we should pretend that this is, i think we should just think of this as an ongoing conversation and just start indl the middle, pick up where we left off. you just whispered to me you wanted -- >> well, i mean i think we have to honor sean tuohy because he was going to be -- >> another high school classmate. >> who was one of the main characters in the blindside. he was supposed to be in your chair, and the amazing thing about that is sean tuohy confessed to me that he thinks in his life he never read a book. but yet he had the balls to come into this and you are so much more qualified. i just wanted to just sort of pile on myself here to want, and add to what he just said. the blindside starts when i fly down t to memphis, i was givinga talk about something else and is thinking of writing something about my high school baseball coach, and io thought i had to get in touch with old teammates just to see what they thought. sean was an old teammate, and so i called and he set up a a gif the airport. he led me into the blindside story. but the first thing he says when he picks me up at the airport, we get in the car. he's like deadpanned, dead serious. he says so who writes your books? [laughing] and i said, sean, i write my books. pecos no-no. i know you're like the author, and your name b is on the book d you're really good on tv. he said, he went on about how he admired my promotionalho abilities, like he thought a handle the business into things. i was out selling it. he said that who puts the words on the page? and i i said sean, i put the wos on the page. he goes, no, you don't. he said you're dumb shit is like me who sat in the back of english class and got c's. it really tookea them forever. he had that in his head michael escott hiss career as an author but he's got some trolls like in the back to do the words for him and he goes out and he gets to be the author. that was his notion because he could not conceive that the person he knew from age five to 17 and went to school with had ended up with this like writing career. and a think t's is not just making get up. nobody saw this coming, not even me. >> may be the last author that sean tuohy picked up at the airport was james patterson. [laughing] >> it was a legitimate question. [laughing] does anyone by the wp you with your? does anybody help me with my words? no, i'm not to since i am impersonating shawn tooie. yeah. where do those words come from? no, no, no. no i'm asking but do you you never use? i once hired a researcher because my daughter is needed a softball coach and the softball coach who of my dreams could not could not take the job as a softball coach unless she had a proper job in addition to it. so i said how would you like to be a book recent my research assistant and then we sat and stared at each other for the next three years because i couldn't think of anything for her to do and it was the problem i have with like any of that kind of help is that though it's in doing the sort of stuff a research assistant would do that. i figure out what the book is in the first place. yeah. all right. so like what are they going to do? i in fact there are people fact check after all that stuff after the fact and there's of course. i haven't i'm i've had the same book editor since liars poker. i mean since my my book i wrote when i was 27 years old. he's still in my life, but he is in his late monet stage of editing where like he kind of sees the words and and but he's great. it's like he sees the big picture but in the words are kind of my words and you're kind of stuff with my words. yeah. well, this is actually you know about this. all of us do this when we think about professions other than our own. which is we understand the general shape of the profession, but we don't understand. how time is allocated within it. so people who aren't doctors think that what doctors do is see patients, but in fact what doctors do is answer lots of email do paper. yeah, or they do see patients, but it's like it's not this much seeing patients and this much paperwork. it's this much paperwork. and computer and this one. writers people who aren't writers think that writers do this much time writing and this much time preparing for writing. it's the opposite. yeah, no i get i mean i know there are people you and i i don't know we're probably exceptions, but there are people who get up and write every day because they have to write. know and and who and who and this is mainly novels. i think you can. i can go months without putting serious words on the page so much of i find so much of what i do is figuring out what needs to be said like and what's worth saying and finding characters. gathering the stuff the actual writing of it is i mean, i don't want to say it's the easy part, but it's kind of an easy part that it's not that's once you're there and you have it all that. it's just really not that hard. but but so yes, you're right that if you looked if you had a camera on my life and probably your life it would be very disappointing right we aren't sitting there in a few state all by ourselves in a garrett thinking thoughts you probably doing that more than i am. you have more thoughts though. i don't but it's no viewer, but but i mean, you're tell me how much time do you spend actually sitting down putting words