It's not 1929, but it might be - Andrew Ross Sorkin

24:47I mean, I've thought of it since then, but there was never a moment. And I never even thought about it as a movie necessarily. It's like an HBO series, I feel like. It's a miniseries. But I never even thought. But I'm saying, as I was writing the book, it wasn't. You just smiled. Are you in talks? Yeah. He went. He went. No, no, no. He's in talks. By the way. There was like a gleam in your eye when I said HBO. I'll go even straighter than that. No, we've talked to all sorts of folks about it. And hopefully one day something will happen. And maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I think I was thinking more.

25:17No, no. I think I was writing the book more like, did you ever read Barbarians at the Gate? Of course. Or Den of Thieves? Of course. Those are the books that I love loving. Yeah. And I don't think that Jim Stewart necessarily was, when he was writing that book, Den of Thieves, was thinking this could be a movie. Or Brian Burrows was thinking that. I just wanted to write it in a way where you and my mother and everybody could read it and just sort of like read it on a beach. You could read it either on a beach or you could read it because you're like a serious academic. There are some very obviously cinematic set pieces in the book in 1929 that as you're reading it, you could just picture, oh, man, I'd love to watch.

25:58I'd love to watch this scene. Who do you want to cast in this movie? I would like to be a young J. Pierpont Morgan, and I will do the must. I'll grow the must. I think Buscemi's got to be in there. Who should be in it? Got to be. Who should be in it? Who are like the three most important characters that we have to cast? I think we got to cast Charlie Mitchell. Okay, fair. We got to cast Carter Glass. Okay. Because he's sort of like… What's the age range for Carter Glass? By the way, this is going to be some older men. Right. Older men. Harrison Ford. I do think we want Evangeline Adams. in this movie.

26:32Evangeline is basically an astrologer that every banker in the city was going to visit basically to tell them what to do which was insane. That's amazing. She had a newsletter by the way back then that was bigger than Dealbook. She had 100 ,000 people subscribed to her newsletter. She was the Tom DeMarc of the 1920s. Oh, let's get William H. Macy. We could do that. Absolutely. For just anything? For just anything? Yeah, absolutely. Make it happen. I will say Charlie Mitchell handsome man could be like a George Clooney type. Like it just, you know, and we got to have Livermore in there. Yeah. You need it.

27:10To me, that's the most. He's got to be in there. Jesse Plemons. Interesting. For Livermore? Make him a little bit older. Let me ask you this. So you didn't have the actors in your head, but surely, because when I'm reading - I'm thinking Leo Dio. Yeah. When I'm reading a great book, when I'm reading a great nonfiction book, I Google the characters. I want to see what they look like, right? Assuming these are not people that I know what they look like. Did you do the same to have some sort of picture in your head? Oh, I had a lot. By the way, I mean thousands of photographs because a lot of the times when I was trying to write a scene, if you will, I'd be trying to find either.

27:44So the way I'd be doing this, I'd try to find dialogue, meaning some kind of note or letter or diary or transcript or something where they're talking to each other. I would then try to find either a picture of like the room that they would have been in or some architecture plan or some description of what that looked like. I might try to find the newspapers from that day to figure out like what was happening that morning or afternoon or what the weather was. I mean, so I was like looking for all these kind of little things. So yes, lots and lots of pictures. When do you think 1929 ended? Like the era?

28:17Was it the beginning of World War II? Like when do you peg that? Like, all right, we're done with this. The end of the depression? Yeah. Well, you know, a lot of people try to give this whole New Deal and Roosevelt lots of credit for somehow ending things. Not true. because if you really go back and look at a stock chart 1937 Ray Dalio's been saying it since 2015 does he say 37? oh he's not no he says we're on the verge of 1937 he's been saying that for a decade that's a shit right which is to say that you could actually go the other way again yeah we crashed in 37 50 % crash so I don't know I'm a what you say 1940 we got a chart no charts no charts so like I I feel like World War II produces the economic activity and the inflation that you need to pull out of like a deflationary or disinflationary tailspin.

29:05And it puts people back to work. And it just, it feels like that's when most people - Yeah, because money wasn't moving. In other words, there was not a financial response that ended the crisis. It was literally an exogenous event. But I also add one other element to it because I also think of, I look at 1950, frankly, 1950 to 1980 and think to myself that that was almost a historical aberration because the other component part of this is the rest of the world is now basically out of business the u.s is like a monopoly power with monopoly rents you have unionization happening and we can afford to actually do that in part because we're not competing against anybody really everyone else has to rebuild and you don't you don't really see wages stagnate in the u.s until about 1980 and i I think that that also coincides a bit with the rest of the world coming back online and competing against us again.

