March 27, 2025 • 41 mins
This week, Nate and Maria discuss The Atlantic’s bombshell report about how its top editor was added to a national security group chat, and get into why the most major security risk is never technology–it’s always people. Then, they give an update on their March Madness bracket contest, and try to figure out why on earth players have to wait until they’re 22 to join the WNBA.
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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 Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Live on tape from the beautiful Pushkin Studios in the
Flying In District of New York City, New York. I'm
Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yes, this is correct. This is the first time that
Nate and I are both in the studio in the
same place since the pilot of the show. Nate.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
But if you detect an extra special chemistry, it's very
close quarters. You're actually it is.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, And today we've got some some stories for you.
First up, the Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Has a quite the scoop, So we're going to be
talking about Jeffrey Goldberg's signal, information security and what not
to do on your group chat.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Then we'll talk ketchup on our NCAA brackets recap, for example,
how team Nate so far in the lead against Team
Maria and Monty. And we'll talk about women's basketball and
why on earth are women not allowed to join the
WNBA until twenty two years old.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Let's get into it, Nate, but before we do, you moved.
You are now in a new apartment.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Now I moved from a neighborhood which might generously be
called Chelsea, but really is South Penn Station.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
To thank you, name you finally, now that you moved
on final New.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
York Times On the New York Times Leader map, it
was considered seventy percent Chelsea. All right, all right, Chelsea
Midtown West High correct.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Now that you're out of there, you can acknowledge that
it really was not Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
No, And like there is something about being like in
an actual like neighborhood. Yea, Like you know, South Penn
Northeast Chelsea as I call it, serves kind of this
transient community, right, so people commuting in and out of
the city. It's there are some working spaces there, right,
people go into Nixon Rangers games. I like Nick and Rangers, right,
(02:34):
But like you know, Massiesquare Garden like dominates in some
ways that profile the neighborhood. And so yeah, this is
a real neighborhood. And like they're you know, I'm reading
the esperate climb. But there's an abundance, right, Not only
do you have your independent coffee shops in the morning, right,
you have your French Vietnamese independent coffee shop on your
Scandinavian independent coffee shop. Right, you have your vaguely Russian,
(02:59):
Eastern European, mostly vegetarian wine bar. It's like, and they're
all pretty fucking good.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, I'm glad you're now in your a new neighborhood.
I'm glad you're finally moved, because, as we all know,
moving sucks the process that is, So I'm glad that's
behind you. Let's talk about something a little bit less fun.
I mean, on some level it's kind of hilarious, which
is that this week there was an absolute bombshell You know,
bombshell is usually overused, but I feel like this was
(03:26):
a bombshell piece in the Atlantic, unprecedented as far as
I can tell, in the amples of national security, where
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, was
inadvertently included on a signal chat with members top members
of US national security that we're discussing a then imminent
(03:49):
attack on the whoties. Let's start off by just talking
about info sec or information security and how the fuck
something like this happens.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, no, I am a top Information security is my
top issue. Right. The reason I voted for Donald Trump
and twin Syxs teenage because of Hiller Clinton's email server.
I thought that was the most important story in the country.
I thought there was too little press coverage of it.
If anything, Sorry, I vote for Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yes, everyone who thought that they was serious night did
not vote for Trump in twenty sixteen. This was he
was being sarcastic.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Are you a group chat girl? Person?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I am only in a few group chats, and those
group chats are like three people, you know, Like I'm
in a group chat with you and your partner. Yeah,
And I'm in a similar group chat with you know,
my college roommates and a few others. But i hate
group chats.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I'm not a big awful. I'm not a big
I think it's probably because now this is where I
sound like a fucking snob, right, But like Maria, you
and I like have we're kind of like we're able
to communicate. We kind of communicate professionally for a living, right,
And so like I could see the value of like
a group chat if like, if you want this cool
people that you're like who care about your opinions, right,
But like if you're writing all the time, I'm like,
(05:08):
it's with emails too. I want to fucking write a
long email. Now I'm making a fucking newsletter. Montize that
shit talk about in the podcast Monetize that shit. I'm
not giving free stuff away in group chats.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Sorry, no, that's absolutely true. So I've had to set
up group chats a few times for various reasons, and
whenever I do, I'm actually super paranoid about putting the
wrong person in the group chat. So Nate, for instance,
let me use you as an example, because I've had
to add you to group chats for scheduling purposes, and
I have several Nates in my phone, and you are
(05:42):
never the first Nate to come up, probably because you
don't have an iPhone, so my iPhone doesn't like that
and always is like, no, don't, don't use this Nate.
And so you know, barstool Nate, he is also in
my phone, Wow, And he is the one who is
always coming up before you. And I am always paranoid, Sorry,
barstool Nate, but I'm always paranoid that I'm going to
(06:04):
add the wrong Nate to one of these things. And
I triple check to make sure that you know, I
don't inadvertently say, you know, Ad, and I'm adding the
wrong person now I'm only highlighting this to say, Okay,
when you're starting a group chat, and this is just
about scheduling, you probably care about who's in it. Now,
imagine your schedule. You're doing a group chat about bombing
(06:27):
a country, right, or bombing a group? Shouldn't you double check,
triple check, quadruple joke? I mean, okay, wait, what am
I even talking about? Why are we starting a group
chat about national security? Rule number one? And you probably
have learned this as a journalist. You never put anything
in an email or in a chat that you don't
(06:47):
want on the front page of the New York Times,
potentially because.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And that's the other reason why I don't like, I'm
pretty circumctanted about what to say over email or even
you know, even a private event. I'm just careful about
what I gues say, whereas I kind of in call,
you know, I say lots of shit like yeah, well
the podcast and on Twitter and whatever else in the newsletter,
but like, but yeah, I don't assume that things stay
private without like explicit Yeah, understand.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
You can't assume they stay private, and you can't assume
that things don't get passed along. That basically the only
people who see them are going to be the people
who you are sending them to. So nothing should be
done over chat that is sensitive. That's not how you
communicate national security, that's not how you communicate war plans.
(07:33):
But in this case, that is what happened. Now. One
of the things I learned when I was back when
I was working on the Confidence Game, I actually talk
to a lot of people who do information security, who
do cybersecurity, because hacking and you know that that kind
of social engineering is huge for con artists. And they
all told me, I don't care what kind of a
security system you have, you know, I don't care how
(07:56):
up to date you are, who's your you know, who
does your infosec all of this stuff. You're only as
strong as your weakest human link. And it's always going
to be human. It's never going to be technological, right,
there's always going to be that dumb person. And if
I can get to that dumb person, then I can
take you down, right, I don't, I don't. I can
get behind any firewall, I can get past anything. And
(08:17):
this that's just like one oh one ABC, And this
is like the textbook case of wait. I didn't even
need to do anything, right, you just fucked up so
badly that you know you just here here is the
weakest link, and the weakest link happens to be at
the top of our national intelligence.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So one thing I'd say is you are bringing a
lot of people that don't have a lot of experience
in government. Right. I listened to the as Recline podcast
with I think it was Ben Buchanan, who was like
a basically one of Biden's heads of AI policy, and
he's like, yeah, you go into the government and like
there are rooms where you're not allowed to use the internet,
(08:58):
and there are all these protocols that are quite cumbersome,
and if you come from the private sector, I'm sure
it's like extremely annoying. Right. And so the fact that like,
you know, JD. Van's only two years in government, right,
Pete Haig Stiff no years and government less, I'm forgetting
about something, Right. You bring in people that are like
our kind of Fox and count I think, you know,
it's kind of could be state on media. I don't know,
(09:20):
but yeah, you're bringing people who like are just like, hey,
we're kind of treating this like a group chat, like
we're negotiating some VC deal or whatever, and like, on
the one hand, it's kind of like, how do I
put this, the casualness of the language, I'm not you know,
I don't think any of them come off especially badly
in the text that are referent. I mean, if anything,
they're kind of like, if anything that seemed like, I mean,
(09:42):
there are internal politics, Like Steven Miller comes in. He's
the kind of Trump advisor and he's like, don't go
too far and interpreting crumps shit, right, and then they
kind of shut up, right, But like, but you know, look,
I'm sure Jadi Vance is a smart guy, right, I
think he might be in over his debt. I think
he's like a smart guy. And it's kind of fun
to watch them to chatting. But yeah, why is this journalist?