on paper versus everything else? not allah, not a lot. it's but it's all about the it's when you you know, you talk to someone you're like oh. that person has just written that section for me. right. yes, you know what? it's going to look like, but it's finding the kind of and the order of things. i was watching that movie. i watched the movie gentleman's agreement. which is just which i thought was a movie about this antisemitism. it's actually a movie about hollywood writers. trying to glamorize their profession and that it's all and the bulk of the movie is the our hero struggling to write a magazine article and you know ripping the pages out of his typewriter screwing them up and throwing them with the wall. that's the good third of the movie. it's just like did anybody people actually do that? i not good people. yeah, but wait michael, so i do have some questions that relate some. we're in new orleans. and i am i was thinking about you because you know, i did this i do this for my sins this newsletter and i did this i imagine that i was going to take it if one were to take a tour of the south. and do you know memphis atlanta, birmingham, new orleans? what 10 books would you read in preparation? so for each city, i gave a list of book and it had readers suggest. and for new orleans question was what the classic new orleans book be. and i answered well, you know the obvious ones but then i said and then the real one i want is the hasn't been written yet. it's the it's the book michael lewis writes about new orleans. did you say that did in public? yeah precious on what is the michael lewis book about new orleans? i've avoided it. i mean i haven't really thought i haven't i thought i came first thought. the only thing i've meaningful i've ever written about this place was a long magazine piece. about katrina. oh, which i about to bring up which was so brilliant and so informed by the fact that you were from new orleans that i wanted more. so did i but i didn't have it and i came down and i thought i gathered string we moved the family down here for six months and gathered string and it's all the string is all in a box and maybe one day. but you know, it's such it was such a peculiar childhood that you don't realize is peculiar until you get out of here, and i think that like this place has informed my writing in so many ways. not least of which it's that. i mean, i think that all the books are it's a person with an odd view of the world coming into a circumstance that nobody recognizes is odd. and the reason i have the odd view of the world i grew up here, you know, not not the southernmost city in north america, but the northernmost city and south america. and and and over and over it's i'm reminded of how strange this place was, but i haven't so i've not spoken to my publisher about writing a book about this place, but the but coming here during katrina. i did think i did think like. the materials my materials pretty good. so so we right so right now i'm i'm about to use some. i was i was i do a podcast for his company. i'm a wholly owned subsidiary of malcolm gladwell and jake's weisberg. it's called against the rules. it's been a total joy to do it reaches a completely different audience than the books. it's it works different muscles. and this season the idea and the idea of the podcast is every season we take a character an authority figure in american life. who's whose status is volatile and examine what's happened to that character? and why in the first season was about referees in american life the second season is about coaches and third is about experts and i was sitting around table with two producers the other day and they were saying they were saying, you know, we really nice if you'd like in the past two seasons, you've had things that are kind of personal stories. and they work real well for the year, is there any like expertise you developed when you were a kid? that that we might like that might be a way in and i started thinking about like what i actually learned as a child. and how different that was from what people in other places might have learned. like the kind of things. i didn't learn anything practical. i didn't learn how to really do anything that you could you could it was a vendable skill. i learned the difference between a like a second cousin once removed in a first cousin twice removed, you know, like nobody in america knows the difference between those two things, but everybody in new orleans knows. but and i thought well there was a moment. i actually had a funny experience where something i learned that was so that i really did learn here. like was of interest to the world and they said well, what was it i said well. when i was when i was 15 years old, i was the king of squires. i was a king of a mardi gras organization. and for a period of like i know six weeks after baseball practice i go over to the house of this little old lady near our school who whose job was to train royalty these people still exist in new orleans then and mardi gras kings and queens go to them to learn how to comport themselves to learn how to sit on a throne. there was a way to sit on a throne to know how to learn how to greet subjects to learn how to wave a scepter things like that and walk around regularly, right? i was learning how to