Michael Lewis on the Power of Intelligent Leadership (Podcast)

is about referees in the real world. Uh, coaches in the real world, How how things operate, How coaches affects students and children and and everybody essentially, including Michael Lewis, who claims he would not have been a writer but for coach Fits in high school changed his life. Really

just quite fascinating. We also discuss his book The Fifth Risk and how prescient it was about ignoring the importance of government in trying to create an entity that can respond to sudden and unexpected events such as the COVID nineteen pandemic. H The discussion about what went right and wrong in the prep for that is really quite fascinating. Lewis, isn't some sort of uh left wing um you know,

Berkeley based ideologue. He just cares about management and competency and organizational um excellence, and he's frustrated when when we don't have that. So, rather than me continue to talk with no further ado. My interview with Michael Lewis v see his Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today needs no introduction. He is the author of Flyers, Poker, money Ball, The Big Short, The Blindside, Flashboys,

The Undoing Project. I'm gonna stop there and just say, Michael Lewis, welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah, this is our third or fourth one. That's uh. We did one live and two in the students. This will be the second one in the studio. Last we spoke, you were just launching your first season of a new podcast called Against the Rules. What was that experience? Like,

what what did you learn being a podcaster? So it's been that long, um, because that would have been that would have been a little more than a year ago, right, it is, it's been. It's at this stage of my career, it's amazing and delightful to find a whole new thing to do. This is as sort of enriching as this thing has been. So he's I found. Um One, the audience is huge, and and it's and and different in

nature from a book audience. People listen to these things differently than they read, and it's a more emotional connection you have with with the audience. So people, um will come up to me and say, oh, I really liked your book, but it's a cool kind of thing. And when people come up and they like the podcast, it's almost like they want to hug you. Uh. Then they feel like, I think there's something about the human voice. They feel like they know you in a different way.

And I was gonna say something you had said to me that I've slowly come around to accepting the book people read isn't necessarily the book you wrote. And originally I pushed back, and now I'm kinda okay. I kind of see that when you're doing an interview, when it's just having a conversation or discussing stuff in an audio format, people really think like they know you personally. It's a very different connection between author and reader versus podcasting r

podcaster and listener. So there's some overlap, and the overlap nature of my podcast is the storytelling podcast. And it's scripted, and it's laid out and structured in the same way a long piece of writing would be laid out in structured. But but it um the form encourages the creator to move in certain directions, and in particularly encourage the creator moving emotional directions. It's an emotional it's an emotional connection

you have. People are more likely to laugh and more likely to cry than they are with the printed the word on the page, and they're less likely to like sit through a description of a collateralized debt obligation. It's it's it's it's harder and it's harder to do that kind of thing, but it but but the raw ingredients of a story in some ways work better in the audio than they do on on the printed page. They're both great, you know, I don't I'm not leaving one

for the other. It's just been I feel like almost like I spent my career um as a as a like a weightlifter with only using my legs, and now someone has allowed me to lift with my arms. Uh, and I'm working all these other muscles that I just I've never worked and and it just feels. It feels both it's fun to do. It's a way to get material, get to material I would have a hard time getting to in print, and and it will make the print stuff better. I mean, I just have no question about

that now. So, so, the first season of Against the Rules was about referees in sports and finance and life. What brought you to that concept of referees? And are you staying with a theme about now? The new season is about coaches, So there is there will be a theme that runs through. I sort of laid out seven sea reasons in my head at some point and seven and seven seasons, seven seasons of seven episodes each. Um. Now whether those get done or not, well, I we'll see.

But the but, but the the The idea in the beginning was to look at to look at American life through through characters in American life, in particular roles that have been in flux where you've seen some movement in the status the situation of the role. So the referee was an easy one to start with because you could you could kind of show that, I mean, even in sports, it was easy to show the way refs have gotten kind of better and better and better but people hated

him more and more and more. And it was that you could see that and you could this is extend that from sports to other things where you see referees under attack for various reasons. And and um that that character interested in me because I did feel like the theme that would run through all the episodes was fairness. Um, it would be kind of like inequality, fair and unfairness, the feelings that are very much alive right now in

in American life. And I was just gonna and I'd be playing with that those ideas through this character and the character, and we do a number of different stories about the character. So going to the second season, it was never gonna be about reveres. It's gonna be about something else. And I had seven characters in my mind. It was a question of which came next, and coach

I went to coaches. I went to coaches one because it preserved, it reserved an option that I thought maybe I'd want to have of keeping the entire seven seasons inside of an arena. That every role is is someone who's actually inside of an arena during a sporting of it. Um. Now, in the second season, it's not all sports. Coaches in fact, it's very seldom sports coaches. There are only two or three of the episodes that have sports coaches in them. Uh but but but the you know, the spirit and

thing still right arises out of athletics. Yeah, that that was pretty obvious as soon as I started listening to the season two. It's like, okay, so first referees, now coaches. I wonder when he's gonna start getting into you know, the guy that tapes up your rankles and and and the ticket seller. How much is it gonna stay with sports? But the other thing that stands out writing is a

pretty solitary act. You can still speak with people and do research and interview people, but ultimately it's you sitting in front of a keyboard or a pen and paper. How have you transitioned to sort of the ensemble um approach? And I know that Pushkin Industries who puts out your podcast. It was founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg, who were too old buddies of yours, yes, and who now sit around at a table during a table read when I have a rough draft and tell me what what

what sucks about it? Um? It's it's one of the joys of the form that it's not an individual sport like writing books is basically an individual sport UM, but this is that the other people who participate in this UM, the producers, the editors, Malcolm and Jacob, have huge effects on the product, on what on how it all turns out. And that's been great. It took me a little while to get used to people telling me that I'm wrong or people are people taking you know, it's more of this.

