Patrick Radden Keefe On Lies, Conspicuous Wealth & Moral Rot

20:14Patrick Radden Keefe:One is, yeah, for me as a parent of two adolescent boys, it took a toll to spend a couple of years talking, you know, a few times a week to a couple who'd lost a child when he was an adolescent. It doesn't, you know, there's no way not to open your heart to people like that and really try and understand their story at a bone deep level and have it not affect you as a parent. And yet where I came out was not with any sort of parenting lesson. I think I came out of it more with a sense of humility, honestly, a sense that I think it's a fantasy to think that our kids are clay and we can completely control who they become.

20:55Patrick Radden Keefe:I think it is kind of true in a weird way when they're really little, which is why, you know, you get people obsessing over organic food and all the rest of it. There's, it's like a little chemistry experiment, right? It's like, I'm going to control all the inputs here and then I can maximize the output. And I think in a kind of strange way for a lot of parents, there's a sense that people don't usually say it this way, but I think it's a little like, you know, they're going to be like me, but better. I'm going to kind of tweak the next generation. Right. And they start to change. And I think that happened before phones, but I think phones really make it much more dramatic.

21:28Right. But it also, in this case, allows Zach to transform himself, right? And put on a new suit, as you know, which kids tend to do, and so do adults, by the way. Everybody has some sort of mask in some way. I know this is going to sound weird, but if you could talk to Zach, what would you have wanted to ask him? Oh, wow.

21:48Patrick Radden Keefe:Karen, nobody's asked me that yet. I'm a professional.

21:55Patrick Radden Keefe:I mean, there are a bunch of parts of this story that I still don't understand even now. And so there are certain details that I'd want to know. There are certain deals he was doing, and I still don't understand what was kind of happening under the hood of those deals. There are certain episodes I'd want to better understand. I think the biggest thing, and it actually goes to a question you asked earlier, would be just what was the plan? You know, what was the longer term plan? Where was this going? Because there are these moments in this story where he seems almost like the talented Mr. Ripley.

22:27Patrick Radden Keefe:It seems like he's playing some kind of slow burn, long game con. But I don't think he actually had a plan like that. I think he was, like a lot of kids who are 18, 19 years old, I think he was just thinking one or two moves ahead. So I think that's what I would want to ask him. Where did you see this going? Now, it doesn't come to a necessarily conclusion, but when you think about sort of the repercussions, because his parents didn't, for people who don't know, London is a notoriously tabloid place. Everything goes into these tabloids, and this story didn't. which is, of course, it seems like it's fantastic for the tabloids, right?

23:09What was the impetus for the parents? Why did they talk to you? And what were the trade-offs you had in that regard? Because I'm assuming it was in your mind.

23:19Patrick Radden Keefe:Oh, every day, yeah. So Zach died in 2019, and his parents kept it quiet. They, you know, I think they're both very private people and also pretty sophisticated people, And I think that they very quickly were able to see if the Daily Mail got hold of this story, they'd have a field day and it would be really unpleasant for our family. And so when I actually first heard the story, I heard it totally by chance. I was producing this Hulu series, Say Nothing, based on my book. And I was on set one day and I fell into conversation with a guy who knew the family and he said, I might have a story for you.

23:53Patrick Radden Keefe:And when I went back to my apartment that night, I Googled Zach Brettler, death, balcony, and there was nothing. So that was, you know, years after his death. It wasn't on the internet anywhere. It just interested you. The story just interested you. Like, huh. In a second. I mean, when he told me the bare outlines of the story that there was this family who had a kid who died in mysterious circumstances and it turned out he'd been pretending he was the son of a Russian oligarch. Oh, yeah. Hello. I was in. Right. You know, it was an open question whether the family would talk to me. And so we had a series of conversations totally off the record.

24:24Patrick Radden Keefe:I didn't even bring a notebook. and it was just fortuitous that the police who really bungled this investigation had kind of botched the whole thing and the formal process had kind of just run its course at the point where they happened to meet me. Right. So they were frustrated. Yeah, they were frustrated. I think they had an appetite to push a little harder in the investigation. I think they also frankly felt a little gaslit by the police because the Metropolitan Police in London had basically said, You shouldn't expect anything more from us. And their perspective was, well, there are all these really key people you never called.

