Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center,

and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate. The National Constitution

Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress, to increase awareness and understanding

of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode, my old friend Michael Lewis joins me to discuss his compelling new book,

Who is Government, the untold story of public service?

Michael is one of America's great nonfiction storytellers, and in the book and in our conversation,

he explores the human stories of the heroic civil servants who make government work, what motivates them, and why their work matters. It's a joy

to share Michael's light with all of you, dear We the People listeners, enjoy the show.

Michael, welcome. Jeff, thank you for having me.

So your timing is always impeccable, and you begin this book by saying that you were inspired to write it.

After writing the fifth risk, your account of the able public servants who served during the Trump transition. You said that book was such a runaway

bestseller. It sold so many copies that it convinced you that this was an untapped market. People

were hungry for positive stories of effective public servants. You then commissioned some of your

friends to write about them for the Washington Post. You've collected them in this new book,

Who is Government? And lo and behold, the central question of our day is whether or not we should

gut the federal government. Tell us more about how surprised you were and struck you were by

how the public is hungry for these positive stories about the federal government.

So I didn't set out to write positive stories about the federal government.

I got interested in the first place when Trump fired his transition team, right after he

was elected the first time.

And I learned that by law, the Obama administration had been required to prepare for the transition and that

...