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Pushkin Industries

Michael Lewis’s best-selling book The Big Short is now 15 years old. The Oscar-winning movie based on it came out a decade ago. To mark the occasion, Lewis has narrated a new audiobook of The Big Short. Here on his podcast, he and co-host Lidia Jean Kott are thinking about the legacy of the book, the movie, and the financial crisis of 2008. Michael catches up with the director of the movie, Adam McKay, as well as some of the real-life characters depicted by the likes of Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Jeremy Strong. He also calls up journalists, economists, and historians to make sense of the 2008 financial crisis and to understand how it still affects the world today.

Pre-order The Big Short audiobook, now narrated by Michael Lewis, on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books, pushkin.fm/bigshort or wherever you get audiobooks.

iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis: The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried

Back in 2008, Michael Lewis started paying attention to Wall Street again, as banks and investment funds started to announce massive losses. Fifteen years ago, he published The Big Short, about a group of traders and investors who bet against a market that refused to see what was coming. Now it’s time to revisit both the book and the Oscar-winning movie based on it. The Big Short Companion series starts Oct. 14.
 
Pre-order The Big Short audiobook, now narrated by Michael Lewis, on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books, pushkin.fm/bigshort or wherever you get audiobooks.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Big Short is Big Back

Is anyone trying to regulate sports gambling on the federal level in the US? In the fall of 2024, Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced a bill with New York Congressman Paul Tonko. The SAFE Bet would restrict sports gambling ads and would help fund more gambling addiction treatment, among other things. Blumenthal speaks with Michael Lewis about why he sees sports gambling as a public health disaster in the making.
 
Further reading: Blumenthal’s press release on the SAFE Bet Act.

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Sen. Richard Blumenthal on the SAFE Bet Act

Michael Lewis invites over Yale psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos, host of The Happiness Lab at Pushkin, for a chat about what scientific research has to tell us about sports fandom, teenagers, and gambling.
 
You can sign up for The Happiness Lab newsletter here.

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Dr. Laurie Santos on Group Psychology, the Teen Brain, and Happiness

As an anthropologist, Natasha Schüll spent more than a decade doing field work in Vegas casinos, especially among the slot machine addicts. She tells Michael Lewis why many of those who play slots actually hate to win. And she talks about how the digital overhaul of Vegas has made all forms of gambling, including sports gambling, more like slots.
 
For further reading: Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas by Natasha Schüll.

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Natasha Schüll on the Antisocial Lure of Gambling

Perhaps you have someone in your life who’s prone to sports gambling. Michael Lewis has someone. So he comes up with a scheme to “inoculate” his 17-year-old son against the lure of placing bets online. All the while, Lewis tries to craft the perfect “master class” for would-be gamblers to understand the dangers of what they might be getting themselves into.
 
Here's his reading list:
 
The Logic of Sports Betting by Matt Davidow and Ed Miller
 
Stephen Pinker’s Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
 
Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil
 
 

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Episode 10: “Anybody Can Win, but Everybody’s Gonna Lose”

Michael Lewis gets a glimpse of sports gambling's future by talking with writers in Great Britain and Australia, where the industry is even more entrenched. But the US has its own peculiar history of failing to regulate dangerously addictive new products, and blaming the users instead. Especially when powerful industry advocates are able to pay scientists to sow doubt and delay the day of reckoning.
 
For further reading: 
Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of our World by Dan Davies
 
Crikey’s coverage on sports gambling in Australia: Punted
 
Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain: The Story of the Sackler Family and Purdue Pharma
 
Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 9: Framing the Gambler

Has betting based on inside intel on games gone down since sports gambling was legalized in the US? Not really, as Michael Lewis finds out. But what's gone up is misery for athletes. We hear from Atlanta Hawks forward Larry Nance, Jr. about the rage, threats and wheedling that pro athletes now endure. The NCAA, former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, is trying to protect student athletes on campus, while their friends all bet on them, often underaged. Overall, the “integrity landscape” for US sports looks more and more pot-holed by the day.
 
For further reading: NCAA sports wagering survey

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Episode 8: The Integrity Landscape

Just recently, Michael Lewis was a guest on the "Prof G" podcast with Scott Galloway. He talks about the rise of sports betting and why the consequences might be a "disaster" for US society. And the two discuss the subject of Lewis's latest book, "Going Infinite." 

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Michael Lewis on the Prof G Pod

On a visit to Las Vegas, Michael Lewis meets three old-school sports bookies. Chris Andrews, Jimmy Vaccaro, and Vinny Magliulo book bets and set odds at the South Point Hotel Casino. They talk about how they got started in Vegas, the origins of the prop bet, and why it's bad for business to limit smart bets.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Vegas Sports Bookies on Old-School Betting

Michael Lewis sits down with Billy Walters, one of the most famous sports bettors of all time. They talk about Walters' impoverished childhood in Kentucky, and his transformation from an auto dealer to a professional poker player in Las Vegas to a sobered-up millionaire who's been indicted five times.
 
For further reading: Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Michael Lewis on the Prof G Pod

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