New York Times bestselling Author Michael Lewis is, as one interviewer recently put it, “a kind of guru of our age”. This is because, in books like Moneyball, The Big Short and Going Infinite, not to mention his own podcast, he has chronicled some of the big social and economic seachanges of our time - from the global financial crisis, to the cryptocurrency market, and how online gambling companies have managed to wage something of a “war against young men”.
Sometimes, he even seems to anticipate the sea changes. Last year, he all but predicted Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE manifesto, when he decided to investigate what American civil servants actually do. And the catastrophic risks that might come from decimating the federal government.
Today, Michael Lewis, on all of this, and what he thinks comes next for the American government. Plus, whether he thinks our own prime minister is “gutless” for delaying a ban on TV gambling advertising.Michael Lewis’ new book is Who Is Government: The Untold Story of Public Service is out now.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Wednesday,
June 11th. New York Times best selling author Michael Lewis is,
as one interviewer recently put it, a kind of guru
of our age. This is because in books like Moneyball,
(00:25):
The Big Short, and Going Infinite, not to mention his
own podcast, he has chronicled some of the big social
and economic changes of our time, from the global financial
crisis to the cryptocurrency market, and how online gambling companies
have managed to wage something of a war against young men.
Sometimes he even seems to anticipate the sea changes. Last year,
(00:48):
he all but predicted Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Doge
manifesto when he decided to investigate what American civil servants
actually do and the catastrophic risks that might come from
decimating the federal government today. Michael Lewis on all of
this and what he thinks comes next for the American government. Plus,
whether he thinks our own prime minister is gutless for
(01:10):
delaying a ban on TV gambling advertising. Michael, I have
to start by asking you what civil servants in the
American federal government actually do, and what is the risk
if they're fired? Because your latest book was actually mostly
written last year before Donald Trump returned to the office?
It seemed to predict Elon Musks gutting of the federal workforce.
(01:34):
So what happens if they're fired?
S2 (01:36):
Well, it depends on which ones you fire. But, uh,
but for starters, if you kind of think about the
federal government, there are several frames that are useful. But
one is it just manages a portfolio of risks and
risks and problems that the free markets don't want to
manage or deal with. And and it's all the hardest problems,
you know, it's from everything from like how you keep
(01:57):
nuclear weapons from exploding when they shouldn't do. Cleaning up.
Horrible waste to like forecasting hurricanes. It's like you if
you move from from sort of agency to agency in
the US federal government. Inside each one you will find
spine tingling risks being dealt with.
S3 (02:16):
Doge saying they've uncovered billions in wasteful and dangerous spending
across the federal government. And Elon Musk hoping to cut
$2 trillion from the budget, the Pentagon wasting thousands on
coffee cups and soap dispensers.
S4 (02:29):
FEMA the list of laid off federal workers continues to grow.
At least 10,000 have lost their jobs. That includes more
than six.
S3 (02:37):
Start more scrutiny on the temporary agency is to be expected.
S2 (02:42):
And the way they've gone about, you know, the supposedly
addressing the waste, fraud and abuse that they say existed
in the government was just to cut arbitrarily whoever they could,
rather than subjecting them to any kind of relevancy test or,
or competency test. And so God knows what happens. It's
like it's like watching a, you know, like the little fat,
(03:04):
fat kid loose in a nuclear reactor, just pushing buttons and,
and and pushing levers and all the rest. It's like,
you never know. It's very hard to predict where this leads.
S1 (03:15):
Okay, so so no biggie. But so in your estimation,
does that mean that the United States is perhaps closer
to experiencing, like another pandemic or a nuclear accident now than, say,
before all of these Doge cuts?
S2 (03:28):
Of course. Yes. All of the above. Name your risk.
I don't think there's a single risk it's less likely
to to have to deal with. I mean, so the
mental model that Elon Musk and his crowd had when
they came into the government was, I think that it's
all kind of wasteful and we'll figure out which parts
(03:48):
aren't by just firing everybody and hiring them back if
we need to. And they can make cuts to things
they didn't understand. And they were they were doing it
as if it was like a tech company, like Twitter. Yeah.
That which is it's true that like, if Twitter goes
down for a few hours because you fire the wrong engineers,
who cares?
S1 (04:08):
Yeah.
S2 (04:08):
This does not matter. But if like, tornado forecasting goes
down for a day.
S1 (04:13):
Yeah.
S2 (04:14):
Or the FAA at the Newark airport is nonfunctional, the
computers go down. It's potentially catastrophic. So, I mean, it'd
be interesting to actually play this play this out as
a game. You try to name a risk that I
don't think is all of a sudden made worse by
what they've done.
S1 (04:31):
Okay. And so the huge contrast to this, of course,
is the eight incredible civil servants that are profiled in
your latest book. And you write of bureaucrats, you say
they were the carrots in the third grade play are
elected officials, the kids who bludgeoned the teachers for attention
and wind up cast as the play's lead. You said,
you know, they take credit for the good work that
(04:52):
the civil servants do, and then they blame them when
things go wrong. Right. You're talking about totally different profiles
of people. So I really want to ask you something
of an existential or profound question, really, which is, are
the civil servants of the like that you profiled? Are
they better off to lead the country than, say, are
our elected officials because the people you profiled, they're mission driven,
(05:13):
they're selfless. You know, they're the people that are keeping
up the roofs of minds from collapsing over the heads
of people. They're the people who are finding cures for
rare diseases. Are they better suited to lead the country
than our elected officials?
