0:15

Pushkin. Hi

0:19

there, it's Michael Lewis here. You probably

0:21

know that Against the Rules is the first podcast

0:24

that I've ever done, and it probably shows.

0:26

So I appreciate all of you first sticking

0:29

with it. The first season's over, but

0:31

we want to give you something a little extra as

0:33

a token of appreciation. The

0:39

writer, Malcolm Gladwell, and I had a conversation

0:41

back in April of twenty nineteen,

0:44

when Against the Rules had just launched. We

0:46

met in front of a live audience at the ninety

0:49

two Street Why, which is this great

0:51

center of culture and Jewish life on

0:53

the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We

0:55

had a big crowd and the whole thing was a lot

0:57

of fun to do, and we talked about

1:00

how I got interested in not just podcasting,

1:02

but the quandary of referees in American

1:05

life. We want to give

1:07

you a little peak behind the curtain of producing this

1:09

show, and also a glimpse

1:11

of the next season of Malcolm's podcast,

1:13

Revisionist History.

1:21

Yeah right,

1:25

thank you, Thank you Malcolm

1:27

for doing this. Thank you. My

1:30

apologies to the audience. I'm the reason this is

1:32

late. I was on subway, yep

1:35

that I feel like no further explanations

1:38

needed. Michael,

1:40

I feel like every time you do

1:42

some new project, do you trot me

1:44

out to interview you. And I

1:47

feel like this is like my fourth time doing this. But

1:50

I've done it as much for you, you've done

1:52

it for me, and I'm going to have to do

1:54

it in September. Apparently, yeah, you might have to do it in

1:56

September. Last time we were on the

1:58

stage, I feel I mortally offended

2:00

you, and I got all kinds of angry, not

2:02

angry, but kind of Several

2:04

friends of mine who might actually be here tonight sent

2:07

me emails saying chiding me from

2:09

my I didn't add it. I you

2:11

know, I pursued particular lines

2:13

of uncomfortable inquiry with too much

2:15

vigor. So I'm gonna very not I'm gonna be

2:18

nice this evening. Nasty

2:20

Malcolms didn't put aside, and we're

2:23

just gonna get nice. Malcolm. Um,

2:25

let's talk about uh. Just

2:28

for the record, I don't remember any of that

2:30

well you, but that's that. That is

2:32

I really don't remember any of that. That is your great charm

2:34

is a pleasure to speak with you. That is a great charm

2:37

of genius. I do think that you have an ability

2:39

to sell the most unbelievable

2:41

bullshit. And and and

2:44

you that you did it. You did it with me the last

2:46

time. And I don't want to see just I was offended in

2:48

any way. But Jesus Christ, Malcolm,

2:51

what do you think you're doing? No, No, you're

2:53

just You're this just proving to the world

2:55

what a what a fantastic wasp you are.

2:58

That you and

3:00

by the way, you're probably the only wasp in his room. Your

3:05

ability to kind of like Nazi and dismissed

3:07

and explain away conflict is quite

3:10

extraordinary. Let's

3:13

get I've spent much of my life as the only

3:15

wasp in the room. Yeah. In fact,

3:18

you're it'll be on your It'll be your tombstone.

3:20

Toyoy

3:22

I wrote. I wrote this piece for the New Republic called

3:25

Toy Gooy, and it was about being the toy boy, about

3:27

being the one boy in every Jewish

3:29

institution. It made everybody feel comfortable.

3:32

Uh, nobody cared what I thought about Israel.

3:35

H I could I could work on Passover?

3:39

You know I played that role. But all

3:42

right, so what do you want to talk about? Um?

3:45

Well, this wonderful podcast of yours um

3:48

and I wanted to start with obvious questions

3:51

that you're going to get it. Every time you do

3:53

any kind of media, they're gonna ask you this question, So I thought

3:55

i'd start with it. Um, this transition

3:58

from writer to

4:00

podcaster? How

4:03

was it? What you

4:06

persuaded me? This was a lot easier

4:08

than it was. You really did, which

4:10

is a lot. It was a total lie. So

4:13

the short answer is it

4:15

was a lot harder than I imagined it to be, but a lot

4:17

more fun than I imagined it to be. And it was different,

4:19

and it was I came

4:21

to the conclusion that some

4:24

stories are better told in this medium

4:26

than in a book form. For me anyway.

4:29

Um, And you have this great gift to be I've said

4:31

this too many times. You have this great gift of taking ideas

4:33

and giving them the qualities of actions that you

4:35

don't actually even need a character. All

4:38

you need is your ideas to play with on the page,

4:40

and the people become almost incidental. Uh.

4:43

And I'm

4:46

not sure I meant it is but no,

4:48

but but it's it. And it's

4:51

Uh. You create the feeling of narrative even

4:53

without the conventional ingredients of a narrative.

4:56

I can't do that um. When

4:58

I write what is essentially essays material,

5:01

it reads like an essay if

5:03

I don't have a main character, if I don't have a kind

5:06

of drama that I'm playing out. And this,

5:08

this idea was naturally kind

5:10

of sash. It was a series

5:12

of it's seventy pieces

5:14

around a theme, and as

5:17

a book, I don't think

5:19

it would have cohered. But so one

5:21

of the cool things I found was this the voice

5:24

pulls. Your voice is able to pull

5:27

an audience through a story, even

5:29

if there's not exactly a story, even

5:31

if it's even if it's not as the materials,

5:34

not as unified as you would like it to be. If it

5:36

was on the page, I

5:39

found it's it's just it's

5:41

interestingly then they all of a sudden, you can hear the character's

5:43

voices, you know, when you put somebody in quotation

5:45

marks. No matter what you do around it, making

5:48

that getting that sound off the page,

5:50

you can't completely reproduce it. And we have

5:52

characters who just come to life their voices,

5:54

just just bring them, you have to do any

5:56

work at all. And so

5:58

that was interesting to me. Are you

6:01

saying to go back to I order you to dwell

6:03

a little bit on that idea that there are

6:05

certain ideas, certain stories you that

6:07

you can only tell this

6:10

way in a podcast. What did

6:12

you need? So maybe should I just first just explained

6:14

what the podcast is, because it's just came out yesterday

6:16

in the first episode. So

6:18

it's called Against the Rules, and it's

6:20

about referees in American life. Um,

6:24

and it's the

6:26

general argument is that the human referee

6:29

is on the run or under assault wherever

6:31

you wherever you turn, except in the

6:34

cases where the ref's been bought by one side,

6:36

and then he might be very comfortably ensconced

6:38

in a rig system. But um,

6:41

the there

6:43

wasn't for me. There wasn't one story I

6:45

wanted to tell. There are whole bunch of stories I wanted

6:47

to tell, and they

6:50

would have felt in an in a book like

6:52

either like a separate story or a digression, a

6:54

long digression, I think, Um,

6:57

And I wanted to play with the argument

7:00

and I wanted to play with the subject matter. But

7:02

I didn't I didn't have one person or I didn't

7:04

have you know, normally, what I have is either either

7:08

I have I have a main character

7:10

who can teach the audience, and I you

7:12

know, I had seven or eight characters

7:15

here, and that would have been it would have

7:17

been hard to structure as a conventional

7:19

narrative. So it was interesting to be able to do

7:21

it. This. The other big difference, um

7:24

is book writing is really an

7:26

individual sport. I mean, it is just

7:29

it's just you and

7:33

the This is definitely it.

