Michael Lewis on Why the World Is Still Reading “Liar’s Poker”

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

So Tracy, one topic that we actually don't talk about that much, that we have a few times, is Wall Street itself. We talk about markets, all different kinds, talk a lot about e-cons and theoretical finance.

Actual Wall Street, banking, et cetera, we probably could talk about it more.

Tracy Alloway (0:37)

I feel like we do quite a few market structure episodes, but you're right. We don't get so much into, I guess the experience of actually working in those markets.

Joe Weisenthal (0:50)

No, we don't.

And of course, it's an interesting time. I mean, it's always an interesting time, but so many other banks are doing extraordinarily well. And I feel like for both of us, our careers post great financial crisis, we like, I think the standard thing is like each year, it's like, oh, bonuses are down at this bank or trading is down or left. And it feels like that at least right now for the moment, it's a very, a lot of up arrows on Wall Street.

Tracy Alloway (1:17)

But I do feel like there's a weird dichotomy at the moment in the sense that the banking and trading results have been excellent and it's definitely boom times for Wall Street. But on the other hand, a lot of people are expressing unhappiness about the actual job at the moment, right? You have a lot of younger bankers, especially who just don't seem that into Wall Street at the moment.

Joe Weisenthal (1:40)

No, they all wanna go work on crypto. They're the probably, everyone else is traveling and working from Tulum or something like that.

And their bosses are telling them to come into the office and they're not having as much fun. And so yes, there was a great, our colleague Max Abelson wrote a great piece recently. So it was like, everyone's making a lot of money on Wall Street, but no one's having any fun.

Tracy Alloway (2:04)

Yeah, exactly. So today we are going to get into the actual experience of working on Wall Street and how it's changed and why fewer people seem to be enjoying it and why everyone wants to go into crypto, I guess.

Joe Weisenthal (2:16)

Yeah, so we have an amazing, the perfect guest for it. We're going to be speaking with the author Michael Lewis. Of course, he is the author of numerous books, but of course, one of his most famous Liar's Poker about Wall Street came out in 1989 His most recent book is The Premonition.

He also has his own podcast, Against the Rules. And he's also, while we're talking about Liar's Poker, done a new audio book and come out with a new sort of five episode mini series podcast sort of that goes along with it called Other People's Money. So really just a real treat to have him on. Let's get right to it. Michael, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Michael Lewis (2:57)

Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:00)

So why now to revisit Liar's Poker?

Michael Lewis (3:03)

So two things happened at once. One was the audio rights of the book reverted to me. They reverted to me at a time when I've been, because of the podcast, I've been talking to my podcast company, Pushkin Industries, about how we would do audio books informed by what we've learned about podcasts. Like the audio books typically are just, you just read them and nothing else is going on.

And they really are starting to produce audio books. And we were looking for an excuse to do a fun, a more fun audio book.

And this thing never got done. I mean, never, even back when Liar's Poker was published, there was really not a market.

There was like, they'd sent out these cassettes, you know, and it was an abridged, very abridged version. So the fact that it hadn't been done, that so many more people are kind of listening than reading, it just seemed like, and the thing still sells, like I don't know how many, 50,000 copies a year. It's still, so it still was a market for it. But the other thing that happened was my eldest child is a junior in college, and she has now three times said, my friend just came back from an internship on Wall Street and they were made to read Liar's Poker, to understand the, which makes no sense. But the fact that this thing is being now handed out as sort of like a work manual, it interested me. And I just thought, plus the asterisk to all of this was, I never read the book again. I mean, I wrote it and I published it in 1989 I guess I read Little Bits and Pieces when I was on book tour back then. But apart from that, I've never picked it up. And so it's just like, I was curious what was in it.