Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Derek DelGaudio:

I think it’s okay to talk about the subjectivity of truth and not have it be a negative thing. I think if we talk about truth as a thing that’s just fact or fiction and true and false in this binary, we abdicate our responsibility that we are shaping truth together collectively at any given moment.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Derek DelGaudio. He’s an interdisciplinary artist, mentalist, and author of the new book, AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies. He’s also the creator and star of a theatrical production, In & Of Itself, which was adapted by filmmaker Frank Oz to Hulu special in January. On April 17th, I spoke with Derek about his new book for the Miami Book Fair, and we covered a lot of ground. We talked about keeping secrets, practicing magic, and what it means to be a moral person. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Guess what, folks. This week, the Bharara family is away on vacation. First family vacation of any sort since before the pandemic.

Preet Bharara:

Leading up to the show, the team pulled together some evergreen questions that I’ve gotten over the months and years, not necessarily rooted in the news, and I thought I’d answer some of those today. Here’s a question that’s been asked from time to time, what have you learned about the art of interviewing that you didn’t know before you started hosting Stay Tuned? That’s an interesting question, and I thought about it and I’ll make two points. There are various types of interviews you do when you’re a prosecutor, when you’re a lawyer. Mostly what you see on television is the kind of …

Preet Bharara:

It is not really an interview, but it’s an examination, whether a direct examination or a cross examination, in a court of law. What is the principle that everyone always talks about? That a good lawyer never asks a question the lawyer doesn’t already know the answer to, and that’s a fine principle and it makes sense in a court of law when you have a particular goal, whether you’re on the prosecution side or the defense side, to argue your case through the witnesses or by cross examination of the witnesses and the undermining of the witnesses, to get the jury to believe your version of the facts and your version of events.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a very orchestrated type of process designed for some end. Not necessarily general edification or entertainment or enlightening, but to prove your case. Obviously, interviewing on Stay Tuned is very, very different from that. What I’ve learned is the most interesting interviews that I think I experience, and hopefully by extension, the listeners experience, are interviews where there are moments when neither I nor the listeners really expected the answer that’s given. Right? It’s the opposite of the principal in the courtroom. Often, the best questions I can ask are the ones where I don’t really know the answer because it’s not in the record anywhere.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not in their memoir, it’s not in their writings, it’s not in profiles of them, but it’s a truly interesting point about them or their work or their character that I want to get the answer to, and maybe they’ve not been asked the question before or maybe they’ve not wanted to answer the question before. But those moments of surprise, I find fascinating, and I think important to the art of interviewing. The second thing I will say, which is particular to the pandemic, I have not interviewed anyone in person in about 16 months. In the before times, I would interview people remotely and we couldn’t see each other.

Preet Bharara:

But by and large, we tried to make sure that people were in studio. At the beginning I interviewed people in other parts of the country, in D.C. and in LA, and I would fly out there because I thought the importance of the dynamic of being in the same room as a person you’re interviewing to have chitchat before the interview, to make eye contact, to find moments when you can interrupt without being rude, which is easier to do in person than it is remotely when you’re just on audio. I was a little bit apprehensive about the prospect of indefinitely doing interviews only by audio.

Preet Bharara:

What I’ve discovered is there’s a certain liberation there, and there’s a certain ability to conduct an interview with some intensity and focus and sensitivity when you don’t have the distraction of the other human beings sitting across from you. You don’t have to worry and be distracted by whether or not you’re making enough eye contact. You don’t have to worry and be distracted thinking they didn’t like the question. Those cues are sometimes nice to have, but it’s also nice in a way, and I’m sure I’ll love getting back to interviewing people in person again, but I’m just reflecting on it in this moment since you asked the question.

Preet Bharara:

When I only have the sound of the person’s voice in my ears and very intimate, and then of all the other stuff, the tableau of the room and the person. When I just have that person’s words in my ears, I think I listen better, I think I hear the answers better, and I think I can make my follow up questions more focused and relevant and better. That’s not to say that I want to forever interview people remotely and with audio only. I think there’s a great dynamic and back and forth. When someone is in-person I think it’s easier to make jokes, I think it’s easier to put a person at ease when you’re in the same room with them. But my apprehensiveness about doing these things audio-only has dissipated.

Preet Bharara:

Here’s a question about leadership. Do you think it’s important for leaders to be kind, or is it ultimately more important to be effective? I’ve been talking about leadership for years and years, giving a lot of speeches on it, written about it, thought about it, and obviously been a leader of small and large organizations, and I think that’s a false choice. I think that kind leaders are ultimately the most effective leaders. It’s not one or the other. Now you can have a scary leader, who is brutal and mean and tough in ways that are the antithesis of kindness and the institution can do well and it can make money or it can succeed or it can improve.