7:35

I don't know how you found it, but for me it was completely

7:37

a team sport. It was and it was fabulous. I

7:39

mean, the editor, the people who were Nick

7:42

Brittell, who made the music, the

7:44

producers that you know, they were

7:46

all intimately involved to the

7:48

extent that in a couple of cases the producers wouldn't

7:51

did a couple of the interviews. And that was having

7:54

to having to both

7:57

make work with other people was I think

7:59

healthy for me, but also having to because

8:01

I don't often have to do it, um,

8:04

but having to satisfy them

8:06

in the course of doing that was interesting. Normally

8:08

I'm just SAT's find me uh.

8:11

And they were hard to satisfy

8:13

you. They were hard to please uh,

8:16

And that was that was just it was interesting

8:18

to have that friction in my life. Did you feel

8:20

like pleasing them entailed compromises?

8:24

No, entailed me

8:26

learning what the hell I was doing. I mean that I

8:29

really that they were right and I was wrong. Most

8:31

kinds of things were you wrong about? Well?

8:38

Did my argument make sense to them? Saying

8:40

that that's a simple one? But but it was. Much of

8:42

it was just structural.

8:44

It was kind of like like

8:48

what I whether there was, it

8:50

was just there. They had a better sense

8:53

than I did. I learned pretty

8:56

quickly. But they had better sense than than I

8:58

did about what someone

9:00

who was just taking it in here would

9:02

tolerate from me, in the way of a

9:05

way of digression, in the way of

9:08

uh odd structured

9:10

to story, in the way of starting

9:12

something and not coming back to it for fifteen minutes,

9:14

what I had to do to accommodate to

9:17

make sure that I didn't lose the audience. They

9:20

also had a much better sense of what I could leave on

9:22

the cutting room floor that I all

9:25

my scripts and it was it was more like it was

9:27

also writing a book than writing a screenplay, which

9:30

I've done. It was kind of in between all

9:34

the all the original scripts were

9:36

twice as long as they needed to be, and there

9:39

was all stuff that I didn't see you could remove, and

9:41

they saw. They were really good at seeing which

9:43

you could pull out. So that was different,

9:45

just having that kind of collaboration. But

9:49

the you know, I this I

9:52

when I'm moving through the world looking for things

9:55

I'm going to do. H you

9:57

know, somebody will catch my eye and I'll open a folder

9:59

on it and not knowing where it will go. When I

10:01

have stacks of Manila folders beside

10:03

and shelves beside my desk, and a decade

10:06

ago, two things happened that sort of triggered

10:08

this interest in ref and I never knew what

10:10

I was gonna do with and the folder got thicker and thicker, but it

10:12

never emerged as a narrative. And then this medium

10:14

comes along and all of a sudden I could Oh,

10:16

I had no idea. This was something a long

10:19

time in the Do you remember

10:21

what the initial trigger it was for the interest in refereen?

10:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there two things. It was right after

10:25

the financial crisis, and I

10:29

was I'd just been put in charge

10:31

of the Albany Berkeley Girls Softball League

10:34

travel ball teams, and my job

10:36

was to take these little girls from Berkeley, the

10:39

all stars from the league at age

10:41

eight, ten, twelve, and fourteen, and

10:44

get them into shape so they could go over the

10:46

hill and compete against Republicans,

10:49

and my

10:52

predecessor had not done a very good job of it. Yeah,

10:55

and I went to I took it seriously. And

10:57

so my girls

10:59

were playing. And the

11:01

first time I started, when I opened

11:03

the file, it started with this. It

11:06

was our first tournament. It was a little place called

11:08

Rona Park, and it

11:10

was it was a night game, and there were a bunch of

11:12

nine year old girls on the field and maybe

11:14

fifty parents in the stands, and

11:17

it was close, and one of

11:19

our girls slid into home plate to

11:22

tie the game at the top of the last inning, and

11:25

the Ronert Park, the opposing team's coach

11:27

came out of the dugout and

11:29

started started

11:32

cursing up and down at the umpire who

11:34

called our little girl's safe. I mean, the language

11:36

was just unbelievable. And

11:39

their whole fan side started

11:41

screaming at the umpire. And

11:44

you know, no one on our side, none of the

11:46

little girls and our dug I had ever heard the word fuck. And

11:49

they were they were in awe. They were watching

11:51

this they'd never seen. I kind of loved

11:53

it because it was great. I loved that they could see how grown

11:55

ups actually behaved instead of how, instead

11:57

of how Berkeley parents after the day. But

12:00

this thing escalated on the field, and

12:03

the coach didn't back down, and the umpire

12:06

didn't back down. The umpire was a woman, and

12:09

all of a sudden, the Berkeley parents started

12:11

getting raged. And so you looked around and everybody's

12:14

screaming at everybody, and most of the people screaming at

12:16

the umpire. Um there

12:19

was a great Berkeley moment when this voice cut

12:21

through the night and this

12:23

woman screamed with horrible modeling

12:26

for our children, but beyond But

12:28

except for that, it was like, you idiot, you askhole,

12:30

you you know, you're safe out, you know.

12:32

And and the

12:35

umpire finally,

12:37

the coach finally through. The coach out, so you're

12:39

out. But it was his ballpark, so

12:42

he says, okay, you can throw me on he

12:44

steps outside. He says, I'm now no

12:47

longer in the position of coach. I'm now

12:49

in the position of director of this facility, and you're

12:51

fired. So so

12:53

he is now at nine o'clock at night, and the

12:55

malls are up in the in the lights, and everybody's

12:58

jaws on the floor that they

13:00

just fired the only umpire. So the game

13:03

can't actually go on, and she doesn't

13:05

know what to do. She's actually just because

13:09

hey, and just walks out into the parking lot. Everybody's

13:11

just standing on the field. And I thought, this is my

13:13

moment when I'm spoke in the position of authority.

13:15

What am? I sort of followed her out into the

13:17

parking lot and she was weeping, U

13:21

and uh. I went up to her and I kind of

13:23

like put my arm around it as before me too,

13:26

you know, and it was okay to kind

13:28

of console in a Biden like

13:30

manner, and uh and

13:33

I said, you know, I said,

13:36

you know, you know, you don't you don't

13:39

have to take that. You know, you really

13:41

should go back. And I said. It was like, is

13:43

there anybody you can call? And she says,

13:45

yeah, there's an umpire association. And

13:47

it was it was nine o'clock in California. It was

13:49

unbelievable that there was anybody where this place

13:52

was. She gets the umpire Association down the

13:54

line and they say, he can't fire you.

