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1:04

Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kerrick

1:06

and this is Next Question.

1:08

I love talking with Michael Lewis.

1:10

He has this incredible ability

1:13

to zoom in on one

1:15

person's story and from there,

1:17

reveals something much bigger about our

1:19

culture. His books leave you seen

1:21

the world differently and his

1:23

books about federal workers are

1:26

no exception. So why has the

1:28

federal government gotten such a

1:30

bad rap? Why are the

1:32

workers often maligned even demonized?

1:34

After all, they're described with

1:36

words like the deep state

1:38

and the swamp? Michael Lewis

1:40

feels very differently after writing

1:42

about a group of these

1:44

civil servants, first in the fifth

1:46

wrist, and now in a new book of

1:49

essays called Who Is Government? This

1:51

time Lewis and a powerhouse line

1:53

of writers turned their attention to

1:55

people who are some of the unsung

1:58

heroes of our society. Actually... making

2:00

government word, even though Elon Musk

2:02

and his posse of doge dudes

2:04

made back to differ. Here's my

2:06

conversation with Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis,

2:08

you must have a crystal ball

2:10

because who is government? The untold

2:12

story of public service could not

2:14

be more timely. Now I know

2:16

this is a continuation of sorts

2:18

of your 2018 book called the

2:20

fifth risk. you examined the transition

2:22

and political appointments of the first

2:24

Trump administration. But what made you

2:26

decide to do another deep dive

2:28

into the federal government? So there

2:30

are two reasons. The good literary

2:32

argument was at the end of

2:34

the fifth risk. I had to

2:36

go back and write an afterward

2:38

for the paperback, and I thought

2:40

to myself that I had done

2:42

a lot to describe the functions

2:44

of government in that book, but

2:46

I had not really gone deep

2:48

on a person, really. And I

2:50

thought might be fun just go

2:52

deep on one of our federal

2:54

bureaucrats. And I basically picked a

2:56

name out of a jar. I

2:58

mean, it's a long story of

3:00

how I picked the guy, but

3:02

it was just, it was kind

3:05

of random. And the story, he

3:07

ended up being an oceanographer in

3:09

the Coast Guard Search and Rescue

3:11

Department, who had had this quite

3:13

dramatic encounter with the death of

3:15

a young woman and her and

3:17

her daughter that it caught, I

3:19

mean, it was avoidable. Had they

3:21

understood, the Coast Guard understood how

3:23

objects drifted at sea. They kind

3:25

of knew where they had capsized

3:27

in the Chesapeake Bay. They knew

3:29

like how the currents were and

3:31

stuff, but they were on upside

3:33

down on a sailboat and nobody

3:35

had ever measured how a sailboat

3:37

drifted at sea. This guy, my

3:39

subject, Art Allen, was so disturbed

3:41

by the fact that they, these

3:43

two people died because they didn't

3:45

know how the object had drifted

3:47

since they discovered they were gone.

3:49

That he went and created basically

3:51

a whole science of how objects

3:53

objects drifted sea. And it was

3:55

such a he was such an

3:57

amazing story. I mean, it's a

3:59

movie his story that I thought

4:01

like if I ever come back

4:03

to this. I want to come

4:05

back to the people because of

4:07

the stereotype of the bureaucrat or

4:09

whatever you are, the deep state

4:11

or whatever you want to call

4:13

him. He was such a, he

4:15

was a mission-driven, selfless giver of

4:17

a person who was also ingenious

4:19

in how he'd solved a critical

4:21

problem that has, say, thousands of

4:23

lives. So I thought, if I

4:25

ever come back to this, I'm

4:27

going to see what more of

4:29

this there is in our government.

4:31

So that was the literary reason,

4:33

is like this material here, because

4:35

the way people think of these

4:37

people, they don't have, they're faceless,

4:39

they don't put a face to

4:42

them. So they're easy to knock

4:44

around when you're, by politicians, by

4:46

media, by whoever. The second reason

4:48

was, I was just astonished after,

4:50

especially after Trump won, and the

4:52

neglect of the federal government during

4:54

that administration. But the Democrats never

4:56

offered a full-throated, like... defense or

4:58

even an explanation of like where

5:00

our taxpayer dollars go like what

5:02

is it actually doing and who

5:04

are these people that they that

5:06

they never kind of came out

5:08

and said like there's a reason

5:10

we have this government so no

5:12

one ever sold the government so

5:14

that like there was so there

5:16

are all these stories it just

5:18

can get told So the idea,

5:20

so I thought, like, the world

5:22

needs to understand some of these

5:24

stories. And so they don't think

5:26

it's just like Michael Lewis bloviating

5:28

with his views of government, blah,

5:30

blah, blah. I'm going to pick

5:32

six other writers, and it's not

5:34

going to just be me. It's

5:36

going to be seven really distinctive

5:38

personalities on the page. And I'm

5:40

going to just, I dropped them

5:42

into the government, say, find a

5:44

story, write up. And so much

5:46

of the book ran in the

5:48

weeks. about seven-eighths of the book

5:50

ran in the weeks running up

5:52

to the election in the Washington

5:54

Post. Weird, long pieces. I mean,

5:56

my longest piece is 13,000 words.

5:58

And it was so powerful, the

6:00

effect, but for a very small

6:02

audience, because it was like the

6:04

Washington Post and behind a paywall.

6:06

And it was pretty obvious these

6:08

things should, they were a coherent

6:10

all and they should be collected.

6:12

But of course, having said that,

6:14

knowing any idea, Donald Trump was

6:16

going to be the President of

6:19

the United States and be doing

6:21

what he's doing to the federal

6:23

government, when we wrote these things.

6:25

In fact, in the Washington Post-opendant

6:27

series, where the essays in this

6:29

new book originated, they received four

6:31

times the session's average readership, and

6:33

you've said it was like the

6:35

country is hungering for an explanation

6:37

of how... government works. Where do

6:39

you think that hunger is coming

6:41

from? And why do you think

6:43

the quote unquote bureaucracy, which is

6:45

often said in a very pejorative

6:47

way, is so misunderstood? Well, so.

6:49

remind me to answer the second

6:51

part of that question because that's

6:53

the longer an interesting answer. But

6:55

the hunger in the first place,

6:57

we just don't get stories, very

6:59

many stories about the government. When

7:01

we get them, they're in the

7:03

form of some poor civil servant

7:05

who's being hauled in front of

7:07

Congress to be retroly humiliated for

7:09

some mistake they made. And I

7:11

do think, I don't know this

7:13

is true, but I've been told

7:15

it's true, that there's been just

7:17

a kind of decline in civics

7:19

education in civics education in the

7:21

country. taught anymore, are not taught

7:23

in the same way. So, you

7:25

know, just like how a bill

7:27

becomes a law, that kind of

7:29

stuff, just doesn't get into kids'

7:31

brains. We need Schoolhouse Rock Part

7:33

Two. Yeah, it's something like that.

7:35

No, it's kind of true. But

7:37

the second part of this is,

7:39

like, these people who work in

7:41

these jobs are, one, forbidden from

7:43

promoting themselves, and they don't have

7:45

time to do it anyway. Two,

7:47

they're really not the kind of

7:49

people who tell their own story.

