problematic things are the ways he feels about women, he also credits his mom was saying she was the first to teach him this kind of discipline that he found in the nation of islam. in many ways returning to her teachings before he even met. why is it that we have this evidence included in the book that we just erased it over time. some part of it is this understanding of sexism and our society, racism in our society

where people do not think that our lives are worthy of documentation. not worthy of celebrating. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website booktv.org. search for the title of her book the three mothers using the search box at the top of the page. >> good evening, everyone. welcome. i am brad graham along with my wife. we have a great event for you this evening with michael lewis talking about his new book premonition. we would like to thank our friends in miami and harvard book store in cambridge massachusetts partnering with us to make this event happen. a couple of brief housekeeping notes first, a question at any point during the talk just click on the q and a icon at the

bottom of the screen. the chat function will be available for audience comments this evening. in that column you will find a link for purchasing additional copies of the premonition. in the introduction of his new book defines his job as mainly finding the story and the material. he has done that consistently with extraordinary success with it 16 bucks over 30 years. found the story where the subject has been wall street, baseball moneyball, football and the blind side, fatherhood and home gain. the sub prime mortgage collapse. high-frequency trading and behavioral science and economics. the unduly project or the hollowing out of the government under trump in the fifth risk, just to name a few. in the premonition, michael addresses the pandemic. as in so many of his previous works he does so through

intriguing characters. a loosely connected of doctor scientists and public health experts that attempt to get the u.s. government to take the pandemic threat seriously and run up against dysfunction and indifference. basic premise is to understand extensive bungling of the crisis we need to look beyond donald trump's own mismanagement to the nations fragmented underfunded public health system and particularly the failings of the cdc. a compelling argument told as michael typically does and a narrative that reads like a thriller. michael will be in conversation this evening with the cognitive scientists that is google's director and previously served as an advisor in the obama white house and at the un. she is about to start a podcast called a slight change of plans. michael, the screen is yours.

>> hey michael. >> hey, maia. >> i know we have talked several times this week. so, as i mentioned to you, this is my favorite book that you bring. i think one thing that i really appreciated was that very early on you gave us a glimpse into your philosophy as a writer. your job is mainly to find the story and lead us readers make up our mind about that story and the characters. it does not mean that you do not form some sort of an opinion about it, too. i am wondering what your take about this book is about? >> well, it really is true. my job is to find the right characters. find the people through the eyes you want to see the world. if i bundle that the book will not be any good.

my job is to kind of draw attention to it. i am like a stripper in front of the cathedral. i will not strip for just any church. these people are important and you need to listen to them. i get excited about stories when there is a situation where there are people that are not being heard. it does not matter all that much what i think about. it really does not. it is more do i feel like i have done justice to these characters in their situation. the story is about what they did and who they are. they are obviously curated and selected for reasons. i think of it as a reason, i thought of it all along as a portrait of a broken

dysfunctional system. not just a public health system, it's like a portion of the society. it tells you a lot about what is wrong with it. they are drawing us a picture by the things that happen to them. yes, it is more narrowly about the public health system to, but that was my target. to write a book, here is what i thought. this thing is a world historic event. it is like the 1918 pandemic. one of those things at 100 years from now, what was it really like? i thought if i do my job really well, it is a little message in a bottle that will describe american society. that was the hope. that was the ambition. it does lots of other things

too. the guiding principle is not what it is about. my editor, he has been my editor my entire career, do not bore your self. keep your self as interested in the material as you can and the reader will stay interested too. i just found this thing, i am glad you think it's my best book, i think it might be my best book. an absolute thrill to write. exhilarating to write. in the way that it is exhilarating, the way it is exhilarating to play tennis. the material is always on the other side of the net. if the material sucks, there is only so much that i can deal. if the material is like roger frederick, then all of a sudden i look so much better than i otherwise did. i felt like i had roger on the

other side. >> one of the reasons this book feels really fresh, the story is unfolding in real time. i don't mean we don't know how coronavirus will evolve. i mean your character's work infectious disease took on new significance against a black drop of a new global pandemic. they are re- processing and reinterpreting their own past in real time. you are kind of live on this journey with them. in having decades to have a more stable understanding of who they are and what they've done. we will need to rewrite my own understanding on where we are in history. >> it is not unprecedented. the thing poured out of me. from first meeting the characters to delivery of book, and both cases it was a year.

