February 6, 2025 • 43 mins
Our intuitive risk assessments can be way off–we’re too scared of hijackings, and not scared enough of crossing the street. This week, Nate and Maria discuss the real risks of plane travel, and of drinking alcohol. Then, they debate whether the sharp money is on heads or tails in the Super Bowl coin toss, and make a very serious bet about whether the national anthem will move any players or coaches to tears.
Plus, Nate and Maria answer a listener question about the value of betting on underdogs for Pushkin+ subscribers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So today on the show, note, we're going to start
off by talking about some of the current events that
we have been experiencing in the last week or so,
some personal ones like poker, some less personal ones, but
very important ones like plane crashes.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Continue on this theme of everyday types of risk, we're
talking about booze just in time for it not to
be dry January. But there is a new Surgeon General
discourse out warnings and Maria has and I have some
thoughts on these.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And finally we're going to be talking about my area
of expertise, the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There's a lot going on. I'm like, I'm apartment hunting officially, Maria,
I played some poker this weekend. I got fourth place
in a tournament.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Four hundred dollars tournament. But you know, look, it's a
it's a final table. It was big. Oh, it's a
five card high low game. When I started playing, I
did not know it was a split pot game. I
thought it was a high only game. But nevertheless, luck
box my way to a small but fun final table.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
That's fun, well before we get into serious stuff, and
there's a lot of serious stuff that we need to
cover this week. I love that you were able to
kind of pick up the game midway through. So should
I be registering ina tournament?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's kind of like, so in different ways, I'm both
the best and the worst player at the table, right
in terms of like overall tournament experience and like po knowledge.
I mean this, I'm sure there are some pros there right,
been a pretty recreational heavy field, so in terms of
like kind of raw poker ability, But then like I
won't know the equities in the hand, right, so you're
(02:20):
very vulnerable to like, am I supposed to call a
check braise with this hand? Am I supposed to value
at this? Am I supposed to bluff this? You're kind
of guessing? And so that battle resulted in a pretty
good result. But also you know, also feeling, I mean,
when you have relative mastery over Texas Hold, which is
a game that both you and I play far more
than anything else, right, It's it's kind of frustrating, like
(02:42):
I just don't know the answer to this, right, Like
I haven't studied this game, and like I'm just guessing
and like trying to improvise, and and so it's chat.
One reason I like the mixed games is because, like
it's a challenge for your poker brain, right, You're trying
to take these concepts and apply them to a different canvas.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, I think that that's a really interesting overarching point
that we are going to be actually talking about in
some of the more newsy segments on today's show, which
is kind of the way that our perceptions of risk
can translate to different environments. For someone who is a
poker player We've talked about this a lot, who actually
(03:20):
does have that innate sense of probabilities, I'm guessing that
you were better able to kind of get those risk
assessments right than somebody who who wasn't right, who is
just trying to go off of random experience or something
like that. So I think that that's a really interesting
point because when we talk about things that you know,
(03:40):
like plane crashes, you know, risks in our daily life, alcohol,
et cetera, it is interesting to try to see, you know,
how can we calibrate risk perception based on past experience.
And I think that this little this little poker Foray
into a game that you had never played before. Is
a really fun lens into that. Congratulations on your first
final table of twenty twenty five, right.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Thank you? Yeah, no, pretty good start.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I hope it's the first of money Nate. So shall
we shall we move on to slightly less fun topics.
There has been a lot going on in the news
this week since we you know, since we last spoke,
both politically and also in the sports news, and we'll
be covering, uh, we'll be covering those as well. But yeah,
(04:28):
you you had a very funny emergency post on sports.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, when I was playing this tournament, there's just like
esp and my phone's dead. It's like one in the
morning at this point, right, and like there's an ESPN
alert that Luka Doncic, the Great Dollars former Dallas maverick,
uh point guard unicorn, you could describe them as different
positions was traded in this deal. It's like totally inexplicable
because usually you get a really high return, but was
traded to the La Lakers for Anthony Davis and a
(04:53):
bunch of crap and a first round draft pick basically,
and yeah, it's probably the most shocking NBA trade in history.
If you want to read more about my view on that,
go to Silver bulletin my newsletter on substack. Tariff's another
story running about this week. This is a very influx policy.
(05:15):
Full disclosure. We're taping this on Monday afternoon, East Coast time.
Terrafts went into effect on China and Mexico over the weekend. However,
an hour or something ago, Trump suspended for a month
tariffs on Mexico after Mexico made some concessions, saying they
would deplay a bunch of troops in the US.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Border ten thousand troops night.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We have a lot of leverage. There's a lot of
game theory involved, both in terms of the domestic political
reaction to the terriffs and in terms of these other countries.
I mean, we have I was just looking at this, right,
do you know that US exports are twenty six point
four percent of Mexico's GDP.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I had no idea that is a high percentage.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Our exports to Mexico are one point two percent, right,
so they can retaliate. We're like, fuck you, Mexico. But
you know the fact that we're levering these allies is
just kind of gross in some ways. But anyway, there's
a lot to talk and I'm sure that'll be a
theme that will hit on going forward the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, absolutely, I think it's going to be a really
important topic. There are also there are a number of
other interesting and concerning policies that have come out in
the last week. I don't know if we want to
get into all of them. Giving Elon Musk's access to
treasury payment systems is something that I think is you know,
it is notable, but has kind of gone under the radar.
(06:36):
What's going to happen to us for an aid? All
of these things are I think topics that we might
talk about in the future, but as of now, I
think it actually doesn't make sense to talk about them
because it's too much speculation. We don't know what's actually
going to happen, we don't know how it's going to
be enacted, and we don't know how much is Bark versus.
But I think that that's kind of the bottom line
(06:58):
on a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And look, there's also so one thing that like I
think poker teaches you, but also life stress. We both
have lots of interesting life experience at this point, right,
is like can you do with multiple things going on
at once and prioritize? And it seems like Democrats are
not good at that. I think both kind of constitutionally
(07:21):
that's a whole theory about like different personality traits, but
also just like people aren't used to having like all
these different stories at once, and prioritizing is essential and like,
but people don't do it right. They tend to like
focus on Like, so there's all this focus on the
first week. Maybe the biggest story until the tariff stuff
and I'm playing crash was Elon Musk's salute. We talked
(07:41):
about that in me a little bit last week, and
like this is not the most important. We're trying to
leverage our friends north and south of the border and
Elon controls of Treasury Department payout system and like AI stuff.
I mean, all this stuff is like quite a lot
more important.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I wrote about multitasking briefly on my substack this past
week because I think that it's so important to remember
how our brain works, right, and how attention works, because
it's really playing in And we talked about this a
little bit. To Trump's strategy right overwhelm overwhelm. Overwhelm because
our brain is like ooh yay, like I get to
do all of these different things. It's really hard to focus,
(08:23):
and it's really hard to kind of figure out what's
best on. Our brain is not good at that, right,
Like our brain wants to be all over the place,
and so this just plays into kind of the worst
vulnerabilities in our thinking. That's why what I said last week,
I think is still the message, which is focus, right, like, figure,
reclaim your attention, focus on what's important, prioritize you need,
(08:45):
you need to kind of see, okay, what are our priorities,
what's the coherent message here? And knowing that that, by
the way, is not like a Democrat or Republican, that's
just like a human failing. Right. Our brains are really
really bad at that, right, and Trump is really really
good at taking advantage of it. It's like, you know,
like social media, right. Social media is designed to take
advantage of that brain's inability to focus and the desire
(09:06):
to have all of these different things happening at once.
And Trump, like the human walking social media, he's so
good as just throwing all this shit out there, seeing
what sticks.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Trump and social media and the regular media too, right,
But algorithmically and editorially people are very aware of like
what things make headlines, and kind of plane crashes are
in a classic category where I mean it used to
be I used to think when a plane crash in
the US, this was like almost a hurricane type story
(09:36):
for days. And you know, one reason why that's not
as much anymore because there are far fewer plane crashes.
Flying on airplanes on commercial airlines in the US is
incredibly safe. But you know, but when there are crashes,
then then they freak people out, and that changes the
incentives toward more and more safety.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, so let's talk about that. Obviously, last week was
the first major aviation disaster since two thousand and nine,
so it's been a one, it's been a minute, right,
which goes to your point that general plane travel is
incredibly safe, even though our risk perception gets overblown because
we do have an outsize focus on events like this,
(10:19):
as we should by the way, you know, I think,
I think that it's actually important to hold kind of
these these sorts of institutions to account in the sense
that one of the one of the things that has
come out of this is that oh, Hey, there were
a lot of safety concerns that have been ignored, a
lot of safety recommendations that have been ignored for years,
(10:40):
specifically with the DC air space. There were recommendations that
the DC air space was already overstressed, and yet more
and more flights kept getting added, you know, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera, and people ignored them because nothing
had happened since two thousand and nine. So there's some
really interesting statistics that near misses have gone up, actually
(11:02):
a huge amount, and near misses is accidents that almost
happen but not quite so since from a decade ago,
we have a twenty five percent increase in runway incursions.