13:56

We're gonna call the guy who's the head of the

13:58

thing that ended, the head of the facility, and we'll get

14:00

him fired. You go back and finished

14:02

the umpiring and she went right back in and

14:05

threw him out, and the game went

14:07

on. But and then

14:09

on I started to watch

14:11

these poor people who were who were brought

14:13

out to umpire nine year old girls

14:16

games, and they were on the on the receiving

14:18

end of constant abuse. And

14:20

my first question is why would anybody even

14:23

do that job? But my second reaction

14:25

was why why do

14:27

people behave that way towards umpires.

14:30

I've never felt that way towards umpires. Why

14:31

do they Why do people take out so much of their

14:34

fury on them? Why is that

14:36

so hard that job? So this

14:38

happens that as I've

14:40

finished the Big Short and

14:43

and I'm watching what's going on on Wall Street

14:45

in the on the back end of the financial crisis,

14:48

and one way of looking at the financial crisis

14:50

was as an umpiring problem, that refering

14:52

problem. Uh. There was a

14:54

breakdown of several refering roles, but

14:56

that one of the big ones was the credit rating agencies

14:59

Moodies and Standard and Poor especially passed

15:02

with refeing. The

15:04

sec the securities that Wall Street

15:06

brings to market now totally

15:10

failed. They totally

15:12

failed for a very good, simple reason. They

15:14

were being paid by the people who created

15:16

the subprime mortgage bonds. They were rating, they

15:19

were on the take, they were being

15:21

paid. It's like being played by one of the players. And

15:25

this umpire

15:28

briefly was flayed in

15:30

public, but basically was

15:32

allowed to go right back to doing what they were doing

15:35

without any reform whatsoever. And

15:37

so I had this umpiring file with

15:40

two umpires, two kinds of umpires. One was a

15:44

very nice woman with

15:46

some spine, who was just trying to do her

15:48

best and make sure the game

15:50

was paid played fairly, and she was being

15:53

made miserable. And the other were

15:55

these umpires on Wall Street who

15:57

who were doing their job and a kind of who

15:59

had horrible incentives and were

16:02

not They were not agents

16:04

of fairness, and the society was

16:06

enabling them to keep going even though they

16:09

orchestrated, helped to orchestrate this horrible calamity.

16:12

And I just started at that point. So I think,

16:14

you know, like, why

16:16

do some umpires

16:19

some umpires and positions of strength and

16:21

wire some umpires and position of weakness. First

16:24

thought, what I was going to do is write a sitcom about umpires.

16:26

It just set in the world a girl's softball. But

16:28

I really had no idea. It was gonna do with the material, and

16:31

I just started to accumulate material. And then Jacob

16:33

Weisberg, you're co founder of Pushkin

16:36

Industries, and I are on

16:38

the hiking trail the year and a half ago when

16:40

we just started talking about this subject, and he said, you know, it

16:42

could work as a podcast. And by

16:44

the time we started, when you start thinking about

16:46

the subject and start looking, when you start looking

16:48

for referees, you see them everywhere. I

16:51

mean that there was It end up being

16:53

seven episodes, but could have been fifteen. And

16:57

there was a kind of like there

16:59

was some arguments to be teased out, but you had to

17:01

move around in a somewhat

17:04

haphazard fashion that the podcast

17:06

structure really lets you do. Yeah,

17:09

can I can? I ask you? I want to go back for a second A

17:11

kind of writer early question in this

17:14

file, after that

17:16

experience with your daughter's baseball

17:18

team, how much did you

17:20

like write a big how

17:23

much did you write about that evening?

17:26

I wrote a paragraph about the evening, but that's

17:28

stuck it in the file, and I put on the outside of

17:30

it um umps and

17:33

uh and chased it and I

17:35

made notes to like I would check at the tournament

17:38

the girls tournaments. I would follow the umpire back

17:40

to his car. They a lot of these guys live out of their cars

17:42

and just talk to him a little bit about why they did what

17:44

they did. Um and

17:48

I saw I'd make notes based

17:50

on those conversations, and I just I was just kind

17:53

of I just kind of Sometimes

17:55

I open one of these files and nothing goes in it. It's just umps.

17:58

Stick it up on the shelf. Maybe that's a subject I

18:00

will pursue, but it just seems to

18:02

me. I mean, you and the more you watch it, if you back

18:04

away from and look at the way

18:07

this society treats people. It just in sports,

18:10

in the umpiring role, it's bizarre.

18:13

You know, you go to a basketball arena and eighteen

18:15

thousand people are chanting in unison ref

18:18

you suck, I mean the the

18:22

but there aren't eighteen thousand people on the other side

18:24

who are saying, thank you for making the calls on my

18:27

in our favor. I mean, it's like nobody's nobody's

18:29

ever thanking this person for the cheating

18:32

he's supposedly doing on behalf of the other

18:34

team of the other and the

18:36

people see in this person injustice

18:41

where it doesn't exist this person has this

18:43

ability to generate an outrage that's

18:46

out of all proportion to

18:47

UH to like how he's behaving,

18:50

and um, it's sort

18:52

of like he ends up he

18:55

ends up at the center of UH.

18:59

I mean, he ends up as a character

19:01

generally kind of unexplored, one of the

19:03

things that end up on the cutting room floor. I interviewed

19:05

Daryl Morey, who is the the Houston

19:08

Rockets Gym, who I adore, who

19:10

had lots that done, lots of studies about about

19:13

referees, knew their tendencies, knew

19:16

like where home court advantage was worse because

19:18

the referees are better because referees more

19:20

like they give the home team

19:22

to call. Had done all his work on referees, and

19:25

I asked him, have you ever met him they ever met one

19:27

of them? No, you

19:30

know, it never even occurred to me that I should

19:32

actually go meet one of these guys and talk to

19:34

one of these guys, that they were completely

19:36

unexplored characters. Why,

19:39

you know, it's interesting

19:41

to go back to the paradigm you have between the Wall

19:43

Street people and the

19:46

Baseball Little League Baseball umpires.

19:48

In one case, the operating assumption is the

19:51

I can influence the rep if

19:53

I try and

19:55

intimidate her, if I abuse her. In

19:58

the other case, the notion is that I

20:00

simply buy them off, that it was I I do

20:02

an exaggerated form of charming them. Yes, and

20:04

I'm always wondered why those

20:08

roles aren't reversed. So are

20:10

there NBA coaches who try to charm referees?

20:13

And are there businesses

20:15

who who or business people

20:17

who explicitly try and essentially

20:20

scream at the government referee? So?

20:23

Um, the answer the first question

20:25

is surprisingly few. Um

20:28

the NBA players that you

20:31

can't really get the players, even the former players won't

20:33

talk about the rest because they're just get in trouble. Um.