7:51

They're not self-promoters. They're almost the

7:53

opposite of self-promoters. They give you

7:56

a little tell you the Atlantic

7:58

though. It's funny. When I went

8:00

to write that piece about the

8:02

first, the first deep dive I

8:04

did in a single person. Arthur

8:06

Allen was his name, the oceanographer

8:08

of the Coast Guard. I called

8:10

him up, said I want to

8:12

come talk to you about what

8:14

you've done, without knowing really much

8:16

about what he'd done, spent three

8:18

days with his wife, his kids,

8:20

you know, interviewing people around him,

8:22

three full days with him. At

8:24

the end of three days, I

8:26

was driving him back to the

8:28

airport and he calls my cell

8:30

phone. He says, hey, you're a

8:32

writer. And I said, Yeah, yeah,

8:34

I'm a writer. We think I

8:36

was, you know, I sit there

8:38

with a notepad for three days

8:40

taking notes and I know I

8:42

said I was a writer when

8:44

I called you. He says to

8:46

him, well, my son says that

8:48

like, you've written books that have

8:50

become movies, like you're like big

8:52

time. And I said, well, I

8:54

don't know if I'm big time,

8:56

but I am a writer and

8:58

he says, you're gonna write about

9:00

this? What did you think I

9:02

was doing there for three days?

9:04

This is the mind of some,

9:06

he's so different from like the

9:08

investment banker you go to interview.

9:10

He's so oblivious, he's interested in

9:12

his expertise, he's very narrow, he's

9:14

not thinking like how he appears

9:16

to the world, he's open to

9:18

help people who come to him

9:20

for help, but not thinking at

9:22

all like I was gonna turn

9:24

him into some celebrity and didn't

9:26

know what to do with it

9:28

or care. They're that way, so

9:30

they don't project. So someone has

9:33

to go project them for us,

9:35

because they won't do it themselves.

9:37

And there is a built-in problem

9:39

in the government. The politicians, and

9:41

I hate to say, I hate

9:43

to use that word as a

9:45

pejorative, but it is just true,

9:47

that people who are campaigning and

9:49

running for elective office find it

9:51

very useful to be negative about

9:53

the civil service and to blame

9:55

them for their problems occur, but

9:57

there's not really any upside for

9:59

giving them credit for giving them

10:01

credit. It's like... The politicians want

10:03

the credit. So the people who

10:05

are junior class, senior class president

10:07

types, who are out there waving

10:09

at the crowds, have no real

10:11

interest in selling the mechanism of

10:13

the government. And I think we

10:15

all kind of know that, you

10:17

know, the government, we sense in

10:19

the background. of our minds, this

10:21

government's doing something, you know, it's

10:23

kind of magical, you turn on

10:25

the tap and you get cold

10:27

water, you can drink, you know,

10:29

that doesn't just happen. And it

10:31

comes from like a reservoir from

10:33

300 miles away, or that, you

10:35

know, the weather is predictable seven

10:37

days out, used to be not

10:39

predictable at all, how that happened.

10:41

It just becomes like the infrastructure

10:43

of our lives, and I think

10:45

until it's threatened, edist. It's like

10:47

your parents, until they're threatened, you

10:49

just think, well, they're there. Thank

10:51

God, they're there, maybe, but I'm

10:53

not going to pay much attention

10:55

to them. But the minute it

10:57

becomes like, oh crap, they're going

10:59

to take it away? Even if

11:01

it's just a hint of that,

11:03

people kind of wake up and

11:05

go, oh, oh, I need, maybe

11:07

I need to know about this.

11:10

You illuminated, Michael, why people don't

11:12

appreciate the federal government, why they

11:14

often take it for granted. There's

11:16

an enduring and entrenched negative stereotype

11:18

in our culture about civil servants,

11:20

that they're stupid and lazy, as

11:22

you describe it. How did that

11:24

happen? I know that they're not

11:26

good at telling their stories or

11:28

blowing their own horns horns, like

11:30

politicians are, but where do you

11:32

think this negative perception comes from?

11:34

I mean, I think it's a,

11:36

it's like a, it's a complicated

11:38

question to answer, but I mean...

11:40

Most, most obviously, they don't do

11:42

the thing that we value in

11:44

this culture, which is make money.

11:46

They don't have, they're not successful

11:48

people. They're not famous people. They're

11:50

not, you know, they're not, they're,

11:52

so they don't have that going

11:54

for them. They're also, they're vulnerable

11:56

because the enterprise they work for

11:58

is the most complicated enterprise ever

12:00

created in the history of the

12:02

university, the United States government. and

12:04

they're spending now seven trillion dollars

12:06

a year there and they're bound

12:08

to be problems you know it's

12:10

a sort of like they're bound

12:12

to be mistakes made and when

12:14

they're made it's sort of it's

12:16

sort of like it's assumed no

12:18

mistakes would be made and when

12:20

they're made they get exposed and

12:22

ridiculed and all the rest. You

12:24

know, why else is it this?

12:26

I mean, you know, I haven't

12:28

really thought too much about how

12:30

this, why Ronald Reagan could roll

12:32

in, you know, 45 years ago

12:34

or whatever it was, 50 years

12:36

ago and say the most, you

12:38

know, dangerous words in the English

12:40

language is, I'm from the government

12:42

and I'm here to help you.

12:44

Didn't he also say that the

12:47

government is the problem? Yeah, and

12:49

the government, you know, there's this

12:51

fantasy you take it away and

12:53

everything's going to be better. And

12:55

the truth is you don't have

12:57

markets without the government. You don't

12:59

have an awful lot of our

13:01

economic growth is driven by government

13:03

private partnerships. But what you all,

13:05

you know, this is part of

13:07

the reason they're so easy to

13:09

beat up on is a lot

13:11

of what they're doing is prevention.

13:13

Like a lot of what they're

13:15

doing is stopping things from happening.

13:17

You don't get credit. You get

13:19

credit when you come in after

13:21

the bad thing has happened. So

13:23

there's an awful lot of work

13:25

that's out there. I know stopping

13:27

someone from getting a bomb on

13:29

a plate. Who do you think

13:31

is doing that? I can tell

13:33

you who's doing that. There's a

13:35

lab called the Livermore Lab that's

13:37

like 40 miles from my house,

13:39

where they are constantly experimenting with

13:41

different sort of chemicals and ingredients

13:43

to see what you might be

13:45

able to make a bomb of.

13:47

And as they, whenever they find

13:49

something new, they program those machines

13:51

that you put your bag through

13:53

to detect those things, to detect

13:55

those things. and you don't see

13:57

any of it. But if they

13:59

weren't there, you would notice. You

14:01

know, the FAA, right? Your plane

14:03

doesn't crash. If it doesn't, you

14:05

know, air safety is a, you

14:07

know, a miracle of modern life.

14:09

It's the government, but you're not

14:11

getting credit for the plane not

14:13

crashing. So I think that's also

14:15

part of it. It's sort of

14:17

easy to beat up on them

14:19

because there's a lot of their

14:21

work as preventing, which is. Make

14:24

money. Meanwhile. The Trump administration, as

14:26

you know, I've thought about you

14:28

often with these Doge government cuts.