It's like people taking stuff that I thought, Wow, that's great and sort of saying that's not really great. Uh, we can do you can do this this way. And it's a it is a new form, you know. I have a lot to learn. UM. So that's been it's been stretching, it's been it's just like been a really great thing. And I like all the people, love all the people who I'm working with. UM. So we have a little TA team, and the team kind of gets

each other. Now we've now done it. I'm just I'm about to put to bed the last episode of the second season. So that's our fourteenth episode. So we've done this fourteen times together, and they're getting I think they know me now and I know them. And that's a lovely feeling. I mean, I haven't had that feeling in a long time. Um and and it's you get it in businesses. I'm sure I don't have one. You get it in sports. You know you missed. I missed. I've

missed that feeling. So that's been just like another another another thing about it. It's been all pleasure. My extra special guest is Michael Lewis. You know him from I'm not even gonna list the books, but I do want to talk about two of his recent books. One is The Fifth Risk, which is about the transition team uh and a bunch of other things with the current president. And also his audio only book, The Coming Storm. Uh.

Let's let's day with the Fifth Risk. So that turned out to be a shockingly precedent depiction of all of the unfilled jobs in this administration. And they were literally thousands of political appointees and very senior folks that just never ever got appointed to a position, which is kind of shocking because that's how you control the government, that's how you affect your policies. First of all, it was incredibly precedent depiction. But second, how did you ever find

this story? People really were not all that plugged into what was going on here. You know, It's funny. It seemed to me kind of low hanging fruit, but only to me. This is so, this is what happened. I woke up, uh from surgery I had. I had hip surgery the day before Trump walked into the White House. Uh, the day before therefore he actually became president. And Um, I was laying in bed, we all drugged up, and

and I hadn't yet remember. I had on my mind what the book I just finished, which was The Undoing Project, which is all about the way people misperceived risk. And I'd always seen Trump as a watching his campaign, it just felt like he was a risk distorting machine. Uh. And I was anyway, I had this thought this and and it was watching part of the White House. I thought, I don't know how he's gonna kill me. How's he gonna kill me? He's gonna do something. He's gonna do

something that's gonna kill me. It was like an existential dread. Uh. And I thought, how do I get this across to people that what they just put in there is unbelievably risky? And uh, And my first thought, this is this is relevant right now. Was and I've got some way to actually doing it, was to creating in Times Square something I wanted to call the Trump death Clock. And it was gonna just scroll the number of deaths caused by

Donald Trump's mismanagement of the federal government. So I'm already framing in my head, the federal government is this management of manager of existential risks. Um that seemed kind of obvious. But but the death clock, you know, I got it. I found someone who was willing to pay for it. I just couldn't find an intellectually respectable way to get

to determine the death count, right. It was gonna look like the debt clock and it but and it was gonna like scroll and you have pictures of people who had died who shouldn't have died and all the rest. Well, that's actually gone up. I don't know if you've noticed it, but two days ago someone put up something called the Trump Death clock in Times Square. Uh, and it's and it's just measuring the number of people who have died from the coronavirus, who wouldn't have who wouldn't have died

if we had different policies in place. Anyway, that's it's funny. It's funny you bring that up because I have not been in Manhattan in sixty four days since we've been sheltering in place. And my version of the death clock is this wonderful infographic from a website called Information is Beautiful.

I'll send you the link, and they it's global and there are a couple of great info sources, but they every day you get the updated version of number of new infections, number of deaths not and it's state by state, country by country, and it's both incredible and depressing at the same time. Because this really I'm I'm coming to that question, but we might as well jump to it. Um, how much of an avoidable error? Are are a hundred

thousand American deaths? A lot of it? So here's to get back because to the fifth risk picks up at the beginning of this story, right, I mean the Trump there's there's meant to be a transition where which is an exchange of knowledge and expertise, re election likes put together.

And you write that of all people, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is leading Donald Trump's transition team exactly, and and by law, you know they've got to have this thing, and the and the federal government subsidizes it, and the Obama administrations required to do it. And Obama knows the value of it because Bush did such a great job apparently handling the government. And there was just lots of stuff.