S2 (05:29):
Their hearts are generally pure. But, you know, leadership is
a funny thing. These are tend to be very recessive characters,
like like that. You put them on stage and make
them talk, and it often makes them very uncomfortable. All
the seven writers of the book, all the people who
did these profiles, found that in the very beginning, anyway,
(05:49):
with all their characters, it was like pulling teeth, like,
I don't want to talk about me. I want to
talk about my team. Well, you know, that kind of thing,
but but as, like, characters far more admirable than if
you take the average civil servant and put him next
to the average elected official. I think nobody would have
trouble identifying who is the superior human being. But it
(06:11):
might be hard to take the average civil servant and
put him in charge. They might. They might not be
comfortable in the role kind of thing. But the bigger
point is, in our country anyway, there has been allowed
to grow and fester this really lazy stereotype of not
of the politician, but of the government of the civil servant.
(06:31):
They are either the deep state or they are lazy,
or they are inefficient, or at worst they're corrupt, like
they're wasting or stealing taxpayer money, which this stereotype is
so outrageously different from what you actually find when you
rattle around the Department of Agriculture or the Department of
Commerce or the Treasury Department. It's an unbelievable. The stereotype exists,
(06:55):
and the reason it exists is that these people stories
don't get told, and they don't get told because they
are precisely the kind of people who sit in, who
quietly toil in the background or are interested in their
work and in solving problems, and they don't publicize themselves.
S1 (07:10):
Let's take one civil servant from your book. So she's
from the Food and Drug Administration, and that probably doesn't
light any of our brains on fire. This is Heather Stone,
and she creates a tool to help doctors find new
treatments for rare, deadly diseases. And I think she's a
case study, right, about the kind of people that you
found or, you know, your co-writers found in the civil service.
They could have made a lot more money in the
private sector. Right? But they want to help humanity, right.
(07:33):
So tell me what drove her and and tell me,
really about the devastating ending to her story, which kind
of illustrates what happens when you get an incredible mind
like hers that isn't used to its full potential in
terms of being able to help humanity within the government.
S2 (07:47):
So it's the last piece in the book by me,
and it's there for a reason, because it sort of
hints at the source of one of the sources of
failure in the US government. But but she herself quite admirable.
And so, so a little backstory here. Um, when I
was writing a book about the pandemic called The Premonition,
I got to know a scientist at the University of California,
(08:09):
San Francisco, which is like the preeminent medical research institution
in our country. Joe Derisi is his name. He tells
me a story. The story is that someone come into
their hospital with they didn't know what, but their brain
was being eaten because something was going on in the
brain before they figured out what was wrong with the woman.
She was dead. They cultured her brain. They found that
(08:31):
she had. He found that what she had in her
brain was something called balamuthia. Brain eating amoeba. Um, only
discovered in, like, the mid 90s. Joe Derisi scientist tries
to figure out if there's anything that could cure Balamuthia.
He takes all known chemicals that are approved by the
Food and Drug Administration here and in Europe, and finds
(08:52):
there's actually a thing called nitroxoline, which is weirdly a
UTI drug used in Europe and in China. Tyler. Uh,
for all I know in Australia that if you give
it to people, it seems to kill the the balamuthia
bug without doing any damage to the patient. So I
say to Joe Derisi like, oh, that's great. If I
(09:12):
get balamuthia, I think you get by eating dirt. But, uh, like, I'm.
It's fine. Now. You figured out the cure. He says no.
He says the way the world works is I do
this research and I can publish a paper. Maybe. Although
the papers, these sort of papers don't get published usually,
like I found this random thing in my lab. He said,
but there is this woman at the Food and Drug Administration,
(09:35):
Heather Stone, who has taken it upon herself all by
herself to gather up, to try to gather as many
case studies as she can around the world of doctors
addressing rare disease, both with success and with failure. And
she built this website and this app to accumulate the stories.
(09:55):
It is a brilliant idea. It is exactly what the
government should be doing. The market won't deal with this
rare disease. There's no big business in rare disease because
it's rare. And so this cure exists. Nobody knows about
the cure. But the government, as it should, is going
to step in. Gather the stories of these cures. Disseminate
(10:15):
them all doctors around the world. So when you walk
into your hospital with this amoeba eating your brain, they
can fix you. Our government has lost its stomach for
these great things. She's doing this thing all by herself.
The app is cure ID it's called is up and running.
But she can't publicize it. She can't promote it. This
(10:36):
kind of dissent within her own operation, about just how
much emphasis they'd be placed on this. Because it's not
exactly science. It's telling stories. The story I tell, it's
a tragedy with a happy ending. A little girl in
the middle of Arkansas contracts balamuthia. The only reason she's
given the drug that saves her life is that the
(10:58):
mom finds Heather Stone herself, uh, through an obscure academic paper,
gets in touch, and the woman at the FDA gets her.
The drug doesn't work the way it's supposed to.
S1 (11:08):
Because the mother of this little girl, she didn't find
the case study of this drug working to kill the
brain eating amoeba on Heather Stone's app. Right? Like she
just happened to find an acknowledgement of Heather Stone in
some rare academic paper about this drug. And the doctors
themselves who are making these findings. They're not actually logging
in the case studies to her app or to her database, right,
(11:29):
because it's not being promoted. And there's just this distrust
of government.