(10:03):
Why is this journalist copied on this chain?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah? And and no one and no one catch which
is that he's on the chain at any point and
apparently so we don't know, but apparently there are very
sensitive details shared. And at this point, so just in
terms of journalistic ethics, you know, people are joking and saying,
you know, you're a journalist, why didn't you stay in
the chat? Well, it's because Jeffrey Goldberg actually understands the
(10:29):
repercussions of this, and at the moment that this was
actually said that this is that this is correct right,
that this isn't because at first he didn't know if
this was a spoof or like what this was right?
But once it was confirmed that this is legit, he left.
And I think that that is the ethical thing to do.
Although there's obviously a part of me that is like, oh,
(10:49):
but what else could you have learned? But I think
that that is the ethical and the legally safer thing
to do, because you know, people will try, I think,
to come after him, and it was smart to leave.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I think you can debate it. I mean, look fundamentally, Okay,
let's let's ask you. Let's say that you're added to
the group chat. What do you what do you do?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Well? I think at first, especially given you know my
my background and the books that I've written, the book
I'm working on, I would assume that it's fake. I
mean that would be my initial assumption. How could you
not assume that it's fake?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When he did say until he kind of performed this
out of sample test where he, like I guess, he
said he drove to they make a movie about it, right,
wrote he drives to some suburban grocery store and waits
in a parking lot, and it was like, well, if
they announced in the next fifteen minutes that were bombing Yemen, right,
and this is real? This is real and yeah, and
(11:47):
the Trump people kind of caught off guard, kind of
did acknowledge this was a real chat. Right. Where their
heads will roll because of this, I don't know, probably
depends on who Trump's mad at it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, I doubt heads will roll, And I think that
probably the the two heads that might roll are the
head of the person who acknowledged that it was real
immediately and Goldberg, right, like, they're they're going to try
to find a way to pin this on him instead,
because that is there, you know initially, you know, the
(12:19):
when Pete Hegsas was asked about this, he said, oh,
it's fake, this isn't real, right, but the government had
already acknowledged that it was very much real.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Have you ever gotten a scoop just by kind of
being in the reference at the right time.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I have. I have, especially because I'm female and
so people tend to forget that I exist as an
actual person. With a brain. No, it's true. It's true.
It's true. I can, like I blend into the background
and people forget to take me into account. I'm assuming
with you, it's probably less likely that people are you.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Know, it's always just thing like kind of what people
And it's probably as different if you're male and in
white whatever, you know, mistakenly taken for heterosexual in my case.
But like what people feel comfortable sharing with you, I
mean this is true even at the at the poker table,
in both public games and private games and poker, there
is kind of, I think a pretty strong unspoken understanding
(13:11):
that like, you know, if something relates, if someone relates
to me at the poker table, then if I don't
have a relationship with them, right, I would kind of anonymize. Yeah, right,
But people do have a lot of trust, right, I
mean I've heard people discussing wildly illegal things at the
poker Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
For sure, they do have a lot of trust, and
they do often forget that you're a journalist and you
do have to remind them. But but yeah, I think
it's very interesting that not only Hexath, but like the
Trump reaction to this was, you know, what's the aleotic
failing magazine. Right, nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
About this, I'm sure a million plus page yeah and.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So and so if you if you think about, you know,
what is ideal risk mitigation strategy? Right, like, Okay, you
fuck up? What do you do now?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Like, from a risk management mitigation standpoint, what is the
best thing to do next? And I would argue that
the best thing, the way that people usually come off
the best, and this comes from both organizations in on
an individual level, is to immediately acknowledge it and be like, yeah,
fucked up, sorry, and then like we'll get back to you,
(14:25):
and then you know, issue whatever, apology, et cetera. But
you always always always look a million times worse and
it spirals out of control and it gets like a
much bigger story. Right, It becomes much worse if you deny,
it becomes much worse if you try to, you know,
put a rug over it, me spill no, no, look,
the floor is beautiful. And so I think that this
(14:46):
is just being handled completely backwards. And you would think
that people who have media training that's something he does have,
would know better, right, would know that that always always
always backfires. I don't think there's a single case that
I can think of when it doesn't backfire, when the
person looks better because they initially denied and then they
were forced to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So ignoring is often a good strategy. Right. There is
a strissand effect thing where like the news cycle moves
on quickly. So a lot of you'll pay expensive money
for a PR person, or you'll have you know, if
for a big corporation, that PR team will come in
a lot of time to say, don't say anything. We'll
do a little bit of work in the background with reporters.
(15:29):
We're working on the story, but don't say anything. Go
take go to the woods for a couple of days,
and it'll probably go away. Right, Yeah, this is I mean,
you know, if you're in the White House, it's a
little bit different than this has national security implications. I mean, look,
part of the issue is in general, you know, you're
a powerful person. You're the vice president, or you're the
(15:49):
secretary of Defense, or you're somebody who thinks you're kind
of like doing some of the most important work in
the world, and you're busy and you don't care that
much about like security, Right, that's someone else's problem, and
so it's kind of like the annoying thing that like,
I'm mean, I'm worried about this, like in a lot
of ways I'm worried about like hacking of a labs.
(16:10):
And I'm sure they take it somewhat seriously, but like
knowing that personality type, you know, I don't think they
probably take it seriously enough. It's seen as like is
pureaucratic shit. You have to like jump up. By the way,
I tell you something, if you want to use the
the men's bathroom at the at the Pushkin Studios in
(16:30):
Flat Iron, there's a four digit code. I'm telling you
it's it's not the most difficult code to guess.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Speaking about information security.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
That's easiest.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, you'd be you know, can we can we just
go go way back in history. One of my favorite stories.
I love the writing of Richard Feynman. I think you
know he was a brilliant mind, brilliant writer, but he
has a hilarious story about information security where he had
a complete fascination with safe cracking, Like he would go
(17:10):
down these rabbit holes with different things, and at some
point he became fascinated with cryptography and safe cracking, and
he became very adept at cracking into safes, and mostly
how he did it wasn't he didn't you know, traind
with criminals and you know, figure out, like in the movies,
how do you listen to all of that? No, he
figured out that it was always easy to get the
code right because there was always a secretary who like
(17:33):
had written it down somewhere or something like that. And
then there was actually an incredibly important safe, and there
was a series of them that had national security secret
stuff because he worked in really important on you know,
important projects, important energy projects, things that were highly classified.
And he was like, oh, I wonder if I can
crack into these safes, and he couldn't find anyone writing
(17:55):
down the combination. He was striking out, and finally he
was like, you know what, I'm going to try the
factory code, and he did and the safe opened.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh no, and he was like huh.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So he went to the second one. There was three
of them. He tried the factory code, the safe opened
and the third one as well. So he wrote notes
in all three and it was like yeah, and left
them and then the guy opened them in the wrong
order and didn't realize that it was fein men, you know,
making a point and thought that they had been like
severely compromised and freaked the fuck out as he should have.
(18:28):
Just this goes to show, right that people are dumb.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
And I mean there are trade offs, right if you
like need to go with draw money from your bank
and they're like, you know, you face this as a
poker player, right, They're like, what's it for. It's like,
it's my fucking money. You have custody of it, right,
give it to me.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, and yeah, no, this there these these types of
things happen all the time, and but I think we
do need to be worried, like the bigger implication. I
think there are a few big implications here. First, it happened,
and they're saying, oh, well, it only happened once in
two months. Okay. First of all, it's never happened. That's
that it's never happened before. Like this is huge, and
(19:05):
they're denying it. They're taking it like no big deal.
It is a big deal, Like they were lucky that
it was Jeffrey Goldberg and not someone else who was
by mistake on this chat. By the way, maybe other
people and other chats had other actors on there that
were there by mistake, Like, this is a big deal.
Information security is incredibly important. Denying is not the correct
strategy if you want to mitigate risk. And we should
(19:27):
be really really worried about this. This is not something
that is.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Like an't even supposed to have signal government phones. No,
you're not saying private phones, which is kind of what
people were mad about with Hillary, and like.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Exactly, I mean everything about this, from start to finish
is incredibly worrisome. So I mean.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Triump Literally, do you know that if Anthony fucking Wiener
hadn't been sexing? Right? Like, yeah, probably know, Clinton becomes president?
Maybe trup because president in twenty twenty to be honest, right,
and then what happens in twenty five?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I don't know, right, But so many, so many stupid
miss so much stupidity here and so much mail you go,
I have to say that that results and things like this.