Preet Bharara:

But I think the full potential of an institution is never realized unless leaders are kind. Now, I was often fond of saying, when I talked about these issues to groups, that you want to be the kind of leader that your people are willing to take a bullet for rather than one they fantasize about putting a bullet in. I also used to quote from Eisenhower, and I’ll mangle it because I don’t have it in front of me. But I’m paraphrasing. Remember, Eisenhower was no shrinking violet. I believe he was a general, and then he was a two-term President of the United States. Here’s a person who was commander in chief after having been a general in the armed forces, who says you don’t lead people by hitting them over the head. That’s not leadership.

Preet Bharara:

That’s assault. I think there’s also a confusion people have between being kind and being strong and being tough. Those are not at odds with each other either. You can be very, very strong, and very, very firm, and still be kind to the people around you. The flip side of leadership is what? Followership. Cheerleader, you want people to follow you, and you want them to follow you because they respect you and because they know you have their back and they know you care about them, not just as people who are in the organization doing the work that they do, but as people and you have an interest in their advancement. Followers know that. People in any organization or agency will give their best work to folks who they think care about them. By the way, that doesn’t mean no criticism.

Preet Bharara:

That doesn’t mean you give false praise. That doesn’t mean you pat everyone in the back all the time. What it means is that you give constructive feedback and you don’t take gratuitous aim at people if they’ve made a mistake. Look, I look back to my own experience for years and years with managers, supervisors, bosses, and the people I worked the hardest for, the people I stayed up late for and gave my all for were not people that I was scared of, not people who I thought would get mad at me or yell at me if I didn’t do a perfect job, but people who I knew cared about me, and would be disappointed if I didn’t give it my best and didn’t do my best work, and I think that’s an important thing to remember.

Preet Bharara:

This is a question I’ve gotten a lot over the years. When you were hiring young prosecutors at SDNY, how did you assess whether or not a candidate had integrity? What were some of the things you looked for? Obviously, there are a lot of basic things you look for. You want to make sure that they’re smart, you want to make sure that they can write well, you want to make sure that they present well when they’re speaking, that they can argue in court. You want all those things, right? You want to make sure that they got good grades, and we got some amazing applications from some of the most credential people in the country.

Preet Bharara:

But that wasn’t enough. The most important thing goes to the question you’re asking, whether the person has integrity and judgment, [inaudible 00:08:43] design the question, but I think sums up things like integrity and a lot of other qualities that are central to doing a job, any job, certainly, but absolutely central to doing a job where you have so much power over people’s lives and livelihoods, particularly at a young age. Many of the entering prosecutors at SDNY and other US attorney’s offices in these offices are fairly young and have not had a lot of life experience. There’s no substitute for integrity and judgment. By the time a candidate got to me, I was pretty confident that they had no skills and craft and intelligence and writing ability and speaking ability.

Preet Bharara:

The most important thing was making sure that the person had the right character, fitness and judgment to undertake this huge responsibility of being a prosecutor and exercising discretion with wisdom and restrain, often. With respect to integrity, one of the things we always did, not just in the interview process, but in the vetting process, was to talk to people who would work with that person, not just supervisors necessarily, but also sometimes their peers, if that was appropriate. If we got any whiff that someone had ever misrepresented something to the court or done something underhanded or cut a corner, we would not take a chance on that person.

Preet Bharara:

Because the most important thing to any prosecutor’s office, republic lawyers office is that you do things in the right way for the right reasons all the time. There was one thing I would ask people who applied to be criminal prosecutors in my office, and I’ve mentioned this over the years. I would say that person, I think, sometimes they were surprised to hear the question, and say, “Look, if you get this job, how are you going to feel knowing that, by definition, if you do your job correctly that you will, in many ways, arguably be the proximate cause for many human beings going to prison for long periods of time?”

Preet Bharara:

Now, that’s not quite a fair way of putting it necessarily, but I ask that question in that sharp language for reason. Every once in a while, you would get someone who would answer the question a little too quickly, and say, “I have no problem with that. If they committed a crime, they should do the time.” There’s some version of that. You might be surprised to hear that we didn’t hire those people. I didn’t want to hire that person. Because to me, it indicated a level of immaturity and single mindedness, and it made me think that they didn’t understand the job correctly.

Preet Bharara:

Because the job of a prosecutor is not to send people to prison, it’s not to get convictions, not to put bad guys away. That’s a byproduct of what the job really is. The job is to do justice and do the right thing, and sometimes that means charging people, sometimes it means not charging people. You want folks in the prosecutor’s office who understand that it’s a heavy responsibility and it’s natural not to feel great all the time at the moment of sentencing when a human being, because the law demands it and requires it, goes to prison for a long period of time and their family is there, a family who might rely on that person.