S2 (11:33):
It's sort of like that story sort of dramatizes the
disconnect between the the ambition and the quality of the
people in the government and what the government seems capable
of carrying out right now. I promise you that if
I if I dropped you just randomly into the federal government,
you would be shocked by the caliber of the people,
(11:55):
and you would be shocked by how the whole thing
doesn't work very well and it's very upsetting. It's sort
of like these people grinding away and they're being, like
misused by the society. And it's the society's fault. Like
we're not managing them well.
S1 (12:09):
We'll be right back. And then in contrast to that,
really hugely would have to be the monetization of the
presidency that we've seen with Donald Trump. You know, I've
read that the president and his family have monetized the
white House more than any other occupant. And I've read,
you know, one journalist in The New York Times wrote
(12:30):
that the Trump administration is a candidate for the most
brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing
even Watergate. Do you agree?
S2 (12:39):
Of course not even close. I mean, I don't know.
I'm not a historian of the 19th century. Perhaps there
were some very crafty president who figured out how to
turn the white House into a cash machine, but no
one in my lifetime has done that. Richard Nixon didn't
do that. Uh, I mean, there were there were norms
in place. That and the country kind of been on
(13:00):
a hair trigger alert for this kind of corruption for
a long time. The idea that you are like issuing
your own cryptocurrency token and having dinners that people pay
you $1 million for by buying your cryptocurrency token to
promote it. It's just it's. Never mind. Like the hotel business.
I mean, it's it it there's been there's deceit in
(13:22):
the mind of Donald Trump. There seems to be no
distinction made between his interest in the country's interests and
and he just seemed to proceed as if the country
exists to serve his private interests.
S1 (13:34):
Okay, so this brings me to my next question, because
everything you've just mentioned, coupled with, of course, what we're
seeing on the streets of Los Angeles and him bringing
in the National Guard over top of the California governor
and so forth. I mean, are you do.
S2 (13:46):
No. Let me stop you for a second. That the
streets of Los Angeles are largely peaceful. There's like one
tiny little piece where and it's not that big a deal,
and he's trying to inflame the situation.
S1 (13:56):
Exactly. So my question is, I mean, are we seeing
the end of the American empire? Is this the beginning
of the end?
S2 (14:01):
Not if I can help it. I'm here, I'm here.
S1 (14:06):
And listen, we love your work. And you have predicted
some incredible things, right?
S2 (14:09):
Like, I know a lot of good people, and I.
And I love my country. And I think my country
has a is a very. It's like a complicated person. Uh,
it's capable of lots of bad stuff and lots of
great stuff. And I think that we are obviously. Look,
if Donald Trump proceeds unchecked and he, like, realizes whatever
his vision is. Uh, yes. The answer to your question
(14:31):
is yes. I don't think that's what's going to happen.
I'm more hopeful.
S1 (14:34):
Why why don't you think it's going to happen? Because
I've got to say, one of the things.
S2 (14:37):
People aren't with.
S1 (14:38):
Him. I'm sorry.
S2 (14:39):
People aren't with him. The people aren't with him. I mean,
it's like he's got. He's. He's not a popular president.
S1 (14:43):
Okay? The people might not be with him, but if
you look at the people under him. So I was reading,
I mean, just in March, you know, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
So his response, as I understand it, to Donald Trump's
plan to invoke the biggest mass deportation of illegal immigrants
it ever is to loosen child labor laws. So he's like, okay,
all these illegal immigrants who, uh, who who pick the
(15:04):
fruit and vegetables upon which our economy is based, they'll
be gone. That's fine. We're going to we're going to
let children 14 and over do it. I mean, is
that not the beginning of of the end of an empire?
S2 (15:15):
I mean, it's not a good sign. Uh, I'm not
celebrating this. I just don't think. I think it's pretty grand.
Claim into the empire. And I also think I. I
think there is this huge disconnect between what's coming out
of the mouths of our elected leaders and the standards
(15:36):
of behavior and the values of the of individual Americans.
I think even now, if you put Obama in a
room with Donald Trump and, and they each got to
talk to every single American and then you had an election,
I think Obama will win 85% of the vote. I
think that we've kind of lost our mind at the
(15:56):
top of the country right now. It's going to snap back,
but you need. The problem is you need elections to
do that. And in the very short term, Donald Trump
terrifies anybody who's running for office as a Republican, who
holds office as a Republican. So they're kind of marching
in lockstep with him. But that could break. I mean,
these things. Things move fast. This could change and move
(16:17):
in another direction very fast.
S1 (16:18):
And what do you think? What do you think it
might take? And the reason I'm asking you, this is
a midterm election.
S2 (16:23):
A midterm election.
S1 (16:24):
So you've got hopes for the midterm elections that the
Democrats will will take control of the House of reps.
S2 (16:29):
I think even fewer people a year from now are
going to think the country is being well run than
they think now. I think that he's created conditions for
things to get even worse for lots of people, not
just the economy. There's going to be an ill, ill
feeling in the air and assuming we have a free
and fair election, and I assume we will, that I
think he's going to get shellacked. I think they might
(16:51):
lose both houses. And once they're on the run, once
the bully gets punched, It's amazing what happens in the schoolyard. Uh,
so I just think someone needs to punch the bully.
S1 (17:02):
I want to ask you about something totally different, which
is about gambling, because you've got your own podcast, and
it's all about against the rules. And it's all about
legalized sports betting companies and how they're exploiting fandom and gambling.
Advertising has been a massive point of political contention here.