29:57And that starts to sort of compete away some of the margin. There's also the boomers coming into their peak earnings years, like into the 80s, which kind of like gives you another leg to the bull market. Once you pull out of the 70s, which were horrible for stocks, horrible for inflation, then you got like a new tailwind that has nothing to do with anything. I'm thinking of Michael Jackson, so what are you going to do? And Rocky, did you ever read The Great Depression, A Diary by Benjamin Roth? Yes, great book. And what was so great about that book was obviously it captured a whole other sort of set about the rest of the country.

30:34What it was actually like for the people. Exactly. So I think using that as a segue in terms of Josh's earlier point, why that sort of dynamic can play out. Forget about the economic ramifications of the debt, and of course it's all valid. But like the actual experience of the average American living through that 15 whatever year period is unthinkable. No work anywhere just for years on end. Like grapes of wrath for 70 % of the population. It just seems – it seems we can't repeat it. Unemployment of literally 25%, manufacturing cut in half, banks all over the place going out of business. Like that's just – that's not going to happen.

31:13I can only hope. I can only hope. You tell me what happens with AI, by the way. I think there's, right? Best case scenario for AI could also undo some of the other things too. So I wanted to just go back to very few Americans actually own stocks. Yes. Most retirement plan for a middle-aged person living in the 20s was die, basically, right? Yes. Okay. Half the country was working in agriculture, working on farms. Everyone was a farmer. Ranches. Okay. The other half working in factories, people weren't living to 90. But that's why you don't have people relying on the stock market to the extent they do today.

31:51And that's why I think we have to race to the rescue with money anytime the stock market, because we just have a much heavier emphasis in society on this is how you retire. You buy stocks, you're in 401k. Trillions of dollars, everybody's in. But this is the ultimate put. But we didn't have that back then is a really. Well, we also didn't have home ownership as sort of a beacon of what the American dream was supposed to be. And you could argue that that unto itself also sort of threw a wrench in things in 2008. Some of the policies to get us there. Yeah. I just look at the degree to which we have based retirement on the stock market itself and the amount of people who are relying on it directly or indirectly.

32:35It's about 60 % now, I think. Yeah. I just don't think we could ever. And the politicians. Like, that's the scoreboard. Yeah. I just don't think we could ever allow for 90 % decline in stocks. It almost like would be an impossible thing. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. We could have a very bad recession. We have them, you know, I've the first 10 years of my career, I lived through two of them. So I understand that. I just feel like you see a lot of people doing financial media, financial commentary. And when they want to get attention, they'll either say 1987 or 1929. And I think 20, 87, I could picture it happening tomorrow.

33:1329, I just don't think is possible. I feel like Andrew retired in 1987. Like, you don't hear that anymore. You killed it. Thanks to 1929. Well, but I will say, one thing to consider though, and maybe I'm talking against my book now, and you guys know this, given what you guys do more than anything else, it's actually never really paid to be a Cassandra. Or at least very rarely does it pay to be the Cassandra. It's not that you shouldn't listen to the Cassandra. and focus, you know, pay attention to the yellow and red flags they're waving. But over the last hundred years, you'll do so much better.

33:45You'll be so much wealthier not listening. Well, that's the premise of what we do. So we don't think we know better than the people who are issuing all these dire warnings. We just know that most of the time they don't come true. And even if they do, they're all survivable. And there's a reason. If you're not taking the wrong kind of risk. There's a reason. It's because we are a capitalist society as individuals. We are right. We are all self-motivated to go to work, to make more money, to better ourselves for our family, to grow personally and professionally. And all of that— That's what our generation thinks.

34:16I think there's some others who— But that's the stock market. It all shows up in earnings. I want to ask you if you struggled during the last— I'm struggling every day. The last couple of years finishing the book. Yeah. And I know the lead time from, like, when you submit a draft to when the publisher— Because I know that takes forever. but like you you're in the morning you're on tv yep you're looking at things like open ai and soft bank and the funding rounds and the valuations it has to be impossible for you to not see the patterns repeating oh there's no question like that must have been very difficult to compartmentalize the first time i started thinking about it was actually during gamestop right right the whole gamestop amc memification i mean that felt very 1920 yeah they were trading It was a GameStop back then.