So that's near misses just on the runway, which is
a lot, right, not not that high in terms of
absolute numbers, but in relative terms, something that's a little
(11:27):
bit worrisome. And we have near misses mid air, not
just on the runway, you know, takeoffs, landing, all all
sorts of things like that. But because everything tends to
work out okay, people are just like, eh, it's totally fine.
So this is a big logical fallacy that people commit
all the time, and it's called the near miss fallacy.
(11:49):
So it's almost leads to something that we talk about
often on the show over Confidence, right that like, oh,
it'll all work out. This means the system's working like
it's all good. No, it means that the system is
barely holding on and you've gotten you know, how many
times did it work versus you got lucky? And that's
such a difficult thing to track, and both you and
(12:09):
I know that you know, being outcome oriented is not
the way to do it. You need to make sure
that your process is intact.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
No, And in fact, if you're doing some type of
like statistical modeling, then near misses give you data and
tend to actually increase the incidence of the thing that
you fear going forward. Right, if if we intercept a
you know, attempt, a terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge
or something, right, that's not good news. Assuming the attack
got like reasonably far along in the planning stage, that
(12:38):
means that like the incidence of terrorism is maybe higher
than we would have thought, right, because usually you know,
when you look back at something like nine to eleven,
you're like, how many different things had to go wrong
or right? And how many signals do we have to
miss right, And it is true that to pull off
like a complicated attack or any type of disaster where
there are multiple redundant systems in place, like you know, two, three, four,
(13:02):
things have to go wrong. But still if you say,
if you say, oh, three things went wrong, but we
got lucky in the fourth thing and it saved us. Right.
To take a more recent example, the fact that President Trump,
than its cannony Trump was nearly assassinated, really bad news, right, yeah,
(13:23):
really bad news in terms of like the rise of
political violence in the US.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah. No, the takeaway from that isn't great, but he
wasn't assassinated. Sources to worked correctly, the takeaway is, oh shit,
you know what happened to make that even possible? And
so but the you know, but oftentimes we do the
exact opposite, right, and people are like, oh, we don't
need to implement these recommendations. We don't need to you know,
spend more money on this, We don't need to really
(13:48):
relieve this airspace or whatever it is, because it's all
been working out, no crashes since two thousand and nine.
So this is you know, what happened was absolutely horrible,
and it seems like absolutely preventable, and that overconfidence and
kind of a lack of accountability on some in some
respects is one of the reasons that we're having this
(14:11):
conversation now. So if there is a silver lining, I
hope that it is that, you know, people actually start
looking at the process and realizing that the number of
near misses that we have both mid air, on the ground, takeoffs,
landings are actually important. And as you say, like if
you were building a statistical model, all of these things
change your probability, and not for the better, right, your
(14:35):
priority probabilities have to be adjusted, not in a good direction.
And so I hope that this is a wake up call.
Do you think it will be? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Okay, now I'm gonna see the controversial thing, right, I
am not sure that it's rational to put more resources
into aviation safety. Right, defined as follows right. So, the
statistical value of a life is a concept we've talked
about before on this show. Yeah, and that is how
(15:06):
much are people willing to pay. It's not based on
some bureaucrats in a back office. It's how much people
willing to pay to ensure their risk of surviving or
extend their life. Right, and comes out to about ten
million dollars. That if people could gamble and say I'll
give you ten million dollars and you have a one
n x chance of dying, right, I mean, you know,
(15:27):
there's some nonlinearities, but it comes from like things like
people being willing to do dangerous tasks, are being willing
to have medical inventions or buy safety features, right, and
across all different ways this is measured, it's pretty consistently
about ten million. For aviation safety. It's much higher than that.
(15:47):
People fear. People fear hijackings, and they fear plane crashes.
It would be an obviously terrible way to die, but
like you know, not every time that, I mean, the
failure rate should not be zero.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
To take a much less serious example, you hear the
phrase like if you've never missed a flight, you're not
doing it right, meaning that like, if you're flying from
New York to Chicago, go there are you know, fifteen
flights an hour an hour? But a lot, right, not
that much consequence to missing your flight. Obviously, any crash
involving what are we up to, like seventy deaths roughly
(16:23):
is more serious. But at the same time, like you know,
bad shit's supposed to happen some of the time because
the alternative is that you are paying gigantic amounts for
safety features. And I mean you see this, right, You see,
like in construction of the New York Subway, for example,
there are so many commitments to different groups and to
(16:46):
safety equipments and a special interest that it just is
incredibly expensive to do anything. So you know, this is
kind of more high level bravarian thinking to you, but
like being willing to think about in terms of trade, uster,
what is the price of reducing air traffic fatalities, right,
(17:08):
compared to what we might spend on other things like
road safety or medical safety or other things. Right. And
the fact is that humans are pretty inconsistent, yeah, about
kind of what they're willing to what risks they're willing
to take action to prevent.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I think that that is a very valid point that
we are inconsistent. However, I will kind of push back
a little bit, not in terms of like overall spending, right,
But what I'm talking about is how we respond to
two different risks and what the takeaway is from near missus. Right.
You could reallocate spending, you could not make stupid decisions
(17:45):
like adding over sixty flights to an airspace that you've
already been warned is overcrowded. This doesn't have to do
with pouring more money into it. This is just risk management,
making different decisions, making different process decisions, holding yourself to
different accountability, maybe reallocating some of the funds you already
have to kind of two different things, looking at training,
(18:08):
like looking and looking at models from the bottom up,
and reassessing a lot of kind of the decision making
along the way, as opposed to complacently saying, oh, everything's
fine or I think it's actually the lazy thing is
just to throw money at it, right, because why throw
money if you don't even know you know, first you
need to figure out what are we fixing, what's going wrong?
(18:31):
What's going wrong in the human decision making and the
non human decision making? Right, like a where are the
systems most vulnerable? And if we don't do that, I
don't care if we allocate billions of dollars to the problem,
it's not going to help, right. That's what happens with
bad financial decision making, where you just think, oh, you know,
pouring money out the problem is going to help. So
(18:52):
I think that that's kind of the way of thinking
about it, not just like, oh, you know, like let's
either allocate more money or not. I think that a
lot of people made bad decisions along the way. And
this was also differences in priorities, right because people say, oh, well,
you know, Senator X, Senator why, and Senator Z all
need direct flights home, and so we're going to add
(19:13):
those roots to you know, for that specific reason. That's
really bad. Right now, what are you saying about the
value of human life? Right You're saying that this person's
preference on when he gets home is much more important
than the safety of all of the people who are
flying through this airspace. Right, So there have been some
(19:36):
questionable decision making results along the way, and I think
those are the types of things we should be looking at.
But I think your other point is very well taken
and something that you know, we do talk about on
the show. But I think it's just something that's really
worth stressing over and over because even though I know it,
I still fall for it. Right when we do inconsistently
(19:58):
take these risk assessments where we do, you know, we
are too scared of a plane crash too, scared of
a hijacking, not scared enough of, you know, crossing the
street where our chance of dying is actually much higher,
right and being hit by a car, having something horrible happen.
You know, we do have very inconsistent risk preferences, and
(20:20):
that's something that you know, we should just constantly remind
ourselves of, constantly remind our listeners of, and constantly remind
our brains of, so that we try to behave more rationally,
even though at the end of the day, emotion always
gets into it. It's really difficult not to have emotion
in your decisions when it comes to you and immediate
decision making as opposed to having kind of the time
(20:41):
and space and leisure to think through it in a
more rational way.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I remember I was in Costa Rica a couple of
years ago with some friends and we were like staying
at this airbnb on a hill and the coaster is
very very wet, right, with like torrential thunderstorms like a lot, right,
maybe every day, but yeah, we're like driving down this
like dirt road in a thunderstorm in a country we've
(21:11):
never been in before. Like, probably not the best idea,
even though like they have incredible drainage systems, right, they're
used to this problem. But sometimes you gotta be like
fuck it, you know what I mean. I mean, if
you never take there's like a portfolio of like you
should get like one fuck it card a year. I
feel like, maybe, yeah, we could, we could talk about
(21:31):
this stuff every week. Let's go on and talk about booze.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right, yeah, let's let's uh, let's talk about some alcohol warnings.
