May 16, 2024 • 39 mins
Welcome to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
Today, Maria has lessons from a poker tournament she recently played in Monte Carlo, where she made it to the final table. Then, Nate discusses what RFK Jr.’s impressive polling numbers could mean for Biden and Trump. And Nate and Maria discuss Caitlin Clark and what her story tells us – or doesn’t – about the gender pay gap.
Further Reading:
The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova
On The Edge by Nate Silver (forthcoming)
"RFK Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain" (NYT)
"What the conversation about Caitlin Clark’s pay gets wrong" (CNN)
For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters.
The Leap from Maria Konnikova
Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Nate Silver. Welcome to Risky Business.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
A show about making better decisions. This is our first
episode of the show, so I want to give you
a little taste of the types of topics you can
expect from us going forward. So we'll obviously be talking
about politics and the elections since this is a major
election year. We'll be talking about poker, We'll be talking
about the news, and of course we're going to be
(00:48):
talking about personal decisions. Right, how do you take this
framework and make decisions in our day.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
To day lives conveniently almost as that we've planned this
in advance. Our first show will cover all three of
these areas. We'll have reflect with Maria on our recent
poker success she had. We'll do a segment on RFK
Junior and his effect on the presidential election, and we'll
talk about Caitlin Clark and the economics of the pay
gap and the WNBA.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So, Nate, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So, Maria, was it last week? It's all kind of
blurring together, but I think last week we were making
the official Twitter slash social media announcement about Risky Business,
the podcast and you were absent from that cluster of
information we wanted to spit out because you were at
the final table of a poker tournament. Good excuse, I
guess tell us more about that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Absolutely. So I was at EPT Monte Carlo, which is
one of the flagship stops of the European Poker Tour,
which is a Poker Stars event, and I was playing
in the one euro side event and it was going
pretty well. So at the time that I saw your
emails and all of these announcements going back and forth,
(02:06):
I was actually in the middle of a redraw for
the final table and we were finally down to nine players.
So I had, you know, a few brief moments to
check my email when I saw of this and had
to respond to you guys that. Unfortunately, I was going
to have to be focused and not actually be paying
attention to any social media announcements because final table is
(02:28):
a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
How much were you playing for?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So first place was, and this is all in euros,
was eighty three thousand, one hundred and eighty euros, so
that's almost ninety thousand dollars and ninth yeah, not bad.
And then ninth place, which would be you know you're
the first one out at the final table was eight
nine hundred euros, so that's just over nine thousand dollars.
So that's a pretty big difference.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's why you weren't answering your emails.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That is why I was not answering your egail.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You can be bought off for that is correct.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Date, I had to be very much paying attention.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, I think people in poker and neglect the importance
so focused sometimes because it's such a there's a lot
of noise, right, I mean it's in any given final table,
it's kind of mostly luck. But like if you go
jogging or running right and you're really hungover, you notice
the effect on your time, Right, there's no noise there
in the data in poker, you don't, But like, tell
(03:23):
me more about the importance of focus of shutting out distractions,
especially in a high stakes moment like this.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, I mean I think that you really really need
to be fully present because normally during a poker tournament, right,
this tournament started with around six hundred players. I don't
remember if it was a few fewer than that or
a few more, but around six hundred, right, So at
that point you're sitting at a full table, and I'm
not going to say you can phone it in, but
you don't have to always give it one hundred percent
(03:52):
of your focus, because a lot of poker is actually
pretty boring, right. You don't play a lot of hands,
you have to fold a lot, you get a lot
of shitty hands, and you don't actually want to be
tempted to play those. So a lot of the time
you have down time. And of course I'd love to
say that I'm one of those players with laser focus
who never has my phone at the table, who is
always one hundred percent present, but that is simply not true.
(04:14):
I mean, I would be just absolutely lying if I
said that, And I think it's just very difficult for
the human brain to do that. I've actually written a lot.
My first book was about mindfulness and presence and focus
and the importance of that and decision making. And one
of the things you find is that's incredibly, incredibly taxing
for the brain because the brain in its default state wanders,
(04:34):
and so it takes a lot of effort to focus,
and so you have to save that effort for the
moments when it really matters. And the final table is
one of those moments because you're playing for really high
stakes and all of a sudden, every single pay jump matters.
It matters if I'm out in ninth place versus eighth place,
(04:56):
versus seventh, versus six. And just to add to the
drama of this particular final table, I had had a really,
really shitty series up to that point, and I knew
that in order to kind of dig myself out from
the hole that I was in financially, I needed to
place third or better. That was the only way that
I would make money on this tournament, and damned if
I was going to let anything distract me from doing that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
One thing, too, is you kind of can't even like
fake the focus part. There's a long discussion about this
in my forthcoming book On the Edge. We're actually talked
about an experience we had playing together Maria in the
Bahamas where we were playing the twenty five k PSPC
first time I played a twenty five thousand dollars tournament,
and like, I was just really wired more than I
(05:40):
wanted to be. You know, you're feeling your heart rate
escalate a little bit, and when you're at a final table,
then you are just inherently more in the zone, more
alert that can be tuned too high. Sometimes. Part of
the benefit of experience playing poker is that you know
how to deal with that extra awareness and stress that
you have. But you can't fake being interested on day
(06:03):
one of some tiny buy in event two hundred blinds deep, right,
but look, did you have any cool hands that you played?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I did have one, specific, one very cool hand, which
really I think illustrates a lot of the principles of
a final table. So I came into the final table
as one of the shorter stacks, so there were a
lot of people who had more chips than I do.
