This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. For my money, forgive the pun, one of the best things on television is a show about making money, making as much of it as possible.

Industry on HBO is a financial drama centered on a group of junior employees at a fictional investment bank in London.

Industry is currently finishing its fourth season, and the show was created by Mickey

Down and Conrad Kay, two old Oxford friends, both of whom did stints in the financial world.

In fact, they say if they'd been any good at finance, they probably wouldn't have created

a TV show about it in the first place.

Mickey Down and Conrad Kay, welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I have to say I'm a huge fan of this show. Conrad, tell me how this show came about. You both worked in finance. You knew each

other from university. Yeah, I mean, we were spat out pretty unceremoniously by the financial industry.

My boss, when he fired me, said I was the worst ever salesman that graced the doors of Morgan Stanley.

What were you selling?

US equities, but selling is a very strong version of what I was doing. I think he's supposed to make

about 40 outgoing calls a day. I made about four a year. So the metrics didn't really stack up. So they pipped me up on my collar and threw me out onto the street. I'm very happy bullshitting in all areas of my life, apart from the area where when I have to pick up the phone to a Dutch pension fund manager, has looked at Apple stock for 20 years, and I have to pretend to tell him something about the stock that he doesn't know. That was really tough for me, to be honest. Mickey, did you get into finance too for the obvious reason you wanted to make some money and please your parents? That's exactly right. Well, my mom thought that finance was too much of a spivvy career, even that she's an architect, which I think blows my mind because she's, you know, she's one of those immigrant mothers, it just says that if you're not a lawyer, basically not, you don't have a job, even though,

you know,

the doctor doesn't count. No doctor is out, but that was never going to happen for me, David. So it was a lawyer or nothing. And I had no interest in being in finance at all when I got to Oxford. I really had no interest in anything other than just like partying and having a lot of fun. And it was around us that suddenly in the second year, everyone started getting these jobs or internships. I looked around and said, God, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? So I applied to all those jobs, didn't get any of them. I ended up working for the home office, the civil service. And then I went to work for Rothschild, which is a kind of, you

know, old blue-blooded institution. I mean, I have that kind of quite fond memories of it

because I like the people I worked with, but the job itself was just not for me at all. I was

like incredibly all suited to it. At that level, it's literally just staring in front of a

computer screen and doing PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets.

And literally, it's just an exercise and do you have the ability to stay up 100 hours a week?

So from there, what's the origin story of industry?

I had sold this thing to NBC Universal, which was a kind of comedy short about a young guy

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