Michael Lewis on the Crafts of Writing, Friendship, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss interviews Michael Lewis in a wide-ranging conversation about how he stumbled into writing without formal training. Lewis recounts his early plagiarism scandal, his Princeton thesis, his unlikely break at The Economist, and his decision to leave a lucrative Wall Street job at Salomon Brothers to write Liar's Poker. He digs into his creative process, the role of blunt editors like Michael Kinsley, his productive laziness and high bar for choosing projects, and how he decides a story is worth a book. The episode also explores his deliberate cultivation of happiness, the nature of friendship through the lens of Kahneman and Tversky, his exercise habits, and his new season of Against the Rules about coaching.

• Lewis was nearly expelled from the Isidore Newman school in seventh grade for copying a book's back-cover blurb as his Johnny Tremain book review, not realizing it was plagiarism.
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• His Princeton thesis advisor William Childs, when asked what he thought of the writing, replied 'put it this way, never try to make a living at it.'
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• Lewis got his start at The Economist by writing about a breast cancer detection device from a New Orleans hospital after spotting a 600-word writing competition in the magazine.
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• He walked away from a Salomon Brothers bonus of $225,000 (promised to double the next year) to take a $40,000 book advance to write Liar's Poker.
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• After an op-ed exposed his identity, Salomon Brothers asked him to keep writing under a pseudonym; he used his mother's maiden name, Diana Bleeker.
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• Liar's Poker was meant as a cautionary tale, but readers wrote daily thanking him for the 'how-to book' on making money on Wall Street, fueling the very behavior he critiqued.
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• Lewis says he consciously adopted the narrative of being 'the happiest person anybody knows,' finding the self-told story to be genuinely happiness-inducing.
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• Moneyball began as a question about resentment between unequally paid teammates, then became a book when Lewis realized it was really about how markets misvalue people.
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• Lewis never wrote for school newspapers or studied literature or creative writing, yet became fully absorbed writing his Princeton art history thesis on the sculptor Donatello.
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• He had an F on his Princeton transcript in a pass/fail class called 'physics for poets' because he played racquetball instead of attending lab.
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• Matt Ridley, then deputy science editor at The Economist, told Lewis 'you're a fraud, but you're a very good fraud, and that's a journalist.'
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• Lewis writes wearing headphones with a soundtrack of looping songs that changes book to book; his family and kids suggest tracks, and the music's purpose is to block out interruptions.
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• The Moneyball soundtrack was Johnny Cash; he often listens to soundtrack songs thousands of times without learning the lyrics because he isn't truly listening.
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• The quote 'people waste years of their lives not being willing to waste hours of their lives' came from Amos Tversky, a main character in The Undoing Project.
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• On his deathbed, Amos Tversky told Danny Kahneman no human had caused him more agony; Kahneman replied he felt the same way.
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• Kahneman told caustic students not to ask if a statement is true, but 'what might it be true of' — showing how smart you are by showing how smart everyone else is.
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• Tim Galway, founder of the 'inner game' coaching philosophy, was told his book The Inner Game of Tennis would sell only 20,000 copies; it has since sold millions.
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• Lewis, a self-described non-swimmer who sinks to the bottom of the pool, swam Alcatraz under a swimming coach who screams at him for an hour at a time.
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