After this break, we have had some news coming out
(21:56):
on the alcohol front. I don't know if it was
time to coincide with dry January when lots of people
decide to, you know, abstain from drinking, but that's that's
when it came out. So the Surgeon General earlier had
issue to report on the potential cancer risks associated with
drinking any alcohol whatsoever. And so are you know, there
(22:20):
are now talks of putting morning labels like you have
on cigarettes right on all alcohol saying, you know, sculling
cross bones, you're going to die basically if you drink this,
and a lot of people, a lot of wellness gurus,
health influencers have been saying, yes, this is exactly right,
zero drinking, you know, no amount of alcohol is healthy.
(22:41):
This is the way to go. And man, oh man,
like I have, I have so many thoughts on this,
Like this is like the most little for.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
You, because I kind of I saw this news. Uh huh,
I'm like, oh, that sucks. You know, it's nice to
have some beer and wine now and then, right. I mean,
but I didn't really want to process it because I
didn't either like want to give myself like an excuse
if I thought it was bullshit, or like didn't want to Facebook.
I'm going to let you drive this segment because I
know you've been researching us a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah. So, so first of all, let's just start off
with the fact that all studies of alcohol and health
are correlational, right, And the fact that they're all correlational
not causational, that they're observational studies in the environment makes
all nutritional studies, like not just alcohol, incredibly difficult to
(23:29):
do and conclusions very suspect depending on how you parse data.
There are so many other variables because it's not like
you take people from birth right and you say, okay,
when this person turns twenty one, we are going to
give them. We're going to control everything they eat their
entire life. We're going to have all these people live
in our little lab environment, and when this person turns
(23:50):
twenty one, they're going to start getting a glass of
wine right a day. And this one's not going to
drink at all. No, that is you know, maybe there's
a science fiction novel about that, but that's not the
way that this all works in the real world. Right,
So in the real world, what we do in all
of these cases is ask people, right, and have observational data.
(24:11):
And there are some studies that have followed people for
decades and decades, and you look at what their habits are.
You try to control for stuff as well as you
possibly can, and then you see what happens to them. Right,
who's getting sick, how are they getting sick, how long
are they living, et cetera, et cetera, and lo and behold.
In past studies when they did that, it turned out
(24:35):
that moderate drinkers actually did better than people who abstained
from alcohol all together. There was one big study that
showed that light drinkers, so people who consumed one to
three drinks per week, had lower rates of cancer and
death than people who abstained all together. There was a
study of nearly a million people that were followed for
(24:58):
over a decade that showed that abstainers had higher rates
of death chronic disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, chronic lung
disease than light were moderate drinkers. There are have been
a study of you know, millions of people that show
that non drinkers had, you know, had higher rates of
death than moderate drinkers. But this is all to say
that that was the prevailing wisdom. Now, all of a sudden,
(25:20):
you know, we see other data that say, oh no,
actually cancer rates go up. What the fuck? Right, Like
this is true of so much nutritional advice, where we
just get really really bad advice for a long time,
and then it's upended, and then it's upended again. Cholesterol good,
cholesterol bad, cholesterol, eggs, right, all sorts of stuff that's
(25:45):
good for you, that's bad for you. Butter is horrible.
You should have margarine. No, margarine's going to kill you
because of the chemicals in it. You should have butter. Right,
All all of these things just go round and round
and round. And I hate when people make it into
a moral crusade, which is by the way exactly what
is happening right that like, oh this is good and
(26:05):
this is the way to a long life, and this
is bad and this is you know, this makes you
a bad person and you are going to die because
the other, the other flip side of it is even
if you know, if I have a drink, if I
have a glass of wine with dinner, and my risk
of breast cancer goes up by one percent, right from
an a you know or whatever it is that I
(26:28):
just totally made up that number, by the way, Okay,
you know I'm willing to have that because it you know,
do I want to live a life where I just
don't do anything, don't drink, don't eat this, don't do that,
don't do this, and just spend all day trying to
live longer. No, right, Like that's that ain't the kind
(26:49):
of existence I want.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Who's that Brian Johnson guy who's like drinking his son's plasma.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Anyway, Yeah, exactly, I'm measuring his son's nightly erections. Yes,
I don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
But this is like, oh my god, this is like
a little bit of like a Silicon Valley thing now
where like you know, I'm not sure, it's exactly straight
edge living as people say, oh yeah, I'm silver, but
then they'll take different types of drugs from psychedelics to
whatever else can be included in sobriety, right, I mean,
you know, it gets very difficult. And I do think
(27:19):
there is this like I don't know, if you'd call
it puritanism.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I would call it puritanism exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
There's kind of like a self improvement culture that you know,
it's a little ascetic acsc I don't know how you're
supposed to say that word, but like there's something about that, like,
you know, even like even like the effective altruism movement
in Silicon Valley is I don't know. It's also it's
also kind of like a California thing, where like because
if you're drinking socially in California, then you have this
(27:45):
constant problem of like how to get places without drunk driving? Right.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, Well, I think that there are two things going on,
and they do go back to the Silicon Valley in California,
and in another way, one, I think it is puritanical,
and I think that there's kind of this like moral
judgment that comes with it that's like a part of
American culture and has been for a long time. But
the other thing is simplifying, oversimplifying, right, this desire for
(28:10):
like one solution that will make you live longer, where
you take tons of data that is really complex, really difficult,
where you can't actually draw conclusions, and you say cold plunge, right, yes,
cold plunge a day, and all of a sudden, you're
going to improve your health in your life, and for
red saunas right, and that you don't actually look to say, oh,
(28:31):
that study was done on ten people and they were
all finish and right, and all the confounders and all
of a sudden, we have all of these things. So
you see these things that are like these solutions that
if you just do this one thing, if you do
this and this, then all of a sudden, you're going
to hack your you know, hack your health and this
biohacking will make you live longer, be smarter, and all
(28:54):
of these things. And so I think that alcohol is
kind of one of these let's simplify and let's just
say you know, absolutely no, and it's wrong. This is
and the best way to think about it.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
You also find that you have people who are concerned
about harm reduction or if you want to put it
more in NATO Maria terms, kind of ev maximalization. Right,
you get some benefits out of drinking. Maybe it's enjoyable,
maybe it's good for your social life. Not advocating it
either way, but like you know, people are doing it,
and there's some costs in terms of health outcomes and
other risks, right, and like you know, how can you
(29:24):
reduce the more harmful ways to use this product? I
mean this comes up a lot, right with nicotine. I'm
not to date with this literature, but like there are
all these alternatives to cigarettes, zin and vapes and everything
else come and you know, sometimes they're advocators, oh there
are safe products, right, because they don't evolve the tar
of cigarettes. Sometimes they're wrapped up and say there's just
another gateway drug. I don't know what the liture on
(29:45):
that is. But like, but you actually have people who
want to do harm reduction and people who are who
are prudes. Right, And then you have that when it
comes to like COVID stuff, you would hear things will
mass just provide a false sense of security, and the
alternative often imply was just stay at home and don't
do anything for a year and a half until vaccines
are widely available. So that's always that's always tricky, is
(30:07):
kind of what are people's actual.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Mone for sure? For sure? And then I will also
just close this out by saying that you know, the
proposed let's put these warning labels and like basically say
that you know, alcohol's terrible and is going to cause cancer.
First of all, life causes cancer, right if you look
at the cancer risks, almost anything causes cancer. So like,
(30:30):
let's just let's just put a warning label on life.
Life also causes death. You know, it's a it's a
really it's a really bad thing. But the fact that
we're embracing marijuana the way that we are and vilifying
alcohol is just absolutely like mind boggling to me because
the data yet, yeah, the data on like the harm
(30:51):
that can come from marijuana consumption, especially now where it's
much stronger than it used to be, is a ton
of long term damage that can happen to your memory,
to kind of reaction time, to all sorts of things.
We don't talk about that, and we're like, yeah, pot good,
because you know, for some reason pot is now good
(31:11):
and alcohol bad.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
People have to be like honest with themselves about what
things they enjoy more or less. Right, Like, you probably
have some matrix of like what is the risk of
something relative to the personal amount of exactly enjoyment that
it brings you? Right, And you know, sometimes I watch
it knew more about the risks to a little you know,
(31:33):
I have some heuristics that so this is really bad
deep fried foods seem really bad. And then but sometimes
they don't care. Sometimes you know, it's kind of your
every now and then you're indulging. But like but like,
but having you know, really out that matrix would be
helpful because you get confused, you hear, like sure, mixed
vesteras a lot. They are different objectives, right, If you're
trying to lose weight versus trying to reduce cholesterol, those
(31:56):
are very different diets that you might consume.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I don't think we are going to do like a
ton of like personal health stuff on the show, but
we'll promise that when we do, it will not be
like judge because a wee be like hypocrites and we
trust people to make their own decisions. But like, you know, yeah,
I would often like more straightforward information about is this
thing that is build as being really bad? Is it
actually bad or.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Absolutely you know?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Or not? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Absolutely? I think I think that that's something that that
we can all aspire to. And the unfortunate truth though
is when it comes to nutrition, it is tough, but
we can we can do a little bit more about
that in the future. But do you want to take
a break and then end on some super Bowl predictions
or prop bets or just thoughts.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, let's do a few Superbowl bets.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Okay, Nate. So I'm so proud of myself because I,
in order to prepare for this segment, I figured out
who was going to be playing in the super Bowl.