But yes, from a risky business standpoint, this is one bad,
risky decision after another. Nate, let's take a break and
let's talk about some March madness. Brackets. Can we start
(20:28):
with a spoiler alert? Nate is currently winning our brackets competition, and.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Worse Maria and Monty have to root for Duke is
their only pathway back to victory.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
And Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
First of all, it's probably gonna put me further ahead, right, but.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Like if Tennessee wins, it doesn't put you further ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Hundred dogs, Maria, I know, I know, but they might win.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah, and we have Purdue. We have one victor over Nate.
So far, we had Purdue as a pick and Nate
did not.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Okay, what I have at a Colorado State? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
So how is a tournament going? I would say it's
a good tournament if you're betting on all the favorites
to win, right, you know, you have all the sixteen
teams left in the men's tournament are from major conferences. Right,
(21:15):
you have I think one double digit seed. You have
all the one seeds intact, all but one of the
two seeds intact. So and I read the article before
nand saying, hey, we have more and more upsets than
say tournament it's gradual, but it's happening this year. This
year we did not. We had lots of chalk. As
we defind the term lost swee, which means that like
you know, the one seeds go forward, the favorites.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Win, except there were some upsets in the earlier rounds, right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Which is that is that some of the more like
the Colorado sticking they were like the lower seed who
they'd beat, but like they were actually a favorite in
our in our model, right, Like there were no you know,
Saint John's lost to Arkansas, which was I believe it
a ten seed, and you know, Saint John's kind of
was a foul trouble. They benched their best player and
kind of otherwise played like crap, right, but you know,
but you know Arkansas had one beating a pretty a
(21:58):
Kansas team, right, It wasn't like a yeah, very and
that's the biggest episode of the events so far. But
there have been like at most eighty twenty upsets, none
of the ninety five to five variety that are are
quite fun, right, And so like, you know, how do
you evaluate that from like a bracket standpoint. On the
one hand, if people are going to like the silver
built in model and picking the favorites, are probably pretty happy,
(22:19):
right if you're doing something we're trying to like calibrate
relative to the odds of an upset, like you know,
full disclosure. I do make bets on these games, right,
and yeah, in general I was betting more underdogs than favorites.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Why is that name?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So I think our our model, I think thought that,
like there's more parody in college basketball to a degree
that like maybe other systems aren't accounting for. So this
trend toward parody has reversed itself. Whether that's a small
sample sized thing or I mean, there are things that
are changing. So in college now there are nil deals,
(23:02):
which I believe standsford name, image and likeness, and so
now maybe there's more incentive to go to like a
big program like a Duke or a Kentucky, where I
mean all those big programs already had that advantage, right,
but maybe that could be changing things. Maybe some I mean,
Duke is clearly a very strong team. Maybe the one
seeds are particularly particularly good this year, you know, some
(23:26):
of the more plucky teams like Gonzaga is a minor
excuse me, a mid major team that our model thought
was like super underrated, but we're an eight C, which
means you faced the one seed. I believe it was
Houston in the around of thirty two, and like, so
you know, the teams that we thought had good potential
to overperform or in disadvantageous positions where they faced other
(23:48):
very good teams. Right, So that's part of it too.
The women's side, I mean, this is kind of how
it goes, right. I mean, there are in any given year,
you know, between like one to five or six women's
programs that are just like so much better than the rest, right,
the programs where men's college basketball is treated as like,
(24:11):
you know, co equal to to the men's program. Right,
that's not everywhere. It might be a dozen to two
dozen schools and a game in a year. A few
of those are really good, but like it's it's it's
you know, a lot of colleges are not aspiring to
treat women's basketball is like a revenue sport, as it's called,
(24:32):
whereas ones that are can do quite well. Right, But
there's you know, gigantic gaps. And if you look at
women's college basketball tenants and a gigantic gaps from some
team selling sixteen thousand seats a game to some literally
sell one hundred seats a game, right, and so and
so you see that, you see that lack of parody
play itself out.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, no, that all makes that all makes sense. And
in full disclosure, I have not watched any of the
women's games, and.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You watch the guys.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I've watched some of the guys, yes, because we had
a bracket.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
How many hours over under.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
An probably around two hours total, two hours more than
I would normally have watched. I'm baby steps, Nate, baby steps,
baby steps, I'm you know, I'm getting there. I was
really rooting for Illinois. I really wanted them to win
because they were one of my one of my Videosyncratic
(25:25):
picks your Rackett. No, I still haven't. I haven't. I
haven't bet any money on this. Yeah, but that was
you know, I wanted to have a free and clear
consultation with Monty. I did not want to use any
of his uh you know, any of his insights to
actually make money, although I think we would have lost money. Well,
(25:47):
I don't know, it depends on how the bets went.
But no, I've never been on sports. You know. I
actually feel like I don't like for me, it's not
it's not fun, you know, just like I don't I
don't play table.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Just watched two hours more of because but yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's a fun bracket, but I don't have money on it.
You know, it's just a sweat I you know, it's
like a you're kind of a pure I.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Want my team to I'll give you a little free bets.
Sometimes the first one's on me.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Gateway drug, Gateway drug. But no, I mean, in all honesty,
you know, I have zero edge in sports betting. I
wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to engage in
an activity that I felt I had no edge. And
you have models like you actually have an edge, right,
Like you're one of the sports betting is hard, and
you're one of the well you're one of the few
people who actually.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
The tournament last year and then this year. I'm down
a little bit cheer before that, I was up a
little bit, like it's but you know, look, if you
go so now, listen, you're I've lost more of the
women than I've made on the men's right. But if
you go through and say, okay, so so far are
the bets I've made, I'm down four percent? Right, ROI
what is the house's cut? Four percent? Right? So if
(27:02):
you haven't a year where you're winning someone losing someone
going fifty to fifty then that four percent gets straying
from your bank roll over and over again. And I
do think that probably you know I'm gonna but also
you know, but also you run in a shit like
where you're I'm restricted to kind of like two and
a half sights. As I complained about last week, some
of them don't take very much money on women's games.
I guess it's to my benefit this year's and so
(27:24):
the women's picks haven't been going great, but yeah, they're
much more they're much more cautious about about that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, So it's so it's increasingly more difficult to make money,
even if you do have an.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Inch you have to, like I mean, it's kind of
like the one thing about the tournament is like if
you were really dedicated like college basketball, it's kind of
like this short season but like yeah, basically, like, first
of all, the more serious experiment I did was like
trying to seriously bit the NBA for the book twenty
three season. This is probably like two hours a day
of work for seven I mean, that was real effort, right,
(27:58):
and that I was basically break even, right, which is
better than ninety nine percent of people, but like, and
that's break even so it's like, okay, if I want
to And by the way, at the start of that,
I have nine looks like a bet on New York
Im the end I have two and a half, right,
and so like so you know, first of all, to
make money, I'd have to like ad to vote more
than two hours a day, which is you know, my
(28:20):
time is valuable, it's real time. And then spend even
more time figuring out like okay, which friends can I
ask find a way get money down with or you know,
it's not like these like betting sites take appeals necessarily, right,
you know, maybe you can get some hamo fish, so
give me back. But like so it's like it's like
(28:40):
quite hard to make a living. You have to like
be kind of I don't know, I mean there's different
you can kind of capitalize it, right, Like you're a
smart guy who can get down money and you find
people who build a model for you and you can
do things like that a little bit. But like it's
not an easy way to It's like bookern noway, it's
not an easy way to make a living.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
No, absolutely not. Well I hope that uh this week,
I hope you do well financially and I hope I
do well in our bracket bets. So even though I
hate saying go Duke, go Duke, you you've put me
in this position. You have forced me. I know you
have forced me in the go Duke and go Tennessee position.
(29:16):
You don't mind the Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
You know they got a nice I like that orange.
I like that orange color.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
On that note, show to tell.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Me for our our landing pages, for the tournament stuff
we have, like this thing we have to like manually
enter the team, some very sensitive like which shade of orange,
the burnt orange kind of Texas. By the way, it's
a night I like the orange shade.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Nice. So you have so you have used all your
Crayola colors from childhood? You know know what a burnt
sienna and all the others. You know exactly what they
look like. Yeah, do you do you remember those Crayola colors.
I have some of those colors just etched into my
mind because they were such cool colors. Relian was my favorite.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Is it like a blue?
Speaker 1 (30:05):
It's a blue, but it just sounds so cool. Soulian.
