45. Daniel de Visé — On Comebacks in Sports and Life

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2018

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this unusual dialogue Dr. Shermer talks to author and journalist Daniel de Visé about one of the greatest athletes in American history, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond and de Vise’s new book about the cyclist, The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France. They also get into what constitutes fairness in sports, Lance Armstrong and the era of doping in sports in which nearly every professional athlete (not just in cycling) was using Performing Enhancing Drugs, and the ethics of how something can be immoral if everyone is doing it. Shermer explains his game theory analysis of cheating and how to tilt the incentive matrix to encourage fair play among all agents in a system. They also touch on de Vise’s prior bestselling book Andy and Don, the story of Andy Griffith and Don Knotts and their classic American television series.

Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. He has worked at the Washington Post, the Miami Herald, and in 2001 shared a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative journalism of the on-the-scene coverage of the pre-dawn raid by federal agents that took the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and reunited him with his Cuban father. His investigative reporting twice led to the release of wrongly convicted men from life terms in prison. He is the author of I Forgot to Remember and Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show.

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This Science Salon was recorded on September 14, 2018.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is your host, Michael Sherman, and you're listening to Science A Lot, a series of conversations
0:10.4	with leading scientists, scholars, and thinkers about the most important issues of our time.
0:17.0	Yeah, so you are Daniel Devise, right? Devise, or Devise.
0:23.3	Devise, it's Belgian.
0:25.3	Oh, Devise, oh yes, of course.
0:26.3	So there we go, the new book, The Comeback.
0:29.6	Greg Lamon, the True King of American Cycling,
0:32.2	and a legendary tour to France.
0:35.0	So for most of my listeners they're not going to be into geking out about cycling like we will but
0:41.6	so this is a little bit unusual but we will
0:43.9	angle in some some science and technology and and gain theory throughout this but
0:50.0	just to give you a proper introduction here, this is just your latest book of several
0:54.8	you've done before.
0:55.8	Andy and Don, the Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV show.
1:00.2	Of course, that's the Mayberry. No, sorry. What's the name of the show?
1:06.4	Oh, Andy Griffith Show.
1:07.8	Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a great show. I grew up with that.
1:10.8	And co-author of I forgot to remember a memoir of Amnesia.
1:15.0	You live in Maryland and you are a Pulitzer Prize winner in 2001 for your journalistic
1:19.9	writing and research and a graduate of Westlian in Northwestern universities.
1:26.3	So very good.
1:27.3	So I think just to give our listeners a kind of a general background of why you came to write this book you've written on so many different topics in your journalism.
	...

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