Part One: The Last Sam Bankman-Fried Episodes (secretly about Michael Lewis)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hey everyone, Robert Evans here with Behind the Bastards, and
we've got some kind of sad news today. This is
going to hit members of the community pretty hard. But
forty eight years ago, on November tenth, nineteen seventy five,
the SS Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, killing
all twenty nine crew members on board. This is a

(00:27):
hard time of the year for everybody here at Behind
the Bastards, for all of you at home, and the
only thing that makes it easier is the knowledge that
both the Russian Federation and the Chinese government have recently
substantially increased the sizes of their nuclear stockpile, while the
United States is in the process of renovating its own

(00:48):
nuclear weapons. And my hope, I think all of our hope,
is that the leaders of our world can kind of
band together in this time of conflict and sadness to
finally expect into the entirety of their nuclear stockpiles, detonating
them over Lake Superior. You know that's my hope. I
know it's all of your hope back at home, and
I really think what can carry us through this is

(01:12):
some classic MAO era propaganda posters sewing, Joe Biden, Zijen
Ping and Vladimir Putin walking hand in hand, surrounded by
a crowd of little kids in Red Guard uniforms, heading
towards the light of a new atomic sun, while a
series of mushroom clouds detonate over Lake Superior's debts. Anyway,

(01:32):
welcome to the show, Jamie. That's so.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I mean, first of all, thank you, thank you for that.
I needed to hear it. I think we all the
image you described, and I hate that my mind went
here conjured the image of Paul Walker in the convertible
next to Brian Griffin. That's right, that's right, sort of
what I was picturing. The image you described has that

(01:58):
exact same and it just acts just throw someone in
the back seat, same exact ship.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Yes, that's the dream, Jamie, that's the dream. God, what
a beautiful, beautiful dream.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
I really think about being a member of Paul Walker's
family at the time that image was circular. Well, you're
just like.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
I mean, from your jacuzzie filled with one hundred dollars bills. Yes,
even so, my.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Loved one, my dearly departed, being thrown in a convertible
next to a cartoon dog. Who to add insult to
injury would be resurrected within months, and like Brian the
Dog not to Okay, Brian the Dog was resurrecrected, I
think on the same timeline as Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It was like, yeah, very similar characters.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, yeah, and we can all agree that, Billow, they're
both mar heads and they also and they both are
you know, like middling authors.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
You could say, yeah, yeah, that's fair to say. So Jamie,
speaking of mediocre men, how do you feel have you
been keeping up with the story of Bastard's pot alumni,
Sam Bankman Freed?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Okay, so I have. I I know the broad strokes,
but as soon as the joyous news became started coming in,
I knew that we were going to be doing this.
And I don't know any of the particulars except for
tweets of yours that have been algorithm to the top
of my feed. I'm just there's no one I would

(03:35):
rather be with to let it just wash off for me.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Robert Family, Robert, can I ask you to please share
your working title for this episode because it's funny.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, it's Sam Bankman, not Freed, and in parentheses because
he is in jail.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
I think it's fun, and I think I think that
that is far superior to Sam Bankman jailed.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah, that's not creative at all. You got to spend
a lot of extra words I could create.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
I'm not interested in other perspectives on that title. I
think that you got it exactly right.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Thank you, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, brevity is some bullshit.
As a great author once said, so Jamie, speaking of
great authors, eighty percent of this episode is shitting on
Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Shirt. Oh yeah, no,
we're really This is gonna be a great one for
the Lewis heads in the audience. Wow, okay, okay, this

(04:27):
is gonna be Oh buckle up, yeah, now this is relevant.
The man just said buckle up. Oh yeah, strap the
fuck in and down.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Fuck ahead, we are.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
We are starting with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
James, We're okay. I feel like when I recently saw
a picture of my three year old niece going to
a Wiggles concert and I just caught myself smiling in
the same way.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
This is great. Yeah, this is great. So on January fifth,
twenty twenty two, Sam Bankman freed send a message to
one of his many signal loops. For what it's worth,
February eight through sixteenth, Michael Lewis is going to be
in the Bahamas profiling us. Now, if you haven't been
following this story, and if Michael Lewis is not familiar
to you, then you probably do remember like the most

(05:16):
famous result of one of his novels, which is the
movie The Big Short. This was based on a book
Lewis wrote about a group of traders who had the
foresight to predict and profit off of the two thousand
and eight financial crash. They realized that, like the subprime
loan business was like a bunch of hooey, and they
shorted it right, made a bunch of money while everybody
else lost their jobs.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
You love to see it.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
You love to see it. His other best known work
is probably Moneyball, which is about a baseball team manager
who uses which called saber metrics, which, without getting into it,
is basically being Nate Silver but also actually running a
sports team. Right.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
That is also that in twenty twenty I started doing
this bit on Cursed Zoom comedy shows called The Boyfriend
Criterion Collection, and it's just like Blu Rays that are
in your house against your living well, Yeah, mon Ball
is very much a part of the boyfriend Criterion collection.
It's right up there with Whiplash. It's like a disaster.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
I must say, if you, if you did not date
the worst man you've ever dated in your entire life
in twenty seventeen that was obsessed with all things Michael Lewis,
then were you really in Los Angeles?

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah? No, that's that's true. The problematic By the way, if.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Your worst boyfriend couldn't read, really.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Think you're you're the median American and honestly don't even know.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Who I'm talking about, Like it's impossible to say that,
but I know.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
The only non problematic piece of physical media that you
can have on you in your house as a boyfriend
is an original VHS tape of Trimmors. That's just the
way it works.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
I I and I would fight with you if I didn't,
if I didn't feel the same way. I think that
that is very much as a good sign.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Uh huh, that's excellent, Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
The more prominently displayed, the better.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
To say that Michael Lewis is a famous writer or
famous journalist. Puts it pretty lightly. He's probably the best
known journalist in the country and almost certainly the wealthiest.
There's not a lot of competition for that, but like,
he's definitely in the running. He's what you'd call an
access journalist. Who he is somebody whose stories come from
his ability to get close to his subjects and just

(07:26):
kind of exist with them during a crucial period of
time as a fly on the wall. There's a number
of ways to do this. There are a couple of
like big Trump administration books written by journalists who basically
just got to sit around Trump and his White House
while things went insane. The route that Lewis takes is
to befriend the people that he's writing about. Right, He
is this guy and people who know him will say

(07:47):
he just kind of makes people comfortable around him. He
is a guy that you want to have at a party.
He's a he's pleasant company. Enough people have said this
that I assume it's true based on just like how
he does his stories. People he's good at putting folks
at ease and they don't mind him being around, and
that's how he gets a lot of his stories. Now,
as general rule, if you are in the position that

(08:08):
Sam bankman Freed and his friends who are in circa
twenty twenty two running a massive financial shell game, you
would be hesitant and welcome very well.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
I think we can all agree based on kings talk
about a game of four D chess.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
The last guy you might want hanging around your office
is a dude who could literally, like Michael Lewis could
literally in like the space of a phone call, get
articles greenlit in every newspaper in the country. Right. He
just is he has that kind of pull. He is
that reliable a seller for his stories, Like nobody would
not want to take a story that he had, so
you would want to be cautious. You would think you'd

(08:44):
want to be cautious about letting this guy into your house.
But there's a reason why they said yes when he
reached out to SBF, and it's that Michael Lewis's reputation
among people in the finance industry was not oh, he
wrote this book that's critical of us. Oh, he's this
guy who exposes the diret of the finance industry. It's
this is a guy who can make you into a celebrity.