And let's say, for a second just kind of do
(06:33):
a little asterisk and talk about how that changes when
you're kind of at the beginning stages of a tournament
versus the final table. So, because as I mentioned before,
there are these huge pay jumps, and you know, the
monetary value really shifts depending on which place you get.
Your chips are no longer worth what just what they
(06:54):
say they are, and the ranges meaning the hands that
you play change, how aggressive you want to be changes,
and your strategy really really changes depending on whether you're
a short stack, a middle stack, or a chip leader, right,
whether you have a ton of chips. And the cool
thing about my situation when I was the short stack
(07:16):
is like I'm in last place anyway, so I can
take risks and I can actually put a lot of
pressure on other people because I still have enough chips
that I can really really put a dent in what
they're doing. So at this stage of the tournament, I
think there were eight of us left and I started
the hand with I think seventeen big blinds. Big blinds
(07:37):
are kind of those fource bets that you have to
make blind to get some action going. So the number
of biglindes is just a good way to gauge how
long you can go right without without playing a hand
and how long you can survive. So I was in
first position, first to act, and I had ace king,
which is a really strong hand.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So you're in here's a test through which are our
audience members know about poker? You're in first position. That
must be really good. You always want to be first.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
What an interesting question, Nate. That is actually it's the
polar opposite. So in poker and in decision making in general,
this is actually a really really crucial point position, really
really matters, and you actually want to be the last
person to act. You want to be the last person
to make the decision, which means you're in position. If
(08:26):
you're in position, that means you get to see all
the information beforehand and then you get to act. If
you're out of position, that means that you have to
go first, right, you choose what to do, but then
all these other people see that and they have more
information and they get to make a decision after you.
So if you think about away from the poker table,
like if you're in a salary negotiation, you do not
want to throw out the first number.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Say you're negotiating terms for a new podcast about decision making.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Exactly, you want the other person to make the first offer,
right because you do not want to accidentally low ball
yourself or you know, you just you just want to
know what the other person is thinking and then be
able to respond to that. And so the positional advantages
in poker are huge. So when you're in an early position,
right when you're acting first, you have to actually be
(09:14):
much more selective with the hand you play, and you
have to be much more cautious because so many things
can still happen. And I say this over and over,
whether it's in poker or in decision making, because we're
always playing games of incomplete information. Right, information is key.
Information is power. The person with the most information has
the edge, and so you want the edge and acting
(09:37):
first ate it. So in this particular case, though, I
have an amazing hand, so I'm going to open it.
So that's what I do. And then two people who
are acting after me decide that they're going to call,
and they're both going to have position on me in
the hand, So middle position calls and the button calls,
and then the blinds fold. So what this means is
that the only other two people in the hand are
(09:58):
actually going to be deciding after me. And it's three ways,
so that means that there's three of us, which means
multi way, which is much more difficult to play. All right,
So here we are ace King. Two people call and
we get a flop, which is the first three community
cards that everyone can see, and they are a Queen,
a ten, and an eight and rainbow, and rainbow means
(10:20):
that there are three different suits, so no possibility of
a flush drawn.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
None of the cards match your cards, Maria.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That is bad Nate. So I decide to check, which
is always a really really good decision when there are
lots of people acting after you. And what checking means
is I just say I'm not going to act now.
I check to you, and you can do what you
want to do. And so I check, and the middle
position player decides to bet, and he bets pretty big.
(10:49):
He bets four big lines and the button. So the
other player in the hand calls, and so here I am.
And at this point we have nine big lines in
the pot right starting to start the hand, plus the
eight that just went in, So that is so right,
(11:10):
that's that's my stack because I had bet two before
the before the flow. So basically this is huge. And
what do I do right? If I call, there are
still two people behind me, and it's a really huge
chunk of what I have left, and I'm going to
be in a really bad position if I don't improve.
And so I decide to run a big bluff or
(11:32):
semi bluff because I could improve, and I decide to
shove all my chips in the middle. I go all in.
And that's a very risky play because if either one
of them has anything and calls me, I'm out of
the tournament. They both have more chips than I do.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Or you make your or you hit your jack or
I hit my jack. Right, we call it a semi
bluff because there are some ways. You know, the jack
always makes you the best hand. You can sometimes hit
two kings in a row. Occasionally one acer king makes
you the best hand. Yep, So you have some equity
in the podos I do.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I do have some equity, and I also have some
fold equity, meaning I still have enough chips that my
shove puts a lot of pressure on them. Right, So
it's not like I'm shoving for four big blinds, which
is what they already bet right, I'm shoving for a
substantial amount more and the middle position player just folds instantly,
which I was kind of relying on. So at a
(12:28):
final table, especially, you will have been playing with these
players for a long time several days in this case,
and so you get to know their tendencies and how
they play a lot more, and so you can make
decisions that are much more fine tuned to these specific players.
