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: 100

Against the Rules: The Big Short Companion
Podcast Episodes
Episode 6: The Overconfidence Game [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:32
In which several people, including Rebecca Solnit, Katty Kay, and Maria Konnikova, help Michael understand the not-so-secret power of men to offer themselves up as experts, when they clearly are not. If you’d like to kee…
Episode 5: The Sanchez Problem [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:02
There’s one kind of expert whose role is enshrined in law: that of the expert witness, who’s called on to bolster one side of a case. But courtrooms are not great places for nuance. Overconfident expert testimony has bee…
Episode 4: Respect the Polygon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:00
Experts know more now than ever before. And we’re more critical of them than ever before, too. But one kind of expert really gets us riled up: the type who deals in probabilities. We hear from meteorologists, political f…
Episode 3: Field of Ignorance [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:27
The right kind of expert, at the right time, can change everything. While working as a security guard at a pork-and-beans cannery in Kansas, Bill James started writing about baseball. But writing about it through the poe…
Episode 1: Six Levels Down [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 42:17
Athenahealth was just another healthcare provider facing the biggest problem US doctors face: not treating patients, but getting insurance companies to pay their bills. But then the company figured out how to fix the pro…
Episode 2: The Art of the Untold Story [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:47
Why can’t we see the experts right in front of us, even when they're saving our lives? Maybe it's because the specialized knowledge of many experts defies good storytelling. We hear from a nonprofit trying to elevate the…
Against the Rules Season 3: The Ballad of Expertise [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:55
In “Against the Rules,” journalist and bestselling author Michael Lewis takes a searing look at what’s happened to fairness—in financial markets, newsrooms, basketball games, courts of law, and much more. In Season 3, Mi…
Other People’s Money: George Saunders on the Value of Failure [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:25
After the surprise success of Liar’s Poker, publishers urged Michael Lewis to try his hand at fiction. It was a bad idea. But even award-winning fiction authors have struggled with failure. Michael speaks with Booker Pri…
Other People’s Money: Ira Glass on Finding Your Voice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:46
Michael Lewis did not rest long on his laurels after publishing Liar’s Poker. In the 1990s, he hit the presidential campaign trail, writing a series of magazine pieces. Some of his dispatches got adapted for audio by a t…
Other People’s Money: Anne Clarke Wolff on the Wages of Sexism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 28:21
Liar’s Poker is set on a Wall Street where women were the last hired and first fired — and that was probably the least of their worries. Is Wall Street today any better for women? Michael speaks with Anne Clarke Wolff, w…