did not feel like i needed another day. i think that that is right. they were all a little surprised that i showed up on their doorstep. i cannot tell you how many times. why are you talking to me? i am just a local public health officer. you are really important. do not talk to me. i have been invisible my entire career. i want to remain in the basement until i retire. mortified by the whole thing. that is true that i think they think of themselves may be a little differently than they did in the beginning. that was, figuring out who they were in relation to this event was the trick.

people had asked me, it is an ongoing event. that was never the problem. because they define themselves, they were basically out of the event by june. it's too late, it's over, we lost. there was never an issue of that. foley processing. that is right. >> yeah. did you ever feel like in some sense, as you are interviewing, did you ever feel like you are taking on a therapist role? traumatic parts of their childhood and past. you are forcing engagement. >> always. this is not true just for this book. if i do not get to that place where they are talking to me like they don't talk to anybody else and i have not done my job,

at one point, you now know me better than my two ex-husbands. she said i was not saying that much at that time, but i got way past that. she thinks i may be know her better than anybody. i know things about her that her sister does not know about her. it's a funny thing. i think the basis at the bottom of all of my books is a trust between subject, writer and subject. clearing a reality in any way in their favor. they trust me to understand what the world looks like through their eyes. once that trust is established, like magical things happen. magical things happen. you get to a sort of see the patterns in their lives that they don't see for themselves.

fully formed people. you are delivering in understanding. there are moments like this. this was, this book moment, i met charity dean in early may of last year. after pestering the california government. they told me she did not want to. they lied. i found her through back channels. i went and visitor in sacramento. we had to relay long days together. she was really interested in and she kind of, all right. >> i need to pause right there, you say casually and nonchalantly this is not normal behavior. it you give credit to this

interaction, are these extremely charming disarming character with a southern drawl convincing her is she a character who has nothing to hide? >> we know each other. if you spend 2 days with me and i said i will write about you but i need to walk around your house, what would you say? >> probably not. i'm one of the people -- working to potential characters, that is made -- i have a type of personality for the engineering project. >> that is just me. and explain why. in her case it was she wanted to tell, all these things to remind herself of who she was. sound strange, a lot of things had to do with the bravery.

to inspect all this stuff. her grandmother's portrait, the photograph is hanging by her bed. i take it off the wall and the most intimate personal resolutions are written on the back and it is all stuff that more or less conventional what i am going to do issues we go to west africa and treat malaria or learn whatever it is and this is all i was saying, where the trust takes you. the twentieth 2019 the first line on her list is something very personal, the second is a prediction. it says it is a tingle down my spine and i called and said

what is this? the thing i have been waiting for is about to be upon us. i had no evidence, she is a doctor. she's a doctor and disease hunter who tried to hone her instincts because she knows there is a 6 sense and all that. that moment i didn't know what to do with it but this is when i'm at my best. i see this thing and she was never going to mention she had premonitions in december of 2019 that we were about to be overrun by a pathogen. for me to do what i'm doing

properly -- >> host: these directors in part, this is my favorite book, these characters are larger than life. i called you after i learned, two minutes later i picked up the phone, i cannot believe the force of nature and i want to ask a few more questions about her. how did she ever cross your desk as a potential and at the beginning this is a done deal, everything it takes to be a main character or require that moment with the grandmother saying it crystallized? >> she was inevitable. she was inevitable because i met all my other characters

first and all the other characters pointed to her. they all said before i got to her five people said to me you've got to meet charity because she's the only one in california government who knows what she -- what we should do. she's like a force and they had a sense that if i was going to understand what was going on i needed to spend time with her because they had the feeling she had enlightenment. and these were not dumb people. these were important men who might not be enlightened by a younger female doctor. it was clear she was special before i ever met her. when i met her i wasn't thinking i'm looking for a main character of the book. i was thinking i'm looking for how to write about this, i

