Who’s Scarier: Gangsters, Billionaires or Investigative Journalists?

23:45Of course. Did you get invited to a Larry Gagosian party? I let the record show I have never been invited to a Larry Gagosian party. But it is a wild world, those parties, because it's like, I mean, the whole art world, like art is like, I don't know what the word is, like greenwashing, artwashing, like access. Like, you know, Steve Cohen wants to sit next to Jennifer Lawrence. Wait. Just to randomly, you know. Just saying, randomly. That's never. What a coincidence. What a coincidence that we both said that at the same time. But yes, I do think that this world of like transacting is very, very real.

24:18And most of the time, you don't get invited back. Like Mark Burnett didn't like you. Larry Gugosi didn't invite you to the party. I almost never get invited back. But El Chapo Guzman more than invited you. You get a call from El Chapo Guzman's team. From his team, yeah, from his reps. From his reps. What do you call them? His cronies? What's the word? Exactly. His cronies. I think it was CAA. They represent me, too. All the grifters. Yeah, so I wrote a big piece about... I wrote two pieces about El Chapo. One for the New York Times Magazine, and then one for the New Yorker. This is after he was captured the first time, before he escaped the second time.

24:59And I wrote a big piece about him. It was a write-around. He wasn't available to speak with me because he was at a prison in Mexico. He should have just waited a few months until he broke out. Yeah, exactly. Fizzily figuring out how to escape from it, it turns out. The article came out. I didn't have any expectation that he would read it. in part because he's, you know, he's, like, supposed to be, I mean, he's said to be illiterate, basically, yeah. He does, like, voice notes for every time. Right, exactly. I did figure out he was able to text a little bit in a kind of rudimentary way, but he didn't, like, even if he could read, he didn't strike me as a New Yorker subscriber, you know.

25:36And the, and, but there was some stuff about him in the piece, you know, just a lot, I mean, little things that, if I thought he was going to read, There's a lot of stuff about his Viagra use. Like, he was moving from safe house to safe house. And it turned out that the biggest logistical concern was not, like, his life keeping him safe, you know, staying away from surveillance. It was getting him all the Viagra that he needed. I know. You really gave, like, El Chapo's midlife crisis. Because, like, the three themes in that piece, which I remember, is, like, Viagra, younger women go together. And BlackBerry Messenger or something.

26:11BlackBerry Messenger was his big thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He was giving, like, real old uncle. It was all of that. But the Viagra stuff was, there was a DEA guy who I interviewed who was doing all the surveillance, and he realized that so much of the logistics was not even about cocaine. It was about Viagra. But the great line that he had was, he said, he ate it like candy.

26:34So those details got picked up in all the major newspapers in Mexico, which was another thing I hadn't really thought through, but of course it happened. And then I got a call from this lawyer who said that he represented the Guzman family. Yeah. And I was very nervous. He left a voicemail in my office. And I remember I called David Remnick at The New Yorker and I said, what do I do? The editor-in-chief of New Yorker. I called a source of mine who was a law enforcement guy and I said, asked him to run the name of the attorney. And he said the thing that he came back with was he was like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, for sure.

27:05He's one of those cartel attorneys. But the thing is, he's one of those cartel attorneys who's like, 70 % cartel and 30 % attorney. And I was like, this is not what I want to hear.

27:17Okay, so it was a guy from the cartel, basically. I was terrified. And you take the call? I took the call. I called him back with my hand shaking. And the thing that he said, I've told this story many times, but they all call him El Señor. And he said, El Señor is ready to write his memoirs. which was not where I expected things to go at all. And so I didn't know what to say, and I was like, oh, that's a book I'd like to read. Yeah. And he was very, very serious and solemn, and he said, but sir, is it a book you would like to write? And he made this pitch to me to, I couldn't get into the prison, but like one of Chapo's daughters was going to go in and do all the interviews, and then she'd come out and we'd co-write, and it was a whole...

28:06Co-writing? Yeah, it was a whole thing. How much money? We didn't get into the details. How much Viagra? I said, yeah, exactly. I said, well, I have one question for you, sir. I said no, like, before the call was out. I feel like you should have done a reporting to get a number. Even when it's like a celebrity ghostwriter situation, that sometimes the relationship between the ghostwriter and the subject breaks down at a certain point. Yeah. I was like, this doesn't seem like a situation I want to be in with Chapo Guzman. But thank you. So, yeah, are you ever afraid of your subjects? Like, are you afraid of, like, a hit from El Chapo Guzman?

28:43No, I mean... Are you afraid of being NF-ed from Larry Gagosian's party? Well, so, I mean, the funny thing is, interestingly, it's only the rich people who actually ever threaten me. It's not the gangsters. Truly. The... Yeah, I mean, I had a... There's a guy who's a character in this new book, a guy named Andy Baker, who's a, who's like a gangster, a kind of gangster in England. And he got out of prison and I arranged to see him. He's actually back in prison now, but I had to go and get in a car, which you're never supposed to do. If there are journalists here, you're never supposed to get in the car.