(09:05):
And in early twenty twenty two, that was the entire
vision of everyone like connected business wise to Sam Bankman,
Freed was, we need to turn this guy into a
celebrity who's constantly everywhere to raise the profile of this exchange. Right,
They spent something like a billion dollars on a variety
of different corporate and celebrity endorsements. Of the nine billion

(09:27):
that was missing, about a billion went towards shit to
boost FTX and to boost Sam's profile.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
Right, I'm sorry, where's that. You gotta spend money to
make money, I guess you because spent ten billion to
make nothing. To go to jail. You have to see
this has been ten billion dollars to go to jail.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
That's what I'm saying, to go to to go to
Forever prison, Shamie. Let's be honest about this.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
He's going to. I for every time I've seen Forever prison,
very often. For you, I hear it in the cadence
of the Forever Purge trailer. You're like, Oh, it's the
Forever prison.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, that is where he's going. And that's you know again,
everyone is kind of cut ties. Everyone legitimate has cut
ties with not just Sam, but like Crypto in general.
In the wake of Sam's collapse, But there was about
a year and a half period where like every bank
was looking into it, every tech company was putting shit
on the blockchain. The last kind of holdout, and the

(10:24):
reason why Sam put so much money into this was politicians. Right.
There were a few who would cut but like most
people who were in politics would not even take donations
directly from crypto, right, you had to launder that shit.
And Sam was looking to buy himself a sizable chunk
of Congress so that he could make sure that regulations
on crypto favored his company specifically, which is why he

(10:48):
did stuff like you know, he spent tens of millions
of dollars getting Tom Brady and Giselle Bunchen to like
pretend to be his friends. He sat down next to
Bill Clinton on fucking stage in a very cringey interview.
He paid Larry Davis to make a Super Bowl lad
But all of that, the potential, all of that had
to legitimize him paled in comparison to having the big
short dude treat you like a financial genius. Right, If

(11:11):
Michael Lewis treats you like Michael Burry, who's one of
the characters from the Big short who became a big
name after Lewis wrote this book. If he's like, this
guy is that kind of financial genius, then everybody's going
to start taking your calls, even people who like have
been hiding from Crypto because they don't they're worried that
what happened would happen right, that you'd get ten million

(11:31):
in donations, they have to pay them back because it
turned out that it was a con man.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
You know, there's there's a note of it that it
almost reminds me when like Errol Morris like profiled and
worked for Elizabeth Holmes. You're just like, it's that level
of profile versus l.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Yes, this turns you into somebody who's like who can
be taken seriously because that's what who Lewis is, right,
he is that big a deal. I'm not like puffing
him up. He doesn't need it right now.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
He is people to care about Moneyball the most, the
most boring ass thing I've ever heard about my life.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Well, and that's the thing. He is one of these guys.
He's maybe the main character of this episode. I wouldn't
call him quite a bastard, but one of the things
you have to give him is. He is legitimately a
very good writer. There's no other way you get people
to give a shit about Moneyball. He's like, I read
his whole Sam Bankman Freed book. I think it's bullshit,
but I didn't. I didn't get bored at any point.
You know, is at a pace a piece of writing,

(12:27):
you know. So he decides to come knocking. Sam is
immediately on board. All of their PR people are on board.
Not everyone at FTX is on board. Carolin Edison, who
is his on again, off again girlfriend who testified against
him repeatedly. She is running Alameda, which is the company
that bankrupts everything that he is illegally funneling consumer deposits into.
She is basically like the and she does not like

(12:50):
the idea of having Michael Lewis around. Now. She can't
really confront Sam Bankman Freed when she has a bad idea.
Nobody can, so she just kind of hedges it and
says the signal chat makes sense. I feel like my
instincts are more towards under the radar, but I might
just be irrationally biased towards that in general. And then
like an emoji of a face sticking its tongue out,

(13:13):
and Sam replies, Sam, except exactly the opposite that, right, like.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
You know you're down bad if you're asking Sam Bankreant
Freed to make sense. Yeah, it's challenging. Oh god, that's
such I mean, I don't know, I know we've talked
about her in the past, but that's like a what
a mess, what a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
She's in a rough situation. And he will talk a
lot about how he treats her in this. But Will
mccaskell is also in that signal chat, and Will is
basically the founder. He's not like literally the founder, but
he is the founder of what is most commonly talked
about as the effect of altruism movement, and definitely its figurehead. Right.
He is the big guy. He's this Oxford professor who

(13:53):
he pills Sam Bankman Freed on the idea, and his
response is kind of I think part of why this
winds up going down. He says, I think either approach
is reasonable, should just be a deliberate, coordinated plan. But
if a whole bunch of attention is going to be
on FTX, Sam and EA, whatever happens, then getting ahead
of the game and controlling the narrative is necessary, yep,
responded Sam, and they did it. Michael Lewis spends like

(14:16):
a year with this guy, like he spends a lot
of time around them. Everyone's very excited because what happened
last year is Sam's world collapses and he gets charged
with like seven felonies. And then right afterwards, Michael Lewis
is like, by the way, I've been basically living with
him for a year, and everyone's like, oh shit, this
could be pretty good because like this guy can write.

(14:38):
He's been front set, he's written about a financial collapse before.
He's got front seat tickets to this whole thing. And
then the book comes out, and unfortunately for Lewis, the
book comes out, he times the release right for when
the court case starts, so we get all of this
right alongside his book. We get all of these signal
texts and stuff that were not in his book book,

(15:00):
and kind of the overwhelming thing that you see when
you compare what comes out in the court case what
comes out in the testimony of as Friends to the
text of Lewis's book, is that like, oh, Michael got
kind of fucking conned by this dude, right, Oh yeah,
Like he fell for it.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, And I mean it speaks to the level of
confidence one would have to have in their own reporting
to time it with yep the trial, because if you
had even a remote feeling that you have got you
had gotten it wrong, I would be like release it
a year after the trial, like bury it in the area.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
I can see if you're if you're just some journalists
and this is your first book or you just don't
have you're not like a huge hit. So like you
are very Your publisher has a lot of power and
they're like, we want this to drop when the case does,
because that's when it'll sell best. I get that you
might not have the suction necessary to move it. Michael
Lewis can say we are putting this out this day

(15:59):
and like, suck my dick. I'm Michael Lewis. It'll make
you money, right, And he doesn't, which which suggests he
has the same kind of hubris that Sam Bankman Freed
did in a lot of ways. So to give you
an example of how emotionally involved Lewis is in this case,
here's a good write up on the court case by
a journalist who was there during the trial, which was

(16:20):
not filmed. Writing for Jacobin, and this is how they
describe the devastating cross examination of Bankman Freed, who again
chose to take the stand in his own defense despite
every expert saying absolutely never do this. Quote across the
aisle for me and the section reserve for friends and family.
I could see Sam's parents growing increasingly agitated, his mom

(16:41):
visibly shaking two rows behind them. I couldn't help but
notice author Michael Lewis leaning forward, arms draped over the
bench in front of him, with his head down between
his arms.

Speaker 3 (16:51):
Nobody expects Michael Lewis in the court.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah, and I you know, I do actually have I
don't think they're very good people, but I have sympathy
for Sam's parents. This is like a nightmare if like
to know that your kid is going to forever prison,
even if it's totally their faults.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
My empathy only goes so far. But also, like, what
a scene, What a fucking scene.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, terrific. Can't wait for Jonah Hill to
start as Sam Bankman Freed in the movie based on this.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
No, I really don't want.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
No, No, there's no one I want to see play
him in a movie. Just do him. Like Maris and Frasier,
have him always be off.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
That would be oh, I love yeah, like the Parents
and Charlie Brown, Heather Sinclaire of Degrassi.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
And you know what, cast David Hyde Pierce as Michael Lewis.
Then we got a movie. Then we got a fucking film.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Then we got I mean, if if this whole ordeal
results in David Hype Pierce winning an oscar a.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Bad absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
There's way is good.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
There's no way it's good. Yes, you know.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
And and it's possible that Adam McKay in an effort
to course directing, endorse on sure Adam McKay is, like,
he absolutely could, and he's and he would need to
course correct on the Michael Lewis in the first place
for having directed The Big Short. It's a great move
for everyone. We could make everyone's agent in the situation.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
You're gonna be rich, Jamie, I'm gonna be fucking rich. Yeah.
In in interviews he gave after the book came out
and the trial started, Lewis framed his book Going Infinite
about Sam Bankmanfried as a letter to the jury, which
is like kind of nonsense, because obviously the jury is
never allowed to read a book about the guy that
they're going on a trial about, and the judge specifically

(18:54):
instructed them not to. There's an interview with sixty minutes,
which is really something we will hear some clips from
it later. But in that interview, Lewis explained, I mean,
there's going to be this trial, and the lawyers are
going to tell two stories, and so there's a story
war going on in the courtroom, and I think every
war and I think neither one of those stories is
as good as the one I have. And like I

(19:16):
on one hand, yes, of course you're right, because you're
a better writer than any lawyer is going to be.
But on the other hand, this isn't a story. It's
just a question of what happened, Michael Lewis, and what
happened is massive fraud, and you don't put that in
your book.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
That's so I mean to hear. I mean, I guess
I can be of many minds about characterizing it as
a story war, because that is like just how history
is written, and it's kind of almost refreshing to hear
someone refer it to as like, well, whoever could write
the better story? That's will We'll end up having the
historical precedent, but interesting that it would be said out

(19:53):
loud in that way.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, and again I want to reiterate, while Michael is
the main character here, he's not like he's he's not
a bastard. He's not someone who's like impact on the
world has been monstrous as far as I've ever heard,
He's a reasonably nice person. We'll definitely get him being
mean in a couple of points here, but it's nothing
that I would like call someone that, like one of
history's greatest monster over But this is Bankman free. It

(20:16):
is a bastard. And so I think talking about the
way in which he kind of has Lewis wrapped around
his finger, in the degree to which Lewis tortures his
own logic and prose in order to ignore that is
just fascinating. So with that in mind, let's start with
a little bit more of Michael's backstory, because that is
important to understand why he falls for this. Michael Monroe

(20:37):
Lewis was born on October fifteenth, nineteen sixty in New Orleans. Now,
from the beginning, his life was about as far from
working class as you get, and to his credit, Lewis
does not deny this whenever he's.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Asked to the only thing you can't do, I guess, yeah, you've.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Got to be open about it. Here's him talking to
the Guardian Lewis's family stat at the very top of
the Wasp Aristocra in New Orleans. I was so inside,
he told me. I was literally trained how to sit
on a throne when I was fifteen years old, because
it was crowned the king of the Carnival Ball, an
organization that didn't allow black people, didn't allow Jews. I
would go from baseball practice to sceptor waving lessons. I

(21:15):
was born into that world. Being an insider in New
Orleans made him feel like an outsider everywhere else, and
not always to his disadvantage. And first off, wow, that's
quite a backstory.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
Thank you, King, I do you, King?