24:59Patrick Radden Keefe:You know, there are these rocks you didn't look under. And so when I came along, they ended up welcoming the idea of me diving into it. Now, to your question, it was a tricky one because I felt enormous compassion for this family. and I had a huge amount of access to them, not just in conversations, but they gave me text messages and emails and all the files that the police gave them. And they, when Zach went missing, they would, Matthew and Michelle, the parents would record the conversations they had in real time with people when they were looking for him. They gave me all those recordings. But what I said to them from the beginning was, you know, I've written a bunch of books and I work for The New Yorker and my North Star is always the truth and the truth will probably be somewhat uncomfortable for you.

25:52Patrick Radden Keefe:It won't be the Daily Mail version of the story. But you'll find out what happened. Yeah, if you let me loose on this story, there will be elements of what I publish that in a perfect world you might wish weren't out there. And there are, if you read the book, there's a bunch of family secrets that come out. there's really unpleasant stuff about Zach and his parents and his relationship with them and things that happen. You know, there are his private Google searches. There's a lot of stuff in there that I think if Matthew and Rochelle had editorial control, wouldn't be in the book. And so what I had to do was sort of manage both my impulse to be compassionate to them, as people who've lost a child in the terrible tragedy very recently, and then my impulse as a reporter, my imperative as a reporter, which is to get to the bottom of the story and tell it in a really fulsome way and write a book.

26:45Patrick Radden Keefe:You know, frankly, it's not written for them. I'm not in PR and I'm not a therapist. I'm, you know, I'm kind of answering to a different master. Absolutely. And I feel good about where we came out. And when we launched the book three weeks ago at the 92nd Street Y in New York, they came over as to Joe's ex-brother. They were all in New York for the launch. So I feel good about that. We'll be back in a minute.

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30:56Every episode, we get an expert to send us a question. Yours comes from Tina Brown, very famous magazine editor. Let's listen to it. Hi, Cara. Hi, Patrick. Now, Patrick, I've read your incredible, fascinating, dark book, London Falling. And it really leaves me thinking again, as I often do when I read you, just about your methods, really. In Say Nothing, you were able to penetrate the really sort of scary world of the IRA. And you got deep into those relationships, which were all built on decades of secrets. Then in Empire Pain, your book about the Sacklers, you were also, again, you know, extracting information from a world which was so litigious.

31:43I mean, there's nobody more difficult and scary than the Sacklers because they had an army of lawyers and a ton of money and they had suppressed the truth for decades. But they couldn't beat you back. And now in this London falling, you stumbled into this very sinister world of the London underground culture that really none of us had really read about before. And I wondered how you earned their trust. You know, I wonder why they talk to you, frankly, because, you know, again, they're people who held their secrets close. And that also actually includes the family who certainly were prone to just chatting to strangers.

32:22So you have an extraordinary way of getting into people's heads and worlds. And I was very interested, particularly in this new book, about how you did that.

32:32Patrick Radden Keefe:What a good question. She is. Well, she's one of the best, right? She is. She would have immediately published this story. She had her own wrangles with Epstein, by the way, and others. Oh, I know. I know, I know. And yeah, she's one of the few people who comes out of those vials smelling good. No, she kicked him in the nuts is what she did, which is her favorite thing. Yeah, you know, so we already talked about the brettlers. I will say with the underworld folks, it's part of what I love about this job is I, you know, I get to sort of move through the world and talk to all kinds of different people.

33:03Patrick Radden Keefe:And I have to find a different wavelength to appeal to everyone. there is no one approach. I will say that sometimes the fact of my earlier work helps. The nice thing about doing this work over a period of time, you know, this is my sixth book. I've been writing for the New Yorker for 20 years. And so I have a track record. You can Google me and get a sense of how I work. And that works in funny ways. So there's a guy who's a minor character in the book. There's a big character in the book who's a gangster named Indian Dave, very scary guy, who, for a variety of reasons, I couldn't talk to Indian Dave.

33:37Patrick Radden Keefe:But I was tracking out people who were associates of his in the underworld. And there's a guy, a fairly notorious English gangster named Andy Baker. And Andy Baker had recently got out of prison. He's never talked to a journalist before. And I made an overture to him through intermediaries. And he ended up agreeing to talk with me and he became a really critical source. And to this day, I don't know why Andy decided to talk to me, but I think I have a theory, which is that Andy knew that I had written not once, but twice big articles about Chapo Guzman. And I, I think there may, these guys all have an ego.