29:20After the journalist gets killed, the other journalist will kind of quietly be like, oh, that's so terrible. Shouldn't have gotten in the car. Literally. And I had to get in the car. And so I had like, there was a friend who had a pen on my phone. There were people who had instructions for what to do if I didn't call them by a certain hour. And I went to see him at a coffee shop in Swansea, of all places, in Wales. It's funny, we were in Swansea and he said, Swansea, the graveyard of ambition. Is it? Factual? I mean, it kind of is. He kind of shook my hand, looked me in the eye, got right in my space, big smile, and asked after my wife and children by name.

29:57Oh. Okay. And like, wasn't saying he's going to do anything bad, just wanted me to know. He knows who they are. Did that have a chilling effect? I mean, I was very chilled by that. Yeah. I should say, we then kind of hit it off. And like when this book came out, he called me from prison in Wales to congratulate me. Oh, that's so nice. If he said anything for your wife and kids, don't give it to them. Exactly. Yeah, he doesn't come off that bad, I guess. No, I mean, I actually think he's, listen, he's done some really bad things. And sometimes this is a criticism of my work. Like he's a human being and I show him in, I think, three dimensions, which, you know, might be distasteful to some people.

30:40But I think that was all he wanted. He said to me, just be honest. And I was. A little cliffhanger. We'll be right back. All right. Today's sponsored dumb question is from me, Naima Razad. I'm telling you to subscribe, follow, like, share the show, share it with people in your life. Send it to an ex-boyfriend who has nothing better to do because he just misses you all the time. Send it to an ex-girlfriend who you want to be your future girlfriend again. Send it to your mom or that aunt who has a lot of time and keeps sending you life advice. Because this show is an independent show. I make it every week with a great team, but to keep things running, I really need you guys to help me grow the show.

31:12And I so appreciate that you listen, that you watch, that you tune in every week. Please continue to do that. I'm forever grateful. Now back to the episode.

31:22We'll move to London Falling, this new book that you have out. And the story really is around this young man, Zach, who has two surnames, and you can explain why. So tell us a little bit about Zach Brettler. So Zach Brettler was a boy who lived in London. He was born in the year 2000. He grew up in a very loving, very kind of comfortable, pretty well-off family who had a nice apartment in West London. His dad worked in finance. His dad's name is Matthew, the mom is a freelance journalist. Her name is Rochelle. He had a big brother, Joe. And Zach, when he was a... Zach was kind of a fun... It's funny that we would be here having this conversation.

32:07I think Zach had some of the qualities of a stand-up comic, in the sense that from an early age, he was somebody who was kind of living his life, but then he was always taking the things that he was experiencing and kind of rearranging them into stories. And they were funny stories. Sometimes you would kind of twist the truth a little bit. but very high emotional intelligence, always kind of reading somebody's face to see what engaged them. But he kind of turned into a bit of a fabulist and he was really obsessed with wealth and kind of blingy, sort of ostentatious, like there's a culture in London now of kind of Bentleys and mansions.

32:40And that was what he was into. So we're going to show one of his key sources of inspiration in a moment. But before we get there, I'm curious, people in the room, like we live in a city that is in many ways opulent, Not to the same extent I think London is at all. It's not, New York is grittier for sure. But I'm curious, how many people here just like shout, laugh, scream, whatever you want. How many of you have lied, embellished something on say a resume or your presentation of yourself externally?

33:13Oh, come on. That's a serious undercount. Here's one. Come on. How many of you lied just right now? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, come on, guys. How many of you have lied on, lied in some course of your life? Do it again. Okay. Thank you for your honesty in this moment. How many people have come to believe their own lie? Like, it started as a fib and it becomes part of a story. Come on. Can you, have you ever lied? Have you ever embellished? Yeah. Not in your reporting, but in your... Not in my reporting, no. But I mean, yeah, listen, I think any of us tell stories about ourselves.

33:56Yeah. And I think we tell them to ourselves. I think we tell them to people around us. And they can kind of harden into truth over time. And so it's not that there are big lies. When I was young, when I was in my 20s, I kind of convinced myself that I was a writer and it was all going to happen for me. And it really wasn't. I mean, in a way, you know, objectively. if you look at my life at that age. Like you went around dinner parties that I'm a writer? Well, no, there's a story that I've been thinking of, which is that there's an old friend of mine who I, there's a whole complicated thing, but after college, I got this fellowship and we were going to the UK and everybody's on the same plane.

34:33So it's all these young people in their early 20s, they've just gotten out of college. They're all flying on the same plane overnight to the UK. Everybody's like euphoric and having a great time. And I took out my laptop. I'd completely forgotten about this and started like self-importantly typing. And this guy, Tim, was like, what are you doing? you know, and I said, and I said, I'm working on an article, you know, and it's that kind of thing. Yeah. Right. I mean, I shudder to tell you that story, but it's, I think any of us do that kind of thing. Yeah. Right. I've spent time in my life in London.