20:35

But Shane Battier, who's a friend who

20:37

played in the NBA for many years, said to

20:40

me it amazed him that no one, ever,

20:42

how seldom people tried to actually

20:44

be nice to the refs. And that's what his

20:46

strategy was, to be nice to the rest of He

20:48

thought that was an original strategy. So

20:50

the but the the

20:53

the but but the answer

20:55

the answer in the NBA is one of the reasons everybody's

20:58

really even angrier at the refs, even though

21:00

the refs are getting better is that the refs are

21:02

getting better. They're harder. It's harder to charm and harder

21:04

and impossible to intimidate. They're

21:07

holding themselves to these objective standard is

21:09

and they're judged by these objective standards and the

21:11

stuff that's going on around them. They're more and more

21:13

impervious too. Um uh.

21:17

The so the second

21:19

part is, are there do

21:22

it with browbeating? Feel like Mark Cuban

21:25

was an example the sec

21:27

Yeah, uh so I

21:29

think the browbeating works in private.

21:32

Uh but but

21:35

but what it's so much better if you

21:37

can just buy the reff you know,

21:39

I mean that if you if you look at uh,

21:41

if you look at the way I mean the rate that that

21:44

was, that's such a sweet rather than

21:46

going and scream at moodies and standard and poor that you're

21:48

separate mortgage behinds a triple A, so

21:50

much better just to slip them some money to make,

21:52

you know, to create that incentive so that they're

21:55

more likely to smile upon the securities.

21:58

But so anyway, this whole

22:00

thing come, it's an

22:02

interesting The subject got

22:04

more interesting to me and it became

22:06

more real in the presidential election because

22:09

all because they say the two campaigns that had

22:11

a real energy about them was Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's

22:14

campaign, and that bottom of both campaigns

22:16

was the systems rigged. That that

22:18

that it was all about

22:21

UH referees having not done

22:23

their job. And

22:26

there was some justice to those charges,

22:28

but that and that's why I thought, you know,

22:30

maybe we could maybe there's maybe

22:32

this is worth trying to do, and

22:35

it was. We'll

22:37

have more of my conversation with Malcolm Gladwell

22:39

at the ninety two Streety in New York after

22:42

this break. We're

22:47

now back with more of my conversation with Malcolm

22:49

Gladwell. I

22:51

wanted to compare notes with Malcolm, who's been podcasting

22:54

for a while. If you listen closely,

22:56

you'll hear a little bit about what's to come in the next

22:58

season of his show, Revisionist

23:00

History. When

23:03

you when you made those initial observations about

23:05

umps umpires referees, um,

23:09

did you think you were examining an

23:11

age old problem

23:14

or a new problem. The thing that I loved about the

23:16

first episode that came out yesterday

23:20

was I kept on. I

23:22

was thinking, oh, this is interesting, and

23:24

Michael's going to tell me why we've

23:26

always had this problem. But then you told

23:29

me no, no, no no, no, no, this is new

23:31

for really really interesting reasons. And that was the turn

23:34

where you cooked me in and that

23:36

that was a non obvious turn. I

23:38

feel like if I had done this story,

23:40

I would have blown it because I would

23:43

have just tried to prove to you to have been around forever and

23:46

that's not interesting. Actually, well, that the refs

23:48

have been abused forever. Yeah, I would have said,

23:51

oh, you

23:53

know, what you're observing is something the Romans

23:55

did you know? I would have done that, some ludicrous

23:58

move like that. But the thing I was

24:00

genuinely so prized by the turn

24:03

where we learn it's new and why

24:05

why it's new? So sports is such

24:07

a wonderful laboratory just because so clean

24:09

in so many ways. But it's new, and

24:11

it's it's it's it's new ish

24:14

in that the NBA,

24:16

when Adam Silver became commissioner, he

24:20

backup for the first episode

24:22

is about the refs, about an actual

24:25

sports ref The only episode in the series

24:28

it's about sports is the first is

24:30

the first episode, and it's about it professional

24:32

basketball refs um

24:34

And what was interesting to me about

24:37

that subject is if

24:41

you, I mean, I think it's just just kind

24:43

of generally true sports, combination

24:45

of technology and unaware

24:47

and transparency is

24:49

forcing all the umpire and the refereeing to get

24:51

better. Um. And

24:54

you would think that would cause everybody to appreciate

24:57

the refs more or at least protest them

24:59

less. Uh, But that's not happening,

25:02

um, especially not happening in basketball.

25:04

It's got from the point of view the refs, it's getting

25:06

worse and worse. It's sort of like more likely to need

25:08

a bodyguard hard to the arena, more

25:11

likely to have really ugly things

25:13

said in the stand out of the stands, more

25:15

likely to have to throw star players

25:17

out of the game because of things they do and say.

25:21

At the same time, the refereing

25:23

is clearly more objectively accurate. And

25:27

the thing that do

25:30

you remember Kurt Schilling to pitch up. So

25:34

there was a moment which told you what kind of why

25:36

objective refereing might

25:39

end up creating a lot of anger in sports.

25:43

Major League Baseball introduced pitch track

25:46

machines into ball

25:48

the ballparks, and that's the machine that shows

25:50

you where the strike zone is. And up

25:53

to the point they introduced these machines, the

25:55

strike zone is entirely a subjective

25:57

matter. What the umpire thinks is a strike and

26:00

there's no real way to check him.

26:02

Now they have measured the strike zone, they

26:04

can determine if the umpire has been after

26:06

the fact, if the umpire has been calling

26:09

accurately or not, and he

26:11

he's graded on his accuracy he's measured

26:13

against the machine. So there's been this in

26:16

decades since they've introduced those machines. There's

26:18

been in pressure on these umpires to conform

26:21

to the stint, to the machines

26:23

accuracy and the way. And they

26:25

have and they'll brag,

26:28

I only got one wrong. You know now,

26:30

Why they even keep the umpires there is another question because

26:32

the machine could just do it. But

26:34

but the umpires started to

26:37

change the way they call the game in

26:40

response to the machine, meaning

26:42

they became more accurate. You think

26:44

everybody would think that was a good thing. Kurt

26:46

Schilling came out of a ball game early

26:49

when he was a pitcher. I can't remember who was pitching for

26:51

the time. He was in the Red Sex. I think he might have been with the Diamondbacks.