thought one of the problems the country has is a status problem. the wrong people have the status. you've got these bozos more like a rotating cast of characters on cable news who are supposedly experts and actually kind of like learned about infectious disease three months ago but the people who make themselves public as experts are usually not the experts, the people who are really experts in disease control are the people controlling the disease and those our local public health officers get all kinds of grief but they are the soldiers on

the battlefield. it is a battlefield without effective generals or the generals are people often who themselves never fought a war so it was clear i wanted to do in the structure of the story with what society should do in real life and that is in very the status structure. take the person who is the lowest person on the totem pole, actually the most important in the fight and make them the most important in the story. once i realized that i thought yeah, she's who i want to lean on the most there was this other thing. reality configured itself in such a way the other characters were connected through her. that's how i found her in the first place. she was the natural connective tissue. she led the reader to the other characters. that was the other reason she ended up where she was. >> it was like a skillfully done seinfeld episode where all

the characters -- very well done. something that was fascinating to me about this is being an infectious disease doctor and public health official it feels like she is possessed by this role. she looked in every nook and cranny and sees this about herself and i am going to rush there. i need to extract lung tissue with garden shears. i'm on that, the hazmat suits, in the clinic, tell him you've got a business, can't practice anymore and i will do that too. very few limits to this person's ability and her willingness to contribute and i am struck, i interacted

recently with a government employee who is very much not charity. i was walking to work and got bitten by a stray dog. i'm scared, in the doctor's office, about to get a tetanus shot and now you have an animal control center like they got it. i'm on the phone, superflustered, i got bitten by a dog, animal rescue, he says everything in his power to avoid having to ask, no problem, just get me the dog's social security number, if you have photo evidence, birthday, street address, i will make sure to chase down the rabbit dog next time and asking the relevant questions. i see the same stray dog two weeks later and so exactly to your point i was thinking how do we help solve this problem

where we recruit people like that into the system? one ways find more people who have deep passionate convictions. that is hard to do. the other alternative is to increase reference we view these physicians has been on this mission with teachers for decades, teachers need to be paid more, they are the backbone of our societies in this past year essential workers, the mailman is a very important person or amazon delivery guy, all these folks we are elevating. it would be wonderful if we elevated local officials. i say that with a vantage.when i was working in the obama white house i did see -- i'm a political appointee type and there are career civil servants

who worked in the government for 50 years, true experts and the shiny new object is the political appointee and that's where the difference goes. even the power system within the government needs to be inverted. >> totally right. that is what i'm trying to do with the book is in for it, this is the person who should have status, everybody should know they are and have the resources to do their job and should be in a position, to be the risks they take, nobody should have to be as brave as charity is doing the job and if you have to be that brave you should be paid $10 million a year. instead of the public service wage. that struck me instantly as being screwed up. wasn't just that she was underresourced and underpaid and overworked, it was that she was expected to take all the

risk that found its way to her, the cdc wasn't willing to cover, the state of california didn't cover for her. she was on her own. one of her mantras was nobody is coming to save you. she had to learn that. when she took the job, she said i did not expect to have to be as brave as i had to be but what made her such a good characters she's full of fear. she's not a fearless person. she has lots of anxieties and fears deeply rooted in a problematic childhood and dealt with alcoholism among other things, and has willed herself to be brave in order to do her job. all those things i was looking at around her house, courage is a muscle memory. signs like that telling herself, reminding herself to be brave. how screwed up is the world b

created that kind of pressure on that role without reward. i agree. the thing in this case, there is great hope in this case because it is such an interesting job. it is a mystery to me there's not been a television drama built around the local public health official. the stories are cinematic. the stakes are high. it is natural material. what they do is so interesting, i would not be surprised if one of the effects of the book is lots of people think maybe i want to do that. what an interesting job or i want to know who my local health official is and all of a

sudden they have a profile they didn't have before but that is what needs to happen. it was mystifying to me the status of the political appointee compared to the status of the civil servant. it made no sense to me, still makes no sense. >> host: i don't have a blue badge, worked at the office of management and budget for 35 years. they could recite things, hundreds of pages and we felt that dynamic. i always felt my own expertise, they were here and here i was. >> it is not they are not compelling people. usually people who have tunnel vision and are obsessed with the subject, that is another aspect of our main character, obsession, that is when you