Preet Bharara:

It’s an important job. It requires prosecutors to do the job and judges and defense lawyers and other folks too. But people who are too eager to prosecute for the purpose of sending someone away and didn’t appreciate the gravity of that responsibility, we didn’t hire. Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this. My guest this week is Derek DelGaudio. He’s the author of the recent memoir, AMORALMAN: A True Story and Other Lies. It’s both a personal telling of his own life stories and a meditation on philosophy, morality, and the complexities of truth. A performer, artist and mentalist, DelGaudio’s craft is hard to explain, so I’ll let him do it. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Derek DelGaudio:

You too, sir.

Preet Bharara:

Are you doing okay?

Derek DelGaudio:

I’m doing well. I’m excited to talk to you.

Preet Bharara:

Congratulations on the book. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, you really need to pick it up. It’s entertaining, it’s page turning, it’s storytelling, and there’s a good bit of poignance philosophy. A lot of your book is about secrets, and the nature of secrets and the effects of secrets. That’s one of the most fascinating themes in the entire book. Do you have an obsession with the idea of secrets?

Derek DelGaudio:

I did without knowing it. I collected secrets the way someone might collect baseball cards when I was younger. That became my hobby, my obsessions, collecting secrets and finding people who kept secrets and convincing them to reveal them to me and let me carry them for a while. I did develop an obsession with secrets, but not with the notion of secrecy until much later. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I was just doing it.

Preet Bharara:

Are secrets necessary for people? Do we all have a need for it or?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, I think that we use them to protect ourselves or to guard us from others. Yeah, I think that it’s necessary to have some sort of level of secrecy in our lives to get through this world, and I could be wrong. Maybe there’s [inaudible 00:13:51]

Preet Bharara:

That’s what’s so complicated and so interesting about your meditation on this. On the one hand, you make the point through stories and straight prose that secrets are important and they help us. On the other hand, you talk about the toxic effects of secrecy.

Derek DelGaudio:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

You talk about and you say in your book, at the beginning of chapter, a secret can be used as a shield to shield us from pain and protect us from harm, or it can act as a barrier built to exclude and oppress those deemed unworthy of access. What do you mean? It sounds very profoundly. What do you mean by that?

Derek DelGaudio:

I think that we all have a world within us or we have a world that we inhabit and who we choose to let into that world is in part what we reveal to them and how much we want to let someone into the world that we live in depends on how much we choose to conceal and reveal. [crosstalk 00:14:47] We have to choose carefully.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to give this a shot. Is there a secret you want to tell us? It’s just you and me.

Derek DelGaudio:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. That was unexpected that you were going to agree, but okay.

Derek DelGaudio:

No, why not? Right?

Preet Bharara:

Tell us something we don’t know that nobody knows.

Derek DelGaudio:

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I suffered what’s called a testicular torsion, which is a very painful medical condition that is probably the most painful experience of my life. Never talked about it because I felt there’s no real need to, but you know.

Preet Bharara:

Wow. I was expecting that. By the way, this is not pre-planned. We’ve never met. Sometimes lawyers will do at the beginning of a cross examination, which this is not. You and I have never met before, sir. Is that correct?

Derek DelGaudio:

That is correct.

Preet Bharara:

You and I have never spoken before, is that correct?

Derek DelGaudio:

That is correct.

Preet Bharara:

You and I have not prepared in any way this testimony/conversation, is that correct?

Derek DelGaudio:

That’s correct.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Derek DelGaudio:

[crosstalk 00:15:45] oddly, it sounds like the preamble for being a lawyer is very similar to a magician bring someone up on stage. [crosstalk 00:15:53]

Preet Bharara:

Right. No, that’s true. Totally.

Derek DelGaudio:

[crosstalk 00:15:54] Is that correct, sir? These are the same questions that one might ask before having someone pick a card.

Preet Bharara:

Because people are skeptical when they’re about to see something that goes the way that either the magician, the conjurer, or the lawyer wants it to go. People have a healthy skepticism of whether or not that’s rehearsed. They’re being tricked.

Derek DelGaudio:

Sure. Agendas. Yes.

Preet Bharara:

That brings to mind a story you tell in the book about your mom, and I want to ask you a couple of questions about your mom. But adults do have some experience of what seems normal and natural, what natural movement is.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

You tell this great story after you’ve spent hours and hours and hours and hours, unbeknownst to your mom, that you were practicing sleight of hand?