Speaker 2 (21:32):
I do think I want to point out something here,
which is where I don't think he's obvious skating, but
I think he's missing something about his own what his
background has done for him. Because I don't I'm not
going to question him when he says it made him
feel like an outsider. But I think it's very clear
that this is a guy whose work is defined by
his ability to make himself into an insider. And I

(21:52):
think that's a big part of why he's able to
do that, is he grows up in the middle of
wealth and power, right where it's the air that he breathed.
And you don't notice this if like you grow up
working class and don't know any super rich people. But
when you meet some people who were born crazy rich,
you note that, like a lot of them have this

(22:13):
this way of making of making themselves feel like they
belong anywhere, right, It's why they can get away with
so much, Like even if they're totally out of their depth.
There's this kind of expectation you get when you grow
up hyper rich that the world is going to show
you a degree of deference when you know people who
have family fortunes behind them, you know what I'm talking about, right,
Like it's the reason they are never going to get

(22:33):
like carded to see if they're a member of a
place that's members only, right, because they they have that
way about them. And I think that's part of how as.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Receptible thing well, And I do think that there is
I mean, and it sounds like what you're getting at
is like there is if you can get someone who
grew up in those circumstances on the side of fucking decency.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
There is a huge.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Value to having someone like that who knows how to
navigate those places on your side. But if they're but
but also, you know, to an extent and a liability
because you never know, you know. I'm curious what endears
him to Sam.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, we'll get to that. So he goes to Princeton
University and he graduates kum laude, which which means pretty
good grades in nineteen eighty two. His senior thesis is
on Donatello, a prominent ninja turtle. And when he's in college,
he's a member of Princeton's Ivy Club, which is the
oldest eating club in the school. Now, if you're not

(23:31):
a blue blood, you probably are like, what the fuck
is an eating club? These are private dining halls that
are also kind of social clubs where upper classmen go
to get nicer food. There's like nine of them, I
think on campus, the Ivy Club at Princeton, or like
everywhere at Princeton. There's other fancy boys schools have these.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Robert, this is full count the clue.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
I was like eating club, the like eating club to
me is like drive through Taco bell one am starving. Yeah, wow,
eating club eating.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
What they Sophie, you said, this is full cunt. But
it did not admit women until nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
The adacy to not let a woman go into hut.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Something that cunty. It just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
And it's it's also very funny that like or not funny,
but it's noteworthy. In this interview, it talks about how
he was at the Ivy Club. Right when he talks about,
you know, his upbringing. He's like, yeah, this like this
contest I was in. You couldn't You couldn't be in
this club if you were like black or Jewish. He
doesn't mentioned that the Ivy Club doesn't admit women. I
think that is maybe interesting. It's also worth noting that

(24:46):
the Ivy Club. F Scott Fitzgerald writes about the Ivy
Club and calls it f Scott Fitzgerald calls it detached
and breathlessly aristocratic, and Scott Fitzgerald says that about your
blue Blood Club, like, my god.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
I love that. Wow. What a treat, what a treat?
If yeah, if f Scott Fitzgerald is the one experiencing
like moral clarity about about your weird group. That's challenging. Now.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
While Lewis had a passion for art history, he had
a bigger passion in life and it's stacking motherfucking paper.
So he goes to the London School of Economics next
and eventually joins the bond desk at Salomon Brothers. He's
in like the London branch of the Salomon Brothers. Uh no, no, no, no,
he's just making Dalla dollar bills, y'all.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Robert Dalla dollar Bill's time is happening now for us
as well.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Oh yeah, speaking of Dalla dollar bills, buy some of
these products and we think about things.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
I have a request for the listeners, which is not
something that I often. I don't I don't ask, I
don't ask anything of our listeners, just that just that
they're happy. But if somebody could please make a dating
profile for Michael Lewis as an art graphic, I just it,
just please for me?

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Oh man, Okay, that's that's good. You've got You've got
two different requests this week, listeners. One is that propaganda
poster and the other is Michael Lewis dating profile. So Lewis.
Lewis is, you know, an investment banker for just a
few years. Actually you know who? He reminds me of,
Oh okay, just.

Speaker 3 (26:35):
You know, hoping your toes in it. Then that kind
of doesn't It's like the just the tip of financial crime.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
He's in there at eighty seven, the market crashes and
he makes a pivot away from like doing that as
a job, and he writes a book called Liar's Poker
about the investment you know, Bang the stockbroker. That like
that kind of life that makes a shitload of money, right,
this is we'll talk about it in a second, but
like I want to he minds me in this trajectory.
Do you know anything about Michael Crichton?

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Uh? Oh, I mean I yeah, Peaks and Valleys. I
had no attachment to him, but I know many do.
And like, yeah, the back half of Michael Crichton pretty
fucking brutal.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, I'm pretty pretty brutal. I'm not talking about like
his actual career as a writer as much as Crichton
goes to Harvard Medical School and becomes a doctor. Most
people are I don't think I actually know this, but
like he was an actual MD. But he doesn't really
do the job, Like he gets his MD and then
he quits to write books like some of which have

(27:36):
a medical like he's the creator of ER and he
gets criticized by doctors who are like, oh you just
creator of ER. Yeah, Michael Crichton created a r Yes.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Oh okay, sorry, I thought we were talking about Michael Lewis. Yes,
I knew Michael.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
They have a similar They have a similar kind of
trajectory where they go to school for this thing they
do like a teeny amount of it, just dip their
toes in and then they get famous writing these books
that are inspired by it. Right. I just find that interesting.
So to give you a further idea of Lewis's family background,
Liar's Poker, which is semi autobiographical, revolves around a scene
where Michael Lewis is invited to a banquet hosted by

(28:10):
the Queen Mother while he's working in London. He gets
a seat there because of his cousin, Baroness Linda von Stauffenberg,
and she seats next to the manager of Salomon Brothers,
which is how he gets his job. Word salad crabs
don't have bluer blood than this man like that is

(28:31):
that is the bluest you fucking get.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
If your cousin's a baroness and you're in your like
late twenties, y, what if you know.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
A baroness, you are like, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So
Lewis's depiction of Wall Street guys from Liar's Poker on
because he writes a few books about Wall Street types
because he knows them, right, It's generally noted as not
being flattering, but I think that's by people who like
a very naive view of what's unflattering because his Wall

(29:02):
Street guys they curse a lot. They use phrases like
big swing and dick. They're like they're like kind of gross,
but in a way that's glamorous, right, Like I.

Speaker 3 (29:12):
Mean I feel like it's like the Glengarry Glenn Ross,
Yes exactly, yeah, talking shit, yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
It like it is a kind of thing where you
could say he's not glamorizing it, but he's absolutely making
it look a way that makes more young men greeting
men when to become stock traders. And to extend the
Michael Crichton comparison, it is Liar's Poker is generally agreed
to have had a similar impact on its industry to
how Jurassic Park influenced paleontology by like bringing a shitload

(29:39):
of people in.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Wow, that's really interesting to me because I like, I
don't know. I have not read Liar's Poker. To be honest,
I have not read any of his books. I have
seen some of the adaptations in movies of his books.
But but yeah, in terms of like, anytime someone writes
something about Wall Street, like you have to be so
fucking careful, and also even if you are extremely fucking careful,

(30:03):
it will still bring in the wrong people who refuse
to see the point, like they're like Wolf of Wall
Street is one of my favorite movies, hands down. At
it's great and it is exact time. Yeah, but it's
still like brought people in on the wrong ye, Like
fuck it, because brain dead people are going to be
brain dead people.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
This is we're going in a more serious direction. But
if you've read Slaughterhouse five, in the opening of it,
Vonnegut talks about how when he said I'm going to
write my my war book, his wife was like, don't
do it. There's no way to do it without making
it look cool, Like no one has ever managed to
not do it in a way that makes young men
think it's cool. And she was right, like, for the record, yeah,