know you have something and the combination of obsession with failure to realize your character is gold. someone knows a character, they lose altitude on the page. it become self-conscious. it is people who are genuinely obsessed but don't think anything is peculiar about themselves. she was a person who has a kid for entertainment, read books about the bubonic plague, hung models of viruses from the ceiling and was willing to be excommunicated from her church and leave her first marriage to pursue a medical degree and found nothing unusual about it. >> host: it is true of people like richter. this was so fascinating to me. carter is struggling to take up anything and says when it comes

to critical care medicine, being given ritalin, another case of being obsessed and richard has a near fatal accident, being told you're here for a reason, carrying the burden on his shoulders, what is my reason and he stumbles upon the pandemic playbook, i guess this is my life's work. >> i had chills when i talked to richard about this. richard was the jungle guy for the book. he's not as prominent as carter for narrative reasons but richard was the one who held my hand. he is a literary figure. richard's mission in life was to be a poet. writing was too hard so he became a doctor. he was in ecologist and the way

he gets into public service is an interesting story but, we are talking a particular moment when they are trying to figure out how to model how to build or find models that will enable them to study the effects of social intervention, social distancing didn't exist. these guys invented. or reinvented it. it was thought not to work. he was sitting in the white house and starts very haltingly to tell me the story because he's embarrassed by it. it sounds a little cheesy. my parents doting on me, a story that's been in my head my whole life, i rolled down this 80 foot cliff, hit my head. i was unconscious. by accident, a course in

pediatric medicine or critical care a week before, he resuscitated me and ever since then there's this mythology in the family, the alabama family that richard was saved for a reason. these -- is not the bible thumping alabama. he's upper-middle-class. they don't routinely tell these stories. the story lingers in his mind. when he is in the white house facing the possibility that they won't have a solution to a pandemic and i mean trying to answer the question what do you do before you get a vaccine? there will be a period the disease will sweep through the land, how do you minimize it? he has the feeling this is why i am here, this is what my mother was talking about and he is embarrassed to tell me about

it. it is incredible, right? that is where he lives. >> host: i think another theme is richard and the other characters quickly realize someone has got it. the people whose job it is to get this done have got it. when telling anecdotes, charity has this been raging exchange with the cdc when she is detecting a meningitis outbreak, the cdc -- it totally falls on deaf ears, we don't have your back, we think you are wrong but go for you powerless local health official. i still remember the day i realized the government body are revered for much of my life was made of people.

an astonishing discovery to have. it is hard remember. these people are prone to the same vulnerabilities and behavioral biases like fear, ego, self protection motivated by intensive structures etc. etc. my first teacher in the supermarket for the first time was like what? mrs. fletcher buys food in the same place as a smear commoners? i thought she lived in the school. that is what it felt like to have the curtain pulled, the cdc, my colleagues. >> as charity put it she was so disappointed, i was so disappointed to find the man behind the curtain was such a pansy. she gets into it, they are the

gods and all of a sudden she finds herself fighting disease in the streets of santa barbara behind oprah's house, it is multi-drug resistant, meningeal cargo outbreak and it is terrifying and she needs backup show is she needs help, material help and moral support, political cover and all that and they don't materialize. when they materialize, to tell her you could take that risk but if you do and you are wrong you blues your job so we are not going to support that but after the fact after she suppresses the meningococcal outbreak for which the health authorities are eternally grateful and say she did on her own without the cdc instructing her every which way later when there's another outbreak on another college campus they asked them to call charity

because she knows how to do it and it is mind-boggling and she gets to a place a couple years and her job of fighting disease where she bars cdc investigators from her investigation because they just interfere. they don't bring anything to it. it is crazy. what is interesting, local health officials depending on how they do their job they have different relations with the cdc but the culture, they are following the cdc's orders. the cdc has no official power, but they have budgets, money to give them. you are not supposed to anger the cdc but the good ones were

crosswise for this reason and the ones she thought were brave and great which were usually women as opposed to the rich retired doctor looking for a cure and doesn't want trouble. the brave ones found themselves realizing no one is coming to save you, the cdc is going to get in the way and they got their heads chopped off in the last year. all the people with a couple exceptions, you are in santa clara. sarah cody should get a presidential metal. sarah cody saw she needed to shut down the county without backup from gavin newsom or donald trump, shuts down the county, probably save lives, interrupting the early disease transmission and it she gets a

