Michael Lewis
/In this post, there is a list of the advanced words and phrases from the BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs interview with Michael Lewis, a non-fiction writer. He wrote the book Moneyball, that was made inti a film. Aggie and I have created a podcast explaining the Desert Island Discs interviews called Radio English.
You can listen to the original BBC DESERT ISLAND DISCS interview here
Here is the link to my podcast on itunes or just listen to it below:
Here are the word/phrases that we discuss in the podcast:
trader
pseudonym
mushroomed
tune out
knack
woven herself into the fabric
ashen faced
thrilling
set up
pressure cooker
torn between
buff
Notes
INTRODUCTION
0:45 A former city trader
0:46 He started writing under a pseudonym
A Wall Street expose
Gave up life in the city
Unearthing stories that delight him and his readers
Wrote Moneyball!
And the Big Short! About the causes of the Wall Street Crash
1:18 Both have been adapted for the big screen
→ Gaining 11 Oscar nominations!
The process is so messy that no business school or writing school would teach it
Write something about what immensely interests me
1:42 Everything I have written started small, and the books simply mushroomed
HOW TO KNOW IF YOU’RE GOING TO WRITE BOOK
I have an obligation to write the story
Recent Book - the 5th risk (about American government)
There were laws to ensure that transition is smooth
President comes in and appoints 4000 people
2:36 There isn’t a permanent civil service who’s running this thing
A Guy who’s leaving spend 6 or 8 months preparing briefings
Person who’s elected has to prepare to have people to go and listen to these briefings
Trump had a team of 500 people that he fired the day after the election
3:30 Nobody shows up
None of these briefings ever happened
DO YOU WRITE TO MUSIC
3:54 I use music to tune out the world
My wife is mortified that you have put me on this programme
I think my wife would rather have the sex tape out there than these discs!
We don’t do that other thing at the BBC
FIRST DISC (JACKSON 5)
The first album I ever remember listening to
I can imagine I’d be dancing around in my underpants on the desert island
FAMILY FROM NEW ORLEANS
5:30 You credit your knack for storytelling to your home town
I knew very few people who read books!
It was a place where you could grow up to tell stories
The people who lead interesting lives are the ones who tell good stories
5:56 Things happen and they turn it into narrative
There was something in the air you breathe in New Orleans
Roots go very deep
The first Lewis was the first Chief Justice of Louisiana Supreme Court
I’d sit in my father’s study and talk to him about how the world worked
He had this thing that he talked about maybe half a dozen times about who we were - the Lewis family
6:42 Its in Latin on our Coat of Arms
Family Motto - DO AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, AND THAT UNWILLINGLY, FOR IT IS BETTER
6:57 TO RECEIVE A LIGHT REPRIMAND,
6:59 THAN TO PERFORM AN ARDUOUS TASK
I believed that until I was about 20 yo!
SECOND DISC (CHICAGO OLD DAYS)
Embarassing part of the sex tape!
MOTHER
8:03 A stalwart of NO Community Life
8:22 300 most important people in the history of NO, entirely civic activism
8:29 She’s woven herself into the fabric of the city
All that energy she has thrown into shaping the city of NO, for first 10 years of life she directed this energy at me
8:47 and that was catastrophic
We were at war!
When I was 13/14, my mother looks at me “do you know that for 7 years you have made my life a sheer hell”
I remember thinking yeah I’ve won!
9:13 This is a give solace to mothers out there everywhere
Love my mother so much, so close now
Once she tried to fix something else
What was she trying to fix?
I caused endless trouble
A period when I was 12/13/14 I’d set an alarm for 2am, go out the backdoor, and meet 2 friends on a corner,
10:09 and run around the city pulling hood ornaments and key covers off cars
When my father found the collection over a few months - maybe 200 of them
No sense to what I did!
THIRD DISC (STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN)
NO had a very highly developed social scene for kids
Always a point where you’d have to decide to ask a girl to dance or not
“If there’s a bustle in a hedgerow” memories associated with this lyric
ART HISTORY AT PRINCETON
Zero idea what I’d do with my life
Wearing a suit to an interviews on Wall Street had no appeal to me
12:27 They made me write a thesis as a senior
LSE STUDYING ECON
THEN BOND DEALER
12:45 Then managed to get a job as a bond dealer in a London office
12:53 I was always a fraud
I wasn’t there for a career but for money
13:00 I figured out I was there for material
I was regarded as successful
I wasn’t engaged
I started taking notes!
I’d write magazine pieces about the city
13:38 The first thing that was published was an op-ed arguing that investment bankers are overpaid
13:50 Next morning, head of Solomon Brothers is waiting for me ashen faced
You have no idea what you’ve done
A crisis meeting about public relations fallout from this
Could you do it under a different name???
Had to wait for my bonus to arrive
FOURTH DISC (BARCELONA FREDDIE MERCURY)
Bought a little house in Hampstead on the graveyard and there were only 2 and in the house next door there were 2 actors - Judy Dench and Michael Williams
Became good friends
Started to write Liar’s Poker
She put this song in my hands
1987 FINANCIAL CRASH
15:47 For me it was thrilling
It felt like I was watching the end of my story
15:55 The financial system has become absurd
Its paying me hundreds of thousands of dollars to give advice to serious people and I have no idea what I’m doing
It felt like something was wrong in the world
I was writing the beginning of the story
There were 2 people that got in my ear said I was going to quit, one was my father
16:54 He parented with a very light touch
At 26, called “I have a 40k book contract”
Paid 250k at the end of second year at solomon brothers
He said wait till you’re rich and then you can leave and write your stories
If I’m jere another 10 years what’s the likelihood of me leaving and writing my stories I knew if I didn’t do it then I wouldn’t
It was a fear of money meaning more to me than it should
FIFTH DISC (DIRE STRAITS ROMEO AND JULIET)
LIves on virtually all my playlists
MONEYBALL
Lifelong interest in baseball
Made into a film and into a verb! Very impressive
Moneyball is a term describing baseball operations in which a team endeavors to analyze the market for baseball players and buy what is undervalued and sell what is overvalued
Explaining how baseball teams used statistics and one of the poorer teams began to use stats to win games
A different way to value people
Curious, thing that people had been doing for a century, analysed by millions of people, and yet this team was able to look at these people in a completely different way
A story about how poorly markets value people
20:02 So wrongheaded about the value of a human being
Became a book when I was interviewing the players of the Oakley AAs
Was watching these players coming out of the showers naked and it was such an awful sight, they were so not athletes!
20:33 Some of them had fat ankles, how can you be a professional athlete if you have fat ankles!!!
SIXTH DISC (LOSING MY RELIGION BY REM)
20:55 Met my wife in 1996, Tabitha, face of MTV
More street cred in the rock and roll world
21:03 Set up on a blind date with her
She said to me, having dinner with some friends tomorrow - some lawyers
21:28 One of her friends is wearing a purple velour jacket
So great that a lawyer can wear that kind of thing
21:42 You are able to pull that off
End of dinner, he’s not a lawyer that’s Peter Buck - the guitarist for REM
He played at your wedding
My wife was pretty sure that my musical taste would be a constant source of embarrassment
DAUGHTER
23:21 She’s a superstar softball player
A memoir of raising Dixie and of youth sports in America
Our market has opened up for child athletes
23:52 Has become far more elaborate than it should
24:01 Because colleges give away 3 billion in scholarships
Only way you can get into them now is by being an athlete
Being professionalised when she was 12
24:19 very intense pressure cooker situation
She’s figured out what college she’s going to
Market part is finished
Somebody doing something for pleasure → other reasons
SEVENTH DISC (PEARL JAM)
Wife was trying to make me better
We went with our first child, Quin, to Neil Young’s charity music festival
25:19 I was aware that it was a philanthropic event
I thought it would be cool for Quin to sit behind the band as well (with the disabled children who the concert was in aid for)
I realise all the other little kids were disabled kids
26:09 The level of mortification was about as high as it’s ever been
FUTURE OF FINANCE
The interesting thing has just happened, the story is over (post Liar’s Poker)
Financialisation of economies
Best educated kids wanted to work on Wall Street
27:41 Just continued and gotten more pronounced
28:03 Similarly after the Big Short → it’s got to be put back in its box
The future of finance is to generate some other spectacular story
Such a decline in trust in both UK and US society
Entire financial system is based on trust
The only reason we could get out of the last financial crash was because we trusted governments
29:02 Drifting into a situation where governments won’t be trusted
CASTAWAY
ENjoy my own company but not that much
No trouble listening to the same songs over and over again because I already do that
Want to learn how to fish
Let’s have a feast
EIGHTH DISC (ROLLERCOASTER BY BLEACHERS)
Asked Quin -- I need some stuff for my next soundtrack
30:14 Her judgement was impeccable
Book - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Tool
Luxury - photo album
31:31 I’m torn between a photo album and a peloton bike
Get plenty of exercise on the island - I’ll probably be kind of buff anyway just naturally
But I’ll get plenty of exercise on the island anyway
Chosen Disc - Chicago Old Days