January 12, 2024 • 15 mins
Holly and Tracy talk about how actuarial science informs other fields, the book "The Player," and insurance mentions in Terry Pratchett's writing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked all about I won't even say all about.
We talked about actuarial science and assurance and insurance all
week long. Yeah, we didn't touch at all on a
type of insurance, the type of insurance that I actually
have the most experienced filing claims and dealing with terrifying
(00:38):
possible claim denial in health insurance. No, homeowner's insurance. Oh yeah,
because most of my health insurance there have been times
that I was like, I thought, this is going to
be covered more, but like most of that has just
been filed on my behalf at the doctor, not something
that I've had to personally do. Yeah, but I had
a very scary homeowners insurance claim thing years ago that
(01:01):
I had to totally deal with myself. And we didn't
talk about homeowner's insurance no at all. No, that's no, No,
that's a whole other thing. Yeah, homeowner's insurance, health insurance.
I mean, you can ensure almost anything at this point, right,
but it's we would still be talking. We would be
(01:24):
recorded for seventeen hours. That's a cool podcast for someone
else to launch. Yeah, at all it do is to
I'm sure there's one out there that talks about nothing
but insurance. Something that has come up on the show
before that we didn't talk about this week was I
guess we alluded to it. We talked a little bit
about COVID, but like medical knowledge that has come about
(01:45):
from actuarial science, Yeah, came up when we talked about
hypertension and making connections between blood pressure and life expectancy.
A lot of that came from tables.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I mean it got me thinking when you mentioned it
earlier before we were recording, about whether or not the
rise of the smart watch has similarly impacted actuarial science,
because you know, there are those occasional news stories where
you'll be like someone smartwatch recognized that they had a
(02:22):
heart problem before their doctor diagnosed them, And I'm like,
are they then adding another finesse layer of information to
the whole morass of numbers? But also that gets into
a secondary thing of like how do you know they're
all the same accuracy? I was thinking that gets into
a think of like privacy and data security, right, right,
(02:48):
I feel like so anytime I'm thinking about actuarial science,
I'm thinking about The Player, which most people will know
from the movie directed by Robert Altman starring Tim Robbins,
which is spectacular in my opinion. However, what I'm thinking
about is the book The Player, which was written by
(03:10):
Michael Tolkien, because there's this Have you ever read that book?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
There is a section in the book where the character
that is played by Tim Robbins in the movie has
had this interaction with his secretary and it's like a
thing where he's they're just having a call transferred through
to him on his phone, and he has this sort
of hilarious moment where he's looking at his phone and
(03:41):
the many buttons that offer different lines on his phone,
and he's thinking about all of the different kinds of
scientific and engineering developments that had to get to a
point where someone on the other side of the world
can call you and you can be connected to them,
and there can be subconnections that are done even within
your office, and someone transfers that call blah blah blah
(04:03):
blah blah, And he kind of says, I'm gonna misquote
it because I didn't look up the exact quote, but
he says, I don't know, I don't know a way
to describe all of this without it just coming out
as wow phones, Like that is exactly how I feel
about actuarial side. Yeah, So this was in a way
me trying to sort through that because I obviously, I
(04:24):
will say I don't think I could keep all of
the the factors that go into a simple actuarial computation,
certainly in my head, but even on paper, I would
have trouble. I think, like, yeah, parsing all of it
in a way that I was not like wow phones.
So my hat's off to you if you're an actuary
(04:47):
or if you work in this field in any way. Yeah,
it's one of those things where it's like, it's not
great in my opinion that so much of this is
just like it's rooted in capitalism and companies wanting to
make a profit, right, But at the same time, like
people need a way to be able to pay for
(05:09):
their burials, right, and might because that's really expensive, and
you know, people might be able to pay an insurance
premium but not be able to like save up the
amount of money that it requires. In the United States,
the same thing with you know, making sure people's family
(05:31):
members are not left destitute when someone dies.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Like all of this.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That's I sort of like to envision a society where
none of these are things that people that are that
companies are making money off of doing, but the like
that would be an entire revisioning of of how our
entire society works.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
This also, I kept thinking about the very very brief
and very early appearance of insurance in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books.
