Michael Lewis with Mindy Kaling at Live Talks Los Angeles

my go is great to see you uh Michael and I I think of Michael as a dear friend we met very recently and the way we met I think it's pretty adorable so I read Mindy did uh uh the New York Times Book Review so uh what is it about the book column by the book we should actually ask her questions and she handles them and one of the questions was who would you like to write your Auto button your biography yeah you said me yeah so I instantly got a right now and I sent your emails and I'm available like I I would I was doing this was a couple years ago because I had a book that I was promoting number one 10 your bestsellers every time specialer day to the matter agent under top of that like I remember anything your Times asked me would you write this by the book and I was just excited to show that I was I I could read how many people may think that I just read Us Weekly which are largely do so and I said and in all they are asking me on my favorite authors and it's it's a nice mess and Jeffrey Eugenides and the Michael Lewis is one of the authors I've read I think pretty much every one of your books and so I said so she got in touch with me was which was very glamorous and exciting for me and you said and you're very short they're like seven words in your email which I was pretty confident and it was like it was saying like anytime just just find me and so I we did something similar in San Francisco with her PO came out I became yes I've never been in a room with so many screaming women yes 1600 screaming women it was just four hundred Asian girls and gay guys it is not good for you yeah the temperature is so different from my demographic actually yours your demographic is your demographic in my demographic ever met it'd be a population explosion that I have lots of frustrated slightly nerdy late thirties early forties guys and can't find a girl and you've got you've got all the girls they can't find yes all the women in the women's March so we're kind of a handful yeah kind of animal but good for your for your the book we're talking about today is the wonderful book see undoing project which I don't know if you do have read which is which is great and I'm going to grill you about today then um I have many questions that I don't know how many of you guys have read this book it's an amazing book and I am openly advocated for you to write about me because I think that if Michael Lewis writes about you then you're set for life and it means that you're pretty interesting and have changed the world you have not written about me yes yeah take this it was eight years from the time I met Danny Kahneman to the time I wrote about him for all you know I'm gathering string right now right now this is happening I'm writing while you're complaining about it not happening yet happening okay as you don't even know it we're doing it and you'll even feel it you want a Nobel Prize and you can always also which I guess I have to know you have a show on to Lou thank you that sounds mean but okay you wrote a book called the undoing project I created a show called the Mindy project Oh I stole it from my keep across Indiana Monica my show is about an Indian American woman trying to date white man in York City very simple hard I not see this coming your book is not about that the undoing project I thought maybe you could talk to me about what what is the undoing project and who undid it good question so uh you may have set this up where it comes from uh I wrote a book twelve years ago called Moneyball he knows what that's a movie and uh that was a book about I mean I thought of is a book about how people getting this value um it was a book about how this baseball team sound chief baseball players so they can compete but was about how people get you know in a marketplace getting this value and how could that happen and when the book came out it was reviewed by a pair of academics condescendingly as academics do review books and but sweetly named Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein who said that I had missed the story basically that Moneyball told a story about how this baseball team had gone about their business and bit of success with no money and so on and so forth they said that what he misses is why people get miss valued and and they said that to these two Israeli psychologists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky had done work in the seventies showing the mistakes people make when they're making judgments and decisions when they're kind of faced with on a certain situation who should they vote for for president what should they invest in which bass killers hi yes which would today right and uh and I thought that's odd I didn't I sell me I'd almost never read the reviews because all I remember is the bad stuff it says all day we never you do I can't believe me I can't believe it yeah I can't believe it I don't I really don't read them but for some reason I read this one and I thought I missed a story the I started to read about these guys and then I turned out that Danny Kahneman lived up the hill from me in Berkeley and we had a mutual friend and the mutual friend said you really just got to go see him and talk to him and I went to see him and it took about six hours before I realized I had this great character in my hands so that's how it starts all books start with characters I don't the ideas are secondary the characters interest or would get me going and this guy was sitting in his Berkeley hilltop house with his Nobel Prize in Economics convinced he was washed up and dumb and uninteresting to people and he was supposed to deliver a book that he'd never written they never really written a book before but it he had a contract to write a book and he was telling me when I walked in the door in it I came at just the right time to see him throw this book he'd started away because it was going to destroy his reputation and I asked to see a little bit of it and it was it was riveting but then I spent the next two years watching him every time I showed up about to destroy the thing he'd just written because it was going to destroy his reputation and if he was this well it is well term doubt and insecurity and and interest because everything came out of the mouth was unbelievably interesting and he would take it to such lengths this anything that about a year into the process he wouldn't believe me that his book was interesting he said that you're just could you're just you're just flattering me kind of thing he's so he paid he gave five thousand dollars to a friend of his who was in news field psychology they distributed to three people whose names he would never know to read his book and trash it so he'd never publishes or publication to show why it should never be published this book ends up being called Thinking Fast and Slow and it sold five million copies and I watched him go through this and in the course of helping him with the thing or helping him manage his emotions around the thing he told me the story of his relationship with a mr. burski which led to many of the ideas that had gotten gotten in the Nobel Prize and that was the next thing they should speak a relationship be described as a love affair it was a it wasn't a sexual affair but it almost didn't matter she actually showed you how for some people sex actually isn't that Borton there's that thing it was it was the most passionate relationship either had in their lives and we talked about him I thought and he talked about the their relation with his arc of love story they met fall in love their babies were ideas and then they'd fallen apart I started to get interested in and start to think about it as a book so then I engage with their ideas and what is the undoing project yeah doing project is what they're doing when they break up then they never do it they never actually finished the undoing project but the undoing project is Danny who is like an idea factory has this idea that the imagination has rules to it and you can discover the rules of the human imagination he gets this idea after his nephew who's a fighter pilot in the Israeli army two days before he's to be released and having fought many dogfights and survived Wars thinks he's flying up in the sky when he's actually flying down and he crashes his plane into the desert floor is killed and Danny wasn't kidding so far he's at t2 days before he's about to get out of them out of their Air Force and Danny being nanny and being a watcher of people goes watches all the people who love this kid try to undo the tragedy which people that people do after something happens they don't like they create an alternative reality and there's there's beginning a lot of sentence if only if only he'd gotten out a couple of days before if only the flare hadn't got off they going off they blinded him no and he noticed people didn't say if only there wasn't an Israeli Air Force where's only he going into the army if they were patterns to how their imagination created an alternative reality and he he he writes this these documents in long letters to at their at the end of their relationship their aim is kind of imploring him to get interested in this subject and he thinks part of the reason they fall apart is that Amos is insufficiently interested he thinks in his ideas and I found a mr. Murphy who's dead I found in his file cabinet a big fat folder called the undoing project where Amos was taking everything Danny said as gold and trying to build theories about it but never communicated it today and I saw this phrase the undoing project on the folder I thought it's not a bad description of their whole project because what the under with of their whole collaboration because what they were doing together was unwinding a false view of how people are and they were they were showing that people do that how fallible inherently fallible people are um and I thought I just grabbed it and stole it as a title for a book that's how I first thought when I heard that you when you asked me to come to do this I thought why me I didn't quite understand to talk to you about your book about - there's a simple answer to that yes there'd be two people here without you that's the simple answer but what I have a group it was the dis book is a love story which I found very interesting when I read it I thought it was a book about two Nobel Prize winning you know psychologists who psychologists to behavioral economics and I thought I don't understand why now I found out very quickly this isn't a very interesting love story between very two different people and it's a good slow story because the characters are so good both of the character is served in the Israeli army which I find very interesting and a sort of superstar people flock to him because of his overt genius and glamorous Ness I would say Danny also genius but with the embodiment of doubt and self questioning and he'll didn't see it they couldn't his genius was harder to see which I love so everybody thought Amos did it all yes and you had no Danny had all the ideas and so you probably relate to that on some level and some of your collaborators you've seen that you've seen two people come together and one person get an unfair amount of the credit when in fact this an alchemical thing going on between the two of them the neither one could do independently what they did together and you've written about them that when they would write they would sit next to each other and when it which is already very unusual but it was so intimate that when someone saw them it was like they were brushing each other's teeth you said it was his awkward watching somewhat two people brush each other's teeth right and Danny said and I remember this if Danny said that he was only ever funny in his life in the presence of Amos yeah which I thought was very romantic and and I thought maybe you could just talk a little about their personalities sure and their relationships sure you know the netlogo The Hollywood Reporter asked me to describe I'll give them a one-sentence movie pitch for the book and I said it was Brokeback Mountain but they each other's ideas [Laughter] well I printed but the the that is kind of what it is and this that it is almost enlisted quality the relationship it's always behind a closed door nobody gets to see it in the minute they're out together it dissolves they can't be in a public place together without danny bristling feeling like it the magic is gone because it's a private relationship so their personalities Danny um who they were Danny Kahneman was seven years old when the Germans invaded France and a Jew and his father had decided that Hitler wasn't a threat that was the first days first experience of judgment under uncertainty and and we watched his Jews all around him were exterminated and spent four years of his life living in chicken coops hiding in barns watching his father die because his diabetes couldn't be treated praying every night that to God a God he didn't quite believe in that that he knew he was insignificant in a speck in the universe but could he just have one more day to live so he spends four years in these conditions after the war goes dick moves with his mother to Israel uh and pretty quickly decides he wants to be a psychologist without ever quite examining why he wants to be a psychologist he is full out there you say doubt he's got a gift for a doubt I mean the doubt caused him to go deeper and deeper and deeper into any kind of problem he never his mind never settles the earth never feels comfortable under his feet the people who know him are frustrated with their dealings with him they feel like he's the minute they think they have a relationship it's not what they thought he hard to collaborate with really hard to collaborate with a genius of a teacher though on his feet mesmerizing to kids in Israel teaches himself psychology because there's no psychology department at Hebrew University there's no psychology department in Israel which is an amazing fact if you think about this I mean it really is Israel without a psychology department and Alabama without a football team it is it's like who why did it and when they try to create one but it's been masked the guy who had been brought in to create it was killed in an era of ambush they never got around doing day teaches about self psychology and I think this little part of his life says so much about it that he goes into the army as this ethereal intellectual who doesn't really relate very well to people and has very few friends it's not his own self image he sees himself kind of differently but this is how everybody who knows and describes and including a couple of people who are close friends of his and the Israeli military makes him practical and useful all the statuses in being useful you have to be useful in Israel at that point the state is being created it's all improvisational and some of grab Simon says we got a problem there know that the Israeli army was kind of ragtag at that point and they decided that they were putting wrong people in the jury in the positions of being officers and they were doing it the way people needs to choose baseball players they had kind of Scouts who thought they were experts and we made a good soldier and they chose kids they watch the role of its that you're an officer a nun officer and Danny goes in gets rid of the experts and builds an algorithm for what would be a good officer and he finds he decides there's certain traits he measures them gives people quantitative scores and assigns in that way he does this when he's 24 years old to this day they use the algorithm to decide who is going to be an officer in the Israeli army that it's so good that 20 years after he does it the guy who's the head psychologist in the Israeli army gets a call from the Pentagon goes overseas a roomful of generals and they say to him you use the same guns you have the same tanks you have the same planes as we do and your army performs so much better than ours we think it's in the psychology what the hell are you doing and he tells him about how Danny allocated personnel and in Java on the floor so this something he does as a kid at 24 the incredibly creative person who probably is by nature kind of a French intellectual but it was forced by Israel to be practical and discovers this gift and his status comes from that very unsure of himself so um avis is happy-go-lucky insistently upbeat upbeat to the point where he actually says as a young man tesam ism is stupid give your pessimist you live it twice once when you're feeling it's bad things going to happen the second time when the bad things happen never does anything in the world he does not want to do in fact though he died in 1989 he says a consistently clear signal from the grave but if every move he made on this planet was exactly the move he wanted to make doesn't talk to me what I want to talk to doesn't go to party - doesn't go - doesn't obey any of the like these he decided very early in life that people paid a huge price to avoid mild social advancement and he made no effort to avoid it uh and and they're fit every you know all the students have famous like stories of Amos isms of things they said they you know he said if you find yourself you know you come to a gathering like this and you're on stage and you decide you're bored with it you said you can't think of the thing that will get you out of it today see just get up and walk your mind will take of the excuse and that's what he spent his life just walking out of things you didn't want anything to do with he he would not his mail would come in and he he'd have it in piles seven days there five or six days of the week pile and he he'd open what he thought was interesting and then move it down a lot of it unopened and we got banana to table to sweep it into the garbage can and someone walked in on him doing it's one of the students and he said oh I just haven't what can they do to me rule if they can't do anything to me to the garbage can so invitations letters and honors you just do just things he didn't he didn't care what's the world thought he did exactly as he pleased and everybody who met him thought he was the smartest man they had ever met every single person that they the the there's an admission is a psychologist at Michigan who is distinguished in his own rise name is dick Nisbet and he designed what he says is the world's shortest intelligence test he called it Tversky test and the diversity test was the longer it takes you to figure out that Amos is smarter than you after you met him the stupider you are and and I I put that to so many people they said absolutely right one more story about Amos and then you get kind of the flavor of it he was invited to they give a prize in Israel for the Beckett a great best young physicist and this prize is like a stepping stone to the Nobel everybody gets this prize gets a Nobel Prize and it's a couple Wolf Prize and someone had a party for the winner of The Wolf Prize and all the former winners were there and it was nothing but a crowd of a small crowd of physicists many of whom in won the Nobel Prize in Physics and after the party the hostess who had invited Amos got a call from the winner of the prize saying who was that physicist I was talking to and he just just she just got he described Amos to her and she said that was the one who wasn't seems the phase of psychologists his name is Amos Tversky and the young man said that's impossible he's the smartest physicist I've ever met get this over and over and over it was like a part people says like a party trick but it wasn't his mind was unbelievable and what he does so what happens is you have this incredibly creative almost literary creative kind of person to an economy is that he's just he's just a he's a volcano of blazing insight into human nature but without much that without a certainly to do much with it and not knowing what are good ideas and bad ideas comes together with this incredibly clean almost diamond cutter of a mind who is able to formalize ideas and build theories of them and assure Danny that that the ideas he likes are good and in that in that relationship Danny blossom Danny's discovered the value his own value Amos saw Danny's value and because Amos was so smart Danny was willing to accept the judgment and it was in that it gave him a level of comfort that lasted for a dozen years while they're in Israel and falls apart actually when they moved here when he moved to the States but the the both these characters share I think the essential trait with every character I've ever written which Bay and maybe actually you would Sheraton ah finally now I can think about your being I'm just waiting it came back to me yes I'm just trying to save you some trouble you have all those notes in there staring me question so that's what I thought so right oh yeah very boring yes always so um what they all share in common is they don't know they're great characters Danny Kahneman fine I think I'm cool yeah they don't Danny Kahneman here you have this Holocaust kid survivor who spends his life in a in an evasive crouch in his relationship to the world around him who is hiding himself at every every moment who becomes a psychologist and tells you that well the straight face will tell you one of those childhood years hasn't have nothing to do with who I am nothing no and you say you interviewed this man for seven to eight years and when you talk about his times during the Holocaust which is about four years of youth when he was living in chicken coops and barns with his family he said he gave you two paragraphs of material that's about right that's what he remembers he gets him but you know what he would say that he would say I am a horrible memory and then if I if I asked him another question he never answered the question you ask he never responds in the way you expect him to respond he answers a better question than you asked so so but if so would it but it's absolutely maddening because you can't get things in a linear fashion for you but over eight years eventually you've triggered everything you can trigger and get and you get the stuff so he he you know that he found it not worth mentioning for example uh that he had spent 18 months trapped in a chicken coop with where the door froze shut in the winners and his sister slept on the stove to stay warm and his father died he watched his father's lips get purple and and died his father who he loved in the day but then he has this incredibly traumatic experience and didn't think it was at all relevant and worth telling me until I don't ask him about it and it comes up in some other weird way that was a story of writing about Danny Kahneman I think it's very challenging to write about him because if you ask him a direct question about something it's not the quite invasive or shy but he talks about something else so you can ever use compiling information yes and you can't he does not want to be known that's a problem in a community in a subject that when you don't wait now that unless the Billy Beane didn't really want to be known but the day Danny has developed not wanting to be known into an art form I mean he he remains hidden he and his not surprisingly when he read the book it is a really uncomfortable jolt look at that I was trying to know him uh and he didn't want to be known and I in preparation for this I mean kind of many students you are kind of a nation is very big very impressive you've watched his interview with Malcolm Gladwell who is kind of a big deal I guess ah nothing ever has a theory about your writing yeah this is this is broader than with the book if that's okay yes about your other books and he's decided that your success comes from the fact that each of your books reflects a central biblical narrative and liars poker is Daniel in the lion's den which was that you as a young 20-something was cast as an innocent was cast in the even pitted Wall Street traders Blind Side is a good Samaritan Moneyball is David and Goliath and Big Short is interestingly Noah's Ark and I watched all of this and I thought maybe because I'm Hindu I was like calm down and Malcolm Gladwell and I kind of disagree with him who cares um I think that your books are like great romantic comedies oh and uh I wanted you to guess which ones I thought they were I know you're just talking about the subjects of one of this is Bertram I've gotten a lot of serious stuff but this is interesting to me yeah and I know what you meant by the defendant we're here for an hour you're fun okay liars hooker what romantic comedy doing better you're gonna have to give me some help you've never seen a romantic comedy the room has or me or Annie Hall or some like one of the classic ones um working girl oh that's I The Devil Wears Prada but I will stay tuned here I'm on okay Moneyball our universe is a volcano the blindside pretty one a flash boys The Blind Side yes pretty woman I think the point is a million and that's pretty woman yes pretty woman speak man Familia is a classier example yesterday my fair lady I fought it is my fair lady they are absolutely right about this yes when I was riding I thought I'm riding Pygmalion I'm writing my America my fair lady except except Julie Andrews is a six foot five inch 300-pound black eyes right just because I spend a lot of time doing as a nucleant relative I'll flash boys was you've got mail and the engine project is When Harry Met Sally I thought explain that loosely I thought it was you know the premise of one hearing the dollars can a man and a woman be friends which they say they can't and I thought can I thought this was can two people who are best friends were together and they can they could be able to do it for a long time you couldn't couldn't do it in America you could do it in Israel yeah that was the problem the problem with this place it was it wasn't the it wasn't the friendship it's just part of a larger pro-israel thing that we have set up right but it's a stretch you might be bad but your hairy mess Valley was that the one with the orgasm scene in there in the reductive but yeah so that okay what's the free is it what's the scene in the book that echoes that scene just remember scene but tightly at one part of the service book is a lot about I think of a breakup I will say the one thing I thought was a very interesting detail was in talking about the acrimony about how they decided to stop working together there was this great detail where you said that things were going south when Univ eight they spoken to America and Amos was got tenure pretty quickly at Stanford fastest ever in the history of Stanford they found out he might be available in the morning and they offered to him and his wife full-time jobs that afternoon they never seen anything like this the so yeah Danny didn't get a job anywhere really you were through British Columbia and what I thought was interesting and I couldn't have written dialogues like this about their breakup was that Danny was annoyed because every time they would talk Amos would say hey you shouldn't come up to Stanford and whenever they would talk about going to bridge going to be separate or I can come down to British Columbia right and that's tiny detail I thought was so telling and would bother me a lot as a neurotic grudge holder and I thought when you read that that I was like oh that's interesting that would that would no bother me so there's another line that Amos wrote to Danny that I would think would be exactly the line that would bother you the most can I tell you it would be if some man you were involved with after you were upset with him wrote to you I don't get your sensitivity metric I think that line captures the relationship that actually anybody who can write that one is not going to get anybody sensitivity me write the Danny was this this raw nerve all the time all Annie you know you know hungry for a pro affirmation and Amos didn't get it he was he actually thought it was beneath him to get it and the meteor Danny became the worse it got because the more I'm is with the other way now does that sound like about 1 billion relationships you know about I mean I've seen this over and over so it was but that line that's the line that actually many of my readers would write to many of your readers when they were breaking up with him that's exactly 70 they oh don't ask question because either certain little fancy books that has a quote at the beginning of it a quotation at the beginning you must do that - no no like Carly Rae John Birks bit what quote would I use your coat as a beginner but Voltaire no big deal this is the quote quotation I heard that quote you shouldn't say that quotation quote is a repetition isn't that part of your preparation for tonight or some Union a fancy thing I like just cultural I want to have a BA okay so it is doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one Voltaire that's what this whole books about there they are picking away at man's self certainty and and and seeding the idea and planting the idea that we are we don't just make mistake we're wired for certain kinds of salability and once you accept that it changes your attitude towards human error it should and should change your attitude toward certainty that you should embrace human salability and accept that we all have it and that we need to kind of just adapt to it that we are not wired to be perfectly right rational and efficient and they found all the mistakes people make but people generally make so they were that was their work was a plea for the beauty of doubt and the ugliness of certainty so this election there we go I knew we were headed there we started and it's like you're dancing merrily we can't really good very good we're on the same wavelength you know all the data driven news got everything incorrect and how did this book make you feel about the election because I remember auction I thinking what's going to year times become and it was 80% tillery's 20 and then over the course of the evening everything changing and up to the election we thought you were just watching it as a just June lip service to Donald Donald Trump okay right um so you and you haven't come to the conclusion that you knew he was gonna win all along okay I people I know no I didn't although maybe that is a posture I should do you what everybody's going to be there sooner or later okay this is that's where they would that's where their thinking comes and they don't say it like people using data in based analytics are going to be right at all the time and if this mark data people don't say that either it's just a matter of probability you have a better chance of winning in blackjack if you count the cards and if you like playing by your gut Donald funk did not think he was going to win he and have an acceptance speech right you complaining the whole thing was rigged to go into another thing now they're starting to tell a story about how they had it all wired and they completely knew it and you've got always people running around the planet saying they saw it coming which is just such nobody saw and and they nobody saw this coming and not only it didn't have to happen you know this is an accident you know the election is held on a different day and he doesn't win the you was not he was not fated to be present in the United States we are in a horrible horrible situation where a really the person who's maybe least suited to be President United States ended up being president United States by a combination of strange accidents they would what they would say about it all is one of the things that's terrifying about him is he doesn't would never get that Voltaire quote that he said he is she's so trusting his own intuitive judgment he's going to make all the mistakes that they describe and he's going to be and his advisors the people around him or going to be very wily know how to pull those strings they know exactly how to know exactly how to manipulate it would be very manipulable so that's one thing to say the second thing to say is after the fact when anything happens that nobody predicted pretty quickly people start to tell a story about how it was inevitable which implies it was predictable which implies were all stupid for not having seen it coming which is actually not the way the world is the reality is not so it is not determined the world is not deterministic a lot of accidents there's a lot of accident involved in these outcomes and they are is an inherent unpredictability about who's going to win an election you can get kind of better at making predictions but you can't be certain about it so how did I feel about my mind in the first place didn't go to Oh Nate silver screwed it up because actually he wrote the best stuff about it he said there was a one-in-four chance he's going to win which means is he had this election four of four times he went in once and these are the conditions in which he might win we're dealing with you know inherently possibly flawed data the polls we don't know if they're completely right if they're wrong in this way it could go his way yeah when Nate solar would say is that Clinton people were making a mistake feeling treating a 75% chance of winning as a hundred percent chance of winning and so I didn't I didn't feel the election collided with my worldview in any particular engine anyway I thought that he collides with in in an interesting way they'd have a lot to say about him the unfortunately it isn't just psychology you need to understand him you need psychiatry too and that's not that's not their line of work open it up now knees I have a lot I have a lot more but we can do this another time come back tomorrow night yes my car night um I wanted to ask just like some Holly good question sure we do i Hayek's whether questions okay so not getting my muscles you have for Paige of course I will get to is there a person who's going to need to get to me why I should take I don't ask it to more in a while um okay so you said it's that Malcolm Gladwell of course likes your books more than you do I thought that was very interesting and whose books do you like more than yours sorry and who do you like to read do you read I do I love to read put that in a magazine I love your book I read when I read your books I think you have to mention no I think your books I think I wish I could be that's funny I wish I gave you that funny I can't do what you do if my hell is having to be funny I would know how to do it you you know having to believe me when you have to be funny you can just be funny and I wouldn't even know how to do that so there's aspects of people's writing that I say wow that's great to be able to I just read a novel that just took my breath away because no way I could ever do it the sell out by Paul Daley I've been in extension pronounce his name the first hundred pages of that book I mean I wouldn't even I could it is a novel I don't like fiction but just the stuff that comes out of mine I don't have that I don't have that I mean there's stuff it's not accessible to me there's no one who I think I'm comparing myself to and I I wish I was that way so I don't have that feeling that's obnoxious to say that but no I'd rather just be me yeah and you probably realize you as a not yeah I'd rather see me oh so there's nobody like that in Malcolm's lying by the way he doesn't like my books more than he likes it TV show yeah doc the way Malcolm the way Malcolm what's his accent like where's he from even you some kinky like animated end okay that's so this is what's going on he's off what he is is he that he's an incredibly passive-aggressive Canadian and and and he what he does what he wants to destroy you as he loves you to death okay cause above bombing he loved bumps and so every time he says something nice about me I know that it's his way of just kind of like taking a little bit a little chunk out of my flesh you watch TV or you wonder there's like Northern California people who like doesn't know the TV oh no I was going to California be whatever idea watch all kinds of TV yeah I tried I tried five times to create a TV show I guess I've written five TV pilots why Jeff I haven't met they've all been catching it gotten very close in a couple of cases but they haven't been made nobody trusts me because I'm not in your industry they think I'm gonna pull up put a pile of money in the street and light on fire and and so so but but that's a whole separate subject but I'm really interested in it and I would love to write a TV show and I watch a lot of TV shows you want to know what I wanted make us you know what is a work of genius on TV right now Vice Principals vice principal that was not expected for me believable Danny my progeny Fanny Brice unbelievable really is a genius he's a genius he's a genius and I think I have the feeling of the fates feeling that HBO is embarrassed about the shows because they say they're kind of vulgar more than kind of your vulgar go there that ship and even and he is incredible um but you you know all the usual ones all the waiting I think you're like dude bro secretly but you're like my principal more to Game of Thrones I think you're like a dude bro it's my theory about you I don't know what a dude bro is yes I know it what is your that like I said like a metrosexual yo dude bro you're like dude bro you like Game of Thrones you like I do whatever I allowed to watch it so I get to watch that on airplanes by myself because my wife will watch it Tabitha Soren she won't watch it so I get to watch I mean how tough the compromises are our homeland yeah we may have just gone off the rails I'm not quite sure I'm a little I'm a little cool not the most recent season but I have watched some of that yeah like in-your-face TV I think it's cool I like great to you is great stuff one I like the crown may be better than movies believe it I think I should take some questions through I think I should get to questions of value I get off we were gonna talk about inside out and we didn't get to it oh yeah I went to tech you know tell a story that I want to tell you I didn't tell him I didn't get a chance to tell her backstage but she was a voice and inside out they're winning inside out you know them yeah yeah right right and um just a journey into the mild of a mind of a trouble child never before what happened the movie for 13 seconds go ahead really anywhere Moodle oh you're the voice you were so um my now ten-year-old son who you met when you were in San Francisco I I'm almost certain he's responsible for the best joke in the movie it is and I'll tell you what happened in life and I repeated on stage and on radio on TV enough then I Pete docter won't deny it that he did he actually heard this this way so Walker was a I run all my kids sports lives and my daughter's really good softball players and Walker has been a bad boy and his older sisters softball teams for years claiming a wild life and he does it because to accumulate the trophies and therefore the hardware and he's got a room full of trophies Donald Trump's nightmare he's got a ruffle trophies and honored he's just been there to collect the trophy and he was in seven six or seven years old and he was that going for his been ten year old older sister who was in the process of money they were they're going to be the number one team in the country and at one time they are in a situation where as a game star and they just melt down the field and it's clearly they're going to lose the game and Walker turned to the hard-ass former Cal women's softball player coach and said Shannon we're going to lose this game he's kind of crestfallen to these things I'm not gonna get trophy and she's she wheels on him and she says Walker if you're gonna sit in this dugout with us you got to think more positive thoughts and he sat there and thought about it for a minute he said Shannon I'm positive real is this day and you remember that line here every time I run yes oh I wish your mana ties don't I see any kind of dad they were at when we saw the trailer we were at somebody in the trailer comes in they said they stole it he said he turned to me said they stole my joke yeah well you know it's good if you learn young yeah and I reckon we'll steal Jeff some children yeah that was my vision I didn't take some questions from the audience you have a question raise your hand I'll bring the microphone to you risk the real reminder questions in this theater start with a wrh sometimes a D they're generally short there's no such thing as a two-part question and only Mindy gets to ask follow-up questions hi um this question is very Mindy oh here we go see that's why we're now never get to the stuff the real stone was blue you planning on writing a third book I write now um maybe I made my write nice write some fiction that would be interesting to me but nothing anytime soon wait I have a question for you oh no too much I don't know the part about you he's looks to be an Oscar who are gonna cast in this movie you know uh this is going to sound odd but I think the experience with the big short was it was a revelation but I've had the revelation over and over these comic actors are so much better than the drum a dramatic actors it's so much harder to do comedy you and and in fact these two are laughing the whole time they're doing what they're doing and the actors are going to need in very subtle ways to make the audience laugh in a way I didn't in the book and I want Sacha Baron Cohen to play Danny uh and I want uh either Christian Bale or Michael Fassbender to play Amos oh that's much that's how I cast it that's great and babe Factory yeah so so think we do have the way we also have the roles that rolls for um four times resentful wives hey man Rory I'm your claim do you owe me resentful yeah can you do it yes she wasn't Indian in the book it does make any doesn't matter ah I thought Adam driver and Oscar Isaac so if you're younger maybe the younger versions whatever that's great Sacha and Michael Fassbender yes that's great that's cool yes hi there this question for Michael so I was listening to your Freakonomics podcast a few weeks ago and you were talking about your writing process and how you build soundtracks for each of your books and you listen to them on repeat over and over and over while you write write and through that process are there any songs that you can no longer listen to the kind of songs I pick or songs you wouldn't want to listen to I mean that they mortify my children when they see when most new piece I wrote the whole of flash boys to to that song from the movie frozen is one of them it was one of them over and over on a loop and uh yeah yeah yeah that one and uh I need a I knew this like I need to put I need to have something that I can just shut out it kind of up it's sort of up music mostly everything I weave in an occasional down usually from Johnny Cash just to just eleven it a little bit but so this one had I thought it was funny in the beginning I mean the beatings pre arbitrary songs about make me want to dance so Jessie's Girl and Stacy's mom I thought there I thought that was really funny that they were together anyway I ceased it so you asked do I I can it is absolutely true at the end of the book I burned the pleasure out of a song and so if I hear them I have this Pavlovian response so I got it right and and so I don't I don't seek them out I don't seek them out I'm building the playlist for the next one I just think I found a really great song for a pilot what is it uh it's an obscure band called The Zutons you ever hear of them it and the song's called Valerie and it was covered by Amy Winehouse she made it famous oh I know it's not her song but it's I heard and I said I get when I hear what a songs I said I put it in a file so that's great for the soundtrack and I have this soundtrack yeah so but I don't listen I can't listen to any of them because I mean I listen to them thousands of times and I don't know the words I'm just hearing the noise and appoint us to shut out the possibility of distraction and it works let it go is mostly let it go let it go I think we'd have cooler dreaming chasing you that makes me so happy oh no it's not even close trust pinky yeah I was separated actually in a funny madness so because of Tabitha I have had recent moments where I seem to actually be cool in music business because I know so much Nicholas Highland again and and I once told Michael Stipe how grateful I was to him for creating songs that I didn't have to listen to of it because they just played beautifully as I was as I was REM songs they worked beautifully - right - and he looked at me while I them yeah I couldn't believe how insulted ear and I didn't mean it that way I was trying to say something else and I said that yeah your enemy my Tabitha has a series justify of a series of stories about tab with a committing horrible full paw and athletic environments like not getting something in the most spectacular way she has a whole bunch of story she tells about what a what a total loser is in the presence of musicians I hope he writes his local stories that I would read that yes yes I just messages for question is from Michael sorry about Flash voice are you apologizing the picnic in a way that I thought was a message versus I so there's been a lot of studies done on high frequency trading afterwards and they don't come up with the same kind of impact that the book suggests so the question is do you still stand by that market rate ha yeah what were they being kindly condescending these studies here and so so yes the high-frequency trading community has commissioned studies that are pretty funny and incredibly phony in fact they fall apart the minute anybody knows anything about it looks at them and the best studies it does it by are now being done by by like big mutual funds that are measuring the cost of trading on the exchange that I wrote about versus the other exchanges and and I mean I've seen several of them and the the rough estimate is a third of a percentage point in their trading costs and that's huge when it's multiplied over billions and billions of dollars of trading so it is not true that the studies have shown anything like that there has been a concerted effort by the people who had a vest have a vested interest in the way the stock market structured to disguise what's going on at the same time you know you have today in the last couple days in New York Stock Exchange announced that you know they're going to create an exchange that's essentially mimics ix because they need a place where ever dusters can be protected it makes you wonder what the hell is going on on the other exchanges they have so it is the experience of telling publishing that book flash boys in a weird way as a premonition of what has happened in the politics of our country in Donald fit with Donald Trump that it was amazing to me how quickly people could could spread lies that were so clearly lies especially when the subject was complicated and how hard it was for the people who would come into a situation that was clearly corrupt and we're trying to fix it to get their message out I thought markets would correct this very quickly and they don't people it's just you know people believe what they want to believe journalists have trouble vetting stories and so you get this oh they're all these studies that show that the high-frequency trading is an effect every one of the studies is polluted in some way either their propaganda paid for by high-frequency traders or P doing it who want to testify on behalf of I fork integrators the data is bad it's so one bad thing after another and it's just there's a huge financial incentive to lie in the on Wall Street I mean rethinking it yes okay yeah I know you already got me going no I think we have some more some more questions yeah over here on the right for Michael I'll follow up on the other side of that the years before the book was published were the most volatile in US financial market history the higher frequency guys profit off the volatility and since the book was published the markets have been very non volatile do you think your book was a result you know impacted that no not really I mean I know I don't I don't think I don't think my book had the only effect that I can see that my book had is enabled I think it had a big the people at the honest exchange I would tell you that without the book they never would have gotten SEC approval it created it through a spotlight on the problem that the regulator's couldn't ignore even though they would like to have ignore it the it is true that the now the middleman and the most in most trades high-frequency traders do have an interesting creating volatility but they don't have the power to I mean I think a lot of other things going on the markets that create volatility or diminish volatility so I don't think the book had that kind of effect I really enjoyed the book in and I enjoyed in the early part when Amos and Danny are so intelligent they send a professors at the university running from the room screaming from the question they asked and as I'm halfway into the book a friend of mine calls me and tells me that his son is going to university of Madison Wisconsin Wisconsin to study philosophy and psychology and I thought the comment you made about why Amos and/or Danny decided not to pursue philosophy was interesting and I wonder if you talked about that for a second um you know it's so hard to recreate Israel in 1956 it is such a wild west that they had by the time Danny gets to the Hebrew University there's no psychology there's no psychology department it's kind of educating himself Amos gets there and Danny's the psychology department I'm dating a couple of other people and and the Amos didn't know what he wanted to study he thought he wanted to be a poet and when he was very young and a literary critic but he didn't that wasn't his mind was Danny's could have been a poet in a literary critic my nameís wasn't really that well-suited he figured out at some point he would've been a very second-rate poet but he had a mind that yeah the natural ways of logician he is a logician he's not naturally excite anything but you the logician and he brings the power of frightening logical power and to whatever problem he was dealing with and he got that he didn't know what he wanted to study at Hebrew University but thought kind of maybe philosophy he listened to the philosophers and he said he turned his roommate and said their problems all interesting and they have no answers they'll never have answers the interesting questions that had could be answered have been answered it's pointless Avis was opportunistic he also saw that that year Amos arrived at Hebrew University it's the first year they opened the department and everybody in Israel wants to be a psychologist and their lines around the block it's the most competitive thing and he he responded I he was a mosquito were leaked impended about everything and I think because everybody wanted to do it he got in the line and got into the department and then figures out that the whole he thinks all fields I mean it takes him about a year to decide every one of the people teaching him doesn't know anything that he wants to know and the night before it is nonsense he thinks he'd go one down line Thanks so he when they do he invents the field inside a psychology judgment decision-making didn't exist you know this whole business it's the you hear about their lives and you can't quite like I say to Danny how does a 22 or 23 year old be given the responsibility to redesign the Israeli military he says oh that was just the way it was you know you just you and how does someone walk into school at age 18 and they or when I guess famous was he'd come out of the army at age 20 and say my professors don't know anything you know that that was but that was the way they were and it it was you know I had trouble it took me six years after I met Danny before I thought I could actually write this book and one of the big stumbling blocks was recreating that environment because it was so alien to me I thought no way that nobody I'm not going to draw it right it's just so different but is that way you say this is the best book you've ever written she is that I did say it once it came in my mouth and I regretted it no no I'm in it Caleb I'm out in a moment of enthusiasm and then and now I'm two weeks into the book tour and I'm so sick of it basically no it's it's the southern way I judged the books is like olimpic dollars its quality of the dive not just quality as I but difficulty of execution and I know the difficulty of the execution this one a night and it was high and uh and I thought the stakes are very high these people are actually they're describing an aspect of human nature that had previously gone to undescribed and you could we their work with their lives and their romance was a great challenge for me and I can remember what I remember was when I finished it and the ending I kind I was in a in a in a lab when I finished the thing as a lie ending wrote itself the last fifteen pages I wrote in four hours and there it didn't even go to touch it just came out of me and I remember going into the bedroom of like 11 o'clock at night and I sis's obnoxious do not quote me do not tweet this this is a privately I'm being open here I said I said Tabitha I said you know I just finished that not just the best book I ever wrote I wrote finish the best book anybody ever read oh my god and you're going nuts and she said I can't quietly open I managed but you're not creating a safe space trying to tell you something and you bet the ravenous orange every word the best woman I know I'm so now I know how Danny feels in the present is a mystery yes yes yes so uh I realized when I woke up that was a crazy thing to have said but I had the moment yeah where I thought that and it was a moment it was a bit was I really I knew how many different things like planned like you solve a Rubik's Cube yeah everything is a place you go oh my god yes oh my god so I had that feeling it dissipates I don't have that feeling any I don't have that feeling anymore but it was really nice to have asked you know how you stand it you're a bee sting writing writing what age students and normally in your books are either my favorite huckleberries bladders poker well that case I'm a beast is ready students are the heart and everything else whether it's Billy being over you're writing about people who you think you are about as smarter and this one you said that you for it yes yeah it was very clear yeah and that's a problem right how do you write about people who are smarter than you how do you get their ideas I mean that you just know you don't know what you don't know and I it was I I was very aware early on that this was that was the problem that the B student has trouble writing about the a students and I was encountering these being with these with smartest people who walk the planet kind of thing most interesting minds and it isn't what I typically do so it Malcolm does Malcolm Malcolm is it was I I said to Malcolm years ago I'm thinking about writing a book that you should write and he didn't reply to the email but you know why and but but it is a very Malcolm subject right it's in what he does so well as he gives ideas the quality of action on the page you don't need people I have lied about reading so many Malcolm Gladwell books right I don't know if we're over time two more questions two more questions okay great oh okay hi we're over here on the left on your left we're right there we go question is from Michael before my question I just want to say if you want help producing your talk shows I'm available and the question is do you think that the brexit phenomenon and the election of Donald Trump are intertwined in this post truth era that we're living that people don't believe they don't know what sex is anymore and they don't even bother checking it I think I feel like I just want to hear your opinion about it you know they're like many subjects on which the honest answer is I don't have anything interesting to say that you wouldn't have heard before 18 million different ways and this is one of them I mean it was really clear before breakfast just as before trumpet the trumpet lesson that people didn't know what they were understand what they were voting for I mean after the election that they were interviewing people who had voted to leave the European Union and they said what does that mean leave the European Union and it was it was so but I'm not sure that the electorate has ever been like perfectly informed it's so I don't have like I mean a dislike except that clearly they'll that the energy the immediate environment is a new and weird one where we're adapting to it and and it gives people the opportunity to read what they want to believe and not encounter things they don't want to encounter so Donald Trump supporters probably allow them still believe right now that the that more people went to his inauguration than know Obama's inauguration and if 3 million people voted illegally and all the stuff and he seems to understand that he can just do that I think it's an accident that he figured this out I don't think he's got like an evil genius for people's vote people susceptibility to live I think he's got a great capacity at a lot of himself and this so he just does that first and in persuasions the best con men believe their own con and I think he's that I think he's like he really gets I think he's mentally ill I read DePandi's Oh and I thought let's turn the Ponte biography it actually reminded me a lot of Milania is in New York City with their kid like you who is he talking to you but yeah I agree um our last final question Michael I'm kind of curious about your work process kind of day-to-day so I mean are you researching lots of stories at one time or kind of people giving you ideas to write about our how does all that work and become a book so right now I'm doing nothing I'm singing on the stage and indeed talking and this is the most work I've done no there is nothing yeah this is a working this isn't a work this isn't medicine right Malcolm Gladwell settle I mean I spend it's not as bad and in Hollywood where an actor spends a few months making a movie than nine months campaigning for awards for it I'm not a streaming show I like won't even know we're talking but hear it yes I know yes but but so the the first thing is that there's after book comes out like now there's several months I just have to set aside because I'm not going to get any work done at all I mean is this pointless to even think about it I think about another book that and the book tour is in a way kind of useful in that it kills your whatever affection you have for the book you just wrote so it frees you up to go do something else you're no longer like obsessing about that anymore you don't want to think about it like the songs you mustn't do when you're writing the book you don't want to you move on from that but so that I'm in that kind of intermission now and during that intermission I asked myself a couple questions and I'm asking them now like should I still be writing like I think people do write books just after a while you do because that's what you do for a living I think it's a bad reason to do it so do I actually feel like this is something I'm still it's still useful for me to do and if then if so which the best what's the kind of arena for me to spend my time thinking about and I have piles of ideas on shelves and manila folders most of which will never be explored much beyond the original conception but that they'll pop up the bubble this is this was you know so this was in a pile of things I probably wasn't going to write for five years I kept their love letters which I had copies up for me missus file cabinets Danny didn't have any papers and is good it was going to creep you out but i'ma say it anyway and you're gonna say it Craig keeps you out so I know what's going to happen about before I say what I'm saying oh my god I kept them in my underwear drawer because I wanted I didn't want to lose them I did I wouldn't have to see it every day so for free so little theatrical but okay it's true it's true in in a plastic thing so they wouldn't be contaminated by the underwear but they uh but I want I knew that this story was so special I couldn't figure out how to tell it I didn't want to just be in the pile with all the other ideas that I probably wouldn't do I wanted to every day have to say oh I'm not going to do that today and that's it so I was afflicted with work because I changed my underwear frequently and and and there it would be and I have the thought about it so um and you never know like win one of those ideas are going to intersect with the world in a way that makes me want to do once I start it becomes very focused I mean it's all I do and it takes a year so to research something a year and a half and it usually takes me six to nine months to write the book blindside took five months this took nine months never never more than that before we end this is the last which one I want to end then thank you this is such a wonderful book and it's so nice to be talking to you Michael thank you for coming to LA searching for this we're no one reads this is very nice dress so this is my last thing I was just I wanted to ask you um so these two men teach you over and over again how your mind can play tricks on you over and over again and I want you once I finished reading this I wanted to outsmart my own prejudices or outsmart the own patterns that my mind makes because what is the point of reading a Michael Lewis book if I can't like Moneyball my life right right like I you know that's the cost of this but so what do a mess and Danny give us as a advice or a guidebook after reading mystical how can we they just can't show us you know your mind is listening what could we learn from this what if I stated this book gives us well so I mean they're probably like ten little things like if we had time yeah I would take it walk you through and they were from but stop the headline would be they're very skeptical about people's ability to fix their mistakes they didn't think that this was they thought you were hardwired to make the mistakes the best thing you do is create checks in your life like have people watch your decision-making or your judgment they were good seeing other people's mistakes not their own so they weren't they weren't they weren't really into the self-help stuff they didn't think there was much to do there however I think they do say they do tell you some things that you can tricks that you can deploy for two examples one they point out in so many words how people think in stereotypes and so that baseball scouts when they're looking at things ball players will actually think a guy is a great baseball player because he looks like a player that was a great baseball player so or so right now it is incredible but it's true there are lots of people who look like Steph Curry you know the Basques of the globus area who who does not look like what a great basketball player used to look like but is now the model I'm a certain kind of greatness people who physically resemble him who are marketing themselves the NBA teams and who are being taken more seriously because they kind of look like he kind of look kind of like me a Steph Curry so stereotypes get created and people are you're seduced by them in ways you would not believe even if you're not sexist racist anything I'm all of the things that you still they can use you think in stereotypes so one thing you can do is when you're looking for someone to fill some role in your life a doctor or dentist or a financial advisor or Boys is well that's I'm sorry no no why did I even go to violence toward you you know but that you have a MA in fix your mind what this person looks like don't go for that go for someone who does not fit the stereotype because everybody shares largely the same stereotypes and if the person looks right for the part they may be the only reason they're in the part however if they don't look right for the part their reason they're in the part is they're good at it so that's no that's a thought what a wonderful way to end our talk I learned so much receiving excellent [Applause]

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 7,855

Keywords: Michael Lewis, Mindy Kaling, The Big Short, The Blindside, W.W.Norton, The Undoing Project

Id: C3YI3zFuJww

Length: 68min 51sec (4131 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017