26:55

Furious because it's performance he had not performed

26:57

well, went into the dugout grabbed

26:59

a bat and went and destroyed the pitch

27:01

track machine and they find

27:04

him fifty thousand dollars and he and he was

27:06

angry because the umpire

27:08

used to give him calls that were

27:10

not strikes before

27:13

they introduced this machine, and he no longer

27:15

was given that privilege. He no

27:17

longer had the advantages that are naturally

27:19

accorded the stars. And

27:23

something like that is what's going

27:25

on in basketball. And what's happening in basketball

27:28

is they've tried to introduce a

27:30

similar spirit of objectivity, and

27:33

they've done it in many different ways. They have

27:36

they've built this five years ago, if

27:38

for fifteen million dollars, they built this replay

27:40

center in Secaucus, New Jersey, which

27:42

is the site of the first episode of

27:44

the podcast, fifteen million dollars

27:47

to run direct

27:49

fiber optic cables to

27:52

every basketball NBA basketball arena

27:57

in the each arena there I don't know a dozen

27:59

cameras anyway, trying

28:01

to get every angle on the court. And this room

28:04

in Secaucus is one hundred and ten

28:06

television screens showing the

28:09

all the angles on every court in the

28:11

NBA. And that's all it shows. And so you

28:13

can't watch, you know, you can't watch

28:15

Homeland on it. You can't. You can't do anything

28:17

with these TVs except watch whatever

28:19

happens to walk onto that basketball court wherever

28:22

it is. And they're guys,

28:24

they're professional referees in there every

28:26

night during the season, double

28:28

checking the calls of the actual

28:30

refs on the floor in

28:33

case the refs make mistakes. And

28:35

the refs themselves are now

28:37

graded and they're showing their mistakes after the game.

28:39

They have the opportunity to check their mistakes if they

28:41

if they check their judgments, and that's

28:44

sure, they're right. They're trained and evaluated

28:46

in all kinds of ways they've never been before. They

28:49

are the hiring process is

28:51

more professional. It's just like Gotten

28:54

used to be an all boys network. Like half a dozen

28:56

of the refs twenty five years ago came with the same high

28:58

school. It was just a bunch of kind of chubby

29:00

white guys, mainly Catholic Philly

29:03

from film Philly. That's right. And

29:06

now you've got they've broaden out that, they've broadened

29:08

out the town search. They got to get in

29:10

shape. They used to be fat, right, everybody

29:13

else in America is getting fatter and the rests are getting better

29:15

shaped. Uh, Now they're buff and

29:18

and and they're training. They're trained, they're

29:20

being taught about all their biases, the

29:22

kind of biases that kind of in Taversky taught us

29:24

about. But also you know that they're

29:26

more likely to give the home team the call, or

29:29

they have racial bias that they've taught and they've

29:31

taught to correct for all this stuff. How could it be anything

29:33

but better? But getting better does not mean

29:36

making is not making people happy, it's

29:38

inflaming that. It's it's partly inflaming

29:40

the situation. So is it a mistake stars don't like

29:43

it? Is it a mistake to get better? Then?

29:45

I mean, is there some choice? The world's

29:47

changed. The problem is now

29:49

the fans can not only see

29:52

in real time that a mistake might have been

29:54

made, they can see for sure on the JumboTron

29:57

that a mistake was made or might

29:59

have been made, and they can then and

30:01

then they can captured on their phones, and they

30:03

can tweet it, and they have

30:06

a they have material for outrage.

30:09

And it's not

30:12

just the fans, the players and so

30:14

the sense of grievance, even

30:17

though the reason for grievance is

30:19

clearly declining. The reasons for grievance.

30:21

It is clearly declining. Um, the

30:25

feelings of grievance are going through the roof. So

30:28

it's becoming more fair on a basketball

30:30

court, but people feel it's less fair. Yeah,

30:33

but I don't think you could fix it by making

30:35

the referees even worse than they are, well, they used

30:37

to be. You know, remember the phrase that was common

30:39

in basketball, the makeup call. Yeah, that's a

30:41

blogny like it. You know that

30:43

it presumes you know you made a mistake. If you

30:46

know you made a mistake, then don't make it u

30:48

no, no, no no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. Whatever. The

30:50

notion of the makeup call was to address precisely

30:53

the problem you're talking about. That other everybody's

30:55

that some team is outraged. And then

30:57

so the reason that you don't get

30:59

quite as outraged as you I'm talking about in the

31:01

past, the old system. You

31:03

think you think that it is, you think

31:06

you know the ref as a human being, and you

31:08

say, oh, he will understand that he blew that

31:10

call, and he'll make it up for me in some subtle

31:13

way, and that will so that diminishes

31:15

my sense of outrage. In a perfect world

31:17

where these guys are like robots, so making the

31:20

right which increasingly

31:22

are there. It's amazing how good

31:24

they are now. So when they on those rare

31:26

occasions when they do make a mistake, there's

31:29

no expectation of a makeup call. No, that's

31:31

right. So is that I mean there

31:33

are I mean I because I wonder about the I

31:36

agree with you you can never go back. But

31:38

I feel like when you sort of roboticize

31:42

refereeing in sports, what you've done

31:44

is you've disrupted the narrative of the sport.

31:46

That you're drawn to the

31:49

sports because it's a story and

31:51

stories. It used to be that the blown

31:53

calls were part of the narrative, not a

31:55

good part of the narrative. Sure,

31:57

they're part of like what makes the get

32:00

if the game just went smoothly from beginning to

32:02

end. Or you don't want

32:04

referee era. It's not a positive

32:06

thing to have referee era. It's you to

32:09

minimize it. You can still

32:11

have a glorious narrative on in

32:15

any kind of conscious without a referee.

32:17

I think the messiness of the sport is one of the

32:19

things that you think. You think the more referee

32:21

the better. No, No, I'm saying

32:24

that there that we operated for many

32:26

years around a

32:28

narrative about sports that included the notion

32:30

of refereere we've

32:32

taken that out. And what we've done is we've disrupted

32:34

the narrative. Maybe we're just going through a period

32:37

of time where we're I think that's right. I think that's

32:39

true. That's partly true, but it's

32:41

also I mean, you know,

32:44

there's a whole bunch of things going on at once. One

32:46

is that everybody can see the era and

32:48

replay it and focus on it and organize

32:50

around it in ways they couldn't

32:53

before. Another is that the

32:55

nature of the improvement of the refereeing is

32:57

it's removing privilege from people who can

33:00

naturally protest the loudest, the stars,

33:02

and they're used to getting

33:05

the calls, and they're not get they can't get the calls in the same

33:07

way. It's also, you

33:09

know, there was if you go back ten

33:12

years in the NBA, home court advantage

33:14

was a much bigger deal. And it was, and there

33:16

were studies that were done to the source of home

33:19

court advantage was referee era. It was like the referees

33:21

trying to tilt towards a home crowd just to appease

33:23

them. Now, now, it's not that big a

33:25

deal. But who's pissed about that? The people

33:27

who are in the arena, the people who think they should get

33:29

an advantage because it's their home court. Um,

33:32

but I think against the Even bigger

33:34

than this is. There's the backdrop

33:37

to all of this is people

33:39

are more and more aware or have

33:42

a greater and greater sense that there's no such thing as neutrality.