do this. it was checked on me with a completely straight face and the one the woman who was who was teaching me? explained to me that she learned all this stuff in eastern europe where she trained actual royalty, but there were no there, you know, they were they were all gone so she had to come here because this is the last place where you found, you know enough of a customer base. yes, so you have so your customers are that's right. one of the principles of the modern economy. so flash forward, whatever it is 21 years 20 years. and i'm a friend of mine who edits one of the newspapers in britain. has asked me to come over and cover one of their elections. and and i get there i land he says i want you. i want you to come to dinner too that someone i want you to meet. and he gave me an address that wasn't his house. he said just show up here at this time. no further instruction. so i show up at this house and knock on the door and princess diana opens the door. and it's really why it's yes. and it's just her and and she's on the alps with charles. and it's a little flat. it's down the road from kensington. yeah, wherever she wherever she was supposed to be. were you married at the time? no, and and so she opens the door. and you know, my jaw was on the floor. i was just stupid right? i was just struck dumb. i said i know who you are and and she leads me into the house and we're having just gonna have a drink together before a dinner party actually does show up and she goes out the back door. and they were like committing. but what are you going to say? right the princess diana and there's a and so i said you and i have something in common. and she said what i said, well, i actually both royalty. you you're about to lose that status but i i was i was i was king of squires and and i i and i and i explained to her i explained to her. that that they taught me how to do stuff and she like bright if she was they haven't taught me how to do anything and and i and so i said, well, you know, like what did they teach you and i said well this and that and they taught me how to wave receptor and she said, you know how to wave a scepter and i said, yes, and so she said would you teach me? and so we walked around she put her hand on my hand and we walked around. that's a pretty big living room and we found a couple of forks. and i showed her the way you led with your elbow and then the fellows with the wrist in the way. you need to follow with your eyes and the whole thing and she was like completely into it. so this is the whole point of this story in addition to eating up five minutes. okay sure you need to point is is you know when i when i was asked by my podcast producers, what did you learn in new orleans and become an expert in that would might be like, you know, like the different and get us back to new orleans. that's kind of thing. i learned you know, that was it. that's what i had. that's all i had. was that kind of thing and every now and then you pull it out of your back pocket and it works but most the time it was a kind of a it was a different and sort of impractical childhood. there's nothing wrong with that. no. no, there's nothing wrong with that. no, there's everything right with that. i mean i would argue that i felt this i feel it less and less as i live outside new orleans for longer and i become kind of more assimilated into the rest of the in the normal american society, but but i can remember thinking when i left here and i went to princeton. it wasn't at it wasn't at princeton. it was really when i was on the cuspect when i had to leave princeton and find something to do with myself in the world and i was watching my i was watching the way the world was, you know, once you're out of school. and especially it was new york, but everybody wanted to go to work on wall street and everybody's kind of grabbing and getting and worried about their careers and and in this i came from a place where you really weren't defined. by which you did for a living. you really weren't defined you're defined by who your mama was and what neighborhood you grew up in and what school you went to and it was it was a it was genuinely a place that turned on family values. and there was not a whole lot of talk about worldly success now partly because there wasn't a lot of worldly success, but partly because it was just you know, it was it was a stagnant stagnant it was somewhere between a stagnant and a stable place. i tell this often my father who's sitting in the front row. i mean this this will give you an idea of the spirit and i've told you this before then in which i grew up that up to the age of about 17, he would every now and then say to me he'd recite the lewis family motto for me. and any seats tell me it was on the coat of arms, which is preposterous when you hear what the lewis family motto is because cut arms has like three words of latin in it, whatever they are, and he said the and the point of the story is that i believed him that i thought this was true. he said the lewis family motto is do as little as possible and that unwillingly. but wait for it for it is for it is better to receive a slight reprimand than to perform an arduous task. i don't know where he pulled that out of. i still don't know where he counted from. but but i thought that's those were