35:04I feel London is a city that in particular kind of seduces you with its like the wealth and power. And in many ways, it's very different to America. America, everyone's like bending over backwards to tell you how much they struggled. Like even Patrick Radden Keefe, like award-winning writer is like, I struggled as a writer. No, not really. But I mean, kind of, right? That's the American story. Like every Rockefeller is telling you how their great-great-grandfather struggled to make it here. And in England, like people are house poor. They are often like, they really cling to their aristocracy and everyone's trying to tell you how kind of important and rich and wealthy they are.

35:38I think Zach Brettler and the way you've written him is a very relatable character. And part of What inspires his initial story, I want to play a clip of it, is a film, which is... The Wolf of Wall Street. You know what a fugazi is? Oh, fugazi. It's a fake. Hey, fugazi, fugazi. It's a wasi, it's a woozi, it's a... Fairy dust. Was all this legal? Absolutely not. We were making more money than we knew what to do with. Well, it don't work for you, man. Yeah, my money taped to your grooves. Technically, you do it for me. What's wrong, daddy? But why should you bring it home? Oh, my God. FBI. Any kind of booze you might want.

36:19The Bureau forbids us from drinking. Ugh. Should be a cautionary tale, but it's kind of sexy. Yeah. The way it's presented. And what was the impact of that and other mythology on Zack? That was Zack's favorite movie, and he watched it again and again. And there was another movie, War Dogs, which some of you might have seen, weirdly also with Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill is the six degrees of Jonah Hill in this story. and he loved these stories about kind of young hucksters on the make you know maybe a little criminally inclined but taking a really big swing it's strange right because I think I think The Wolf of Wall Street is a weird movie because technically it's a cautionary tale and that he ends up in prison in the end but you can get the vibe even off of that that this is a it's like a little bit of a celebration of this guy's moxie yeah he gets a role with Margot Robbie it's like yeah say no more yes exactly yeah And so Zach, when he turns 18, incorporates a business.

37:19And the business, the name that he gives the business is Omega Stratton. And I think Omega is a reference to the watch, just the watch, the James Bond, like Swiss watch. Stratton is a reference to Stratton Oakmont, which is the crooked brokerage firm in the Wall Street. So just like take a second to wrap your minds around that. You know, that at 18, this was, he took this movie and essentially kind of pulls, like in a very conscious way, pulls the name of that crooked business out and thinks, I'm going to name my business after the dodgy business in the Wolf of Wall Street. And another one of his great heroes is Vladimir Putin.

37:55And he decides that he will pull out of thin air a Russian daddy, a Russian oligarch dad. Yeah. Who here has done that?

38:07Yeah, he... I think I found the original person that he did this with, but he meets a guy one night at kind of a function. This is when he's 18. And Zach was very quick-witted. And because of that thing, I was talking about this sort of stand-up comic thing. He's always, like, telling little lies and little fibs and kind of seeing what you'll buy. He's testing his material. Totally. There's a story, actually, in the book about when he was in high school. The interesting thing is the kids in the story all see through this stuff. It's the grownups who believe the lies. But in high school, he was sitting around with friends and he was a big athlete.

38:40And he told his buddies that New Balance wanted to sponsor him. And they all started laughing and they all said, oh, Zach, you're full of shit. You're a compulsive liar. And Zach really seemed to kind of take this personally. And he kind of got a little quiet, a little sad. And he said, no, you're right. You're right. I am. I'm a compulsive liar. It all started when I had this terrible accident And they're like, Zach, you're doing it again. You know, it's so compulsive. Yeah. And in this case, he met this guy and he said, I'm the son of a Russian oligarch here in London. My name is Zach Ismailov.

39:15My father has a huge fortune. I'm helping him invest hundreds of millions of dollars. And the guy who actually worked for Chelsea Football Club, which at the time was owned by a real Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, bought the story and started introducing him to people. And that's very, because when he met him, he's like wearing this tracksuit, which is British for sweatpants, sweatsuit. And he's walking around and it's kind of like, you know, you quote Fran Lebowitz in another piece of writing, I think about Mark Burnett saying that Donald Trump is what a poor person's imagination of a rich person would look like.

39:50And in this case, it's like, Zach seems to be what a rich person's imagination of a rich Russian oligarch son would look like, right? He plays the part masterfully. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing that's so interesting about him is that he was very, yeah, he dresses down. He dresses in this very understated way. As he starts to get to know some of these older men who think that he's this son of an oligarch. Yeah, he's a teenager and he's hanging out with all these 40-something-year-old dudes. Guys in their 40s and 50s who, incidentally, want his money or the money they think he has. But, like, he told them all that he lived at, there's this obnoxious building in London and Knightsbridge called One Hyde Park, which, when it was built, their whole thing was, they literally, they called it, they said, it's the most expensive residential housing development ever built anywhere ever in the world.

40:46So that was funny. Also, that was, like, you know, Versailles would like a word. But the, but the, so, Zach would, he would wait outside. like they would pick he'd say like come pick me up at my place one hide park and they would drive up and he'd always be outside the building you know presumably having just come down in the elevator right but they never actually saw him walking out of the building so he's very good at that stuff i asked one of these guys did you google him um like if his dad is a real russian oligarch and the answer was fascinating he said you know the thing is people who are real have real means are not on the internet.