33:45

That there's like people are biased. We

33:47

are we you know. That's even though in the case

33:49

of referees the opposite is true. They are now less

33:52

biased. They are less there, even though they're

33:54

there and they're they've been made

33:56

aware of their biases every which way and try to work

33:58

against them. Um, everybody,

34:00

it's in the air that, uh,

34:04

you know, a white guy won't be fair. It's

34:06

fair to a black guy, is to a white guy.

34:08

It's in the air that the

34:10

condom and diversky stuff that people

34:12

make those kind of mistakes. It's in the air that they

34:14

are they favor the home home team, or they favor

34:17

stars, So that there

34:19

is even as

34:21

there's a less reason for cynicism about

34:24

what's going on inside the mind of

34:26

a professional NBA referee.

34:28

There's more awareness, awareness

34:30

of the reasons for cynicism about people's

34:33

judgment, referee judgment generally.

34:35

That I mean, one of the takeaways

34:37

from the common Diversky stuff is that nobody's

34:39

like nobody's judgments. You

34:42

know, everybody's judgments is systematically

34:44

flawed. It was interesting, is the Yes,

34:47

it is the process of investigating.

34:49

What the process of investigating bias does

34:52

is more than any thing, alert

34:54

us to the uncomfortable fact that there was a lot of bias

34:56

there that we didn't even think about. That's right, we

34:59

had no idea just how unfair at all used

35:01

to be. I was that. This reminds me yesterday

35:03

I was for one of my podcast episodes. I'm

35:06

hanging out with the folks who make the L set, who construct

35:08

the L set, Oh, and they do these

35:11

biased tests. So they have practice

35:14

questions, which do you all take when you take the L set is

35:16

one set that's all practice questions, and they

35:18

look to see whether different

35:20

groups have different patterns of answering

35:23

questions correctly, which is something I would

35:25

never have thought about. So there was a question they showed me,

35:28

and it's just this random question about

35:30

some literary figure in the seventeenth century

35:33

and C, which

35:35

is the wrong answer. All

35:37

the smartest women taken the test

35:39

thought was the correct answer, Like fifty

35:42

percent of them got it, said

35:44

it was C and it wasn't c. D which

35:46

is the right answer, was overwhelmingly

35:48

the male choice fifty percent of

35:51

the band. So here's a question that has

35:52

so there's patterns in the errors in

35:55

the eras, there's a massive pattern

35:57

in the air, and there's nothing obvious. And

35:59

if they find the pattern in the air, or do they think there's something

36:01

wrong with the question, they throw the question out. And I said them,

36:03

well, what is it about this totally anadine

36:07

question about seventeenth century litter that

36:09

caused all these really smart female test

36:11

takers to answer see? And

36:14

they're like, no idea.

36:17

I thought, no clue.

36:19

It just doesn't work like that process.

36:22

The minute I hear that, I think, oh my god, this

36:24

thing is rigged in ways I hadn't even thought, right,

36:26

right, Yeah, So like it's the same process

36:28

now I'm alert. Before I was like, well, it's an intelligence

36:31

test. So you know, you and I both

36:33

made this turn into this new medium, your

36:35

fears ahead of me. How have you found

36:37

what do you find the differences are from

36:40

writing this prose on the page. Well,

36:45

it's funny, I've gone in the opposite because

36:47

I don't write books

36:49

that are character driven

36:52

as much. Now in

36:55

this medium, I'm really into the character driven,

36:59

So I like, I'm drawn to the fact that

37:01

I can bring these characters to life in a way

37:03

because I'm not ask I don't

37:05

I you know, I'm not being falsely modest.

37:08

I'm not nearly as good as you at bringing

37:10

individuals to life on the page. But

37:12

if I can get tape, then

37:14

I can do that. I feel like, like I

37:16

you know, and you can capture interactions like

37:19

there's in one of my episodes for next season.

37:21

I have these two women who are sisters

37:24

who wrote a book together, a really

37:26

good work of history, largely so they can

37:28

hang out with each other. This one has been one is like

37:30

seventy one is sixty five, and

37:33

they're so insanely charming,

37:35

and all you do is just run the tape and

37:37

you're in love with it. You're in love with them. It doesn't matter

37:39

what happens next. It is like, it is amazing

37:42

the difference when you can hear a person's voice

37:44

that we have an episode at

37:46

the second episode which you actually edited.

37:49

Um, it's about how

37:51

hard it is to create a referee, even when you

37:53

clearly need a referee, and it's about the Consumer Financial

37:55

Protection Bureau. But we have a woman

37:57

who is who is just crushed by student

38:00

Oh my god, and to

38:02

the point where she's a She is a

38:04

public school teacher who with

38:06

a with a couple of little kids, whom

38:09

whose student loan servicer has basically deceived

38:11

her from from even knowing really about

38:14

for years, for years knowing about a program

38:16

that Congress created to relieve her student loan

38:18

debt because it paid them to keep her in the student

38:21

in the in the debt. And to the

38:23

point where her she grind has been

38:25

grinding her teeth so badly at night that five of her teeth

38:28

have fallen out, and she's now won't smile. And

38:31

if if I told the story,

38:33

just if I just told the story, you

38:37

might think I've had my thumb on the scale. You wouldn't

38:39

quite believe it, Like you think I was exaggerating.

38:42

But when she just tells it straight, you're

38:45

weeping, I mean, and there's

38:48

no question the sincerity just

38:50

just it just jumps out of the off

38:53

off the tape in a way, in a way

38:55

that I would have to try to persuade the

38:57

reader of uh and I

38:59

don't just you just let her speak and it's

39:02

magnificent, incredibly moving. What

39:04

can't you do in the podcast form? So talk

39:06

about that story? Did you where? There must

39:09

be limitations. I

39:11

can't do things you don't have tape off. That's

39:13

the that's the problem. You got to go out and interview.

39:16

You have to have the thing. If if it's you

39:18

just talking, it's far

39:21

less less persuasive

39:23

than if you've got some someone

39:25

else you you know, it's

39:28

it's um so

39:30

that it's it's a constraint. That's worse with

39:32

TV when you have to have the pictures.

39:34

But you can only do so much with your

39:37

own words in this in the narrative

39:39

form, I think, um so,

39:41

that's your constrained there, uh

39:46

um But what can't

39:48

you do? Like what stories? When it

39:50

gets complicated? Yes, it gets hard.

39:53

I could not. So it's hard. It was

39:55

hard, very hard to explain. I

39:57

didn't even really explain, but I tried to explain

39:59

a collateralized debt obligation in the big

40:01

short it's the most complicated thing I've ever tried

40:03

to explain to anybody and uh,

40:06

I can't do that. That's not possible in a podcast.

40:08

You couldn't do it in a podcast. Uh,

40:11

you just you just couldn't. I mean people would

40:13

have collision that people listening as they're driving would

40:15

be having crashes on the highway and

40:18

you you you um

40:20

so because the

40:22

reader can go back or the reader

40:24

can get slow down, the reader can the reader

40:26

can can paste themselves through an explanation.

