Two years ago, writer Michael Lewis went on a walk with crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. After the catastrophic collapse of FTX last fall, Bankman-Fried now stands trial in Manhattan federal court.
This week, Michael Lewis returns to the show with his new book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (5:51). We walk through the latest events in Bankman-Fried’s criminal fraud case (7:27), the subject at the center of this winding story (12:06), and why Lewis was first interested in observing him (17:50). Then, he unpacks Bankman-Fried’s belief in effective altruism (20:00), his probabilistic approach to trading (23:50), and how his Stanford law professor parents shaped his thinking (27:36).
On the back-half, we discuss the ten-day period of FTX’s collapse (38:00), the scene in the Bahamas as Bankman-Fried filed for bankruptcy (47:10), and why Lewis felt a kinship with Sam’s parents in that moment (50:32). To close, Michael reflects on his own journalistic tendencies (55:10) and how he managed to write this book in the aftermath of great personal tragedy (1:06:50).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.