41:24Which is not incorrect. It's true. Yeah, that's true. I think that, so basically he ends up kind of swindling these men, but not really because what he's getting is like, they want access to daddy's fortune. At some point in the story, his father, his fake father dies. He's like, he's, you know, needs help. And so they're buying him dinners. They're taking him to Annabelle's. They're taking him to Five Harper. and they think they're going to get this big payday for their friendship, effectively. I mean, you talk a little bit about the book and speak a little bit about the research around gullibility and lying and like the ways in which we in everyday society allow ourselves to be lied to because it's just like too much of a pain to fact check everyone, I think is something you kind of allude to.

42:07You kind of have to, right? As you move through the world, I just think that the, I think most of us take it for granted as we move through life that people are being basically straight with us because it would just be too paralyzing if you were completely skeptical and on guard all the time. And I think Zach took advantage of that. I will say, I think there's something to this idea that the kids could see through it because Zach wasn't just a digital native. He was a social media native. And I think that there is something about kids who were born in this century where they're way more attuned than people in their 40s and 50s to the idea that everybody's got a filter on the photo, that, like, everybody's putting some kind of spin on their presentation.

42:54And so Zach was kind of constantly, you know, kind of putting on these different guises, these different masks. And the kids would always just say, like, you're so full of shit, you're a regular kid just like me. Whereas the adults said, you know, an oligarch, you say. Yeah. And it's so sad for his parents because, I mean, for the, you know, the bulk of the book, Zach is missing it. He's gone. He's, he's thrown himself off a bridge. And your, this book is really an investigation into how that happened, why that happened. Is there culpability? Is there not? And you're doing in a lot of ways, like a lot of the work that the Metropolitan Police didn't do.

43:34Because like, they just don't, why? Why didn't they do that work? Because like, for example, I just want to say, like there are parts of this book that Patrick's like, that, you know, he, you find a source by looking at the Instagram followers. It's like you could be a great ex-girlfriend. You look at the Instagram followers. The Instagram followers of, like, the puppy dog of, like, a Charlton 40-something-year-old dude and find the crony that you need to talk to. So you're able to do this. And the Metropolitan Police, after a teenager goes missing, dies, is not able to do this. Some of you may watch British police procedurals on BritBox.

44:13and have like a, you may still have a sense of like the overweening competence of Scotland Yard. You know, Scotland Yard, I think, still has quite good branding, but not actually a state-of-the-art police force at this point. And so this is partially a story about these parents who their kid goes missing initially and then turns out to be dead. I think initially they put their faith in the authorities and sort of thought, okay, they're going to get to the bottom of this. they're going to figure this out. And this kind of slow process in which they realize that's not going to happen, that actually nobody's coming to help.

44:49And then they have to kind of activate. I mean, a big part of what this book is about is these two parents who have to kind of become detectives themselves to do the work the police didn't do and figure out how their son died, but also really who he was in life in a way that they couldn't really appreciate while he was alive. These cities, New York, London, Hong Kong, LA, I've lived in all of them, actually. I think there's like a reality of there's so much wealth proximate to you. And it's also so out of reach at the same time. And it can be a really corrupting force. As these parents, like they have no idea that their son, they have a little bit of an idea, but not enough of an idea of like their son is hanging out with these 40-something-year-olds at these nightclubs.

45:31His mom thinks maybe he's having an affair with this woman who's much older. But how did you as a parent, did it just make you want to like leave New York City? Yeah. You know, I will say, I think New York is not as bad as London in this respect. Like, we have obviously huge extremes of income inequality in this city. We have huge concentrations of wealth in this city. But in terms of that, I think it's literally just the kind of physical architecture of the city. The fact that it's like, it's not, you know, if you're the kind of person who wants to have a$400 ,000 car, the Upper East Side or Tribeca may not be the best place to keep it.

46:09And so in a strange way, you have to kind of go out to the Hamptons to see all those cars. I think there's something about the physical layout of the city where it's not quite as in your face. There is no analog to Mayfair, if any of you know London, this neighborhood in London that's just so over the top. What's funny is I've been touring around, talking about this book all over the place, and I was in Miami. Like, you go to Miami and you describe Mayfair at every head in the place. It's like, oh, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah. You know. Mayfair is what Miami wishes it could be. Exactly. If it had class.

46:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But there is like a, there are a bunch of private members clubs opening up around New York. Like this is a new wave of the city. Do you worry about it becoming more London-esque? I mean, I, I do, yeah. I don't, I think that the, I think some of these trends are not specific to London. We're going to see them everywhere. I think generally that. I will say the thing with Zach, this kid, is there's a tendency, there's a temptation to look at it and think that he was on some grift and he had some plan. There's something a little bit the talented Mr. Ripley about him. He's kind of insinuating himself into the lives of other people.