the words we live live by you know, and but we were so happy. you know and there was there was just like i the child who was so happy. so all of a sudden i'm thrust into a world. that's not new orleans and i'm and it was you know, broadly financial success america, new york and it's very successful. people are making a lot of money and they're so unhappy, you know, there's so miserable my most miserable college classmates knew they wanted to go to wall street the day they said foot on the campus. it was and i was like, what's something's wrong here all those people going up to study economics. they've had no interest in economics. so they go to work on wall street and have miserable lives. rich successful successful miserable lies. so right from the start. i have a view of that world. that is a little different that it's i think it's screwed up like why is this? why is this success and that and there's no question that that leads to liar's poker. i mean, there's no question that that leads in particular to a kind of armor that i had about that. they never persuaded me. this was important. even though they let me in they made me a successful person for a few years and they were gonna give me a lot of money. i never i could never really buy in because it seems so kaka miserable. they they screwed up and let in a happy person and the result was the most scathing in diet. that's exactly that's exactly they will never make that mistake again, so and they will know so don't know them. that's come. there's some real truth to that that and they couldn't understand. i mean, i've told you the story of i've told you we've there if i don't have any stories left to tell you that i haven't told you, but but i could remember the bewilderment of the wall street people. when i was warning to write wanting to publish stuff. you know i get to i've been writing some magazine pieces before i got there couldn't make a living at i get this job. they can pay me a lot of money. it was kind of cool and maybe you'd write about it. one day. i was to say i was i was always kind of one foot in one foot out. however through very flukishly. very flukishly. i was like crazy successful for the first 18 months. it was it and i could explain why that happened but it had very little to do with me knowing anything but they thought i knew what i was doing and i didn't know what i was doing, but the but it was generating many many tens of millions of dollars for the firm. and so i was sort of protected. and so i didn't think oh anybody's gonna fire me they couldn't fire me. i was too profitable. so i started writing stuff that. in retrospect was reckless, you know, i wrote i wrote a piece in the wall street journal op-ed page arguing that investment bankers were overpaid and on the bottom. it said michael lewis is an associate at solomon brothers in london. and and when i would when i arrived at work. the next day the head of the whole company international was there ashton-faced waiting for me and saying like, i mean, i feel bad he looked so bad. he said we've spent we've been up all night with the board of directors trying to figure out what to do about this because it's being reprinted in all over the country in newspapers and you can't say that we're overpaid and i said, well we are overpaid and he said yeah, but you can't say it and and he says and and it was like what can you do to wait stop for second. how old are you at this point 24 you're 24. yeah, you're at a job in wall street. is this your first real job out of college? real job out of college. i was a there's the arms on how you count them, but i was a stock boy at the wildenstein art gallery and i wore a suit to work for six months and i got tired of that and then i worked as a cabinet maker as apprentice for four months and then i led rich teenage girls american girls through europe for three months and then yeah except for that. so this is principal. you're making a handsome amount of money. yeah, and your first impulse 24 making a lot of money is to turn on institution and to suggest that actually you and not just you could have written an article saying i'm overpaid. yeah, no, no, no. no, it's we're all over you. you're like samson you're gonna take you're gonna take down everyone, but i wasn't even thinking i was thinking how do i get an article in the wall street journal and and i wasn't even thinking that oh crash gonna have some effect. it was like this is an interesting point to make we're overpaid and and how why are we overpaying and so that i laid that out and i thought i mean my state of mind was such that i kind of thought when i walked into work the next day, they'd all be saying my god you got an article in the wall street journal. that's so great. nobody said that nobody said that they said instead they said and said you got to stop writing and i said not gonna stop writing. and so he said, okay. can you write under another name? so i wrote under my mother's maiden name for a long stretch diner. my mother's maiden name was diana bleeker monroe and i was diana bleecker and that's that mollified them that that they they actually said no one will ever guess that a woman is a man around here. they don't think like that and but but when i finally kind of said to them i'm out of here. i'm going to go i'm gonna go write