They are in the middle of a financial crisis, a lot of stuff that needed to go from one group to the other. As as naturally hostile as they might have been to each other, there was a general recognition that, like ninety percent of the federal government is not not an ideological matter. It's a problem solving and and problem dealing with situation. And you've got these people who do who do it like civil servants, but it's run by

political appointees. It's run by four thousand people you're putting in charge of these this operation. And and so Trump has, through Chris Christie, a team of hundreds and hundreds of people who are supposed to go into the federal government the day the day after the election and learn how the nuclear arsenals works, or learn you know. One of the things on the top of this was how they old a bowl of uh crisis was epidemic, was was

dealt with um and Trump fires every body, everybody. Christie, Wait, they're supposed to start November nine, Yeah, before January twenty. If they get like a four month head start, two months start, yeah, and uh. And Crump had always been dismissive of this. He told Christie at some point when Christie is trying to explain him how important this was that Chris, you and I can take two hours away from the victory party and learned everything we need to

know about the federal government. Uh. He had He had no interest at all. And he's the guy who's supposed to be running it. So when things happened, the big I think the biggest thing they did. They missed the apropos of our current crisis. They missed um, the lessons learned from not just to Bola, but the flu um, the flu potential pandemic um. I can't remember burger swine, I get a mixed it was the previous coronavirus, it was it wasn't it was the it was influenza, and

it was, but wasn't. No one of them, so many I'm sorry. It's it's either the bird or the swine flu. I get one of them have been in the Bush administration. And one happened in the Obama administration, and it's a it's it actually is very telling that I can't remember which is which because it never happened. You know, it was dealt with, but it was dealt with not perfectly in either case, but in each case they learned and

it got better and better. And one of the things they learned in the Obama administration is it is absolutely critical that there be someone in the White House who is coordinating the entire federal response because you've got all these different agencies doing all these different things, and the agencies, you know, compete with each other their power grabs that

you need to check them. So you need to know if the Center for Disease Control says, oh, we have a good test, uh for the for the for the coronavirus, you have someone there says show me, and and I want to see it, and I want to make sure that that we have you know, we we have um fallibility built built into this. There's there's there are other

places we can go if this doesn't work. Trump fired the people on the National Security Council who oversaw the the federal government's response to pandemic and the threat of pandemic. It's one of the several things he did that that that um had a huge effect early on to in our ability to respond to it. But as a result, I mean, I think what you've got to do is compare our experience here with the experience of governments that have been more competent, like South Korea or Germany or

you know, they've been most almost everybody. I mean, we are what what percentage of the world's population are we and what percentage of the world's infections are were like like a quarter of the inflections and we're like five of Yeah, I mean that's crazy, especially since it took a little while to get here. UM. So I don't um,

it's it's been shocking. How shocking if you didn't know, like if you didn't know how Trump had approached the federal government, it's totally shocking how they how they responded. But if you knew, like if you if you've done the work I did to do the book, you know you think, well, that's gonna happen, you know. I mean that I don't know what. I don't know what the crisis is going to be, but whenever it comes, we're

not gonna be ready for it. So I know the immediate pushback that some people are gonna make is, Oh that Michael Lewis lives in Berkeley. He's in California. He's a lefty. But from everything I've read that you've written about this, you're not talking politics and partisan policies. You're talking organization and management. Am I getting that right? Yes? It's it's it's just like, how do you do this intelligently? Um? I mean, how partisan is a pandemic? It's crazy? And

let me you know, it's funny. I live in Berkeley. I'm actually not that much of a lefty. I mean I I I if the people in Berkeley knew my politics, they run me out of I mean really, it's much messier than that. I am not like this, Oh, identify as a lefty nowhere near I'm not even tell you who I voted for in my life. But it's I'm

all over the map in my political feelings. Uh so that but yes, even if you label me a Berkeley lefty, um, this Berkeley left he is asking like, why can't we have a smart management of a pandemic instead of a stupid one? And why? You know the amazing thing about it to me is even now that he is refusing to accept the responsibility from managing the problem that is a it is a problem that naturally demands a centralized response,

a coordinate. It's like a war a court. You know, you don't want California raising their army and Alabama raising their army and deciding, you know, where the attack Japan independently is in the world. You know, you you you, you need to coordinate the enterprise. And it's even even it's almost even more demanding of a centralized response than a war, because everybody's behavior affects the outcome. That you know, if if half the population says, all right, this is

no big deal. We're gonna go run around the streets and infect each other, and the other half the population shuts down the economy, you get the worst of both worlds. And that's what's happening. And I have to ask about the coming storm, which is sort of based on the whole um weather n o A a part of fifth risk.

So it was so what it was. So what I've always done is almost always done with the books, is I've tricked them out in magazines beforehand, and not all of them, not all of it, but pieces of it, you know, sort of tests, run them in in shorter form. And the Coming Storm was the magazine version of the

Fifth Risk. It was a it was a chapter in the and um it was a chapter about So I was wandering around once I realized that Trump had not got the briefings, and I could go get the briefings for the first time and turn up in some poor person's office who was wondering when someone was gonna show up and have them explain to me how you manage the nuclear arsenal, or or how you predict the weather. And these things have not happened. Nobody's been told in

the Trump administration. It started. And this is why I thought it was a low hanging fruit. I thought, oh my god, what a story. You know, you can go anywhere. There there the risks, they're being managed, your spectacular risks, um the weather. So I was in this position writing

the book where do I Go? And I had on my floor of my office that you're watching me in there were manilla folders for every department of the government, and each got fatter and fatter and fatter, and and at some point one would make the argument to me you really got to go there. And and I thought, and the way I chose where to go was I want to go places where people don't imagine there's a problem. Like every it's gonna know there's a problem in the