47:22But the thing that's so tragic is that all he wanted was to get past the velvet rope. Like he was 18. He didn't have a plan. He wasn't thinking several steps out. He never got any money, really, to speak of from these guys. He actually spent the money that he had. Yeah, like these 18 ,000 pounds or something. He had all this money from his bar mitzvah and from various gifts from his grandparents. And he just burned through it, you know, paying for meals and Ubers. And when he dies, like, these guys think that he's got hundreds of millions of pounds. He had four pounds in his account. But to the point of private clubs and that idea of kind of access and exclusivity, and there's always another room.

47:59There's always a kind of, you know, it's like the last door, right? Like there's always some kind of more exclusive sanctum. I think if you're a young kid, that's very destabilizing. And the craziest thing, if anybody reads the book, is that Zach was like on the continuum. Like this kid was pretty well off. Like the idea that he would feel like he didn't have enough, you realize something very sick is going on here. When I was reading, I kept thinking, fake it till you make it. But, you know, fake it till you make it, which is a real anthem of American life. And ambition and success. I'm curious, obviously, Zach didn't make it.

48:35But do you have a sense? Like, there's a scene here where there's a picture his mother looks at of somebody who drew of him at 40. Like, do you have a sense that if he had kept going, he wouldn't make it? Yeah, I think about this a lot. I mean, I think it's funny because there's a way of reading this story where you say, oh, this kid was this, like, reckless fabulist who invented these stories and kind of flew too close to the sun and died. there's another way of reading it which is that he actually kind of had our number like he sort of knew how the world works at this point in this century I think he looked around and like a lot of young people I think the future seemed really uncertain to him I think he didn't know what the job market was going to look like he didn't know was he ever going to be able to own his own home I think he was kind of taken with these like all or nothing fables these stories of people who are kind of faking it.

49:30They kind of go out there and they lie. They're failures, but they pretend to be successes. They just keep kind of upping the ante and upping the ante. And how can I put this delicately? If you look around when Zach is like 16, 17, 18 years old in 2016, 17, 18, you know, I think there are good indications that if that's your MO, you can go all the way to the top. Yes. Put it not delicately. I think everyone understood the subtext. I mean, my story about Donald Trump and Mark Burnett is a story about a guy who was like anybody who's here and lived in New York and is old enough to remember like he was a punchline on page six he was a joke he was a carnival barker and there's this kind of amazing act of like transubstantiation through which he like goes through the apprentice and he comes out the other side and he is this symbol of prosperity and success.

50:24And it worked, right? And I feel as though there's so much. So I don't think Zach was crazy to look around and be like, all right, well, how do you do this? No, it's rational. I mean, Anna's here. I mean, like there's a Netflix series Inventing Anna. There's a, you know, like she's parlayed herself into a new career after the original act. So I think that there's a reality of like people do make it. I think if Zach had survived that night, he would be a fairly successful, up-and-coming real estate developer in London today. Yeah. I do. It's wild. I was just thinking about you writing this book.

50:56It's very different to a writer out. You know his parents. You get introduced to them in some ways through a mutual friend. So in some way, it's a friend of friends kid. It's a friend of friends. You know, I mean, he was a guy I met randomly. I met him randomly and he told me about them. But yeah, I was introduced to them through a friend of theirs. Is this like the trickiest book you've had to write? Yes. Because of that? Yes. Yeah. It's much easier when the people won't talk to you. I think the challenge for me was I got to know this family very well. They had had this very tragic recent loss.

51:26I spent hundreds of hours talking to them. Occasionally, we would have these long sessions talking, two, three hours. And then we'd get to the end, and Rochelle, the mom, would say, that felt like a good therapy session. And I'd have to say, yes, but it wasn't therapy. Because I have to go and write about this, and I'm going to write about it in a way that may make you uncomfortable in some respects. you know, the version of the story that I tell is not going to be the version that you would write. It's all kind of filtered through me. And so I think the challenge of getting the story from them, there's a lot of, if you read the book, there are family secrets in this book.

52:04Like, I kind of am who I am. So if you invite me into your life, I'm going to rummage around a little bit. And there are things in the book that they maybe didn't anticipate would be there. I had to write a book where I felt as though I wasn't withholding things out of my sympathy for them. Right. And I hoped that I could write a book that they could live with. And I will say, you know, seven weeks ago, we launched the book at a big event here, and they came for it. They were in the room for the launch, and that meant a huge amount to me. So, I mean, the good news is, this is a family that's been through an awful tragedy.

52:37It's also a family that's doing okay. They're very emotionally resilient. And I think in a weird way, the process of working with me on this book and having the book be out there in the world for people who know them to read it has been helpful for them. Yeah, that's beautiful. We'll take a couple of audience questions. We have a couple. Go ahead. But of all the frauds that are in the world, there are so many to choose from. How do you decide what to write about what you're going to write about next? Yeah. All the frauds and rebels. Exactly. All the frauds and Steve Cohen.