I'm trying to remember, right, so unless I am misremembering,
because there are books that are sort of about, like,
you know, when when the Clacks system, which was sort
(06:20):
of the early version of a telephone and telegraph system
is like invented inkhmorphor it's like there's whole books that
sort of explore, you know that, the post office, things
like that, And I don't think there's a book that's
specifically like insurance. But at the very very very beginning
of that series, two Flower a tourist and also, if
(06:41):
I'm remembering correctly, an insurance agent, and this is like
a sort of a side part of one of the
earliest books of that series. But I kept thinking about
it because they say it in sewer ants. In sewer
ants is how they say it, and it's I don't know.
I just kept thinking about it. Every time the word
(07:02):
insurance came up. In this episode, we could re record
the whole thing and say ensuwer and every time, just
see how many people lose their minds. They're really frustrated
with us. One of the kinds of insurance that we
(07:24):
did not talk about, which fascinates me utterly, uh huh,
was popular in I think the eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
which was called leases for lives. And basically at that
point I was singing, like why would this even be
a thing, And then I realized, like, because your home
was the most important thing at that point in terms
(07:45):
of your financial stability. And basically, like a person could
pay a lump sum to lease a piece of land,
but in a home, and it would mean that they
could keep that the rest of their life, and in
a lot of those it also meant that like the
next two generations of their family could So they were
like it was a form of insurance so that their
(08:09):
family would always have a place to live. And I'm like,
this is fascinating so when was this again, I think
this was mostly in the I don't have this noted
anywhere handy like late seventeenth through eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Maybe it reminds me a little bit of something that
(08:30):
we talked about in the Rebecca Riots episode about how
people living in rural Wales were mostly tenant farmers and
for centuries like their least had generally been a whole lifetime, right,
And so that's I wonder if that's connected to Probably, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's a wild thing to consider.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I told you we would mention a thing about the
eccentric Edwin Roemores.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
All right.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, we talked about how there is a theory that
he just plucked actuary as like a that's an interesting
word from history.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I'll use that.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Here's another story that I read about him that kind
of illustrates what a marvelously odd duck he may have been,
even though a lot of people said he was really
obstinate and kind of a pain in the neck. He
had a daughter who, for a lot of her early
life he would only speak to in Latin. Oh, okay,
(09:31):
that's kind of all I know about it. I don't
know if she continued to use Latin throughout her life.
I don't know if she was like, Dad, will you
please just speak English to me? I don't That's it's
an odd experiment to do, and it does show how
eccentric he really was. Well, and I like, I know
(09:53):
of some people who have wanted to raise their children
to be bilingual.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yes or more, Oh for sure, which is great.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Parent was fluent in a language, and like that parent
has spoken that language with the kids exclusively or nearly exclusively. Uh.
But you know, Latin is not something most people are
just conversing language daily. So even if she knew Latin,
(10:23):
learned Latin to the point where she could speak it,
she could probably only speak to him and a couple
other people at that point. It's an odd limitter again, fascinating.
I mean, I know people that wasn't it. I think
seand Ryan said in an interview that she only let
her kids watch Netflix with the the French dubs on.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
But I could be misremembering, So don't anybody get mad
at me if that's wrong. But I swear I saw
that somewhere, and I have known other parents who have
done similar things where they're like this, but it's usually
much more granular, like this one cartoon we only watch
in Spanish or whatever because they know their kid loves
that cartoon and like they'll rewatch it over and over
and it'll be a good learning thing. But listen, I
(11:08):
wish I mean, I was fairly multi lingual when I
was tiny.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I lost most of it. I wish I had maintained it. Yeah,
we've talked about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Now I'm still like on Duolingo going I don't remember
if that's a masculine or feminine noun. Here's another interesting thing. Okay,
this is a personally interesting thing, but also just delighted
me because there's a name.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Of a place that is delightful.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
So okay, when I was in London in April for
Star Wars celebration and we went a little early so
we could kick around and celebrate my husband's birthday, one
of our friends who lives just outside the city had
recommended this particular pub to us, and the name delighted me.
