“The goal is to move through life in a way that you don’t miss the thing you really love to do. That you don’t walk away from it by mistake. That you’re alive to it when it walks in the front door.” – Michael Lewis, episode 224 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Best-selling author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short) joins us this week! His latest book, The Premonition (2:40), reveals how the U.S. mishandled the pandemic (5:05), and why the 2009 H1N1 virus was a precursor to 2020 (10:15). But to understand how Lewis tells his stories, I wanted to understand a bit of his story. How he grew up in New Orleans (20:48) and fell in love with writing at Princeton (26:20), before working as a bonds salesman on Wall Street (29:29). He also shares his approach to creating honest journalist-subject relationships (36:19), the six months he profiled President Obama (37:12), a favorite poem from his high-school baseball coach (43:02), and the role of luck in his career (48:49).
Show notes
- Get your copy of The Premonition now.
- Check out Against the Rules with Michael Lewis at Pushkin.
- Listen to Michael on the Ezra Klein Show, from 2019.
- Read Michael’s Vanity Fair profile of Obama.
- View his full Baccalaureate speech at Princeton (transcript here).
- Learn more about Michael’s life and career on his website.
- Illustrations by: Krishna Shenoi.