And so I knew that this middle position player was
(12:49):
a recreational player who didn't really know what he was
doing I'm sorry, and also really loved love to bet
whenever anyone checked to him, like, I don't think he
passed a single spot to bet, and he would just
bet very random amount, so I was pretty sure he
had nothing. And the person who was on the button
was actually an old pro and he was someone who
(13:12):
I'd been playing with for a while, and I knew
he was very solid, good and very very capable of
making big folds, which is crucial because after he calls
with me to act behind, he has a good hand, right,
he doesn't have just air, and so I need to
be sure that this is a player who is capable
of folding, because some players aren't. And so he starts tanking.
(13:34):
And when someone goes into the tank that means they're thinking,
and he is tanking and tanking and tanking, and the
longer they tank, the likelihood that they're gonna call you
goes up, right, So the longer he thinks here, I
am sitting thinking, okay, well I guess I'm out of
the tournament. And then finally he shows a queen and
(13:55):
he folds his hand, so he folds top pair and
I basically double my chips without any showdown whatsoever. And
that was an absolutely crucial hand in the tournament because
it gave me breathing room and it enabled me to
make it to second place, which is what I eventually got.
(14:17):
How much money Maria fifty two thousand euros.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Which is Zero's good? Now there's like one point one. Yeah,
it's it's like.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Fifty six thousand something like that. Not as good as
it would have been last year, but still pretty good.
So one of the things that has been in the
(14:44):
news lately and has really gotten me a little bit scared,
to be perfectly honest, well, actually scared shitless would be
a more precise technical term for how I'm feeling about
it is how close this presidential election is, and the
fact that with how close it is, we have suddenly
(15:08):
these third part party candidates, and specifically I'm thinking about
RFK Junior, who is actually pulling ridiculously well for a
third party candidate, and makes me incredibly worried that there's
a chance that you know, this person who has a
brainworm or had a brain worm, I guess it's still
(15:30):
in his brain so that he and his running mate
the worm, who do not believe in a lot of
things that are science based and who are members of
the Kennedy family, that the two of them have a
real chance of making a difference in states where the
elections are close.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Marie, can you please, yeah, pers I need to interrogate you.
What state are you from?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I'm from Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Do you understand Americans the other four nine states don't
give a fuck about the Kennedies and don't understand the
entire Kennedy thing.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
No, Nate, I disagree. I disagree. I think the Kennedy
thing is a huge thing, and it is a very
big but yes, point taken.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Okay, let me give two other kind of points of
context for the listeners, one of which is kind of
like a meta abstract point. Right, Maria, you planned to
vote for Joe Biden? Is that right? Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And we're doing shows on politics. I think Maria is
not going to make any hidden attempt to pretend that
she's not a you know, don't know if you're a
Democrat or not, but you're going to vote for Joe Biden.
And I plan to vote for Joe Biden too. For
what it's worth, however, I am not in these politics.
I've been's going to make as many assumptions about what
(16:44):
our audience necessarily thinks. Right. I hope we do have
some Kennedy listeners and some Trump listeners whatever else. You're
welcome to listen no matter what. But Maria is kind
of going to be playing more of a partisan hat role,
and I'll have more of a non partisan hat. So,
and the second kind of assumption here is, I think
you're assuming that Candy will draw more from Biden than
from Trump, when I'm not so sure that's true. So
(17:07):
in polls, Kennedy overall is at ten point two percent
of the vote according to the five thirty eight average,
which is the highest share of anybody since Ross Peruro
in nineteen ninety six. If he wants up realizing that, well,
debate in a moment how the numbers are more elected
than not to fade. But ten percent is a serious
chunk of the electorate. However, I mean, as you mentioned,
(17:29):
Maria RFK Junior is not some liberal, progressive, pro science
democrat with one of those yard signs we believe in
xyz in front of in front of their house. He
has some beliefs that the scientific consensus would not endorse
about things like vaccines. For example, he is not to
Biden's left on issues like abortion or Israel Palestine. He's
(17:51):
to the right, although sometimes inconsistent in what he says,
although at times he's been kind of linked with a
libertarian nomination. Has kind of views all over the place
on economic issues, a little hard to play, So he
kind of seems to me like an anti establishment. You
can say this nicely or not too nicely. Heterodox is
a nice way to say it. Maybe kind of low
(18:14):
information mix is a not so nice way to say it.
Right to me, that reads like it's coming from the
Trump pile as much as the Biden pile. And then
the polls is all over the place. There are some
polls where Candy draws more support from Trump, similar he
draws more support from Biden. You could say examples, but
(18:34):
you can have you can you know, every which way
potentially in terms of the effect on November. By the way,
there's also Cornell West and Jill Stein who are definitely
running to Biden's left and are I think purely harmful
to Biden. But I think look, if I'm Joe Biden,
I have a lot of concerns right now, including the
fact that I'm eighty one years old, the fact that
(18:55):
you know, voters are still concerned about inflation, the fact
that you have kind of a lot of pushback against
the left. Now, I'm not sure if RFK Juniors had
my top five concerns at the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So then, but in it all, that's at least right now,
so close, right, So many polls have them just neck
and neck, fifty to fifty more or less. Some have
you know, Trump ahead, some have Biden ahead. You know,
it depends on the state. But when we're talking about
states that actually matter, So Nate, you vote in New York,
and I voted in Massachusetts. Then I voted in New York.