(30:42):
I mean one of the problems with even anti war
war fiction is it always makes it look cool because
it's it's cool, right, That doesn't mean it's good. It's like,
Joe Cammel is cool, he still killed one hundred million people.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Joe Cammell gave my father lung cancer, and I stand
by that. And to conjure a similar image Joe Cammell,
there's an image that I saw when I worked in
the Playboy archives of Joe Cammel and illustrated gorgeous like
painting essentially of Joe Camil in convertible with smoking hot

(31:16):
human women. Hell yeah, yeah, big old titties, And you're like, no,
wonder this advertisement killed people. This advertisement kill people being
like this, you could be this ugly ass camel with
women with huge naturals, like just like.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
You can add up all the German generals on the
Eastern Front and they didn't kill as many people as
that act.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Truly like, and it's a beautiful piece of artwork, but like,
let's be fucking honest.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah, so today Lewis merely acknowledges that the psychos he
wrote about in Liar's Poker were more fun on the
page than they were in person. This can be if
this is your first book and you write it in
nineteen eighty two and you really later, oh, this actually
might have made the problem worse. That's not a thing
you have any moral culpability for. That's just like writing

(32:07):
a thing with good intentions and it turns out badly.
But this does become a problem, and one that we
can critique is partly a moral problem when it becomes
part of a pattern, and it is a pattern with
Michael Lewis. The Big Short is obviously not a Wall
Street puff piece, but it became beloved by exactly the
same people you might assume it was trying to criticize.

(32:29):
And that Guardian article I've quoted from, there's a story
about Michael Lewis attends this big New York party and
he's like warned ahead of time that it's going to
be full of bankers and other finance guys, and he's like, oh,
I don't know if they're going to like me, because
he had just not only was The Big Short out,
but he just published an article at a major publication
attacking Wall Street big wigs as being greedy idiots, like

(32:49):
saying it in very unsparing terms. And one of Lewis's
friends later said, quote, but all these former heads of
investment banks, all these current bankers, they ran not walked
to the office just to meet him. One hedge fun
manager walked in with fifteen copies of Lewis's books, Michael
signed them all. And again, if you are a journalist,
that's a bad side, Like.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, what is your take on that? I mean, like,
what is the game of chess that I'm not seeing here?

Speaker 2 (33:17):
I mean, I think it's just that he makes he
makes this look sexy, and it's if he writes about you.
Part of a big part of this is that while
he's maybe negative about greed within the overall finance industry,
he cannot write about a person without making them look
cool because he has to like them to write about them. Right,
All these guys in the big short you could say,

(33:39):
profited off of a lot of misery. Now they didn't
cause it. He didn't start this subprime loan thing. But
they profited off of a lot of misery. And that's
at least kind of grimy. But Lewis likes these guys
and he turns them into celebrities because of how good
he is at writing about them and making you see
what's likable in them. Right. And so at this point

(33:59):
he because of how often this has happened, is he
is aware that his books are pr for their subjects.
He has a habit now of connecting people he writes
about in his books to his PR manager so that
they can set up speaking tours for them, right, Because
he knows if I put you in a book, that's
going to be a big business for you, you're going
to be in demand. Yeah, And this is part as

(34:21):
a result of him he doesn't he can't really be
critical about the individuals, right, And this is this is
another quote from that Guardian article. The obverse of Lewis's
approach is that he doesn't write about people he can't befriend,
or about stories that might cost him relationships. Among the
few projects he has abandoned is a biography of George Soros,
who was so unhappy with Lewis's portrayal of him as

(34:42):
a financier rather than an intellectual in a magazine profile
that he refused to cooperate. Another is a book about
New Orleans, which would have demanded a level of honesty
about the city's society and about his family's place in
it that might have hurt his parents. He said, I
adore my parents. I couldn't write that part while they're alive.
And and you know, again, none of this is like unforgivable.

(35:03):
But if you're admitting that as a journalist, what aren't
you able to admit? And I think in this case,
it's that he is not able to look at Sam
Bankman freed honestly because he found himself taken in by
the kid stick.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Well, that's what I feel like is one of the
complicating factors of And I don't say this in a
way to seem like it's like an unsolvable puzzle, but it's,
like Michael Lewis writes, it seems like, you know, largely accurate,
you know, pieces of journalism. We'll talk about that, well, okay, yeah,

(35:36):
so far right as someone who's never read his work.
But they're also inherently commercial, because I feel like there's
a journalistic value to explaining why someone is appealing, but
there's also an even more commercial value to explaining why
someone is appealing because that makes it, you know, that
sells books, that sells movie tales, that sells all this shit.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also part of why
his stuff is successful in a commercial sense. Is that
is this other fact that like it's always kind of uplifting.
Right again, the big short the whole collapse of the
financial industry is dark, but stuff goes well for these
characters that you've come to light, right. And Lewis himself
is kind of admitted he can't really end on a

(36:20):
not upbeat note. He has a lot of trouble with it.
He said, quote, once you identify yourself as happy, you're
always looking for happiness, and when things come along to
great on that happiness, you find ways to deflect them.
You can force the narrative. And I think what he
doesn't say there, but what is explains his Sam Bankman
Freed book, is that once you get in the habit
of writing about like these geniuses who are hidden in

(36:41):
the middle of systems, right and see more than everybody else.
Once you start doing that, you see anybody you start
focusing on as that kind of genius, even when they're not.
And that's what's happened with Michael here?

Speaker 3 (36:53):
So yeah, mess, mess, And it's like, you know, ultimately,
nine times out of ten the person wearing like fucking
X ray glasses is wearing a pair of fucking Imax
glasses to go see Oppenheimer.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Like, it's just embarrassing, exactly, It's just embarrassing. And yeah, yeah,
So I think the best example of this before we
get into Sam Bankman freed prior in Lewis's history, is
a book called The blind Side, which was published in
two thousand and six. Now, The blind Side, like a
lot of Swiss stories, there's a macro in a micro narrative.
The macro narrative is he's talking about the grow, the

(37:27):
explosive growth in the importance of the left tackle in football.
This is an offensive lineman whose job is basically to
make sure the quarterback doesn't get a maimed. The micro story,
which contains the emotional heart of the book and is
the core of the narrative, is the tale of a
guy named Michael Oher who was He was placed in
foster care at age seven because his mother suffered from addiction.

(37:48):
His dad was generally in prison. His dad dies while
he's I think in high school or was dealt a
pretty tough hand in life. But he's also six foot
six and very fast, right, so he is someone who
will like shows an aptitude for football. As a result
of this, he's kind of coaxed through getting into a
private school and he gets he gets literally adopted by

(38:09):
this rich white family, oh as a black man, black
child at this time, and they make it their business
to coach him and coax him in through getting through
the academics so that he can be in the NCAA
and college so that he can get an NFL contract.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Right, So I'll be perfectly honest. I before we started,
before you told me that Michael Lewis was a main character,
I did not know that he wrote The blind Side.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Oh yes he did, because this comes becomes a movie
that's huge, right also, and.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
I am very well acquainted with the the ensuing nasty,
fucking cultural narrative associated with the movie. But I didn't
realize that it was a book. I knew Liar's poker
moneyball in the Big Short.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Holy Robert, Robert, I just want a fact teck real quick.
He wasn't adopted by them.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Not We're getting to that Okay, that was the narrow,
that was the nar in the blind Side, right right,
that they have basically adopted this guy. Yes, you are correct, Sophie,
but I'm building to that. Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
So okayah, okay, that's just like I don't I don't
know why I didn't know that, and also like who
didn't want me to know that? Michael Lewis Yeah, I
mean Blindside a book that is famously bullsh Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
So this family adopts or and they effectively adopt him,
is I think generally how it's framed. And they help
him get through high school, get into a college, and
kind of like help usher him into this NFL career
where he makes a significant amount of money obviously, And
I'm a quote from the La Times here. The administration
at his high school accepts him although he can barely read.

