It's the whole idea of a heist and a plan and a coming together of something for a common goal, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the form and particularly its relation to the rest of, you know, the other kind of subgenres in crime fiction.

And it strikes me, I'd be curious to know your... your thoughts, cause you're certainly an expert on this, this and your, as are your listeners, I'm sure.

But my theory of the case is that the, the heist novel is fundamentally a comic form, you know, it's about, and I guess the closest analog in that way within crime fiction might be the whodunit, you know, or certain, certain versions of that, that story where, you know, you have the satisfaction of essentially solving a puzzle.

Um, and, uh, The heist sort of goes in the opposite direction.

Instead of figuring out who committed a crime, it's how can the criminals figure out how to pull off a great crime.

But essentially, they go one of three ways.

Yeah.

What was your response when you heard that Tom was interested in making this film and what did your input go from there?

Yeah, I was blown away.

He's one of my favorite directors.

I was thrilled, of course.

I see the book in the same way.

I see it as a human story, a story about people flawed in many ways who are trying to basically save the world, but have to deal with their own failings.

And I felt like given his work, He was an ideal director to bring out the human element of the story, which I think is so crucial in writing about this subject.

I'm just curious, given how hopeless things can seem, and given that the film does not exactly flood us with hope, what do you hope that the film might accomplish as people get to see it next year?

She reminds him of a character in one of his favorite books.

Yeah, she reminds him of a real-life character named Veronique Le Guin, who I think I first encountered in a great book by Michael Finkel, A Stranger in the Woods, about a kind of hermit who lived in the Maine woods for decades, undetected.

And in that book, there's a passage about sort of other figures like that.

And one is Veronique Le Guin, who is a French shop girl who essentially, I think, was talked into... by her boyfriend at the time, who was a speleologist, he would climb in caves and spend a lot of time in caves doing science there, to take part in a crazily unethical experiment, which was essentially to live underground in a cave as long as possible, essentially until she went insane.

For 111 days in the 80s, she did that.

She lived underground, monitored by scientists to see what would happen to her when she was cut off from her circadian rhythms, did not see sunlight, and essentially was left to her own devices.

And she chronicles what happens in this incredible diary that was published in France that I was able to get a copy of.

You know what I mean? And this description just spoke to me, spoke to the young me at that time.

Rather than explain it myself, why don't you t-tell people about the heist?

It's this incredible story of the heist of a data center in the center of London about 20 years ago.

Um, and I came to it, uh, and I should say that the headline is, uh, five professional thieves and a professional, um, fake police dog that they hired, um, dressed up as police officers, went into this Verizon data center in, in the middle of King's Cross and stole 80 servers.

Um, they claim they were hired by, uh, some kind of banking conglomerate through a, through a fixer, professional fixer, classic, you know, Ocean's 11 scenario.

And, um, that on those servers was information, um, that would incriminate, um, the bankers.

And this was a-- The Times actually made me cut this detail 'cause they didn't wanna get sued.

But among the banks that were keeping their data in this, in this data center, um, was JPMorgan Chase, the s- the world's second biggest bank at the time, as well as another number of major international banks.

Um, uh, there hasn't been as much conversation around kind of this more whatever libertarian horseshoe angle, um, of, of it, like, which is what like what are we s- you know, what like what are the security implications of this? Like, what are my personal security implications of this? What are the risks of, of, about this to, on a more systemic level?

I began by asking him where he got the idea for the heist of a data center.

I think it must have come from a piece I reported many years ago about a group of people who were connected to the WikiLeaks organization and Julian Assange who were extremely concerned about privacy, surveillance, and this sort of coming age that we've now entered of tech corporations controlling every aspect of our lives.

And I remember a conversation with one of these activists who told me, "You know, Google is more powerful than any country in the world." And I said, "Because they're, you know, so rich?" He said, "No.

No, in their servers, they have information that could compromise any political leader, any CEO, any, you know, news organization, any military.

Everybody uses these servers, and they own all of it." And that kind of staggered me.

Was it a shock for you to research for this book just how much of our lives, from classified war plans at the Pentagon to cutting edge science trials, to emails that could implicate business leaders or politicians in crimes, is just sitting there in these warehouses without a ton of security?

Yeah, it's funny.

The focus has been on cybersecurity really in the last 20, 30 years, and I, I've sp- I've spoken with a bunch of security experts, and they, they feel like there's been a real disservice, uh, in focusing so much on cybercrime because as, as those defenses have been built up, there's much less concern about the prospect of physical security.

Coming up, author Nathaniel Rich shows you his old house.

You walk in and you're in another world.

The main impression one gets was of being inside the mind of an artist, of a sculptor.

Completely filled with a chaotic mess of half-finished works of art, old furniture draped in various fabrics.

The bedroom is not really occupied.

Dusty, used as a place for naps more than actually residing in.

But first, we go to Round Pond, Maine, where author Nathaniel Rich returns to a secluded studio tucked in the woods that taught him that a house can shape not just who you are, but the work you'll spend a lifetime trying to create.

My name is Nathaniel Rich.

I think you've already done much of this already, but whatever you would like to do to set up a reading in terms of background?

Sure.

Yeah, so the main character, I'll just read a couple sections for the two, two of the main characters.

One is Tim, who's a journalist, a climate journalist, who's really down on his luck when the book begins, and you'll hear why.

And he's with his buddy, Cess, who's a kind of conniver who's trying to convince him to rob It's a series of heists.

The data center is number two out of three.

The first heist, and again, the stakes kind of increase, but the first heist is a heist of a mini storage facility.

I'm wondering if you've noticed differences, either across these moments or across time, with your different books and the audience talks you've seen.

So, they have to choose between saving their homes or saving their livelihoods, and they've picked their livelihoods.

Well, it's really a question of time scale.

They're not climate deniers down there.

It's a very conservative parish, but they don't need to be convinced that the water is rising.

They've seen the swamp disappear.

They've seen places that used to be land turn into open water.

However, they're not really concerned about what's going to happen, you know, to them 10 or 15 or 30 years from now.

I just wonder, is there a way that this message of cherishing the moment in which we actually spend our lives can be an impetus to change?