(19:30):
But now I actually get to vote in Nevada, which
is a purple state and a state that is actually
a swing state. So my vote finally matters. It actually
matters who I am voting for. And in places like Michigan,
you know, votes definitely matter. So in those cases, right
in those states where every single vote is actually crucially important,
(19:50):
do we think that collectively third party candidates, including RFK Junior,
are going to be in a position where they actually
might swing the outcome of the election.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So historically, third party candidates get less of the vote
in swing states because voters, even before a podcast Maria,
some voters were rational. They would understand that, like, if
you're running in New York and you want to send
a message to Biden and Democrats or the two party
system by lending a vote to a third party, it's
(20:21):
not going to actually affect the outcome in the election.
If you're in Pennsylvania or Arizona or Nevada, Georgia, Michigan,
then it might. And I think people like actually are
are relatively rational about that. We've had in the last
two elections what I call tipping point states, a fancy
term for the states that make the differen between who
gets two hundred and seventy electoral votes and not came
(20:42):
down to a percentage point or so. So yeah, in theory,
if you have a guy taking ten percent or let's say,
because by the way, it usually does go down. Because
right now, people kind of use RFK as like a
free parking space for deciding what we'll do later to
demonstrate their lack of satisfaction with these two very old
men who are running again in a rematch. A lot
(21:02):
of Americans do not want. Although Canny himself was I
think over seventy years old.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
He is, and he had a warm parasite the brain
who ate part of his brain.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, I mean, you know, look, I'm not sure what
it told people that personally, if I if I have brainworms,
I'm not going to do a brainworm segment on this.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
He didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
He didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It came up because he used it during a divorce trial,
where let's just say so, I have a background in
con artists. My second book was about con artists the
confidence game, and con artists are known for telling people
what they want to hear or what's strategically good in
that particular moment, which has a high overlap with politicians
in general. But during his divorce proceedings, RFK Junior was
(21:42):
trying to argue that his cognitive capacity was greatly diminished
and so his future earnings potential was a lot lower,
so he had to pay less money during the divorce
and would have to pay a lower settlement. So this
was a matter of record, and journalists dug it up.
And now of course he's saying, oh no, no, no,
cognitive capacity not diminished at all. What are you talking about.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
We don't think he was lying in the divorce anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
He was lying in one of the two.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The point is, if you had to project historically, so
for example, Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, was polling at
maybe around ten percent now or eight percent of remembering
this offhand, and got more like five percent. Russfrow bounced
around a lot in nineteen ninety two. He was at
one point leading in the polls believed it or not,
and then dropped out and then rejoined the race. God,
(22:30):
I'm going off memory here, nineteen percent or something like that.
So if you had to project where Candy will wind up,
you've probably take an over under of like seven points
and not ten. Right with that said, look, seven points
will almost certainly be bigger than the margin of difference
between Biden and Trump in a state like Michigan, for example,
So if Kennedy were to take most of that vote
(22:51):
from one side, that would be a problem for whoever
lost those voters. But again, I think it might wind
up being fairly even. And if the Biden campaign knows
what's doing. I mean, you've seen actually Trump advisors begin
to express more reservations about rfkus right as people learn
more about him, they learn more about the vaccine stuff,
(23:14):
they learn more about how he's not some typical liberal Kennedy.
He may compete more with the kind of disaffected, sort
of Trump voter archetype instead.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
So just to kind of sum that up, we're not
sure at this point. We're not sure what's going to happen,
but this is put a potential issue. So how you know,
we're getting new polling data all the time. You know,
the New York Times just released a big poll this week.
How should we read the polls? How should we think
about the polls going forward in the months leading up
(23:45):
to the elections? Or should we just ignore them up
to a certain point.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
At like this, if you're a Democrat, I'd be worried
because Biden is losing the Trump right now, I wouldn't
care so much about RFK Junior. It's like not my
first concern. You know, you almost if you're losing Maria
in a poker hand or something. You want more variants,
You want more things that are in the mix. And
right now, if you had an election today, Biden would
probably lose at least in the swing state. So give
me more RFK Junior. Right, the more worried you are
(24:11):
about Biden's position overall, the more you should welcome chaos,
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
All right, So with that I will welcome chaos. Welcome
to the race, RFK and worm and let's see what happens.
And as a Democrat, I hope that I don't need
to hit the panic button quite yet, but I'm ready
to just in case.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Some Maria. A couple of weeks ago, my finance bro
buddy texts me and says, do you want to go
to the New York Liberty game in a couple of weekends?