(39:41):
He secures a full time tutor. When his grade point
average still proves too low for the NCAA. His adoptive father,
a canny former college basketball standout named Sean Touhey, manages
to find a crucial loophole he has over tested to
prove that he's learning disabled, then has him take numerous
easy online courses Lewis treats these measures genius. We are
meant to cheer the fact that Ore has gained the

(40:02):
educational process. And this is a tech. This is from
the book. Leanne, who's the wife of Sean, was now
making it her personal responsibility to introduce him to the
most basic facts of life, the sort of thing any
normal person would have learned by osmosis. Every day, I
try to make sure he knows something he doesn't know,
she said. If you ask him, where should I shop
for a girl to a pressure, He'll tell you Tiffany's

(40:24):
if I go, I'll go through the whole golf game.
He can tell you what six under is, and what's
a birding and what's par I love that those are
her two examples of basic knowledge.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
This is Sandra Bullocks Oscar talking. Yes, is Sandra Bullocks
Oscar flat? This nasty little mound.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Two things every boy needs to know? Where to buy
jewelry and how to golf works. Really says a lot
about her socioeconomic status, right, not like here's how you
pay your taxes, not like you know literally anything else,
like here's how you cook eggs, But no fucking fucking

(40:59):
golf and Tiffany's well yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Also, like I mean to state the obvious, like conflating
that with like this is what normal people, This is
normal the doctoral thesis in the ways that that is.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Okay, great shit. Yeah, So we can all see the
potential abusive issue with a wealthy white family adopting a
teenaged black boy to coach him into launching a pro
football career. Right, just if you think about all of
the head injuries and shit involved, there's a lot this
problematic here. Lewis does quote Lane at one point as saying,
with me and Sean, I can see him thinking if

(41:30):
they found me lying in a gutter and I was
going to be flipping burgers at McDonald's, would they really
have had an interest at me? But the book is
ultimately positive and uplifting. We're left thinking how nice it
is that these people help this kid out. The la
Times note that Lewis seems to be like amused at
these rich people cheating the system to usher this kid
into a dangerous job without like educating him. So the

(41:52):
nice parts of the story ended earlier this year when
a now retired or filed a lawsuit in a Tennessee
court alleging that the two He's never adopted him and
instead created a conservaship two He's, I don't care, fuck him,
and instead created a conservatorship and used it to take
his money. Right, the Twohees or whatever the fuck deny
doing this.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
They again, Yeah, I think it's it's actually for the pepes,
I don't care.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Dick bags deny this, And again I'm not being a
non biased journalist here, but.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Fuck you know, referend it's actually dickman's, dick Mans.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
The Dickmans. They call his claims hateful and absurd. Michael
Lewis has defended the Twohees by saying that they only
earned a few hundred thousand dollars off of The blind Side,
the book and the movie that was made off of it.
He's like, they didn't make millions, then they made a
few hundred grand. Now Lewis also does and I'll give
him this. He also admits, right after saying that that

(42:50):
the two hees biological daughter is married to the son
of the main investor in the film, which might suggest
that the family made a lot more money off of it. Right, Oh,
that might because The Blindside makes half a billion dollars
and a thirty five million dollar budget.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
In his own way, Michael Lewis in this.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Kind of Michael Lewis is super rich and always really
there's been buried.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
There's there's so many articles about like it is the
Shady Ship.

Speaker 3 (43:21):
That's the first time I'm hearing about the daughter marriage
because I read a fair amount.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
About that fun stuff. So in his own twenty eleven book,
oh Like expresses issues with the movie based off of
Lewis's book. Primarily, there's this part where like the twees
are teaching him how to play football and he's like,
I knew football before I met them. I'm a teenager
in America, Like, like, what are you fucking talking about?

(43:46):
There are other problematic moments in the book, uh, and
this is from The Guardian Again. Lewis calls Oer big
mic throughout it, despite the fact that Oher is open
about hating that nickname. He also tells this guy's story
almost exclusively through the words of other people talking about him,
even though he had access to Oor. Lewis justifies this
by saying that or was not a strong voice on

(44:07):
his life. Yeah, this guy's not good at talking about himself.
I'm just gonna listen to everyone else about him. I'm out.
I think what's really going on here is that poor
is a black kid from a desperate poverty background, right,
and Lewis cannot identify or get inside of his head
because that is nothing even that even resembles the Michael

(44:29):
Lewis story.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
It feels like a very privileged dark take. Yes, Like, well,
who do I consider to be a credible voice? Can
I get twenty white people who barely know this guy.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Who just met this kid to profit off him.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
To speak to him better than he can speak to
his own life, Because that's who I trust is white people.
That yeah, Oh, that's so fucking gross.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
He doesn't try to get inside o'er his head, and
he just focuses most of the narrative on the twoees,
who who Lewis understands this is the final shoe. He
understands them for a very good reason. And I'm going
to quote from the La Times here. As I tore
through the book, I kept wondering how Lewis got such
remarkable access to the ties, and I also wondered why
does he take such an uncritical view of their role.

(45:13):
The author's note at the end provides the obvious explanation,
stating that Lewis is a friend of Sean Tooey's and
that they had been longtime classmates at the same New
Orleans school.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
No, how is it even ethical to take this fucking
story on if you have.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
There's only one kind of ethics that I care about, Jamie,
and it's dolla dolla fucking bills.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Well, well, Jamie, as you know, things could be unethical
but still be legal legal.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
That's how.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
I mean, truly, what a gift that we have as that,
Like I am he a force of evil in the world, certainly,
but I am grateful that he gave us that one thing,
just the way of uh describing juvenile lawless capitalists.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah, it's so funny.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
One thing I have started to notice watching some of
the more recent and critical interviews with Lewis after the
SBF book is that, well, he's generally a pretty friendly
seeming guy. He starts to get really angry the instant
you question him on anything regarding one of his stories.
And you see this in this story in the Oer story,
because Ower's former coach comes out and like defends the

(46:26):
twohees or whatever. Once the lawsuit goes out, He's like,
you know, I don't think they took advantage of him, basically,
and Ower calls it brave.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
And my professional, unbiased opinion, thank you.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Yeah. Lewis calls the coach brave for doing this and
basically says he's taking a stand against cancel culture. And
then here's the Guardian again. Lewis recalled Oer as a
shy young boy and found it hard to square that
memory with the Oer behind the lawsuit. What we're watching
is a change of behavior. He told me. This is
what happens to football players who get hit in the head.

(46:56):
They run into problems with violence and aggression. It wouldn't
surprise him. Lewis said, if we were seeing some confluence
of Ora's history in football with other campaigns that stoke
claims in lawsuits like his, perhaps some lawyer of Ores
figured the time was ripe to sue the tweilies, Lewis speculated,
or perhaps Oer realized that people would get behind him
if he makes these accusations. He's just a poor head,

(47:17):
injured boy.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
I They're like, no, the perceived exploitation and racism you
experienced was the result of CTE that's Oh my.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
God, that's fucking wild. Right, that's gross as hell.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Oh, Jamie, Wow, I just thought he was the guy
who wrote Moneyball. I thought that that was the hard
I was thinking too.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Now. Yeah, so here, I want you to keep in
mind how he wrote about his former subject. Oor Now
hear his him talking in a sixty minutes interview about
Sam Bankman Free, the now convicted former billionaire, and I
just want to I really want to emphasize the contrast
between how he writes about these two different people who
are subjects of his books.

Speaker 4 (48:01):
The story of Sam's life is people not understanding him,
misreading him. He's so different, he's so unusual. I mean,
I think in a funny way that the reason I
have such a compelling story is I have a character
that I do come to know, and then the reader
comes to know that the world still doesn't know.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Now, that is not the case. Sam Bakman Freed is
exactly the person he appears to be on the surface. Right,
He is a guy who committed a bunch of financial
crimes and didn't get away with it because he was
too lazy and undisciplined to do with the smart way, right,
and that's all that going.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
I mean, this is like, oh, this is a bummer.
This is like a case study and a journalist biases
coming out on there.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
Oh it's so it's so obvious. Yeah, No, story better
illustrates this part of the story than how Lewis wound
up writing Going Infinite in the first place. In twenty fourteen,
Lewis published a book called Flash Boys, which is a
book about Brad Katsuyama and a small group of rebel
Walst investors who form I ex which is like a

(49:02):
stock exchange that's supposed to. The idea is we want
to protect investors from the unfair advantages that these high
frequency trading firms have on traditional exchanges due to like
a whole bunch of shit, but largely access to a
special fiber optic cable. And with most Lewis books, there's
a lot of insiders that will criticize them foring some
details wrong here and glossing over some issues that don't

(49:23):
conform to his narrative. There's like a market crash that's
largely mitigated by some of these firms that he's criticizing.
But I don't know enough about that to want to
get into it. What's important is that Katsuyama and his
book of Rogue Traders are depicted semi heroically, is that
they're kind of fighting against this rigged financial system, which
you know, the financial systems rigged. I don't know about
his characteristication of them, but the book is a hit

(49:45):
and it makes Katsuyama and his crew celebrities within the
finance world. So Katsuyama reaches out to Lewis when he
is considering an institutional investment in FTX. He's like, we're
considering getting into crypto through these guys putting a lot
of money on there exchange. Would you look into this
guy for me? Right? And this is what Lewis says.
Lewis like basically goes in there and like talks to

(50:08):
Sam Bankman Freed, and he's he's so impressed that he
quotes himself as telling Katsuyama do whatever he wants to do.
What could possibly go wrong? Right? That's which bad bet
Uh does wind up putting money.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
He is a worst person to ask what to go
wrong with?