14:30

But even before Doge was created,

14:32

they have not only encouraged this

14:34

stereotype as bureaucrats or government workers

14:36

being stupid and lazy and extraneous,

14:38

if you will. But they've turned

14:40

it into something more sinister. Let

14:42

me give you a quote that

14:44

Jady Banff said on a podcast

14:46

in 2021. If I was giving

14:48

Trump one piece of advice, it's

14:50

fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every

14:52

civil servant in the administrative state

14:54

and replace them with our people.

14:56

So it's just such a misconception

14:58

of who these people are in

15:00

the first place, because it's probably

15:02

true that the government workers generally

15:04

probably tilt more left than right,

15:06

but their politics are very hard

15:08

to predict. You'd be surprised who

15:10

they voted for, I think. But

15:12

the bigger point is, most of

15:14

what they're doing is so nonpartisan.

15:16

It's like, it's stuff that the

15:18

Congress has allocated money for because

15:20

it's problems that needed to be

15:22

dealt with, and they're dealing with

15:24

them. And the list is like

15:26

endless of what these problems are.

15:28

But you know, you know about

15:30

air safety, but like, there's all

15:32

this stuff you don't see. Rural

15:34

America. for example, is propped up

15:36

by the agriculture department. Like there

15:38

wouldn't be firehouses and schools and

15:40

all, it would be a wasteland

15:42

without the spending from the agriculture

15:44

department. And that's something you can

15:46

argue that we shouldn't have. But

15:48

that argument's been had by Congress

15:50

and it's authorized the money. And

15:52

the people who are in there

15:54

working are they're just trying to

15:56

execute tasks. And like, how is

15:58

it partisan to like make sure

16:01

nuclear weapons? don't explode when they

16:03

they they shouldn't explode. It's just

16:05

it's such a misapprehend tension of

16:07

what that enterprise is and what

16:09

they're doing. It's interesting because what

16:11

they're doing is accused. the existing

16:13

workforce of being essentially political, like

16:15

their deep state, they're out to

16:17

get us, when in fact that's

16:19

not who they are, but where

16:21

they're trying to do is turn

16:23

it into something that's very political,

16:25

it's out to get the other

16:27

side. And it's taking 50,000 jobs

16:29

and turning them from career civil

16:31

service jobs to... to essentially patronage

16:33

jobs that the Trump administration can

16:35

appoint. Not based on expertise, but

16:37

based on loyalty. How dangerous is

16:39

that replacement in your view? It's

16:41

dangerous on a couple of levels.

16:43

It's very dangerous. It's very dangerous.

16:45

It's very dangerous. And it's one.

16:47

It's going to make the government

16:49

a lot less effective because you're

16:51

replacing people who actually know things

16:53

with people who don't. And their

16:55

main qualification is they're just loyal

16:57

to Donald Trump. That's not a

16:59

good place to start when you're

17:01

solving complicated problems. But it's dangerous

17:03

in another way, that if you

17:05

actually succeed in turning the federal

17:07

government into what Trump and Vance

17:09

say it is, turning it into

17:11

this political weapon, it's hard to

17:13

know. It's from there to like

17:15

no democracy is a half-step. And

17:17

so it's dangerous on that level

17:19

too. And it'll have this knock-on

17:21

effect. And this is the knock-on

17:23

effect of a Republican rhetoric, is

17:25

you know, you disable. You villainize

17:27

this enterprise that's there to serve

17:29

us all. You make it less

17:31

effective at what it's supposed to

17:33

do. And then you can point

17:35

to it and say, look how

17:38

ineffective it is. Like, the problem

17:40

is government. Well, no, the problem

17:42

is how you run the government.

17:44

The problem isn't government. If

17:47

you want to get smarter every

17:49

morning with a breakdown of the

17:51

news and fascinating takes on health

17:53

and wellness and pop culture, sign up

17:55

for our daily newsletter, wake up

17:57

call, by going to katikkarik.com. We

18:01

live in a divided country. I have

18:03

a lifelong Republican with all kinds of

18:05

different people. You know, I'm a mother,

18:08

I'm a grandmother. That's why we started

18:10

the middle with Jeremy Hobson. It's about

18:12

bringing voices, not from the extremes, but

18:14

from the vast middle into the national

18:16

conversation. Anna, I'm calling from Las Vegas.

18:18

Each week we bring together an all-star

18:21

panel. Mark Cuban, so great to have

18:23

you on the middle. Thanks for having

18:25

me. And here from ordinary Americans from

18:27

all over the country on the most

18:29

important issues. Hi, my name is Venkad.

18:31

I'm calling you from Atlanta, Georgia. And

18:34

when you subscribe to the middle, you

18:36

also get an episode each week called

18:38

One Thing Trump did that focuses on

18:40

just one item from the avalanche of

18:42

news. We should be examining what our

18:45

government spends its money on and are

18:47

these jobs necessary and what are we

18:49

doing here. But that doesn't seem to

18:51

be what we're doing in this situation.

