Of congress, thank you david, the chairman of the festival, and we are going to have a little chat here just, a couple of old friends along with 1 million other new acquaintances here in the hall. Michael and i go way back and lets just start out talking youre an art history major at princeton, right, and then you go off to wall street and you do really, really well, michael, you could have been rich. [laughter] i mean, you could have your own plane at this point instead you went into the book business, tell us how that came about. So you know joe and i were classmates. This is an opportunity for joel toow express resentments he fee. Thats right. [laughter] yes. This is the project joel and michael. The fact that that, yeah. So the question is why i quit wall street . So i didnt know i i what i wand to do with my life, when i got out, you know, i didnt have any plan. It didnt occur to me. I think partly because of how i grew up. I grew up in new whar lanes where nobodyny really did anythg for a living. [laughter] it didnt occur to me that i would have to and its a place where careers go to die but it was a great place to study and i loved it. I didnt have any kind of plan. The job on wall street fell into my lap and it was a way to make a living but by the time i got it, i had figured out i wanted to write, kind of a twoyear gap in there h. How did you figure that out . You know, it was when you had to writed like i did. Basically write a book to get out of princeton and i loved it like i loved no Academic Experience and i kind of made the jump in my mind, well, this would be a good thing to do forever, if you could. The false start i had it would mean academic career and the thesis the guy who supervised, the guy who supervise it is thesis not only told me that i wasnt made for academic career but i asked him at the end of my thesisy defense, i was feeling vain about the writing, put it this way, never try to make a living at it. [laughter] revenge against william ap, if you see that man where is he now . No one has heard of him. He was great. He was a wonderful professor, archaeologist. I started just to submit wilynilly, i didnt know anybody who wrote for a living. It was a quick enterprise. Writers market, it was about that thick and it had the name and addresses of all the editors in americais and for some reasoi got it in my head that the easiest thing i might be able to breakthrough is inflight mag zeeps. I started and volunteering at a soup kitchen and i thought the street people were so interesting. I start today write pieces about homeless people. You do understand we are in the business ofke doing, we are tryg to get people to go to places and not flee them. [laughter] it took me a while to figure out the market. [laughter] but eventually i started to get things in print, an editor in washington basically gave me my start. The economist in london gave me my start but michael kensly, editor in new york public, i called him, i really want to write for your magazine, he thought he gave me a chance, hent published a couple of thin. But then i get this job on wall street and the job on wall street promises a fortune, i mean, it doesnt sound like a fortune now but it was 100,000 a year. But you put that today, a couple of hundred thousand dollars. 25, 26 . 23. 23. And i thought, this is incredible. I have to go do this just to see what it is. By then i, knew i wanted to wre for a living. I have a friend from my training class and you joke about i could have been rich, but the people in my training class pity me. They all went and actually got they hit wall street just the right time to get really, really rich. I have a friend who says, when we met the first day of class, he introduced himself and said, he start today tell me how he wanted to go into mortgage bonds and whatever and i said my name is Michael Lewis and im here to write a book and that i had it in mind that i would write about this place and i might have had at least the back of my mind and i w wrote while i was there, log answer that you t want, but this is a lot book career happened. While i was there, i started to write about b i started to write and continue today write about other things and i started to publish pieces about wall street and i put a piece on the oped of the wall street journal that had at bottom Michael Lewis and the piece argued that Investment Bankers were overpaid. [laughter] i was working in london and i came in to work the next day and the head of solman brothers europe was sitting in my desk and was great guy, happened to been be the guy that gave me the job. Do you realize what youve done. A piece in the journal, thats great. [laughter] he says, we have had a crisis meeting with the board of directors solomon brothers to how we are doing to deal with this piece because its being printed with local newspapers around the country. We are getting calls. I said, thats great. He said, no, this is a big, big problem. He wasnt going fire me, oddly, he wasnt going to fire me then yet but he said, he said, how are we going to fix this problem and i said, you tell me because the way we could fix it is you dont write anymore and i said, no, its not going to happen, im going to keep writing and he was fond of me, he wanted me to stay,e what if you load under a different name and i said, instantly came into my mind, what if i wrote into the name of diana blinker, perfect, nobody will think a woman is a man, do theke connection. Stuff i was saying right around me under the name diana blinker and oneta day i get home from wk and dianas career is taking off. People want to read about wall street in 1987, i get off from work one day and theres a phone call and actor chase, his dad was editor, very distinguished book editorhe and its him. I found out that youre diana blinker and he said, i think you should write a book. You dont have to do it for me but you should write a book. From that moment, september of 1997 i was out the door, i knew thats what i wanted to do. Youre not going to no. Im the potted plant. Yes, yes. [laughter] youre the carrot in the school play. [laughter] so what happened next [laughter] was i went nil they gave my my bonus because i didnt want to lose thatt and, a huge pile f money and i said im leave to go write a book, and he said, what to write about and i said wall street. I wasnt sure, they took me into a room and they didnt care that i was writing