And then when I was doing this research, I found
(11:59):
out at the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance office,
if you wanted to become a member, you had to
go to this same place to inquire and the name
of that pub is the Cheshire Cheese Okay, and it
still exists, although my understanding is that the pub has
moved a couple times. But love, I wish I had
(12:19):
known it's there in Fleet Street, and I wish I
had known when I was in London that I was
at the place where you could join one of the
earliest assurance society.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's a great name for a pub.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It is a great name for a pub. I feel
like I need to go back to London anyway, because
that was the first time I had been in many decades,
certainly the first time I had been as what I
would categorize as a more or less functional adult, and
I just felt like I didn't have enough time. And
we did stuff, but I feel like we couldn't ever
(12:56):
have done enough stuff. And then when I was when
it was time to like prep for the convention I
was there for, I had some kind of worky engagements
that I had to be preparing for, so I couldn't
be running around as much. And now I'm like, I
should have added another week to that trip so I
could just go visit all of the fabulous historical pubs.
(13:17):
A historical pub crawl sounds great to me, and the
good thing about London is that they're everywhere still. You
could you could take up days doing nothing, but that
they might get tired of your American obnoxious pub crawl.
But we hope not. We try to be respectful. Yeah
(13:40):
wow phones Yeah, yeah. So I hope other people find
this stuff as fascinating as I do, because it is
to me super interesting to consider. Where are the things
we just take for granted and as part of our
everyday necessities, Like oh, I got to deal with insurance? Well, yes,
but someone had to come up with it. Yeah, that's
(14:03):
fascinating to me, hopefully to others as well. I hope
you don't have to deal with yucky insurance stuff this weekend,
and that you have the time off. Having had some
really yucky insurance stuff in my life, man, I hope
the nope. I hope that's not falling anybody right now.
I hope it befalls nobody ever. But I know that's
(14:24):
not a hope.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's not the world we live in, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
But I do hope whatever is going on with your
weekend goes as smoothly as possible and you get some
fun in whether you are booked up with obligations or work,
or if you have some time to yourself. I just
hope you get some fun and delight, because we all
need more of it. We will be right back here
tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we'll
have something brand new. Stuff you missed in History Class
(14:55):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit thee radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
of iHeartRadio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
We talked all about I won't even say all about.
We talked about actuarial science and assurance and insurance all
week long. Yeah, we didn't touch at all on a
type of insurance, the type of insurance that I actually
have the most experienced filing claims and dealing with terrifying
(00:38):
possible claim denial in health insurance. No, homeowner's insurance. Oh yeah,
because most of my health insurance there have been times
that I was like, I thought, this is going to
be covered more, but like most of that has just
been filed on my behalf at the doctor, not something
that I've had to personally do. Yeah, but I had
a very scary homeowners insurance claim thing years ago that
(01:01):
I had to totally deal with myself. And we didn't
talk about homeowner's insurance no at all. No, that's no, No,
that's a whole other thing. Yeah, homeowner's insurance, health insurance.
I mean, you can ensure almost anything at this point, right,
but it's we would still be talking. We would be
(01:24):
recorded for seventeen hours. That's a cool podcast for someone
else to launch. Yeah, at all it do is to
I'm sure there's one out there that talks about nothing
but insurance. Something that has come up on the show
before that we didn't talk about this week was I
guess we alluded to it. We talked a little bit
about COVID, but like medical knowledge that has come about
(01:45):
from actuarial science, Yeah, came up when we talked about
hypertension and making connections between blood pressure and life expectancy.
