1929 vs 2025: Andrew Ross Sorkin on Crashes, Bubbles & Lessons Learned
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Hey, Sorkin, I just went through the comments. The one question keeps coming up over again.
why the are you writing this book jesus christ what a party pooper what a party pooper i don't know man i don't think i think it's supposed to be the book supposed to be like a beach read a beach read yes come on did you read it my god no i saw the title i was like skip all right besties i think that was another epic discussion people love the interviews i could hear him talk for hours absolutely we crushed your questions a minute we are giving Chumath, you're going to love these characters.
I kid you not. I kid you not. The people who are involved in this at that time, like the main character.
I totally agree with you. I am a huge, to be honest, I've studied this period for a while, actually. I think it's great that you wrote this book. I think it's incredibly fascinating.
We're here with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Chamath and I with another all-in interview. Riveting. Today, we're going to talk about Andrew's new book, 1929, and specifically cover why Andrew got into it, what the history teaches us, and are we looking at another 1929 or something different this day and age, as a lot of people may speculate. But Andrew, thanks for joining Chamath and I to talk about this.
Thank you for having me. And I love your background there. a true image of what was actually happening in October of 1929, crazily enough.
That's right. And it was colorized by some AI or something, I think. But yeah, great. How and why did you get into this era of 1929, the great stock market crash of 1929? Like you're a busy guy. You're on TV every day. We see you all over your conferences. I saw you at a conference in Southern California this week, then you're at another conference and you're back in New York. You're very busy. At what point did you say, Hey, I want to sit down and write a book about this era?
Okay, so here's what happened to me. So I'd written that book, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 financial crisis. Right. And people used to always say to me after that, they'd get into these very in-depth conversations about 1929, or they'd want to know more about 1929. And most people know that something terrible happened in 1929. They know there was a crash in 1929. They oftentimes think it is the Great Depression or leads to the Great Depression. But if you were to ever ask most people, now Chamath and you are maybe in a different category and say, well, who were the people who actually were engaged in this? What were they saying to each other? Who was sleeping with who? Who was trying to fuck over who?
What was actually happening here? And what were the incentives and what were the motivations that led to what clearly were some poor decisions? I couldn't find that. So I went on a vacation like 10 years ago with my wife, very nerdy. And I like downloaded all these books to my Kindle. And there's some great books, by the way, about this period. Don't get me wrong. But they didn't have the sort of character-driven story. Like I loved Den of Thieves. I loved Barbarians at the Gate. I loved stories about people. Fabulous books. Fabulous books.
What did your wife think when you ignored her the entire vacation you guys were on and were just reading books on your Kindle?
I mean, I think she thought it was out of my mind, but no, so I read these books and I was like, okay, where's the story? Where's the, where are the people?
Before you get to the people, can you, can you give people a concise tick? Like I was going to ask you for a tick tock of the overarching economic issues before we get to the sort of the characters, because I think, yeah, because I think what, to your point, which is an important one, people think it was like a, okay, stocks went down. But the other things like the overproduction of the economy, tightening interest rates, the war debt, like all of this stuff was just co-mingled and nobody fully understands that. Can you maybe give folks a precise representation of the setup, the setup, the price?
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