34:17Patrick Radden Keefe:I'm sure you've encountered this too, Carla. Why haven't you called me? Why haven't you? Exactly. And so I think there was a little bit of a sense maybe for Andy of, you know, finally a journalist worthy of my stature in the criminal underworld. Sure. Comes knocking. And it's the guy who wrote about El Chapo. My story must be told by the finest reporter in the land. By somebody who was worthy of, you know, whoever else it is. And so I think it was probably something like that. But, you know, that became a really important relationship for the book. Andy actually is back in prison now. But, you know, he calls me from prison.

34:52Patrick Radden Keefe:I think I'm going to go. He's organizing a reading in the prison library. I'm going to go and do a book signing in the fall. Oh, my God. You're a lot nicer to them than I am. It'll be a story to tell. See, I'm going to contrast this. You're doing that, and I was thinking of going, I was in San Francisco yesterday and the day before, and I was thinking of going down to the trial and just waving at Elon to fuck with him. Like, hi. Hi, dude. What's up, girl? You should have done it. I know. He would have erupted because he and I don't speak anymore. Imagine the drama. Just for me. That was just for me.

35:27That's my inclination. So, go ahead.

35:30Patrick Radden Keefe:But it would have been for the rest of us had you only gone. Correct. I thought about it. I just thought, I just can't. There's too much Kara Swisher out there right now. So, anyway. So, go ahead. Finish what she was asking. Yeah. So, you don't—I think that helps sometimes. I will often—I'll sometimes send people articles I've written just to say, like, here, this will give you a sense of the kind of work that I do. But, you know, I published a piece in The New Yorker just as the book was coming out about this crazy fraud conspiracy in New Orleans involving people crashing into tractor trailers.

36:05Patrick Radden Keefe:Totally different world. You know, that was the world of kind of scuzzy personal injury lawyers in New Orleans. and then a lot of people in New Orleans East, you know, living in generational poverty and risking their lives to make money in these schemes. And it's just a different approach. That's part of what I like about it is that there is no, I don't have a beat. I sort of move from one world to the next and I always have a little bit of a sense of vertigo trying to figure it out. Sure, but what do you do, would you say you do to earn their trust? She's asking specifically, what do you think you do?

36:38Patrick Radden Keefe:I ask good questions. I try to listen well. But honestly, the biggest thing, and this is annoying sometimes, I think, for other journalists to hear, because I am speaking from a position of, you know, what these days counts as rare institutional privilege in the sense that I can keep coming back. Because when I'm writing for The New Yorker, like the piece I just published on New Orleans, I started working that piece in 2021. So it just, you've got time. And with a book, I've got time and I keep showing up. and that kind of persistence. And I think in a kind of strange way, you know, that sort of novelty of you begins to disappear a little bit when they see you keep hanging around.

37:19Patrick Radden Keefe:Another thing that I've always done is if you won't talk to me, I'm going to call the 10 people you talk with all the time. And all I need is a few of them. And if I talk with them for a couple hours, they'll come back and say, oh, actually, he's pretty serious. You know, it's not, he's really trying to understand this and they'll report back to you. It doesn't always work. Or it scares them. That worked with Steve Case. I talked to 25 people around him, and he wasn't talking to me. And then he's like, I guess I have to talk to you now. And I go, I guess you do. I mean, I think that's the line I often use, which is slightly obnoxious, but gets the point across is I'll say the train's leaving the station.

37:57Patrick Radden Keefe:You can get on it or not. I say I'm inevitable, so you might as well start. Yeah, I haven't quite summoned the confidence to put it in those terms. I'm ruder than you are, Patrick. I'm sure you're charming. I'm not charming. There you go. I like it. I like it. I could learn from you. I also, I also neg, interesting when she was talking about this, I find negging a lot of these billionaires yields a lot of things, you know, because. Well, they're also insecure. Yes. So they'll go, well, you don't ask me about it. I go, not really. I'm not interested in what you have to say. And then I leave. Like I actually go, and then they always come back.

38:34I shouldn't say this because now they'll figure it out, but they'll never figure it out.

38:37Patrick Radden Keefe:But the thing is so many of these people, I mean, I don't know. You've spent more time around these people than I have, but I've written about billionaires over the course of my career. And so often, I mean, the inherited variety is like a different kind of pathology. But the self-made ones, I think almost without exception, these are people who have some hole they're trying to fill that they're never going to fill. A deep hole. I always say their mothers didn't hug them enough, but I would say their parents didn't hug them enough. Yes, or whatever it is. But there's just, there's a thing motivating them.