53:15I don't know. You know, I wish I had a kind of analytical answer for it. I've learned over the years to become... I don't overthink this stuff. What I pay the most attention to is my own attention span. And so, you know, we've all had this experience of you get plunked down next to some random person at a dinner party. And they start telling you a story and it's deadly boring. and you feel yourself just, you know, thinking about how you got to do the laundry tomorrow or whatever else in your mind, hoping that this story will end. And then you've had the experience of somebody telling you a story where you really lean in and you can't get enough of it and you're sort of hanging on their every word.

53:53And as I move through life, either reading things or meeting people, what I'm most attuned to is like, am I leaning in? And I can say in retrospect that most of the time those are stories with, you know, it's the investigative melodrama. It's like a little opera. There have to be kind of big characters and sort of twists and turns in the story so that you end in a place that's different from where you started. It's not a thing where I kind of go in and I have ingredients in my mind. It's much more, I'm just constantly asking myself, am I bored? Because I have a real allergy to boredom. And if I find the story remotely boring, I am really going to struggle to make it interesting to you.

54:35Because I know that when I write these New Yorker articles, you all have this little device in your pockets that is trying to pull you away from anything that I might hope that you would read. So I need to find something that feels like it has enough juice that I can hold on to you and hopefully get you to put your phone down and just absorb. Thank you. Next question. Is there anyone on your radar where you look at them and be like, that guy's full of shit, or I think I'm going to write about this person. I'm just waiting for the evidence to come out. The Adam Neumann of 2026 right now. I mean, it's kind of an all-you-can-eat buffet, right?

55:14I mean, how long you got, right? And sometimes it's not even... Like, how do you write about Kash Patel, you know? Like, what's the right register? Start with a drink and stuff in there. Yeah, exactly. But how do you even do it, honestly? I mean, I think for me, the challenge there would be, like, what's the right tone for this material? You know, it's like Caligula. Like, it's so over the top. Yeah, I don't, I mean, I'm sort of just getting back into it, having, I wrote a big fun piece for The New Yorker that came out a few weeks ago about this crazy fraud conspiracy in New Orleans involving people deliberately getting into high-speed car accidents with 18-wheelers.

56:02and I'm now sort of looking for my next thing. It is a challenge that we live in an era where I think there's almost fatigue with stories like this. And I do think actually to bring it back to Netflix, I think to some extent, we've kind of trivialized these stories a little bit because we've sort of turned them into this like pretty fizzy entertainment. And the sad thing is that like, you know, Cash Patel is the director of the FBI. I hate to tell you. Yeah, it's an embarrassment of riches. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, we have, I think, two more questions. So obviously, you write about liars and fraud, and you mention in your latest book that most people, everyone lies, people embellish their stories.

56:47So how do you deal with that in your work with your interview subjects? How do you know that they're not lying or consciously or subconsciously embellishing their stories? Oh, man, what a great question. Okay, so I could talk all night about this, but just quickly, there's an old saw in journalism, you know, it's kind of an old, like, newspaper, apocryphal story about a newspaper, which is that, you know, the kind of old grizzled city desk editor is advising the young cub and says, if your mother tells you that she loves you, check it out. And I think that's a good impulse generally for, I mean, honestly, for everybody in life.

57:19But, sorry, mom. But particularly for journalists, just to have a kind of default mode of skepticism. I try and talk to people multiple times. It's a luxury of writing for The New Yorker is that I can spend six months on a piece so I can keep coming back. And I do find that it's, you know, it's almost like cross-examining someone or interrogating someone if you're a cop, that you see the story evolve sometimes. times. I think this stuff is really slippery, and I'll give you one quick example from this book. The bretlers, when I first met them, would tell me about these conversations that they'd had.

57:54And normally, it's like the gold standard. You're writing a book or an article, you interview somebody, and you say, you know, and then what did you say on that day? And they said, well, I said this, and then he said that, and then I said this, and you've got one of the participants there. Now, at The New Yorker, we would want to cross-check that and have fact-checkers go to, or the reporter go to the other party in the conversation. So I did that with the Brattlers. And then at a certain point, they told me that they had actually been recording a lot of those conversations on an iPhone. And Rochelle said, you know, would you like those recordings?

58:26Of course, I would like the recordings. There's nothing better. The amazing thing is the way in which the recordings deviated from their memories of those conversations. So this is not people lying to me. This is people who've been through a very traumatic, intense experience, and they remember it differently. And so in a kind of weird way as a journalist, it sort of shook me to my core because so much of what we do is we go out and we ask people about events that happened in the past that they've witnessed and they tell us. And we're sort of trained to think that we should trust them if they're telling the truth.

59:02But even if they're telling what they believe to be the truth, sometimes it's actually off. And even if someone else remembers it that way, because they may have discussed the story. Well, this is the other thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay, last audience question. We have a couple more things we're going to do up here. My name is Al. You mentioned declining the opportunity to do a memoir for El Chapo. Reasonable. But I was wondering if you had ever done ghostwriting like that before. If not, would you? If you have, how is that different than the investigative work that you've done in the past?