18:53

Listen to the middle with Jeremy Hobson

18:55

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

18:58

or wherever you get your podcasts I'm

19:08

curious how you feel this kind

19:10

of rhetoric, things like weaponizing or

19:12

demonizing the deep state, how that

19:14

erodes the public trusts in our

19:16

government and institutions in general. I

19:19

mean, I'm trying to think of

19:21

some equivalent where, can you think

19:23

of a product or a service

19:25

or that is just, all it

19:27

gets is negative publicity? And it's

19:29

like a publicity machine designed to

19:31

undermine it. And that's all people

19:34

here. I mean, it's just, there's

19:36

no question that public, this is

19:38

reflexive public opinion, especially on the

19:40

right, but not just on the

19:42

right, that like, oh, it's just

19:44

government's waste, government's fraud. So this

19:46

was tracking me as something to

19:48

the first places. I don't have

19:51

any big stake in government. I

19:53

just saw that wasn't true, because

19:55

I wanted it around the government

19:57

and saw what was there. What's

19:59

shocking about it is whatever people

20:01

believe because of what they've heard

20:03

from casual, this kind of casual

20:06

loose talk, the opposite is kind

20:08

of true. That if you're looking

20:10

for waste or fraud, you were

20:12

so much more likely to find

20:14

it in a private sector company

20:16

than you are in a government

20:18

agency, especially fraud. like that the

20:20

places are on a hair trigger

20:23

or alert for like people stealing

20:25

money you can't you know you

20:27

can't you when you're on wall

20:29

street and you want to get

20:31

business you could you know take

20:33

people to strip clubs and get

20:35

in front row seats to watch

20:37

the Mets and all that stuff

20:40

you can't buy a sandwich for

20:42

someone who works in the federal

20:44

government that it is so it

20:46

is like and there and all

20:48

around these places are watchdogs whose

20:50

job is to prevent money from

20:52

being stolen and in fact the

20:55

first people the Trump administration fired

20:57

were those watchdogs so that tells

20:59

you something about how much they

21:01

care actually care about the fraud

21:03

the waste is more complicated because

21:05

it's true that like there are

21:07

some ways government does things that

21:09

if you were starting from scratch

21:12

that's not how you do them

21:14

and there is for sure ways

21:16

to go in and make it

21:18

work somewhat better but the way

21:20

to when that in that case

21:22

The way to go in is

21:24

with an appreciation of why it

21:26

works the way it is, because

21:29

you're just going to end up

21:31

recreating what was created if you

21:33

don't understand why it got the

21:35

way it was. It's like, there

21:37

reasons. There reasons, it's like, there's

21:39

endless bureaucracy around contracting, or, you

21:41

know, it's to prevent the fraud

21:44

kind of thing, and it's maddening

21:46

how it's done, because basically there's

21:48

no trust, you know, it's a

21:50

low trust environment. It's a very

21:52

inefficient environment. when you got assigned

21:54

pieces of paper to get an

21:56

extra box of paper clips, you're

21:58

going to be less efficient. And

22:01

if you can just go to

22:03

the storeroom and take one. So

22:05

there are problems there, but a

22:07

lot of the wasteful problems will

22:09

rise from the mistrust about the

22:11

institution. It's been sewn into the

22:13

public mind by this rhetoric. I

22:15

mean, let me ask you a

22:18

question. You're asking me questions, but

22:20

I want to ask you a

22:22

question. Is it not, if you

22:24

just back away from it, kind

22:26

of weird that we're in a

22:28

democracy where we elected people to

22:30

do stuff and these things that

22:33

got done by the government? It's

22:35

not like some autocrat did it.

22:37

We, the people, did it. And

22:39

that we view these civil servants,

22:41

the instruments of our will as

22:43

somehow our enemies? somehow like insiders

22:45

trying to bring us down, it's

22:47

a really odd thing for in

22:50

a democracy, for people to feel

22:52

that way about their government. And

22:54

I didn't have it. As I

22:56

said, I came in this, I

22:58

didn't have any particular view. I'm

23:00

not like some screaming liberal. I

23:02

like people who make money and

23:05

none of that. It was just,

23:07

I could not believe. Like, the

23:09

heroism basically in the civil service.

23:11

could not believe the quality of

23:13

the people that were engaged in

23:15

such critical stuff like the society

23:17

falls apart if they're not there.

23:19

And I started pulling my hair

23:22

out when I realized like, oh,

23:24

they've been doing this for 30

23:26

years and all they've heard is,

23:28

you know, abuse from the outside.

23:30

It's just like, there's something untrue

23:32

about this. So my question to

23:34

you is how do you explain

23:36

this? Like it just seems really

23:39

odd. I think that government workers

23:41

for as long as I can

23:43

remember growing up in Arlington, Virginia,

23:45

outside DC, where a lot of

23:47

people did work for the government,

23:49

I think there was an attitude

23:51

that there was excess and redundancy

23:54

and inefficiency in the federal government.

23:56

And I think it's just been

23:58

a stereotype that for whatever reason

24:00

has been baked in. to our

24:02

national consciousness. And that's, but of

24:04

course. There are critical jobs, but

24:06

I think that there has always

24:08

been the impression my goal that

24:11

they were extraneous jobs or jobs

24:13

that weren't really necessary and I

24:15

think the very word bureaucracy Has

24:17

gotten you know has become a

24:19

dirty word. Yep. And in the

24:21

public's mind and with bureaucracy it

24:23

means unnecessary levels of baloney that

24:25

you have to kind of get

24:28

through. So I think all those

24:30

things have kind of come together

24:32

to make people feel fairly anti-government.

24:34

And I think to your point,

24:36

we haven't heard enough stories about

24:38

civil servants. And I also think

24:40

there's something about having a job

24:43

for life. You know, this is

24:45

all just kind of things that

24:47

I have when I was a

24:49

kid growing up right outside DC.

24:51

that some jobs are protected like

24:53

tenure when other people are subjected

24:55

to performance reviews and and there

24:57

was a feeling of meritocracy when

25:00

you got in the civil service

25:02

you basically had a job for

25:04

like yeah I think that probably

25:06

explained some of the negative things

25:08

that I've heard about government workers

25:10

right some of that's valid and

25:12

I can understand hostility towards tenure

25:14

basically They don't exactly have tenure.

25:17

You can fire a civil servant.

25:19

You just have to have cause.

25:21

But I think at the, I

25:23

do think at the bottom of

25:25

this is some false, kind of

25:27

like false ideas that people have

25:29

in their heads about what goes

25:32

on inside the places and its

25:34

relationship to the society. So if

25:36

you ask people that most, I

25:38

bet most people say government just

25:40

has been growing out of control,

25:42

for example, like it's gotten bigger

25:44

and bigger and bigger and bigger

25:46

and bigger. That's not the government.

25:49

But the federal workforce hasn't. It's

25:51

shrunk. It's like the civil service,

25:53

not the military, 50 years ago.

25:55

was 2.3 million workers. It's still

25:57

2.3 million workers. The society is,

25:59

you know, 40% bigger or whatever.

26:01

So in relationship to the society,

26:04

it is shrunk. So people can

26:06

flight like government spending, which is

26:08

a different thing, on the government

26:10

workforce. The fact that Elon Musk,

26:12

when he goes in to say

26:14

to eliminate, to reduce, to cut

26:16

two trillion dollars out of the

26:18

budget deficit, he said, and eliminate

26:21

all this inefficiency. finds himself cutting.

26:23

So he finds him for cutting

26:25

in such a, this he cutting

26:27

just a civil service, but it's

26:29

such a small sliver of the

26:31

actual spending that has almost no

26:33

effect. I mean, 86% of government

26:35

spending is either interest payments on

26:38

the debt defense or entitlements. So

26:40

it's only 14% of the budget

26:42

that's these people anyway. But nobody

26:44

says, oh, wait, he's trying to

26:46

cut. a big chunk out of

26:48

the pie, but he can find

26:50

himself to a little sliver of

26:53

the pie. This is impossible. It

26:55

will never happen. Instead, people cheer

26:57

and say, yeah, he's getting rid

26:59

of all the fat and we're

27:01

going to get rid of our

27:03

deficits. And it's just, I mean,

27:05

we're ignorant. So here's another answer

27:07

to your question. Like, how did

27:10

we come to this pass? Why

27:12

are these people so easily distorted

27:14

by the political process? so that

27:16

people think of them differently than

27:18

they actually are. The answer is

27:20

we've been afforded that luxury, that

27:22

we've lived through a very long

27:24

period without great existential risk to

27:27

ourselves. It hasn't been all peace

27:29

and prosperity, but by world historic

27:31

standards, a lot of peace and

27:33

prosperity. We don't wake up thinking

27:35

our society is about to be

27:37

invaded by barbarians or we're all

27:39

going to die because of a

27:42

pandemic or whatever. we can afford

27:44

to take the parents for granted.

27:46

You know, it's like... Like, we've

27:48

been safe for so long and

27:50

we don't, it's not until something

27:52

really bad happens, like people don't

27:54

realize why we needed this thing.