Derek DelGaudio:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Preet Bharara:

You finally … I think she’s taking a shower or she’s drying her hair, and you knock on the door and you’re bothering your mom, she’s like, “Can I dry my hair?” And you want to show her your trick?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

I think it was moving a coin from one hand to the other, and you’re very proud of yourself and you were very young, and she immediately says, much to your dismay, “It’s in the other hand.” Was she using childlike abilities of observation? What was going on there?

Derek DelGaudio:

No, I [crosstalk 00:17:05] very good. [inaudible 00:17:08] This was before I understood natural actions versus unnatural actions, and how to simulate natural actions. I was being awkward in my mannerisms, and therefore she was able to [inaudible 00:17:22] what was happening. Which is different than someone being very good and talented and a kid being able to see through it.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, what I loved is how you describe. All this is new to me. I was very fascinating. That one of the reasons why you weren’t as good as you want it to be was the way you practiced, and one of the ways you practiced was you’re looking in a mirror.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

When you look in the mirror to watch yourself, you’re looking at your hands.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

So you’re seeing yourself. Then the owner of this magic store [inaudible 00:17:49] … I want to talk about the magic store, too, if we have time, because we could do this for three hours, gave you a video camera. In the moment, you were just performing for the imaginary audience, and then later, you could assess the naturalness of your movements. How much of a difference did that make?

Derek DelGaudio:

Well, a big difference in terms of self deception. The thing about mirror practices is, after a while, your brain starts to do some of the work subconsciously for you, and it starts to edit out the discrepancies or things that make it look unconvincing. It’s in real time and it’s just … People either decide on certain angles unintentionally or they blink at the right time unintentionally, and these are habits that will carry on after you walk away from the mirror. Yeah, you need to remove yourself from seeing it at the moment and a video camera was one way to do that.

Preet Bharara:

Can you give folks a sense of how much time you spent to do a simple card trick?

Derek DelGaudio:

Well-

Preet Bharara:

Because it boggles my mind. You know that to become a good pitcher or good athlete in certain areas, some people cite the 10,000 hours of practice makes you really excellent. It seems like a lot more than that [crosstalk 00:19:11] you do, right?

Derek DelGaudio:

[crosstalk 00:19:13] When that number came out, which was at Malcolm Gladwell that [crosstalk 00:19:18]

Preet Bharara:

I think it might have been. I don’t remember.

Derek DelGaudio:

It was laughable to me. [inaudible 00:19:23] a small number compared to what I had tallied up. No, I was a bit obsessive. I woke up and fell asleep with cards in my hand. I would go through-

Preet Bharara:

At what age? Tell people at what age that was.

Derek DelGaudio:

I really started to ramp things up at 14. 12 and 13, it was finding my way into it, and then 15, when I transitioned going into high school … I dropped out of high school my freshman year and it was all I did every single day was practice. I practiced the way that I imagined martial artists in films where they’d go out into the forest and punch a tree practice. I was very determined to become whatever imagined version of the best was in my head at that time.

Preet Bharara:

Pardon me for saying it this way. What’s crazy about that, and one of most interesting things about your arc that people haven’t read the book want to appreciate, is that normally you would think, whether it’s the athlete or doing what you do, you’re practicing, you’re practicing, you’re practicing, you’re becoming perfect at it, you show your mom your trick, that the whole idea is to be able to perform that publicly and show an audience of people look what I learned, look what I can do.

Preet Bharara:

That was not the case with you. In fact, you’d seem to have no interest in performing. You just wanted to perfect the trick or the sleight of hand. In fact, you say at one point in the book, and this line … The main lines in the book just have stayed with me. You say because you you have a discussion with the owner of the magic shop where you say, “I don’t want to do it in front of people.” He said, “Why the hell not? That’s the whole point,” and you say, “Concealing my talents was the performance.” What does that mean?

Derek DelGaudio:

Well, for me the mark of it being successful was a perfect simulation of real life. If it’s a perfect simulation of natural actions and of life itself, there is no distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary. It just is what it is. In performances of magic, it is all about the perception of extraordinary. Something extraordinary occurred. To me, that was pointing to the secrets and pointing to the craft, and for me, it was all about hiding the craft and hiding myself. I just didn’t have any interest in showing off.

Preet Bharara:

Would you consider yourself to be part of an industry? If so, whatever the category of … Because some of the words don’t really work. Magician doesn’t really work. I don’t know if conjurer works, deceiver. I’ll leave it to you to describe this special talent that you have.

Derek DelGaudio:

No, I don’t think I’m part of any [inaudible 00:22:06]

Preet Bharara:

That may be obvious. My question, have you found that you are unusual in this field of having been somebody who, at the outset, at least, didn’t want to perform?