Defense Department. If the Defense Department is not well runned or or Treasury, people kind of get treasury um, but they don't know what goes on in the Commerce Department. And in the Commerce Department there's this thing called the National Weather Service, among other things. The Commerce Department is really what it really is is the department of data. So much of the data that we use as a

society resides there in one way or another. And the weather data, in climate data, is part of that story. And so I went to go ask, like, what happens if nobody gives a rats ass about this data? And and and Wilbert Ross, who've been put in charge of the Commerce Department as much as said, I don't give a rats ass about the data. All I care about his trade, which has nothing to do with the converment

wrong department. Uh So I the National Weather Service ends up being a really interesting case study in Trump management, because what happens when you don't it isn't the Trump is some libertarian. I mean it's that he just that he thinks the federal government shouldn't exist in some way. He's not there in his head. He gets there when it's convenient. He'll say it because then he doesn't have to manage it, like if it shouldn't be doing things

like managing a pandemic, then it's not his fault. It's not managing a pandemic. But but it's uh. But but he has no particular He just doesn't care about it all. He cares about himself. And so what happens when you don't care about it? Who shows up to run it? And when you don't care about it? And the only rule you have for who you're gonna put in the jobs is they have to have demonstrated total loyalty to

you and not said anything bad about you. Well, who shows up are people who have got narrow interests in these things? Um And he put in charge of the weather Service and or the operation that runs the weather service, or tried to put in charge the guy who who owned and ran ACU Weather. Now ACU Weather has been a hell bent for twenty five years, essentially making it extremely difficult for the National Weather Service to communicate weather forecast the American public because it gets in the way

of ACCU Weather's profits. That's how accuate what ACU weather does. And and once you do that, I mean, this is a this is once you all of a sudden say all right, um, yes, yeah. Everybody in that Weather Service knew this was an existential threat to the Weather Service. And the Weather Service is in itself a wonderful story that you know, you go back forty years, not even forty years, the three day forecast wasn't any good, uh, you know, much less the ten day forecast. The progress

has been made in weather prediction. It's like one of those great, very slow moving stories like I don't know, I grew up in New Orleans. When I was growing up in New Orleans, the way you found out whether the hurricane was about it as you went outside, you know, yeah this you know it was the frisbee still still in the yard when you throw it. Um. But but you know, and now you can evacuate entire cities and you have a really good sense of where it's going,

and all that Weather Service achievement. Uh, And there's there's a lot left to do. So let me just stop you. There is said, because there's a part of the book that you just said something that triggered me. So you said, I'm gonna go meet with these various people and get the briefings that the incoming Trump administration didn't get. Can anybody say, hey, I want to learn how to dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods or how do we maintain the safety of our nuclear weaponry? You can't just walk

into d O E and get that briefing. How did you arrange that? Because I would imagine a lot of that stuff is pretty classified. Well there's stuff people had to tiptoe around um, but but I got to For example, the guy who had just walked out of the Department Energy and had been he was a Wall Street guy

named John McWilliams. Uh worked at Goldman Um. It was a very successful private equity investor, has made his fortune and wanted to kind of give something back, and he he was He was asked by the the Obama's Secretary of Energy, Earnest Monies Too, to come in and evaluate the risks inside of the Department Energy, and he became the chief risk officer. So all this stuff classified and unclassified ended up kind of percolating up to him and he so I could go see him, and I went

and sat down with him, and it was true. He would have to say, I gotta stop right there in this description of how we're dealing with the South Koreans and the North Koreans and their missile program, because we just hit classified. But but you can get a long way before you got the classified. You didn't have to. He but he as we were actually what I was talking to, he said, you know, just assume the Chinese are listening to this, because because I'm almost sure they've

listen to everything I've done since I've been here. Um, it was amazing. He's sitting in his backyard in Long Island, uh and and the Chinese are there. But he but he but he could walk me through if not, if not in the most granular detail where we got two places where there was the issue of like is it classified, But he could walking through broadly what this, what the

problems were that he was most worried about. And in a way that he and the thing was, I sat there listening with my jaw on the ground, thinking, God, I hope someone's they're dealing with this stuff. And he's he's telling me, no, nobody's there dealing with this stuff. And um, and not only that, nobody's talked to me that all you'd have to do, all they have to is call me up and I could tell you everything I'm telling tell them everything I'm telling you, and and

and they the fact they didn't want to know. I just couldn't get past that because it was not ideological. It's not ideological. How you stopped the North Koreans from from being able to deliver a missile to California. That's not an ideological issue. Uh, really, it isn't. At least it never used to be. Never it seemed to have become one. Right, And so they're all these there. There was all this knowledge that just seemed essential if you're

going to manage the enterprise. And the endifference to to the knowledge was in a way, it was gold for me, right, because it was it gave me a way to justify my presence inside the federal government. And I never would have thought if you'd ask me, you can write a book bout the federal government? I mean, my god, no, I mean, it's what a horrible subject. But Trump electrified the material. All you had to do was totally ignore

the federal government to make it interest. You describe the power of a coach to change a life and in and in the second episode of the series, you say, in this case mine, tell us how coach Fits changed your life. Um. Yes, So my coach Fits was my high school baseball coach. And he was when he arrived at the Newman's School in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was the most terrifying thing any of us had ever seen.