27:56

And what I worry is that's

27:59

what has to happen. Like something

28:01

really bad is gonna happen. And

28:03

people are, oh, that's why we

28:05

had the government. We'll bring it

28:07

back. And it's a shame it

28:09

has to come to that. And

28:11

the point of the book is

28:13

like, you know, just read this,

28:16

seven random profiles from inside the

28:18

government, and see if you can

28:20

preserve that. bigotry you have about

28:22

the civil service, see if you

28:24

can't like see if you can

28:26

avoid opening up your mind the

28:28

possibility that this is actually a

28:31

useful enterprise. I want to talk

28:33

to you about some of those

28:35

essays and particularly the person you

28:37

profile, but since you mentioned Elon

28:39

Musk, I have wondered Michael how

28:41

you have felt given the fifth

28:43

risk and given your interests in

28:45

profiling the federal workforce, how you

28:48

have felt. watching Elon Musk and

28:50

his so-called Doge Rose go in

28:52

and just wholesale fire tens of

28:54

thousands of people. Right. In the

28:56

very beginning, there's a little part

28:58

of me that was helpful was,

29:00

it is true that the government

29:03

has been kind of starved young

29:05

talent for a long time. people

29:07

have not been encouraged to go

29:09

into government service and in particularly

29:11

in the tech world because you

29:13

can get paid so much better

29:15

just going to work for a

29:17

Silicon Valley startup and the idea

29:20

that he might channel some of

29:22

this talent into the government and

29:24

actually fix some old and broken

29:26

systems that was a I thought

29:28

maybe there's hope there like but

29:30

then when they started doing what

29:32

they were doing which is like

29:34

cutting agencies you know like without

29:37

explanation exactly and going in and

29:39

randomly cutting seemingly big chunks of

29:41

the federal workforce without a whole

29:43

lot of explanation about why except

29:45

to say that they were cutting

29:47

fat out of the budget. So

29:49

then I became puzzled because what

29:52

they said they were doing was

29:54

clearly not what they were doing.

29:56

The first thing they said they

29:58

were doing was going after fraud

30:00

and when they got rid of

30:02

all the inspector generals at the

30:04

agencies, those people, they're not deep

30:06

state bureaucrats who were there to

30:09

help fraud happen. They're there to

30:11

point out fraud to Congress. They

30:13

are the refs, the cops on

30:15

the beat. So the guy read

30:17

all the cops. That's not what

30:19

you do if you try to

30:21

catch the crooks. You don't get

30:23

rid of all the cops. And

30:26

then there are the cops who

30:28

know the most. So it was

30:30

an odd thing to do. So

30:32

I thought they're not going after

30:34

fraud. That's not what this is

30:36

about. And then with the waste,

30:38

it was like our, you know,

30:41

the fat. They were dealing with

30:43

such a small part of the

30:45

government. They were never going to

30:47

make that much of a dent.

30:49

But get rid of the budget

30:51

deficit doing what they're doing. They're

30:53

not going to cut two trillion

30:55

dollars like they claim. They're probably

30:58

not going to cut a hundred

31:00

billion dollars. It's like they're dealing

31:02

with rounding errors. And so it

31:04

was like, if they're not doing

31:06

what they say they're doing, or

31:08

they're doing it so badly, they

31:10

might as well not be. But

31:12

I don't think they're that dumb.

31:15

Like, what is the motive? human

31:17

beings doing extremely complicated and important

31:19

things to turn this into an

31:21

instrument of personal political power for

31:23

Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And

31:25

so turn it into something that

31:27

just doesn't get in their way

31:30

whenever they do whatever they want

31:32

to do, whatever that might be.

31:34

And it's hard to know how

31:36

the society's going to react to

31:38

this because it's been told for

31:40

so long that this this government

31:42

is so awful. They might, Saudi

31:44

might just let him get away

31:47

with it. I'm not sure of

31:49

that. How are we going to

31:51

react? How upset are people going

31:53

to be? How much of a

31:55

stand are they going to take?

31:57

Will Republicans in Congress have the

31:59

nerve to stand up and actually

32:02

argue against this when they know

32:04

it's wrong or bad? And I

32:06

just don't. know. But I've become,

32:08

you know, in the course of

32:10

the first six weeks of the

32:12

Trump administration, pretty cynical about them

32:14

because I don't see a whole

32:16

lot of reason to it. Like

32:19

I don't see them doing things

32:21

that I think, oh that's going

32:23

to make us stronger. I see

32:25

them doing things that they're going

32:27

to make them more powerful, but

32:29

at our expense. And I have

32:31

this feeling, it's a visceral feeling,

32:33

it's a feeling you have when

32:36

the risk in your life has

32:38

just gone up. It's a feeling

32:40

like, oh, we're all always kind

32:42

of playing Russian roulette. They're always

32:44

risks. But they're just sticking willy-nilly

32:46

more bullets in the chamber of

32:48

the gun. And we're now playing

32:51

Russian roulette with greater risk of

32:53

fatality. And I feel that. So

32:55

that's agitating, because it seems like

32:57

wholly unnecessary to be inflicting this

32:59

risk on the population. You know,

33:01

you go in and you start

33:03

firing air traffic controllers. or you

33:05

start firing people whose job it

33:08

is to monitor the cleanliness of

33:10

the water, or you fire people

33:12

whose job it is. overseas to

33:14

monitor and control disease that might

33:16

find its way to our shores.

33:18

Or you fire the nuclear, the

33:20

people in charge of the nuclear

33:22

weapons. I mean, sometimes they've done

33:25

this and then they've said, oh,

33:27

we made a mistake and we're

33:29

going to bring them back. But

33:31

there's been an awful lot of

33:33

mucking around with the mechanisms for

33:35

controlling existential risk. And that just

33:37

makes just makes me really uneasy,

33:40

uneasy, said like. If you're so

33:42

sure this is right, I'd love

33:44

to come to sit and watch.

33:46

And you can explain to me

33:48

why this is smart. I've spent

33:50

a lot of time inside this

33:52

institution, a lot more than you,

33:54

happy to come and talk to

33:57

you, and I didn't get a

33:59

response. I was going to ask

34:01

if he wrote you back, but

34:03

you just told me. It seems

34:05

like the whole tech adage of

34:07

moving fast and breaking things, right?

34:09

being complete disruptors, is what, what,

34:11

what is at play here? to

34:14

me is it doesn't seem that

34:16

this is being done reducing government

34:18

at any kind of thoughtful way

34:20

and if anything it is so

34:22

insulting and demoralizing and demeany to

34:24

some of these public servants who

34:26

have dedicated their lives to their

34:29

area of expertise and not surprisingly

34:31

I just read that many of

34:33

them are dealing with some serious

34:35

mental health issues they're also getting

34:37

abused online and These are people

34:39

who were not seeking out of

34:41

attention. I don't understand why this

34:43

is being done with a sledgehammer

34:46

and not a scalpel, but maybe

34:48

this is just not Elon Musk,

34:50

MO. Why it's being done with

34:52

such malice is that it's malicious,

34:54

right? And there's a point to

34:56

there's a point to be made

34:58

here about like his MO, how

35:01

he operates. I'm sure most people

35:03

think Elon Musk is like an

35:05

incredibly smart guy. And in some

35:07

ways, I'm sure he is incredibly

35:09

smart. But that doesn't mean he's

35:11

like universally smart. Doesn't mean he's

35:13

like good at everything. And he's

35:15

actually not demonstrated that he's all

35:18

that good at managing a large

35:20

institution. He's really good products and

35:22

like peddling products. But he, look,

35:24

he took Twitter. which was, you

35:26

know, whatever it was, it was

35:28

a successful-ish business, he bought it,

35:30

and he's reduced its value by

35:32

more than half. I mean, anybody

35:35

who invested alongside of them has

35:37

lost 60% of their money, and

35:39

he did it much the same

35:41

way. He came into this existing

35:43

institution, I'm so smart, all you

35:45

all are fired, unless you can

35:47

prove that you belong here, humiliated

35:50

everybody, and that doesn't seem to

35:52

have worked out very well. I'd

35:54

like to hear, you're not hearing

35:56

any of these voices because everybody's

35:58

scared of Donald Trump, but I'd

36:00

love to hear what people who

36:02

are genuinely gifted. at running big

36:04

complicated institutions, like people who run

36:07

big corporations. Think of this as

36:09

a management style. It's not something

36:11

you see in successful big companies.