Right with his is a divorced dad with his young daughter,
And I'm like, sure, you know, I mean, it was
a little surprising in this particular friend of mine, not
to profile too much, wanted women's basketball tickets, but he
(25:08):
has a young daughter who's forty, so it kind of
makes sense, right, And then I learned that it's the
game against the Indiana Fever, which is the team that
drafted Caitlin Clark, the superstar point guard from University of Iowa,
who is maybe the most famous female basketball player in history,
probably more famous than any amateur NCAAA men's player, at
(25:30):
least as of the date of the NCAA tournament, and
I was excited about this and any texts again and says,
by the way, we're in. We're in the bleachers for this.
And the reason why is that, unlike a typical New
York Liberty game, the court side seats for this game
costs tens of the utter made, not tens, but you know,
(25:51):
high four figures worth of prices. The cheapest seats when
I checked yesterday were about one hundred and five dollars
with Ticketmaster fees. So that is actually more than a
typical Brooklyn Nets game, right at least in the post
Kevin Durant era, maybe not as much. Is like a
Knixt game, the Knicks are a very popular in demand
(26:13):
ticket but all of a sudden, women's basketball is when
Caitlin Clark plays, drawing on a par with the NBA.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I mean, that is crazy and quite the phenomenon. Just
to be clear, I know the names of two female
basketball players, Britney Griner for reasons that have nothing to
do with her playing basketball and everything to do with
the political crisis in twenty twenty two right where she
was detained by Russia as a prisoner, and Caitlin Clark,
(26:46):
and all of a sudden whenever something bleeps on my
sports radar. And for people who don't know me, I
am not a sports fan. I do not watch sports.
I have actually never been to a single basketball game
in my life though, name you say you want to?
You want to? Yeah, yeah, so Caitlyn Clark has popped.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, I bet the friend who's buy tickets this game
could also name those exact two women's basketball play and
maybe Sue Bird, maybe one or so other. Right, if
you go, for example, to the next game at Barclay Center,
the Seattle Storm at New York Liberty, I can buy
a good seat for twenty one bucks. So, as of now,
this is very much focused on the particular cultural phenomenon
(27:26):
that is Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah. So obviously this is a huge deal. But then
what I started reading about her, the stories that I encountered,
were all about the contrast between how popular she is, right,
what a huge audience and viewership she draws. And then
we have her starting salary as at WNBA's number one
draft pick, which is going to be seventy six thousand,
(27:51):
five hundred and thirty five dollars. You know, I think
that's crazy given that in the NCAA March Madness Final,
she averaged well. Their game averaged eighteen point seven million
viewers and peaked at twenty four million between ESPN and ABC,
(28:12):
while the men's final averaged fourteen point eight million. Now,
let's compare the salary of seventy six, five hundred and
thirty five dollars to the lowest draft pick in the NBA,
not the WNBA. The last pick in the first round
of the NBA draft gets two million dollars in their
first year. So that is quite the contrast to someone
(28:34):
who has brought in record audiences to the sport. So
there are two things that I want to talk about.
So first of all, a lot of people point out, yeah,
but her salary isn't it right. She's going to get
endorsement deals, She's going to get branding deals, she's going
to get opportunities that most women's basketball players or men's
never get because she's a superstar. I want to talk
a little bit about the superstar effect here. But then
(28:55):
I do want to talk about that gender pay gap
and the fact that we're seeing these absolutely huge differences
between someone who's just a slam dunk top superstar and
what a superstar would be getting in the NBA. So, Nate,
do you have any initial thoughts on that, because I
could start going and it's going to be hard to
(29:17):
shut me up. So I'm going to let you get
an word in Edge West first.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
As an mostly underpentent capitalists most of the time, I
think the issues that the system is not capitalistic enough. Right,
that Caitlin Clark does not have leverage to demand her
marginal revenue product would be the way that an economist
(29:41):
would put it, and that I don't agree. I mean
just because she makes money from endorsement, so I mean, look,
she should also have the right to make money based
on the fact that she's bringing in five or ten
times more ticket revenue than any other player in the
w NBA. Right. One problem is that rookies and almost
every sports league are on a salary scale where they're
(30:03):
basically underpaid. Right. One reason why NBA teams tank, meaning
intentionally trying to lose, is but because you cannot only
get a player like Victor Womanyama for the Spurs. He
was number one pick in the men's league, and the
men's we have saying men's league in the NBA. He's
also paid far less than he's worth, and it has
to do with the dynamics of union bargaining frankly, and
(30:26):
the fact that like established players to some extent, are
screwing over rookies who do not have as much leverage
in the player union. Also, a lot of rookies are bad.