a book on wall street. That wasnt what concerned them, they thought i was out of my mind. They said, you do understand, you made 250 this year and next year its like 500 and then after that millions of dollars a year, you can stay here for another decade and in ten years you wont have to work and then you can write your books basically, dont do this to yourself, they felt sorry for me but i was so out the door that it didnt even occur to me that that i was so enamored with the process, amused with myself as now [laughter] what happened when i sat down with a blank sheet of paper, 24, i was 26 then. You know, you kind of go with this will not work for everyone, this career path. But certainly being selfamused is a good personality trait for this business and no question. I have a bunch of michaels books, this is big short which everyone knows this book. [applause] tons of fans. At the end of the book is an actually heroine encounter with bojohn, may he rest in piece tel us, theres a moment where your old boss says, major career and put it in slightly different urterms, he said, and the reasoi went to go see him, it seemed clear to me when i wrote that that was ate bookend. I had come in, a lot of the forces that had led to the financial crisis had been had been set in motion while by solomon brothers and i was watching the end of a process that john had helped put in motion and the big one was turning the wall street partnerships into corporations. But is it scary though to see him . It was terrifying. And he booked a table for two at hiss favorite restaurant around the corner from his house when i sent him a note saying i would love to sit down with you. He said, yes, he didnt say much more than that. I got there on time and he did not and the table was one of tables where you sit together with your legs together like your on a date and i sat down and i start today sweat, i thought, what is this, he set this up so we are going to sit like this for two hours. He walks in and he says, first thing he says, is youre your book made the career and ruined mind. And then you had a lovely lunch after that . No, i said that seems that seems misinterpretation of history tolu me that i dont thk my book ruined your career. It didnt help but it didnt ruin your career. And when settled in and i see him from time to time after that, after that he was genial, he kept a box of book under the desk to sign for people when they came into his office. [laughter] thats a win. Im your biggest customer. [laughter] so you gave the commencement speech at princeton a few years back and you described yourself as lucky and said some people are just lucky and those of us who know you well you work incrediblyba hard, right, youra very hard worker, you have an incredible gift for telling a story, you write and, so, you know, lucky, f no, youre not lucky, what has been your secret in terms finding stories not only that people want too read but that no one else has told. The big short being the classic example, we had all been writing about the financial crisis, the Great Recession and you come in with something that no one else really had written, so how do you find this stuff . All right, so so i will answer that question, its not true that im not lucky. I mean, an incredible serendipity, the fact that i wanted to be a writer and i got the job in the very best place on earth to write about wall street in the 1980s, i was not only in the firm but the place in the firm, the you know, i was i was given the leisure by my parents to go around and if they hadnt done that i wouldnt haves become a writer. Huge advantages. Huge advantages. The point of the speech was, it ise odd odd conceit in our culture that once youve made it,ee it was inevitable becausef the virtue of you and that, in fact, thats not how it works. Obama was write when he said, you didnt build it. That its [applause] you are so you are such the recipient of benefits to this culture bestows on you and not to and to tell the story without a high level of awareness of that, thats what im trying to get across princeton kids. Its getting harder and harder to see how lucky you are. Anyway so, yes, you had a lot of advantages and you had the freedom to look around and improvise, but, you know, you also y found these stories thato one else saw, the classic one is the blind side, tell us how you, a friend of yours told you such and such and you have an incredible book that becomes a movie. The blind side, typical of how i find stories in that you see that its just chance, a chance in the story, slightly different but the blind side what happened it started with a bottle of wine in New York Times editor jared and we were sitting in new york, i remember the restaurant. Cover story for the New York Times magazine, it was whatever it was, 2005 or 4, around there. And he was thinking important people. He was thinking jamie dimon. Never really interest me. I said, you know, if you want me to write someone important, let me write about the teacher who life. It happened to be my baseball coach but he was a teacher. He said, okay, go do it and while i was doing that i thought, well, im going to write about this personal story about this coach. I would talk to some of the people on my team. I was a pitcher on the team, sean, played by tim mcgraw the movie blind side was the catcher, so i went to see him and i didnt see him and he picks me up at the memphis airport, this poor boy, in high school he had not enough to eat. He made great good of himself, he was a wonderful athlete, drafted to play in the nba, he was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in high school and he had gone onto make a fortune in the fastfood business. Heig wanted to show me his mansion, he took me to his mansion and we spoke for two hours or s so about our old coah and the whole time in his living room there was a 65inch 350pound black kid who didnt say a word and who was not introduced to me. He was like you were when i was [laughter] he was the character in school play and on the way back to the airport i said, sean, who is the black kid and he said, thats william, our new project and he start today get teary, we saw him standing in the bus stop in the snow in tshirt and shorts and she recognized him as someone coming to kids school, what are you doing in shirt and tshirt and put him in the car and drove him home and he hasnt turned out that he had no