A lot of that came from tables.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
I mean it got me thinking when you mentioned it
earlier before we were recording, about whether or not the
rise of the smart watch has similarly impacted actuarial science,
because you know, there are those occasional news stories where
you'll be like someone smartwatch recognized that they had a
(02:22):
heart problem before their doctor diagnosed them, And I'm like,
are they then adding another finesse layer of information to
the whole morass of numbers? But also that gets into
a secondary thing of like how do you know they're
all the same accuracy? I was thinking that gets into
a think of like privacy and data security, right, right,
(02:48):
I feel like so anytime I'm thinking about actuarial science,
I'm thinking about The Player, which most people will know
from the movie directed by Robert Altman starring Tim Robbins,
which is spectacular in my opinion. However, what I'm thinking
about is the book The Player, which was written by
(03:10):
Michael Tolkien, because there's this Have you ever read that book?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
There is a section in the book where the character
that is played by Tim Robbins in the movie has
had this interaction with his secretary and it's like a
thing where he's they're just having a call transferred through
to him on his phone, and he has this sort
of hilarious moment where he's looking at his phone and
(03:41):
the many buttons that offer different lines on his phone,
and he's thinking about all of the different kinds of
scientific and engineering developments that had to get to a
point where someone on the other side of the world
can call you and you can be connected to them,
and there can be subconnections that are done even within
your office, and someone transfers that call blah blah blah
(04:03):
blah blah, And he kind of says, I'm gonna misquote
it because I didn't look up the exact quote, but
he says, I don't know, I don't know a way
to describe all of this without it just coming out
as wow phones, Like that is exactly how I feel
about actuarial side. Yeah, So this was in a way
me trying to sort through that because I obviously, I
(04:24):
will say I don't think I could keep all of
the the factors that go into a simple actuarial computation,
certainly in my head, but even on paper, I would
have trouble. I think, like, yeah, parsing all of it
in a way that I was not like wow phones.
So my hat's off to you if you're an actuary
(04:47):
or if you work in this field in any way. Yeah,
it's one of those things where it's like, it's not
great in my opinion that so much of this is
just like it's rooted in capitalism and companies wanting to
make a profit, right, But at the same time, like
people need a way to be able to pay for
(05:09):
their burials, right, and might because that's really expensive, and
you know, people might be able to pay an insurance
premium but not be able to like save up the
amount of money that it requires. In the United States,
the same thing with you know, making sure people's family
(05:31):
members are not left destitute when someone dies.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Like all of this.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That's I sort of like to envision a society where
none of these are things that people that are that
companies are making money off of doing, but the like
that would be an entire revisioning of of how our
entire society works.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
This also, I kept thinking about the very very brief
and very early appearance of insurance in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books.
I'm trying to remember, right, so unless I am misremembering,
because there are books that are sort of about, like,
you know, when when the Clacks system, which was sort
(06:20):
of the early version of a telephone and telegraph system
is like invented inkhmorphor it's like there's whole books that
sort of explore, you know that, the post office, things
like that, And I don't think there's a book that's
specifically like insurance. But at the very very very beginning
of that series, two Flower a tourist and also, if
(06:41):
I'm remembering correctly, an insurance agent, and this is like
a sort of a side part of one of the
earliest books of that series. But I kept thinking about
it because they say it in sewer ants. In sewer
ants is how they say it, and it's I don't know.
I just kept thinking about it. Every time the word
(07:02):
insurance came up. In this episode, we could re record
the whole thing and say ensuwer and every time, just
see how many people lose their minds. They're really frustrated
with us. One of the kinds of insurance that we
(07:24):
did not talk about, which fascinates me utterly, uh huh,
was popular in I think the eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
which was called leases for lives. And basically at that
point I was singing, like why would this even be
a thing, And then I realized, like, because your home
was the most important thing at that point in terms
(07:45):
of your financial stability. And basically, like a person could
pay a lump sum to lease a piece of land,
but in a home, and it would mean that they
could keep that the rest of their life, and in
a lot of those it also meant that like the
next two generations of their family could So they were
like it was a form of insurance so that their
(08:09):
family would always have a place to live. And I'm like,
this is fascinating so when was this again, I think
this was mostly in the I don't have this noted
anywhere handy like late seventeenth through eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
Maybe it reminds me a little bit of something that
(08:30):
we talked about in the Rebecca Riots episode about how
people living in rural Wales were mostly tenant farmers and
for centuries like their least had generally been a whole lifetime, right,
And so that's I wonder if that's connected to Probably, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's a wild thing to consider.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I told you we would mention a thing about the
eccentric Edwin Roemores.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
All right.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yes, we talked about how there is a theory that
he just plucked actuary as like a that's an interesting
word from history.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I'll use that.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Here's another story that I read about him that kind
of illustrates what a marvelously odd duck he may have been,
even though a lot of people said he was really
obstinate and kind of a pain in the neck. He
had a daughter who, for a lot of her early
life he would only speak to in Latin. Oh, okay,
(09:31):
that's kind of all I know about it. I don't
know if she continued to use Latin throughout her life.