He was six ft four, he had been he had been a catcher in the Oakland, a system, big time college basketball and baseball player, and he was from the Bobby Knights school of coaching. Uh but but he he he but with with a twist. Unlike Bobby Knight. There was never any doubt that he cared about you, that that he was coming from a place where he was just trying to fix you and not just make you a better baseball player, but like make you a better man. And um and he's he when he when I collided

with him, I was just trouble. I was like I was when I was thirteen years old, fourteen years old, I guess I was thirteen, and he was, um, you know, my idea of of of a day of hard work was going out on a ripping hood or him and and keep covers off cars. I mean, I was like a little vandal. I didn't go to I didn't care about school. I was kind of like indifferent to the

world around me. And he just first he jolted me with by scaring the hell out of me and sort of like, this is a guy who I don't want to displease. But second he sort of then he created a series. The best way to put it is, he created a series of dramas not just for me, but for everybody who was he, whoever played for him. And in these dramas, you were you were doomed to fail, you were doomed to be incredibly uncomfortable. You were doomed to experience real fear, but you were destined to overcome

it all. You were going to learn how to deal with your fear, learn how to bounce back from failure, learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable, learn how to compete in a really difficult situation. And there are lots of little anecdotes and stories, but these dramas in the end he starts. What he actually starts to do is build new identities for kids. And the identity is I'm someone I can win, i can fight, I'm not afraid.

You know that, I'm i can be a hero. And and and he starts kids on a kind of a new track how they think about themselves. Uh. And he did it over and over and over and over and the punchline all this And what got me interested in telling the story in the first place was some years ago I got a call from someone who played for him basketball for him, and they were raising the money to rename the school gym from millions of dollars, and

the money was being thrown in this guy. The school let him do it without a whole lot of help from the school, but parents of former players and foreign players were saying, man, this guy changed my life. This this guy did all the hard, hard work and raising my child. And at the same time, the very same time, the parents of his then current players were trying to get him fired because they thought he was too hard

on their kids. And I thought, this is a moment the culture that that this a thing that I went through that wasn't abusive, It was just really difficult um that somehow kids aren't allowed to go through anymore, aren't being allowed to go through anymore, And I think you're gonna pay a big price for this. At the bottom all I was this guy. I think I maintained to this day, Uh that if I had never had this experience with this coach, I never would have become a writer. Yeah.

I was astonished when you said that, because you seem like such a natural writer. So coach fits takes you from Michael Lewis the Hooligan two. I love the story one out bottom of the ninth man, first and third the best picture picture gets pulled and income second stringer Mike Lewis tell us what the coach says to you that seems like a lifetime turning point, that moment in your baseball. Uh so this is what you know. They're lots of other people in the podcast with me sent

telling a similar sort of story. It's sort of like where he said, where how he uses the sport to create to start to create a new identity. So I just joined the team I was. I was thirteen. Uh it was the summer team. I was the younger picture, so it wasn't my turn to pitch. I was sitting on the bench watching us play, and like, you know, it was one of those games where you felt like all the grown ups in New Orleans were in the stands screaming and drinking and and and it got very intense,

and for complicated reasons, he had to pull the picture. Uh. And it was the bottom of the last inning and runners on first and third, one out, and it was just I was so over my head, you know, i'd been I I just restarted my baseball career six months before. I just learned a curveball. He comes and he grabs me off the bench and he said and pulls me out into the mount He says, he says, you know, I'm kind of glad we're doing this because there's no

one I'd rather have in this situation. And you know, in retrospect, it's funny. It At the time I thought I believe him, you know, like he he thinks I can do this, and and he kind of looks over at the guy. He first he hands me the ball, he says, shove this up their ass, and then he looks over at the guy in the third base and he goes and then pick his ass off and and and and so, and it's exactly what happened. I picked the guy off third base, I struck out the next guy.

We won. And afterwards he says, this is who you are. This moment is who you are. It was so different than anything I've ever been. But it was such a good feeling coming from this. You know, it was like God talking to you. Zeus was talking to you, and he says, this is who you are. So all of a sudden, you start to be this. You start to tell yourself this story, this is who I am. And to be this. But to be this person, I have

to be a different person. I have to work, I have to care, I have to try, I have to suffer. I have to be brave. You know. It's like one thing after another. And so all those qualities started to come and come out of him. It's almost like and we are. I argue this in the podcast cast, the really great coaches are giving you a piece of themselves, and they're taking some little piece of their character and

they're putting it inside of you. And and like anybody can call themselves a coach, but that the role is a very funny roles. As I say, it's like a rubber suit. It's our strengths and and expands to fit the character of the person who's wearing it. And and um, you know, the man makes the clothes. And and when you have a character who is as powerful as that character, you can have an enormous influence on a person, to say the very least. So let's talk about a very

different coach. I am very late to the game of tennis. I started in my I don't know, early fifties, so I am not playing all that long. And one of the few books I purchased that I found to be of help is The Inner Game of Tennis. Tell us a little bit about the author of that book, and he's completely different approach to coaching than coach fits. So this is the episode that follows the Coach Fish Jerald episode,

