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

Summary

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The Compound and Friends

Episode: "It's not 1929, but it might be – Andrew Ross Sorkin"

Date: January 9, 2026
Guests: Andrew Ross Sorkin, Josh Brown, Michael Batnick

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Overview

This episode of The Compound and Friends features a deep-dive conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin—acclaimed journalist, author of Too Big to Fail and the latest book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How it Shattered a Nation. Hosts Josh Brown and Michael Batnick interrogate the parallels (and lack thereof) between the 1929 stock market crash and present-day financial markets, drawing on Sorkin's in-depth historical research and the wisdom acquired from his work at CNBC's Squawk Box and the New York Times Dealbook. The discussion is fast-paced, mixing investment analysis, financial history, media craft, and even casting speculation for a possible 1929 miniseries.

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Main Themes

• Is Today Like 1929? — Exploring the systemic, structural, and behavioral differences between now and the run-up to the Great Depression.
• How Crashes Happen — Debt, leverage, and the critical role of policy errors.
• Pattern Recognition & Markets — Why investors look for analogies between market eras—and why history doesn’t always repeat.
• The '29 Book Process & Discoveries — Sorkin's research journey and findings for his narrative historical book.
• Private Markets, AI, and Modern Speculation — Bubble dynamics, today’s tech exuberance, and evolving investment vehicles.
• The Journalism Craft — Behind the scenes of interviewing titans of politics and business.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comparing 1929 and Today

Start: 07:37

• Structural Safeguards: There was no SEC, no FDIC, no capital requirements, and rampant legal manipulation in 1929 (07:48).
  • Quote: "[In 1929] you had no capital requirements. You had nothing. Literally. People talk about the Wild West. This was like truly the Wild West." – Andrew Ross Sorkin (08:04)
• Technological Advancements: Delayed information and panic-selling were exacerbated by slow ticker tapes and lack of real-time data (08:37).
• Debt/Lending: Unsustainable leverage—10:1 margins—was pivotal in the 1929 crash; today, regulations mitigate such risk but cannot eliminate hidden debt (09:41).
• Societal Impact: In 1929, only 3% of Americans owned stocks, whereas today stock market health is closely tied to retirement and public sentiment (~13:44).

Notable Quote

"Every major systemic crisis that this country and anywhere has ever had has been a function of debt, credit, too much leverage in the system." – Andrew Ross Sorkin (09:41)

2. Why 1929 Can’t Repeat—Or Could It?

Start: 10:59

• Policy Playbook Shift: Post-1929, the 'throw money at the problem' approach is now standard (11:46).
• US Debt Risks: Sorkin worries about a hypothetical scenario where excessive government spending triggers a bond market revolt, leading to an austerity spiral (12:17–13:05).
  • Quote: "The Fed says ... we're going to bail out everybody ... But in the process of doing that, all of a sudden the bond market says, no mas. ... And then you actually do land in 1932." – Sorkin (12:44)

3. Debunking Market Panic Myths

Start: 13:44

• Cultural Memory: Myths like “waves of suicides” are largely overblown; statistically, suicides didn't spike post-crash (14:14).
  • Sorkin shares a family story: his own grandfather was so scarred by seeing someone jump after the crash, he never owned a stock (14:47).
• The Great Depression’s Onset: The depression wasn't an overnight result of the crash—it was a series of policy and economic failures (10:36–10:55).

4. Inside the Writing of "1929"

Start: 15:28

• Why Write It?: Sorkin wanted to understand how 2008 compared to 1929, and to write a book that placed readers "in the room" with decision-makers (15:50–16:18; 17:05).

• Primary Sources & NY Fed Minutes: Sorkin convinced the Fed to release board minutes from the era—never before published—which became a "treasure map" for the narrative (17:13–18:11).

• Character-driven Reconstruction: Rebuilt scenes using secondary and tertiary sources; aides' diaries, depositions, even the butler's notes where available (19:38–20:14).

• Challenge of Getting Details: Some major figures left little paper trail, requiring detective work to reconstruct events (18:14–20:39).

  • Quote: "Some of the best stuff in the book ... came from some of their aides who kept diaries." – Sorkin (20:04)

5. Hoover and the Power of Confidence

Start: 21:00

• Changing the Language: Hoover coined "depression" to avoid the word "panic," believing optimism itself could stabilize things (21:00–21:16).
  • Quote: "Thought a panic was a bad word, brilliant. ... Thought that you could sort of jawbone the economy..." – Sorkin (21:00)

6. Who Was Culpable, Wall Street or DC?

Start: 21:43

• Blame Game: Can't pin it on one figure, but the real issue was the lack of regulation and political/fed hesitation about drastic actions (22:27).
• Interest Rates as a Central Character: Debates over raising rates to quell speculation vs. the risk of tipping over the economy (22:27–22:54).

7. The Gold Standard’s Constraints

Start: 23:13

• Can't "Print" Money on Gold: The Great Depression response was hamstrung by the gold standard—a massive difference from today (23:38–24:24).

8. The Human Angle & Cultural Change

Start: 27:08

• Casting the Movie: Banter around who would play 1929’s key figures if the book is adapted—fun moment, but underscores the vivid, person-centric narrative (25:58–27:19).
• Photographic Research: Sorkin amassed thousands of photos to reconstruct context, settings, and character appearances (27:34–28:13).

9. When Did the Great Depression End?

Start: 28:13

• Roosevelt and the New Deal didn’t magically end it; World War II and the postwar era brought the real change (28:21–29:44).
• Sorkin: 1950-1980 was "almost a historical aberration" due to America's unique post-war dominance (29:20).

10. How Society & Markets Have Evolved

Start: 31:23

• The market's central role in retirement, the American Dream, and policy—today, market collapses are less tolerable (32:07–32:48).
• Sorkin: "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." (31:35)

11. Financial Cassandra vs. Realism

Start: 33:14

• Perpetual Doomsaying Doesn’t Pay: History shows it's almost always been better to be a long-term optimist in markets; being a Cassandra rarely rewarded (33:19).

12. Are We in a Bubble Now? Pattern Recognition and AI Parallels

Start: 34:28

• Pattern Matching Is Human Nature: We look for analogy and warning signs ("patternicity") because it's hardwired for survival—but markets do not always repeat (36:56–37:24).
  • Quote: "When you’re looking at the roaring 2000s ... it’s impossible not to compare the patterns of what was happening then to now." – Josh Brown (36:56)
• Democratization of Finance: “Religiously” invoked in both the 1920s and the present as new investment products proliferate (37:13).
• Tariffs & Policy: Modern era was quick to reverse trade policy, breaking historic patterns and softening economic blows (38:12–38:57).
• It’s “Always Different”: Each cycle is unique in key details; historical pattern-matching can be misleading (39:48–40:15).

13. Current Market Speculation: Is It 1999... or 1996... or 2004?

Start: 41:03

• Paul Tudor Jones Calls it 1999?: He suggests “it’s 1999” but notes the market rose 40% before the bust (41:03–41:19).
  • Sorkin: In 1928–1929, even after prominent warnings, markets surged another 90% (41:36).
• Are Today’s AI Bulls Mania?: Skepticism about mania; today's giants (e.g., Microsoft, Nvidia) have strong earnings and are not rocketing indiscriminately—unlike many dot-com names (41:59–43:38).
• Private Markets: The Next Bubble?: Many pockets of excess are in private AI valuations, not widely owned stocks. Upcoming "tokenization" of alternative investments could have future risk (49:11–50:05).