This is my level of interest. I was like, I
was like, I got to I have to know who's playing.
So I was I was very proud of myself. That
(33:20):
is the extent of my super Bowl knowledge. So let's
have you take it away. We've already talked about, you know,
the odds of who you should be betting on the
Eagles or the Chiefs given where the odds are. But
let's talk about some Super Bowl prop bets because this
is something that you know, I think a lot of
(33:42):
people are interested in and more and more sports books
are offering just a whole array of them. How do
you think about it? By the way, do you think
that they're like, would you ever put money on prop
bets or you know, real money? I mean, maybe you'd
put on ten bucks because you think it's funny or
fun but would you ever actually like bet real money
(34:03):
on prop bets or do you think that that's not
kind of a smart way of looking at these things?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Oh? No, I so, actually in my book On the Edge,
there is discussion about Super Bowl prop bets. But wanted
to meet a guy named rufus pea buddy may be
familiar to fans of the show. He has his own
gambling related podcast with Jeff ma also featured in the book.
And yeah, so he is somebody who like builds computer
models and specializes in Super Bowl prop bets and is
(34:32):
very high ev in them to the point where of
course he gets limited, and you know he'll like, literally,
go is the West Gate the super book? Get the
West Gate? I think casino where they're famous for their
prop bets, will like set up camp and bring thousands
of dollars where you are all have to make like
two bets at a time, and you just like go
to the back of the line, right, But like you
these are these are beatable if you do research, and
(34:55):
I haven't done the research, but they're chaunting on people
being lazy, right that they're recreational bets. They're a lot
of fun, right, and so if you're sharp, And it's
probably true by the way, for the Super Bowl in general,
is that there's so much public money out there, everybody
is making a bet that there isn't enough sharp money.
(35:16):
There's not enough roofous pea buddies in the world to
gobble up all that all that expected value, right, And
so like you know, as of today Monday to third,
seventy seven percent of the money on the point spread
is on the Philadelphia Eagles. That's probably a good sign
(35:37):
that you should bet on the Kansas City Chiefs. See
of course are sixteen and one, right, who have won
two balls in a row have often had very hairy
escapes from games this year, right are are are you know?
But anyway, do you want to do some crop betting?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah? Yeah, Well there's there's one that I know that
people do bet on, but it's just to me, it's
like so mind boggling, which is the result of the
coin toss, right, Like, why would you bet on that?
Of all the things that could be you know, predictable, modelable,
et cetera, it's a coin toss. This is what we
base a lot of our statistics on, right, the fact
that a coin toss is fifty to fifty and yet
(36:16):
and yet night it's like the.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Face tattoo of of gambling. Right, It's just you're so.
I mean, first of all, heads does win like fifty
point five percent of time or something?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Right, Well, in our limited data set of Super Bowls.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Well, no, but the reference class is like, isn't there
wasn't that a study? Have we talked about this for
like where like a coin flip is not actually random
whatever aerodynamic shit it lines on.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
The Yeah, well it depends on the coin.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yes, and I guess it's a special Super Bowl commemorative
coin with I don't know what the fuck on this.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I don't know about that one. But no, the study
you're talking about there was. There was a study where
it turned out that the two faces were not actually
weighted equally.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
If I were the Kansas City chiefs for the field
of fit Egals, I would have a fucking intern spend
the week researching what coin will be flipped and which
side is like heavier, Right, I would optimize that strategy
if possible.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
What if you find out that neither side is heavier?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Uh, come on, I'm not gonna I think the side
it's like once I with like a little l i
X it's Super Bowl licks l I X. That looks heavy, right,
there's like a lot of embossing and shit like that.
So I bet on the on the LICKS side. I think,
which is a heavier side, fall tend to come up
(37:33):
on top.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
No, the heavier side is going to be on the bottom, Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So bet against licks. I think bet against the side
with a big Super Bowl logo on it. And I
don't know if that's heads or tails, so and probably
not enough to whatever. Where are they are?
Speaker 1 (37:48):
There?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Are they giving like minus one ten on this bets?
You're risking eleven dollars to win ten? Right? But like
if I don't know, I think there's some edge there,
maybe with minus one oh one or something.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Well, we'll see, we'll see. And also do we know
so maybe this is we're getting into the nitty gritty
of coin tosses. Guys, do we know whether they always
position the coin with the same side up before the
flip or is that also random? Do they flip a
coin to know where their heads or tails is going
to be up when the flip starts.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm just telling you, this fucking Super Bowl logos had
looks pretty fucking heavy. You know, I can't tell if
it's in bosted or not, but yeah, Google superb commemorative coin.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
All right, Well there's your.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Coupon code risky business for no I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
That would be hilarious. But yes, okay, okay, fine, we
could do some research, but it's still likes. That's about
as DEGENNI of a bit as as you can get.
I think the coin toss. But there are also a
lot of other lines that are available, such as will
a player or a coach cried during the national anthem?
(38:54):
That seems like a gimme, right, someone's gonna cry?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, minus three hundred, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Minus a million.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Okay, look, I'll take I'll take no crying at plus
five hundred.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, all right, let's say we could talk about that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Okay, I'm betting twenty bucks at plus five hundred on
no crying. If no one cries you owe one hundred bucks. Okay,
let me.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Think about it. How do we define crying? It's tearing up?
Is tearing up? Is tearing up a because I think
I mean like you. I don't mean someone's going to
like full out bawling, but like tearing up. I think
for me counts. That's that's when I said, like minus
a million, you have to.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
See a tier. Okay, not merely watery. You have to
see a tier.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
But what happens? But we can't see everyone either, So
who actually decides this?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
But on the official whichevery Networks till us in the game,
which should probably no official broadcast. It's on Fox on
the Fox News US, not Fox deport this or whatever?
Right the Fox News US feed during the national anthem?
Is there a player or coach who has a tier
in the ride during the national anthem? Picture on Fox?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
All right, we can do it. How about ten dollars?
Not twenty?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Okay, okay, fine, okay, we're we're.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Do you risking? And then and then you're on let's
do it?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Any of their bets.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
First song performed by Kendrick Lamar.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
I look these odds up.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Does Polymarket, by the way, have odds for all of
these Super Bowl bets as well.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I'm I'm and I'm an investor to POLYMCA. I'm sure,
I'm sure you can. You know, Dja hard your heart's content, okay,
not like us. Plus one humble plus two ten for you,
plus three hundred by the weather is also a plus
seven to fifty chance of a Taylor Swift cam girl
friend of the Cansallity Chiefs taught in I have you know?
(40:51):
Taylor Swift guests appearance is plus seven fifty. I guess
I kind of like that. I mean she's in the stadium, right, Yeah,
I don't know, I mean it would be Actually I don't.
I mean, I mean overexposure is a problem.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Right, what's this true? This is?
Speaker 2 (41:12):
But yeah, you can, like, look, you can bet on everything, basically,
any any other bits you want to make with me, though, Maria, No.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We got one. We got one. We'll report back on
the risky business prop bet, I say, sadly, Nate, I'm too,
I'm too Uh, You're you're too good. I can't. I
can't bet against you, and I know nothing. The funny
thing is, though these types of prop bets, you need
to know absolutely nothing about football or about the actual
(41:44):
kind of results of the game.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But there is like, what's a chance that like a
foam ball return in the second quarter results? And you know,
I like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, there are prop bets that are actually very much
related to football knowledge and to the actual gameplay, but
the ones we've been talking about are completely random. So
I guess, Nate, you don't have any special insider knowledge.
And I'm hoping that my knowledge of human psychology will
render me on top on our crying that someone will
tear up I believe where.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
You actually find that. On Thursday, there's going to be
a silver bulletin post about historic crying during the Super
Bowl and empirical rates of crying every time. And now
that's changed.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
What was that voice? I like that?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I don't know. It's a blogger voice. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Would blogger your blogger voice? Got it? And on that note,
Risky Business listeners, we will see you next week where
we will know whether crying did in fact take place.
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
(42:51):
out to us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm.