How cool is that word?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I like it?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah, and I'd never heard it before, right, So I
just it really appealed to my writer's sensibility. What was
your favorite?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I mean, I like the red orange feels like a
Nate color.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right that was burnt Sana yea, yeah that was more brownie.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I like you by the advance and there's like a
separate red orange and orange red.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
That's true, that's true. Yeah, this is this is fun.
A lot of a lot of kids were shaped by
by Crayola colors. Guys, this will be a future episode.
For now, let's let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Like the didn't have the white crayon, but the white
crayon doesn't really.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It doesn't do much. Yeah, there was a white one.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Discontinue, Hey, Crayola advice, discontinue the white crayon. It's at
best of placebos Well, I guess.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
On black paper. You can do it on black paper.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, alright, Crayole, please please take our advice account. Maybe maybe,
maybe it's better than who knows.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
You just have nine planets eight.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
A lot of things have changed since we went to school.
Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll
talk more about the women's side of things and that
pesky eligibility rule. Last week, Nate, I learned something totally
(31:34):
crazy from you. You just casually mentioned that women were
not eligible for the WNBA until they were twenty two
years old. That's just like totally bad shit. Let's talk
about this a little bit more. This is something that
is not true of men. And why in the world
(31:55):
does this exist? Why is it a thing?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So let me theorize, right when Caitlin Clark is probably
going to offend people are sensitive out their women's basketball topics,
I will say, right, people who are longtime women's basketball fans.
And by the way, we been running women's models dating
back the five thirty eight days for ten years now.
It's something we've always taken seriously, right, you know, Okay,
(32:23):
I'm going to make some broadstroke generalizations. Right, until fairly recently,
the WNBA was not a very popular product and not
making a lot of money. It did have a loyal
fan base, and like the quality of the product is good.
Certainly these players are spectacular players, right, But you know
(32:48):
the reason why all these people were, like you know,
Britney Griner who was detained in Russia, Right, it's because
there was more money there than they were making from
from the American sport where they might get paid. I
mean it's kind of crazy, right, you talk about some
of the best athletes in the world and they're like
getting paid like, you know nothing, Yeah, some intern salary
(33:11):
basically right. By the way, most sports leagues have like
a rookie scale cap, right, where like you kind of
are are restricted in your free agent negotiating power for
some number of years. I don't know off handwo is
you know in baseball it's six years of professional servitude,
right or service time is how it's used. So there
is a lot of like protection. So their combination thing, well,
(33:35):
there's like there's protection of like the existing classes, right.
Labor unions in sports tend to bargain in ways that
fuck over young players and protect the veterans, which in
some ways is like and I'm you know, generally whatever,
I think. I'm a free country. People should form menions
if they want to think they've done benefited people in
(33:57):
some cases and maybe not in others. Right, I'm just
saying empirically, in sports, what happens is they tend to
protect the veterans, the aging stars, whereas they deny younger
players the right to have full bargaining power. Right, Younger
players are subject to a draft, and then they in
most sports, do not make their market salaries or particularly
(34:18):
close to it until they're several years in. Right, they
might say that, uh, well, we're actually doing a player
a service by developing him. It is true that like
a bad a young player in the nw and the
NBA is like is pretty bad. Right, So on, so
on one hand, you have like a restriction of supply
problem which is formulated by you know, you know, unions
(34:42):
that maybe don't care as much about these younger players.
And also, like from the league standpoint, they're probably kind
of indifferent toward this. Because one thing I've learned having
built basketball protection systems, and I haven't done it well,
have done the team ratings for women. I have done
player ratings for women. Right, in general, if you're a
nineteen year old twenty year old playing in the NBA,
(35:03):
you're pretty bad, right. I imagine the same is true
for the WNBA, And generally speaking, from age eighteen to
twenty two is when you do a lot of your
physical maturation when you become an adult. In other ways too,
maybe it's a little bit different. For do women hit
puberty earlier than they do. Maybe it's a little bit different, right.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It is, so everything you're saying though, should apply to
men and women, right in terms of the unions protecting
older players all of that.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
So one thing, they're probably a few players who you know,
if you're making whatever, like sixty thousand dollars a year
in the wa and maybe maybe you run an ad
and local subway chain or something. Right, So on the
one hand, like then maybe the college experience is better
if you're playing it like a South Carolina or a
Yukon or an Iowa or a usc you know, maybe
the college experience is actually better. It's it's probably also
(35:52):
like less demand for your services, right, But yeah, I'm
surprised there hasn't been more.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, because that seems like that seems like a very
paternalistic argument, right, like let them have the choice, Like,
if the college experience is better, then let them stay
in college. But let them also have the same choice
as their male counterparts, which is to leave early. Now,
one of the things that I heard when I, you know,
started researching this a little bit is that speaking about paternalism,
(36:25):
that there was an argument made that you know, women
need the degree more than men do. So force them
basically to finish college because they will thank you for
it later, because they'll, you know, they'll be lucky that
they have an alternate career to fall back on, because
this isn't this is probably not going to work out.
(36:46):
And look, I understand that that like technically might be
might be the case, but I once again, you know,
I think that there should be you should be able
to make that choice. So one of my closest friends
was a professional dancer, right, a professional athlete, didn't go
to college, right, didn't finish college and danced full time.
(37:07):
You know, you know her as well, ended up after
you know, finishing her dance career, going to Columbia and
finishing a degree, writing a novel and becoming you know,
an incredibly successful entrepreneur, jewelry designer, all these wonderful things.
But she did that afterwards because she never went to
college because she was a professional athlete. So it's not like,
(37:30):
if you you know, leave at the age of nineteen
or twenty to go play basketball, oh my god, you
can never finish college. Right. I think a lot most
colleges would be thrilled to have a professional athlete come
back to finish their degree, because that's you know, it's
not like you're closing off that option, you're not precluding it.
And I think that you know, so that argument is
(37:51):
not doesn't suffice. And so it does seem like there
are these vested interests, as there often are when there's
something so crazy, right, when there's something that doesn't make sense,
usually it's because there are some old, vested interests that
don't want it to change. And so what you were
saying about unions about protecting older players, about kind of
enshrining that that to me kind of makes more sense
(38:11):
than oh, we're doing this for the good of the players,
because that seems like a disingenuous argument at best.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
No, look, I mean you have you know, the other
risk is that you get some if you you know,
talk to college basketball players men, they'll sit now I'm
talking to them personally. If you read interviews with them, right,
they're like, look, I can't take the chance that I
get like injured, right and therefore have no career at all.
You know, USC's best player just tore her acl in
(38:40):
there around thirty two win last night, right, and you
know this is a long recovery and like if you
have that happen after you sign your kind of like
rookie contract, then like that gives you more protection, right.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, so in some ways it's better if.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
You can, like goodn to play professionally, and the professional
league and the NCAA are kind of like, I mean,
I guess it's not really the NCAA's fault, right, but
the league is supposed to represent women's basketball, is kind
of denying you a professional existence. I mean, it's kind
of fucked up, right, Somebody should sue. Somebody sue the NBA.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, somebody should sue.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah, no, it is un American.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Well no, it actually it is kind of fucked up
that you are just unilaterally denied the opportunity to do this,
and you know you you should have you should have
the choice. You should be able to make a living
however you want. And these days we have so many
people arguing that, oh, well, college degrees aren't even what
they used to be. You don't even need one, you know,
(39:41):
Peter Tiele paying people money not to go to college.
And yet here we are right that finish your college
degree before you can play basketball professionally. I mean, it
just it makes absolutely zero sense.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, if you're good enough to be, uh, you know
the WNBA, right, one of the one hundred and two
hundred best players in the world, And like, yeah, I
mean that's more viable than a college degree. Absolutely it is.
It's more unique, and like you build life skills, and
absolutely it is, and we build.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And you can always and you can always go back
and ghetto college degree later if you want, and then
you'll be a former WNBA with a college degree. Right.
I think that's the kind of experience that you can't duplicate,
whereas a college degree is actually quite easy to duplicate
in a lot of different ways. So yes, let's I
think that you and I agree on this. WNBA, get
your shit together. This is not a good rule.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
All right.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Well, let's see what happens next week. I don't think
the WNBA rules will change, but maybe maybe I will
be redeemed in our bracket competition. And if not, Nate,
I'm going to have a survey of best burgers in
both New York and Vegas, depending on where we are,
and then we can pick a fun dinner whoever wants.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Risky business is hosted by me, Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And Me Maria Kannakovin.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel carter or A. Social
producer is Gabriel hunter Chen. Sally Helm is our editor.
Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Live on tape from the beautiful Pushkin Studios in the
Flying In District of New York City, New York. I'm
Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yes, this is correct. This is the first time that
Nate and I are both in the studio in the
same place since the pilot of the show. Nate.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
But if you detect an extra special chemistry, it's very
close quarters. You're actually it is.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah, And today we've got some some stories for you.
First up, the Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Has a quite the scoop, So we're going to be
talking about Jeffrey Goldberg's signal, information security and what not
to do on your group chat.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Then we'll talk ketchup on our NCAA brackets recap, for example,
how team Nate so far in the lead against Team
Maria and Monty. And we'll talk about women's basketball and
why on earth are women not allowed to join the
WNBA until twenty two years old.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Let's get into it, Nate, but before we do, you moved.
You are now in a new apartment.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Now I moved from a neighborhood which might generously be
called Chelsea, but really is South Penn Station.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
To thank you, name you finally, now that you moved
on final New.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
York Times On the New York Times Leader map, it
was considered seventy percent Chelsea. All right, all right, Chelsea
Midtown West High correct.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Now that you're out of there, you can acknowledge that
it really was not Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
No, And like there is something about being like in
an actual like neighborhood. Yea, Like you know, South Penn
Northeast Chelsea as I call it, serves kind of this
transient community, right, so people commuting in and out of
the city. It's there are some working spaces there, right,
people go into Nixon Rangers games. I like Nick and Rangers, right,
(02:34):
But like you know, Massiesquare Garden like dominates in some
ways that profile the neighborhood. And so yeah, this is
a real neighborhood. And like they're you know, I'm reading
the esperate climb. But there's an abundance, right, Not only
do you have your independent coffee shops in the morning, right,
you have your French Vietnamese independent coffee shop on your
Scandinavian independent coffee shop. Right, you have your vaguely Russian,
(02:59):
Eastern European, mostly vegetarian wine bar. It's like, and they're
all pretty fucking good.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, I'm glad you're now in your a new neighborhood.
I'm glad you're finally moved, because, as we all know,
moving sucks the process that is, So I'm glad that's
behind you. Let's talk about something a little bit less fun.
I mean, on some level it's kind of hilarious, which
is that this week there was an absolute bombshell You know,
bombshell is usually overused, but I feel like this was
(03:26):
a bombshell piece in the Atlantic, unprecedented as far as
I can tell, in the amples of national security, where
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, was
inadvertently included on a signal chat with members top members
of US national security that we're discussing a then imminent
(03:49):
attack on the whoties. Let's start off by just talking
about info sec or information security and how the fuck
something like this happens.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Well, no, I am a top Information security is my
top issue. Right. The reason I voted for Donald Trump
and twin Syxs teenage because of Hiller Clinton's email server.
I thought that was the most important story in the country.
I thought there was too little press coverage of it.
If anything, Sorry, I vote for Trump.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yes, everyone who thought that they was serious night did
not vote for Trump in twenty sixteen. This was he
was being sarcastic.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Are you a group chat girl? Person?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I am only in a few group chats, and those
group chats are like three people, you know, Like I'm
in a group chat with you and your partner. Yeah,
And I'm in a similar group chat with you know,
my college roommates and a few others. But i hate
group chats.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, I'm not a big awful. I'm not a big
I think it's probably because now this is where I
sound like a fucking snob, right, But like Maria, you
and I like have we're kind of like we're able
to communicate. We kind of communicate professionally for a living, right,
And so like I could see the value of like
a group chat if like, if you want this cool
people that you're like who care about your opinions, right,
But like if you're writing all the time, I'm like,
(05:08):
it's with emails too. I want to fucking write a
long email. Now I'm making a fucking newsletter. Montize that
shit talk about in the podcast Monetize that shit. I'm
not giving free stuff away in group chats.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Sorry, no, that's absolutely true. So I've had to set
up group chats a few times for various reasons, and
whenever I do, I'm actually super paranoid about putting the
wrong person in the group chat. So Nate, for instance,
let me use you as an example, because I've had
to add you to group chats for scheduling purposes, and
I have several Nates in my phone, and you are
(05:42):
never the first Nate to come up, probably because you
don't have an iPhone, so my iPhone doesn't like that
and always is like, no, don't, don't use this Nate.
And so you know, barstool Nate, he is also in
my phone, Wow, And he is the one who is
always coming up before you. And I am always paranoid, Sorry,
barstool Nate, but I'm always paranoid that I'm going to
(06:04):
add the wrong Nate to one of these things. And
I triple check to make sure that you know, I
don't inadvertently say, you know, Ad, and I'm adding the
wrong person now I'm only highlighting this to say, Okay,
when you're starting a group chat, and this is just
about scheduling, you probably care about who's in it. Now,
imagine your schedule. You're doing a group chat about bombing
(06:27):
a country, right, or bombing a group? Shouldn't you double check,
triple check, quadruple joke? I mean, okay, wait, what am
I even talking about? Why are we starting a group
chat about national security? Rule number one? And you probably
have learned this as a journalist. You never put anything
in an email or in a chat that you don't
(06:47):
want on the front page of the New York Times,
potentially because.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And that's the other reason why I don't like, I'm
pretty circumctanted about what to say over email or even
you know, even a private event. I'm just careful about
what I gues say, whereas I kind of in call,
you know, I say lots of shit like yeah, well
the podcast and on Twitter and whatever else in the newsletter,
but like, but yeah, I don't assume that things stay
private without like explicit Yeah, understand.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
You can't assume they stay private, and you can't assume
that things don't get passed along. That basically the only
people who see them are going to be the people
who you are sending them to. So nothing should be
done over chat that is sensitive. That's not how you
communicate national security, that's not how you communicate war plans.
(07:33):
But in this case, that is what happened. Now. One
of the things I learned when I was back when
I was working on the Confidence Game, I actually talk
to a lot of people who do information security, who
do cybersecurity, because hacking and you know that that kind
of social engineering is huge for con artists. And they
all told me, I don't care what kind of a
security system you have, you know, I don't care how
(07:56):
up to date you are, who's your you know, who
does your infosec all of this stuff. You're only as
strong as your weakest human link. And it's always going
to be human. It's never going to be technological, right,
there's always going to be that dumb person. And if
I can get to that dumb person, then I can
take you down, right, I don't, I don't. I can
get behind any firewall, I can get past anything. And
(08:17):
this that's just like one oh one ABC, And this
is like the textbook case of wait. I didn't even
need to do anything, right, you just fucked up so
badly that you know you just here here is the
weakest link, and the weakest link happens to be at
the top of our national intelligence.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So one thing I'd say is you are bringing a
lot of people that don't have a lot of experience
in government. Right. I listened to the as Recline podcast
with I think it was Ben Buchanan, who was like
a basically one of Biden's heads of AI policy, and
he's like, yeah, you go into the government and like
there are rooms where you're not allowed to use the internet,
(08:58):
and there are all these protocols that are quite cumbersome,
and if you come from the private sector, I'm sure
it's like extremely annoying. Right. And so the fact that like,
you know, JD. Van's only two years in government, right,
Pete Haig Stiff no years and government less, I'm forgetting
about something, Right. You bring in people that are like
our kind of Fox and count I think, you know,
it's kind of could be state on media. I don't know,
(09:20):
but yeah, you're bringing people who like are just like, hey,
we're kind of treating this like a group chat, like
we're negotiating some VC deal or whatever, and like, on
the one hand, it's kind of like, how do I
put this, the casualness of the language, I'm not you know,
I don't think any of them come off especially badly
in the text that are referent. I mean, if anything,
they're kind of like, if anything that seemed like, I mean,
(09:42):
there are internal politics, Like Steven Miller comes in. He's
the kind of Trump advisor and he's like, don't go
too far and interpreting crumps shit, right, and then they
kind of shut up, right, But like, but you know, look,
I'm sure Jadi Vance is a smart guy, right, I
think he might be in over his debt. I think
he's like a smart guy. And it's kind of fun
to watch them to chatting. But yeah, why is this journalist?
(10:03):
Why is this journalist copied on this chain?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yeah? And and no one and no one catch which
is that he's on the chain at any point and
apparently so we don't know, but apparently there are very
sensitive details shared. And at this point, so just in
terms of journalistic ethics, you know, people are joking and saying,
you know, you're a journalist, why didn't you stay in
the chat? Well, it's because Jeffrey Goldberg actually understands the
(10:29):
repercussions of this, and at the moment that this was
actually said that this is that this is correct right,
that this isn't because at first he didn't know if
this was a spoof or like what this was right?