Derek DelGaudio:

The performing part, I have met other people who have no interest in performing, but maybe not quite to this extent or maybe not for the same reasons. A lot of the people I know who aren’t interested in performing are introverts and they’re just interested in the analytical part. I actually wasn’t opposed to performing in any other context. I wasn’t opposed to getting on a stage and talking [crosstalk 00:22:43]

Preet Bharara:

Yes. You talk about that. It’s another thing I thought was fascinating, right? I must ask you, there was some back and forth between you and other people about this idea of not wanting to perform, and you hadn’t really mastered it. You could do the trick, but maybe not have this, and so you did drama.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yes. [crosstalk 00:22:58]

Preet Bharara:

You said an odd thing. You’re new at drama and you said you felt no nervousness getting on the stage doing that other thing?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But when you tried to do the thing at which you had become expert to some degree, you did feel nerves. Explain that.

Derek DelGaudio:

I think that I had … Getting on stage and being in a play and pretending to be someone else, for me, there’s no stakes in that because I’m not that person. It’s an imaginary circumstance and it’s theater. But when you’re presenting as yourself and you have tied so much of who you are to this thing, the stakes seem much higher, and I think that it’s just that there’s a lot more in it. But also, the context is so different, in that when you’re … For some reason, the deception of theater or the deception of art, in general, films is an accepted sort of deception that we go with it. We’re okay with being [crosstalk 00:23:58]

Preet Bharara:

You suspend disbelief when it’s fiction.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah. But when it’s someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes, or something like that, there’s just a different social contract there. I was always very uncomfortable with the perception of that contract. Naturally, there’s a lot of power involved of I know something you don’t know, I’m going to display that now. It’s kind of a challenge in that sense, and I was never interested in that challenge aspect of it. For me, it was not about that. I couldn’t understand how to make it not about that. For me, it was just that’s all it ever was and that’s all anyone ever saw it as, and so that’s all it’ll ever be.

Preet Bharara:

To me, and I don’t know how other people react to different and what feedback you’ve gotten from people, one of the most stunning things to me in the book was this. You have this lead up with this person who is in the field, the general field, named Grayson, who, as I understand it, is one of the preeminent conjurers deceivers ever. You had occasion as basically a kid to meet him at a hotel lobby. It’s a great story. You impress him because you do a thing that he’s never seen anybody else able to do, and he’s obviously someone who you either aspire to be or respected tremendously.

Preet Bharara:

It was a huge break for you to meet this guy, Grayson, and for him to spend, I think when you … two or three hours with you, teaching you some stuff, mentoring you, and that’s a lovely story that you see Karate Kid and other stories. But then you go see his performance. I forget how long later it was. Here’s a guy you somewhat placed on a pedestal, who does these things that you aspire to do, and a simple thing happens in his performance. This is the thing that struck me the most, maybe of anything in the book.

Derek DelGaudio:

Wow.

Preet Bharara:

And out of other people’s reaction. You’re watching him, and he does some trick with a little wooden box, and he tells a story about the little wooden box. He says, “My father gave this to me before he died and said you can’t open it until I …” I don’t know what the trick was. But you set it up this way, and tell me if I got it wrong. But you can’t open it until I die, and then he does something with the box.

Preet Bharara:

You describe how, basically, you were repulsed by this because it was a deception. He knew it was a deception because you’d seen him or heard him do the same thing before, and then a different story about the box. It wasn’t from his dad. It offended you in some ways. Describe how you felt about it. Why you felt so strong? So strongly, in fact, that I think you left the theater after the show and didn’t even meet with Grayson. Can you explain that to me? I’ve been wanting to ask you that question since I read the book. What was going on there?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah. Well, but I would like to know what what affected you about it.

Preet Bharara:

It’s because this is not my area, right? I’ve been trying to figure out how, in the context of deception, that a particular subset of deception would offend the deceiver? In the process, you say about art, it’s more easy to understand in fiction, right? There’s a drama. It’s all made up. It’s all make believe. It’s all fiction. But you can have an untruth in fiction, and so that seems to me the best analogy, a parallel. You found it to be, I think, an unnecessary, untruth and a lie to the audience and a deception of the audience that was not necessary. Do I have that right?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah. Basically, it is a untruth in service of an untruth. I didn’t know at the time that what I was reacting to was that, was this idea that that’s not what I … Villains never see themselves as the villains, certainly, and I never saw myself as a deceiver.

Preet Bharara:

You say in the chapter. I did my homework. You say, “I’m not interested …” Maybe this helps [inaudible 00:28:09], but you say, “I’m not interested in deceiving people.” But you also refer to yourself as a deceiver.

Derek DelGaudio:

Just to help people look for context. Knowing those who are before me.

Preet Bharara:

Right. I don’t. I’ve been struggling with that.