And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber,
we have some bonus content for you. We'll be answering
a listener question each week that's coming up right after
the credits.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. Nice price. You get
access to all that premium content and ad for listening
across the Pushkins and Hire network. Of show.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Breuger.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. Thanks so much
for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
So today on the show, note, we're going to start
off by talking about some of the current events that
we have been experiencing in the last week or so,
some personal ones like poker, some less personal ones, but
very important ones like plane crashes.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Continue on this theme of everyday types of risk, we're
talking about booze just in time for it not to
be dry January. But there is a new Surgeon General
discourse out warnings and Maria has and I have some
thoughts on these.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And finally we're going to be talking about my area
of expertise, the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There's a lot going on. I'm like, I'm apartment hunting officially, Maria,
I played some poker this weekend. I got fourth place
in a tournament.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
It was.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Four hundred dollars tournament. But you know, look, it's a
it's a final table. It was big. Oh, it's a
five card high low game. When I started playing, I
did not know it was a split pot game. I
thought it was a high only game. But nevertheless, luck
box my way to a small but fun final table.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
That's fun, well before we get into serious stuff, and
there's a lot of serious stuff that we need to
cover this week. I love that you were able to
kind of pick up the game midway through. So should
I be registering ina tournament?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It's kind of like, so in different ways, I'm both
the best and the worst player at the table, right
in terms of like overall tournament experience and like po knowledge.
I mean this, I'm sure there are some pros there right,
been a pretty recreational heavy field, so in terms of
like kind of raw poker ability, But then like I
won't know the equities in the hand, right, so you're
(02:20):
very vulnerable to like, am I supposed to call a
check braise with this hand? Am I supposed to value
at this? Am I supposed to bluff this? You're kind
of guessing? And so that battle resulted in a pretty
good result. But also you know, also feeling, I mean,
when you have relative mastery over Texas Hold, which is
a game that both you and I play far more
than anything else, right, It's it's kind of frustrating, like
(02:42):
I just don't know the answer to this, right, Like
I haven't studied this game, and like I'm just guessing
and like trying to improvise, and and so it's chat.
One reason I like the mixed games is because, like
it's a challenge for your poker brain, right, You're trying
to take these concepts and apply them to a different canvas.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, I think that that's a really interesting overarching point
that we are going to be actually talking about in
some of the more newsy segments on today's show, which
is kind of the way that our perceptions of risk
can translate to different environments. For someone who is a
poker player We've talked about this a lot, who actually
(03:20):
does have that innate sense of probabilities, I'm guessing that
you were better able to kind of get those risk
assessments right than somebody who who wasn't right, who is
just trying to go off of random experience or something
like that. So I think that that's a really interesting
point because when we talk about things that you know,
(03:40):
like plane crashes, you know, risks in our daily life, alcohol,
et cetera, it is interesting to try to see, you know,
how can we calibrate risk perception based on past experience.
And I think that this little this little poker Foray
into a game that you had never played before. Is
a really fun lens into that. Congratulations on your first
final table of twenty twenty five, right.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Thank you? Yeah, no, pretty good start.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I hope it's the first of money Nate. So shall
we shall we move on to slightly less fun topics.
There has been a lot going on in the news
this week since we you know, since we last spoke,
both politically and also in the sports news, and we'll
be covering, uh, we'll be covering those as well. But yeah,
(04:28):
you you had a very funny emergency post on sports.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, when I was playing this tournament, there's just like
esp and my phone's dead. It's like one in the
morning at this point, right, and like there's an ESPN
alert that Luka Doncic, the Great Dollars former Dallas maverick,
uh point guard unicorn, you could describe them as different
positions was traded in this deal. It's like totally inexplicable
because usually you get a really high return, but was
traded to the La Lakers for Anthony Davis and a
(04:53):
bunch of crap and a first round draft pick basically,
and yeah, it's probably the most shocking NBA trade in history.
If you want to read more about my view on that,
go to Silver bulletin my newsletter on substack. Tariff's another
story running about this week. This is a very influx policy.
(05:15):
Full disclosure. We're taping this on Monday afternoon, East Coast time.
Terrafts went into effect on China and Mexico over the weekend. However,
an hour or something ago, Trump suspended for a month
tariffs on Mexico after Mexico made some concessions, saying they
would deplay a bunch of troops in the US.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Border ten thousand troops night.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We have a lot of leverage. There's a lot of
game theory involved, both in terms of the domestic political
reaction to the terriffs and in terms of these other countries.
I mean, we have I was just looking at this, right,
do you know that US exports are twenty six point
four percent of Mexico's GDP.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I had no idea that is a high percentage.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Our exports to Mexico are one point two percent, right,
so they can retaliate. We're like, fuck you, Mexico. But
you know the fact that we're levering these allies is
just kind of gross in some ways. But anyway, there's
a lot to talk and I'm sure that'll be a
theme that will hit on going forward the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, absolutely, I think it's going to be a really
important topic. There are also there are a number of
other interesting and concerning policies that have come out in
the last week. I don't know if we want to
get into all of them. Giving Elon Musk's access to
treasury payment systems is something that I think is you know,
it is notable, but has kind of gone under the radar.
(06:36):
What's going to happen to us for an aid? All
of these things are I think topics that we might
talk about in the future, but as of now, I
think it actually doesn't make sense to talk about them
because it's too much speculation. We don't know what's actually
going to happen, we don't know how it's going to
be enacted, and we don't know how much is Bark versus.
But I think that that's kind of the bottom line
(06:58):
on a lot of this.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
And look, there's also so one thing that like I
think poker teaches you, but also life stress. We both
have lots of interesting life experience at this point, right,
is like can you do with multiple things going on
at once and prioritize? And it seems like Democrats are
not good at that. I think both kind of constitutionally
(07:21):
that's a whole theory about like different personality traits, but
also just like people aren't used to having like all
these different stories at once, and prioritizing is essential and like,
but people don't do it right. They tend to like
focus on Like, so there's all this focus on the
first week. Maybe the biggest story until the tariff stuff
and I'm playing crash was Elon Musk's salute. We talked
(07:41):
about that in me a little bit last week, and
like this is not the most important. We're trying to
leverage our friends north and south of the border and
Elon controls of Treasury Department payout system and like AI stuff.
I mean, all this stuff is like quite a lot
more important.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I wrote about multitasking briefly on my substack this past
week because I think that it's so important to remember
how our brain works, right, and how attention works, because
it's really playing in And we talked about this a
little bit. To Trump's strategy right overwhelm overwhelm. Overwhelm because
our brain is like ooh yay, like I get to
do all of these different things. It's really hard to focus,
(08:23):
and it's really hard to kind of figure out what's
best on. Our brain is not good at that, right,
Like our brain wants to be all over the place,
and so this just plays into kind of the worst
vulnerabilities in our thinking. That's why what I said last week,
I think is still the message, which is focus, right, like, figure,
reclaim your attention, focus on what's important, prioritize you need,
(08:45):
you need to kind of see, okay, what are our priorities,
what's the coherent message here? And knowing that that, by
the way, is not like a Democrat or Republican, that's
just like a human failing. Right. Our brains are really
really bad at that, right, and Trump is really really
good at taking advantage of it. It's like, you know,
like social media, right. Social media is designed to take
advantage of that brain's inability to focus and the desire
(09:06):
to have all of these different things happening at once.
And Trump, like the human walking social media, he's so
good as just throwing all this shit out there, seeing
what sticks.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Trump and social media and the regular media too, right,
But algorithmically and editorially people are very aware of like
what things make headlines, and kind of plane crashes are
in a classic category where I mean it used to
be I used to think when a plane crash in
the US, this was like almost a hurricane type story
(09:36):
for days. And you know, one reason why that's not
as much anymore because there are far fewer plane crashes.
Flying on airplanes on commercial airlines in the US is
incredibly safe. But you know, but when there are crashes,
then then they freak people out, and that changes the
incentives toward more and more safety.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, so let's talk about that. Obviously, last week was
the first major aviation disaster since two thousand and nine,
so it's been a one, it's been a minute, right,
which goes to your point that general plane travel is
incredibly safe, even though our risk perception gets overblown because
we do have an outsize focus on events like this,
(10:19):
as we should by the way, you know, I think,
I think that it's actually important to hold kind of
these these sorts of institutions to account in the sense
that one of the one of the things that has
come out of this is that oh, Hey, there were
a lot of safety concerns that have been ignored, a
lot of safety recommendations that have been ignored for years,
(10:40):
specifically with the DC air space. There were recommendations that
the DC air space was already overstressed, and yet more
and more flights kept getting added, you know, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera, and people ignored them because nothing
had happened since two thousand and nine. So there's some
really interesting statistics that near misses have gone up, actually
(11:02):
a huge amount, and near misses is accidents that almost
happen but not quite so since from a decade ago,
we have a twenty five percent increase in runway incursions.