39:07Patrick Radden Keefe:And I wrote a big piece a few years ago for The New Yorker about Larry Gagosian, the art dealer. I remember. You know, as the dealer for all those types of people. And I swear Larry's great genius is realizing that at a certain point, you've got all the boats and all the houses, and you're trying to find some other way to measure your self-worth vis-a-vis your peers. And if it's the best Picasso, and you're worried that your rival is going to get it, you'll spend any sum. Well, look what's happening in OpenAI right now. The trial with Musk and OpenAI and Sam Altman. Why are they there? Why are they exposing themselves?

39:46Patrick Radden Keefe:And you think it's that? It's just a kind of... It's a dominance game. It's a dominance. They can't stop them. It's not good for anybody. They should have settled. You know? I don't know. I think it's a deep, deep, deep insecurity and a sense of victimization then manifest itself. I think you're right. That's another story. But you're right. Larry Gagosian took advantage of that. So one of the things you've said after you published, quote, the story keeps moving, unfolding, fluttering its wings. So I'm going to check back on some of your other stories. Now, I interviewed you for your book in 2022, Your Empire of Pain about the Sackler family and their role in the opioid crisis.

40:24I am still incandescent after reading that book, I have to say. Not incandescent. Someone pointed out I wasn't using it. I'm furious. Their company, Purdue Pharma, finally received its sentencing in the federal court for fraud and kickback charges. They ordered to pay over$8 billion in criminal penalties, but none of the Sacklers faced criminal charges, which kills me. How did you react when you heard about the ruling?

40:48Patrick Radden Keefe:Well, I mean, I knew it was coming. It was not a, it was, at this point, it was sort of a formality of something that had been in the works for years. Listen, to me, it is a really lamentable feature I mean, never mind the fact, there was a story, I think, in the Financial Times a few weeks ago about how all the big white-collar criminal defense firms are out of work. They're all, because there's no white-collar criminal defense prosecutions under the Trump administration. So, you know, it's open season now, I guess. But even in earlier eras, I think there's this crazy thing about the way in which we prosecute corporations where you can have a situation like this where the corporation pleads guilty and pays fines, but no individuals go to prison.

41:30Patrick Radden Keefe:It's like you treat the corporation like a driverless car. And I just don't know, as a kind of broad systemic matter, that we are going to solve these kinds of problems of like corporate malfeasance of the highest level. That in this case spurs a public health crisis that ends up killing hundreds of thousands of people. I don't know that it's going to end up being anything but a speeding ticket if people don't go to jail. And so to me it was— Parking ticket. Yeah. Yeah, just, I mean, it was kind of a sad outcome, but a sadly predictable one. Yeah. Do you imagine that will change? I mean, one of the reasons I was interviewing all these parents so much is I was hoping lawsuits would occur, right?

42:11When people hear this or that federal regulators would finally pay attention or politicians. And one of the companies, I think I've done two of the parents, but I talk about it a lot. Like this was years ago, I started doing this on these chatbot suicide things. and one of the companies said to me, when are you going to stop? And I said, when you go to jail. I'm hoping. That's my goal here, really, for one of you to go to jail. But it didn't happen in this case when there's so clear a line, a bright line that you drew and many others did between the Sacklers and what happened.

42:44Patrick Radden Keefe:Yeah, but again, I mean, I think the thing that's so frustrating, right, is that we have, if you look at the chatbots, right, in theory, I don't know, I want to live in a society in which we sort of learn and improve over time. And when you have certain forms of corporate transgressions in which people are making decisions on the basis of their valuation or ROI or shareholder value or whatever these considerations are where they say, okay, I'm going to do the wrong thing. We're actually going to sell out the country. We're going to sell out families like that. They were all at the White House for King Charles.

43:18Well, that's the thing.

43:19Patrick Radden Keefe:But this is, it's funny, this is a thing I come back to a lot recently. There's a friend of mine, a guy named David de Jong, who wrote a terrific book that came out a few years ago called Nazi Billionaires. And it kind of is what it says on the tin, right? It's like a story about the generation of German industrialists who weren't ideological Nazis, but kind of made peace with the Third Reich because they realized it's good for business. And they said, you know, we are running these corporate empires and actually that's the first and foremost, that should be our consideration is we need to protect the business.