Derek DelGaudio:

It’s very difficult to … When so much is placed on the intention of … No one ever called Picasso a deceiver or Hemingway a deceiver. They’re either artists or writers or whatever. But like magician or conjurer, these are all synonymous with deception. You can’t have that without the other. I understand that. But for me, it wasn’t … I didn’t realize that what I was after, for whatever reason, what I was after wasn’t deception. It was deception as a means to an end, and that end should be truth of some sort and finding it, and finding it by means of the antipodes.

Derek DelGaudio:

There are only some lights that you can see in darkness, and sometimes a light is easier to see in darkness. I think I was searching for light in dark places or figuring out how to use darkness to expose a light of some sort. I realized I couldn’t do that [inaudible 00:29:28] I had picked up the wrong tool in my head. I realized, oh, my gosh, I’m not interested in deceiving people, and yet, I’ve spent all of these years learning how to do that. It was an existential crisis. It was a moment of what am I doing with my life spent … At that time, I think it was seven or eight years.

Derek DelGaudio:

Dropped out of school to learn this on such a deep level, as deep as anyone would study anything in this world, and then having all of that collapse in one moment and realizing this is not what I want to do with my life, and I didn’t have a model for it. The person that I thought was my model turns out to not be, and so everything just gets flattened in that moment and it’s like and now what?

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Derek DelGaudio continues after this. People should understand that there’s a lot in the book about your activities with some unseemly folks, and this is also the most page turning storytelling in the book, where you get involved in new world of con men and poker games and card cheats. I think I learned a lot of terms, by the way. The footnotes are very well [inaudible 00:30:49] Actually, I usually don’t like footnotes, but the little explanations of what … You were a bust-out dealer, is that the right?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah. That’s the closest term that there is to [inaudible 00:30:57] Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

There was a period of time, and everyone should recall that my prior profession was prosecutor. I’m looking at some of this stuff, and it’s not just deception. It’s not audience deception. Laws were potentially hypothetically allegedly being broken.

Derek DelGaudio:

Please. Please. [inaudible 00:31:15] I just want to [inaudible 00:31:15] to hear from you.

Preet Bharara:

I feel like maybe a law or two-

Derek DelGaudio:

A law?

Preet Bharara:

… may have been broken in Colorado. I presume that you have good counsel, and you’ve checked out the statutes of limitations and that you’re good, and this is not hurting you in any way.

Derek DelGaudio:

We’ll go with that. But you talk about this. You have all these skills. One use to what you can put these skills is that one is you can entertain an audience. The other is you can help bad guys make a lot of money by cheating at poker.

Preet Bharara:

Sure.

Derek DelGaudio:

You use two words when you get to this point in the book. You say you reach the line, he says more like a ledge. This goes back to the title, right?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Because you had a self perception about yourself. Right? Are you a moral person? Do you do upstanding things? You didn’t think you would do something like this, and then you did. How did you think about that?

Derek DelGaudio:

Well, the truth is I don’t know that I thought about it that much in terms of morality, at the time, because I trained my entire life, or at least adult life at that point, to do something, or I gained skills that that seemed to have no value in this world. [inaudible 00:32:36] reminded had no value in this world by the world in which I lived. Then you find yourself in a circumstance where it is literally valued, both by the people who are employing you and also financially. There’s a currency to what you do. This is probably very difficult to understand for people who are really … It might be hard for everyone there. I don’t know.

Derek DelGaudio:

But there was an integrity to using the things that I had learned to do what they were intended for. Because I had spent all these years learning how to essentially cheat at cards, but never used it. I always just had this ability and I had it for myself because I liked the exploration of technique the way that someone might enjoy exploring classical music and wanting to be a virtuoso at a piano or at the cello. That was, for me, a deck of cards. The most difficult, most elegant moves were the cheating moves, because they had to simulate real life in a way that was unlike anything else, or as much as you could. I had these things that I learned and no place to use them, and then finally, there was a place where I could use them and there was an honesty to that I hadn’t felt before.

Preet Bharara:

There was an honesty in the dishonesty?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, [crosstalk 00:34:00]

Preet Bharara:

Again, going back, it’s all murky, right?

Derek DelGaudio:

It is. There’s an honesty and a dignity and integrity in using the thing … Molarity [inaudible 00:34:10] in using the tool for the job. Creating the ability to do this and then using it for the thing that it was intended, there’s a satisfaction in that that goes beyond winning money. You’re scaling the mountain that you wonder if you could climb.