sense, every wednesday at sarah cody's house a mob to this day chance insults and absurdities at her and her family. i call her a month ago, around-the-clock armed guards and she was in the shelter with her teenage daughter to study for a test the next day because the mob was making so much noise outside her house so that's what they get. this selective pressure placed on the public health system by the pandemic to drive the best of them out and let the ones who said i'm not going to interfere too much, let's say that something to correct. >> back to my time in government, there is almost an allergy to risk-taking. people are petrified of taking risks and i don't mean risks of

the magnitude during covid but basic things like running an experiment to see if a program works well or not. of the permit of veterans affairs it took eight month to run a simple experiment and the reason is the upside is solo. if things continue with the status quo, there is no risk incurred. that is the way forward and it is alarming that requires people's willingness to lose everything in order to have a voice but any ideas out of these stories about how the incentive system, leading to the best problem-solving whether it is academia or publications where it is all about profits and medicine.

>> guest: is that a question? the tone of the voice threw me off. i thought it was a statement. >> host: i or if you have any idea about the incentive structures that exist in these different sectors that the end goal of making an impact is achieved. >> guest: we need to create a recognition culture in government celebrating government achievement and the risks. award shows for public service it is a good idea. it is called the sammy award. it is slowly gathering steam, should be broadcast like the oscars. the stories are fantastic, creating the recognition, the second is a leadership thing. the leaders of each organization need to create this culture. it is not like society.

if you become the secretary of commerce, in the department of commerce, to celebrate people taking the risk even if it goes wrong. and you are not taking enough risk. what kind of leaders will do that you there is a structural change. i wonder what you think of this that will have a big effect? it would be to lop off -- we have 4000 political appointees in the administration. they are usually typically with a couple interesting exceptions they are just for the tenure of whoever is in the white house with a mike quit or to get fired or take forever to get confirmed. the average tenure is 18 months to 2 years. that, you're not going to

create any culture in 18 months to 2 years. you wouldn't think to do it because you will not be able to do it. the head of the gao, the general accounting office, the president appoints that person with a 15 year position and it is not surprising that people in their organization rank at the top of the federal government and their answers to questions like i'm encouraged to take risks or i love my job or i might be meaningful. it is the way they -- the institution is led. we need more long-term leaders have the homeowner rather than the home renter attitude toward the enterprise they are on top of. how do you do that? get rid of presidential appointees. instead of 4000 you have 400 and institution allies the

leadership in the operation and they are encouraged when you make this change to look to the best practices in the private sector and ask what do we do to make our employees had the part of agriculture decided about their job as the people at microsoft or google or wherever it is, and i don't think it is that hard. i know it sounds radical and crazy but i don't think it is especially when we have now seen what happens in the cdc when you don't have this and when you frame it is this is no longer government a little more efficient or less efficient, it is existential, the existence of society, we are only as good as our government. talking at the federal level, you can do similar things at the local level. that is sort of like thing. that is one thing.

>> it is a good idea to live off some fraction. one thing the political appointee position is solving for his allowing people, even the carter character, who are often afforded things to bring fresh ideas and government so we do see academics who are like harvard gives me a few years off. >> it is a matter of balance. if i say you are the new head of the cdc but you probably only last to the end of the administration you will have two good years. versus you are the new head of the cdc and you will have it for 15 years, you are much more likely to bring in for 15 years, you're much more likely

to look for innovation if you have to live with what you have got eight years from now so i think i don't think these two things are mutually exclusive. >> the only other point i would make is i did sense of urgency among political appointees to get stuff done because they knew the clock was ticking and that had a psychological effect. i wrote to the department of education official in 2014 who reassured me that in 2017 they would make sure to implement, three years -- >> thick about why the person is that way. they are led by someone they know will be gone and you will be gone, if that person is led by someone who is going to do what they are supposed to do

that person is fired. one of the consequences of good leadership will be organizations will get rid of people who don't function in the whole business of slow walking stuff because the boss will not be around in 18 months, clearly our institutions need a refresh. >> the political appointee lobbyist organization. but there is a tension there. >> you could go too far in the other direction. i agree. after all, the president is held accountable for functioning of the federal government and if he doesn't have the believe to have any effect on it, that can work also. but i agree.

