Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A former city trader turned writer, best known for bestselling books Moneyball and The Big Short, both adapted into Oscar-nominated films.
On the island
Eight records
It's the first album I remember ever buying. I must have been 10 or 11 years old. And it's the first song I remembered kind of dancing around to in my underpants. And I imagine that's what I'd be doing on a deserted island in the first place: dancing around on my underpants.
Old DaysFavourite
I love the song and I still listen to it and it takes me back to about age 13 in the Chicago old days.
There was always a point in the dance, and everybody knew it was coming. And you were going to have to decide whether to ask a girl to dance to it. There's a line, and it's if there is a bustle in your hedgerow.
Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé
She put this song in my hands. She said, You've got to listen to this. So I started putting on headphones and just listening to the same song over and over and over. And this is the song I wrote Liars Poker to.
This is a song that has managed to live on virtually all of my soundtracks even after I edit them. So when I go right now, when I go home, I'm probably going to start another book and I'll pull out my soundtrack and I'll get rid of half the songs on it. This is on it. It will remain.
And so she put this song in my hand so I would know who REM was. And it's Losing My Religion.
So I took my child by the hand and sat right behind Eddie Vetter. Pearl Jam was about to play. And they start playing the song, Who's Better Man? And I look around and I realize all the other little kids are disabled kids. The level of mortification and social embarrassment was about as high as it's ever been. And my wife never lets me forget it. And this is the song that triggers the memory.
And this was the first song she sent me. And I thought how great it is that my kid knows me. And it's Roller Coaster by Bleachers.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:46How do you know when you're onto something good?
It's a very distinct feeling I get when I know I'm going to write a book, and it's that I have an obligation to the story. It's so good. And if I don't tell it, nobody else will, kind of thing. I get that feeling.
Presenter asks
2:02Where did you start telling the story of The Fifth Risk?
Well, first I found out this curious thing. And the curious thing was what had happened when Donald Trump was elected president... none of these briefings ever happened, ever, and that I could go to the person who maintained the nuclear arsenal and be the first person to hear how it worked, I realized there was at least the beginning of a story.
Presenter asks
9:32What was wrong with you that your mother was trying to fix?
In my mind, nothing. I was always pretty happy with myself, but I caused endless trouble. I was a grifter and a vandal by the time I was [ten or] eleven years old.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
John Kennedy Toole
which is not just a brilliant comic novel, but it is the single best description of the New Orleans I grew up in that's ever been written.
The luxury
a photo album that would have pictures of all the people I love, so I'd have those associations.
How much of an idea did you have as a young man of what you wanted to do with your life?
Zero. It didn't even occur to me that I would have to do something with my life... I fell in love with the doing of the thing.
Presenter asks
12:40Did you feel you fitted in at Salomon Brothers?
The answer to that is no, because I was always a fraud, because I wasn't there for a career. I was there to get some money, and then very quickly I figured out I was there to get material.
Presenter asks
15:35What did it feel like to be inside the 1987 financial crash while it was happening?
For me, it was thrilling because it was all material. And what I felt, I felt as if I was watching the end of my story. At the core of the story was the financial system has become absurd... I thought I was writing the end of a story, and I was writing the beginning of a story.
“I do think that if you gave my wife a choice between having a sex tape of me released publicly with someone else or my choice of music on desert island discs, she would rather have the sex tape out there.”
“Do as little as possible, and that unwillingly, for it is better to receive a slight reprimand than to perform an arduous task.”
“my mother looks at me with just like steely eyes and she said, Do you know that for seven years, you have made my life a sheer hell? And I remember thinking, yeah, I won.”
“There was a period when I was kind of 12, 13, 14, where I would routinely get up, I'd set an alarm for like two in the morning. I would sneak downstairs, go out the back door, slip onto my banana-seated bike, and meet two friends on a corner in pitch black, and run around the city pulling hood ornaments and key covers off cars.”
“And one of her friends is outside waiting for her. And he's wearing a purple velour jacket, and he's got long, cascading, dark locks. My first thought was, this is so great that a lawyer can wear that kind of thing. I was introduced to him. I instantly said, I just think it's so great that you are wearing that. You're able to pull that off. And he's looking at me like strangely, but then that moment passes. And then we spend the next three hours having dinner. And I adore this guy. He's just the best. I could see why he would be a successful lawyer, even though he's wearing this purple velour jacket. Now, at the end of the dinner, my now wife says to me, like, what was that about? Like, with a purple. And I said, and I just thought, lawyer. She said, he's not a lawyer. That's Peter Buck. He's the guitarist. He's for REM.”
“So I took my child by the hand and sat right behind Eddie Vetter. Pearl Jam was about to play. And they start playing the song, Who's Better Man? And I look around and I realize all the other little kids are disabled kids. The level of mortification and social embarrassment was about as high as it's ever been.”