But once it was confirmed that this is legit, he left.
And I think that that is the ethical thing to do.
Although there's obviously a part of me that is like, oh,
(10:49):
but what else could you have learned? But I think
that that is the ethical and the legally safer thing
to do, because you know, people will try, I think,
to come after him, and it was smart to leave.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I think you can debate it. I mean, look fundamentally, Okay,
let's let's ask you. Let's say that you're added to
the group chat. What do you what do you do?
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Well? I think at first, especially given you know my
my background and the books that I've written, the book
I'm working on, I would assume that it's fake. I
mean that would be my initial assumption. How could you
not assume that it's fake?
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When he did say until he kind of performed this
out of sample test where he, like I guess, he
said he drove to they make a movie about it, right,
wrote he drives to some suburban grocery store and waits
in a parking lot, and it was like, well, if
they announced in the next fifteen minutes that were bombing Yemen, right,
and this is real? This is real and yeah, and
(11:47):
the Trump people kind of caught off guard, kind of
did acknowledge this was a real chat. Right. Where their
heads will roll because of this, I don't know, probably
depends on who Trump's mad at it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Yeah, I doubt heads will roll, And I think that
probably the the two heads that might roll are the
head of the person who acknowledged that it was real
immediately and Goldberg, right, like, they're they're going to try
to find a way to pin this on him instead,
because that is there, you know initially, you know, the
(12:19):
when Pete Hegsas was asked about this, he said, oh,
it's fake, this isn't real, right, but the government had
already acknowledged that it was very much real.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Have you ever gotten a scoop just by kind of
being in the reference at the right time.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I have. I have, especially because I'm female and
so people tend to forget that I exist as an
actual person. With a brain. No, it's true. It's true.
It's true. I can, like I blend into the background
and people forget to take me into account. I'm assuming
with you, it's probably less likely that people are you.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Know, it's always just thing like kind of what people
And it's probably as different if you're male and in
white whatever, you know, mistakenly taken for heterosexual in my case.
But like what people feel comfortable sharing with you, I
mean this is true even at the at the poker table,
in both public games and private games and poker, there
is kind of, I think a pretty strong unspoken understanding
(13:11):
that like, you know, if something relates, if someone relates
to me at the poker table, then if I don't
have a relationship with them, right, I would kind of anonymize. Yeah, right,
But people do have a lot of trust, right, I
mean I've heard people discussing wildly illegal things at the
poker Oh for sure.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
For sure, they do have a lot of trust, and
they do often forget that you're a journalist and you
do have to remind them. But but yeah, I think
it's very interesting that not only Hexath, but like the
Trump reaction to this was, you know, what's the aleotic
failing magazine. Right, nobody cares.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
About this, I'm sure a million plus page yeah and.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
So and so if you if you think about, you know,
what is ideal risk mitigation strategy? Right, like, Okay, you
fuck up? What do you do now?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Like, from a risk management mitigation standpoint, what is the
best thing to do next? And I would argue that
the best thing, the way that people usually come off
the best, and this comes from both organizations in on
an individual level, is to immediately acknowledge it and be like, yeah,
fucked up, sorry, and then like we'll get back to you,
(14:25):
and then you know, issue whatever, apology, et cetera. But
you always always always look a million times worse and
it spirals out of control and it gets like a
much bigger story. Right, It becomes much worse if you deny,
it becomes much worse if you try to, you know,
put a rug over it, me spill no, no, look,
the floor is beautiful. And so I think that this
(14:46):
is just being handled completely backwards. And you would think
that people who have media training that's something he does have,
would know better, right, would know that that always always
always backfires. I don't think there's a single case that
I can think of when it doesn't backfire, when the
person looks better because they initially denied and then they
were forced to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So ignoring is often a good strategy. Right. There is
a strissand effect thing where like the news cycle moves
on quickly. So a lot of you'll pay expensive money
for a PR person, or you'll have you know, if
for a big corporation, that PR team will come in
a lot of time to say, don't say anything. We'll
do a little bit of work in the background with reporters.
(15:29):
We're working on the story, but don't say anything. Go
take go to the woods for a couple of days,
and it'll probably go away. Right, Yeah, this is I mean,
you know, if you're in the White House, it's a
little bit different than this has national security implications. I mean, look,
part of the issue is in general, you know, you're
a powerful person. You're the vice president, or you're the
(15:49):
secretary of Defense, or you're somebody who thinks you're kind
of like doing some of the most important work in
the world, and you're busy and you don't care that
much about like security, Right, that's someone else's problem, and
so it's kind of like the annoying thing that like,
I'm mean, I'm worried about this, like in a lot
of ways I'm worried about like hacking of a labs.
(16:10):
And I'm sure they take it somewhat seriously, but like
knowing that personality type, you know, I don't think they
probably take it seriously enough. It's seen as like is
pureaucratic shit. You have to like jump up. By the way,
I tell you something, if you want to use the
the men's bathroom at the at the Pushkin Studios in
(16:30):
Flat Iron, there's a four digit code. I'm telling you
it's it's not the most difficult code to guess.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Speaking about information security.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
That's easiest.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, you'd be you know, can we can we just
go go way back in history. One of my favorite stories.
I love the writing of Richard Feynman. I think you
know he was a brilliant mind, brilliant writer, but he
has a hilarious story about information security where he had
a complete fascination with safe cracking, Like he would go
(17:10):
down these rabbit holes with different things, and at some
point he became fascinated with cryptography and safe cracking, and
he became very adept at cracking into safes, and mostly
how he did it wasn't he didn't you know, traind
with criminals and you know, figure out, like in the movies,
how do you listen to all of that? No, he
figured out that it was always easy to get the
code right because there was always a secretary who like
(17:33):
had written it down somewhere or something like that. And
then there was actually an incredibly important safe, and there
was a series of them that had national security secret
stuff because he worked in really important on you know,
important projects, important energy projects, things that were highly classified.
And he was like, oh, I wonder if I can
crack into these safes, and he couldn't find anyone writing
(17:55):
down the combination. He was striking out, and finally he
was like, you know what, I'm going to try the
factory code, and he did and the safe opened.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Oh no, and he was like huh.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
So he went to the second one. There was three
of them. He tried the factory code, the safe opened
and the third one as well. So he wrote notes
in all three and it was like yeah, and left
them and then the guy opened them in the wrong
order and didn't realize that it was fein men, you know,
making a point and thought that they had been like
severely compromised and freaked the fuck out as he should have.
(18:28):
Just this goes to show, right that people are dumb.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
And I mean there are trade offs, right if you
like need to go with draw money from your bank
and they're like, you know, you face this as a
poker player, right, They're like, what's it for. It's like,
it's my fucking money. You have custody of it, right,
give it to me.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, and yeah, no, this there these these types of
things happen all the time, and but I think we
do need to be worried, like the bigger implication. I
think there are a few big implications here. First, it happened,
and they're saying, oh, well, it only happened once in
two months. Okay. First of all, it's never happened. That's
that it's never happened before. Like this is huge, and
(19:05):
they're denying it. They're taking it like no big deal.
It is a big deal, Like they were lucky that
it was Jeffrey Goldberg and not someone else who was
by mistake on this chat. By the way, maybe other
people and other chats had other actors on there that
were there by mistake, Like, this is a big deal.
Information security is incredibly important. Denying is not the correct
strategy if you want to mitigate risk. And we should
(19:27):
be really really worried about this. This is not something
that is.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Like an't even supposed to have signal government phones. No,
you're not saying private phones, which is kind of what
people were mad about with Hillary, and like.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Exactly, I mean everything about this, from start to finish
is incredibly worrisome. So I mean.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Triump Literally, do you know that if Anthony fucking Wiener
hadn't been sexing? Right? Like, yeah, probably know, Clinton becomes president?
Maybe trup because president in twenty twenty to be honest, right,
and then what happens in twenty five?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I don't know, right, But so many, so many stupid
miss so much stupidity here and so much mail you go,
I have to say that that results and things like this.
But yes, from a risky business standpoint, this is one bad,
risky decision after another. Nate, let's take a break and
let's talk about some March madness. Brackets. Can we start
(20:28):
with a spoiler alert? Nate is currently winning our brackets competition, and.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Worse Maria and Monty have to root for Duke is
their only pathway back to victory.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
And Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
First of all, it's probably gonna put me further ahead, right, but.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Like if Tennessee wins, it doesn't put you further ahead.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Hundred dogs, Maria, I know, I know, but they might win.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Yeah, and we have Purdue. We have one victor over Nate.
So far, we had Purdue as a pick and Nate
did not.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Okay, what I have at a Colorado State? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
So how is a tournament going? I would say it's
a good tournament if you're betting on all the favorites
to win, right, you know, you have all the sixteen
teams left in the men's tournament are from major conferences. Right,
(21:15):
you have I think one double digit seed. You have
all the one seeds intact, all but one of the
two seeds intact. So and I read the article before
nand saying, hey, we have more and more upsets than
say tournament it's gradual, but it's happening this year. This
year we did not. We had lots of chalk. As
we defind the term lost swee, which means that like
you know, the one seeds go forward, the favorites.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Win, except there were some upsets in the earlier rounds, right.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Which is that is that some of the more like
the Colorado sticking they were like the lower seed who
they'd beat, but like they were actually a favorite in
our in our model, right, Like there were no you know,
Saint John's lost to Arkansas, which was I believe it
a ten seed, and you know, Saint John's kind of
was a foul trouble. They benched their best player and
kind of otherwise played like crap, right, but you know,
but you know Arkansas had one beating a pretty a
(21:58):
Kansas team, right, It wasn't like a yeah, very and
that's the biggest episode of the events so far. But
there have been like at most eighty twenty upsets, none
of the ninety five to five variety that are are
quite fun, right, And so like, you know, how do
you evaluate that from like a bracket standpoint. On the
one hand, if people are going to like the silver
built in model and picking the favorites, are probably pretty happy,
(22:19):
right if you're doing something we're trying to like calibrate
relative to the odds of an upset, like you know,
full disclosure. I do make bets on these games, right,
and yeah, in general I was betting more underdogs than favorites.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Why is that name?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
So I think our our model, I think thought that,
like there's more parody in college basketball to a degree
that like maybe other systems aren't accounting for. So this
trend toward parody has reversed itself. Whether that's a small
sample sized thing or I mean, there are things that
are changing. So in college now there are nil deals,
(23:02):
which I believe standsford name, image and likeness, and so
now maybe there's more incentive to go to like a
big program like a Duke or a Kentucky, where I
mean all those big programs already had that advantage, right,
but maybe that could be changing things. Maybe some I mean,
Duke is clearly a very strong team. Maybe the one
seeds are particularly particularly good this year, you know, some
(23:26):
of the more plucky teams like Gonzaga is a minor
excuse me, a mid major team that our model thought
was like super underrated, but we're an eight C, which
means you faced the one seed. I believe it was
Houston in the around of thirty two, and like, so
you know, the teams that we thought had good potential
to overperform or in disadvantageous positions where they faced other
(23:48):
very good teams. Right, So that's part of it too.
The women's side, I mean, this is kind of how
it goes, right. I mean, there are in any given year,
you know, between like one to five or six women's
programs that are just like so much better than the rest, right,
the programs where men's college basketball is treated as like,
(24:11):
you know, co equal to to the men's program. Right,
that's not everywhere. It might be a dozen to two
dozen schools and a game in a year. A few
of those are really good, but like it's it's it's
you know, a lot of colleges are not aspiring to
treat women's basketball is like a revenue sport, as it's called,
(24:32):
whereas ones that are can do quite well. Right, But
there's you know, gigantic gaps. And if you look at
women's college basketball tenants and a gigantic gaps from some
team selling sixteen thousand seats a game to some literally
sell one hundred seats a game, right, and so and
so you see that, you see that lack of parody
play itself out.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, no, that all makes that all makes sense. And
in full disclosure, I have not watched any of the
women's games, and.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You watch the guys.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I've watched some of the guys, yes, because we had
a bracket.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
How many hours over under.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
An probably around two hours total, two hours more than
I would normally have watched. I'm baby steps, Nate, baby steps,
baby steps, I'm you know, I'm getting there. I was
really rooting for Illinois. I really wanted them to win
because they were one of my one of my Videosyncratic
(25:25):
picks your Rackett. No, I still haven't. I haven't. I
haven't bet any money on this. Yeah, but that was
you know, I wanted to have a free and clear
consultation with Monty. I did not want to use any
of his uh you know, any of his insights to
actually make money, although I think we would have lost money. Well,
(25:47):
I don't know, it depends on how the bets went.
But no, I've never been on sports. You know. I
actually feel like I don't like for me, it's not
it's not fun, you know, just like I don't I
don't play table.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Just watched two hours more of because but yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's a fun bracket, but I don't have money on it.
You know, it's just a sweat I you know, it's
like a you're kind of a pure I.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Want my team to I'll give you a little free bets.
Sometimes the first one's on me.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Gateway drug, Gateway drug. But no, I mean, in all honesty,
you know, I have zero edge in sports betting. I
wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to engage in
an activity that I felt I had no edge. And
you have models like you actually have an edge, right,
Like you're one of the sports betting is hard, and
you're one of the well you're one of the few
people who actually.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
The tournament last year and then this year. I'm down
a little bit cheer before that, I was up a
little bit, like it's but you know, look, if you
go so now, listen, you're I've lost more of the
women than I've made on the men's right. But if
you go through and say, okay, so so far are
the bets I've made, I'm down four percent? Right, ROI
what is the house's cut? Four percent? Right? So if
(27:02):
you haven't a year where you're winning someone losing someone
going fifty to fifty then that four percent gets straying
from your bank roll over and over again. And I
do think that probably you know I'm gonna but also
you know, but also you run in a shit like
where you're I'm restricted to kind of like two and
a half sights. As I complained about last week, some
of them don't take very much money on women's games.
I guess it's to my benefit this year's and so
(27:24):
the women's picks haven't been going great, but yeah, they're
much more they're much more cautious about about that.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, So it's so it's increasingly more difficult to make money,
even if you do have an.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Inch you have to, like I mean, it's kind of
like the one thing about the tournament is like if
you were really dedicated like college basketball, it's kind of
like this short season but like yeah, basically, like, first
of all, the more serious experiment I did was like
trying to seriously bit the NBA for the book twenty
three season. This is probably like two hours a day
of work for seven I mean, that was real effort, right,
(27:58):
and that I was basically break even, right, which is
better than ninety nine percent of people, but like, and
that's break even so it's like, okay, if I want
to And by the way, at the start of that,
I have nine looks like a bet on New York
Im the end I have two and a half, right,
and so like so you know, first of all, to
make money, I'd have to like ad to vote more
than two hours a day, which is you know, my
(28:20):
time is valuable, it's real time. And then spend even
more time figuring out like okay, which friends can I
ask find a way get money down with or you know,
it's not like these like betting sites take appeals necessarily, right,
you know, maybe you can get some hamo fish, so
give me back. But like so it's like it's like
(28:40):
quite hard to make a living. You have to like
be kind of I don't know, I mean there's different
you can kind of capitalize it, right, Like you're a
smart guy who can get down money and you find
people who build a model for you and you can
do things like that a little bit. But like it's
not an easy way to It's like bookern noway, it's
not an easy way to make a living.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
No, absolutely not. Well I hope that uh this week,
I hope you do well financially and I hope I
do well in our bracket bets. So even though I
hate saying go Duke, go Duke, you you've put me
in this position. You have forced me. I know you
have forced me in the go Duke and go Tennessee position.
(29:16):
You don't mind the Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
You know they got a nice I like that orange.
I like that orange color.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
On that note, show to tell.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Me for our our landing pages, for the tournament stuff
we have, like this thing we have to like manually
enter the team, some very sensitive like which shade of orange,
the burnt orange kind of Texas. By the way, it's
a night I like the orange shade.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Nice. So you have so you have used all your
Crayola colors from childhood? You know know what a burnt
sienna and all the others. You know exactly what they
look like. Yeah, do you do you remember those Crayola colors.
I have some of those colors just etched into my
mind because they were such cool colors. Relian was my favorite.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Is it like a blue?
Speaker 1 (30:05):
It's a blue, but it just sounds so cool. Soulian.
How cool is that word?
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I like it?
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah, and I'd never heard it before, right, So I
just it really appealed to my writer's sensibility. What was
your favorite?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I mean, I like the red orange feels like a
Nate color.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Right that was burnt Sana yea, yeah that was more brownie.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I like you by the advance and there's like a
separate red orange and orange red.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
That's true, that's true. Yeah, this is this is fun.