40:29

Um. What always breaks my heart is where

40:32

you finally find the person who you

40:34

think can explain the thing it's

40:37

going to give you tape, and then they're

40:39

boring, which in a book

40:41

it doesn't matter, right in a book,

40:43

like I feel like that's that is one of your geniuses

40:46

as a writer is you have clearly

40:48

in your life made lots supporting people seem really

40:51

fascinating. But so

40:53

I would put it in so I'd put it

40:55

in a different way. You're absolutely

40:57

right that that people's

41:00

voices kill them as characters.

41:03

Um that you you, you're, you're,

41:05

You're talking to them for five minutes and you think

41:07

that voice just won't works. It's

41:10

not gonna work. You know, there

41:12

are people in this world. Who I mean, it's

41:14

an amazing it's almost a superpower. Who

41:16

have an ability to walk into a room and

41:19

kill all interest in the room. I mean that

41:21

I had. I had an uncle who had

41:23

this capacity, and it was he was a great guy,

41:25

and he did really interesting stuff. But the

41:28

minute he opened his mouth, it was like it reels

41:30

like everybody's gasping for air. There's no oxygen

41:32

in there. And it was just incredibly

41:35

dull, and it was dullless listening to him,

41:37

and you were just relieved when

41:39

he someone else, someone else threw themselves

41:41

on that hand grenade and and the

41:44

the So it is true that

41:47

you can take that person in print and

41:49

bring him to life. Yeah, I could make my

41:51

uncle really great in print, but

41:54

but I could not the minute

41:57

the minute someone heard him speak,

42:00

you'd lose. They wouldn't believe anything you said about

42:02

him, if you know what. The one trick that I found,

42:04

though, is sometimes you think

42:06

someone's going to be boring, but

42:09

it's because you're in book

42:11

interview mode and podcast

42:13

interview mode is quite different than what

42:15

you really want to do when you're interviewing someone on a podcast

42:17

is you want them to speculate and free

42:20

associate. So you want to push

42:22

them. You don't want them giving

42:24

when you're doing when you're doing the book interview

42:27

there, you want them to describe in detail,

42:30

you know, a to

42:33

ze how this works. Did you walk

42:35

me through? You always use that walk me through.

42:38

You never say walk me through in the podcast interview.

42:41

What you say is what about like

42:43

imagine this? And then

42:45

they at a certain point they kind of get it. They

42:48

realize that, oh, which is like, it's play,

42:50

It's play, right, Yeah, that's really true,

42:53

That's really true. I've had this once

42:55

with this love this interview for this one

42:57

of my podcasts with this guy who was a OBGA

43:00

and researcher in Philadelphia,

43:03

and he gets he's in the weeds

43:05

on some new kind of contraceptive, deep

43:08

in the weeds, and I realized, no, this is usable. He

43:10

starts talking about the endometrium. The endometrium

43:12

is not working in podcast for him, and

43:15

you know, follicles, and then he

43:18

sort of says something and I was like, wait a minute, this thing

43:20

you're talking about, why is that a contraceptive.

43:22

He goes, oh, it's not a contraceptive. And he

43:24

goes on this long, insanely

43:27

interesting totally hypothetical

43:29

thing about oh, I wouldn't calling a contraceptive, I called

43:31

something else. And he gives you this long riff about how it's

43:33

actually this other thing over here, and like

43:36

it's just he just came alive. So because

43:38

he was, this is absolutely right. And

43:41

we have an episode of three is about

43:44

refs in the

43:46

culture, like language refs, people

43:48

people who write who are usage panel members

43:50

and dictionaries who they've all been let

43:54

go, and the people who used to write kind

43:56

of usage manuals. And I was we were

43:58

I was talking to a guy named Brian Garner

44:01

who's one of the characters in the in the

44:03

episode, and he's he's

44:06

the author of a book called uh Garner's

44:10

Modern English Usage. I think that's what it's

44:12

called. It's twelve hundred pages. It's actually

44:14

riveting. But nobody but at Barnes

44:16

and Noble told him a decade ago it's a defunct category.

44:19

All of his heroes, their books

44:21

sold millions of copies. There were times where

44:23

there was a time when when the language

44:25

ref occupied

44:28

occupied a bigger role than he does now. Now now

44:30

the crowd refs the language in and nobody

44:33

wants to hear from the snood um, but

44:35

he's a great snood. And he

44:38

was just talking about like

44:40

where are the culture is gone, and

44:43

how he's daily outraged

44:46

by things, uh, that he just can't

44:48

believe that we're we're becoming

44:50

this. And he said, I

44:52

got a letter from my bank. It

44:55

said dear mister Garner, semicolon.

44:59

And he was off for like like

45:01

like for like ten minutes on

45:05

on I called my bank manager.

45:07

I said, there's a mistake. It says dear mister

45:09

Garner, semicolon. And he

45:11

says it's either a colon or a comma. And

45:14

the bank manager said, um, could

45:16

you write us a letter about that? And he

45:18

said, so I wrote them a letter and I did, you've

45:20

come to the right place, and wrote

45:23

wrote I said, I wrote them a letter and

45:25

I cited all the authorities,

45:27

including Garner's modern English usage

45:29

about where you don't put a semicolon after

45:31

dear mister Garner. And they they

45:34

they wrote him back and said, um, we're

45:36

keeping the semicolon. And and

45:39

he called him, he said, how he's

45:41

and now he's just off. I could not. I didn't

45:44

need to be there anymore. Right, He's just he's like

45:46

in his own world this is an outrage,

45:49

uh, and he's for

45:52

him it's genocide. I mean, that's that's

45:54

that he's a code read. There's

45:56

a there's a certain uh quality

45:59

of delight that that's

46:01

that's what we're talking about then, Only it's conversational

46:03

delight. You don't you don't get It's

46:06

really hard to get delight off the page. You

46:08

get delight when you're in a conversation

46:10

with someone and they go on in some unexpected

46:13

direction and you sort of understand that something

46:15

fabuless is coming down the pike. You're kind

46:17

of waiting for it, and they sort of take

46:19

on that's what you're and those

46:21

I was trying to prod people

46:23

a little bit in the direction of going

46:25

off just to see what happens. Yeah, and

46:28

the good ones will understand that they've been given

46:30

life, but they're playing a game with you. Yes. Yeah.

46:33

Stay with us for some more conversational

46:36

delight with Malcolm Gladwell. We're

46:47

back with more of me and Malcolm Gladwell in conversation

46:49

at the ninety two Street why his

46:51

new company, Pushkin Industries

46:54

is the production house behind Against the Rules,

46:57

And I couldn't help but tease him a little bit about something.

46:59

The crew there told me. It's

47:03

funny that the producers when they came to me in the first

47:05

place, they said, please, please

47:07

don't be like Malcolm and and try to

47:09

tape your own stuff. The first season

47:12

almost of Malcolm's podcast almost killed us.