43:55Patrick Radden Keefe:Yeah, shareholder value. And I remember thinking specifically about the tech barons when they, you know, in this new phase, when they all started, you know, with the inauguration, thinking, boy, I'd love to send them this book just to give them a sense of how their grandkids are going to think about them. But the irony, right, is that like, well, here's the thing. if you read the whole book, those families, like the grandkids, are now the wealthiest people in Germany. That's right. That's exactly right. We'll be back in a minute.

44:47Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

44:52Patrick Radden Keefe:Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at MintMobile.com. I'm Midge First, two-time individual sale champion, championship MVP, and forward for the U.S.

45:27Patrick Radden Keefe:Women's National Team. Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology, mindset, and unseen battles on the path to greatness. So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an Elite Athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

46:10I'm going to move on to your other breakout books, Say Nothing, is about a kidnapping that's set against the backdrop of the Troubles. In Northern Ireland, the political violence we've seen recently in the United States doesn't come anywhere near what happened in Northern Ireland, obviously. But it's concerning, and the recent assassination attempt at the White House correspondent feels already like old news. Do you find any parallels having written about the troubles?

46:31Patrick Radden Keefe:I do and I don't. Yeah, I, it's funny when I was working on the book, I guess I started working the book on the article that became the book in 2014. And I finished the book and it came out in 2018, 2019. And during that time, I mostly felt like I was writing a period piece about a very foreign situation that as an American, I couldn't particularly relate to. But then, you know, you got the Black Lives Matter protests and you got these militarized cops out on the streets and tear gas. And suddenly just the kind of visual iconography of American life started to look a lot more like the early days of the Troubles.

47:09I think that the kind of the depths of the division and, you know, there was, I thought

47:16Patrick Radden Keefe:about it when ICE killed those two civilians several months ago. the response by people who very quickly were looking to dehumanize them in one way, you know, oh, he had a gun, you know, he had a concealed carry permit or she was gay or whatever, you know, immediately looking for some reason not to think of them as human beings, like fellow human beings. That's a very Northern Ireland thing. The idea that all deaths are not created equal, that they're coded differently and how you feel about them should be really a function of the identity of the person who dies. That really worries me. You know, I was at a thing last summer in Maine and I saw George Mitchell speak.

48:07Patrick Radden Keefe:And he was talking about the Good Friday agreement, which ended the troubles. And somebody asked him in the Q &A if, because he was very involved in that decision and ending this, you know, three decade conflict. Somebody asked him if he thought that there could have been a Good Friday agreement in a world in which social media existed. And he said, I thought about it and I don't think so. I think if social media had existed in 1998, we never would have gotten there. Which is why it amplifies and weaponizes everything. Yes. Even more so, because bots are in there. You know, and of course, it's created out of rage and desperation.

48:43Now, you also hosted a podcast called Wind of Change, where you dig into the allegation that the CIA ghost wrote a song for West German heavy metal band during the Cold War. You said that making it was the most fun you've ever had. Why did you get out of podcasting? Why aren't you doing more? Are you doing more?

49:00Patrick Radden Keefe:I've got one in the works, actually, with the same. Yeah, I mean, in the nature of the messed up podcasting industry, the company that made that, Pineapple Street, doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist. There were terrific people. I did my succession podcast with them. So great. But the two people who I worked with most closely on that, Joel Lovell and Henry Malofsky, I'm collaborating with again. It's very early stages of a new podcast. It's not about spying. It is about music. It's really fun. And yeah, I loved it. I loved it. And I love working with those guys. You know, writing is solitary stuff.

49:38Patrick Radden Keefe:And you make a podcast, it's like running off to join the circus. It's really fun. I'm having a lot of fun. This is the best part of my career, I have to say. I can tell. We talked briefly about El Chapo. He wanted you to write his memoir, and you turned him down, by the way. Just Andy Baker. And you said access is overrated. I would completely agree with you, and Walter Eisen should have agreed with me on that issue. Where do you— Here, here. Oh, God, I don't even. I don't even. Where do you draw the line over what stories you'll cover? And when it comes to writing someone's memoir, would you say yes to someone that might surprise me?