a book about wall street. told him their response was not you can't write about this or you don't write about us or we're afraid or none of that. they actually didn't care the bosses who were seeing me out the door. they were worried about my mental health. they said they took me in a room and said we're just worried about you. you're gonna make a half a million dollars next year and a million dollars a year after that. you might run the firm one day. they said and i said you're out of your mind, you know? no, i don't know what i'm doing. you know, you just don't know. i don't know what i'm doing and i really like doing that and they they couldn't they couldn't understand where i was coming from like they and where i was coming from was here. that's why they couldn't understand it. it was like i remembered a happy place that wasn't like this and and so that you know that whatever it was about this child. it was still with me and that in protected me. because otherwise, i don't believe what they were saying about me and about the importance of this and i would have money would have become a substitute for something else and i just i just lived my life there. that's that's what would have happened. did you recently with us re-released? virus poker is an audiobook. which meant that you both had to go back and read it again. am i right? are you like me? do you never do you reread your old books or don't you don't reread them? i don't i haven't yet. i can't no can i i can't but you would have had to you know, it's an odd thing that you can't though right because right before you finish the book you're re-reading it obsessively you're rereading it. you're dreaming about your thinking about it. you're going back in line editing it. you're you're doing but the minute it's in print i completely lose interest in it like to the point where book tours are paying for me. i just don't want to talk about it. and and so i never i mean i i had to so it's funny. i had to have flipped through it. before i went on like the paperback book tour. yeah, and i remember this because i was going on the paper on the paperback book tour for liars poker. always had to fly back from london to new york and i had the book on my lap. i thought i got to remember what i read because i could be going tv talking about it and a kind of an oil man type from texas comes and sits next to me looks down and says you read that book. and before i could stop him he said i read that book. it sucked cynical -- and and and and and and and i remember thinking i i must spend eight hours trying to avoid him figuring out who i am. but so i must i remember flipping through it then but just flipping through it just so i didn't forget anecdotes and but never since so what happened was? um, jacob weisberg, you're who's gonna be up here in a couple of hours and i've been talking about doing what you you've doing, which is an audiobook with pushkin, which is actually a produced audiobook which isn't just someone tiedown might >> i don't like recording when i'minterviewing . >> they recorders that are this big. >> it makes people self-conscious and a lot of times it's just hard. it just makes it a much more natural interaction. so what are we going to do? if we are going to do one tof these books what are we going to do and the rights reverted to me and i thought why don't we do this. let's start with something and so the other piece of this is my daughter quinn who is a junior at harvard told me friends offers had been made to read the book by people they interned with on wall street because it was still relevant somehow. and that was curious to me c because i how could that be? it's changed so much. so the combination i bought well, let's see what's in here. and three months ago we recorded it and released it a fewweeks ago . and the experience was not what i expected. it was, i mean there's a reason you don't read reviews. >> went straightdown. you're rereading it for the first time in how many years ? >> 33 years. >> soul walk me throughyour reactions . to the rediscovery of yourown work . >> similar to the experience i had yesterday when i went back to the isidore newman school and talked to students and i was walking the halls. all of a sudden i have these associations. ormembers i had just didn't even know i have every corner of the place is some story. i opened the book and i started reading in two auparagraphs in i thought i remember what i was reading when i wrote that and i was imitating it and i can didn't sound quite like me. i was reading the education of henry adams and reading and education of henry adams because i thought in preparation for writing this brutally frank memoir i don't know. i've never written anything longer thana couple thousand words . i started to read other supposedly brutally frank memoirs. confessionswith frank russo, oi don't know . so i have this odd experience as i was reading the first couple of chapters. the first chapter i wrote last so it wasn't the first chapter. when you get to chapter 2 i could see like now i'm henry adams. now i'm george orwell. now i'm mark twain. there i'm a little. so i was hearing the voices of the writers in the book i was reading that i was imitating. not plagiarizing, justtheir voices are in my head .