All right. Hello, everybody. We are up. It is the Felger and Maz Off Air Show with a very special

guest this week. We'll change up this week, not just grab assing with Big Jim Murray and others,

a little bit more of a serious, like a traditional podcast interview, I would say, which we do from

time to time with some authors, but we got a great one this week. You may know them. It's Ben Mesrick, obviously a renowned, accomplished, prolific author of many books you may have read

in the past, including, yeah, your claim to fame is bringing down the house probably.

Well, I think as a book, it was bringing down the house, which is the MIT Blackjack

story, but as a movie, the social network about Facebook, which is, was kind of a big. What's been your biggest selling book? Bringing down the house easily. And the, but the biggest movie was the social network. Social network. Yeah. So like the bringing down the house, you know, was just one of those books like just kept selling, kept selling, kept selling. And but the movie 21 wasn't like, you know, it was Kevin Spacey. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, did you work with Kevin Spacey? I did. You know, back when it was okay to work with Kevin Spacey, let's be, I didn't know, we didn't know. We didn't know. Let's put it that way. Um, Kevin, you know, discovered me. I, sounds horrible now. But I was sitting at home and I had written bringing down the house, which was the story of this group of college kids who took Vegas for millions of dollars playing blackjack. And the phone rings. And it was Kevin Spacey. No way. I read the book, read an article had written for Wired Magazine. And he's like, I want to make a movie out of this. So my movie career actually started with Kevin.

And he was a producer on the social network as well, which not a lot of people know. I like Kevin Spacey. I didn't love him in the movie. In 21. Too angry. It was just sort of him ranting and raving. It was ranting. You know what I mean? So the book was very different than the movie.

So the book was really about these kids beating blackjack and there was a lot of math.

It was kind of more like Michael Lewis Moneyball kind of thing. And then the movie went like the director was Robert Lucetic who did legally blonde. The movie like looks great. And it's a really fun movie., it's a great movie to watch on the plane to Vegas,

the very Vegas movie. I love the movie. I love the book. Kevin, I thought was Kevin. I thought Spacey was too much. Yeah. Anyway, the off-air show is presented by the original light bear Miller light, legendary stories and the off-air show. Start with the Light. Here's it just over 50 years of Miller time.

We'll go back and talk about some of the other stuff that you've done.

But let's just talk about some of the other stuff yeah that you've done but let's just

talk about this off the top yeah okay checkmate and genius lies ambition and the biggest scandal in

chess it's been's latest book okay and i'm vaguely aware of the story and as i told you and i've

sat on the air a couple different times i am am aware of the big chess cheating scandal that involved the allegation that one of the chess players who won had inserted anal beads up his ass, which would buzz at certain points.

Right.

And help him won the match.

And that's pretty much all I kind of knew was the headline of what I remembered. Yeah. Why don't you fill us in on. Okay. And then we're definitely going to get to the anal vets. But work our way up to it again. Okay. And tell us what the story is about before we get there okay so checkmate it's the story it starts in

22 magnus carlson greatest chess player in history i mean really they call him the mozart of

chess about casparov and bobby fisher and all these guys i i'm i would say magnus was number one

there's always debate is it casparov is it magnus magnus is rated higher than anyone's ever been

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