Sometimes rookies are playing for developmental reasons, so they tend
to lack leverage in general, and that carries over to
the WNBA. The other is she though, is that she
is a big outlier as far as her market ability,
(30:48):
even forgetting the rookie thing right, even if she weren't
a rookie, the entire WNBA salary cap is like what
like one point four million dollars I was looking up
a moment ago. The entire salary cap is, yeah, one
point four six three million dollars, which is less than
what a single NBA rookie makes. Now, that's because WNBA
(31:09):
historically has made much less revenue than the NBA. There
are debates about whether it's even profitable or kind of
like a loss leader for the league. But she that
doesn't work for her, right, she should have some special
provision where she probably is gonna make in Marshall revenue
probably ten fifteen, twenty million dollars a year, and she's
(31:31):
being exploited because if she decides she doesn't want to
play or go plays in China or something, which is
where she might ultimately have leverage, that is money out
of the coffers of the Indiana Fever and also visiting
teams like the New York Liberty that are you know,
people are going there to see her. My friend's daughter
will be wearing a Caitlin Clark jersey and not a
New York Liberty jersey. So she's getting screwed over by
(31:54):
by a lack of ability to kind of achieve what
she's really worth.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, I mean that seems to be pretty clear and
something that I didn't realize. So when you're talking about
how you know, the WNBA is a young league, doesn't
make as much money generally as the NBA, so you
know the salaries are lower. But what I didn't realize
was that the NBA players get fifty percent revenue share
that's kind of what goes towards their salary, whereas the
(32:22):
WNBA only get ten percent. So even if we account
for the lower revenue of the WNBA, they're still getting screwed, right,
They're still getting a much smaller percentage of the overall
revenue share than the male players. And this, I think
is something that is general to the league and not
just to Kaitlin Clark, even though obviously we know Caitlyn's
(32:44):
getting now doubly screwed because that superstar effect is not
actually applying to her, right, it is applying to her
in certain endorsement deals, but it's not applying to her
when it just comes to her basic salary. And that
pushes people like her, as you said, and like Brittany
Griner to go play abroad where they might get detained
because there's just no revenue opportunity in the United States.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, I mean, look, women's basketball has not historically had
as much of an audience as men's basketball, particularly not
outside of the US. So in the NBA. The European
leagues are are relatively speaking more competitive, but in general,
there are genetic differences between men and women, and those
manifest themselves and things that are relevant to athletic competition,
(33:30):
like who can jump farthest or run fastest or things
things like that.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna interject here to say that
Kitlyn Clark was the top overall scorer in NCAA history,
which includes men.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
But she's competing against women. I'm not gonna get away. No,
that's that's a good point. I don't fine because she's
competing against women and not men. But for the most
part people, it's kind of socially constructed, Like why do people,
for example, watch college basketball at all? Right, the games
are much much, much worse than the NBA. It's because
people like are not watching for the pure sake of
(34:03):
athletic competition. And I think maybe a lot of mostly
male decision makers underestimated their market ability of women's basketball,
and now there's a big correction, and I think I
think that players should demand their restructuring, like sooner rather
than later. I mean, it may have been appropriate compensation
given what the league's ratings were up until Caitlyn Clark,
(34:24):
and now it's going to be in all likelihood different,
and you know, they should use whatever marketing power they
have to rectify that as soon as possible because now
they are being underpaid.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Absolutely, And you said you said a phrase in there
that I think is absolutely crucial, which is socially constructed, right.
So I do think that a lot of this, a
lot of the compensation, a lot of the historical differences.
And this is not just true of basketball, This is
just now, you know, more broadly speaking, when it comes
to men versus women's gender pay gaps, et cetera, is
(34:56):
a result of generations of socially constructed norms and what
people you know, are doing versus not doing. And so
I think that that's absolutely crucial to remember as we
talk about, you know, moving forward, what is reasonable? What
isn't it reasonable? Because even you know that fifty versus
ten percent revenue share, now they can you know, can
(35:18):
they push for fifty percent?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Because that accounts for that accounts for the fact that
there are differences. They're not saying we need to be
paid as much money as the men. They're saying we
want to proportionally be paid as much money as the men.
And to me, that's absolutely reasonable. And you know, obviously
I'm a woman and I've been on the I've been
on the bottom end of the of the gender pay
(35:42):
gap from you.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, look, when you are charging one hundred bucks for
a cheap seat for a regular season WNBA game in Brooklyn.
That's real money. That really adds up there whatever eighteen
thousand people in that stadium, and Caitlin Clark, you're going
to sell out every arena as long as she remains
healthy and isn't a total flop. That's real money, and
(36:06):
the players who are generating that money deserve more of it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Absolutely, And I think that we need to look more
at that argument as opposed to their gender differences, because
it's incredibly easy to get bogged down in that and
then to start using that as an excuse. So in
my own area, right, I'm a writer, I'm a speaker,
and I happen to know with one hundred percent certainty
(36:30):
because I've actually talked to people about this and compared
that I get paid less for speaking engagements, I get
lower advances, I get paid less a lot of the
time than male counter perhaps who don't have a PhD.
And by the way, I got that fucking PhD so
that I could have those three letters behind my name,
because as a woman, I need that in a way
(36:52):
that men don't. Just like Caitlin Clark to achieve what
she needed to, she has to be a million times
more extraordinary than a man, right, like, that's what you
have to do to get over that. And even still
I have people who say, oh, you don't know what
you're talking about in psychology, and they have an armchair degree, right,
They've never studied psychology at the level that I have,
(37:13):
and yet they say that to me all the time.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Look as the kind of dumb sports pro between the
two of us, Right, I somewhat object to how what
you can map those differences in things like speaking gigs
onto sports where there are more objective measures of performance.