35:05It was modern day bucket shops. Similar story with some of the crypto stuff that was going on. So I feel like there were actually a couple of periods of time where even my publisher would have wished that I had like finished a book. Now. Because they would have been like, yeah, now it's happening. That was way more reminiscent, that 2021 period than today is. Yeah. I won't disagree with you there. I think you're totally right. So one of the things that I find really interesting is the pattern matching. Because I'm a market commentator. I do it all the time. Everybody does this. we're always looking for patterns because it's nice to be the person that spots danger coming.

35:37But also, second, our DNA. In one of the most ancient parts of our brain, pattern recognition was literally life. Like, I wanted to share this with you. I thought it was interesting. Like the human being cannot help but see danger everywhere and repetition of things. There's an economist, Gary Smith, and a data scientist, Jay Cordes, and they wrote a book. And it's about the human need to pattern match. And this is a quote. The survival and reproductive payoffs from pattern recognition gave humans an evolutionary advantage over other animals. Indeed, it has been argued that the cognitive superiority of humans over all other animals is due mostly to our evolutionary development of superior pattern processing.

36:23The authors list various ways pattern recognition aided in the survival of early humans. Zebra stampedes were a signal of predators. Dark clouds were a signal of rain. Some foods are edible, some are poisonous. What do they look like? The reason why we are all here is because our ancestors spotted the danger, usually as a pattern, and were able to pass on their genes. The people whose ancestors did not do that are not with us today. When you're looking at the roaring 2020s and you just finished reading Andrew Ross Sorkin's unbelievable 1929, I personally, I found it impossible not to compare the patterns of what was happening then to now.

37:05Oh, with the cash. Like it's unbelievable how easy it is for us as people, as humans. Oh, for sure. This looks like that. No, the whole time I'm seeing, you know, this phrase democratization of finance used, you know, almost religiously in the 1920s. That's amazing. And then, of course, it's used religiously today as we're introducing all these sort of new interesting and maybe esoteric products and things like that, crypto and da-da-da-da. Tariffs all of a sudden happen. Right. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. I've seen this movie before. Let me tell you how that movie ends. Now, but that's the complicated part because the movie, well, we'll see how it ends, ends, but it's not exactly the same.

37:50It was very easy to get bearish about tariffs now. and God forbid you knew anything about the 30s, it would have been a five alarm fire to look at the numbers that they were talking about for tariffs. Last year, the stock market ended up 18%. Like it was the total wrong thing to pay attention to. But how do you know, especially if you're looking for patterns without even realizing it? Well, I think part of it is we look for patterns broadly, but then we oftentimes then miss the details. So for example, on tariffs, I think there's a view, how did everybody get it so wrong? everyone had their hair on fire and it hasn't been as bad as people expected.

38:27You know, back in 1930, you know, trade falls by 60%. Why was that? Because it was an across-the-board tariff, very similar to the kind of things that Trump announced on Liberation Day with the kind of super aggressive numbers that he was talking about. And then reversed. The second here, but the reversal was not sort of part of the pattern match. Right. And so that's where things, I think - The reversal - Oh, that's such a good point. The reversal invalidated the pattern. Exactly. They didn't reverse themselves in the 30s. They plowed ahead. Right. And you never knew, I think, for at least a couple of weeks, even when it felt like there was a reversal, you weren't sure, is this a full reversal?

39:03What's happening? And so people— Well, Trump could have reversed the reversal and, in fact, tried to several times. And that's what makes—I guess Michael and I debate this a lot. Not really debate, but we talk about this a lot. we have so much respect for some of the older people who have decades more experience than we do in the investing world. And we read all their stuff and we revere them. But we also have to remind ourselves, these people are experts on a previous version of the world. And they're always talking in analogies to other things they've been through. But these things are never the same.

39:41The inflation of 2021 is not the same as the inflation of 1975. Whenever anybody says, I've seen this movie before, no, you haven't. Right, right. But it's a little bit like, this time is different is not totally right, and this time is never different is not. We say always different. Right. You think it's always different? I think it's always different. We say this time is different, which is the thing that people say sardonically. So, oh, this time is different. Yes. Every time is different. different like and how is it different see i think it's like this time is never really that different but there's always like a twist but it depends what you're talking about so for things need context for example in 2015 ish every investment writer was obsessed with the cape ratio in 2013 henry blodgett wrote about it right i'm stopping i'm not reinvesting my dividends whatever every it was like years of it well there was there was a husband infection the husband that That was traveling through Wall Street.