So that's near misses just on the runway, which is
a lot, right, not not that high in terms of
absolute numbers, but in relative terms, something that's a little
(11:27):
bit worrisome. And we have near misses mid air, not
just on the runway, you know, takeoffs, landing, all all
sorts of things like that. But because everything tends to
work out okay, people are just like, eh, it's totally fine.
So this is a big logical fallacy that people commit
all the time, and it's called the near miss fallacy.
(11:49):
So it's almost leads to something that we talk about
often on the show over Confidence, right that like, oh,
it'll all work out. This means the system's working like
it's all good. No, it means that the system is
barely holding on and you've gotten you know, how many
times did it work versus you got lucky? And that's
such a difficult thing to track, and both you and
(12:09):
I know that you know, being outcome oriented is not
the way to do it. You need to make sure
that your process is intact.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
No, And in fact, if you're doing some type of
like statistical modeling, then near misses give you data and
tend to actually increase the incidence of the thing that
you fear going forward. Right, if if we intercept a
you know, attempt, a terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge
or something, right, that's not good news. Assuming the attack
got like reasonably far along in the planning stage, that
(12:38):
means that like the incidence of terrorism is maybe higher
than we would have thought, right, because usually you know,
when you look back at something like nine to eleven,
you're like, how many different things had to go wrong
or right? And how many signals do we have to
miss right, And it is true that to pull off
like a complicated attack or any type of disaster where
there are multiple redundant systems in place, like you know, two, three, four,
(13:02):
things have to go wrong. But still if you say,
if you say, oh, three things went wrong, but we
got lucky in the fourth thing and it saved us. Right.
To take a more recent example, the fact that President Trump,
than its cannony Trump was nearly assassinated, really bad news, right, yeah,
(13:23):
really bad news in terms of like the rise of
political violence in the US.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah. No, the takeaway from that isn't great, but he
wasn't assassinated. Sources to worked correctly, the takeaway is, oh shit,
you know what happened to make that even possible? And
so but the you know, but oftentimes we do the
exact opposite, right, and people are like, oh, we don't
need to implement these recommendations. We don't need to you know,
spend more money on this, We don't need to really
(13:48):
relieve this airspace or whatever it is, because it's all
been working out, no crashes since two thousand and nine.
So this is you know, what happened was absolutely horrible,
and it seems like absolutely preventable, and that overconfidence and
kind of a lack of accountability on some in some
respects is one of the reasons that we're having this
(14:11):
conversation now. So if there is a silver lining, I
hope that it is that, you know, people actually start
looking at the process and realizing that the number of
near misses that we have both mid air, on the ground, takeoffs,
landings are actually important. And as you say, like if
you were building a statistical model, all of these things
change your probability, and not for the better, right, your
(14:35):
priority probabilities have to be adjusted, not in a good direction.
And so I hope that this is a wake up call.
Do you think it will be? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Okay, now I'm gonna see the controversial thing, right, I
am not sure that it's rational to put more resources
into aviation safety. Right, defined as follows right. So, the
statistical value of a life is a concept we've talked
about before on this show. Yeah, and that is how
(15:06):
much are people willing to pay. It's not based on
some bureaucrats in a back office. It's how much people
willing to pay to ensure their risk of surviving or
extend their life. Right, and comes out to about ten
million dollars. That if people could gamble and say I'll
give you ten million dollars and you have a one
n x chance of dying, right, I mean, you know,
(15:27):
there's some nonlinearities, but it comes from like things like
people being willing to do dangerous tasks, are being willing
to have medical inventions or buy safety features, right, and
across all different ways this is measured, it's pretty consistently
about ten million. For aviation safety. It's much higher than that.
(15:47):
People fear. People fear hijackings, and they fear plane crashes.
It would be an obviously terrible way to die, but
like you know, not every time that, I mean, the
failure rate should not be zero.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
To take a much less serious example, you hear the
phrase like if you've never missed a flight, you're not
doing it right, meaning that like, if you're flying from
New York to Chicago, go there are you know, fifteen
flights an hour an hour? But a lot, right, not
that much consequence to missing your flight. Obviously, any crash
involving what are we up to, like seventy deaths roughly
(16:23):
is more serious. But at the same time, like you know,
bad shit's supposed to happen some of the time because
the alternative is that you are paying gigantic amounts for
safety features. And I mean you see this, right, You see,
like in construction of the New York Subway, for example,
there are so many commitments to different groups and to
(16:46):
safety equipments and a special interest that it just is
incredibly expensive to do anything. So you know, this is
kind of more high level bravarian thinking to you, but
like being willing to think about in terms of trade, uster,
what is the price of reducing air traffic fatalities, right,
(17:08):
compared to what we might spend on other things like
road safety or medical safety or other things. Right. And
the fact is that humans are pretty inconsistent, yeah, about
kind of what they're willing to what risks they're willing
to take action to prevent.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I think that that is a very valid point that
we are inconsistent. However, I will kind of push back
a little bit, not in terms of like overall spending, right,
But what I'm talking about is how we respond to
two different risks and what the takeaway is from near missus. Right.
You could reallocate spending, you could not make stupid decisions
(17:45):
like adding over sixty flights to an airspace that you've
already been warned is overcrowded. This doesn't have to do
with pouring more money into it. This is just risk management,
making different decisions, making different process decisions, holding yourself to
different accountability, maybe reallocating some of the funds you already
have to kind of two different things, looking at training,
(18:08):
like looking and looking at models from the bottom up,
and reassessing a lot of kind of the decision making
along the way, as opposed to complacently saying, oh, everything's
fine or I think it's actually the lazy thing is
just to throw money at it, right, because why throw
money if you don't even know you know, first you
need to figure out what are we fixing, what's going wrong?
(18:31):
What's going wrong in the human decision making and the
non human decision making? Right, like a where are the
systems most vulnerable? And if we don't do that, I
don't care if we allocate billions of dollars to the problem,
it's not going to help, right. That's what happens with
bad financial decision making, where you just think, oh, you know,
pouring money out the problem is going to help. So
(18:52):
I think that that's kind of the way of thinking
about it, not just like, oh, you know, like let's
either allocate more money or not. I think that a
lot of people made bad decisions along the way. And
this was also differences in priorities, right because people say, oh, well,
you know, Senator X, Senator why, and Senator Z all
need direct flights home, and so we're going to add
(19:13):
those roots to you know, for that specific reason. That's
really bad. Right now, what are you saying about the
value of human life? Right You're saying that this person's
preference on when he gets home is much more important
than the safety of all of the people who are
flying through this airspace. Right, So there have been some
(19:36):
questionable decision making results along the way, and I think
those are the types of things we should be looking at.
But I think your other point is very well taken
and something that you know, we do talk about on
the show. But I think it's just something that's really
worth stressing over and over because even though I know it,
I still fall for it. Right when we do inconsistently
(19:58):
take these risk assessments where we do, you know, we
are too scared of a plane crash too, scared of
a hijacking, not scared enough of, you know, crossing the
street where our chance of dying is actually much higher,
right and being hit by a car, having something horrible happen.
You know, we do have very inconsistent risk preferences, and
(20:20):
that's something that you know, we should just constantly remind
ourselves of, constantly remind our listeners of, and constantly remind
our brains of, so that we try to behave more rationally,
even though at the end of the day, emotion always
gets into it. It's really difficult not to have emotion
in your decisions when it comes to you and immediate
decision making as opposed to having kind of the time
(20:41):
and space and leisure to think through it in a
more rational way.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
I remember I was in Costa Rica a couple of
years ago with some friends and we were like staying
at this airbnb on a hill and the coaster is
very very wet, right, with like torrential thunderstorms like a lot, right,
maybe every day, but yeah, we're like driving down this
like dirt road in a thunderstorm in a country we've
(21:11):
never been in before. Like, probably not the best idea,
even though like they have incredible drainage systems, right, they're
used to this problem. But sometimes you gotta be like
fuck it, you know what I mean. I mean, if
you never take there's like a portfolio of like you
should get like one fuck it card a year. I
feel like, maybe, yeah, we could, we could talk about
(21:31):
this stuff every week. Let's go on and talk about booze.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Right, yeah, let's let's uh, let's talk about some alcohol warnings.
After this break, we have had some news coming out
(21:56):
on the alcohol front. I don't know if it was
time to coincide with dry January when lots of people
decide to, you know, abstain from drinking, but that's that's
when it came out. So the Surgeon General earlier had
issue to report on the potential cancer risks associated with
drinking any alcohol whatsoever. And so are you know, there
(22:20):
are now talks of putting morning labels like you have
on cigarettes right on all alcohol saying, you know, sculling
cross bones, you're going to die basically if you drink this,
and a lot of people, a lot of wellness gurus,
health influencers have been saying, yes, this is exactly right,
zero drinking, you know, no amount of alcohol is healthy.