(37:38):
But I think like championing women's sports is like something
that like young women and young men like. Right, the
social norm around that changed fast. I mean I have
heard more conversation about women's basketball from my sports breou
friends in the past six months than I have in
my entire lifetime before that, Right, And so I think
(38:00):
encouraging that behavior, I mean, I think, for example, the
Insane Tournament is a lot more fun. We need these
kind of two tournaments going on together. You can bet,
by the way, on on the women's game. I made
a fair amount of money betting on women's college basketball
this this march. That was that was you know, a
way to get into the sport too for certain people.
But lo, look, I think this is good, and I
think Kate and Clark needs to demand demand that she
(38:24):
is paid for the revenue she generates for the league
because this whole thing wouldn't be happening. Maybe it's not true,
maybe you'd have some other focal point, inflection point, but no,
she should. We should have a whole march on the
NBA offices on Park Avenue. Would have ever be like
pay Kate and Clark more. I agree on that on
that point at least, maybe not for the same reasons,
but like I agree with the conclusion.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
All right, excellent. So we can agree on the conclusion
and we can hope that when we're having this conversation
again on episode one thousand and one of Risky Business,
that we'll be able to look back and say thank
you to Caitlin Clark for being kind of the catalyst
for a revolution in the gender pay gap and how
people compensate women.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
For what they do.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Ki Business is hosted by me Maria.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Kannakova and me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter Our Executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Sarah Bruger,
Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Greta Cohne, Christina Sullivan, Kerrie Brody,
Owen Miller, Farah Daygrunge, Jordan McMillan, and Jake Gorsky. If
(39:37):
you like the show, please rate and review us so
other people can find us too. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Nate Silver. Welcome to Risky Business.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
A show about making better decisions. This is our first
episode of the show, so I want to give you
a little taste of the types of topics you can
expect from us going forward. So we'll obviously be talking
about politics and the elections since this is a major
election year. We'll be talking about poker, We'll be talking
about the news, and of course we're going to be
(00:48):
talking about personal decisions. Right, how do you take this
framework and make decisions in our day.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
To day lives conveniently almost as that we've planned this
in advance. Our first show will cover all three of
these areas. We'll have reflect with Maria on our recent
poker success she had. We'll do a segment on RFK
Junior and his effect on the presidential election, and we'll
talk about Caitlin Clark and the economics of the pay
gap and the WNBA.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So, Nate, let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
So, Maria, was it last week? It's all kind of
blurring together, but I think last week we were making
the official Twitter slash social media announcement about Risky Business,
the podcast and you were absent from that cluster of
information we wanted to spit out because you were at
the final table of a poker tournament. Good excuse, I
guess tell us more about that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Absolutely. So I was at EPT Monte Carlo, which is
one of the flagship stops of the European Poker Tour,
which is a Poker Stars event, and I was playing
in the one euro side event and it was going
pretty well. So at the time that I saw your
emails and all of these announcements going back and forth,
(02:06):
I was actually in the middle of a redraw for
the final table and we were finally down to nine players.
So I had, you know, a few brief moments to
check my email when I saw of this and had
to respond to you guys that. Unfortunately, I was going
to have to be focused and not actually be paying
attention to any social media announcements because final table is
(02:28):
a pretty big deal.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
How much were you playing for?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
So first place was, and this is all in euros,
was eighty three thousand, one hundred and eighty euros, so
that's almost ninety thousand dollars and ninth yeah, not bad.
And then ninth place, which would be you know you're
the first one out at the final table was eight
nine hundred euros, so that's just over nine thousand dollars.
So that's a pretty big difference.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's why you weren't answering your emails.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That is why I was not answering your egail.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
You can be bought off for that is correct.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Date, I had to be very much paying attention.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, I think people in poker and neglect the importance
so focused sometimes because it's such a there's a lot
of noise, right, I mean it's in any given final table,
it's kind of mostly luck. But like if you go
jogging or running right and you're really hungover, you notice
the effect on your time, Right, there's no noise there
in the data in poker, you don't, But like, tell
(03:23):
me more about the importance of focus of shutting out distractions,
especially in a high stakes moment like this.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, I mean I think that you really really need
to be fully present because normally during a poker tournament, right,
this tournament started with around six hundred players. I don't
remember if it was a few fewer than that or
a few more, but around six hundred, right, So at
that point you're sitting at a full table, and I'm
not going to say you can phone it in, but
you don't have to always give it one hundred percent
(03:52):
of your focus, because a lot of poker is actually
pretty boring, right. You don't play a lot of hands,
you have to fold a lot, you get a lot
of shitty hands, and you don't actually want to be
tempted to play those. So a lot of the time
you have down time. And of course I'd love to
say that I'm one of those players with laser focus
who never has my phone at the table, who is
always one hundred percent present, but that is simply not true.
(04:14):
I mean, I would be just absolutely lying if I
said that, And I think it's just very difficult for
the human brain to do that. I've actually written a lot.