14. SPACs and Speculative Cycles

Start: 50:57

• SPAC Bubble: Not a new product, but the celebrity / retail-driven mania was new. Most retail investors and institutional insiders knew the risks (51:37–53:08).
  • Quote: "The great irony of the SPAC bubble is that actually the SPACs were the best part of it. ... It wasn’t until they converted to a company away from being a SPAC that you had risk." – Josh Brown (51:38)

15. Andrew’s Media Craft—Booking Guests, Conducting Great Interviews

Start: 53:10

• Versatility & Curiosity: Sorkin credits his success to genuine curiosity and an ability to care about any subject—from hedge funds to poets to scientists (54:08–54:44).
  • Quote: "I'm lucky that I'm curious, because when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was typically talk to the adults..." – Sorkin (54:08)
• Preparation and Art of Pivot: Every big interview is an exercise in prep and adaptability (58:21; 59:59).
• Listening is Key: Sorkin tells the story of interviewing David Stern at 15 and learning that the best stuff comes when you listen, not just power through preset questions (59:47–60:37).
• Dealing with Strong Views: Sorkin remains non-judgmental and constructive, even when guests espouse controversial or oppositional views (63:27).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "People used to ask me after I wrote Too Big to Fail, how does 2008 compare to 1929? I didn't know the answer." – Sorkin (15:50)

• "I'm always trying to figure out, okay, in this moment, how are we going to bring [the interview] back?" – Sorkin, on the Musk interview (57:05)

• "History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. But the rhyme isn't the exact same lyric." – Paraphrased by all

• "[On AI and speculation] If we have excesses in the private markets and ... they want to have temporary liquidity ... that is how you get true price. It's probably lower, frankly for a lot of things, not for everything." – Josh Brown (50:57)

• “I just wanted to write it in a way where you and my mother ... could read it ... on a beach.” – Sorkin (25:32)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 07:37 | "Is it 1929?" (Historical context & why it's different today) | | 13:44 | Myths of 1929 — suicide rates, real impacts, and family stories | | 15:28 | Andrew’s motivation & research journey for "1929" | | 17:13 | The NY Fed board minutes “unlock” | | 21:00 | Hoover and managing market language—depression v. panic | | 23:13 | The role of the gold standard in deepening the crash | | 28:13 | When did the Great Depression "end"? | | 33:14 | Why market doomers (Cassandras) have rarely been rewarded | | 34:28 | Recent pattern-matching, meme stocks, and GameStop’s parallels | | 36:56 | Patternicity: why investors are wired to find historic analogues | | 41:03 | Paul Tudor Jones' "it's 1999" analogy & current AI optimism | | 43:34 | The real locus of exuberance: private markets and startup valuations | | 50:57 | The SPAC phenomenon—what was new, what wasn’t, and who really got hurt | | 53:10 | Sorkin’s approach to live interviews and high-profile guests | | 59:47 | Story: 15-year-old Sorkin’s first major interview & key journalism lesson| | 63:27 | Staying non-judgmental and cool in interviews with contentious subjects |

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Further Highlights

• Casting "1929" (25:58–27:19): Hosts joke about who would play Wall Street figures if the book is adapted.
• Private Markets’ Risks (49:11–50:57): Discussion of “semi-liquid” alternative products and upcoming cycles of price discovery.
• Meta-commentary on Financial Bubble Calls (39:45–47:30): Hosts argue that 2021 was the modern "bubble," not the current market; major tech stocks have already weathered severe drawdowns.
• Sorkin’s List of Dream Interviews (61:25): Oprah Winfrey and even the Pope top the list, underscoring curiosity-driven booking.

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Conclusion

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 is a lens to both reflect on past financial crises and evaluate the present: we're nowhere near the Wild West of the 1920s—structurally, socially, or technologically. But echoes remain, in both speculation and in the ceaseless search for patterns by investors and commentators. Sorkin’s method—rooted in exhaustive research, empathy, and listening—illuminates both history and current events, providing frameworks not just for financial analysis but also for the art of conversation itself.

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Recommendation:
Pick up 1929 at your favorite bookstore or Audible. It's vivid, immersive, and may well be adapted into the next great financial miniseries.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Josh Brown]

Okay, well, you were thinking short sleeves.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I was thinking to go. I could go full squawk on you. Just take the coat off. I could do whatever you. I could. I could go down to. Go down to my T shirt.

[Michael Batnick]

So, Andrew, I was with my. My sister and brother in law.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

For Hanukkah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay.

[Michael Batnick]

We're going. And he said, like, if you want to go, go. Like, anybody special coming up on the show that I might know? I said, yeah, actually, he's a big. He's a big New York Times fan. I said, yeah, Andrew Ross Hurkin is coming on. He goes, we go to the same temple.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What did you say?

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Wow.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. How about that?

[Josh Brown]

Wait minute, let me hear you.

[Michael Batnick]

Andrew goes to the same temple as my sister. Same temple.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Same temple.

[Michael Batnick]

They share a synagogue. Small world.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But not the synagogue. So I grew up going to Westchester Reformed Temple. Not Westchester.

[Josh Brown]

What town in Westchester did you grow up?

[Michael Batnick]

You are a Westchester guy.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Scarsdale, New York.

[Michael Batnick]

Josh and I are Merrick.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

We're Long Island. Westchester of the south.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh. But you know, or maybe you don't probably know this. My father grew up in Merrick.

[Josh Brown]

I did not know that. What that to the list.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Hawthorne. Hawthorne.

[Michael Batnick]

North. Is that North Merrick?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah, right near the. Right near the high school. No, on the back side of the high school. Calhoun, if you know where that is.

[Michael Batnick]

Of course.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Josh Brown]

It's near.

[Michael Batnick]

We grew up there. I mean, I live there. Yeah, so does Josh. We live in Merrick.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah. So my grandmother lived till she was 102 years old. We used to literally go out, especially the last five, 10 years. We used to go out every weekend to see her.

[Josh Brown]

So we have to add that to the list. Andrew Sorkins.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Not you, but your family. Do you know who else?

[Michael Batnick]

So Paul Krugman.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Krugman.

[Michael Batnick]

So I just moved houses, but the house that I lived in previously, he grew up in the house across the street. Americ. I'll do you one better.

[Josh Brown]

Not in the same era.

[Michael Batnick]

No, He's a little bit older than I am. Mario Puzo.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

Wrote the Godfather in Merrick.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I'll give you one other. Can I give you another? My grandmother, who was a schoolteacher, taught the Ben of Ben and Jerry's at Calhoun. Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

We've got some people.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You've got a lot of good people.

[Josh Brown]

We have Debbie. We have Debbie Gibson.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, right, you do have Debbie Gibson.

[Josh Brown]

Lindsay Lohan, Amy Fisher and her driving instructor mother. We have Amy Fisher.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Wow. Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

Doug Ellen, creator of Entourage.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Of course.

[Josh Brown]

Kenny Dichter. I mean, this town. Josh Brown.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's a lot going on in this town.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, it's something in the water.

[Josh Brown]

There's something going on. But we have like a big celebrity town.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, you're like, basically one of us. Sort of, kind of.

[Josh Brown]

I mean, your dad claiming.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

My dad, but by the way, also my. My. My dad's brother, my uncle, actually. Famous teacher in America.