50:14Patrick Radden Keefe:I don't think I would write anybody's memoir. I wouldn't ghostwrite anybody's memoir. It's funny, I go back to actually a conversation I had with Larry Gugosian when we were at his beach house in Amagansett. And he has all these amazing, I mean, he's got surprise, surprise, he has an incredible art collection. And he's been painted by all kinds of people. David Hockney did a portrait of Gugosian. And we were talking about the big 12 ,000-word piece I was in the process of writing about him. And I think he was a little bit uncomfortable because he's so used to the art press, which is a little bit, you know, as you'll relate, it's a little bit like parts of the tech press.

50:52Patrick Radden Keefe:Right. Where the people who are just on the beat are kind of really what they're hoping is that they'll get the next interview, they'll get invited to the party. And that wasn't me. And he was, I think, becoming aware of that. Yeah. And I was trying to sort of prepare him for my piece. And I said, you know, when you see the piece, it's not going to be like looking at a photo of yourself. It's going to be like looking at a painting that somebody's painted. It's like it's all filtered through somebody else's sensibility. I meant that not in a self-aggrandizing way, but more just because he's a guy who's actually sat for, you know, David Hockney painting Larry Gagosian doesn't actually look like the way Larry Gagosian sees himself, right?

51:32Patrick Radden Keefe:It's all filtered through Hockney's perception. That's the way I see my writing. And so I think it's one thing to write a story like London Falling, where I have a ton of access to this family. It's a very intimate account of the family. But I wouldn't make any claim for it being their story. Like if their name was on the cover along with mine and it was a memoir. Sure. That's just not what I do. Would there be anyone you might say yes to, like in that regard? Nobody. Nobody. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, access is overrated. I did some of that with the journal. I hated it. I hated it. It was so, oh, I just, I'm so glad.

52:07I don't, I'm so glad they're not talking to me. I love it. It's the best life.

52:12Patrick Radden Keefe:I mean, I think it's better. And I think that the, the story I always tell is, you know, I find out anyway. Well, you get all the, but you get better stuff. I mean, you know, with the Sacklers, none of them talked to me. And so I got, you know, I got doorman, I got administrative assistants, I got college roommates, I got a yoga instructor who traveled because when you're the Sacklers, you go on vacation and you bring your yoga instructor with you. All those kinds of people, I don't know. Would it have been better to have the family talking to me with their lawyers and their PR people? I don't think so.

52:45Patrick Radden Keefe:I'm always very sincere when I say to people, I want to talk. Let's hear. I want to hear what you have to say. But when they say no, that's never the end of the story for me. That's the beginning. Especially if you're a good reporter, it doesn't matter. That's the one lesson I learned far too late, I think, in some ways. Let's wrap up with some reflections on larger trends very quickly. I'm not going to ask you what your J.Crew ad. I'm in The Devil Wears Prada, too, so I can't. Okay, there you go. That's great. You managed to become a famous magazine writer at a time when magazines can feel like anachronisms, as you noted.

53:21With a few exceptions, New York, or I would say Vogue, and New York Magazine is going pretty well, Atlantic is. Say Nothing was adapted into a TV series for FX. A24 has already optioned the rights for two-year works, including the rights to London Falling. Obviously, it's such a clear, I was like, hello, Netflix, before it was even published. Do you ever feel like an entrepreneur who produces and sells IP? I've sold a lot of rights and stuff too, so I'm super aware of this world. But it's a different world. It's sort of an omnimedia world. How do you look at it?

53:54Patrick Radden Keefe:Oh, boy. I mean, I have a bunch of feelings about this. When I first started writing for The New Yorker, I was freelance for six years before they put me on staff. And they basically would publish one big piece a year, but nothing more. And that forced me to learn how to hustle a little bit. And so I started doing some screenwriting. I did all kinds of different things. I was at a think tank, you know, various things. And I never really lost that even after I went on staff at the magazine. And I think generally speaking, you'd be crazy in this moment, even if what you love most is magazine journalism, at least for me, just in terms of the economics of it and the trend lines and so forth.

54:36Patrick Radden Keefe:I think it's good for everybody to have some kind of side hustle. I do a bunch of things. You know, I write scripts, I produce TV, I do podcasting, and they all actually kind of feed into each other creatively in a way that feels pretty healthy and useful to me. Strangely enough, for years, I was an unproduced screenwriter getting paid good money to write scripts for studios that they didn't make. And all those years in the trenches as a screenwriter actually helped my nonfiction writing in all kinds of ways that I wouldn't necessarily have predicted. The area in which it gets tricky, I think, or the area in which I'm maybe a little bit different from other magazine journalists is I think there's a kind of sad trend that you've seen with the decline of the industry in general, which is that a bunch of people now, when they sit down to write a magazine article or they conceive of a magazine article, what they're really thinking about is, can I get an option in Hollywood?

