MITCHELL ZUCKOFF

For starters, let's dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg - sorry - for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless - sorry, again - attempts to make the subject more palatable - last one.

I know that plenty of folks have issues with Social Security, but I'd urge them to confront it on its own terms. Calling it a Ponzi scheme is misleading and does more to cloud the issue than it does to illuminate it. And yes, I do know that unless changes are made, the current system is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean it's fraud.

We've suffered a 'Ponzification' of the economy in recent years, as bubbles have built up and then burst, and each time we act as though it's the first time.

My favorite pre-Ponzi schemer was known as '520 Percent Miller' because he promised 10 percent returns a week, or 520 percent a year. Of course he was just using new investors' money to pay old investors, and soon he was on the lam.

Every swindle is driven by a desire for easy money; it's the one thing the swindler and the swindled have in common.

I was researching a different World War II story when I came across an article in the 'Chicago Tribune' from June 1945 that knocked me for a loop. The article explained that a military plane had crashed in an impossibly remote valley of New Guinea that had been nicknamed Shangri-La.

Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!

Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea' has rightfully taken its place as a classic for its literary merits. It has a special place in the cannibalism canon as well.

No Ponzi schemer tells anyone exactly how it works. The purpose of a Ponzi scheme is to trick people, to take the money and run.

When running a Ponzi scheme, how does one avoid enormous, unexpected withdrawals - runs on the bank, so to speak - that would pull back the curtain and reveal a little man blowing smoke? One way would be to attract a core of investors who could be counted on to never withdraw more than a small percentage of principal each year.

Sending a book out into the world is a lot like sending your child to the first day of kindergarten. You hope the other kids play nice and that she makes friends.

More people will watch 'Spotlight' than will ever read the 'Globe' series that inspired it.

I'm a huge Michael Lewis fan.

It's not that you make a psychopath. They are - more likely, they come out that way, and they show their stripes over time.

I've remained in touch with more than a dozen descendants of Gremlin Special survivors, victims, and rescuers. I treasured my friendship with Earl Walter Jr., the lead paratrooper who jumped into the valley to protect the survivors.

There's a certain type of sociopathy to many schemers.

I'm an ex-'Globe' guy. My friends are depicted in 'Spotlight.'

Acting on the theory that sometimes luck is better than work, I randomly called several people named Dattilo in Kentucky. All were unfailingly polite, and none knew anything about a major with their last name who died in World War II. I also discovered that more Dattilos lived in Kentucky than I would have imagined.

There is an interesting parallel between the 'Argo' story and '13 Hours' in that, around the world, we have 285 or so diplomatic outposts and the expectation that the local government will come to our aid if we ever come under attack on the sovereign property of the United States in an embassy.

This is not a documentary. Are there essential truths that are captured by this movie? I think unquestionably the answer is yes. Do you have to change certain things to make it work? The book is called '13 Hours'; the movie is two hours long.

There are very few people whose names come to symbolize their achievement, even if it's a negative achievement.

The State Department has promised they will never have another temporary mission facility like the one in Benghazi that is so lightly protected. But at the same time, history tends to repeat itself here, and so it might not repeat itself in exactly the same way as Benghazi.

While researching the book, I used the Freedom of Information Act to request what the military calls Individual Deceased Personnel Files for all the Gremlin Special's passengers and crew.

I need to know everything inside quote marks is true.

Most travel disasters turn into something else: a story of survival, a story of bravery, of heroism, sometimes villainy. You just don't know when it starts where it's going to go because they are unexpected events.