Michael Lewis: The NIH “Murder Mystery,” DOGE, and Our Government Immune System

Eric Topol (0:00)

Well, we are about to get started. I am just so thrilled to have one of my favorite authors, maybe my favorite author, with me today.

This is book number 21, Micheal, is that right? 21?

Michael Lewis (0:16)

I don't count them.

Eric Topol (0:17)

Something like that, it's up there. Anyway, probably the most impressive storyteller of our time. And so it's a real privilege for me to have this conversation. And we're going to get into this new book of his that's coming out October 6 It's called Blockers. And you may not know what blockers means, but we're going to get into that. It's a derogatory term as far as the government sees it. But anyway, what's really curious, Michael, is that you've written in the last, since 2019, this is the fifth book and four of them are about the US government.

Did you ever think you're going to move from Moneyball and Undoing and all these other places, new, new thing, to the government?

Michael Lewis (1:04)

No. And what I can't predict is what's going to trigger my interest. And what happened, Donald Trump is what happened. I mean, it was, and I can tell you the nature of the interest, what happened.

And when he won the first time, he clearly, it was kind of the dog caught the bus situation. He wasn't really expecting to, and he got himself in the situation where he won. And he wasn't someone who had any real experience with government, and he was going to be running this 2 million person civilian workforce. And when one of his first moves was to fire his 550 person transition team, which was just to go in and get briefings from all the people who were in there to figure out what on earth is going on in this complex operation. And he told Chris Christie that we don't really need that anymore because you and I are so smart. And he said this. He said, it'll take an hour and we'll understand it. I had the same feeling. Have you ever been in a car with someone who's driving a little too fast and they're talking to you like this, like that? And your response is all of a sudden you're looking at the road for them.

You're so scared that you hope if you look at the road more intently that they will not get in an accident. I had that feeling with him. It's like all of a sudden I was like, what doesn't he know? What is this thing? And that got me on a kind of curious journalistic investigation where I was doing, I was going to places that were supposedly sort of boring places, the Department of Agriculture, and finding, not just riveting things that were happening, like really interesting things. But it took me a while for the penny drop. Really interesting characters like, oh, these people in here are not who I thought they were.

And so which led to this stunt piece of stunt journalism, I did during the, we did during the Biden administration, where I got six writers I love. I parachuted them into the government. I said, just find a person, tell a story. And the thing just exploded in the pages of the Washington Post and did real well as an anthology.

And I thought, well, that just proved the point that like, it is interesting. And then comes along this Trump too. And instead of like, like not looking at the road, he's intent on the road and he like takes us off road in a completely different direction. And, and it was, he was gonna, he was more, he went from being intent on ignoring the thing he was supposed to manage to being so aggressive with what he was managing that he was managing things no president had managed before. And, and I just thought, oh, this thing, there's another kind of story to tell here. And I know these characters are good. What is it? And having, this isn't like a lifetime ambition of mine. I'm gonna do other things.

Eric Topol (4:04)

I really am.

Michael Lewis (4:05)

But, but I just think you got to follow what I, what I do, if I'm gonna do it well, I got to follow where I'm genuinely interested. And I just got so interested in what they were doing, that it led to this. And I got to say that writing it was like, writing was a joy. I know as disturbing as some of it is, writing was like total pleasure.

And that never once did I think, oh, I shouldn't be doing this. I do have a question. I do have a question, is anybody gonna read it? But that's a different question.