47:14

Nonsense, they're you

47:17

know what they are. I know they're out there, they're

47:20

they are these they're purists, right

47:23

they there. They come from NPR, which is

47:25

like the cathedral on the Hill of Sound.

47:27

Yeah, it's like the Gothic cathedral where

47:30

and they sit and they study

47:32

their scripture and then they go

47:34

into the cloisters and they take a vow of silence

47:36

and then they listen to pure audio, you

47:38

know, in the evenings Like that's not the

47:40

real world I'm living in. I'm not I'm not

47:42

in the monastery. I'm

47:44

no. So I

47:46

don't listen to them, and

47:49

they don't listen to you. Wait.

47:53

Um, so we have questions, We have questions.

47:56

Um, we actually we have quite a lot of time. Um

47:58

when I had some other Um,

48:01

oh, I want to talk to you about uh,

48:05

falling in love. Um

48:07

it's we talked ab us a little bit. I you're talking about

48:09

about this because you're in your

48:12

fiction, in your nonfiction, in your books, you

48:14

fall in love with characters. And

48:16

then you were saying that in the podcast

48:19

you're doing a different kind of slightly

48:21

different storytelling where you're having many voices.

48:23

Does that impair your

48:27

Are we going to get the classic Michael

48:30

Lewis character

48:32

who we fall in love along with you? And

48:35

if we're not, does that sort of are

48:37

you a little bit sad about not having people to fall in love

48:39

with? You have people to fall in love with, it's

48:41

just they're they're they're in a single episode.

48:44

I just don't live with them for the whole series. Yeah,

48:46

I fell in love with Alex Cogan. Alex Cogan

48:48

is he was the academic

48:51

responsible for the work that supposedly

48:53

allowed Cambridge Analytica

48:56

to get Donald Trump elected. Yeah,

48:59

and in fact it's all bullshit.

49:03

In his work was useless. This

49:07

real story there is that it's

49:10

amazing that Cambridge analytic ha persuaded

49:12

anybody they knew anything that was useful.

49:15

Hustle. It's a hustle. It's a hustle, right, yes,

49:18

and every a lot of people wanted to believe that

49:20

that's why Donald Trump was elected because they

49:22

needed a reason why don't wait, what episode is this?

49:24

This is three. This is actually part of episode

49:27

three. So it's what's the what's the largest story.

49:29

The largest story is the kline of kind

49:32

of these culture resting. So it's it's language

49:34

refs, it's um budgsman,

49:36

it's referees in the newsroom. So

49:39

how this story ever got to the front page

49:41

of the New York Times is part

49:43

of it. But but he's built up as the main character

49:45

of the thing, and in a very

49:47

similar way to a character that you

49:51

would fall in love with it in a magazine piece.

49:54

Um, so this is totally

49:58

in some ways it's it's it's

50:00

easier to sell the characters

50:02

because you can hear them. You can see why you

50:04

you you should fall in love with him. Um,

50:07

you've Ken Feinberg, don't you showing up? How

50:09

many people here? Uh, you can't

50:12

really see it. I wonder how many people heren know who Ken

50:14

Feinberg is. Ken

50:16

Feinberg should be a household name. Ken Feinberg

50:19

was an ordinary

50:21

lawyer when he was brought in

50:23

in the early eighties

50:26

to try to resolve the dispute between

50:28

Vietnam veterans and the chemical

50:31

companies that made agent Orange, and Vietnam

50:33

veterans had, without a whole lot of evidence,

50:36

had brought a suit saying that that this this

50:38

chemical that was spread across the jungles of Vietnam

50:42

was responsible for all these health problems that they

50:44

were having. And the case had

50:46

lingered in the courts for I don't

50:48

know seven or eight years, and

50:51

judges had despaired of resolving it,

50:54

and a judge asked this young lawyer,

50:56

Ken Feinberg, to see

50:58

if he could negotiate outside of the court

51:04

a solution resolution to the

51:06

between the vets and the companies. And

51:09

six weeks he had the thing done, and he was on

51:11

the front page of every newspaper in the country, and

51:13

his career then just went. He all

51:15

of a sudden, he became America's referee. So

51:18

he's he's brought in to adjudicate these

51:20

disputes. And um,

51:23

the question was like two

51:25

questions, Like what are we gonna do when he dies? Because

51:27

he seems to be brought in. I mean, he's like he's like the

51:29

Forrest Gump of

51:31

of of American tragedy and

51:34

and but the second it is like what what what

51:36

is it about him? Like? And I don't want

51:38

to give away the story. But he there

51:41

were he had a theory of himself

51:44

and his wife had a different theory of him, and

51:47

the wife's was right. Uh

51:49

but but but you but his

51:51

theory of his wife's theory you

51:55

can hear kind of proven

51:58

just in the sound of his voice. Oh

52:00

voice, it is. It's unbelievable.

52:03

So so it's

52:05

so good that I think

52:07

it's all the voice. So it's so, it's so

52:09

it could be the voice. It's part. It's the righteousness

52:12

in the voice. It's the

52:14

it's a Boston accent, like you cannot believe.

52:16

And so the episode

52:18

opens with the passage

52:21

Um in the Bible,

52:24

Solomon resolving the dispute between

52:27

the two women, each of whom is claiming

52:29

the baby is hers, and Solomon

52:31

just about to cut the baby in two, and

52:34

um, Feinberg's voices. So we were gonna

52:37

have an actor read that. We had the Fiers

52:39

voice was so we just had Feinberg read the Bible, and

52:41

it was like it felt like God was reading the Bible.

52:44

Uh. And so you the

52:47

the it's so this

52:49

form, you know, this form.

52:51

It's just nice to have a different way to tell a

52:53

story and a different way to get to an audience.

52:56

I don't I don't regard this as like a substitute

52:59

for writing books, but it is. It's different

53:01

and it's interesting. I don't know you found when you write

53:03

it. No matter how conversational

53:05

your writing style is, it is not

53:08

conversational that how people talk

53:11

is so different from how any writer writes.

53:13

That you have to learn how to write your

53:15

own dialogue. That is so kind of interesting.

53:18

Anyway, thanks for doing this, Michael,

53:20

thank you. Pleasure being with you again. Yes,

53:33

thanks for listening to this live bonus

53:35

episode of Against the Rules. I

53:37

want to thank especially Malcolm Gladwell and his

53:39

team at Pushkin Industries and the

53:42

ninety two Street Why for hosting our conversation.

53:45

I'm off now to my secret hiding place.

53:48

We'll try to figure out how to keep you

53:50

entertained next year. You

53:53

can follow Pushkin Pods on social media

53:55

if you want to keep track of when I'm back on the feed.

53:58

I hope it's soon. I

54:01

don't know each and every one of you, but you've been a great audience,

54:03

the best a writer could ask for.