Episode 339: Michael Lewis

04/17/19 • 53 min

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Michael Lewis is the author of several bestselling books and the host of the podcast Against the Rules. “I think anything you do, if it’s going to be any good, there’s got to be some risk involved. I think the reader or the listener will sense that you were taking chances and it will excite them. So, you never want to do the same thing twice, and you don’t want to cling to something because it’s the safe thing. I try to keep that in mind. Ok, I started with this, but if I push off shore clinging to this life raft or this floatation device and I get way out of swimming range of the beach, but I find this more interesting flotation device, have the nerve to jump from one to the next. You never know where it’s going to lead.” Thanks to MailChimp, Going Through It, Green Chef, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. Lewis's author site Lewis on Longform [1:40] Against the Rules with Michael Lewis [4:55] The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (W. W. Norton & Company • 2007 [9:50] The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton & Company • 2011) [11:10] The Fifth Risk (W. W. Norton & Company • 2018) [11:40] Revisionist History [13:15] Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (W. W. Norton & Company • 2004) [14:35] The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (W. W. Norton & Company • 2016) [14:50] Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood (W. W. Norton & Company • 2010) [27:10] How I Got Into College (This American Life • 2013) [30:00] Ref, You Suck! (Against the Rules • 2019)

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Previous Episode

Episode 338: Hillary Frank

Hillary Frank is the creator of The Longest Shortest Time podcast and the author of Weird Parenting Wins. “I think motherhood is not valued in our culture. We don’t value the work of mothers both at home and then at work. Mothers are the most discriminated against people at work. They’re discriminated more against than fathers or people without children. Mothers are promoted less, hired less, and paid less. People are forced out of their jobs after they announce that they’re pregnant, they’re passed over for promotions, and they get horrible, discriminatory comments like, ‘Oh, don’t you really think you want to be at home? Do you really want to come back?‘ And American work culture is not set up for people to be parents and mothers.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @hillaryfrank hillaryfrank.com [0:35] The Longest Shortest podcast [6:00] The Special Misogyny Reserved for Mothers (New York Times • Dec 2018) [19:20] This American Life archives on family [41:35] Weird Parenting Wins: Bathtub Dining, Family Screams, and Other Hacks from the Parenting Trenches (Penguin • 2019)

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Next Episode

Episode 340: Linda Villarosa

Linda Villarosa directs the journalism program at the City College of New York and is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Her article "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" was one of Longform's Top Ten of 2018. She is at work on a new book, Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation, due out in 2020. “I think at the beginning I was afraid to say it right out, so I think I was saying ‘racial bias’ or something like that. Then I stopped. ... I think how I learned about it both in earlier reporting and in grad school and in my own research was that race is a risk factor for a bunch of different health problems, whether it’s heart disease, infant and maternal mortality, or HIV. It’s just said that race is a risk factor. It’s disproportionate. What it really is is that race is a risk factor, but it’s also a risk marker. Instead of looking at what individuals are doing wrong, it’s what society is doing wrong in creating problems for individual people which lead to health crisis. It’s sort of like bias, related to racism, is creating problems in people’s actual bodies. That’s what I came to understand. It really shifts the blame off the individual.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @lindavillarosa lindavillarosa.com Villarosa on Longform [0:40] "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2018) [5:00] "America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 2017) [13:20] "A Conversation With: Phill Wilson; Speaking Out to Make AIDS an Issue of Color" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2000)

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