40:35So had you only looked at the CAPE ratio without any context of the CAPE ratio in 1870 versus today, the differences in the economics and the industries and the sectors and the margins of these businesses, you would have missed everything. So yes, there is nuance. Now, when it's not different, our behavior, that is always the same, right? When you see manias, that always ends a certain way. But when you're talking about the facts of the markets today and the economies and the companies, always different. Okay, so where are we today? You know, I was with Paul Tudor Jones a couple, maybe a couple weeks ago now.

41:08Sell. Okay, and Paul says - We're live trading the show, so. So Paul says it's 1999. Oh, I was going to say 1994. He says 1999. Okay. But he will also remind you that the market still went up 40%. Yeah, I think the NASDAQ tripled in 1999. Right, so you tell me. I mean, by the way, 1928, Yeah. People like Charles Merrill, you'd appreciate, co-founder of Merrill Lynch. Sure, sure. He told people, get out of the market. Yeah. Except from the beginning of 1928 to September 1929, market was up 90%. So here's where I think we are right now. Babson, too. Roger Babson. Roger Babson. Of Babson College.

41:49The Babson Break. Did like a four-year tour, same doom and gloom speech. One day, it actually was right. Right, and they call it the Babson Break. The Babson Break. Years, nobody listened to the guy. So, Andrew, obviously, there is massive optimism around this new technology, and it is factually driving everything. 75 % of the spending, the markets, the gains, whatever, like all that good stuff. But what I'm seeing is not a lack of enthusiasm because it's not hard to find euphoria, right, like in different areas. But if you use Microsoft as one of the proxies for the AI public security that you can invest in, like I think the market is rejecting a lot of the optimism.

42:28Microsoft has not even outperformed since chat GPT or over the last year, like barely outperformed the market. NVIDIA is getting sold off. Like, yes, the semiconductors are going vertical. But I like the forward P of the Mac 7, it's unchanged. So is there optimism? Is there uncertainty? Is there debt? Is there high expectations? Yes, but this is not a mania. By the way, I've always been uniquely focused on Microsoft because I always thought that Microsoft was a backdoor way to buy access and shares effectively of OpenAI. In the private market, in the public market. I think a lot of people think that.

43:02Private shares. SoftBank is the other sort of backdoor vehicle for that. And again, I think you're right. But then you say to yourself, if that's true, how do you think about the private market valuations for some of these assets? That's where 1929 is perhaps. Like OpenAI and their, what is it, 500, whatever it is right now. 500 billion. It's going to be very interesting. I am very curious to see how the market reacts if we have the opportunity to trade those shares publicly. Like Oracle was just in a 45 % drawdown. If OpenAI was public, I think it would be worse. If Tudor is saying it's 1999 though, the implication.

43:38I think he might even said September 1999. Okay. So the NASDAQ fell 85%. People don't understand this. not the S &P, the NASDAQ fell 85 % from the peak, which maybe was March of 2000. I know that was for the S &P. I'm not sure if that was the NASDAQ's peak, but it was an 85 % drawdown. So when you invoke 1999, like you sort of better be sure or wink when you're saying it. I feel like it's not the kind of thing to say lightly. a 99 % decline in the NASDAQ today would be akin to the crash of 1929 for the overall stock market. These are the biggest stocks in the world. In 1999, forget about earnings valuations.

44:25These companies are pre-revenue. I think like not Cisco, but we don't have pre - OpenAI is not pre-revenue. It might be overvalued. But there's a whole ecosystem of much smaller companies that we're not really focused on that I think if you add them up to collect. But they don't matter. That's the thing. Nobody has exposure to them. They don't even trade. This is a hilarious headline from the information the other day. AI evaluation startup, LM Arena, valued at$1.7 billion. Now, that's no money. Who cares? But it's a startup that operates a widely cited ranking of AI models. Like, that's where we are.

45:00That sounds bad. That's the company? Yeah. So, listen, whatever. I don't know anything about the company. So yes, there is obviously optimism around these particular names that we don't have access to. But just anecdotally, you are on TV every day talking about the stock market, as are you. How many people are asking you about stocks right now? Because I'm not getting anything. I get asked about stocks every day. I mean, I'm sure you do. You're on - NVIDIA. I go to the airport. They say to me, what do you think of NVIDIA? What do you think of - Maybe you're a bad example. You are literally on CNBC every single day.