(22:41):
This is the way to go. And man, oh man,
like I have, I have so many thoughts on this,
Like this is like the most little for.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
You, because I kind of I saw this news. Uh huh,
I'm like, oh, that sucks. You know, it's nice to
have some beer and wine now and then, right. I mean,
but I didn't really want to process it because I
didn't either like want to give myself like an excuse
if I thought it was bullshit, or like didn't want to Facebook.
I'm going to let you drive this segment because I
know you've been researching us a lot.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Yeah. So, so first of all, let's just start off
with the fact that all studies of alcohol and health
are correlational, right, And the fact that they're all correlational
not causational, that they're observational studies in the environment makes
all nutritional studies, like not just alcohol, incredibly difficult to
(23:29):
do and conclusions very suspect depending on how you parse data.
There are so many other variables because it's not like
you take people from birth right and you say, okay,
when this person turns twenty one, we are going to
give them. We're going to control everything they eat their
entire life. We're going to have all these people live
in our little lab environment, and when this person turns
(23:50):
twenty one, they're going to start getting a glass of
wine right a day. And this one's not going to
drink at all. No, that is you know, maybe there's
a science fiction novel about that, but that's not the
way that this all works in the real world. Right,
So in the real world, what we do in all
of these cases is ask people, right, and have observational data.
(24:11):
And there are some studies that have followed people for
decades and decades, and you look at what their habits are.
You try to control for stuff as well as you
possibly can, and then you see what happens to them. Right,
who's getting sick, how are they getting sick, how long
are they living, et cetera, et cetera, and lo and behold.
In past studies when they did that, it turned out
(24:35):
that moderate drinkers actually did better than people who abstained
from alcohol all together. There was one big study that
showed that light drinkers, so people who consumed one to
three drinks per week, had lower rates of cancer and
death than people who abstained all together. There was a
study of nearly a million people that were followed for
(24:58):
over a decade that showed that abstainers had higher rates
of death chronic disease, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease, chronic lung
disease than light were moderate drinkers. There are have been
a study of you know, millions of people that show
that non drinkers had, you know, had higher rates of
death than moderate drinkers. But this is all to say
that that was the prevailing wisdom. Now, all of a sudden,
(25:20):
you know, we see other data that say, oh no,
actually cancer rates go up. What the fuck? Right, Like
this is true of so much nutritional advice, where we
just get really really bad advice for a long time,
and then it's upended, and then it's upended again. Cholesterol good,
cholesterol bad, cholesterol, eggs, right, all sorts of stuff that's
(25:45):
good for you, that's bad for you. Butter is horrible.
You should have margarine. No, margarine's going to kill you
because of the chemicals in it. You should have butter. Right,
All all of these things just go round and round
and round. And I hate when people make it into
a moral crusade, which is by the way exactly what
is happening right that like, oh this is good and
(26:05):
this is the way to a long life, and this
is bad and this is you know, this makes you
a bad person and you are going to die because
the other, the other flip side of it is even
if you know, if I have a drink, if I
have a glass of wine with dinner, and my risk
of breast cancer goes up by one percent, right from
an a you know or whatever it is that I
(26:28):
just totally made up that number, by the way, Okay,
you know I'm willing to have that because it you know,
do I want to live a life where I just
don't do anything, don't drink, don't eat this, don't do that,
don't do this, and just spend all day trying to
live longer. No, right, Like that's that ain't the kind
(26:49):
of existence I want.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Who's that Brian Johnson guy who's like drinking his son's plasma.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Anyway, Yeah, exactly, I'm measuring his son's nightly erections. Yes,
I don't want to be that guy.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
But this is like, oh my god, this is like
a little bit of like a Silicon Valley thing now
where like you know, I'm not sure, it's exactly straight
edge living as people say, oh yeah, I'm silver, but
then they'll take different types of drugs from psychedelics to
whatever else can be included in sobriety, right, I mean,
you know, it gets very difficult. And I do think
(27:19):
there is this like I don't know, if you'd call
it puritanism.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
I would call it puritanism exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
There's kind of like a self improvement culture that you know,
it's a little ascetic acsc I don't know how you're
supposed to say that word, but like there's something about that, like,
you know, even like even like the effective altruism movement
in Silicon Valley is I don't know. It's also it's
also kind of like a California thing, where like because
if you're drinking socially in California, then you have this
(27:45):
constant problem of like how to get places without drunk driving? Right.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Yeah, Well, I think that there are two things going on,
and they do go back to the Silicon Valley in California,
and in another way, one, I think it is puritanical,
and I think that there's kind of this like moral
judgment that comes with it that's like a part of
American culture and has been for a long time. But
the other thing is simplifying, oversimplifying, right, this desire for
(28:10):
like one solution that will make you live longer, where
you take tons of data that is really complex, really difficult,
where you can't actually draw conclusions, and you say cold plunge, right, yes,
cold plunge a day, and all of a sudden, you're
going to improve your health in your life, and for
red saunas right, and that you don't actually look to say, oh,
(28:31):
that study was done on ten people and they were
all finish and right, and all the confounders and all
of a sudden, we have all of these things. So
you see these things that are like these solutions that
if you just do this one thing, if you do
this and this, then all of a sudden, you're going
to hack your you know, hack your health and this
biohacking will make you live longer, be smarter, and all
(28:54):
of these things. And so I think that alcohol is
kind of one of these let's simplify and let's just
say you know, absolutely no, and it's wrong. This is
and the best way to think about it.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
You also find that you have people who are concerned
about harm reduction or if you want to put it
more in NATO Maria terms, kind of ev maximalization. Right,
you get some benefits out of drinking. Maybe it's enjoyable,
maybe it's good for your social life. Not advocating it
either way, but like you know, people are doing it,
and there's some costs in terms of health outcomes and
other risks, right, and like you know, how can you
(29:24):
reduce the more harmful ways to use this product? I
mean this comes up a lot, right with nicotine. I'm
not to date with this literature, but like there are
all these alternatives to cigarettes, zin and vapes and everything
else come and you know, sometimes they're advocators, oh there
are safe products, right, because they don't evolve the tar
of cigarettes. Sometimes they're wrapped up and say there's just
another gateway drug. I don't know what the liture on
(29:45):
that is. But like, but you actually have people who
want to do harm reduction and people who are who
are prudes. Right, And then you have that when it
comes to like COVID stuff, you would hear things will
mass just provide a false sense of security, and the
alternative often imply was just stay at home and don't
do anything for a year and a half until vaccines
are widely available. So that's always that's always tricky, is
(30:07):
kind of what are people's actual.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Mone for sure? For sure? And then I will also
just close this out by saying that you know, the
proposed let's put these warning labels and like basically say
that you know, alcohol's terrible and is going to cause cancer.
First of all, life causes cancer, right if you look
at the cancer risks, almost anything causes cancer. So like,
(30:30):
let's just let's just put a warning label on life.
Life also causes death. You know, it's a it's a
really it's a really bad thing. But the fact that
we're embracing marijuana the way that we are and vilifying
alcohol is just absolutely like mind boggling to me because
the data yet, yeah, the data on like the harm
(30:51):
that can come from marijuana consumption, especially now where it's
much stronger than it used to be, is a ton
of long term damage that can happen to your memory,
to kind of reaction time, to all sorts of things.
We don't talk about that, and we're like, yeah, pot good,
because you know, for some reason pot is now good
(31:11):
and alcohol bad.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
People have to be like honest with themselves about what
things they enjoy more or less. Right, Like, you probably
have some matrix of like what is the risk of
something relative to the personal amount of exactly enjoyment that
it brings you? Right, And you know, sometimes I watch
it knew more about the risks to a little you know,
(31:33):
I have some heuristics that so this is really bad
deep fried foods seem really bad. And then but sometimes
they don't care. Sometimes you know, it's kind of your
every now and then you're indulging. But like but like,
but having you know, really out that matrix would be
helpful because you get confused, you hear, like sure, mixed
vesteras a lot. They are different objectives, right, If you're
trying to lose weight versus trying to reduce cholesterol, those
(31:56):
are very different diets that you might consume.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I don't think we are going to do like a
ton of like personal health stuff on the show, but
we'll promise that when we do, it will not be
like judge because a wee be like hypocrites and we
trust people to make their own decisions. But like, you know, yeah,
I would often like more straightforward information about is this
thing that is build as being really bad? Is it
actually bad or.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Absolutely you know?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Or not? Right?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Absolutely? I think I think that that's something that that
we can all aspire to. And the unfortunate truth though
is when it comes to nutrition, it is tough, but
we can we can do a little bit more about
that in the future. But do you want to take
a break and then end on some super Bowl predictions
or prop bets or just thoughts.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, let's do a few Superbowl bets.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Okay, Nate. So I'm so proud of myself because I,
in order to prepare for this segment, I figured out
who was going to be playing in the super Bowl.
