Pushkin way back in the spring of two thousand and eight, after many years of ignoring Wall Street, I started paying attention to it again. After all, these big banks began to announce these massive trading losses. These people, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers, and Baris Stearns and Merrill Lynch, who were meant to be the smartest in the world at
managing financial risk, suddenly looked like complete idiots. And then one day the losses grew so large that the banks began to fail and bring the entire financial system down with them. My name is Michael Lewis. I wrote a book about this time. I told the story through the eyes of the relative handful of people who made fortunes from the crisis. They took the other side of the bets made by the big Wall Street banks, and those bets paid off when the market collapsed. I called the
book The Big Short. It came out in twenty ten, which is now fifteen years ago. Five years later it became an Oscar winning movie. And now I've narrated the audiobook of The Big Short for the first time. Steve is using his fingers to speak on his behalf zero. They said yes, asked the obviously irritated CEO. Is that another question? No, said Eisman, It's a zero. Why am
I bringing this story back now? Well, for one, the financial crisis of two thousand and eight has entirely reshaped the world we live in, and I think there's a lot more we can learn from this event. So that's what we're going to do over the next seven weeks. Here and Against the Rules, a companion podcast series for The Big Short, I speak with many of the characters that I followed back when I was writing the book,
the hedge fund manager Steve Eisman. But after the meeting, like you know, guys, thought said, what do you think? I said, what do I think? Somebody just told me how to make a gazillion dollars. I'm ready to go. I also spent some time with Eisman's posse at Front Point Partners Vinnie, Danny, and Porter. And what do you say to him when he says, Vinnie, what the hell's going on? There's a problem with the housing market? Which you don't want to say. Is I've been trying to
tell you this, but I was scared. You know, humans are humans, will make the same mistakes all over again. All the consequences of all those things that happened seventeen years ago are not only still with us, potentially end up getting a lot worse. We're also going to unpack a bit the way the financial crisis broke politics in America. Draw me a line between the financial crisis and Donald Trump? Was his rise directly a result of the anger that
was generated by the financial crisis? One million percent? Do you worry about the Fed's independence? Of course, that absolutely can be destroyed. But I think also this is the story of how a story gets told. If you aim for art and you miss, you end up with comedy. If you aim for comedy and you miss, you end up with crap. I hope you'll join me for this special behind the scenes series on the making and the
meaning of The Big Short. You can get your copy of The Big Short audiobook, newly narrated by me over at Pushkin dot FM or wherever audiobooks are sold. Then come back here to Against the Rules. Episodes of The Big Short Companion podcast drop weekly starting October the fourteenth. See you then,