59:35I've never done it. And I honestly, I mean, I, you know, I don't think I ever, if I'm, it may be at some point in my life, I need a paycheck. And that's a thing that I do. I sort of hope I don't get there. Not because I'm casting aspersions at it. There are a lot of people who are really brilliant ghostwriters. And I think it's its own art. I would struggle with it because the thing that is kind of essential for me is I'm filtering everything through my own apparatus, my own sensibility. I mean, this is going to sound a little pretentious, but we've been talking about Larry Gagosian, and I was saying it to Larry Gagosian.

1:00:18When I was talking to him about the piece I was writing, he's somebody who's been painted by a number of really significant painters. and we were talking about what the article would look like and I said, Larry, it's not going to look like a photo of you. It's going to look like a painting of you. It's going to, it's kind of coming, it's being processed through my brain. So you're not going to, like you guys might look at me and see Neil Patrick Harris. Indeed. I'm never going to see Neil Patrick Harris when I look at myself in the mirror. And so that was kind of the slippage that I was getting at.

1:00:48So I think I, you know, I sort of think of myself as working in a slightly different idiom and I actually think if I were like your ghostwriter, I would struggle to sort of channel your voice in the way that you might want and be happy with. And probably even more so because you've developed your own voice to such an extent. Yeah, and you don't want the interference of my voice. Yeah. Okay, we're going to do a little round of paddles. This actually builds on the second question we had. And thank you, everyone, who asked a question. This is stories that you would be interested in doing. You can say no or yes.

1:01:19You would be interested in telling the story. Green, red. Okay. Okay. Sam Bankman-Fried, SBF, and the world of crypto. Red, you don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I talk to him and his mom. Oh. Together. Comparing, contrast his mom and Rochelle Brettler. Oh, interesting. I mean, I think they would both go to the mat for their sons, I'll tell you that. A colleague of mine did end up writing about him. I spent some time talking with him and his mom, and I thought, this isn't a piece I want to do. Because? I mean, there were a bunch of reasons. One of them was that Michael Lewis's book was about to come out, and I just sort of thought, do I want to be the guy who publishes a big New Yorker piece like three weeks before the Michael Lewis book on the same subject comes out?

1:02:03Yeah. I do not. Is it also because crypto kind of bores you? Well, okay, so. I think it's kind of boring. This is my struggle is that it's hard for me to, like, what I was saying earlier about, you know, what makes me bored? Am I bored? Blockchain. Yeah, exactly. I'm already bored. I don't know how to, I don't know what to do. It's not sexy. No one, no. Okay, what about Varsity Blues? Aunt Becky from Full House and the parents who did the college sandals. Such a good, jealous of that, right? Totally, great story. Great story. Adam Newman, he keeps on bouncing back. He has his start. He's raised so much money.

1:02:39Oh, yeah, but wouldn't I just be kind of perpetuating the problem? Like, I want that guy to go away. I don't know. Are you agreeing? I had a breakfast with him in Miami. And he was wearing shoes, and I felt like I was lied to. That's a hat on a hat. Yeah, exactly. What about Diddy? The Diddy drama. So did people watch that documentary? I thought it was quite fascinating documentary. I think it's green. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is dark and twisted. I mean, very, very dark, but yeah. Very dark. Luigi Mangione. Would he be, he would be like a, oh, okay. I think he counts as a rebel and a killer, guys, but yes.

1:03:23Uh, the... Uh, watch this space. Oh, really? Did I just get a scoop? I don't know for sure, but, you know, we'll see. Tell us more. I mean, it is an idea that we have discussed. I mean, part of it is like the... You and Luigi? No. You and hot Luigi? No, I'm not one of the many people who write him letters. The, uh, the, um... No, but it's a really interesting story to me. Yes. And depending on what happens with the trials and what happens... I mean, at the New Yorker, there are lots of people and lots of different priorities. And so I would never presume. But like there may be some universe in which in terms of my timing and the timing of the trials and the coverage at the New Yorker that I could write something.

1:03:59I look forward to reading this piece in fall of 2026. Yeah, exactly. I mean, who knows when? I will tell you that right after the shooting, actually before he had been identified, somebody who shall remain nameless called me up and said, you have to write about this. It's empire of pain meets say nothing. It's like, it's rapacious healthcare capitalism meets political violence. Yeah, sounds up your alley. What about the story of a grift, potential grift, alleged grift, of the Trump ballroom? I think that's a good story. You should write that story. Because you famously, like the one story you put away, or one of the stories you put away, I don't know how many you have, was about Jared Kushner and Donald Trump, who love your...

1:04:39It was about Jared and Ivanka. Yeah, Jared and Ivanka. And you decided not to tell that story because? I think I was dealing with this thing that I'm still dealing with, which is what happens when you expose a certain kind of behavior and then nothing happens. For any of us who do this for a living, it just changes the context. I grew up on, like, you know, all the president's men. You know, there's a sense that sometimes if something kind of questionable is happening, you work really hard, you expose it. And then some referee steps in, whether it's Congress or, you know, prosecutors or whoever.