So I'm wondering if you can teach us something because
our government has stalled banning gambling advertisements on television, and
(17:23):
it's a proposal that had bipartisan support. So can you
tell me from what you know what, just how bad
are the risks of gambling? And what would you say
to our government? You know, when they're considering whether to
ban ads, TV ads about gambling, full stop. Like, would
you say you've got to do this?
S2 (17:39):
Yes. But I would also say, why haven't you done
it already? Because you said you were going to do it.
And so what's happened is this happens in industry after industry, right.
The vice industries, they get so big. They have so
much money and they're such a concentrated interest. It's very
hard for politicians to fight them rather than just take
the money and and and the organ. There's not an
organized and well financed opposition. So that's that's happened in
(18:02):
a nanosecond in this country. It was sports. Gambling was illegal,
was basically illegal except in Nevada until six years, seven
years ago.
S1 (18:10):
And now it's, what, 38 states that it's legal, I think.
Is that right?
S2 (18:13):
I mean, it's moving so fast. I hate to even
put a number on at least 38 states. So here's
what I'd say. It's a predatory industry the way that
and it's predatory in a way that even casinos are
quite predatory. Right. But it's it's taking it to a
completely different level because because the leading sports gambling comes,
they're actually data companies. They know more about you, the gambler,
(18:34):
than any casinos ever known about its customers. And they're
able to manipulate you into wagers that you would never make,
you know, naturally on your own. And, um, and you
got the casino in your pocket 24 over seven. Uh,
it's on your phone. And so it's it's just it's
a really toxic form of gambling. Um, and it's targeted
at young men. So it is a it's almost like
(18:56):
a war on young men. It's shocking that they've been
surveys done. They're like 60% of the young college males
are sports gambling in the United States from basically not many.
It's almost zero ten years ago. And the way the
industry is structured, it essentially mines addiction. It's not like, oh,
everybody's all having having fun, making a little wager in
(19:18):
some win and some some lose and a few more
lose than win. No, that's not how it works. If
you actually know what you're doing, you get banned or
limited to the point where you might as well be banned.
They figure out very quickly that you know what you're
doing and they don't take your bets. If you really
don't know what you're doing and you're kind of incontinent
about it, you become a VIP. And if you're a VIP,
(19:38):
you're in trouble because you've been identified as someone who's
bad at this. So there's studies that show, I mean,
this is new in our country. You all may be
a bit more inoculated because it's been in the water
there longer, but that from from sort of first wager
to addiction problem hits crisis is like 6 or 7
years kind of thing, and we're headed there. I mean, like,
(19:59):
there's going to be I think it's going to become
actually a public health issue here, and people are going
to start noticing. And their signs are there already signs
turning up that it is becoming a public health issue.
S1 (20:09):
And people here have criticized our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese,
for not putting in this reform. You know, he said
he was going to do it and it's been stalled.
Do you think that's just sort of gutless in terms
of the impact that it will have on people here?
S2 (20:20):
Yes. Yes. Why let these people advertise? Why encourage people
to do something that's bad for them? Uh, I mean,
we we we don't I don't know what you do
in your country. We don't allow cigarette advertisements here. It
makes a lot of sense. I mean, people will find it.
Make the way you deal with this problem in the
modern world. You're not going to probably ban it or
make it illegal to gamble on sports, but you just
(20:41):
make it harder. You make it, you create snags. You
don't make it really easy to ruin your life. You and,
you know, decent society sort of tries to protect its citizens.
And the problem you have is probably the problem we
have is you've got some probably very powerful financial interests
in the form of the gambling companies.
S1 (20:57):
Oh, absolutely.
S2 (20:59):
That that don't want that to happen.
S1 (21:00):
Well, the gambling companies in the sports. Yeah. The sports
organizations and the sports.
S2 (21:04):
Well, everybody makes money off this.
S1 (21:06):
Oh, Michael, I've got one last question for you. And
it's it's the left of field one. But you do
teach a master class on storytelling. Now this is very
left of field, but you are, of course, a master storyteller.
And I know that a lot of people here around
the world are really struggling when they speak to people.
This is very left of field about Gaza and Israel
and say they're on say they're on opposing side of
(21:27):
the political spectrum. What are your tips for people about
how they can help the other side understand what they're saying,
not necessarily even to persuade them of what they believe,
but just so that the conversation doesn't devolve into recriminations.
Do you have any tips?
S2 (21:43):
One simple tip is actually to find a character and
tell a story about them. Like who? This person. If
someone on, you know, humanize the other side through an
individual would be one way to do it. Uh, I mean,
making is in the same way you might make a
doge person read one of the stories in our book
before they go and slash the government. They couldn't look.
They couldn't look at it in the same way. If
(22:04):
you give them a true, concrete story of to an Israeli,
of some Palestinian or Palestinian, of some Israeli, that you
you might, you might temper views a bit. I don't
think actually this is it's funny you say this. There's a,
there's a, there's an economist at MIT, uh, who right
now is working on this question of can you change
people's minds? Can you present them with stuff that will
(22:27):
change their minds? And there's a sort of trope out
there that, oh, people don't change their minds. They have
their opinions and they just dig in. And it's it's
sort of true and sort of not. He's proving it's
actually not true. You can get them to temper their views.
You just present them with story and fact and make
them live with those uncomfortable things. And you, you kind
(22:48):
of move them in some direction, but that is out
of left field. I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning
with a brilliant answer that I wish I had given you,
but that's the best I got right now.