>> that book doesn't feel like a michael lewis book it to you ? >> there came a moment where i didn't think someone else. and i also bought this is less objectionable and i know exactly where the moment was and it was mid chapter 6. what's happening in that is interesting. it's the onfirst time i'm ripping offthe customer for salomon brothers and i'm outraged i'm in a situation . i don't know i'm ripping them off buti'm ripping them off and it's funny . the story. the guy loses his job. because of something i put him into but i was so absorbed with my own experience i forgot about how i was supposed to write it and i just pulled it. i was sending in chapters the publisher two at a time and the response was so enthusiastic i started to think maybe ican do this. the backdrop of it was it was so odd was whati had sold the publishers was a history of wall street . at the end for a few pages . the book ended up being something completely different than what iintended thank god and i thought at some point i sat down and i thought my experience , i'm going to trythat but i had one hand on other writers . i had no sense that i could just be myself. and what happened is i was writing it t is i gathering confidence in just being myself. which tsense that book has neverleft me . at some point i don't know. i think about different you are now from when you were when you started writing but here i am a sweaty mess in the beginning reading all these other writers, trying to figure out how you do this stuff. borrowing their voices. when i write a book now i don't i avoid reading things. i don't want anything in my head. lli read the stuff i have to read for the book but anything that might actually kind of influence , i don't read anything. so i was getting to the point middle of the book where i was learning how to write a book as i'm writing the book whichis not something you should do . and i could see the moments where that's me o. we are and off we went. >> something you said i wanted to follow up on. you said at the time you were writing this book you would have said that you were writing a book that was an angry book aboutwall street . but yet does it read to you today like an indictment of wall street? >> know, it reads like afunny book about wall street . i know. here's a an essential truth about whatwe do . you think you wrote the book you wrote until the readers read yourbook and they tell you what you wrote and as you write the words and the readers decide what they mean . and to the extent you try to, if you try to muscle them around too much you just lose them so you have no influence . it's the mark of a good book that you leave a hole for the reader to walk into and exercise him judgment about what the book is and you get radically different responses to a book is not a bad sign, it's avery good sign . about the moral consequences of my life, it doesn't speak well. i thought if you had asked me going in what's the purpose of what you're doing aside from youwant to be a writer and read a book or whenever , i have this thing in me since i was in princeton and it comes back to this place that this idea that you are supposed to sacrifice the best in you or some idea of success was really offensive to me. i had friends who had real passions when they were undergraduates. a roommate who was born to be an oceanographer. spent his summers talking about nothing but was underwater and junior year at goldman sachs he supposed to go work at goldman sachs and erjust make a beeline for wall street to spend his career as a money manager and didn't care one way or another about what he did and i watched people make that mistake and i thought if i just demystify this for people andshow how silly it kind of is . my roommate will read this andgo be an oceanographer thinki don't need to do this . this is not important work . it's a little silly. not you're not having alot of value to the world . instead what happened was i mean, it happened right away. four months after liars poker etwas published i had 1000 letters and i need 1000 letters from college students dear mister lewis i read your book about how to get ahead on wall street and i'm more enthusiastic than ever about it and thank you for writing it and can you give me any more tips that aren't in the book. so it's also true this culture especially the english don't do this butwe do it. turn calls every book into a how-to book . it's people just don't have a read that they want to find the lessons so the lessons in the bookwere how to get ahead on wall street . so that has, that surprised me. subsequently i've seen those sorts of things happenwith other books where people read them in a completely different way . >> youth, they keep in mind liars poker was not particularly but the youthful mistake you made wasn't thinking that in showing the kind of superficiality and pointlessness of wall street you were doing them a disservice but in fact that's what they needed to be more appealing . what pitstop was wall street makes you a lot of money but it's deadly boring and you said no, actually it's kind of fun. it's crazy and nutty. what, you mean i can make money and continue to be a frat boy and it will all work out. that's what you are telling them. when does themovie wall street come out ? >> around that time. it might have preceded it. >> what's the one leo