36:13

The CEO doesn't run insulting the

36:15

employees, telling them how valueless they

36:17

are and all the rest. That's

36:19

not historically been like a recipe

36:22

for success. Why would it work

36:24

here? And on top of it, maybe that

36:26

may be in some weird corporation

36:28

might work. But it's definitely not going

36:31

to work in a workforce where you

36:33

can't actually pay people very much. Like,

36:35

they're working, they're not there for the

36:37

money. They're not there for the fame. They're

36:40

there if they're the best people for the

36:42

mission. And so if you're going to

36:44

come in and undermine their sense of

36:46

cells and undermine the mission, I mean,

36:48

that's just got to be just especially

36:51

toxic in the government environment. So I think,

36:53

you know, I suspect that it's going all...

36:55

and so badly that we'll look back and

36:57

say how do we let that happen and

36:59

we'll go try to fix the things he

37:01

broke. But you never know because we

37:03

have a world where people believe all

37:05

kinds of stuff that isn't true and

37:07

people will be being told that this

37:09

was a big success even if it's

37:11

a big failure. My biggest fear in a

37:14

funny way in the back of my head

37:16

right now and I'm thinking about like what

37:18

if I write something else, what purpose

37:20

would it serve? My fear is... The bad

37:22

thing happens because of something

37:24

they've disabled in government. The

37:27

mechanism for preventing the bad thing,

37:29

whatever the bad thing is, was

37:31

disabled, and the bad thing happened,

37:34

and it can be traced by

37:36

a rational person directly back to

37:38

what Elon Musk and Donald Trump

37:40

have just done. But that after the

37:42

bad thing happens, a narrative war

37:44

follows, and their side gets to make

37:46

up all kinds of facts. and say

37:48

that no we didn't have anything to

37:50

do with the bad thing. The bad

37:52

thing was the responsibility of the deep

37:55

state which we haven't rooted out or

37:57

whatever, however they frame it. I'm trying to

37:59

think how do you... prevent them from

38:01

being able to do that? How do

38:03

you make sure that when the bad

38:05

thing happens, everybody understands it was their

38:08

fault? I am groping towards like what

38:10

the next literary response is to this.

38:12

This book, it's funny, the timing of

38:14

this book is so funny, this book

38:17

is so funny, this book is so

38:19

funny, this book is so funny, this

38:21

book is so funny, this book is

38:23

so funny, this book is so funny,

38:25

this book is so funny, this book

38:28

is so funny, but you've got to

38:30

hear every day. And so I do

38:32

think there's some hope of changing shifting

38:34

the narrative a bit. We

38:47

live in a divided country. I

38:49

am a lifelong Republican with all

38:51

kinds of different people. You know,

38:53

I'm a mother. I'm a grandmother.

38:55

That's why we started the middle

38:58

with Jeremy Hobson. It's about bringing

39:00

voices not from the extremes but

39:02

from the vast middle into the

39:04

national conversation. Anna and calling from

39:06

Las Vegas. Each week we bring

39:08

together an all-star panel. Mark Cuban,

39:10

so great to have you on

39:12

the middle. Thanks for having Jeremy,

39:14

Jeremy, Jeremy. Neil Degrass Tyson, welcome

39:17

to the middle. Thanks for having

39:19

me. And hear from ordinary Americans

39:21

from all over the country on

39:23

the most important issues. Hi, my

39:25

name is Venkad. I'm calling you

39:27

from Atlanta, Georgia. And when you

39:29

subscribe to the middle, you also

39:31

get an episode each week called

39:33

One Thing Trump Did that focuses

39:36

on just one item from the

39:38

avalanche of news. We should be

39:40

examining what our government spends its

39:42

money on and are these jobs

39:44

necessary and what are we doing

39:46

here. But that doesn't seem to

39:48

be what we're doing in this

39:50

situation. Listen to the middle with

39:53

Jeremy Hobson on the iHeart Radio

39:55

app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you

39:57

get your podcasts. Michael, I'm wondering

39:59

if you have found it hypocritical

40:01

that Elon must traces private sector-led

40:03

in a big... but a lot

40:05

of these breakthroughs come from NASA

40:07

and the Department of Energy and

40:09

he couldn't do what he does

40:12

without them. It's sinister. It's not

40:14

just hypocritical. He's claiming credit for

40:16

stuff he doesn't deserve credit for.

40:18

Not that he doesn't deserve credit

40:20

for some stuff, but like he

40:22

says he was the founder of

40:24

Tesla and the founder of PayPal

40:26

and he wasn't. Someone else founded

40:29

the company he came in. Tesla.

40:31

isn't just the triumph of the

40:33

private sector. The Tesla does not

40:35

get off the ground without a

40:37

$450 million loan or a loan

40:39

guarantee from the Department of Energy.

40:41

At the time, he said, this

40:43

saved us. And other people at

40:45

Tesla said we just wouldn't exist

40:48

without this. It was like a

40:50

little bit of a moonshot technology,

40:52

and the Department of Energy has

40:54

a little, has a couple of

40:56

programs that back moonshot technologies. and

40:58

they've had astonishing success with it.

41:00

And it's true of a lot

41:02

of our economy, that it's, that

41:05

it, especially a lot of innovation.

41:07

It starts with some public-private partnership.

41:09

So to try to pitch people

41:11

on the idea this is all

41:13

a bunch of smart guys in

41:15

Silicon Valley who'd be even, who'd

41:17

be doing even greater things if

41:19

the government wasn't in their way

41:21

is a complete misreading of what

41:24

has happened. But also, it's very

41:26

self-serving. It's like now I'm on

41:28

top. I'm going to disable this

41:30

mechanism for like people coming up

41:32

from beneath me to challenge me.

41:34

And I'm going to, I'm asworn

41:36

around telling the story that I'm

41:38

basically responsible for all this. Not

41:41

a big fan of Bylon Must,

41:43

are you? I mean, less and

41:45

less so. I didn't, I wasn't

41:47

born with an animus towards him,

41:49

but I think he's been very,

41:51

very bad for the country. And

41:53

any, it's just to tell. when

41:55

someone is lying all the time.

41:57

It's just like when they're putting

42:00

lies out constantly. It's just that

42:02

this this underlying Roth. And there

42:04

are all these lies about what

42:06

they've achieved in the government when

42:08

they haven't achieved them. There are

42:10

a lot of eyes about other

42:12

people. And the other thing is

42:14

offensive about him. He's a bully.