Preet Bharara:

You’re saying something that’s just reminding me of a conversation I had about another book written by an actual philosopher who taught me in college and I had on my podcast not too long ago, and he talks about meritocracy. We give lip service to meritocracy. But even if you had a meritocratic America, it’s still unjust for various reasons, one of which is the following. You just reminded me of what he pointed out in his book, and that is, yeah, you can say Michael Jordan deserves what he has and he’s entitled to what he has depending on which verb you want to use because he’s the best at what he does.

Preet Bharara:

But he happens to be really good at something that American society and capitalism values. Surely there’s a person who is just as good as Michael Jordan at badminton or in stalking golf balls, or in some other such thing, or in card tricks. The Michael Jordan of that is not rewarded. Given your place in that sort of rubric of capitalism and how we reward stuff, what do you think about meritocracy?

Derek DelGaudio:

I totally agree with that. I’ll go on even further than that. If you have a craft where the better you do it, the more invisible to the world it becomes, the more challenging it becomes to get credit for what you do. The more spectacular Michael Jordan got at basketball, the easier it was for us to see that. But by nature of sleight of hand and deception, the better I am at it, the less you see, and so it’s even harder. Even in a meritocracy, it’s even more difficult when you’ve chosen a craft that renders you invisible to the world.

Derek DelGaudio:

Which is why you see people adding flourishes to their work or performing the secrets and performing the deception but still trading on it and withholding the information. They have to be able to show you that they’re working and that they’re good at what they do. But they have to let you know that by making the secrets decorative in some way.

Preet Bharara:

Bernie Madoff, one of the world heavyweight champions in history of deception, illegal deception, and line in the book made me think about that and I wonder if you have a thought about it. When you’re the bust out dealer and you’re looking for that moment when you’re going to change out the deck or do something, do some funny business, and it’s a great line, and you don’t know if the people at the card table are onto you or not onto you. One time you get lucky because someone spills a drink and you do the funny thing that you do, but you’re not always …. Someone’s not going to spill a drink every time you need to do-

Derek DelGaudio:

Sure.

Preet Bharara:

… your funny business. You say, “Cheating under watchful eyes requires confidence.” I wonder if you have any thoughts about people like Bernie Madoff and how confident he must have had to be. I guess there’s an open question as to how watchful the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission were. But there are a lot of watchful people. Does your experience cause you to have a certain view of people who do that kind of thing?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yes. It is a mindset that I think transcends any sort of craft. It is a belief system of how this world functions and an entitlement that some people either are born with or develop over the years. That the puppet tear in the book, the allegory of the cave is the most important aspect of this book for me. I wouldn’t have written it had I not found a way to talk about these stories in a way that frames it in a larger context that people could relate to the rest of the world. And that someone like Bernie, or what we’ve experienced over the last four years, is the pinnacle of that sort of deception. You have to dehumanize others in a way that I wasn’t able to do, and I’m glad that I’ve never been able to do that. But also these people understand that … I guess the ultimate point is it’s not deception to them. It’s craft-

Preet Bharara:

It’s belief.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, it’s crafting truths and the arrogance to believe that you can create a new truth just by uttering it and just by saying it enough and just by the conviction of your own belief or at least projection of that belief that others will start to also believe it, and it does work. We saw it happen. You talk about watchful eyes. We were all watching over the last four years. How much more could we possibly watch corruption and deception occur, and yet, what happens? I don’t know enough about the cogs and wheels of the legal system of how that works like you do, but I do know-

Preet Bharara:

Well, but you do know that that dynamic of … You do the things you do, it’s in front of an audience, and some of the things … When you were watching those tapes, your version of YouTube, it’s not even like, except for the examples where there was a person who was trying to be the anti fraud guy, and he was showing multiple camera angles so you could see what the fraud was. But if you have a straight-on view, even if you can pause it frame by frame, you can’t see the deception because it’s all done out in the open.

Preet Bharara:

Some of what’s happened last four years is being done out in the open, and in some ways people will believe their eyes more when that is true. Here’s one thing you said, since you mentioned the last four years. You said when the prior president was running for office in 2016, “The democrats think this is a game. It isn’t.” What did you mean by that?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, I think the full quote was … I tweeted this. I said, “I used to read card games for a living and I would watch people come back night after night and lose again and again, but they didn’t lose because we follow the rules of the game and they didn’t. They lost because it wasn’t a game, it just looked like one, and democrats think it’s a game.” That just comes from watching people essentially stack the deck and then watching democrats pony up to the table and buy in again and sit down and play. There are no rules to these people, to the others, to the people who sit on the other side of things.

Derek DelGaudio:

But they understand that we play by the rules as good Samaritans, as good people, law-abiding citizens and people who are moral and just. They understand that we want to live by those rules, and they are smart enough to pretend to play by those rules and use them as if they are the ones upholding them. But they don’t matter to [crosstalk 00:41:37] I think. Ted Cruz doesn’t give a shit about the rule of law. He just doesn’t. It’s all horse (beep) performance, and anyone who agrees with him and Trump and all those people, they don’t actually care. They perform that they care so that they can push their agenda forward. I don’t know if the same is true for Democrats.