dicaprio did? >> there are three points on the continuum because all of those, those two movies are doing a much more grandiose and absurd version of the gsame thing which is there pretending what wall street is, all of these hijinks. in fact the scene where matthew mcconaughey is there with leo dicaprio and their chest pounding . . they're having three martinis in the middle of the day, that's not happening . thatnever happens . >> know, so anyway it did have this odd effect. the first thought was wow. i can't believe i got away with this. like, this book worked. i was cringing at what i was reading. i was taking a pen to it and julia stopped me from changing the book because i would have changed quite a bit about the book that was the first reaction . the second reaction was how much funnier i was when i didn't think i was being funny then when i thought i wasbeing funny. when i thought i was being funny wasn't very funny . i know when i was writing it i was vastly amused by myself . i was laughing the whole time and the parts where i thought i was most amused by myself were not the parts that most amused the reader. the next thought i had was where i could see places where i had screwed up the story. the truth about it is the material was so good it was idiot proof. i had such good material i could make a lotof mistakes and get away with it . and i just saw the mistakes as i went through it. >> the genius, it has the clear one of the greatest titles. all great titles follow one simple rule which is there must be a puzzling and pleasing contradiction between the two word titles. there must be between the e two nouns there must be a pleasing but puzzling contradiction. silent spring. perfect. unsafe at any speed. liars poker. poker is a game in which we live so what does a game of liars look like played by liars ? what does that mean? fantastic. >> you've already bought more about my title. then i thought about itever . and when we, one of the things we did when i was starting to record the book is i went into ourstorage facility . i've done everything into a box, toss the box into an addict so i didn't know what was in the box and i opened the liars poker box and the top was a manila folder which just said title ideas on it. it had a lot of stuff in it but they were all written out on the front . the before it was liars poker , it was almost bonds of passion. >> if you have that you literally wouldn't be on the show. >> i know. there were like 50 really bad titles before that one. so that happens. anyway, what are we doing here? i thought we had some other people. >> we have one minute 48 seconds left. you could give us one more story and we can ask one question. audience, one question from the audience. we only have room for one. anyone want to step up? >> i'll say this, out of all the books i've written the one where you put the camera on me while i was writing it where i would most like a writer in a movie, it was the premonition. i've never felt so much like a conduit, the story just flowed through me and i can't tell you very much about the book but i can tell you about the back story. so it's supposedly about the pandemic, it's actually not about the pandemic, it's everything leading up to the pandemic . through three characters we are seeing the bridges in our system that lead to the response we have. and i stopped it. i had in mind before i wrote the book, before the pandemic i had this idea that i was going to my next book i was going to startwith a character and let the story worry about itself . the character i was found so compelling that we would follow that character anywhere and the character is in a situation and i have the character and the situation . so at the back of my mind going into the pandemic i'd also written a book called the fifth risk which is the risk mechanisms managing the federal government and how we neglected it for generations and what would happen if something bad happened that's the ingredients going into this . i found i think three of the best characters lyi've ever had and certainly a woman at the center of the book may be the best character i've ever written. and so what i discovered was actually that's the joy that's where i get the joy, writing about the characters . it sounds weird because we're in the middle of this grim period but the nine months i was working on it, six months i was writing it obviously it itwas the most joyful six months i have as a writer. it's a fun book about the pandemic, right? >> i shouldn't say anything. >> we've got people coming on after us is the problem. we've got to cut it off. >> wrap it up here. >> i should wrap it up. >> i was going to ask you whether you were writing a book about the pandemic today . >> it's such a dreary subject the pandemic itself but the stuff leading up to it is interesting so i don't think i would write a book aboutthe pandemic . i knew i was going to do this . the trip was i was going to tell everybody it was a book about the pandemic and it wasn't. i don't know. it's still a failed response. you go about analyzing igthe failed response maybe in a slightly different way. >> michael, people are looking at me with daggers in their eyes. i want to thank you for being part of ourcontinuing conversation . 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