>> host: i want to make sure we have time for q and a. i did to end with one fun question. when i was at berkeley a few years ago you told us when you are writing a book you create a music playlist and play on loop over and over again. to be desensitized to these songs. i wonder if you could share a few songs from the playlist. >> let me see. i've got it here. while you are looking at questions i will tell you what they are. it is really like my writing playlist, this is not curated for musical excellence. i'm an idiot with music. i don't tend to have this ability. i'm not a dj. it is kind of like a musically idiotic spin instructor. i am looking for stuff that not

always but sometimes inside like to write to. romeo and juliet, emmylou harris, suspicious minds. may i have this dance. kelly clark. stuff the i asked chair ready dean what her favorite song was and she sent it to me and i thought that is so curious i'm putting on the playlist. kermit the frog. >> host: that is definitely -- >> guest: chasing cars. it is just like some of it is cool and hip and some is distinctly not cool, but it gets me going. it is pavlovian. in the grocery store, i hear that song, i look to go to work. i should be writing now.

>> host: peggy wants to know how you decide what to write about and once you do what you do next? ent love your book. >> this is the truth and it sounds not true. after every book i do ask myself should i still be doing this? i try to give myself a state where i could answer know. i usually go with do something like a podcast to write a script. i don't say i've got to write another book. i start from the position no book will never need to be written by me again. that way i'm called rather than force myself to write a book. i have to feel like i'm called to the story like the story needs me to point i sense obligation to tell it. how i get there with any particular subject has depended on the subject. in his case it was cheap and dirty. iversen the fifth risk and

something bad will happen in the trump administration will mismanage it because of the way they handle the transition and something happens. i thought i had a duty to poke around and it yielded such gold right away in the form of these characters that i was off and running but sometimes i don't go into write a book but ask a question about money and the answer is so interesting, it turns into a booklet it is always there are always i have the same conversation with my editor 16 times where i say star -- does this interest you. we spent three months pondering my uncertainty and i care so much about them and no one else is going to do it i got to do it.

it is slightly revealing. i had a secret group of doctors who had a privileged view. carter and mesh are at the center of it. no one in the world as far as i knew knew who they were and the new york times discovers one of carter's emails and is briefly in the news, front page of the new york times and they have a tiny sliver of the story and i call richard and say i'm not going to write the book because i don't need to it is in the new york times. i waited for oliver to emerge and it didn't so i came back to it, it is already in the newspaper. if i don't do it won't get done and it should be done. that the important feeling and how it gets found is action.

>> i care a lot and if i don't do it nobody else will. >> that is true. >> host: you have a session. which of your own books is your favorite? >> guest: the honest answer, asking which of my kids is my favorite. >> host: which of your kids is your favorite? right here. i know who it is. >> guest: it compute, the question. i will make critical judgments. the way i judge them is the way olympic dives are judged. not just the quality of the dive but the difficulty of the dive. it was an incredibly difficult dive where i made some cuts going into the water. and unbelievable simple one was

no splash at all. moneyball, pretty simple dive, not much splash. this one was a complicated dive and i don't there was a lot of splash. if i had to write them it isn't like it is my favorite, i wouldn't put it that way but if you say you got to one of your books and writing competition to compete against other writers, who's the best writer? i would put this one up. >> host: helen wants to know the most surprising discovery made with interviewing, researching and writing? >> the discovery of the material and the writing process. >> that was easy. that was easy.

