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 f