I don't know if she was like, Dad, will you
please just speak English to me? I don't That's it's
an odd experiment to do, and it does show how
eccentric he really was. Well, and I like, I know
(09:53):
of some people who have wanted to raise their children
to be bilingual.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yes or more, Oh for sure, which is great.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Parent was fluent in a language, and like that parent
has spoken that language with the kids exclusively or nearly exclusively. Uh.
But you know, Latin is not something most people are
just conversing language daily. So even if she knew Latin,
(10:23):
learned Latin to the point where she could speak it,
she could probably only speak to him and a couple
other people at that point. It's an odd limitter again, fascinating.
I mean, I know people that wasn't it. I think
seand Ryan said in an interview that she only let
her kids watch Netflix with the the French dubs on.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
But I could be misremembering, So don't anybody get mad
at me if that's wrong. But I swear I saw
that somewhere, and I have known other parents who have
done similar things where they're like this, but it's usually
much more granular, like this one cartoon we only watch
in Spanish or whatever because they know their kid loves
that cartoon and like they'll rewatch it over and over
and it'll be a good learning thing. But listen, I
(11:08):
wish I mean, I was fairly multi lingual when I
was tiny.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I lost most of it. I wish I had maintained it. Yeah,
we've talked about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Now I'm still like on Duolingo going I don't remember
if that's a masculine or feminine noun. Here's another interesting thing. Okay,
this is a personally interesting thing, but also just delighted
me because there's a name.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Of a place that is delightful.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
So okay, when I was in London in April for
Star Wars celebration and we went a little early so
we could kick around and celebrate my husband's birthday, one
of our friends who lives just outside the city had
recommended this particular pub to us, and the name delighted me.
And then when I was doing this research, I found
(11:59):
out at the Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance office,
if you wanted to become a member, you had to
go to this same place to inquire and the name
of that pub is the Cheshire Cheese Okay, and it
still exists, although my understanding is that the pub has
moved a couple times. But love, I wish I had
(12:19):
known it's there in Fleet Street, and I wish I
had known when I was in London that I was
at the place where you could join one of the
earliest assurance society.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's a great name for a pub.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
It is a great name for a pub. I feel
like I need to go back to London anyway, because
that was the first time I had been in many decades,
certainly the first time I had been as what I
would categorize as a more or less functional adult, and
I just felt like I didn't have enough time. And
we did stuff, but I feel like we couldn't ever
(12:56):
have done enough stuff. And then when I was when
it was time to like prep for the convention I
was there for, I had some kind of worky engagements
that I had to be preparing for, so I couldn't
be running around as much. And now I'm like, I
should have added another week to that trip so I
could just go visit all of the fabulous historical pubs.
(13:17):
A historical pub crawl sounds great to me, and the
good thing about London is that they're everywhere still. You
could you could take up days doing nothing, but that
they might get tired of your American obnoxious pub crawl.
But we hope not. We try to be respectful. Yeah
(13:40):
wow phones Yeah, yeah. So I hope other people find
this stuff as fascinating as I do, because it is
to me super interesting to consider. Where are the things
we just take for granted and as part of our
everyday necessities, Like oh, I got to deal with insurance? Well, yes,
but someone had to come up with it. Yeah, that's
(14:03):
fascinating to me, hopefully to others as well. I hope
you don't have to deal with yucky insurance stuff this weekend,
and that you have the time off. Having had some
really yucky insurance stuff in my life, man, I hope
the nope. I hope that's not falling anybody right now.
I hope it befalls nobody ever. But I know that's
(14:24):
not a hope.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's not the world we live in, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
But I do hope whatever is going on with your
weekend goes as smoothly as possible and you get some
fun in whether you are booked up with obligations or work,
or if you have some time to yourself. I just
hope you get some fun and delight, because we all
need more of it. We will be right back here
tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday we'll
have something brand new. Stuff you missed in History Class
(14:55):
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit thee radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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