42:17

He's got this platform and he

42:19

can turn his fans against anybody

42:21

at any time and does it

42:23

routinely. Outing civil servants by name.

42:25

It's disgusting. I mean, it's just

42:27

disgusting. And so... I think he's

42:29

a bully and I don't react,

42:31

I just don't react very well

42:33

to bullies. Getting back to your

42:36

book, who is government, the untold

42:38

story of public service, you, as

42:40

you mentioned, got a number of

42:42

great writers to profile different government

42:44

workers and you picked someone named

42:46

Christopher Mark. You met him, I

42:48

guess, via something called the Sammys,

42:50

which you described as the Oscars

42:53

for public service. Out of the

42:55

500 divvie names on that list,

42:57

what made you stop in your

42:59

tracks when you came across Chris

43:01

Mark? So Chrismail could not want

43:03

any award when I met him.

43:05

It was just a list of

43:07

nominees, right? And the what made

43:09

me stop was he was the

43:12

one nominee where there was some

43:14

trace of personal information, some trace

43:16

of a human being, that the

43:18

way the nominations were laid out,

43:20

it was a couple of sentences,

43:22

and it was like Joe Schmo

43:24

from the FBI from the FBI.

43:26

discovered and disrupted a child's sex

43:28

trafficking ring. And then they moved

43:31

on, not telling you anything about

43:33

Joe Schmo. And it got the

43:35

Christopher Mark and it said, Christopher

43:37

Mark inside the Department of Labor

43:39

has solved the problem of coal

43:41

miner roofs collapsing on the heads

43:43

of coal miners, a problem which

43:45

killed 50,000 coal miners in the

43:48

last century. And then it said,

43:50

Christopher Mark is a former coal

43:52

miner. And I thought... There's a

43:54

story here. I mean, there's probably

43:56

a story everywhere, but like how

43:58

does a former coal miner get

44:00

himself in the position of solving

44:02

was probably really technical. complicated problem

44:04

and I'd assume that like his

44:07

he had a personal he did

44:09

have a personal motivation but I

44:11

assume the wrong one I assume

44:13

he like grew up in West

44:15

Virginia and his dad had been

44:17

killed by a falling roof or

44:19

something like that so that's what

44:21

got me to him but but

44:24

then the story ended up being

44:26

wildly different and even more interesting

44:28

than I expected. He grew up

44:30

in Princeton New Jersey he wasn't

44:32

from West Virginia at all. No

44:34

he always if you grew up

44:36

in upper middle class family child

44:38

of a Princeton professor and had

44:40

rebelled against his father. It was

44:43

a kind of lefty rebellion against.

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awaits. that Elon must trace is

46:16

private sector-led innovation, but a lot

46:18

of these breakthroughs come from NASA

46:20

and the Department of Energy, and

46:22

he couldn't do what he does

46:24

without them. It's sinister. It's not

46:26

just hypocritical. He's claiming credit for

46:28

stuff he doesn't deserve credit for.

46:31

Not that he doesn't deserve credit

46:33

for some stuff. But like he

46:35

says, he was the founder of

46:37

Tesla and the founder of PayPal,

46:39

and he wasn't. Someone else founded

46:41

the company he came in. Tesla.

46:43

isn't just the triumph of the

46:45

private sector. The Tesla does not

46:48

get off the ground without a

46:50

$450 million loan or a loan

46:52

guarantee from the Department of Energy.

46:54

At the time, he said, this

46:56

saved us. And other people at

46:58

Tesla said we just wouldn't exist

47:00

without this. It was like a

47:02

little bit of a moonshot technology,

47:04

and the Department of Energy has

47:07

a little, has a couple of

47:09

programs that back moonshot technologies. and

47:11

they've had astonishing success with it.

47:13

And it's true of a lot

47:15

of our economy, that it's, that

47:17

it, especially a lot of innovation.

47:19

It starts with some public-private partnership.

47:21

So to try to pitch people

47:23

on the idea this is all

47:26

a bunch of smart guys in

47:28

Silicon Valley who'd be even, who'd

47:30

be doing even greater things if

47:32

the government wasn't in their way

47:34

is a complete misreading of what

47:36

has happened. But also, it's very

47:38

self-serving. It's like now I'm on

47:40

top. I'm going to disable this

47:43

mechanism for like people coming up

47:45

from beneath. me to challenge me

47:47

and I'm going to, I'm going

47:49

to, I'm a swan around telling

47:51

the story that I'm basically responsible

47:53

for all this. Not a big

47:55

fan of Bylon Must, are you?

47:57

I mean less and less so.

47:59

I didn't have a view, I

48:02

didn't, I wasn't born with an

48:04

animus towards him, but I think

48:06

he's been very, very bad for

48:08

the country. And, and it's just

48:10

to tell when someone is lying

48:12

all the time. It's just like

48:14

when they're putting lies out lies

48:16

out. constantly. It's just that this

48:19

this is an underlying rot and

48:21

there are all these lies about

48:23

what they achieved in the government

48:25

when they haven't achieved them. There

48:27

are a lot eyes about getting

48:29

back to your book who is

48:31

government the untold story of public

48:33

service you as you mentioned got

48:35

a number of great writers to

48:38

profile different government workers and you

48:40

picked someone named Christopher Mark. You

48:42

met him, I guess, via something

48:44

called the Sammys, which you described

48:46

as the Oscars for public service.

48:48

Out of the 500 different names

48:50

on that list, what made you

48:52

stop in your tracks when you

48:55

came across Chrismark? So Chrismail could

48:57

not want any award when I

48:59

met him. It was just a

49:01

list of nominees, right? And the

49:03

what made me stop was he

49:05

was the one nominee, where there

49:07

was some trace of personal information.

49:09

that's some trace of a human

49:11

being that the way the nominations

49:14

were laid out it was a

49:16

couple of sentences and it was

49:18

like Joe Schmo from the FBI

49:20

discovered and disrupted a child child

49:22

sex trafficking ring and then they

49:24

moved on not telling anything about

49:26

Joe Schmo and it got the

49:28

Christopher Mark and it said Christopher

49:31

Mark inside the Department of Labor

49:33

has solved the problem of coal

49:35

miner roofs collapsing on the heads

49:37

of coal miners, a problem which

49:39

killed 50,000 coal miners in the

49:41

last century. And then it said,

49:43

Christopher Mark is a former coal

49:45

miner. And I thought... there's a

49:47

story here. I mean there's probably

49:50

a story everywhere, but like how

49:52

does a former coal miner get

49:54

himself in the position of solving

49:56

was probably a really technical complicated

49:58

problem. And I had assumed that

50:00

like he had a personal mode,

50:02

he did have a personal motivation,

50:04

but I assumed the wrong one.

50:07

I assume he like grew up

50:09

in West Virginia and his dad

50:11

had been killed by a falling

50:13

roof or something like that. So

50:15

that's what got me to him.

50:17

But uh, but then the story

50:19

ended up being wildly different and

50:21

even more interesting than I expected.