This is my level of interest. I was like, I
was like, I got to I have to know who's playing.
So I was I was very proud of myself. That
(33:20):
is the extent of my super Bowl knowledge. So let's
have you take it away. We've already talked about, you know,
the odds of who you should be betting on the
Eagles or the Chiefs given where the odds are. But
let's talk about some Super Bowl prop bets because this
is something that you know, I think a lot of
(33:42):
people are interested in and more and more sports books
are offering just a whole array of them. How do
you think about it? By the way, do you think
that they're like, would you ever put money on prop
bets or you know, real money? I mean, maybe you'd
put on ten bucks because you think it's funny or
fun but would you ever actually like bet real money
(34:03):
on prop bets or do you think that that's not
kind of a smart way of looking at these things?
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Oh? No, I so, actually in my book On the Edge,
there is discussion about Super Bowl prop bets. But wanted
to meet a guy named rufus pea buddy may be
familiar to fans of the show. He has his own
gambling related podcast with Jeff ma also featured in the book.
And yeah, so he is somebody who like builds computer
models and specializes in Super Bowl prop bets and is
(34:32):
very high ev in them to the point where of
course he gets limited, and you know he'll like, literally,
go is the West Gate the super book? Get the
West Gate? I think casino where they're famous for their
prop bets, will like set up camp and bring thousands
of dollars where you are all have to make like
two bets at a time, and you just like go
to the back of the line, right, But like you
these are these are beatable if you do research, and
(34:55):
I haven't done the research, but they're chaunting on people
being lazy, right that they're recreational bets. They're a lot
of fun, right, and so if you're sharp, And it's
probably true by the way, for the Super Bowl in general,
is that there's so much public money out there, everybody
is making a bet that there isn't enough sharp money.
(35:16):
There's not enough roofous pea buddies in the world to
gobble up all that all that expected value, right, And
so like you know, as of today Monday to third,
seventy seven percent of the money on the point spread
is on the Philadelphia Eagles. That's probably a good sign
(35:37):
that you should bet on the Kansas City Chiefs. See
of course are sixteen and one, right, who have won
two balls in a row have often had very hairy
escapes from games this year, right are are are you know?
But anyway, do you want to do some crop betting?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah? Yeah, Well there's there's one that I know that
people do bet on, but it's just to me, it's
like so mind boggling, which is the result of the
coin toss, right, Like, why would you bet on that?
Of all the things that could be you know, predictable, modelable,
et cetera, it's a coin toss. This is what we
base a lot of our statistics on, right, the fact
that a coin toss is fifty to fifty and yet
(36:16):
and yet night it's like the.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Face tattoo of of gambling. Right, It's just you're so.
I mean, first of all, heads does win like fifty
point five percent of time or something?
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Right, Well, in our limited data set of Super Bowls.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Well, no, but the reference class is like, isn't there
wasn't that a study? Have we talked about this for
like where like a coin flip is not actually random
whatever aerodynamic shit it lines on.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
The Yeah, well it depends on the coin.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yes, and I guess it's a special Super Bowl commemorative
coin with I don't know what the fuck on this.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
I don't know about that one. But no, the study
you're talking about there was. There was a study where
it turned out that the two faces were not actually
weighted equally.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
If I were the Kansas City chiefs for the field
of fit Egals, I would have a fucking intern spend
the week researching what coin will be flipped and which
side is like heavier, Right, I would optimize that strategy
if possible.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
What if you find out that neither side is heavier?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Uh, come on, I'm not gonna I think the side
it's like once I with like a little l i
X it's Super Bowl licks l I X. That looks heavy, right,
there's like a lot of embossing and shit like that.
So I bet on the on the LICKS side. I think,
which is a heavier side, fall tend to come up
(37:33):
on top.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
No, the heavier side is going to be on the bottom, Okay.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
So bet against licks. I think bet against the side
with a big Super Bowl logo on it. And I
don't know if that's heads or tails, so and probably
not enough to whatever. Where are they are?
Speaker 1 (37:48):
There?
Speaker 2 (37:49):
Are they giving like minus one ten on this bets?
You're risking eleven dollars to win ten? Right? But like
if I don't know, I think there's some edge there,
maybe with minus one oh one or something.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Well, we'll see, we'll see. And also do we know
so maybe this is we're getting into the nitty gritty
of coin tosses. Guys, do we know whether they always
position the coin with the same side up before the
flip or is that also random? Do they flip a
coin to know where their heads or tails is going
to be up when the flip starts.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
I'm just telling you, this fucking Super Bowl logos had
looks pretty fucking heavy. You know, I can't tell if
it's in bosted or not, but yeah, Google superb commemorative coin.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
All right, Well there's your.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
Coupon code risky business for no I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
That would be hilarious. But yes, okay, okay, fine, we
could do some research, but it's still likes. That's about
as DEGENNI of a bit as as you can get.
I think the coin toss. But there are also a
lot of other lines that are available, such as will
a player or a coach cried during the national anthem?
(38:54):
That seems like a gimme, right, someone's gonna cry?
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, minus three hundred, I think.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Minus a million.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Okay, look, I'll take I'll take no crying at plus
five hundred.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, all right, let's say we could talk about that.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Okay, I'm betting twenty bucks at plus five hundred on
no crying. If no one cries you owe one hundred bucks. Okay,
let me.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Think about it. How do we define crying? It's tearing up?
Is tearing up? Is tearing up a because I think
I mean like you. I don't mean someone's going to
like full out bawling, but like tearing up. I think
for me counts. That's that's when I said, like minus
a million, you have to.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
See a tier. Okay, not merely watery. You have to
see a tier.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
But what happens? But we can't see everyone either, So
who actually decides this?
Speaker 2 (39:45):
But on the official whichevery Networks till us in the game,
which should probably no official broadcast. It's on Fox on
the Fox News US, not Fox deport this or whatever?
Right the Fox News US feed during the national anthem?
Is there a player or coach who has a tier
in the ride during the national anthem? Picture on Fox?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
All right, we can do it. How about ten dollars?
Not twenty?
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Okay, okay, fine, okay, we're we're.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Do you risking? And then and then you're on let's
do it?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Any of their bets.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
First song performed by Kendrick Lamar.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
I look these odds up.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Does Polymarket, by the way, have odds for all of
these Super Bowl bets as well.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I'm I'm and I'm an investor to POLYMCA. I'm sure,
I'm sure you can. You know, Dja hard your heart's content, okay,
not like us. Plus one humble plus two ten for you,
plus three hundred by the weather is also a plus
seven to fifty chance of a Taylor Swift cam girl
friend of the Cansallity Chiefs taught in I have you know?
(40:51):
Taylor Swift guests appearance is plus seven fifty. I guess
I kind of like that. I mean she's in the stadium, right, Yeah,
I don't know, I mean it would be Actually I don't.
I mean, I mean overexposure is a problem.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
Right, what's this true? This is?
Speaker 2 (41:12):
But yeah, you can, like, look, you can bet on everything, basically,
any any other bits you want to make with me, though, Maria, No.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We got one. We got one. We'll report back on
the risky business prop bet, I say, sadly, Nate, I'm too,
I'm too Uh, You're you're too good. I can't. I
can't bet against you, and I know nothing. The funny
thing is, though these types of prop bets, you need
to know absolutely nothing about football or about the actual
(41:44):
kind of results of the game.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
But there is like, what's a chance that like a
foam ball return in the second quarter results? And you know,
I like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, there are prop bets that are actually very much
related to football knowledge and to the actual gameplay, but
the ones we've been talking about are completely random. So
I guess, Nate, you don't have any special insider knowledge.
And I'm hoping that my knowledge of human psychology will
render me on top on our crying that someone will
tear up I believe where.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
You actually find that. On Thursday, there's going to be
a silver bulletin post about historic crying during the Super
Bowl and empirical rates of crying every time. And now
that's changed.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
What was that voice? I like that?
Speaker 2 (42:27):
I don't know. It's a blogger voice. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Would blogger your blogger voice? Got it? And on that note,
Risky Business listeners, we will see you next week where
we will know whether crying did in fact take place.
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
(42:51):
out to us at Risky Business at Pushkin dot fm.
And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber,
we have some bonus content for you. We'll be answering
a listener question each week that's coming up right after
the credits.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. Nice price. You get
access to all that premium content and ad for listening
across the Pushkins and Hire network. Of show.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Breuger.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
If you like this show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too. Thanks so much
for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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