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, okay, yeah, And I'm going to continue from the
Guardian here. Okay, he did find himself intrigued in particular
by effective altruism, the movement to which Bankman Freed subscribed.
Effective altruists believe in giving away most of what they
make to do the most good in the world. Some
of them commit to earning as much as possible so
as to donate more to their chosen beneficiaries. Having spent
so long on Wall Street, Lewis wasn't used to meeting

(50:46):
a wealthy young man who claimed to have no interest
in wealth. Unusually for Lewis, he couldn't figure Bankman Freed out.
Michael just said, this kid is the richest and most
interesting young person I've ever met. Understand them all the
deep possesses of bank Reid's mind. But he knew it
was a great story. And this was before the shit
hit the fan. So this is real talking. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
And also it takes someone who grew up in that
environment to not have alarm bells going off in their
mind when they hear oh, I, as someone who has
never not had money, don't really care about money, You're like, well, yeah, no, shit,
you've never not had it.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
You would really.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Care if you'd. That reminds me of this is like,
I think about this easily once a week. It happened
over ten years ago my freshman year of college. It
was my first time really encountering people who grew up
with like money, you know. And there was this guy
on my floor and one night everyone was hanging out
and he like, put a this is the era, this

(51:43):
is the early twenty tens. He put a skinny scarf
around my neck because it was cold, and he was like,
you can have that, and it smelled and I didn't
want it. But he's like, you could have that. And
I was like, oh, don't you like want it back
and he's like, no, I don't care about my material possessions.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
And great.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
I think about that all the time because he could
just get nine thousand scarves. You just get nine thousand scarves.
But that was like, but I feel like that is
so much of what effect of altruism is. It's just
a fundamental like, yeah, not understanding how the world works.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Yeah, it's it's a bunch of rich kids who are
talking through like fucking philosophy one oh one level shit
and think and so impressed by everyone else's answers to
like dumb logic puzzles because they've they've never studied enough
humanities to know that like no man, people have been
talking about this shit for thousands of years and all
of their takes are better than yours. Like anyway, we're

(52:40):
not getting into that as much right now. We are
about to get into the ads and if you really
want to do some effective altruism, purchase from the sponsors
of this podcast. Ah. So, we've been talking around the

(53:01):
book Going Infinite, which is Michael's terrible book on Sam,
so I think now is probably a good time to
dig into exactly how it fails. I wanted to start
by introducing that contrast between Lewis's treatment of o OR
and SBF first, because it puts things into perspective. Now,
I think a good anecdote to start on. Here is
one of the stories Lewis uses to introduce Sam to
the reader. This is right at the start of Going Infinite,

(53:23):
and it's about a phone call that Sam has during
his billionaire era with fashion industry icon Anna Wintour before
the Metgala. No oh yeah, oh yeah, Jamie. This this
is good.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
So exhausted because Anna Wintour is Bill Nye, He's girlfriend
right now, and I don't want to think poorly of
Bill Nye.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
He does no, No, it is tragic. My heart goes
out to Bill Nye, who I'm incapable of feeling badly about.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
No, I'm here, I'm sitting my ass down and listening.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, so Anna is who Meryl Streep's character in The
Devilwar's product is based on, right, Like, that's who this
person is. Oh.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
I love when men try to explain what The Devil
Wears Prada is about. Yes, for all the men listening,
pause and go watch The Devil Wears Prada. It is
just like one of the greatest films of I think,
one of the greatest comedy films and books of Yeah,
very good.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Very good, happy essays.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Half the essays I wrote in college were based off
of said book.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Really, the met Gala is an annual event. I think
Vogue puts it on technically, but like it's where rich, famous,
and occasionally even beautiful people were insane outfits that cost
the GDP of a small island nation.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Right, yes, and then and then a bunch of YouTubers
I watch say that they looked ugly.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yes, yes, it's a true. Yeah, it's it's great. It's great.
Everybody makes a feast off of it. But somebody has
to pay for the Son of a Bitch, right, and
that year went Tour wanted SBF to pay for the gala, right.
He was spending way more money on stupider shit than that,
so not unreasonable that he might actually agree to do this.

(55:04):
He had instructed at this point his publicity woman to
do whatever she could to increase ftx's reputation and keep
his name in the news. So not a bad way
to do that, right. The met gala often does make
the news, And when it came to his side of
the job, though, Sam was he put as much work
into like this call with Anna win Tour where tens
of millions of dollars are on the line, that he

(55:26):
did to like everything else that he had a meeting about,
which is no work at all. Right. Lewis goes into
detail about the fact that he's playing this dumb video game,
like while he's on a zoom call with her. It's
the same game he's always playing. It's this this video
game that he winds up buying because it's made by
a friend of his called Storybook Brawl, and it's it's

(55:46):
about like Fable characters fighting, right, Like it's it's that
it's a little strategy game. It's like an it's like
an app game. It's not a real game.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
You know, you know how you watch those videos And
I say this with love and appreciation of like college
students now playing a video game while explaining like Marxism
to you and I want that. But Sam Bankmin Freed
playing that game. Well, well, Anna Wintour is like what

(56:17):
is he up to?

Speaker 2 (56:18):
What is he up to?

Speaker 1 (56:19):
The Jamie and I in Unison when you said playing
video game while talking to Anna Wintour, mouth wide open, like.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Well, it's like she could, I mean and and and
not even to like endorse her. I'm just like I
would be very afraid to do anything in front of
scary and she's famously scary.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
She's famously scary. And he's talking about a lot of money, right,
Like it's it's not that he's blowing her off, because
like I don't feel precious about Anna Wintour's time, but
like it's that this is a big money deal and
he just he can't focus on it. And I would
take that. It's just like this is a this is
a dude too, smadhd right, Like that's what that is.

(57:00):
And this is a dude who has ADHD, who's part
of a generation that has ADHD.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
Well, No, this is a very dumb observation. But it's
also clear to me that Sam bank Bankment Freed has
never seen the Devilwaar's product, which I've never been less
surprised at. But it's like, if you have no one
in your life who could tip you off you're talking
to me, protagonist of the Devilwaars product, then you lack

(57:26):
a support structure in a fundamental way. I think it's
it's okay, that's good to know that funny and I
are here.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
What's funny about the way Lewis talks about this is
that he marvels at this right like it's the most
amazing thing, and it's evidence of how unique Sam is.
When you just noted one of the biggest pieces of
entertainment for millennials in gen z is people playing video
games and explaining politics. Right that is, it is not
at all unique that Sam Bankman Freed will not stop

(57:57):
gaming to have a business meeting. But Michael Lewis treats
it as like this is evidence that he is too
much of a genius he can't bear to pay attention
to her for a second. It also there's a little
bit of anti woman stuff in here, because Lewis notes
that I think Sam would minimize the window with her
face on it whenever she spoke and bring it back
up whenever he talked. Right, curiously, only when he was

(58:20):
talking did he want to see her, which I do
think there's a lot in that sentence. So yeahsting, Yeah.
It is again like the way Lewis describes this, this
isn't just yeah, he's not very disciplined, and he has
the same thing that like a lot of millennial and
gen Z people have, which is, you know, an inability
to stop distracting yourself no matter what important shit you're doing.

(58:43):
He describes this as SBF's brain being so big that
like games are he's like a Sherlock Holmes character and
games are his heroin. Right, Well, that makes me.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
That indicates to me that Michael Lewis, because that's the
way that you're like, like you're doting parent would talk
about it, and like that's that is clear to me.
The way he sees him is like, wow, look at
this amazing kid. And also what SBF is doing here
is like the inverse of what most easily distracted millennial
and gen Z people are doing, which they're playing games

(59:14):
and explaining radical politics to you. They're not playing games
and talking to some like like half listening to someone
before they part with millions of dollars to throw the
world's stupidest annual party. Yeah, and I love that stupid
ass party.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
It's it's I mean, I think both of those things
are on a similar level potentially, but it depends on
how you do them. And he's not actually good at it.
But the way Lewis describes this is he just is
in awe of this kid's ability to have attention deficit disorder. Quote. Yeah, absolutely,
said Sam. But his mind was elsewhere. The hoard dragon

(59:49):
was dead and a win tour had killed it. What
to do? He made a half hearted bid to begin
another game and pick another hero, but then changed his
mind and shut the game down. He could often occupy
two worlds at once in w in both. In this case,
he clearly stood no chance of winning in one world
unless he paid less attention in the other. And this woman,
somehow it acquired a spell that interfered with his abilities
to multitask. What an amazing way to write that paragraph.

(01:00:14):
Michael Lewis, dude, Oh god, it's it's something else. Like
I have played video games through some important work meetings.
Sophie has often had to pick my ass up off
that it's not because I'm a genius. It's because I'm
hungover and have trouble focusing because I use Twitter too much.