which will be released next next week. Um. So there's been this movement and coaching and I kind of wonder where to come from. And the movement has a couple of aspects to it. One is, um, the thing that's being a coach more than anything else is the state. It's the state of mind in which you're doing whatever you're doing. So it's sort of mental coaching. Uh. And it's everywhere you see it. You see it in with chief executives, you see with Wall Street traders, you see

it various forms of life coaching. And these people call themselves performance coaches, and they're all over the economy where the Tony Robin of America. Yes, but it's really the Tim Galway of vacation of the It's the guy the

inner game of tennis is really the beginning of all this. Um. I mean you talked to talk to some talked to some big time coaches like Pete Carroll or Steve Kerr, and they will tell you their inspiration is that book and that guy, uh and and the eye and the idea, Yes, and the idea is um your words, like, you can't really manipulate players or the people you're trying to coach as simply as you think you can just by telling him to do things, just by criticism and praise, And

in fact, criticism and praise are both often counterproductive there they create that what you're trying to do is get the the player into a state of mind where they're almost unseelf conscious in what they're doing and and to focus or put in another way, to move their focus onto things that are very helpful to focus on, and

away from things that aren't helpful. To focus on. Someone who's going out to um to pitch in a in a in a in a pressure situation, the last thing you want to be thinking is, oh, please God don't let me walk him, or please God throw a strike. What you want to be thinking is, um, push off the rubber, you know, really push when you you're thinking about physical things that actually control the outcome, not the

outcome itself. I can take a funny story. So Tim Goalaway, who writes this book, he's it was just a tennis pro. Like how many tennis pros in the world have started a revolution? Uh, He's he's a he's a tennis pro in the early seventies who starts teaching in this different way, not telling people where to hold their racket, just showing them strokes and saying just watch me and then just do it. Uh. And and he his book is published and he thinks it's a tennis book. It's like, ah,

you know, you know, it'll sell twenty thou copies. It sells like ends up selling like two million copies. But and people are grabbing it. Who aren't interested in tennis, but teaching other things. He gets a call from the Houston Philharmonic, and he knows nothing about music, like doesn't even know the notes, never played anything. He's not a musical guy. But he goes down to see these people.

And the guy who's the the who's the conductor of the symphonies kind of skeptical and he kind of and after they listen to go always talk about the end of game of tennessee, is okay? Pick someone here to coach? And he and and and and Go always says, any volunteers,

and he says. The tuba player raises his hand and he goes like this is really bad, Like I don't I don't even know where to end of the tuba you blow on and and so the tuba player gets up and Go always says to him, what's your what's your? What worries you? Like, what's the problem? And the guy says, sometimes the notes are the notes are not coming out quite as full as as I like them too, And I'm straining to hear it, and it's very hard to hear it because you know the two but where they

come out so far away from my ear? And always says, well, like, what do you what do you notice in your body when things aren't working? And the guy says, oh, my tongue gets dry and almost it starts to condoms, almost get swollen. And so go always says, forget about the notes, don't listen to the notes. He says, just focus on your tongue. Well, just keep the tongue moist. Don't worry about anything but keeping the tongue moist. So the guy

you know always says. The guy picks up the tube and goes boom boom, and he says, I couldn't tell any difference. I didn't know I did, I could tell whether it was good or bad. But the guy does this, and the entire orchestra stands up and gives him a standing ovation. He said, and that it was like focusing on the right thing as opposed to the outcome outcome, process over outcome. And there are lots of different ways to say it, and there are lots of different ways

to teach it. But it creates a movement inside of coaching, and and it creates an opportunity different kind of opportunity. It means you don't need to know anything about the thing you're coaching, you just need to know about states of mind that lead to good performance. And so there's a guy in that episode. He's twenty nine years old. He is he is a direct descendant of Tim Galway

and he's coaching. You know, any given day you would find in him with New York Giants football players, New York Mets baseball players, New York City Firefighters, Goldman Sachs, traders, my daughter, seventeen year old softball player. I hired him just to see how that work out. But he that he's able to move from one space to the next. And you talk to the people who work with him, and actually I saw it. The effects. The effects are

actually kind of great. Uh. That that you you just gives people in a in a kind of a relaxed frame of mind to perform underpression. My special guest this week is Michael Lewis uh and he has been writing almost a weekly series of columns at Bloomberg Opinion about things that are going on with the coronavirus and and they've been kind of fascinating. Like most Michael Lewis topics, you find a corner of this that other people are either overlooking or having dove is deeply into it, and

then you reveal something interesting. The first one you wrote no, is gee, we really don't have a lot of data about the effect of social distancing and what it means for the spread of of the coronavirus. What made you start doing these weekly calms, Well, it was the ineptitude of the response, I think was the first thing. Also the size of the problem, but it was I was just struck that we live in this society that has lad the world in exploring the importance of data. We

coined the phrase data scientist. We revolutionize sports by using data and analytics in new and different ways. Every business in America has has been swept up in this data revolution. We faced this existential threat and we lack data because we're not collecting enough of it. It's the most amazing thing.