[Michael Batnick]

How famous?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Pretty famous. In that he.

[Michael Batnick]

Infamous.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, no, he actually still teaches.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, Mr. Sorkin. I had him for gym.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You did not. You did not. Steve Sorkin teaches at Landon. In Washington D.C. or outside of Washington, DC. And I can't tell you, in our family, more people come up to me on the street randomly and say, your uncle taught me and changed my life.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, that's cool.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And for us, that's like the whole game. You want me to go this way?

[Josh Brown]

You related to Aaron Sorkin or.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, totally unrelated.

[Josh Brown]

But do people ask you?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do they ask me? I mean, I went on years ago, I went on the Jon Stewart show, and at the end he says, aaron Ross Sorkin, everybody. Very confident.

[Josh Brown]

Thank you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But by the way, I worked for Aaron probably now, a decade ago, I was the consultant on the third season of the Newsroom.

[Josh Brown]

Were you really?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And I don't know if you remember this.

[Michael Batnick]

I like the Newsroom.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There was the. What had happened was Aaron wanted to create a merger, sort of a plotline around the merger of acn, which was the cable network. The fake news network. Yeah. And I don't know if you remember, there were these different family members, and so I went out to LA and spent a lot of time. It was a lot of fun.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, do you know that I served as the technical advisor?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I do.

[Michael Batnick]

Of course.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I know. What do you think I.

[Josh Brown]

Did you do that for the first year for them, For Brian and David?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, I helped create the show.

[Josh Brown]

No, I know, but did you, like, ever help with the technical.

[Michael Batnick]

Of course, Andrew. They should have merged with Waystar. Royco. Just like a crossover, like multiple universes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, between. You're saying. Between billions and succession. Sure, sure, sure.

[Josh Brown]

Guys, he's an important man. Are we.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, no. By the way, this is always. I always think the best part of a pod is before the pod actually sells.

[Josh Brown]

We agree with that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right?

[Josh Brown]

Big part of our pod.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And I love. I love the sound effects. I just, I want to say. Who is managing that? Is that you?

[Josh Brown]

That's. That's.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, you're going right off the laptop.

[Josh Brown]

I'm like player coach.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But this is a Little bit like you got like. It's almost like Kramer with the, with the different buttons.

[Josh Brown]

We have different sounds.

[Michael Batnick]

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[Josh Brown]

Welcome to the compound and friends. All opinions expressed by Josh Brown, Michael Batnick and their castmates are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Redholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to an all new edition of the best investing podcast in the world. Very modest here, Andrew. Guys, we are in the presence of literal financial media greatness. I have been looking forward to this one for a really long time. Thank God you wrote a book. I don't know how else we would have gotten you here.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Are you kidding me? Can I just tell you, the energy in this room is outrageous. I don't know what's happened. I think it's maybe you put the headphones on.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You get the music rolling.

[Josh Brown]

That's right, that's right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You get the applause kicking.

[Josh Brown]

That's right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And everybody just sort of gets into it. You're not wearing the headphones over there. So can you feel this right now? Honestly, there's like there's an energy going on, Right. This is palpable.

[Josh Brown]

She's going to hear it on Spotify.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award winning financial journalist, co anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box, and a longtime columnist for the New York Times, where he founded the influential Dealbook newsletter that then basically became the business section. Yeah. No, close enough.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, no. We've got a lot of things going on at the time.

[Josh Brown]

He is the bestselling author of Too Big to Fail and most recently 1929 inside the greatest crash in Wall street history and how it shattered a nation. Sorkin also co created the hit Showtime series Billions and has won major journalism awards, including an Emmy for his interviewing work. Finally, Sorkin's family hails from Merrick.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Bingo. There you go.

[Josh Brown]

All right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's the real claim of fame. Clap that up.

[Josh Brown]

All right, let's do this. Is it 1929?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It is not 1929.

[Josh Brown]

Why? What are the differences that are overwhelming the similarities?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Look, a lot of people are talking 1929 all over again right now, thanks to you. Thanks to you. I think the truth is, maybe it's 1999. We can discuss that. But the distinction between 1929 and now is so different in the following way. Back in 1929, there was no SEC. There was no insider trading, rules, manipulation. It was legal, normalized. It was completely cool. There was no FDIC insurance for banks. So you had runs on banks. 9,000 banks go out of business. You had no capital requirements. You had nothing. Literally. It was. People talk about the Wild West. This was like truly the Wild West. And so I like to believe it.

[Josh Brown]

Was almost like an unlicensed casino.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Completely.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And there was just no norms. And forget even about questions about morality or immorality or amorality. It just. It was a whole In a business of trying to one side, trying to outwit the other side. This was the sort of the ultimate manifestation of that. Also, the technology sucked, to be honest with you. I mean, I think one of the reasons that the crash was as violent as it was in 1929 was because literally the stock prices on the wall were like four, five, seven hours out of sync with what was actually happening. And if you had any pride at all, you just sold indiscriminately. And that sort of just sucked the confidence down the system. And then the last piece is, to me, every major systemic crisis that this country and anywhere has ever had has been a function of debt, credit, too much leverage in the system. You could go to a brokerage back then and literally give them a buck and they would give you ten dollars. Yeah. So, I mean, people playing ten to one. And so all of a sudden, the margin calls are coming. When the downdraft happens today, we have rules, we have regulations we could discuss. A lot of guardrails are coming off. There's new products and all sorts of new crazy things happening. There's also debt building up in places we don't know about, but I don't think there's a sort of ten to one Situation. I do think the technology's pretty good. I mean, you can by the millisecond on Robinhood or whatever you want, you know, figure out exactly where things are. So for all of those reasons, I don't think we're 1929.

[Michael Batnick]

All right.

[Josh Brown]

So I want to take that a step farther. I'm glad to hear that. That's your take.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And one last thing, please. I think there's a misconception, which was actually one of the reasons I want to write the book, which is that 1929, somehow, that there's some kind of terrible collapse, and then all of a sudden, there's a Great Depression, and there's, like, 25% unemployment in the country, 9,000 banks out of business left out.

[Josh Brown]

Smoot Hawley left out rates being raised a lot.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's like, a hundred. It's like 1929 was the first domino of a series of dominoes that go. Including terrible policy choices, political choices, and other things. It wasn't preordained that you had to land in the morass. You did.

[Michael Batnick]

It's so good that you didn't say it was 1929. From one Merrick boy to another, we were ready to light you up.

[Josh Brown]

No. Well, you were not on for it. I'm of the mind that we are in for a series of crises. None. None that reach the levels of 1929 ever again. I don't think it's possible. I just think we're gonna have these, like, market scares, and we'll have recessions, and that's perfectly normal. 1929 is probably impossible. And I have, like, a lot of reasons why I believe we could not repeat that again. We could have worse. You could have a nuclear war. But 1929 specifically can't be repeated for.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

A lot of reasons. I'll throw out one reason it could. There's only really one way it gets there.

[Josh Brown]

Microstrategy.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

If you believe that debt is the match that lights the fire of every real crash.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

One of the lessons that we learned, actually, in the aftermath of 1929, that we actually enacted in 2008, and again actually during the pandemic, is when you have a crisis, you're supposed to throw money at the problem. That's actually what Ben Bernanke learned, by the way, doing his thesis at Princeton on the Great Depression. And that was everything they didn't do. So now we have this playbook, which is, okay, looks like there's a crisis.

[Michael Batnick]

Fix it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Fix it. Spend the money. It doesn't matter. Back in 1929, there was a budget surplus in America.

[Josh Brown]

Right. We don't have. We're not in that position.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so what I just don't know is whether there is some kind. I've always thought there would be like some invisible line in the debt in America. So we have $38 trillion of debt right now. Is there a day where we actually do have some kind of massive pullback in the market or something terrible happens? The Fed says, and the politicians say we're going to bail out everybody. We're going to spend 5, $10 trillion because that's what we have to do. The playbook says to do that because if we don't do that, we're going to be in this other mess. But in the process of doing that, all of a sudden the bond market says, no mas. This is not going to work for us anymore and we're going to have to pay extraordinary interest rates. And then all of a sudden you get into some kind of terrible austerity spiral and then you actually do land in 1932. That is the path. I'm not suggesting that happens, but that's the thing I worry about.

[Josh Brown]

I agree you absolutely need the bond market to not do that. But I think it's very difficult for the bond market to do that because we owe ourselves the money. By and large, people stand up comics like to do late night TV and talk about how we're like in hock to China. China's been selling treasuries for 10 years. We own the. We own the Treasuries for the most part is one very important piece of the equation.

[Michael Batnick]

Josh is loaded up on treasuries. Personally.

[Josh Brown]

We owe the money to ourselves. I think it's important. But the second part of this is society was not built around the stock market 100 years ago the way that it is today. I was Talking to a 1929 truther the other day.

[Michael Batnick]

What is that?

[Josh Brown]

And he was not counteracting the importance and how vital your book is for everyone to read. But his comment was. I'm trying to think of who it was. His comment was, less than 3% of the US population owned stocks in 1929.

[Michael Batnick]

What's a 1929 truther?

[Josh Brown]

And number two, nobody jumped out the window. There were. That's a fabrication. Like there were like one or two suicides. It was not waves of men like loosening their ties, stepping onto a roof and splattering on the ground, by the.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Way, interesting stat on that.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Which is. So there were people who were jumping out of windows, by the way.

[Josh Brown]

Interesting, but not like by the hundreds.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Not by the hundreds. And even crazier about it. If you go and look at suicide rates, 2000 or, sorry, 1928 compared to 1929, it was actually marginally less.

[Michael Batnick]

And the builders were not very tall, let's be honest, back in the day.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But I'll give you a story which you will appreciate as both Merrick boys, My grandfather, Sidney Sorkin, no longer alive, but used to live in Merrick, rest in peace. He was down there with his brother as a messenger boy.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, wow.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And he did watch somebody jump out of a window.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And he used to tell us that story over and over again. Not just tell us the story. He was so psychologically scarred by that whole scenario and situation, he never bought one stock in his life.

[Josh Brown]

How do you talk about that? It's crazy. The whole time there's a lot of people whose formative experience is a financial crisis, and then that's the information they pass on to their next generation. That it's all risk, it's all speculation, it's dangerous.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And we have some characters, by the way, in the book that do shoot themselves in the head. At least two.

[Michael Batnick]

The characters in the book were amazing. But, Andrew, you got very lucky with the timing of this book because when did you start to write this? Or when did you think about it?

[Josh Brown]

Seven years ago.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I started working on this at the end, in 2000, 2016.

[Michael Batnick]

Holy years ago. So needless to say, you could not have foreseen where we are today, obviously.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No.

[Michael Batnick]

So very fortuitous that we're even having this conversation. Why did you write this? Like, where'd the idea come?

[Josh Brown]

What makes you set out for.

[Michael Batnick]

Because there are great crash books that have been written. Why? Why did you do this?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Two things happened. One was people used to ask me after I wrote Too Big to fail, how does 2008 compared to 1929? I didn't know the answer. Like, I really didn't know. And so I went on my own journey, read other books, profiles, biographies. And you're right, there's some great books about this period. The Galbraith book being the most famous.

[Josh Brown]

The Livermore book.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's so many.

[Josh Brown]

The Brian Burroughs book about Livermore. Not Reminiscences, but the biography.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And there's some. There's some other good books.

[Josh Brown]

A lot of good ones.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

For me, for whatever reason, the book I kept looking for was that sort of inside the room TikTok book that actually put you right there where you could feel the characters you wrote the movie. And I couldn't find that book. There were a lot of great books but I couldn't find that book. And that was the book that I wanted to read and that was the book that ultimately I wanted to write. And I wasn't sure you could even do it. I think one of the reasons it took me this long was I to get to the sort of granular details where you could put somebody in the room and say this table that we're sitting at here is made out of wood and it's dark brown and this is what they said to each other and you know, drinking a glass of water, like all those little details you had to find from old transcripts and depositions and letters and memos and diaries and all sorts of crazy things and that's what was that became the sort.

[Josh Brown]

Of wild journey I went on. You got your hands on some materials that no one's ever seen before during the research that you were doing for the book. Tell us about that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So the biggest sort of unlock in a way which you don't hopefully feel oddly enough in the book itself was convincing the New York Fed to give me the board minutes. During that period. For some reason 100 years later, they had never disclosed the board minutes. By the way, the current board minutes, they distribute them online.

[Josh Brown]

Who are they protecting? Like it's not a schedule.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

100 years ago you couldn't get them. So I went through multi year process effectively to try to convince them to give me these board minutes. In fact, the first time they gave me the minutes they'd had a lawyer spend months prior to redacting parts of the minutes. Everybody's dead, it's okay to give to me.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think they were worried about?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know, I've never gotten a full answer on that. I think that back then the truth is that the expectation of those executives and the people on that board was that this was like everything in the vault.

[Josh Brown]

Also a lot of Chatham House rules.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Interestingly, a lot of the information they were redacting was, was actually bank information. Not actually about the biggest banks but about a lot of small banks from around the country that had been seeking money from the Fed trying to get bigger loans effectively. So I don't know, but that in a weird way once I had that, because then I knew when the meetings were, where they were, what they were talking about at any given moment. A number of the major characters in the book were on the board of the Fed. And so I said you don't hopefully Feel the minutes in the book. It gave me sort of a treasure map because then I knew Charlie Mitchell, who is a main character. I knew that if the meeting ended at three, I would say to myself, okay, well, who would have you talked to after the meeting? And then I'd go try to find the diaries and notes of like the five people he might have gone and talked to that afternoon. And then you hope, you'd pray, basically.

[Josh Brown]

You know, I think I was raising you about this. He's doing this while he's a full time job.

[Michael Batnick]

It's insane.

[Josh Brown]

While he has a full time job.

[Michael Batnick]

I was talking to.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

One of the reasons it took so long was there were. There were long stretches where I still.

[Josh Brown]

An incredible feat.

[Michael Batnick]

So I. I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks. I listen to yours. And one of the things that's so interesting about the primary sources that they even existed for your period of time for. For earlier presidents. They had diaries.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Unbelievable.

[Michael Batnick]

It was all right there for you. So I'm sure there was many periods of time where you're like, would you want to show it to somebody? Like, this is insane.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, I couldn't believe it. But the truth and the sort of problem or challenge of writing the book was actually a lot of them didn't. So it's all based on primary material. But for example, like Charlie Mitchell, there is no diary. The guy hardly wrote anything. He was like Hank Paulson. He basically didn't want to put anything on paper ever. So what you had to rely on was say to yourself, okay, who did he work with? Who did keep diaries? You know, you had to find the a. You know, I gotta go.