on the ground with charity dean in santa barbara where i was for two weeks, retracing his steps, following the path for she's rescuing people going through all -- living her drama i felt i walked into a netflix show. how come i didn't know about this person? it. my thoughts off. right behind it are the other two characters. we haven't talked about joe but this guy, solving pandemics in pythons and his parents. >> host: brain eating amoebas. >> guest: the most badass virus you've ever seen in these people who rethink what happened in 1918 to create a national pandemic strategy, that blue my doors off. those are the things. and the process was one thing that excited me that was new

and that was in a very self-conscious way for the first time with a book i said i'm going to go where the characters go. this is about these characters and i don't know what's the story is yet. that proved in this case, maybe not in every case, a very fair way to write the book. >> host: i never asking a friend of mine the day i was married do you have any advice for me? you did that part, marrying the right person. if you have the right characters the story will unfold. >> guest: you are building your house on the best foundation and the building materials are not quite up to it. >> host: what is the biggest

mistake made by the cdc in response to covid 19? we don't have 2 hours but choose one. >> guest: the testing failure is the biggest. and a flashlight. to the fda, simply blinded them when they are supposed to enlighten them. that was shocking and catastrophic. it is not one thing but a to the institution to the point it was unable to stand up to donald trump, it just caved and it became a mouthpiece for lots

of stuff. it lost -- the process by which it lost the ability to be brave is the other side of it. >> host: and effortless narrative to have, no, this doesn't -- this is deeply entrenched and began long before. if you could review the career. >> if i could redo some part of my career. >> host: what would it be? >> guest: read to an interview. i don't have those regrets, don't have them, nothing comes to mind with an interview. it is a relationship, charity,

i have to spend the days but months, there's no cake risk. >> guest: for a moment -- >> guest: i never lost a fish. every fish i hooked i landed. never had a problem with someone saying you scared me off the story, don't 20 writing about me anymore. the mistake i made with george soros, there was a masterpiece in him.

it cut across the financial market, cover peace about it for the new republic and he agreed to let me be his writer and then said no. i think he made a mistake. that was a mistake on my part to write that. >> host: a final one. a few minutes over. this is a great question here. what do you read or listen to for fun? >> guest: all kinds of stuff. i'm reading clara on the sun. how can you win the nobel prize and still write so well? it is not fair. it is so good. i read fiction. the nonfiction i tend to read

is usually work-related, stuff i need to know about. i seldom pick up -- sometimes i read biographies but i tend to read more fiction than nonfiction for pleasure. a tendency there. what i listen to -- >> what is your favorite podcast? >> guest: there is a new one called a slight change of plan. >> host: mind blowing. >> guest: i don't want to write anymore, just listen. it is so charming. i listen to wallace malcolm gladwell's podcasts. he led me into this.

this is damning. i'm not a big consumer of culture. i am a big consumer of fiction. i'm a sort of consumer of some kind of nonfiction. i watch tv shows. i'm watching the mayor of east town, the kate winslet detective story. i could watch kate winslet. i get hooked on things. i'm not a systematic consumer of culture. this stuff kind of appears before me and i eat it. tending towards fiction, tending towards television, good television drama. >> host: given your last book on federal bureaucrats and all

that happened during the trump years to find out what happens to them. >> guest: thought about what i wrote? almost always, a lot. yeah. a lot of them are totally oblivious to what is written about in the book. arthur allen who ended up being the afterword to the paperback in 8000 words who basically created the field, the world expert in how different objects drift at sea enabling him in the coast guard to rescue all kinds of people who otherwise would have been lost at sea, they didn't know how an overturned 18 foot sailboat moved in the water, couldn't

predict where it had gone. he developed a prediction machine for these objects. it captures the spirit. arthur allen to write about him, and alphabetized list of the government workers. has been essential. i wonder what he does, only saved 8000 lives but never mind. i call him and i am michael lewis, didn't listen that closely. i fly to connecticut and spend time with you and spent three full days, full days, i interviewed children, want to his old office, we went to where he floated these objects

to figure out, he cried before me remember the woman he hadn't saved, got very emotional. three days later back to the airport i got a call from arthur and he says you are a writer, you are an author and i said i told you that. what did you think i was doing? flying to connecticut, i thought you were interested in how objects drift. i said no, i'm interested but not that interested. i got an email from arthur allen because he just read the premonition. i don't just stay in touch, to get their feedback, i stay in touch because we become friends.