45:26You don't think 2021 was more of that than - So much. Oh, so much. Okay. So much. That I agree with. But then the question is, do you think that there's going to be a re-rating on any of the AIs? Well, who knows? Or do you think the re-rating has already happened? Look at CoreWeave. It's cut in half. Yeah. Like, it's happened. So you think it's happened? It's already happened. I said this, and it was very profound. I said this on TV the other day. It was almost brilliant. I said, the sign of a healthy bull market is it takes out its own trash. And I think I was probably referring to the Bitcoin treasury stocks at the time.

45:58but it applies to not that the company is trash, CoreWeave, but the trashy behavior that we look back and we're embarrassed by. A healthy bull market doesn't require for there to be a market-wide sell-off in order for those corrections to happen. They just sort of happen and people stop talking about it. Do you remember the Circle IPO? Of course. Wild. That was last year. Look at a chart of that stock. We took out the trash. I'm sure it's a fine company. It went straight up and straight down. Straight up, straight down. The band played on. Like, we're doing this show today with the Russell 2000 having rallied, the small cap 600.

46:40The Dow. Stocks all over the world. Okay, so maybe we're - Are we 1996? I just think we're better at processing - But I think this is Josh's point. My point is, you can't say it's a speculative mania, and then I show you 50 of the hottest stocks of last year in 30 to 70 % drawdowns. Only two of them. Where's the mania? Only two outperformed last year. So I think Josh's point is right, is in 1996, this is the point. Like we're looking desperately - For some parallel. For some parallel. We're looking for the pattern. But what if 2021 was 1999 and this is 2004? Like, I guess I'm trying to say we had a speculative mania.

47:17People are glossing over this. We had a thousand IPOs on the NASDAQ, a thousand on the New York Stock Exchange between 2020 and the end of 21. It's never happened before outside of 1999. Why doesn't that qualify? ARK had six different ETFs that were up 100%. That hadn't only happened since 1999. That was the bubble and we're done. It's over. So it's not to say, listen, if the market were to fall 40 % from here, I don't think that necessarily proves anything. I think if you look at the valuation, the fundamentals, the growth, like that is the truth. And the market, listen, if the market falls 80 % from here, yes, it was a bubble.

47:51The market falls 40 % all the time. In 2022, NVIDIA was cut in half. Maybe worse. Dude, in 2025, NVIDIA fell 35%. It just happened. Meta was in a 70 % drawdown in 2022. That's not good enough as a 2001 analog. Like that's not enough pain. It's not enough - Meta and NVIDIA lost three-fourths of their market cap. Yeah. Amazon was cut in half. Like we sort of had, it's not akin to 2000, 2001, but it's like bad enough in the tech stocks where the excess was. We cleared it out. And what did these companies do? They did some layoffs and then went into a brand new CapEx cycle. And so I feel like it's early to say, here we are.

48:35It's 1999. I just, I'm not seeing it. I don't know. Listen, there is more optimism, obviously, than as there should be. We've been in a long bull market, but it is not excessive. Now, Josh and I talk about this a lot. We had multiple contraction in 2025. People don't even know that. You could say, well, what about XYZ? What about IREN and Oclo and those names? Which, by the way, the trash have been taken out. They got cut in half. Especially in 2025 or 2026, because of Robinhood and the advent of the realtor trader, which is a real thing, 20 % of the volume, there are always pockets of nonsense.

49:06And especially in a bull market, there will never, never not be pockets. It's just always going to be. That will never not exist. But I think the pockets, to the extent that they exist today, may be more, actually, frankly, than the private markets. I totally agree with you. We agree. and and and the thing is who cares like who gets hurt but well who get uh the people that are in those markets can all afford it they're big boys what's one mark andreason like if he invests in 10 startups and six of them go to zero or or get cut in half he's fine he'll continue his investors it's harvard like they could take a hit but watch this space because to me the next sort of piece of this and this is not this year probably not even next year the year after there's gonna there's a big move of what you know about it to take a lot of the private equity venture capital tokenize it um create these semi-liquid instruments uh similar to some of the reets uh that you know like b-reit kind of products that look like a stock you can buy any day but if you want to sell you may not be able to sell we are watching we are like there's stuff like that yes you know what and you know what happens the minute those vehicles meet price discovery instant 20 to 30 percent haircut.

50:16Healthiest thing in the world. We just saw that happen with a private equity company where they attempted to merge a private vehicle and a publicly traded vehicle. And the market said, oh, yeah, here's where we think it's worth. Yeah, great news. You have liquidity. Oh, shit, it's worth 70 cents on the dollar. Healthiest thing in the world. If we have excesses in the private markets and you have a situation where they want to have temporary liquidity, quote unquote, or offer like you can pull out 5 % of your money every quarter, whatever it is. That is how you get true price. It's probably lower, frankly, for a lot of things, not for everything.

50:53And I think that's what you want to see if you want to be constructive. How do you explain something I think about a lot? This, what was the SPAC phenomenon? Because that was sort of a new product. Everybody got super excited about it. Not so new. It wasn't that new, but it became - I used to sell that shit in the in the late 90s right not so no and then but most of them failed and the truth was and i'd go on tv or be writing about it and be sort of sort of cautionary warning people saying look this may not work out be careful and the truth was most people were like sorkin stop trying to protect me by the way you're not really protecting me you're protecting the man like like stop being so paternalistic about this stuff this stuff is here's the great i want my lottery ticket.

51:39Give me the lottery ticket. The great irony of the SPAC bubble is that actually the SPACs were the best part of it. Meaning while it was still a SPAC, your downside was guaranteed at$10 a share. Oh yeah, totally. The safest thing in the world. SPACs were like bank accounts. They're great. It wasn't until they converted to a company away from being a SPAC that you had risk. And then of course, almost every one of them had a massive drawdown on that conversion. we had SPACs in the mid 2000s that's how half the Chinese companies got public here in the US and I was doing the IPOs for these SPACs and I would tell clients honestly most of these are going to suck some of them will probably work but it doesn't really matter that much because we have a$10 downside they announced the deal we'll have six months to decide if we want to stick around for the conversion and of course you never did right and you collected your interest and you just moved on this was a great investment banking product in in that day what we saw four years ago was different celebrity SPACs were new right this is what you had to report on you had very prominent successful business people who had made a lot of money get really attracted to the structure uh everyone lucrative people that but shack like that that that part of it was not different we everyone knew that this is going to end badly.

53:06Once you see that, you know you're closer to the end than the beginning. So can we talk about your day job? Yeah. Like you are absolutely killing it with CNBC Squawk, but like in particular the guests that you have on the show. What's the story? How do we do this? We're in awe of your ability to book people from politics, economics, technology, stock market traders, hedge funds, pro athletes, movie stars. I've seen you interview Kim Kardashian and like Ray Dalio back to back. It's not just the booking. It's the versatility of being able to jump from one conversation to the next. I don't think there's a lot of people in the world who can do that.

53:47Do you give yourself enough credit for having that ability? This is like you're throwing the ball underhand. I really mean it. Do you recognize how extraordinary it is to do something like the Dealbook Summit, for example, which I've been to. I feel very lucky. And it's not like a humble brag. I feel lucky. You have the talent. You're lucky that you have the talent. I'm lucky that I'm curious. That's honestly, I think what it is. Lucky that I'm curious. Because when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was typically talk to the adults. I would go to like my parents are like a cocktail party. I want to talk.

54:23Did you hold up like a corn on the cob as a microphone? I used to do magic tricks. I was, I love magic. But I was always like curious, asking people questions. And I didn't care. I love business. Always loved business. But if you were a poet, I could sit with you for an hour. I'm just curious about that. If you were a scientist, if you were, it didn't matter to me. So you have a wide-ranging curiosity that touches on a lot of things. I meet somebody on the street. I want to know about their story. It's just like how I'm sort of wired. Yeah. So I feel lucky that I'm wired like that. because it's, for me, it's like a natural act to want to know.

55:01I don't have to like try. Well, we think it's amazing. It is amazing. By the way, I do have to try. I don't want to say I don't try. I have to try to like figure out how I'm going to do the interview and I probably over prepare and make myself crazy. But like the actual, like, that's what I really love. And the fact that I get to do that all day. Unbelievable. I was on an airplane recently watching you with Tom Freston. I had never heard of him. Really? And I said, this guy looks super interesting. And I listened to his book, which he read also. Great book. And it just sent me down a rabbit hole of the Redstones and Hollywood.