family, he was living on the streets, nothing to eat, illiterate and liane, rich white evangelical republican living in thell outskirts of racially divided city and said, im going to fix him and im going to make him a rich white evangelical christian. [laughter] and thats what sean was amused. Dont get in her way. Shes going to do it, shes going to do it. And i started following and i thought thats odd. I thought, i will just follow that. Can i finish how the book comes out because thats not a book, i thought, thats interesting, curious thing and i just want to know more. Flash forward, a few weeks, money ball had come out not that long before. I got to be friends with the several nfl cutoffs. The brain trust was great. Theres not a money ball story in football. Its the same story. Everybody has same amount of money to spend. Its not about thinking about how to do more with less, what it is about is figuring out to distribute your money across the field and i said, well, can you give me a history of that happens since free agency created a market and he pulled it out and it was really remarkable that you had this character on the offensive line, the left tackle who protected the quarterbacks blind side whose salary had gone from the lowest paid on the field along with yellow line to second highest after the quarterback because he was the insurance policy and most valuable asset because if the quarterback got hit, he could get hurt in a way that, he wouldnt normally. And i thought, thats interesting, flash forward, six or eight months, i had been hearing about michael down in memphis and the story of getting rich and emotional. Its not my story, my old high school, and sean calls me and said, youre not going to believe what just happened, theres a lot of that. You cannot believe what just happened. Alabama coach, he was in lsu coach, came through a school, he was looking at some players in our school and he saw michael on a Basketball Court and sean flew him and he said, sean, thats a future nfl left tackle. You can see from the way he moves hes nfl tackle. Sean, do you know what they get paid, no, thats what he was. I told him the story about the nfl financial story and i start today think, well, theres a story here and the story is because the kid the moment he was identified as the future of nfl left tackle which he, indeed, became, he went from he was like the most prized kid in the universe, he had gone from the least valued 15yearold on earth to the most valued 17yearold in a flash and i thought theres a story that can be organized along the lines, what are the forces in this kids life that changed his value and one of those forces is stuff happened in nfl strategy, but one of those forces is a mother and once i realized that, i had a story and this always happens, i had it for six months before i had the nerve to say, yeah, im going to write, i thought, i kind of thought, i often think that theres someone better to write this, someone who actually has empathy or someone who actually knows emotions or someone who or someone who knows about psychology or someone who knows theres always some thats alien to me, so i really shouldnt be the one to do it but the truth is, the fact that its alien too you is why you should do it because enables you to get across to other people to whom its alien the stuff about it is interesting. So what pushed me over the edge when sean came out and he was a commentator for the memphis grizzlies, they were playing the warriors and went to dinner and start today telling my wife and i some of the stories. Hewi mentioned to my wife and it was interesting when michael came into the house, because we took him into the room and he showed him the bed and he staired at it, ive never had a bed. He was 15 years old and never had a bed and my wife started crying anddg she got in the car and said afterwards, youre an idiot if you do anything but write this book and so i started to write the book. But it sounds like a oneoff kind of thing but that happened in various forms over and over and over. You have a common theme of unrecognized value in several of books. I mean, is that a conscious thing you shoot more and think toed yourself, this book, every business person in america is going to buy the books at the next flight because what youre sort of saying with money ball, blind side, the big short, you know, and really with the new book, undoing project, seems differently about this, theres value out there if you can recognize it, is that a conscious theme you have . No, it is a theme what does seem to happen a lot and i dont quite know why, i mean, i can guess why but the books come to market a lot and the way markets dont function sometimes very well. Markets are miraculous in a lot of ways but so value comes from market, the value into the market and so we do have market angles of them and i say ive always been since i left new orleans and always been bemuised amused of what gets valued and why because i came from a place that was very charming place to grow up, it was really rich interesting childhood, i loved it and i loved the culture, i loved thegr people ad the place and it was a failed place. It was not valued. And so the fact that you see this over and over. People who are special who dont get valued properly and people who are distinctly not special who get valued very highly and that so that has always interested me since i was a little kid, really interested me. He introduced me to the stock market which i never had an interest and still dont have much of ann interest but hes obsessed with it, he likes to watchch his portfolio, just wath it and [laughter] i dont get that, but so hes watching the portfolio and say i am going to give you 10 shares of raw stock so you can learn how to watch it too and i was 13 or 14, black book in which to keep theit record of wt i saw when i was watching it and he gave me 10 shares which was a Restaurant Company and he gave it to me because new orleans restaurants were own and 20 a share but he paid 220 and i said, well, 10 shares is 12 a share, so 200, whats the other 20 bucks, thats what we had to pay to buy the stock and i said, im going to get this, thats outrageous, he charges 20 bucks for us to go buy, how does that happen . And i remember having outraged of the value assign today that role even back then. So you invented online trading, right . [laughter] we should talk just as a novelty