the first thing that happened is the kind of feedback, becomes water under the bridge and we move on to having a relationship. >> host: keith wants to know about the book. >> guest: i really like anthony fauci. if you wanted to use it as a weapon, the kind of person who wanted to do damage to anthony fauci i wouldn't approve but he wanted to use my book as a weapon and you say if you're so smart how come you didn't know as much on january 20th. he was saying everything was not that big a deal and they were watching it. carter was explaining why you shouldn't say it is okay and anthony fauci is operating with constraints carter isn't.

to stay copacetic with trump and talk to the american people. he's playing a political game at the same time trying to save lives. i admire him and i would hate it if someone took this as something to use against him. >> host: he was sort of the man last year. the final one, great question. after everything is back to normal what do you think of the possibility of people not having any interest in reading, watching, listening or consuming anything pandemic related as we have been living this for 24/seven? thank you for writing it. >> guest: people will have that prejudice, i might have that prejudice. the pandemic, we don't get to the pandemic until page 180 in the book. i told my editor i am skipping

the pandemic. it is going to be done so briefly because the only interest to my characters is the very beginning of it. taking on this march through a dreary event, wasn't what the story was about. it was about all things around the pandemic that led to what happened during the pandemic. in some ways it is not even a book about the pandemic. i wasn't worried about people won't read a pandemic book. it is and it isn't. >> host: you are in a control place like infectious disease but anything else the same stories would hold. that is really interesting. we are done. >> guest: you did great job. >> host: you did too. >> great moderating. i don't know why maya shankar

won't let you roll around her place but you can come over to mine anytime. >> i had no idea. >> everyone watching, thanks very much for tuning in. this is michael's best book yet. be sure to read it. you can find bookstore links for purchasing additional copies of "the premonition: a pandemic story". all of us at politics and prose and cambridge and books and books in miami, stay well and well read. >> weekends we bring you the best in american history and nonfiction books. on booktv atlantic magazine's effort to reflect on the past and future of what he calls trump's america in the cruelty is the point. on "after words" conservative podcast rain journalist ben schapiro discusses his new book

the authoritarian moment in which he argues the progressive left is fishing an authoritarian agenda in america. he is interviewed by national and syndicated radio talkshow host eric from texas. watch booktv every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime, booktv.org. >> during a virtual event, harvard university professor henry louis gates junior discussed the importance of the church in black communities. >> south carolina, louisiana, mississippi, where majority black states, ground 0 for the black communities are reconstruction was charleston, south carolina. georgia, alabama, and florida were almost majority black states, there's real

concentration of black power is jim clyburn in the film in those six states, that was true before the civil war. south carolina's nickname was negro country which was full of black people, and productivity of the expertise in africans, and and this is on richard allen and it is formerly born in 1860, in charleston there was the manual church and in

1822 a man named denmark was accused of plotting and insurrection, and this is one of the ironies of american history, he was an enslaved man in 1799, he played the lottery like you play at the grocery store and won $1,500 and used 600 to buy his own freedom from his so-called owners, so after 1800, in 1822 was a very prominent man, we don't know if it was really and insurrection. he was accused of leading this plot for insurrection in charleston. he was found guilty and was executed.

the church was completely destroyed. there was paranoia, the haitians defeated the greatest army, the army of napoleon bonaparte, became emperor, the name of haiti -- >> a particularly brutal form of slavery. the average lifespan on a sugar plantation is 7 years. the richest colony in the history of the world, sugar, teachers using that analysis. they couldn't afford sugar. only wealthy people could use sugar before the new world opened up.

sugar could be mass-produced to become one of the world's first commodity products. it was used to bolster the working-class to get the more energy so they can be exploited. some anti-slavery figures boycotted sugar because they knew it was a product with blood dripping all over it. nations defeated napoleon when he sent his brother-in-law back in 1801 to reinstitute slavery in 1794 and under the french assembly, you know those details. he died a horrible death in france, but he led that, the

americans were paranoid about slaves insurrections. whether or not denmark bessie was found guilty he was executed, and he will cut to the end of the civil war and all these black people, and a minister in brooklyn basically backed themselves to charleston because the church hadn't been allowed to proselytize in the confederacy and they lived in the former confederate states in the south before the great migration. so ground 0 had to be charleston and the first thing

they do is rebuild, and they needed denmark bessie's son. you can't make that up. it is like poetry.