1:05:12And I think I worried that if all we're doing is a kind of outrage porn about the Trump administration, that we might actually weirdly be adding to the problem. I don't know what the answer is, but that was like the circle that I couldn't square. I think it does get into that same level of boring. And Elon has that, too. Like, Elon has shades of boring, too. It's like you're just bored of hearing about him, right? I want to get back. I told you I was going to ask you about Jonah's piece in the New York Times, that can a journalist be a celebrity? your wife says no, people in this crowd would say, the number of people, when I told them I was interviewing Patrick Radenkeven, people said, is he single?

1:05:48Was out of control. My wife says no. She does know. You, but you have, you've modeled for J.Crew, you played yourself in industry. A question for you that I also want to ask Gavin Newsom, do you think you would be as successful if you were like less charismatic or attractive, Less Neil Patrick Harris looking. Ask Neil Patrick Harris, you know, honestly, because that guy, he's struggling. No, but does it play a role in your own success? I don't, I mean, I think that the, this is like the most awkward question I've ever been asked in my life. I try to do here. Listen, I do think that the, I think that it, the thing that I love most about the job and that I think I'm good at, and on some level I think I was always good at, but I've gotten better at is every day brings a new encounter with a new kind of person, and you have to find some wavelength to communicate with those people on.

1:06:48And sometimes that's an MIT professor, and sometimes it's the, you know, deputy national security advisor, and sometimes it's a, you know, a runner for a Mexican drug cartel. And I love about the job having to kind of find that register and it's always different with everybody and i think that there is an element of i don't know about charisma but just kind of human connection being able to sort of look people in the eye listen to them find a way to to um uh i guess i mean i ingratiate is maybe too cheap a word but it's just like make them sort of have a good enough vibe with you that you can find your way to something and um i don't know would it would it be different if i was somebody who was kind of naturally ornery.

1:07:33Listen, I know some great... Oh, some great reporters. ...reporters who are like... They're like animals who aren't house-trained. I mean, you wouldn't... It was so weird, yeah. You wouldn't, like, have these people in your home. And they get unbelievable stories. So I don't know that it's a requirement. Yeah. But it helps. Okay. Okay, I end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions asking my guests a dumb question you have that you don't know the answer to.

1:08:02What is the blockchain? All right. Thank you so much, my guest, Patrick Raddenkief. Thank you. The book is called London Falling. I could not recommend it highly enough. It's an excellent book. It's a very sad book. A big thank you to Liz, to Riley, to the team at the Comedy Cellar for having us here tonight. Thank you for getting us our dinner, our drinks, our checks. Thank you to my team, Desta, Melissa, Sanjana, Devi, Johnny. And thank you to Jason Chatfield who introduced us tonight. He drew pictures of us. He actually, Jason's work is actually in The New Yorker. You can find him at New York Cartoons.

1:08:36He's great. Thank you to Isaac Chotner, who's part of the reason we, who inspired the interview tonight. Thank you, Anna, for coming here shamelessly, which I kind of love. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Patrick. Was it really the most awkward question you've been asking for? It's pretty awkward. He didn't really like it.

1:09:03So our exit music from the Comedy Cellar was fittingly It Wasn't Me by Shaggy. And it was wild that Anna Delvey was there. We're going to get back to that in a second. But first I need to fact check Claude that Patrick Rodden Keefe is actually very funny. His stuff, it reads like fiction, but it's not. It is nonfiction. I think it was so clever for him to tell the story of Zach Brutler. This is the opposite of that kind of Wolf of Wall Street trailer. There's money, there's like private clubs in London and all that stuff. But when a teenager throws himself off a bridge at the opening of your book, you know it's going to be a cautionary tale.

1:09:36And there's just no doubting that in a world where we do have so much fraud porn, like Inventing Anna on Netflix. And now back to Anna Delvey. It was wild to have her there. I did invite her there. Anna Delvey, for those of you who don't know her, is a New York City character. she actually also took on this appearance of being an heiress and was conning and was found guilty of defrauding a number of people in New York City. And since then, she got out of jail. I actually reached out to her originally when she got out of jail to see if maybe I'd do an interview with her. This was like five years ago.

1:10:07And I've run into her at a bunch of New York City parties since then. And I just reached out to her like, hey, we're doing this event at the Comedy Cellar. I sent her the link. It was for fraud, griff, fakes. And she wrote back like, I was like, oh, you might find it interesting. and she wrote back that she was a fan and so she showed up and she told me she really enjoyed the conversation. If you want to come out and enjoy the conversation, the best way to learn about this is to follow us on social media at smartgirldumbquestions or drop us an email, naimaaraza101 at gmail.com. We're going to continue to be doing live tapings.

1:10:36Let us know where you'd like us to do them. We will continue to do them at the Comedy Cellar. And I think over time, we should probably build out some kind of email list when you email us so we can do that. Should we do that? Then I could use it to grift you and sell you SGDQ coin on the blockchain, whatever that is. That's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. In my credits above, I forgot to thank Aisha, Ben, Cam, and last but not least, Skylar Gibson, who was our great volunteer for the evening. I'm your host, Naima Raza, and I'll see you next week for an all-new Smart Girl Dumb Questions.