[Michael Batnick]

The butler.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The butler. Honestly, some of the best stuff in the book about Hoover, or rather actually about Hoover and about Roosevelt, came from some of their aides who kept diaries.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And so it was a lot of trying to find these sort of secondary and tertiary characters and getting their information. And sometimes they'd recount in whatever it was that afternoon. I talked to Charlie. He did this, I did this. Da da da da da. Or you'd find some deposition where they. Cause there was all these lawsuits afterwards where the lawyers would actually say, hey, Charlie, so you were here. What did you say? You talked to your wife. What'd you say to your wife? Ba ba ba ba ba ba.

[Josh Brown]

And you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And then they'd interview the wife. What'd you say?

[Josh Brown]

You were able to read through all of the depositions?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah, yeah. And then they'd interview the wife. And then the wife would say, Yeah, I was in the kitchen, and this is what I said back to Charlie. And then all of a sudden you go, ah, I have a scene here.

[Michael Batnick]

On the Hoover thing. I thought it was particularly hilarious that he called it. He gave it the word depression because he didn't want it to be called a panic.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thought a panic was a bad word, brilliant. Thought he was trying to end the pandemic. Interestingly, he was one of those guys, by the way, kind of like Trump, kind of like Biden. Thought that you could sort of jawbone the economy, get people to believe something that wasn't actually something they couldn't feel.

[Josh Brown]

It's about confidence.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It was just like if you smiled and felt good, that things would get better. And I think we've seen that play. We saw that play in 29. We're seeing it now.

[Josh Brown]

Did you come away from all of that research with sort of like an informal list of the people, not the policies, but the people themselves, who you think are the most culpable for what ended up happening? Or is it too big to pin it on any one or two people?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think it's probably too big to pin it on any one person. For me, it was more.

[Josh Brown]

I tried more politicians or more Wall street people, like, the bigger mistake.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

My expectation is never to suggest, I think Wall street does what Wall street is gonna do. Like, that's just what it is. And so then the question is, how do you put the guardrails around that? Can you jump in front of the train to stop the train kind of thing? And that, I think, is probably both a political issue and potentially a Federal Reserve issue. And by the way, both of them, and I think you see it in the book, are grappling that spring of 1929 with the question in their head, things are getting out of control. What do we do about this?

[Michael Batnick]

Interest rates were like a main character, right?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And look, the same debate we're having now, should they cut interest rates, should they increase? Like, that's what they were doing, and they thought, should we increase rates so much to try to tamp down the speculation, but if we do that, would we tip over the entire economy? And by the way, politically, will we get killed? And interestingly, back then, it wasn't that they were worried that Hoover was going to kill him, the way I think some of the Fed might worry about Trump today, but more about the idea that the Fed was so new, it had been born in 1913.

[Josh Brown]

It hadn't survived an actual crisis yet.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Some people had called it an experiment. They Were still calling it an experiment. And they'd gotten killed in 1920, 1921. There had been a sort of mini crash, and they had been blamed for it. And so they think. They were worried. Are they just gonna, you know, forget about getting called in front of Congress? Are they just gonna. Would Congress just get rid of them?

[Josh Brown]

Presidents and Congress have gotten rid of banks of the United States before. Like, famously, the first two or three bank of the United States entities, where a president would come in, Jackson, and say, we don't need this shit. Get rid of it. So it was a legitimate concern. I wonder if you have a strong view on the role that gold and exchange rates and the dollar, like, what was the. What do you think was the fulcrum there? That was the.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Look, I think the biggest fulcrum there was. We were still on the gold standard. And that meant that what we're doing today, the lesson that we learned was we need to print money and just flood the system with cash. Yeah. Back then, as long as you were living on the gold standard, you could not do such a thing.

[Josh Brown]

You would have to recall gold from elsewhere to sit in the bank in reserve.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yep. And so the big debate that was happening was if you got off the gold standard, would like, the. Would the world, like, fall off its axis?

[Josh Brown]

What are all these dollars? Even worse?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. I mean, that was the question. So there really even was a question happening as this is all unfolding about just like, what is money? Right. And that was sort of another story. I probably didn't even get as deep into that in the story as I'd love to, but that was sort of another component part of this as you.

[Michael Batnick]

Were writing the book. Like, I loved it, by the way. It was amazing.

[Josh Brown]

God bless you.

[Michael Batnick]

I think what you did, that was so special. It read like a movie. It read like a script. It was a character narrative of all of these different players. I'm sure you've thought about this becoming a TV show or a movie or whatever, but, like, taking that a step further, did you have actors in your head?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, no, never. In fact, people have said to me, like, who should play what? And da da, da. Even. I 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.

[Josh Brown]

It's like an HBO series.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I've heard it's a miniseries, but I never even thought. But I'm saying, as I was writing.

[Josh Brown]

The book, it was smiled at you in talks. Yeah, you were in talks.

[Michael Batnick]

He went.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He went no, no, no. By the way, there was, like, a.

[Josh Brown]

Twinkle when I said hbo.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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, but. And maybe it will, maybe it won't. But I think I was thinking Jake Warrenhaal. No, no. I think I was writing the book more like. Did you ever read Barbarians at the Gate? Of course. Or Den of Thieves? Those are the books that I was loving. And I don't think that Jim Stewart necessarily was when he was writing that. Den of Thieves was thinking, this could be a movie, or Brian Burroughs 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 pandemic.

[Josh Brown]

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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I'd love to watch this. Who do you want to cast in this movie?

[Josh Brown]

I would like to be a young J. Pierpont Morgan. And I will do the must. I'll grow the most.

[Michael Batnick]

I think Buscemi's got a billionaire.

[Josh Brown]

No. Who should be in it? Who should be in it? Who are, like, the three most important characters that we have to cast if this were to cast?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We got to cast Charlie Mitchell.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, fair.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We got to cast Carter Glass.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Because he's sort of like, what's the.

[Josh Brown]

Age range for Carter Glass, by the way?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This is going to be some older. Older men, Right? Older men.

[Michael Batnick]

Harrison Ford.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I do think we want Evangeline Adams in this movie. Evangeline is basically an astrologer that every banker in the city was going to visit, basically, to tell them what to do, which was insane. She had a newsletter, by the way, back then that was bigger than dealbook. She had 100,000 people.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. She was the Tom DeMarc of the 1920s.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, let's get William H. Macy. We could do that. Absolutely.

[Josh Brown]

For just anything.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

For just anything.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. Absolutely. Make it happen.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I will say Charlie Mitchell. Handsome man. Could be like a George Clooney type. Like, it just. We gotta have Livermore in there.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, you need to me that's.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He's gotta be in there.

[Michael Batnick]

Jesse Plemons.

[Josh Brown]

Interesting for Livermore.

[Michael Batnick]

Like, make him a little bit older. Let me ask you this. So you didn't have the actors in your Head. But surely.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Cause when I'm reading, I'm thinking Leo Dio.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

When I'm reading a great book. When I'm reading a great nonfiction book, I. I Googled the characters. I want to see what they look like.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

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?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, I had, by the way. I mean, must have photographs, 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. So the way I'd be doing it is 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. Little things. So, yes, lots and lots of pictures.

[Michael Batnick]

When do you think 1929 ended? Like, the era. Was it the beginning of World War II? Like, when do you peg that? Like, all right, we're done.

[Josh Brown]

The end of the Depression.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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.

[Michael Batnick]

1937. Ray Dalio's been saying it since 2015.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Does he say 37, that.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, he's not. He's 19.

[Josh Brown]

No, he says it's. We're on the verge of 1937.

[Michael Batnick]

He's been saying that for a decade.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. Which is to say that you could actually go the other way again.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah. We crashed in 37. 50% crash.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So I don't know. I'm assessing what you say. 1940. We got a chart.

[Michael Batnick]

No charts.

[Josh Brown]

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. And it puts people back to work. And it just. It feels like that's when most people.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, because money. Money wasn't moving.

[Josh Brown]

In other words, there was not. There was not a financial response that ended the crisis. It was literally an exogenous event.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But I also add one other element to it. Cause I also think of. I look at 1950 frankly, 1950 to 1980. And think to myself that that was almost an historical aberration because the other component part of this is the rest of the world is now basically out of business. The US 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.

[Josh Brown]

Everyone else has to rebuild and you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Don'T see wages stagnate in the U.S. until about 1980. And I think that that also coincides a bit with the rest of the world coming back online and competing against us again. And that starts to sort of compete away some of the margin.

[Josh Brown]

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, 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do with Reagan and Michael Jackson. So what are you going to do?

[Michael Batnick]

And Rocky. Did you ever read the Great Depression? A diary by Benjamin Roth.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yes. Great book. And what was so great about that book was obviously it captured a whole other sort of set about the rest.

[Michael Batnick]

Of the country, what it was actually like for the people.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Exactly.

[Michael Batnick]

So I think using that as a segue in terms of Josh's earlier point, why that sort of dynamic can't play out. Forget about like 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.

[Josh Brown]

End like grapes of wrath for, for 70% of the population. It just seems, it seems we, it seems we can't repeat it.

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I can only hope. I can only hope. Once you tell me what happens with AI by the way, I think there's. Right. Best case scenario for AI could also undo so many other things too.

[Josh Brown]

So, so I wanted to just go back to. Very few Americans actually own stocks.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Most retirement plan for a middle aged person living in the 20s was die basically. Right?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. Half the country was working in agriculture, working on farms. My husband 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 markets to the extent they do today. And 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. And that's.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This is the ultimate put.

[Josh Brown]

But we didn't have that back then. Is a really.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, we also didn't have homeownership as sort of a, you know, 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.

[Josh Brown]

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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's about 60% now, I think.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. I just don't think we could ever.

[Michael Batnick]

And the politicians, like that's the scoreboard.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

I just don't think we could ever allow for 90% decline in stocks. It almost like would be an Impossible 90.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

No, yeah. No. We could have a very bad recession. We have them. You know, I've the. The first 10 years of my career, I, I live 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 2087 could. I could picture it happening tomorrow. 29. I just don't think it's possible.

[Michael Batnick]

I feel like Andrew retired in 1987. Like you don't hear that anymore. You killed it thanks to 1929.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, but I will. 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 pay attention to the yellow and red flags they're waving, but over the last hundred years, you'll do so much better. You'll be so much wealthier not listening.

[Josh Brown]

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.

[Michael Batnick]

And there's a reason if you're not.

[Josh Brown]

Taking the Wrong cards.

[Michael Batnick]

There's a reason. It's because we are a capitalist society. As individuals 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That's what our generation thinks. I think there's some others who.

[Michael Batnick]

But that's the stock market. That's it all shows up in earnings.

[Josh Brown]

I want to ask you if you struggled during the last. Every day, the last couple of years finishing the book.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

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're in the morning, you're on TV, you're looking at things like OpenAI and SoftBank and the funding rounds and the valuations. It has to be impossible for you to not see the patterns repeatedly.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, there's no question.

[Josh Brown]

That must have been very difficult to compartmentalize.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The first time I started thinking about it was actually during GameStop. Right, right. The whole GameStop AMC memeification. I mean that felt very 1920.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. They were trading tons of GameStop back then.

[Michael Batnick]

Modern day bucket shops.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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 the book now because they would have been like, yeah, now it's happening.

[Michael Batnick]

That was way more reminiscent that 2021 period than today is.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah, I won't disagree with you there. I think you're totally right.

[Josh Brown]

So one of the things that I find really interesting is the pattern matching because we. 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. But also second, our DNA. In one of the most ancient parts of our brain, pattern recognition was literally life. I wanted to share this with you. I thought it was interesting. The human being cannot help but see danger everywhere and repetition of things. As 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. 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. The 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 2000s 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.

[Michael Batnick]

He went to cash.

[Josh Brown]

Like, it's unbelievable how easy it is for us as people, as humans. Oh, for sure, this looks like that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, the whole time I'm seeing, you know, this phrase democratization of finance used, you know, almost religiously in the 1920s.

[Josh Brown]

That's amazing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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.

[Josh Brown]

Right, right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I'm like, oh, my goodness, I 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.

[Josh Brown]

It 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?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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. You 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 and then reversed and then reversed the second he. But the reversal was not sort of part of the pattern match. Right, right. And so that's where things.

[Josh Brown]

The reversal.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, that's such a good point.

[Josh Brown]

The reversal invalidated the pattern. Exactly. They didn't reverse themselves in the 30s. They plowed ahead.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. And you never knew, I think for at least a couple of weeks even, even when it felt like there was a reversal, you Weren't sure. Is this a full reversal? What's happening? And, and so people.

[Josh Brown]

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 review 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. The inflation of 2021 is not the same as the inflation of 1975.

[Michael Batnick]

Whenever anybody says, I've seen this movie before, no, I'm still.

[Josh Brown]

No, you haven't.

[Michael Batnick]

You haven't.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right, right, right. But it's a little bit like this time is never. This time is different. It's not totally right. And this time is never different. It's not.

[Josh Brown]

We say always different.

[Michael Batnick]

Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You think it's always different?

[Michael Batnick]

I think it's always different.

[Josh Brown]

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. And how is it different?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But see, I think it's like this time is never really that different. But there's always like a twist.

[Michael Batnick]

But it depends what you're talking about. So things need context. For example, in 2015ish, every investment writer was obsessed with the cape ratio. In 2013, Henry Blodgett wrote about it.

[Josh Brown]

Right.

[Michael Batnick]

I'm stopping. I'm not reinvesting my dividends. Whatever. It was like years of it.

[Josh Brown]

Well, there was a. There was a husband infection. The husband that was traveling through Wall Street.

[Michael Batnick]

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, things there, there is nuance. Now when it's not difference are 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, so where are we today? You know, I was with Paul Tudor Jones a couple, maybe a couple weeks ago now sell. Okay.

[Josh Brown]

And Paul says we're live trading the show.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So Paul says he. It's 1999. Oh, I was going to say 1994, he says 1999.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But he will also remind you that the market still went up 40%.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah. I think the NASDAQ tripled in 1999.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. So you tell me, I mean, by the way, 1928.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

People like Charles Merrill, you'd appreciate co founder of Merrill Lynch.

[Josh Brown]

Sure.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

He told people get out of the market. Yeah. Except from the beginning of 1928 to September 1929, market was up 90%.

[Michael Batnick]

So here's where I think we are right now.

[Josh Brown]

Babson too. Roger Babson of Babson College. The Babson break did like a four year tour, same doom and gloom speech. One day it actually was. Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right. Then they call it the Babson break years. Nobody listened to the guy.

[Michael Batnick]

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 there is, 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. Microsoft has not even outperformed since, since ChatGPT or, 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 Max 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. It's just.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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.

[Michael Batnick]

Correct.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

In the private market, in the public.

[Josh Brown]

Market, I think a lot of people.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Think private shares, private 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 valuation for some of these assets?

[Michael Batnick]

That's where 1929 is perhaps like OpenAI and their. What is it, 500, whatever it is.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right now, 500 billion.

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Josh Brown]

If TUDOR is saying it's 1999 though.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The implication I think he might even said September 1999.

[Josh Brown]

Okay, so the NASDAQ fell 85%. People don't understand this. Not the S and P. The NASDAQ fell 85% from the peak, which maybe was March of 2000 for. I know that was for the S and P. I'm not sure if that was the Nasdaq's peak, but it was an 85% drawdown. So when you invoke 1999, 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 earning earnings, valuations. These companies are pre revenue, I think, like, not Cisco, but those are the big guys.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I mean, the question is, but there's not pre revenue.

[Josh Brown]

It might be overvalued, but there's a.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Whole ecosystem of much smaller companies that we're not really focused on that I think if you add them up to.

[Josh Brown]

But they don't matter.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That's the question.

[Josh Brown]

Nobody has exposure to them.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

They don't.

[Josh Brown]

They don't even trade.

[Michael Batnick]

This is a hilarious headline from the information the other day. AI evaluation startup Ella Marina, valued at $1.7 billion. Now that's. 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.

[Josh Brown]

That sounds worth more.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That's the company. Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I get asked about stocks every day.

[Michael Batnick]

I mean, I'm sure you do.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You're on Nvidia. I go to the airport, they say to me, what do you think of Nvidia? What do you think of.

[Michael Batnick]

Maybe you're a bad example. You are literally on CNC.

[Josh Brown]

2021 was more of that than today.

[Michael Batnick]

Oh, so much.

[Josh Brown]

Okay.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So much that I agree with. But then the question is, do you think that there's gonna be a RE rating on any of the AI stuff?

[Michael Batnick]

Well, who knows?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Or do you think the rerating's already happened?

[Josh Brown]

Look at Cor Weave. It's cut in half. Yeah, like it's happened.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Do you think it's happened? It's already happened.

[Josh Brown]

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. But it applies to. Not that the company is trash core weave, 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?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Of course.

[Michael Batnick]

Wild.

[Josh Brown]

That was last year. Look at a chart of that stock. We took out the trash. I'm sure it's a fine company.

[Michael Batnick]

Went straight up and straight down.

[Josh Brown]

Straight up, straight down. The band played on like it. We're, we're doing this show today with the Russell 2000 having rallied the small cap 600 stocks all over the world.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So maybe are we 1996?

[Josh Brown]

I just think we're better at processing.

[Michael Batnick]

This is Josh's point.

[Josh Brown]

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% drawdown.

[Michael Batnick]

Only two of them.

[Josh Brown]

Where's the mania?

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We're looking for the pattern.

[Josh Brown]

But what if 2021 was 1999 and this is 2004? Like I guess I'm trying to say we had a speculative mania. People 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, I think. Why doesn't that qualify?

[Michael Batnick]

ARK had six different ETFs that were double 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, but the market falls 40%.

[Josh Brown]

All the time in 2022, Nvidia was cut in half, maybe worse.

[Michael Batnick]

Meta, dude, in 2025 Nvidia fell 35%. It just happened.

[Josh Brown]

Meta was in a 70% drawdown in 2022. That's not good enough as a 2001 analog. Like that's, that's not enough pain.

[Michael Batnick]

It's not an Nvidia lost 3/4 of their market cap.

[Josh Brown]

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, it's 1999. I just, I'm not seeing it. I don't know.

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Josh Brown]

We had multiple contraction in 2025. People don't even know that.

[Michael Batnick]

What you could say, well what about xyz? What about Iron and Oklo and those names which by the way the trash has been taken out. They got cut in half like there are especially in 2025 or 2026 because of Robinhood and the advent of the retail trader, which is a real thing, 20% of the volume. There are always pockets of nonsense and especially in a bull market, there will never, never that will never not exist.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But I think the pockets, to the extent that they exist today may be more actually frankly in the private markets.

[Josh Brown]

I totally agree with you.

[Michael Batnick]

We agree.

[Josh Brown]

And, and, and the thing is, who cares like who gets hurt?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, who get.

[Josh Brown]

The people that are in those markets can all afford it. They're big boys. We're talking about Marc Andreessen. If he invests in 10 startups and six of them go to zero or get cut in half, he's fine, he'll.

[Michael Batnick]

Continue to his investors, it's Harvard, they can take it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But watch this space because to me the next sort of piece of this, and this is not this year, it's probably not even next year, the year after. There's a big move afoot, you know about it, to take a lot of the private equity venture capital, tokenize it, create these semi liquid instruments similar to some of the REITs that are, 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.

[Josh Brown]

We are watching.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

There's stuff like that.

[Michael Batnick]

Yes.

[Josh Brown]

You know what? And you know what happens the minute those vehicles meet price discovery instant 20 to 30% haircut, healthiest thing in the world. We just saw that happen with the private equity company where they attempted to merge a private vehicle and a publicly traded vehicle. And the market said, oh yeah, here's what we think it's worth.

[Michael Batnick]

Yeah, great news, you have liquidity. Oh shit. It's worth 70 cents on the dollar.

[Josh Brown]

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. And I think that's what you want to see if you want to be constructive.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

How do you explain something? I think about a lot? What was the SPAC phenomenon? Because that was sort of a new product. Everybody got super excited about it.

[Josh Brown]

Not so new.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It wasn't that new, but it became.

[Josh Brown]

I used to sell that shit in the late 90s, right? Not so new.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But most of them failed. And the truth was 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. Stop being so paternalistic about this stuff. This stuff is.

[Josh Brown]

Here's the great irony.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I want my lottery ticket. Give me the lottery ticket.

[Josh Brown]

The great irony of the spacious 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh yeah, totally.

[Josh Brown]

Safest thing in the world spacs were. Spacs were like bank accounts. So 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 gonna suck. Some of them will probably work, but it doesn't really matter that much, cuz 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Right.

[Josh Brown]

And you collected your interest and you just moved on. This was a great investment banking product in that day. What we saw four years ago was different. Celebrity spacs were new. 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.

[Michael Batnick]

Everyone lucrative.

[Josh Brown]

Usually people that Shaq like that, that, that.

[Michael Batnick]

That part of it was not different. We.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Everyone. Rod was doing one.

[Michael Batnick]

Everyone knew. Everyone knew that this is going to end badly.

[Josh Brown]

Once you see that, you know you're closer to the end than the beginning.

[Michael Batnick]

So can we. Can we talk about your day job?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Michael Batnick]

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.

[Josh Brown]

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. Do you give yourself enough credit for having that ability?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This is like you're throwing the ball underhand.

[Josh Brown]

I really mean it to you, rapping how extraordinary it is to do something like the Dealbook Summit, for example, which I've been to.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I feel very lucky. And it's not like a humble brag. I feel lucky.

[Josh Brown]

You have the talent. You're lucky that you have the talent.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

No, I'm lucky that I'm curious. That's honestly, I think what it is lucky that you're curious. I'm 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. My parents are like a cocktail party. I want to talk.

[Josh Brown]

Did you hold up a corn on the cob as a microphone?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I never. At the barbecue, I used to do magic tricks. 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 curious about that. If you were a scientist. If you were, it didn't matter.

[Josh Brown]

You have wide ranging curiosity that touches.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

On a lot of things I meet somebody on the street, I want to know about their stories. It's just like how I'm sort of wired. Yeah. So I feel lucky that that's. That, like, that I'm wired like that. Because it's. For me, it's like a natural act to want to know. I don't have to like, try.

[Josh Brown]

Well, we think it's amazing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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.

[Michael Batnick]

I was. 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Great book.

[Michael Batnick]

And it just sent me down a rabbit hole of the Redstones and Hollywood. And 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.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Tom Forreston's a fascinating dude. I mean, the history of mtv. Unbelievable.

[Michael Batnick]

Unbelievable.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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. And I feel like I'm doing that in the context of the interview, by the way. I feel like I'm doing the context of like, people that I was writing about in the 1920s or I'm always. That's sort of like the way I'm, as I said, sort of wired.

[Josh Brown]

What do you think is an example of one of the best interviews that you've done and why?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, so the interview that has probably gotten 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.

[Josh Brown]

Okay. I remember it.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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.

[Josh Brown]

He told them, go yourselves to the advertisers.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

But the. The thing for me, in sort of like the Art of The interview craft of the interview thing was when you see somebody, 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? Cause it could have gone. That interview could have just gone.

[Josh Brown]

Well, he could have done this, thrown his earpiece down and walked off.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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. So to me, I'm always trying to figure out, like, okay, in this moment, how are we going to bring. And so I actually. That's a. I love that interview, actually. X 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 sort of planned a couple 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.

[Josh Brown]

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 win him back, here's what I'll ask. Or if I need to change a little bit.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Like, I always think I'm not a pilot, but 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 drop in Dallas or wherever. And so I have sort of a plan. But then I also know the weather's going to change.

[Michael Batnick]

You had turbulence in that one.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Like, the weather is going to change and I'm going to have to divert, 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 plan and I try to listen. I think, by the way, you guys, I can tell, like, because you're not looking at questions, reading, like, the best interviews.

[Josh Brown]

We're just hamming egg at it over here.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, actually, Andrew, I said compared to you, dude, this is the only. This 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.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, we got nothing. Well, no, because we know what we want to ask you, right?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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. I also that, you know, where the speed bumps are for the other person. 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, do 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 ever does. Fifteen years old, I had started the sports magazine. I went and interviewed David Stern, the former commissioner, NBA, late commissioner of the NBA, one of the all time great people.

[Michael Batnick]

Wait, what do you mean you went and interviewed David Stern? How so?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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 doing this magazine, I wanted to come interview him. And I went to interview him and I had a legal.

[Josh Brown]

That's amazing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I had a legal patch my dad given me and I had written down all the questions and I sort of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Just asked 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.

[Josh Brown]

You just went through your list.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I just had my list. But it was like then and there that I realized you have to listen to the other person and 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 ideas, three or four questions, and never even think about anything else. If you just listen to the answer. Right?

[Josh Brown]

And. Because that could lead you to a place where you didn't even think that you were gonna get to go.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Exactly.

[Josh Brown]

Somebody opens, opens themselves up and you're just worried about, well, what's the next thing I wanna ask them?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Totally.

[Josh Brown]

And then you miss the. You missed the conversation. Get the interview, but you missed the conversation. Who's, who's saying no to you? Still feel like you can get anybody.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I got to get you guys on the, on the air in the morning.

[Josh Brown]

You know, I've never been on Squawk. I've been on CNBC 15 years, swear to God.

[Michael Batnick]

What time do you wake up, though?

[Josh Brown]

I don't know. I don't know why.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

What time do you wake up?

[Josh Brown]

Believe me, I'll be Up.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I mean, the show starts at 6am.

[Josh Brown]

I'm 48 years old. I'm going to menopause. I will be awake.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Can we just say you're only three blocks away?

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, I know.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Josh Brown]

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 the Pope?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know?

[Josh Brown]

Why do you think that would be interesting?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Interestingly, I went and interviewed the previous Pope. I went to Italy because all of these CEOs were going to visit him. This is in 2019. They wanted to get his blood blessing for all. You remember when ESG and DEI programs and climate issues were front center?

[Josh Brown]

That was how you raised money in.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

18 oil executives were going to visit the Pope.

[Michael Batnick]

Unbelievable.

[Josh Brown]

For asking for permission or begging for forgiveness?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Probably a combination of both.

[Josh Brown]

Probably the photo op. Why do you think that would be an interesting. I can't imagine that being interesting.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't know. You know, it's just the scale of it.

[Josh Brown]

Like, I'm going to the Vatican and I'm sitting at the bottom the scale.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I'll tell you somebody who I think one of. I actually, I want to interview because she's a great businesswoman and because she's a great interviewer. Oprah Winfrey.

[Josh Brown]

Oh, I feel like you could do that.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah. I got to work.

[Michael Batnick]

I got it for the summit.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I got to work my work on it.

[Josh Brown]

All right. This is the last thing we're going to get to, and then we're going to let. We're going to let you go. And I just want to say thank you so much for spending this time with us.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Oh, my goodness. Thank you.

[Josh Brown]

Appreciate it. Could you rank the three people that you can't stand the most in finance? No, I'm just kidding.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah, I can do that.

[Josh Brown]

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 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. Nothing 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, like, people have really passionate opinions, sound really weird.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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 are their motives and incentives and all. But I'm also. I sort of recognize people are who they are, you know, and in that moment, I'm just trying to. Trying to figure it out and trying to make sense of them, and I'm not trying to change them.

[Josh Brown]

Yeah, you're giving people a chance to tell their side of whatever the issue is.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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 gotta go harder at that person. They didn't answer the question. You gotta ask it again. Why haven't you asked it five times? Yeah. And what they're really saying is, why have you not taken out your revolver and shot this person?

[Michael Batnick]

Cause you're from Scarsdale. Merrick boys are very judgy. Josh's very judgmental, but I'm extremely judgmental.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

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 that that's what they're going to tell you, and that's great.

[Josh Brown]

And it's also. That's great television. That's. I mean, people. How many years have you been on squawk?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Started in 2011, hosting, and was probably maybe 2006 or seven. You know, just with CNBC as a contributor.

[Josh Brown]

It's incredible. And you're getting up at like three in the morning every day. Four in the morning.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I live in the city, so I'm. I'm the closest to the studio. Okay. I wake up late in morning TV land.

[Josh Brown]

4:30. I think it's safe to say it's. It's one of the most influential shows in not just financial media, but I think just anyone who's an investor. It's like ground zero. Every CEO, every politician, myself include. Everyone's watching. And you're amazing.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Well, I'm listening to the compound, so there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

[Josh Brown]

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, Audible.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Independent bookshops. They've been really good to me.

[Josh Brown]

Guys, you are going to absolutely love 1929 and. 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 fair?

[Michael Batnick]

We want cameos.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We want cameos.

[Josh Brown]

All right, guys, Andrew Russell, gentlemen, thank.

[Michael Batnick]

You so much for watching.

[Josh Brown]

Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Good night.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thank you, everybody.

[Josh Brown]

You want to do it one more time? You got it. You got this. That was fun.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You guys are great.