I you know that the so the initial failure of the of the Center for Disease Controls tests and then the seeming lack of enthusiasm interest in the Trump administration in in in rapidly figuring out that problem and testing more um got me interested in the first place. And then the question became like, I mean, I still think this is an opportunity, and I still may try to

do this with the pieces. I think you could take some of the best like baseball stats geeks, the guys who are in front offices now, guys who are running teams, and throw throw them into this problem because like, where do you what's the data you want? Right now? There's a lot of data that really help us with this. One is like one is data in in who's got about how many people have the disease and how it how it spreads. I mean that's this is this is knowable. Uh,

we don't know it, but it's knowable. You mentioned in one of the columns that we haven't really explored why churches and synagogues seemed to be focal points. Is it's something about singing as opposed to working with a family member who has it that you don't get yet A church or synagogue seems to be a giant hotspot. Yes, I mean the places where people are in each other's presence and breathing heavily, uh, for a long periods of time seems to be a big, big problem. Whereas you

don't really it's not doesn't. I mean, it's all anecdote, right, This is just so tri it shouldn't be anecdote. I don't get the sense that anybody's getting it by, you know, from a jogger who's passing by, uh, or from a surface of a table or I mean, I don't know that's true. But we should know this already and we don't.

Let me ask you a question when when you go shopping and or if you have food delivered from the supermarket, are you wiping everything down with h either Clorox wipes or something like that, or is it just get thrown right into the fridge and freezer gets thrown right into the fridge and freeze. Really yeah, but I but I would not go to a restaurant right now if they no,

not no, no, it's gonna be. I don't know. I'll go to a restaurant before there's a vaccine now, but if there's a tree eatment, but not that, I'm going to restaurant this have you? Have you been following this about the Llama antibodies much smaller than human anybody's that seem to a lock onto the spike projections of the outer part of the coronavirus. I think Fiser is testing that with their German partner. And the downside is you get a very long neck and you start spitting and everything.

But other wise, but you won't get the coronavirus. That's that's a fair trade off. Yeah, totally fair. Uh So there are so the data. You asked me why they got interested. I got interested because it seemed like we figured out how to value baseball players, but we haven't figured out how to measure, how to how to how the coronavirus works, and we and there's there's social data,

like the movement of people. It's being collected, it's being analyzed, it's just but I I get the sense it's being done in the kind of very crude ways that say, baseball stats were looked at in the early seventies, and I think I think there's just like So that's one threat of the columns is I'm very interested in the whole data story. So before we leave data, the Google Apple project to trace people who are moving about through

their mobile phones. That seems to be pretty detailed data set, although we don't really know of that data, who has it. We could just tell how much people are moving around the country. So all I have actually written about this yet, But but there's also the Facebook data that's being essentially

laundered through epidemiology departments at universities. So the Facebook, these companies can't give their data to the government's privacy issues, but they can give it to academics who can anonymize it and and give it in a different package to policy makers. And I do know that they've been able to determine that that just increase increases in human movement. I mean, this is kind of mind blowing, but increases

in human movement. So so let's say Gavin Newsom in California says, Okay, it's okay to go to the beach, and then all of a sudden you see an up tick in actually how many how many yards people are moving every day? Um, there's a direct correlation between that and deaths from coronavirus. Yes, a couple of weeks later,

they've already figured that out. And and if they think about how many steps there are in there, you know, you can imagine a world where everybody's moving around a lot more, but they're just in their cars and they never get out of their cars, and they would have no effect at all. But actually, movement is a pretty

good proxy for spread of disease. Uh And and so that data is gonna be usable if they get their minds around it in all kinds of interesting ways, they'll be able to see the effect of the policy on movement and you know, the effective movement on the spread of the disease. Um. So that I think we're headed in a direction where data is is going to be our solution short of a vaccine or treatment that the

data offers the most hope. What do you think about these anti lockdown protests that we've seen in places like Wisconsin and Michigan. Um, I think they're horrible. Uh. I mean, it's sort of like if you it's not just yourself you're affecting when you wander, when you when you decide to get together with lots of other people, you're making it more likely I get this thing and and um. But although a lot of them have gotten it is so from what we've read since those events, it's symptomatic

of a bigger problem. And this circles back to the podcast. We are we are an uncoached team right now. We're a team. We're a team. We're a team where everybody wants the ball to shoot. We're a team where that does not playing together. It's really it's it's it's and it's a moment where we really need to act as a team that play and and play together. So we we need to have a strategy and everybody, everybody buy into the strategy. That is going to be the title

of this We are an uncoached team. If somebody is to write a book about this era, and I have to imagine we're gonna see dozens of them. Um who should write that? Is that a Michael Lewis book? Or is that somebody else's book. I think I have an idea, but I'm not. I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm glad to hear that, because anytime you get a an idea, other interesting things come about. All right, So season one was referee, Season two is coaching. What is

season three going to be about? I don't want to say yet because because I'm not quite sure whether I'm going to keep it in the arena or leave the arena, right, But if you do seven, you're gonna keep The original concept was everything sports related within that everything It's sort of like the roles are all roles you find inside of a stadium, inside of inside of an arena of ambition. But but it may, I may I may break that

rule and just and and it just may be. You know, there may be other roles that I just i't want to explore. I have not figured out what the third season is yet. And um, I have to ask about the book Coach. You wrote about Coach Fit. That's a deeply personal book. You reference yourself in Liars Poker, But I don't think I've read anything of yours that looks as deeply personal as as Coach appears to be. Well, and the podcast, so that this is right, there's nothing.

