Michael Burry Speaks

Michael Burry Speaks

Author: Pushkin Industries December 2, 2025 Duration: 39:44

Of all the characters in The Big Short, fund manager Michael Burry (depicted by Christian Bale in the movie version) seemed the least likely to grant Michael Lewis a follow-up interview. Burry was one of the first to see the subprime housing market crisis coming, and he actually helped Wall Street banks develop the credit-default swap, the instrument that allowed short sellers to make their bets against the market. Lately, Burry has been in the news again because his fund has taken short positions against tech giants Nvidia and Palantir. Now he finally sits down with Lewis as part of this series.

Burry recently launched a newsletter called Cassandra Unchained.

Order The Big Short audiobook, now narrated by Michael Lewis, on Audible, Spotify, pushkin.fm/bigshort or wherever you get audiobooks.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.


Fifteen years have passed since Michael Lewis published his defining work, Against the Rules: The Big Short Companion. In that time, the story of the 2008 financial crisis, first told in his best-selling book and later in an Oscar-winning film, has only grown more relevant. This audio companion, produced by Pushkin Industries, is not a simple retrospective. Instead, Lewis, joined by co-host Lidia Jean Kott, uses the anniversary as a starting point for a deeper investigation. They examine the enduring legacy of that seismic event-how its lessons were absorbed, ignored, or misunderstood in the worlds of business, culture, and even sports. Listeners are brought directly into conversations that feel both urgent and reflective, including Lewis catching up with the film's director, Adam McKay, and revisiting the real-life individuals whose stories fueled the original narrative. The result is a podcast that functions as a vital, living appendix to a modern classic, asking what we truly learned and how the rules of the game have-or haven't-changed since the house of cards came tumbling down. It’s an essential listen for anyone who wonders how the past continues to shape our present.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 110

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
Podcast Episodes
Blockers: A New Audiobook from Michael Lewis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:42
Exciting news! I have an all new book coming out on October 6th: BLOCKERS. You can pre-order your copy of the audiobook exclusively at blockers.fm. The hardcover is available at michaellewiswrites.com. A blocker is the w…
From Medal of Honor: James Fleming’s Impossible Vietnam War Rescue [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:05
In 1968, in the dense jungles of Vietnam, a team of Green Berets was pinned down by an overwhelming North Vietnamese Army force. Their last hope was a young Air Force pilot named James Fleming. Despite being low on fuel…
Welcome to Carbon Cowboys | From Drilled [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:38
Drilled, a new addition to the Pushkin network, is a true-crime climate change podcast exposing how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate denial and delay. Award-winning investigative jou…
Live with Nicolle Wallace [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:53
Recently, Michael Lewis spoke with Nicolle Wallace, host of the podcast The Best People, at Symphony Space in New York. They discussed what it was like re-visiting the Big Short 15 years on. And we hear the actor Zach Gr…
How the Financial Crisis Broke Politics [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:19
To wrap up our series on The Big Short, Michael Lewis speaks with two people who represent two very different responses to the financial crisis of 2008: US Senator Elizabeth Warren, an expert in bankruptcy law who became…
How the Financial Crisis Broke Wall Street [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:25
To make sense of Wall Street’s hangover from the crash described in The Big Short, Michael Lewis calls up Matt Levine. Levine is author of the Money Stuff newsletter for Bloomberg Opinion and co-host of a podcast by the…
Lessons of the Great Depression [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:49
Andrew Ross Sorkin writes the business and policy newsletter DealBook for the New York Times and is co-anchor of Squawk Box on CNBC. He also has a historical bent, and has a new book out about the causes and consequences…
Lender of Last Resort [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:48
When Michael Lewis wrote The Big Short, there was an extra character in the story: The Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the US, which bought up bad debt on the balance sheets of big Wall Street banks and tradi…
The FrontPoint Boys [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:28
The Big Short is centered around the story of investment advisors who noticed something was seriously wrong with the subprime housing market starting in the early 2000s. Why did the traders at FrontPoint Partners and oth…