A lot of a lot of kids were shaped by
by Crayola colors. Guys, this will be a future episode.
For now, let's let's talk about.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Like the didn't have the white crayon, but the white
crayon doesn't really.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It doesn't do much. Yeah, there was a white one.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Discontinue, Hey, Crayola advice, discontinue the white crayon. It's at
best of placebos Well, I guess.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
On black paper. You can do it on black paper.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, alright, Crayole, please please take our advice account. Maybe maybe,
maybe it's better than who knows.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
You just have nine planets eight.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
A lot of things have changed since we went to school.
Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll
talk more about the women's side of things and that
pesky eligibility rule. Last week, Nate, I learned something totally
(31:34):
crazy from you. You just casually mentioned that women were
not eligible for the WNBA until they were twenty two
years old. That's just like totally bad shit. Let's talk
about this a little bit more. This is something that
is not true of men. And why in the world
(31:55):
does this exist? Why is it a thing?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
So let me theorize, right when Caitlin Clark is probably
going to offend people are sensitive out their women's basketball topics,
I will say, right, people who are longtime women's basketball fans.
And by the way, we been running women's models dating
back the five thirty eight days for ten years now.
It's something we've always taken seriously, right, you know, Okay,
(32:23):
I'm going to make some broadstroke generalizations. Right, until fairly recently,
the WNBA was not a very popular product and not
making a lot of money. It did have a loyal
fan base, and like the quality of the product is good.
Certainly these players are spectacular players, right, But you know
(32:48):
the reason why all these people were, like you know,
Britney Griner who was detained in Russia, Right, it's because
there was more money there than they were making from
from the American sport where they might get paid. I
mean it's kind of crazy, right, you talk about some
of the best athletes in the world and they're like
getting paid like, you know nothing, Yeah, some intern salary
(33:11):
basically right. By the way, most sports leagues have like
a rookie scale cap, right, where like you kind of
are are restricted in your free agent negotiating power for
some number of years. I don't know off handwo is
you know in baseball it's six years of professional servitude,
right or service time is how it's used. So there
is a lot of like protection. So their combination thing, well,
(33:35):
there's like there's protection of like the existing classes, right.
Labor unions in sports tend to bargain in ways that
fuck over young players and protect the veterans, which in
some ways is like and I'm you know, generally whatever,
I think. I'm a free country. People should form menions
if they want to think they've done benefited people in
(33:57):
some cases and maybe not in others. Right, I'm just
saying empirically, in sports, what happens is they tend to
protect the veterans, the aging stars, whereas they deny younger
players the right to have full bargaining power. Right, Younger
players are subject to a draft, and then they in
most sports, do not make their market salaries or particularly
(34:18):
close to it until they're several years in. Right, they
might say that, uh, well, we're actually doing a player
a service by developing him. It is true that like
a bad a young player in the nw and the
NBA is like is pretty bad. Right, So on, so
on one hand, you have like a restriction of supply
problem which is formulated by you know, you know, unions
(34:42):
that maybe don't care as much about these younger players.
And also, like from the league standpoint, they're probably kind
of indifferent toward this. Because one thing I've learned having
built basketball protection systems, and I haven't done it well,
have done the team ratings for women. I have done
player ratings for women. Right, in general, if you're a
nineteen year old twenty year old playing in the NBA,
(35:03):
you're pretty bad, right. I imagine the same is true
for the WNBA, And generally speaking, from age eighteen to
twenty two is when you do a lot of your
physical maturation when you become an adult. In other ways too,
maybe it's a little bit different. For do women hit
puberty earlier than they do. Maybe it's a little bit different, right.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
It is, so everything you're saying though, should apply to
men and women, right in terms of the unions protecting
older players all of that.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
So one thing, they're probably a few players who you know,
if you're making whatever, like sixty thousand dollars a year
in the wa and maybe maybe you run an ad
and local subway chain or something. Right, So on the
one hand, like then maybe the college experience is better
if you're playing it like a South Carolina or a
Yukon or an Iowa or a usc you know, maybe
the college experience is actually better. It's it's probably also
(35:52):
like less demand for your services, right, But yeah, I'm
surprised there hasn't been more.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, because that seems like that seems like a very
paternalistic argument, right, like let them have the choice, Like,
if the college experience is better, then let them stay
in college. But let them also have the same choice
as their male counterparts, which is to leave early. Now,
one of the things that I heard when I, you know,
started researching this a little bit is that speaking about paternalism,
(36:25):
that there was an argument made that you know, women
need the degree more than men do. So force them
basically to finish college because they will thank you for
it later, because they'll, you know, they'll be lucky that
they have an alternate career to fall back on, because
this isn't this is probably not going to work out.
(36:46):
And look, I understand that that like technically might be
might be the case, but I once again, you know,
I think that there should be you should be able
to make that choice. So one of my closest friends
was a professional dancer, right, a professional athlete, didn't go
to college, right, didn't finish college and danced full time.
(37:07):
You know, you know her as well, ended up after
you know, finishing her dance career, going to Columbia and
finishing a degree, writing a novel and becoming you know,
an incredibly successful entrepreneur, jewelry designer, all these wonderful things.
But she did that afterwards because she never went to
college because she was a professional athlete. So it's not like,
(37:30):
if you you know, leave at the age of nineteen
or twenty to go play basketball, oh my god, you
can never finish college. Right. I think a lot most
colleges would be thrilled to have a professional athlete come
back to finish their degree, because that's you know, it's
not like you're closing off that option, you're not precluding it.
And I think that you know, so that argument is
(37:51):
not doesn't suffice. And so it does seem like there
are these vested interests, as there often are when there's
something so crazy, right, when there's something that doesn't make sense,
usually it's because there are some old, vested interests that
don't want it to change. And so what you were
saying about unions about protecting older players, about kind of
enshrining that that to me kind of makes more sense
(38:11):
than oh, we're doing this for the good of the players,
because that seems like a disingenuous argument at best.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
No, look, I mean you have you know, the other
risk is that you get some if you you know,
talk to college basketball players men, they'll sit now I'm
talking to them personally. If you read interviews with them, right,
they're like, look, I can't take the chance that I
get like injured, right and therefore have no career at all.
You know, USC's best player just tore her acl in
(38:40):
there around thirty two win last night, right, and you
know this is a long recovery and like if you
have that happen after you sign your kind of like
rookie contract, then like that gives you more protection, right.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yeah, so in some ways it's better if.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
You can, like goodn to play professionally, and the professional
league and the NCAA are kind of like, I mean,
I guess it's not really the NCAA's fault, right, but
the league is supposed to represent women's basketball, is kind
of denying you a professional existence. I mean, it's kind
of fucked up, right, Somebody should sue. Somebody sue the NBA.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, somebody should sue.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah, no, it is un American.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Well no, it actually it is kind of fucked up
that you are just unilaterally denied the opportunity to do this,
and you know you you should have you should have
the choice. You should be able to make a living
however you want. And these days we have so many
people arguing that, oh, well, college degrees aren't even what
they used to be. You don't even need one, you know,
(39:41):
Peter Tiele paying people money not to go to college.
And yet here we are right that finish your college
degree before you can play basketball professionally. I mean, it
just it makes absolutely zero sense.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Yeah, if you're good enough to be, uh, you know
the WNBA, right, one of the one hundred and two
hundred best players in the world, And like, yeah, I
mean that's more viable than a college degree. Absolutely it is.
It's more unique, and like you build life skills, and
absolutely it is, and we build.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
And you can always and you can always go back
and ghetto college degree later if you want, and then
you'll be a former WNBA with a college degree. Right.
I think that's the kind of experience that you can't duplicate,
whereas a college degree is actually quite easy to duplicate
in a lot of different ways. So yes, let's I
think that you and I agree on this. WNBA, get
your shit together. This is not a good rule.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
All right.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Well, let's see what happens next week. I don't think
the WNBA rules will change, but maybe maybe I will
be redeemed in our bracket competition. And if not, Nate,
I'm going to have a survey of best burgers in
both New York and Vegas, depending on where we are,
and then we can pick a fun dinner whoever wants.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Risky business is hosted by me, Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And Me Maria Kannakovin.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel carter or A. Social
producer is Gabriel hunter Chen. Sally Helm is our editor.
Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
If you want to listen to an ad free version,
sign up for Pushkin Plus. For six ninety nine a month,
you get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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