I don't think I've ever written anything quite like that, just because um, I'm generally not my material this Usually it's generally something else. But this was just an odd moment where I was useful. Let's talk about podcasts and streaming video. What are you watching during lockdown and what are you listening to? I have been working so hard on the podcast that I've been watching very little. But the one thing I have been watching is Fouda. Uh.

It was so stressful. It's it is stressful, but it's unbelievably good. Great. Uh. So Fauda is the only thing I've been watching regularly. In fact, I think I learned in one of your columns. I don't remember if this was you were somebody else, that Fouda was originally written for an Israeli audience, and it's watched throughout the Arab world, which is sort of surprising when you consider the subject is Israeli intelligence officers going after terrorists. It's the Narcos

story all over again. Narcos. Narcos was written for an American audience, and it's all over the South, all over Latin in South America. So I think I asked you this last time, and I don't recall much of an answer. I asked who who your mentors were? And I don't remember you saying coach fits. But now I have to re ask the question intense, who were your mentors? We'se after you know you have you know they're meant your

mentors at different stages of your life. Right, He's probably the most important, certainly the most important, because he caught me at that stage. My father has always been a mentor mentor to me and still is um the uh. Tom Wolfe was a mentor to me when I very early early stages of my writing career. UM, my editor star Lawrence at at Norton has been a really important mentor to me. Uh, those are the I would say those are the main ones. That's a good list, UM,

favorite books. What are some of your old time favorite books? And what are you reading now? If anything? I just started in on you on Hillary Mantell's UM trilogy. Wolf Hall was the first novel and I never got around to it, and so I've just started to read that. Um. I just finished the single best pandemic novel. It's called The Gentleman in Moscow by Amer Tolls, and it's it's the it's the novel to read in the pandemic because it's about a Russian aristocrat who's locked up inside of

a hotel for fifty years. He can't leave, he can't leave, and it's this it's this wonderful exploration of of a of a mind adapting to a smaller space. Um. Anyway, so that I love that book. Um, I'm reading novels that I'm not really I haven't been reading any nonfiction. Give us a third one. Well, I can't read more than one a time. So the the the I'll give you, I'm gonna give you one. Um. Uh, I'll give you one that I read a while ago. But it's sort

of like it should have been. It's it should have occupied the place in the American curriculum and Catcher in the Ride does. It's called Red Sky at Morning and uh um, pick that up and you won't be You'll you'll be happy. Fantastic And and our final two questions, what advice would you give a recent college graduate who was thinking about writing as a career. It's really simple, and that is, make sure that you actually want to

write rather than be a writer. Uh They are always people who want to be writers, but they actually don't want to write. And if you don't actually love it, you're not gonna be good at it. It's gonna be miserable. And you can spend all your life posing and pretending to have written, and it's just it's just it's a horrible, horrible path. And it's something about the because nobody can you can nobody can really call you on it. Uh for a long time. You can spend your whole life

pretending to be a writer without actually writing. So uh so just right, you know, And then the second part that is what you write about, right, because then when you come out of college is usually don't have that much in the way of material. Go do stuff. It's just interesting because maybe you can write about that. So don't just be a writer right right and be something else right and then and the two will go to

eventually the two will find each other. And our final question, what do you know about the world of writing and investing and risk today that you wish you knew thirty years or so when you ago when you were first getting started. So, when I was first getting started at Solomon, oh those other when I was first getting started as

a writer. Well, I love the story about you, you know, writing it Sally and having them call you into the office and you had someone figured out was it chevy Chase's dad figured out that I was writing at her a pseudonym, and chevy Chase's dad was an editor Simon and Schuster. He's want to put in my head that I could write a book. So I'm so at that era. What do you what do you know today? You wish you knew back then about the writing process? I don't think I would you know. I like the way I

I learned about the writing process. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to put a lot of stuff in my head when I was starting out, that I didn't have to sort of earn the knowledge, you know. I think I was blessed that I didn't have any writers in my life, that I didn't know any writers, that I didn't know anybody knew any writers, that I was sort of making it up as I went along. I would hate to

have gone at it in a more knowing way. I made a lot of dumb mistakes, but I like those mistakes like I don't I don't rewind the tape and say, oh, I wish I had known that it would have been worse. Anything I would have known would have made me works. That was my conversation with Michael lewis always a delight. We decided to release this as a special bonus podcast for Memorial Day weekend. I hope you found it interesting.

Um all the usual things apply. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure to look up or Down an Inch on Apple iTunes and you can see any of the other three D plus conversations we've had since we began recording these, or check out your favorite podcast source Spotify, Google Overcast, Stitcher, wherever find our podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m I Be

podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion, Follow me on Twitter at Rid Halts. Sign up for our daily reads at Rid hal dot com. I would be remiss if I did not thank the cracked staff that puts these conversations together each week. Michael Boyle is my producer slash booker. Charlie Volmer is our audio engineer. Michael Batnick is my head of research. A taker Val Brunn is

our project manager. I'm Barry Retults. You've been listening to Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio