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10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)

15 Dec 2025 65 published claims 3 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Michael LewisBen GilbertDavid Rosenthal

Claim mix

belief 37recommendation 7commitment 7evaluation 5uncertainty 4prediction 2observation 2preference 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

65 published records

08 / uncertainty

The way you respond to each other when you're presenting material is helping the audience under understand how they should feel about it. You're giving them sometimes very dry facts, like, I don't know.

“The way you respond to each other when you're presenting material is helping the audience under understand how they should feel about it. You're giving them sometimes very dry facts, like, I don't know.”
Speaker
Michael Lewis
Publisher
Acquired

11 / belief

If I had pitched you on Acquired in 2015, there's no way I would've said Acquired helps you understand why the world is arranged the way it is. Now I think that is absolutely the promise that we come through on.

“If I had pitched you on Acquired in 2015, there's no way I would've said Acquired helps you understand why the world is arranged the way it is. Now I think that is absolutely the promise that we come through on.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

12 / belief

I think we did our part two, and then we got a note from NVIDIA saying, Jensen has listened and wants to know who your inside sources are because it's the most correct telling of NVIDIA's story ever.

“I think we did our part two, and then we got a note from NVIDIA saying, Jensen has listened and wants to know who your inside sources are because it's the most correct telling of NVIDIA's story ever.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

18 / evaluation

If an agency reaches out and says, we want to place ads on your podcast, we write them a very nice note if we're able to get to the email and say, oh, we don't work with agencies, but thank you so much for your interest.

“If an agency reaches out and says, we want to place ads on your podcast, we write them a very nice note if we're able to get to the email and say, oh, we don't work with agencies, but thank you so much for your interest.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

36 / belief

I think in the first 10 episodes. The first five episodes, we got feedback saying, you guys need to disagree more, but I don't think we quite realized that we should reveal surprises for each other until five years ago, four years ago.

“I think in the first 10 episodes. The first five episodes, we got feedback saying, you guys need to disagree more, but I don't think we quite realized that we should reveal surprises for each other until five years ago, four years ago.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

43 / belief

I think the reasons Acquired will eventually fail, I don't think come from like platform disruption like, oh, TikTok's going to make it so people want short form instead of Acquired.

“I think the reasons Acquired will eventually fail, I don't think come from like platform disruption like, oh, TikTok's going to make it so people want short form instead of Acquired.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

44 / belief

I think we think about narrative structure, acts, and what a story is. When we're reading books sometimes, a lot of books, especially corporate history books are, this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and then this happened.

“I think we think about narrative structure, acts, and what a story is. When we're reading books sometimes, a lot of books, especially corporate history books are, this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and then this happened.”
Speaker
David Rosenthal
Publisher
Acquired

54 / belief

I think we're trying to store up as much potential energy in Acquired as we can rather than anytime there's a way to make it show up on the financial statements, like letting out the pressure and being like, yup, second show, yup, more ads, yup, dynamic ads from an ad network.

“I think we're trying to store up as much potential energy in Acquired as we can rather than anytime there's a way to make it show up on the financial statements, like letting out the pressure and being like, yup, second show, yup, more ads, yup, dynamic ads from an ad network.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

57 / evaluation

I've had exciting collaborations with people, and the feeling I get is this person is bringing out a better version of me, which is why I asked if your spouses were threatened because Kahneman and Tversky's spouses were threatened is too strong a word, but they were very aware that the relationship that was the most important in their lives was not with their spouse.

“I've had exciting collaborations with people, and the feeling I get is this person is bringing out a better version of me, which is why I asked if your spouses were threatened because Kahneman and Tversky's spouses were threatened is too strong a word, but they were very aware that the relationship that was the most important in their lives was not with their spouse.”
Speaker
Michael Lewis
Publisher
Acquired

58 / evaluation

Because of where you're coming from and because you're thinking of this in very practical terms like why did this work, you do get away with it. It's just that first episode, you're almost like different people, but I'm going to hold back on what I think you've learned because I want to see if you get to it.

“Because of where you're coming from and because you're thinking of this in very practical terms like why did this work, you do get away with it. It's just that first episode, you're almost like different people, but I'm going to hold back on what I think you've learned because I want to see if you get to it.”
Speaker
Michael Lewis
Publisher
Acquired

59 / evaluation

You were discovering these things that nobody's talking about, whereas when we do something like Trader Joe's, someone says, what are you working on, and we're like, Trader Joe's, they're like, I love Trader Joe's.

“You were discovering these things that nobody's talking about, whereas when we do something like Trader Joe's, someone says, what are you working on, and we're like, Trader Joe's, they're like, I love Trader Joe's.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired

64 / evaluation

I think we found our way to that probably four-ish years ago, maybe five years ago, where we used to feel like we were bad at podcasting because we couldn't make very many, because we didn't have a whole production team, and we didn't have professional ad salespeople.

“I think we found our way to that probably four-ish years ago, maybe five years ago, where we used to feel like we were bad at podcasting because we couldn't make very many, because we didn't have a whole production team, and we didn't have professional ad salespeople.”
Speaker
Ben Gilbert
Publisher
Acquired
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