Speaker 3 (01:00:32):
There's so many there's like so many, I mean whatever.
And also you have to imagine that this manuscript made
it through a lot. It speaks to how old people
in general who work in the public stitching industry are
that no one was like Michael, I have to tell
you that this is just how kids are these days.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
He's a real venture game ganius. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:52):
I mean it's like we've both written books. Like I
was surprised that I got the title of my book through,
but it was because people over sixty don't know what
raw Dog needs. And that's most people I'm publishing. Like,
it's ridiculous, that's so nuts that that made it to
the final book.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
No, it's like that's yeah. So if you're not reading
critically and inclined to give Lewis the bit of the
benefit of the doubt, I can see how you might
assume that like he's trying to make Sam look kind
of silly in that paragraph. I can see how you
would assume that based on the text, but that is
not what's going on. Listener. Here is Lewis talking about
that exact same moment in an interview with Intelligence Squared

(01:01:32):
from about a month ago.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
Yay, so on the screen zoom and a win tour,
and he does not know who she is. He doesn't
know what the purpose of the meeting is. He doesn't know, well,
the purpose of the meeting is can Sam Bank mcfreed
pay for the whole met gala? That's the purpose of
the meeting, because he'll pay for everything else. Why not that?
And she comes on the screen and she is dressed

(01:01:54):
to the nine. She's got those size of hair coming
down around her. She's like ready to kill and gorgeous.
You know, she looks great, She's well prepared. He's playing
Storybook Brawl.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Which is his video game.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Pause.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
I hate the way he talks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:08):
About Anna Wintour, Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Well, okay, okay, And first we can deal with that
in private, ze fair.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
We can no, no, before we can talk about a
woman on a zoom call. Does she look gorgeous or yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
That's the point. It has nothing to do with Anna Winter. Also,
she looks like that all the time, Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
It's her thing.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
And wherever she comes on the screen, he blacks her
out and the video game pops up, so like she's
she's talking and and mons, minotaurs are killing, are killing dwarfs,
and trees with axes are coming in and like you know,
the weapons are appearing on the screen and people are
dying and exploding, and and you're hearing her talk about

(01:02:48):
the met Gala.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
And there's seven minutes in when he hits.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
A button in the Wikipedia entry for the met galap
comes up, so he can figure out what the hell
she's talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
And he's doing watched him do this. He's doing this
with her.

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
This is what he was doing on live television when
he would be interviewed by Bloomberg TV.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
It was like and he had tricks.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):
He took him about one tenth of his brain to
have a conversation with Anna Wintour, And what he would
do other part of his brain was either reading about
who she was or playing his game. And what he'd
do is he'd say, you asked me a question. He'd say,
that's a really good question. It's a really good question.
Let me think about that for a minute. You know, meanwhile,

(01:03:30):
the minutaur is killing the tree and he comes off
and then he thinks for a minute, and he says
some boilerplate thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
So that does not show genius. He's obviously the smile
on his face, that is not him being critical. That's
him thinking about like, that's him fawning over this kid
for not being prepared for a multimillion dollar meeting, right,
which is like, fine, but that's not an example of
him being smart.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Well, And I think that that is a clear pattered
in the way that we cover the like young white
kid genius who comes from a rich background. There's a
lot of similarities in how early Mark Zuckerberg's like casual
misogyny and not giving a ship about people was like
part and parcel to why he was cool and why

(01:04:17):
he was seen as a visionary. Like that the same
is truth. Like just I mean, I feel like every
generation has at least one of these guys, and they're
all covered in the same way. No one ever learns
their lesson because the guy covering them is often the
same guy. Literally Michael Lewis and often literally Michael Lewis.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
How did how did okay, I'm sorry, how did this
revolve with Anna Wintour?

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
Did she like the fact that she.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Didn't he said, He says, yeah, I'll pay for it,
and then he just ghosts her.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Yeah. So the fact that Anna wind Tour didn't like
like smoke out that he was like fully a fraud
at the girlies.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
The girlies are disappointed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
I'm not caping for Anna Wintor here, but the famously.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Named the Dragon Lady.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Well, no, SBF is lucky that he'll never encounter Bill
Nai because Bill for Bill Nihey, it would be on
the phone.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Bill would fuck him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
So he was an I Frankenstein for crying. He was
in Detective pikat Chip break was broken like my brain.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
So Bra, these are these are amusing anecdotes right what
he's what he's telling. Potentially, if you are someone who
is critical about him, that same anecdote could could form
part of your thesis about why this kid got away
with it and for so long and why he ultimately
flamed out. But Lewis is convinced that these show you
evidence of Sam's genius, and he sets this up early

(01:05:45):
in the book, talking about Sam's childhood quote. He had
a fault line inside him. Pressure was building on it,
and one day in the seventh grade, he slipped. His
mother returned from work to find Sam alone in despair.
I came home and he was crying. Recalled by b
he said, I'm so bored, I'm going to die, and like, oh, yeah,
I have had a similar conversation with my mom. And

(01:06:09):
it's a sign. You know, certainly Sam has been diagnosed
with ADHD. That's certainly one way in which that can manifest.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Hold on one for the girlies again.
That is a direct quote from Sex and the City.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Oh okay, that is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
A direct quote from a Sex in the City.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Sure, I'm sure Sam's a big Samantha.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Hey who says it?

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
But she goes, I'm so bored I could die And
she jumps out of and she falls out of the window.

Speaker 3 (01:06:32):
Oh my god. Really one of the most famous in
the city.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yeah, I don't remember that anyway. So, because like Lewis again, again,
if you're if you're just kind of being honest about
Sam writing a book, he might be like, well, Sam
gets diagnosed with ADHD. This moment makes total sense as like, yeah,
this is a kid who's got ADHD and he's also
you know, good at math and stuff. He's bored in
the classes that he's in. But Lewis does not acknowledge

(01:06:58):
that Sam has ADHD in his book. He doesn't say
anything about it because that would that's not a bad thing, obviously,
but it's also that you like, you're not a genius
just because you have ADHD. Right, plenty of people who
are not super geniuses have ADHD. It's just a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Well, and it's like if you're if you're talking about
that behavior and I want to be like delicate, and
then they talk about it, but it's like it's contextually important.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
If you proceed from the principle like, yeah, this is
a kid with ADHD, then there's another explanation for his
addiction to games, his inability to focus on stuff, right
and it it and then it means those things aren't
a sign of his brilliance right now. Part of why
I'm critical of Michael for this is that he does
make a note about one character's ADHD in the book,

(01:07:45):
and it's Carolyn Ellison, who comes across as one of
the villains in the book. And I should note that
the following paragraph comes to me part of the book
where Lewis is talking to George, who is a therapist
who worked for FTX as the company shrink. So, among
other things, this is a therapist talking about his patient. Right, Okay.
When she'd first come to him back in twenty eighteen,

(01:08:07):
she'd had two issues. She wanted to talk about, her
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and her new and emotionally complicated
polyamorous lifestyle. Every subsequent session after the first, Carolyn came
back with just one issue. She wanted to discuss Sam.
She'd fallen in love with Sam. Sam didn't love her back,
and that fact alone left her deeply unhappy. I thought
of her as an exception, said George. I thought she

(01:08:27):
might be willing to trade effective altruism for reciprocation of
love any day. Right, Sorry, how is it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
Like?

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
I mean, I truly like, how was it even legal
or ethical for this information.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
To I don't actually know. I don't like that truly,
because it seems.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
You're not supposed to be able to do like. They're
famously not supposed to be able to do that. And
also not to like overly come to her defense. But
also it's like that if anyone's therapy logs were leaked,
it would be like, oh, they had this fixation on
this issue. Yeah, that's why you fucking go dude, you know,
go there to be a reasoned person.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
No, and especially since like what's what's messy to me
is that he brings that he makes sure to bring
this up with Carolyn because he's kind of writing that
like she was unreliable, she wasn't focusing enough, she was
in love with him, hysterical, whereas he's just this misunderstood genius.
But he notes her ADHD and he doesn't note Sam's,

(01:09:25):
even though Sam's ADHD is a matter of public fucking record. Now,
like his family went to court to get him his
medicine a thing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
It's like not even looking that he particularly tries to obscure, right, No,
like no, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
And again it's critical to understand him because it provides
an alternate explanation for all this behavior that Lewis chalks
up to him just like only needing ten percent of
his brain to talk to people. Yeah, now there's another
like there's another very fun bit in this which kind
of relates to that, which is that, and this is
like the weirdest through line in Going Infinite, which is

(01:09:59):
my Lewis does not understand games right like he is,
so he writes about like video games and board games
and other popular nerd pastimes that are now like the
dominant form of entertainment by money in our country. He
talks about them like he's an alien who's just arrived
on the planet. And as a result, he talks about