Derek DelGaudio:

They at least push agendas that seem to help people or want … They care about others and the idea of others and helping others and things like that. The politics aside, at least the agendas are in line with something that I can understand, and humanity is at the forefront of all of it. But this recent thing of the Democrats adding supreme court justices is the first time in a long time where I’ve seen them actually do something that is in line with something republicans might do in a way that I applaud. I think it’s absolutely what they should do.

Derek DelGaudio:

Because if the shoe were on the other foot, they wouldn’t think twice about it. I think about Merrick Garland. They don’t care, but they need you to believe that they care about … It’s the same card table. The rules at the card table didn’t really matter. I was cheating. That you don’t need … It doesn’t matter. You’re going to give me the money at the end of the night because you think you’re playing poker, but I need you to believe that you’re playing poker in order for me to take your money. Without that framework, I can’t get you to sit down and show up and let me leech you. [inaudible 00:43:14] bizarre thing of performing the rules.

Preet Bharara:

Your statements just now made me wonder, do you think you would be a decent political consultant based on the experience you have?

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been trying-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Derek DelGaudio:

… [crosstalk 00:43:25] for a long time. [crosstalk 00:43:26]

Preet Bharara:

I can set you up with some folks. I know a couple folks.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah. 100%. I’ve been [crosstalk 00:43:32]

Preet Bharara:

That had not occurred to me when I read your book. Should that make us hopeful or cynical about politics, that you would be a good political consultant? I mean that with great respect.

Derek DelGaudio:

No, no, no, no. Yeah, I understand. It is the way it’s always been. I don’t know that it’s … You could read a book about propaganda from 100 years ago and it’s the same as what’s happening today. I don’t know that it changes. You do need people who understand how they think, and I spent my life learning from those people. Whether it was a different context, it doesn’t really matter. The rules of engagement and deception are the same. You see it in … I’ve talked about strategic ambiguity, about it doesn’t matter if what I say is true or not. I just need to be able to make people think that what you say-

Preet Bharara:

Is false.

Derek DelGaudio:

[crosstalk 00:44:24]

Preet Bharara:

[inaudible 00:44:25] People like Gary Kasparov who has a lot to say about Vladimir Putin and propaganda makes the point that people forget. The thing is to the point you’re making, the issue is not what is true and what is false. The issue for the propagandist and the tyrant is to make the world believe you can never know what’s true or not true. Everything is possibly true and everything is possibly false. It’s not the case of this fact that you state, that my opposition states is false, and I need to demonstrate it. That’s not my goal. My goal is not to prove you to be wrong. My goal is to prove that anything anybody says can be false and you can’t know it.

Derek DelGaudio:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there needs to be a new discussion around how we talk about truth. I think we need to approach it more like we approach climate change, and that it’s a crisis and that we are now in an era where anyone is capable of having a platform and saying things and putting misinformation out there, and we need to … I think it’s okay to talk about the subjectivity of truth and not have it be a negative thing. I think it’s okay to put the responsibility.

Derek DelGaudio:

I think if we talk about truth as a thing that’s just fact or fiction and true and false in this binary, we abdicate our responsibility that we are shaping truth together collectively at any given moment, whether it’s you and I, between us, what we decide is true, or with the rest of the world, collectively. I think that the more humanity we can inject into that conversation, the more that it becomes a nuanced conversation that isn’t just about fact or fiction. It becomes about what’s the most decent humane thing for us as a people.

Preet Bharara:

I could talk to you for another hour. I have many more questions to ask.

Derek DelGaudio:

I have questions for you, too. Hopefully, [crosstalk 00:46:11]

Preet Bharara:

Oh, boy. Yeah, I’ll take the bet. AMORALMAN, AMORALMAN, AMORALMAN. It’s unclear, but that’s the point of the book. Congratulations. It’s excellent. People should buy it, read it and watch your show.

Derek DelGaudio:

Thanks so much.

Preet Bharara:

It’s been a real treat. It’s been a real treat, sir.

Derek DelGaudio:

For me too. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Derek DelGaudio continues for members of a Cafe Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Derek DelGaudio. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the #ask Preet, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338.

Preet Bharara:

That’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to staytuned@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe Studios and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Your host is Preet Bharara. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper, the senior producer is Adam Waller, the technical director is David Tatasciore. The Cafe team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jay Kaplan, Jennifer Corn, Chris [Boylan 00:48:02] and Sean Walsh. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.