55:30And like, it started with him and started with your interview. Like that sort of, I was like, this is a dude. I want to learn more about this guy. Tom Preston's a fascinating dude. I mean, the history of MTV, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Everything that he was involved with. But yeah, so I just, I love hearing people's story, understanding their story, understanding them and understanding like what drives them and why they're doing what they're doing. And yeah, I mean, I think that's my whole, and by the way, I feel like part of it's like you're always trying to put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

55:57I feel like I'm doing that in the context of the interview. I feel like I'm doing the context of like people that I was writing about in 19, in the 1920s or I'm always, that's sort of like the way I'm, as I said, sort of wired. What do you think is the, an example of one of the best interviews that you've done and why? Well, so the interview that I probably got the most attention that I ever did, but, and may very well be the best interview I did, was this interview I did with Elon Musk a couple years ago. Okay, I remember it. And it wasn't, you know, early on in the interview, he made some, you know, big incendiary comments about advertisers and told them to go after themselves.

56:40He told them to go f*** yourself to the advertisers. But the thing for me, sort of like the art of the interview, craft of the interview thing was when you see somebody like, Like somebody going to some kind of place like that, for me, it was like, okay, how do you sort of like meet them where they are in that moment and try to pull it back? Because it could have gone. That interview could have just gone. Well, he could have done this, thrown his earpiece down and walked off. Could have walked off, but also it could have just gone down a dark road. It could have stopped. It could, you know, sometimes people shut down.

57:14So to me, I'm always trying to figure out like, okay, in this moment, how are we going to bring? And so I actually think that's a, I love that interview actually X that, that moment sort of right after that moment, because there was sort of a turn that I took partially because of the preparation. I had like, I had sort of planned a couple of different ways I could do things in sort of any given moment. And I sort of went to a thing and sort of settled him and brought it to a different place. And then we were off to the races. Do you have those, almost like a comic has a bit. do you have those little pieces of an interview ready almost like all right if i need to get him win him back here's what i'll ask or if i need to turn you know a little bit like i always think i i'm not a pilot but i i think i'm taking off from jfk and i ultimately need to get to lax and i'm probably going to stop at o 'hare and atlanta and i might have to you know drop in dallas or wherever and so i have a sort of a plan but then i also know the weather's going to change you had turbulence in that one like the weather is going to change and i'm gonna have to divert yeah but i have to have a plan of how of a couple different ways to divert based on what happens so yeah i sort of try to have a a plan and i try to listen i think oh you guys i can tell like because you're not looking at questions reading like the best interview we're just ham and egg it over here.

58:40Wait, actually, Andrew, I said to Josh, compared to you. Dude, this is the only podcast we've ever done. We have like almost nothing in the doc. We normally have like 15 pages of charts and stuff. We are, we have nothing. Yeah, we got nothing. Well, no, because we know what we want to ask you. Right, but I think that the best interviews, at least that I've ever done, are the ones where I feel A, super prepped and like read in. I feel like I feel them. Also that you know where the speed bumps are for the other person. Yeah. That's another thing I think I spend a lot of time thinking about. Like, if I ask this question, If I ask it this way, do they lean in?

59:12Do they flinch? Do they shut down? And then I sometimes rethink, how do I want to, what kind of reaction do you want, by the way? But yeah, I think listening was the other thing. Many years ago, actually the first real interview I ever does, 15 years old, I'd started the sports magazine. I went and interviewed David Stern, the former commissioner. Late commissioner of the NBA, one of the all-time great people on the planet. Wait, what do you mean you went and interviewed David Stern? How? So I was living in Scarsdale, New York. He lives in Scarsdale. and I wrote him a letter and said, I was 15 year old kid.

59:42I was doing this magazine. I wanted to come interview him. And I went to interview him and I had a legal, I had a legal patch that my dad had given me and I had written down all the questions and I sort of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Just ask the questions. He answered the questions. I went to the next question. I had a tape recorded, da, da, da. And it was the greatest lesson of my life because when I listened to the tape, when I got home, I realized oh shit he said this he said this and I never followed up I never even thought you just went through your list I just had my list yeah and it but it was like then and there that I realized you have to listen to the other person the best stuff comes out if you just listen you could probably go for certain interviews you could go into the interview with sort of three or four idea three or four questions and never even think about anything else if you just listen to the answer right and because it could lead you to a place exactly where you didn't even think that you were going to get to go exactly somebody opens opens themselves up and you're just worried about well what's the next thing i want to ask them totally and then you missed the you missed the conversation you get the interview but you missed the conversation uh who's who's saying no to you still i feel like you can get anybody i gotta get you guys on the on the air in the morning you know I've never been on Squawk.