(01:10:20):
Sam's embrace of this stuff at the expense of everything
else to be evidence of brilliance. Quote. He felt nothing
in the presence of art. He found religion absurd. He
thought both right wing and left wing political opinions kind
of dumb, less a consequence of thought than of their
holder's tribal identity. He and his family ignored the rituals
that punctuated most people's existence. He didn't even celebrate his

(01:10:40):
own birthday. What gave pleasure and solace and a sense
of belonging to others left Sam cold. When the bankman
Freeds traveled to Europe, Sam realized that he was just
staring at a lot of old buildings for no particular reason.
We did a few trips, he said, I basically hated
it to his unrelenting alienation. There was only one exception. Games.
In sixth grade, Sam learned of had a game called

(01:11:01):
Magic the Gathering. For the next four years, it was
the only activity that consumed him faster than he could
consume it. And this is so funny because like Lewis
has to describe Magic the Gathering after this point, and
he like he describes it basically it's the first game
ever made where like you like the way that you

(01:11:23):
play it, like it's it's different, Like every character can
come into this strategy game with a different set of equipment.
No one had ever done this before. It was all
like chess where everyone's the same. And it's like, no,
it wasn't. There were decades, decades of war games and
strategy games that Magic was influenced by. Like, that's just wrong, Michael, Now, hold.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
On, hold on magic, Yeah, hold on nerd any any
put up. I I do think that like this is
of the because because I don't play Magic the Gathering
and I know that how he's describing it is, I was.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Like, it's so wrong. Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
Speaks word to like a generation gap, because I think
that you're someone who could be on the opposite side
of SBF and equally with it. Like it's just like
do your research.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Just talk to it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
Just talk to someone who plays Magic the Gathering. They
famously love to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
And it's it's funny because he's like he has to
make this, Like he goes on a limb about like
Sam Bankman Freed couldn't didn't like chess. It was too boring.
There were too few possibilities, like you could calculate everything,
like his computer brain wasn't amused by chess. Only Yeah,
it's so funny. It's like, man, my friends and I

(01:12:42):
all played Magic the Gathering and like as a spoiler,
some people looked into Sam's like performance in League of
Legends and the Other only he was never good at anything.
He was not very good. He wasn't particularly bad, but
he was not very good. And I'm gonna guess he
was indifferent at Magic the Gathering because you know, like
it's it is not a great it's a wonderful game,
not a great like yardstick for your intelligence, you know, Oh,

(01:13:05):
it's just a guard game.

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
No one should be uh, I mean not, but like
no one should be judged by their intelligence, by how
they interact with like a beloved hobby.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
That's weird. Yeah, it's so weird, and it's like it's
interesting because like Sam's parents, A big part of this
section is like he comes home and he's like, I'm
so bored, I can't I want to die, and his
you know, his parents do what I think is the
right thing. They lead the charge to get their school
to add like an advanced math class, and it seems
to have a good impact on him. He's excited to

(01:13:35):
go to school now, and that's a good thing. But
what we find hints of in parts of this story,
and I don't think Lewis is able either knows it
or is able to admit it to himself, is the
troubling fact that once Sam's parents decide he's a math genius,
they they don't bother to make him into a well
rounded person. Sam grows up hating art. He thinks books

(01:13:56):
are useless. He has this big rant he goes about like, well,
there's no way that shape is the best author ever,
because there have been this many billion people born since
he was alive, and if you want to calculate the
odds that none of them were better at writing than him,
then there's really no reason to read Shakespeare. And it's like, well, Sam,
the fact that you think that means that like no
one even casually tried to teach you the humanities, because like,

(01:14:17):
the reason you should study Shakespeare is not that he's
the quote unquote best author ever. That doesn't exist. It's
that there is not a day in your life or
the life of anyone that you love that they don't
use words and phrases Shakespeare introduced to the English language.
That's why he's important.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Don't get me wrong, Sam, I also don't want.

Speaker 5 (01:14:35):
To read a book, but I there sometimes were Sometimes
that's just what you need to do to understand the
world and not go to prison for forever because you're
a gambler or just.

Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
Be willing to fucking google your way around it. Like
that you're not better than Shakespeare.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
Weird.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
There is like an element of like there are certain
the lower side of sbf L's that he takes in
the statements he makes. He sounds like like a one
episode Fraser character.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Yes, you know, he sounds like.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
Freddy made a friend and he fucking sucks and.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
He's a piece as shit.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Yeah, and then he even polarizes Fraser and Niles. And
that's how you know you're in fucking trouble.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Yeah. Yeah, when Niles Niles is like, this kid's kind
of got a fucking problem.

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):
This kid's incomprehensible. I wouldn't I wouldn't share a glass
of brandy with him.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
Yeah, And man, if you know Niles, you know what
that takes. Hey, everyone, Robert here just wanted a quick
note that the next like the last like five or
six minutes of this episode is all Fraser. It's all
all all Fraser talk. Jamie and I got off on
a tangent. There is a lot more Sam Bankman Freed
than Part two. It's another like hour and twenty minutes,
so plenty more on Thursday. But as heads up in

(01:15:54):
case it's kind of confusing, we just we just wound
up in a Fraser hole after this point. So if
you want to hear us talk about Frasier, this is
your chance. Speaking of David Hyde Peers, Jamie Loftus, you
are starring in a floor show with David Hyde Peers
based on the life of Kelsey Grammar. Actually you are

(01:16:16):
playing Kelsey. You spent like Michael Lewis a full year
living with him to really get his character down. What
was that like?

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Look, it was pretty hostile. It was pretty hostile. And
in the subsequent publishings that I've made, a lot of
people have said that I couldn't explain the video games
that Kelsey Grammer was playing for the year that I
was following him around, and I resent that I was
in the room with Kelsey while he was berating women

(01:16:47):
on the phone. And I think that that makes him
a genius. I think that that makes him a genius.
And you know, do I believe he's the greatest sitcom
actor of all time? Well, I'll keep that to myself,
but wink wink. I think that he's kind of a
beautiful genius and is above criticism. And if you don't
think that he's kind of the perfect person, or if

(01:17:07):
you even like just we read his Wikipedia page in
four am an opinion, I beg to disagree.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
And I do love I love Kelsey Grammar stories from
the head of Fraser because they're all like members of
the cast being like, well, yeah, he was very like
he came on set and he had clearly just woken
up after vomiting up his seven martini lunch. He looked
like he was dying. We were all worried that he
was going to drop dead that day, and then the

(01:17:37):
director called action and he was immediately care He was perfect,
He was.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Beautiful, his chest hair hurt like We'll never know I was.
I mean, I was fixated on Fraser reruns when I
was a kid. I would stand late to watch them.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
Yeah, it's one of my conference shows for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
Yeah, the best. And like when I remember remember getting
Kelsey Grammer's like memoir from the library and read that
he broke up with his wife on the phone, and
it may have been one of the first times that
I was like, wow, Wow, men are scary.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
You can just do that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
You could just be Kelsey Grammar and be evil and
then and I will still like base my sexuality on
you forever.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Absolutely seem fair. Who's among us, right, ah man? But
I will say, having watched the new Fraser show, it
becomes very clear how much of that show's charm was
John Mahoney and David Hyde Pierce.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Oh well, I think tell Kelsey's doing I mean, and
he's an evil person. He's doing his damn best.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
He is, he is perfect. He is like literally his
voice is not changed in twenty years, which is remarkable.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
No, and he's been, you know, physically preserved well enough.

Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Yeah. One of the big problems that show has is
they've cast that kid as Niles and Daphne's son, and
they're relying on him to hold up a lot of
the physical con many ends that David and Hyde Pierce
used to. And if if you are going up next
to David Hyde Peers in like a physical comedy competition,
you're gonna look like shit fu. David Peers like he's

(01:19:12):
the guy. Robert.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
I thought you would love the Fraser reboot because it's
some of the most abysmal Boston accents I've ever heard
of my fucking Lutch.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
Don't get me wrong, I've watched every episode, some.

Speaker 3 (01:19:23):
Of the nastiest little I have to like pause sometimes
and like get a water. Yeah, I like walk nearly
that acsence. Yeah, I mean you have and I have
conceded long ago that you've got it down.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
Thank you, thank you well. Anything to plug Jamie after
our five minute Fraser digression, Well, i'd like to.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
I guess I'd like to plug the Fraser reboot because
I would like a second season.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Check it out, everybody. It's not ship.

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
It's on Paramount Plus. And I also just read read
Raw Dog and follow me online. You're so inclined. And
that's that's all I have to say. Listen to the
Bexel Cast while you're at it. Why not?

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Yeah, all right, what about you? Uh, that's it. I'm done.
You're gonna find find figure out where David Hyde Pierce lives.
You know, have a nice letter. A letter.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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