55:31Patrick Radden Keefe:And I've been lucky in that regard. I've had a lot of stuff optioned and some stuff made, but I never, ever, ever pick a story on that basis. I think it's a mistake to do that. as a general rule, kind of across life, I think you should focus on making the thing you're doing be the best version of that thing and not, I couldn't imagine, honestly, kind of focusing on a project in front of me, but in the back of my mind, thinking how cool it would be if it was something else. If that's what you want to do, just go do that other thing, in my view. That's a good point. I think it leads to a lot of bad magazine writing.

56:05Patrick Radden Keefe:So yes, I've been fortunate in that regard, but I never give any thought to that. We never show things to people. I mean, there's crazy stuff that happens in this business among magazine journalists, but there are people who will, they'll cut life rights deals with the subjects of their stories before they've published, which to me feels like it's just not a thing that I would do personally. Of course they would, though. Some of that comes from the desperation of people trying to make a living in an industry that's rapidly contracting. And so maybe some of my virtue here is just a reflection of the fact that I've been fortunate that I don't have to make those kinds of concessions.

56:43Patrick Radden Keefe:But it would feel like a pretty distinct conflict of interest if I were trying to sign people up, sign up the life rights of people who I was then going to write a magazine article about, which I hadn't published yet. Right. But you do have to think about everything I do. I'm like, is this better as a podcast or should it be a book or should it be? Yes. I spent a lot of time, or maybe I'll do this this way. And so it's, I'm constantly thinking about other ways to tell a story that I might have. Yeah, I am too. But I feel as though that's the great thing about that is that. That's right. Everything has a kind of natural medium in which it wants to.

57:14Patrick Radden Keefe:So Wind of Change, my podcast, it wouldn't have worked as a magazine article. You certainly could have done it, but you're right. You're right. You could, but it comes, I'm not, I'm spoiling nothing here to say. It lands in a slightly inconclusive place, which I knew would be the case from the get. And I felt as though if people read a story and it takes them hours and hours to read the story and at the end you're inconclusive, they will feel frustrated because they've given you their whole attention span for a certain amount of time and then you've gotten to the end and you haven't totally delivered the goods.

57:47Patrick Radden Keefe:If they're listening to a podcast and they can be washing the dishes or walking their dog. There's music too. Or, you know, on the bike or whatever. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why it worked better. Yeah, there's lots of ways to tell a story. Okay, I have two last questions. I saw a TikTok from the late show Book Club where you said, if you're doing your job in a way that AI can easily replicate, you're probably not doing your job well. I could not agree more. And I don't think you were saying that in a cavalier way. Your point was that journalism unearths new information by gumption reporting, making calls, going out in the world to talk to people.

58:21There's also an element of creativity that is not replicable. They can do a very close facsimile. I just made a version of myself that is pretty close, an avatar, a 3D avatar. But is there a place for AI in journalism? Because at some point in the future, AI agents could be making calls, sending emails, and potentially doing real reporting. It could even involve a con because the AI agent may not identify itself as AI. How do you look at it? Everyone sort of has a take right now. Do you have one?

58:52Patrick Radden Keefe:I mean, I don't have a, you know, I don't have a bumper sticker take. I do use AI. It's been really helpful for me in really narrow ways. And so don't use it for anything associated with writing. And I should say, I now get, as I'm sure do you, these kind of clever spam emails that sneak past my filter that are, you can immediately tell that they're written by AI. And I think it's such a mugs game to think that AI is going to help you with your writing. It's one of those funny things where I honestly feel as though six months ago, there were people who was a certain kind of person who thought that this was a good idea.

59:29Patrick Radden Keefe:And now we know, like, in fact, it sort of flattens everything out. And you can tell when you're reading. You can tell. I don't use it for that stuff. I will tell you the area in which it's been amazingly helpful. And I want to kind of pick my words carefully, because I don't want to tip too much about what this, I was working on a project. And basically, what I said to Claude and ChachiPT was, there's a certain kind of lawsuit that I'm really interested in. And this lawsuit is really only about 10 or 15 years old. The law changed and suddenly there started being these new lawsuits. And I'll bet that there's the equivalent of like a big time kind of ambulance chaser who does this sort of thing.