1:01:00I've been on CNBC 15 years. Swear to God. What time do you wake up though? I don't know. I don't know why. What time do you wake up? Believe me, I'll be up. I mean, the show starts at 6 a.m. I'm 48 years old. I'm going through male menopause. I will be awake. Can we just say, you're only three blocks away. I know. Yeah. Invite me anytime. Okay. I know a couple things. Like who, who can't you get that you would love to get? Like, like what's a, the Pope, you know, why do you think that would be interesting? By the way, went and interviewed uh the previous pope i went to italy because all of these ceos were going to visit him this is in 19 in 2019 um they wanted to get his blessing for all you remember when uh esg and uh dei programs and climate issues were front center that was how you raised money in oil oil executives were going to visit the pope oh my god for asking for permission or begging for forgiveness.

1:01:59Probably a combination of both. Probably the photo op. Why do you think that would be an interesting, I can't imagine that being interesting. I don't know. You know. It's just the scale of it. Like I'm going to the Vatican and I'm sitting with the photo op. The scale of it. I'll tell you somebody who I think's one of, I actually, I want to interview because she's a great businesswoman and because she's a great interviewer, Oprah Winfrey. Oh, I feel like you could do that. Yeah, I got to work. I got it for the summit. I got to work on it. All right. This is the last thing we're going to get to and then we're going to let you go.

1:02:26And I just wanted to say thank you so much for spending this time with us. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Could you rank the three people that you can't stand the most? Infinite. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. I can do that. I think this is what I wanted to ask you. I think one of the things you do better than almost anyone I see on air is you stay cool. And you are able to sort of like hear people say things that the audience is kind of in on it with you. They know you don't agree, but you keep it business and you still remain curious. Even when it's obvious that you have an opposing view, you just, you have this ability I find to just keep the conversation going.

1:03:08Nothing is worse than a conversation that ends with people mad at each other, right? It's like the, it's like the defeats the whole purpose. I've never really seen that happen with you. You keep the conversation going and you're dealing with like political stuff and, and And like people have really passionate opinions. This is going to sound really weird. Even though I think our job is to be super judgmental, I'm like one of the least judgmental people you'll actually meet. So in the moment, I'm not judging. I mean, I'm judging because part of my job is to judge who's telling the truth, who's not telling what their motives and incentives and all.

1:03:43But I'm also, I sort of recognize people who they are. Yeah. You know? And in that moment, I'm just trying to figure it out. They're trying to make sense of them. And I'm not trying to change them. Yeah. You're giving people a chance to tell their side of whatever the issue is. And the viewer, the public gets to see whatever the answer is. You may not like the answer. But by the way, that is the answer. Sometimes I'll get emails or texts or tweets from people. And they'll say, you got to go harder at that person. They didn't answer the question. You got to ask it again. Why haven't you asked it five times?

1:04:20Yeah. And what they're really saying is, why have you not like taken out your revolver and shot this person? Because you're from Scarsdale. Merrick boys are very judgy. Josh is very judgmental. I'm extremely judgmental. But the truth is, the greatest thing about what I call live journalism is I can ask the question once, twice, maybe three times, and you can see the physical reaction of the other person. And that is the answer. You may find it completely unsatisfying, but that's what they're going to tell you. And that's great. And it's also, that's great television. That's, I mean, people, how many years have you been on Squawk?

1:04:53Started in 2011 hosting and was probably maybe 2006 or seven, you know, just with CNBC as a contributor. It's incredible. And you're getting up at like three in the morning every day, four in the morning? I live in the city, so I'm the closest to the studio. I wake up late in morning TV land. Well, I think it's safe to say it's one of the most influential shows in not just financial media, but I think just anyone who's an investor, it's at ground zero, every CEO, every politician, myself included, everyone's watching and you're amazing. Well, I'm listening to the compound. Thank you. Thank you.

1:05:29Thank you guys. All right. So that concludes part one of the compound friends with Andrew. I want to tell people where they should buy the book, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, airports. Audible. Audible. Independent bookshops. They've been really good to me. Guys, you are going to absolutely love 1929. And when it does become an HBO show, which Andrew tipped us off about, that way you'll have that background. And I highly recommend reading it or, like Michael does, listen to it in our post-literate society. Is that there? We want cameos. We want cameos. All right. Guys, Andrew Russell, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for watching.

1:06:07Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Good night. Thank you, everybody. You want to do it one more time? You got it. You got it. That was fun. You guys are great.