S1 (22:56):
As we all do. And we love you for your
humanity and your storytelling. So thank you so much, Michael Lewis,
for your time.
S2 (23:02):
Thanks for having me.
S1 (23:09):
Today's episode was produced by myself and Julia Carcasole, with
technical assistance from Taylor Dent and Josh towers. Our executive
producer is Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
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(23:32):
to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe
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most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Wednesday,
June 11th. New York Times best selling author Michael Lewis is,
as one interviewer recently put it, a kind of guru
of our age. This is because in books like Moneyball,
(00:25):
The Big Short, and Going Infinite, not to mention his
own podcast, he has chronicled some of the big social
and economic changes of our time, from the global financial
crisis to the cryptocurrency market, and how online gambling companies
have managed to wage something of a war against young men.
Sometimes he even seems to anticipate the sea changes. Last year,
(00:48):
he all but predicted Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Doge
manifesto when he decided to investigate what American civil servants
actually do and the catastrophic risks that might come from
decimating the federal government today. Michael Lewis on all of
this and what he thinks comes next for the American government. Plus,
whether he thinks our own prime minister is gutless for
(01:10):
delaying a ban on TV gambling advertising. Michael, I have
to start by asking you what civil servants in the
American federal government actually do, and what is the risk
if they're fired? Because your latest book was actually mostly
written last year before Donald Trump returned to the office?
It seemed to predict Elon Musks gutting of the federal workforce.
(01:34):
So what happens if they're fired?
S2 (01:36):
Well, it depends on which ones you fire. But, uh,
but for starters, if you kind of think about the
federal government, there are several frames that are useful. But
one is it just manages a portfolio of risks and
risks and problems that the free markets don't want to
manage or deal with. And and it's all the hardest problems,
you know, it's from everything from like how you keep
(01:57):
nuclear weapons from exploding when they shouldn't do. Cleaning up.
Horrible waste to like forecasting hurricanes. It's like you if
you move from from sort of agency to agency in
the US federal government. Inside each one you will find
spine tingling risks being dealt with.
S3 (02:16):
Doge saying they've uncovered billions in wasteful and dangerous spending
across the federal government. And Elon Musk hoping to cut
$2 trillion from the budget, the Pentagon wasting thousands on
coffee cups and soap dispensers.
S4 (02:29):
FEMA the list of laid off federal workers continues to grow.
At least 10,000 have lost their jobs. That includes more
than six.
S3 (02:37):
Start more scrutiny on the temporary agency is to be expected.
S2 (02:42):
And the way they've gone about, you know, the supposedly
addressing the waste, fraud and abuse that they say existed
in the government was just to cut arbitrarily whoever they could,
rather than subjecting them to any kind of relevancy test or,
or competency test. And so God knows what happens. It's
like it's like watching a, you know, like the little fat,
(03:04):
fat kid loose in a nuclear reactor, just pushing buttons and,
and and pushing levers and all the rest. It's like,
you never know. It's very hard to predict where this leads.
S1 (03:15):
Okay, so so no biggie. But so in your estimation,
does that mean that the United States is perhaps closer
to experiencing, like another pandemic or a nuclear accident now than, say,
before all of these Doge cuts?
S2 (03:28):
Of course. Yes. All of the above. Name your risk.
I don't think there's a single risk it's less likely
to to have to deal with. I mean, so the
mental model that Elon Musk and his crowd had when
they came into the government was, I think that it's
all kind of wasteful and we'll figure out which parts
(03:48):
aren't by just firing everybody and hiring them back if
we need to. And they can make cuts to things
they didn't understand. And they were they were doing it
as if it was like a tech company, like Twitter. Yeah.
That which is it's true that like, if Twitter goes
down for a few hours because you fire the wrong engineers,
who cares?
S1 (04:08):
Yeah.
S2 (04:08):
This does not matter. But if like, tornado forecasting goes
down for a day.
S1 (04:13):
Yeah.
S2 (04:14):
Or the FAA at the Newark airport is nonfunctional, the
computers go down. It's potentially catastrophic. So, I mean, it'd
be interesting to actually play this play this out as
a game. You try to name a risk that I
don't think is all of a sudden made worse by
what they've done.
S1 (04:31):
Okay. And so the huge contrast to this, of course,
is the eight incredible civil servants that are profiled in
your latest book. And you write of bureaucrats, you say
they were the carrots in the third grade play are
elected officials, the kids who bludgeoned the teachers for attention
and wind up cast as the play's lead. You said,
you know, they take credit for the good work that
(04:52):
the civil servants do, and then they blame them when
things go wrong. Right. You're talking about totally different profiles
of people. So I really want to ask you something
of an existential or profound question, really, which is, are
the civil servants of the like that you profiled? Are
they better off to lead the country than, say, are
our elected officials because the people you profiled, they're mission driven,
(05:13):
they're selfless. You know, they're the people that are keeping
up the roofs of minds from collapsing over the heads
of people. They're the people who are finding cures for
rare diseases. Are they better suited to lead the country
than our elected officials?