1:00:11Patrick Radden Keefe:And probably among the many people who started doing this 10 or 15 years ago, there are some who are more prominent, have more prominent cases, talk to the press, and our big characters. And I want you to find me those names. And it went, and gave me the two names. And that's the kind of thing that it would have taken me, you know, it could have taken me a day or two in the past. For that stuff, great. I think there are all kinds of uses for AI. But in the actual writing, or worse, in the, I mean, I think the point I was trying to make in that video was your job is not to take shit that's on the internet and rearrange it.

1:00:50Patrick Radden Keefe:But you wouldn't want it to make calls or send emails or do reporting for you, correct? I would never do that. But I mean, to go back to Tina Brown's question, why do people trust me? Well, part of the reason is that I'm never going to lay you off on an assistant, much less an AI. I am accessible. I am reachable. I'm pretty straightforward. I try and be as transparent as possible. So I don't know. I mean, I guess there are some people who are, I feel like I'm pretty busy. I guess there are some people who are so busy that they need to outsource in that way. But to me, it's just like a— No, it's ridiculous.

1:01:24It's so lazy.

1:01:25Patrick Radden Keefe:I mean, to me, the thing is, what's the world you want to live in? I mean, some of this is that you're catching me after three weeks of going out and talking in rooms with people about my book and meeting with people who've read it. I think ultimately, as human beings, we want to see other humans and read a human face. Yes, it's good for your health. Even in a universe in which you say, isn't it uncanny the way the avatar seems like a real human face? At a certain point, people are going to get pretty icked out by that and want the real thing. They do, but the numbers are growing enormously. This used to be an outlier.

1:01:59All these chatbots used to be an outlier. I just interviewed Cherry Turkle about this. It used to be an outlier and strange, and now it's very common, unfortunately, and very bad for people's health. Let me ask you the last question. In the recent New York Times profile, you said everywhere you looked, there were people doing morally grotesque things. And that while you may not be part of the solution, you're not part of the problem. And that's something. I know what you mean. You got a law degree from Yale and had a job lined up at a corporate law firm, but managed to sell a book and a New Yorker article in the nick of time and never went down that path.

1:02:34What would your life be like if you became a corporate lawyer? Can you imagine yourself leading a morally protest? Maybe a Sackler lawyer, perhaps.

1:02:46Patrick Radden Keefe:Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, listen, I think about this stuff all the time. And if you read Empire of Pain, the first person you meet in that book is Mary Jo White. I wanted to slap her. Long-time lawyer to the Sacklers. I did. Oh, man. I liked her. Well, that's the thing. She was a hero to a lot of people. But behind the scenes, doing some pretty—and again, like, perfectly—her legal right to do that work. but the idea that we would celebrate this person seems just gross to me. Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I think I would really struggle with it. I didn't want to come off too self-righteous in that times piece.

1:03:18Patrick Radden Keefe:The point that I was making was just, I have no trouble explaining to my kids, and I'll have no trouble explaining to my grandkids what I was doing at this moment in history. And I don't know that I'll be able to boast about having, you know, help turn the ship around. I wish I could. But I certainly, it hasn't, you know, it hasn't been, yeah, you know, full speed ahead. Let me contribute to the, you know, the kind of pretty dire direction in which we're going. I think what my wife, I should say, and this is maybe a good place to end, what my wife would say is I would have been a terrible lawyer.

1:03:53Patrick Radden Keefe:I mean, leaving aside all the kind of moral choices, right, I would have been so bad at it. Leaking everything. Oh, let me tell you about Enron, reporter. Right, right, right. So, I mean, hey, I guess in that respect, maybe the way in which I would sort of sabotage the machine would just be incompetent. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. You might have ended up like the lawyer in the Pelican Brief, so be careful about that. Exactly. You are part of the solution, in case you're interested, just from someone who admires you. Thank you. You're more than just not part of the problem. In any case, it's a wonderful book.

1:04:24It's really a great read. It kept me up all night. I'm exhausted. But I really appreciate it, and I'm excited to see what you do next.

1:04:31Patrick Radden Keefe:What a pleasure. Thanks, Cara.

1:05:01ad or be in the Devil Wears Prada too. If not, you're part of the problem. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.