50:23

He grew up in Princeton, New

50:26

Jersey. He wasn't from West Virginia

50:28

at all. No, he wished if

50:30

he grew up in an upper

50:32

middle class family child of a

50:34

Princeton professor and had rebelled against

50:36

his father. It was a kind

50:38

of lefty rebellion against his bourgeois

50:40

father in the late 60s, early

50:43

70s, and set out to become

50:45

be a working man rather than

50:47

go to Harvard or Princeton, which

50:49

he could have done. And then

50:51

I find all this out like

50:53

the first 30 minutes and this

50:55

just blew me away. His dad

50:57

had become famous as a civil

50:59

engineer for building technology that analyzed

51:02

what kept the roofs of Gothic

51:04

cathedrals from falling. And he was

51:06

so good at it. I mean,

51:08

Robert Marcus's name, you can go

51:10

there like. TV shows made about

51:12

it. But he's so good that

51:14

he could like predict where in

51:16

the Shark Cathedral the stones would

51:18

be crumbling because the designers made

51:21

a mistake. And so it was

51:23

like he was answering a question

51:25

everybody has who goes to those

51:27

gorgeous buildings like what keeps the

51:29

roof off? And the son said

51:31

put a middle finger in the

51:33

end of the father when he

51:35

was 17 years old, left home,

51:38

went away and started working in

51:40

factories and and warehouses and ends

51:42

up working in a coal mine,

51:44

thinking I'm not going to have

51:46

anything to do with what my

51:48

father did. And then realizes the

51:50

roofstep falling, kill me, and goes

51:52

and is very clever in the

51:54

intellectual journeys wild, but how he

51:57

figures out how to keep rues

51:59

from collapsing on coal mines is...

52:01

its own story, but what's even

52:03

wilder is when I get him

52:05

and I hear this story, I

52:07

say, wow, you rebelled against your

52:09

dad and then you kind of

52:11

like went in your dad's line

52:14

of work. You fall about it,

52:16

what keeps the roof up? And

52:18

he goes, that is not true.

52:20

What I did had nothing to

52:22

do with my father. He was

52:24

like, nope, nope, nope. Fun to

52:26

write about. And there's similar stories

52:28

are very inspiring stories by all

52:30

these other writers in the book.

52:33

Can you just tell us some

52:35

of your favorites? It would take

52:37

a long time to go to

52:39

the room, but I'll tell you

52:41

who the writers are, because it's

52:43

an illustrious class. It's John Manchester,

52:45

Dave Eggers, Sarah Val, Casey Sepp,

52:47

and the New Yorker. Young writer,

52:50

she's going to be very famous

52:52

one day. She's a little famous

52:54

already. I'll tell you her story.

52:56

She found a guy inside the

52:58

Department of Veterans Affairs. I don't

53:00

know if he's still there. They've

53:02

gutted it. But his name is

53:04

Ron Walters. And Ron Walters had

53:06

walked into a job that is

53:09

a kind of sacred duty. It's

53:11

caring for the national cemeteries. It's

53:13

providing me experience for the families

53:15

of veterans. when they bury their

53:17

dead. And when he comes into

53:19

it, and this is like 20

53:21

years ago, the customer approval rating

53:23

is not great. It's kind of

53:26

eh. And he sets about attacking

53:28

the problem with such panosh that

53:30

kind of a decade in. There's

53:32

surveys that the University of Michigan

53:34

does of customer satisfaction across the

53:36

economy and they measure satisfaction of

53:38

government agencies as well as with

53:40

like private companies. So Amazon and

53:42

the Department of Agriculture is in

53:45

these surveys. By the time Ron

53:47

Walters is done, this National Cemetery's

53:49

burial program. has the highest customer

53:51

satisfaction of any institution in our

53:53

country. And nobody knows who he

53:55

is. He doesn't, he's not out

53:57

there telling people how to manage

53:59

businesses because he's a genius manager

54:02

though he obviously is. All he

54:04

cares about is this sacred duty

54:06

we have to our veterans. It's

54:08

a moving story. I mean it's

54:10

like who this guy is and

54:12

why he did what he did

54:14

and then he did what he

54:16

did. And I mean, I think

54:18

she just kind of scratched the

54:21

surface at some places, because I

54:23

do think that the Harvard Business

54:25

School should go figure out what

54:27

he did, because it's an amazing

54:29

transformation, like private, public, whatever sector,

54:31

to do that with a very

54:33

delicate problem. But you never hear

54:35

about it. That happened. And you

54:38

never hear about it. Like, if

54:40

that had happened in one of

54:42

Elon Musk's company, or God Amazing.

54:44

Donald Trump's companies companies. Donald Trump

54:46

will be telling you how he

54:48

took the company from here to

54:50

there and you'd be celebrating Donald

54:52

Trump as a manager and you

54:54

know but that's different personality. I'm

54:57

wondering if you're hoping that this

54:59

book will inspire more people at

55:01

this terrible time for government workers

55:03

to become public servants because even

55:05

now people younger than 30. represent

55:07

only 7% of the full-time civil

55:09

service, despite being 20% of the

55:11

overall US labor force. And 68%

55:13

say they'd never consider pursuing a

55:16

non-military federal job. Yeah, not you

55:18

wonder why, right? Because all they

55:20

hear is what they hear. So

55:22

this is what I hope for.

55:24

I hope that young people read

55:26

the book or read these stories

55:28

somehow, some way. And they don't

55:30

rule out the possibility that they'll

55:33

be called to serve. That they

55:35

will develop their skills in whatever

55:37

field they choose. But if there

55:39

comes a time when those skills

55:41

clearly are needed by the country,

55:43

they don't just turn up their

55:45

nose at the federal government. they

55:47

think the federal government is all

55:49

a waste, that they realize it's

55:52

just the opposite, that this is

55:54

the place where you can have

55:56

the greatest impact with those skills.

55:58

You won't make a lot of

56:00

money, and that you won't just

56:02

make money, but you will change

56:04

lives, save lives. And if that

56:06

idea is still kind of alive,

56:09

there's hope. It's like, and it

56:11

is alive. It's very clearly alive.

56:13

These are role models we're writing

56:15

about. And it wasn't rigged that

56:17

way. I didn't like I didn't

56:19

tell the writers. Go find a

56:21

role model. Go find a role

56:23

model. I said, go find a

56:25

story. And this same kind of

56:28

story just kept presenting itself because

56:30

it's there. You know, it's just,

56:32

it's just, it's right there on

56:34

the surface waiting to be described.

56:36

You wrote a book called Going

56:38

Infinite, the story of billionaire Sam

56:40

Bankman Fries, who's now serving time.

56:42

And I'm curious how you feel

56:45

about his latest interview with Tucker

56:47

Carlson and reports of their efforts

56:49

from his family and allies to

56:51

receive a pardon from Donald Trump.

56:53

I mean if you to ask

56:55

me the moment Trump was elected

56:57

what the bank and freed were

56:59

going to do I have told

57:01

you they were going to seek

57:04

a pardon from Donald Trump. That

57:06

doesn't, that part doesn't surprise me.

57:08

And there's even a kind of

57:10

a weird sort of narrative path

57:12

to it because the judge that

57:14

sentenced Sam bank and freed 25

57:16

years in jail, it was also

57:18

the judge in the E.G. and

57:21

Carroll case. So there will be

57:23

some natural...