S2 (05:29):
Their hearts are generally pure. But, you know, leadership is
a funny thing. These are tend to be very recessive characters,
like like that. You put them on stage and make
them talk, and it often makes them very uncomfortable. All
the seven writers of the book, all the people who
did these profiles, found that in the very beginning, anyway,
(05:49):
with all their characters, it was like pulling teeth, like,
I don't want to talk about me. I want to
talk about my team. Well, you know, that kind of thing,
but but as, like, characters far more admirable than if
you take the average civil servant and put him next
to the average elected official. I think nobody would have
trouble identifying who is the superior human being. But it
(06:11):
might be hard to take the average civil servant and
put him in charge. They might. They might not be
comfortable in the role kind of thing. But the bigger
point is, in our country anyway, there has been allowed
to grow and fester this really lazy stereotype of not
of the politician, but of the government of the civil servant.
(06:31):
They are either the deep state or they are lazy,
or they are inefficient, or at worst they're corrupt, like
they're wasting or stealing taxpayer money, which this stereotype is
so outrageously different from what you actually find when you
rattle around the Department of Agriculture or the Department of
Commerce or the Treasury Department. It's an unbelievable. The stereotype exists,
(06:55):
and the reason it exists is that these people stories
don't get told, and they don't get told because they
are precisely the kind of people who sit in, who
quietly toil in the background or are interested in their
work and in solving problems, and they don't publicize themselves.
S1 (07:10):
Let's take one civil servant from your book. So she's
from the Food and Drug Administration, and that probably doesn't
light any of our brains on fire. This is Heather Stone,
and she creates a tool to help doctors find new
treatments for rare, deadly diseases. And I think she's a
case study, right, about the kind of people that you
found or, you know, your co-writers found in the civil service.
They could have made a lot more money in the
private sector. Right? But they want to help humanity, right.
(07:33):
So tell me what drove her and and tell me,
really about the devastating ending to her story, which kind
of illustrates what happens when you get an incredible mind
like hers that isn't used to its full potential in
terms of being able to help humanity within the government.
S2 (07:47):
So it's the last piece in the book by me,
and it's there for a reason, because it sort of
hints at the source of one of the sources of
failure in the US government. But but she herself quite admirable.
And so, so a little backstory here. Um, when I
was writing a book about the pandemic called The Premonition,
I got to know a scientist at the University of California,
(08:09):
San Francisco, which is like the preeminent medical research institution
in our country. Joe Derisi is his name. He tells
me a story. The story is that someone come into
their hospital with they didn't know what, but their brain
was being eaten because something was going on in the
brain before they figured out what was wrong with the woman.
She was dead. They cultured her brain. They found that
(08:31):
she had. He found that what she had in her
brain was something called balamuthia. Brain eating amoeba. Um, only
discovered in, like, the mid 90s. Joe Derisi scientist tries
to figure out if there's anything that could cure Balamuthia.
He takes all known chemicals that are approved by the
Food and Drug Administration here and in Europe, and finds
(08:52):
there's actually a thing called nitroxoline, which is weirdly a
UTI drug used in Europe and in China. Tyler. Uh,
for all I know in Australia that if you give
it to people, it seems to kill the the balamuthia
bug without doing any damage to the patient. So I
say to Joe Derisi like, oh, that's great. If I
(09:12):
get balamuthia, I think you get by eating dirt. But, uh, like, I'm.
It's fine. Now. You figured out the cure. He says no.
He says the way the world works is I do
this research and I can publish a paper. Maybe. Although
the papers, these sort of papers don't get published usually,
like I found this random thing in my lab. He said,
but there is this woman at the Food and Drug Administration,
(09:35):
Heather Stone, who has taken it upon herself all by
herself to gather up, to try to gather as many
case studies as she can around the world of doctors
addressing rare disease, both with success and with failure. And
she built this website and this app to accumulate the stories.
(09:55):
It is a brilliant idea. It is exactly what the
government should be doing. The market won't deal with this
rare disease. There's no big business in rare disease because
it's rare. And so this cure exists. Nobody knows about
the cure. But the government, as it should, is going
to step in. Gather the stories of these cures. Disseminate
(10:15):
them all doctors around the world. So when you walk
into your hospital with this amoeba eating your brain, they
can fix you. Our government has lost its stomach for
these great things. She's doing this thing all by herself.
The app is cure ID it's called is up and running.
But she can't publicize it. She can't promote it. This
(10:36):
kind of dissent within her own operation, about just how
much emphasis they'd be placed on this. Because it's not
exactly science. It's telling stories. The story I tell, it's
a tragedy with a happy ending. A little girl in
the middle of Arkansas contracts balamuthia. The only reason she's
given the drug that saves her life is that the
(10:58):
mom finds Heather Stone herself, uh, through an obscure academic paper,
gets in touch, and the woman at the FDA gets her.
The drug doesn't work the way it's supposed to.
S1 (11:08):
Because the mother of this little girl, she didn't find
the case study of this drug working to kill the
brain eating amoeba on Heather Stone's app. Right? Like she
just happened to find an acknowledgement of Heather Stone in
some rare academic paper about this drug. And the doctors
themselves who are making these findings. They're not actually logging
in the case studies to her app or to her database, right,
(11:29):
because it's not being promoted. And there's just this distrust
of government.
S2 (11:33):
It's sort of like that story sort of dramatizes the
disconnect between the the ambition and the quality of the
people in the government and what the government seems capable
of carrying out right now. I promise you that if
I if I dropped you just randomly into the federal government,
you would be shocked by the caliber of the people,
(11:55):
and you would be shocked by how the whole thing
doesn't work very well and it's very upsetting. It's sort
of like these people grinding away and they're being, like
misused by the society. And it's the society's fault. Like
we're not managing them well.
S1 (12:09):
We'll be right back. And then in contrast to that,
really hugely would have to be the monetization of the
presidency that we've seen with Donald Trump. You know, I've
read that the president and his family have monetized the
white House more than any other occupant. And I've read,
you know, one journalist in The New York Times wrote
(12:30):
that the Trump administration is a candidate for the most
brazen use of government office in American history, perhaps eclipsing
even Watergate. Do you agree?
S2 (12:39):
Of course not even close. I mean, I don't know.
I'm not a historian of the 19th century. Perhaps there
were some very crafty president who figured out how to
turn the white House into a cash machine, but no
one in my lifetime has done that. Richard Nixon didn't
do that. Uh, I mean, there were there were norms
in place. That and the country kind of been on
(13:00):
a hair trigger alert for this kind of corruption for
a long time. The idea that you are like issuing
your own cryptocurrency token and having dinners that people pay
you $1 million for by buying your cryptocurrency token to
promote it. It's just it's. Never mind. Like the hotel business.
I mean, it's it it there's been there's deceit in
(13:22):
the mind of Donald Trump. There seems to be no
distinction made between his interest in the country's interests and
and he just seemed to proceed as if the country
exists to serve his private interests.
S1 (13:34):
Okay, so this brings me to my next question, because
everything you've just mentioned, coupled with, of course, what we're
seeing on the streets of Los Angeles and him bringing
in the National Guard over top of the California governor
and so forth. I mean, are you do.
S2 (13:46):
No. Let me stop you for a second. That the
streets of Los Angeles are largely peaceful. There's like one
tiny little piece where and it's not that big a deal,
and he's trying to inflame the situation.
S1 (13:56):
Exactly. So my question is, I mean, are we seeing
the end of the American empire? Is this the beginning
of the end?
S2 (14:01):
Not if I can help it. I'm here, I'm here.
S1 (14:06):
And listen, we love your work. And you have predicted
some incredible things, right?
S2 (14:09):
Like, I know a lot of good people, and I.
And I love my country. And I think my country
has a is a very. It's like a complicated person. Uh,
it's capable of lots of bad stuff and lots of
great stuff. And I think that we are obviously. Look,
if Donald Trump proceeds unchecked and he, like, realizes whatever
his vision is. Uh, yes. The answer to your question
(14:31):
is yes. I don't think that's what's going to happen.
I'm more hopeful.
S1 (14:34):
Why why don't you think it's going to happen? Because
I've got to say, one of the things.
S2 (14:37):
People aren't with.
S1 (14:38):
Him. I'm sorry.
S2 (14:39):
People aren't with him. The people aren't with him. I mean,
it's like he's got. He's. He's not a popular president.
S1 (14:43):
Okay? The people might not be with him, but if
you look at the people under him. So I was reading,
I mean, just in March, you know, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
So his response, as I understand it, to Donald Trump's
plan to invoke the biggest mass deportation of illegal immigrants
it ever is to loosen child labor laws. So he's like, okay,
all these illegal immigrants who, uh, who who pick the
(15:04):
fruit and vegetables upon which our economy is based, they'll
be gone. That's fine. We're going to we're going to
let children 14 and over do it. I mean, is
that not the beginning of of the end of an empire?
S2 (15:15):
I mean, it's not a good sign. Uh, I'm not
celebrating this. I just don't think. I think it's pretty grand.
Claim into the empire. And I also think I. I
think there is this huge disconnect between what's coming out
of the mouths of our elected leaders and the standards
(15:36):
of behavior and the values of the of individual Americans.
I think even now, if you put Obama in a
room with Donald Trump and, and they each got to
talk to every single American and then you had an election,
I think Obama will win 85% of the vote. I
think that we've kind of lost our mind at the
(15:56):
top of the country right now. It's going to snap back,
but you need. The problem is you need elections to
do that. And in the very short term, Donald Trump
terrifies anybody who's running for office as a Republican, who
holds office as a Republican. So they're kind of marching
in lockstep with him. But that could break. I mean,
these things. Things move fast. This could change and move
(16:17):
in another direction very fast.
S1 (16:18):
And what do you think? What do you think it
might take? And the reason I'm asking you, this is
a midterm election.
S2 (16:23):
A midterm election.
S1 (16:24):
So you've got hopes for the midterm elections that the
Democrats will will take control of the House of reps.
S2 (16:29):
I think even fewer people a year from now are
going to think the country is being well run than
they think now. I think that he's created conditions for
things to get even worse for lots of people, not
just the economy. There's going to be an ill, ill
feeling in the air and assuming we have a free
and fair election, and I assume we will, that I
think he's going to get shellacked. I think they might
(16:51):
lose both houses. And once they're on the run, once
the bully gets punched, It's amazing what happens in the schoolyard. Uh,
so I just think someone needs to punch the bully.
S1 (17:02):
I want to ask you about something totally different, which
is about gambling, because you've got your own podcast, and
it's all about against the rules. And it's all about
legalized sports betting companies and how they're exploiting fandom and gambling.
Advertising has been a massive point of political contention here.
So I'm wondering if you can teach us something because
our government has stalled banning gambling advertisements on television, and
(17:23):
it's a proposal that had bipartisan support. So can you
tell me from what you know what, just how bad
are the risks of gambling? And what would you say
to our government? You know, when they're considering whether to
ban ads, TV ads about gambling, full stop. Like, would
you say you've got to do this?
S2 (17:39):
Yes. But I would also say, why haven't you done
it already? Because you said you were going to do it.
And so what's happened is this happens in industry after industry, right.
The vice industries, they get so big. They have so
much money and they're such a concentrated interest. It's very
hard for politicians to fight them rather than just take
the money and and and the organ. There's not an
organized and well financed opposition. So that's that's happened in
(18:02):
a nanosecond in this country. It was sports. Gambling was illegal,
was basically illegal except in Nevada until six years, seven
years ago.
S1 (18:10):
And now it's, what, 38 states that it's legal, I think.
Is that right?
S2 (18:13):
I mean, it's moving so fast. I hate to even
put a number on at least 38 states. So here's
what I'd say. It's a predatory industry the way that
and it's predatory in a way that even casinos are
quite predatory. Right. But it's it's taking it to a
completely different level because because the leading sports gambling comes,
they're actually data companies. They know more about you, the gambler,
(18:34):
than any casinos ever known about its customers. And they're
able to manipulate you into wagers that you would never make,
you know, naturally on your own. And, um, and you
got the casino in your pocket 24 over seven. Uh,
it's on your phone. And so it's it's just it's
a really toxic form of gambling. Um, and it's targeted
at young men. So it is a it's almost like
(18:56):
a war on young men. It's shocking that they've been
surveys done. They're like 60% of the young college males
are sports gambling in the United States from basically not many.
It's almost zero ten years ago. And the way the
industry is structured, it essentially mines addiction. It's not like, oh,
everybody's all having having fun, making a little wager in
(19:18):
some win and some some lose and a few more
lose than win. No, that's not how it works. If
you actually know what you're doing, you get banned or
limited to the point where you might as well be banned.
They figure out very quickly that you know what you're
doing and they don't take your bets. If you really
don't know what you're doing and you're kind of incontinent
about it, you become a VIP. And if you're a VIP,
(19:38):
you're in trouble because you've been identified as someone who's
bad at this. So there's studies that show, I mean,
this is new in our country. You all may be
a bit more inoculated because it's been in the water
there longer, but that from from sort of first wager
to addiction problem hits crisis is like 6 or 7
years kind of thing, and we're headed there. I mean, like,
(19:59):
there's going to be I think it's going to become
actually a public health issue here, and people are going
to start noticing. And their signs are there already signs
turning up that it is becoming a public health issue.
S1 (20:09):
And people here have criticized our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese,
for not putting in this reform. You know, he said
he was going to do it and it's been stalled.
Do you think that's just sort of gutless in terms
of the impact that it will have on people here?
S2 (20:20):
Yes. Yes. Why let these people advertise? Why encourage people
to do something that's bad for them? Uh, I mean,
we we we don't I don't know what you do
in your country. We don't allow cigarette advertisements here. It
makes a lot of sense. I mean, people will find it.
Make the way you deal with this problem in the
modern world. You're not going to probably ban it or
make it illegal to gamble on sports, but you just
(20:41):
make it harder. You make it, you create snags. You
don't make it really easy to ruin your life. You and,
you know, decent society sort of tries to protect its citizens.
And the problem you have is probably the problem we
have is you've got some probably very powerful financial interests
in the form of the gambling companies.
S1 (20:57):
Oh, absolutely.
S2 (20:59):
That that don't want that to happen.
S1 (21:00):
Well, the gambling companies in the sports. Yeah. The sports
organizations and the sports.
S2 (21:04):
Well, everybody makes money off this.
S1 (21:06):
Oh, Michael, I've got one last question for you. And
it's it's the left of field one. But you do
teach a master class on storytelling. Now this is very
left of field, but you are, of course, a master storyteller.
And I know that a lot of people here around
the world are really struggling when they speak to people.
This is very left of field about Gaza and Israel
and say they're on say they're on opposing side of
(21:27):
the political spectrum. What are your tips for people about
how they can help the other side understand what they're saying,
not necessarily even to persuade them of what they believe,
but just so that the conversation doesn't devolve into recriminations.
Do you have any tips?
S2 (21:43):
One simple tip is actually to find a character and
tell a story about them. Like who? This person. If
someone on, you know, humanize the other side through an
individual would be one way to do it. Uh, I mean,
making is in the same way you might make a
doge person read one of the stories in our book
before they go and slash the government. They couldn't look.
They couldn't look at it in the same way. If
(22:04):
you give them a true, concrete story of to an Israeli,
of some Palestinian or Palestinian, of some Israeli, that you
you might, you might temper views a bit. I don't
think actually this is it's funny you say this. There's a,
there's a, there's an economist at MIT, uh, who right
now is working on this question of can you change
people's minds? Can you present them with stuff that will
(22:27):
change their minds? And there's a sort of trope out
there that, oh, people don't change their minds. They have
their opinions and they just dig in. And it's it's
sort of true and sort of not. He's proving it's
actually not true. You can get them to temper their views.
You just present them with story and fact and make
them live with those uncomfortable things. And you, you kind
(22:48):
of move them in some direction, but that is out
of left field. I'm sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning
with a brilliant answer that I wish I had given you,
but that's the best I got right now.
S1 (22:56):
As we all do. And we love you for your
humanity and your storytelling. So thank you so much, Michael Lewis,
for your time.
S2 (23:02):
Thanks for having me.
S1 (23:09):
Today's episode was produced by myself and Julia Carcasole, with
technical assistance from Taylor Dent and Josh towers. Our executive
producer is Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so
(23:32):
to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe
and to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's
most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
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