My first book was about mindfulness and presence and focus
and the importance of that and decision making. And one
of the things you find is that's incredibly, incredibly taxing
for the brain because the brain in its default state wanders,
(04:34):
and so it takes a lot of effort to focus,
and so you have to save that effort for the
moments when it really matters. And the final table is
one of those moments because you're playing for really high
stakes and all of a sudden, every single pay jump matters.
It matters if I'm out in ninth place versus eighth place,
(04:56):
versus seventh, versus six. And just to add to the
drama of this particular final table, I had had a really,
really shitty series up to that point, and I knew
that in order to kind of dig myself out from
the hole that I was in financially, I needed to
place third or better. That was the only way that
I would make money on this tournament, and damned if
I was going to let anything distract me from doing that.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
One thing, too, is you kind of can't even like
fake the focus part. There's a long discussion about this
in my forthcoming book On the Edge. We're actually talked
about an experience we had playing together Maria in the
Bahamas where we were playing the twenty five k PSPC
first time I played a twenty five thousand dollars tournament,
and like, I was just really wired more than I
(05:40):
wanted to be. You know, you're feeling your heart rate
escalate a little bit, and when you're at a final table,
then you are just inherently more in the zone, more
alert that can be tuned too high. Sometimes. Part of
the benefit of experience playing poker is that you know
how to deal with that extra awareness and stress that
you have. But you can't fake being interested on day
(06:03):
one of some tiny buy in event two hundred blinds deep, right,
but look, did you have any cool hands that you played?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I did have one, specific, one very cool hand, which
really I think illustrates a lot of the principles of
a final table. So I came into the final table
as one of the shorter stacks, so there were a
lot of people who had more chips than I do.
And let's say, for a second just kind of do
(06:33):
a little asterisk and talk about how that changes when
you're kind of at the beginning stages of a tournament
versus the final table. So, because as I mentioned before,
there are these huge pay jumps, and you know, the
monetary value really shifts depending on which place you get.
Your chips are no longer worth what just what they
(06:54):
say they are, and the ranges meaning the hands that
you play change, how aggressive you want to be changes,
and your strategy really really changes depending on whether you're
a short stack, a middle stack, or a chip leader, right,
whether you have a ton of chips. And the cool
thing about my situation when I was the short stack
(07:16):
is like I'm in last place anyway, so I can
take risks and I can actually put a lot of
pressure on other people because I still have enough chips
that I can really really put a dent in what
they're doing. So at this stage of the tournament, I
think there were eight of us left and I started
the hand with I think seventeen big blinds. Big blinds
(07:37):
are kind of those fource bets that you have to
make blind to get some action going. So the number
of biglindes is just a good way to gauge how
long you can go right without without playing a hand
and how long you can survive. So I was in
first position, first to act, and I had ace king,
which is a really strong hand.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So you're in here's a test through which are our
audience members know about poker? You're in first position. That
must be really good. You always want to be first.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
What an interesting question, Nate. That is actually it's the
polar opposite. So in poker and in decision making in general,
this is actually a really really crucial point position, really
really matters, and you actually want to be the last
person to act. You want to be the last person
to make the decision, which means you're in position. If
(08:26):
you're in position, that means you get to see all
the information beforehand and then you get to act. If
you're out of position, that means that you have to
go first, right, you choose what to do, but then
all these other people see that and they have more
information and they get to make a decision after you.
So if you think about away from the poker table,
like if you're in a salary negotiation, you do not
want to throw out the first number.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Say you're negotiating terms for a new podcast about decision making.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Exactly, you want the other person to make the first offer,
right because you do not want to accidentally low ball
yourself or you know, you just you just want to
know what the other person is thinking and then be
able to respond to that. And so the positional advantages
in poker are huge. So when you're in an early position,
right when you're acting first, you have to actually be
(09:14):
much more selective with the hand you play, and you
have to be much more cautious because so many things
can still happen. And I say this over and over,
whether it's in poker or in decision making, because we're
always playing games of incomplete information. Right, information is key.
Information is power. The person with the most information has
the edge, and so you want the edge and acting
(09:37):
first ate it. So in this particular case, though, I
have an amazing hand, so I'm going to open it.
So that's what I do. And then two people who
are acting after me decide that they're going to call,
and they're both going to have position on me in
the hand, So middle position calls and the button calls,
and then the blinds fold. So what this means is
that the only other two people in the hand are
(09:58):
actually going to be deciding after me. And it's three ways,
so that means that there's three of us, which means
multi way, which is much more difficult to play. All right,
So here we are ace King. Two people call and
we get a flop, which is the first three community
cards that everyone can see, and they are a Queen,
a ten, and an eight and rainbow, and rainbow means
(10:20):
that there are three different suits, so no possibility of
a flush drawn.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
None of the cards match your cards, Maria.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That is bad Nate. So I decide to check, which
is always a really really good decision when there are
lots of people acting after you. And what checking means
is I just say I'm not going to act now.
I check to you, and you can do what you
want to do. And so I check, and the middle
position player decides to bet, and he bets pretty big.
(10:49):
He bets four big lines and the button. So the
other player in the hand calls, and so here I am.
And at this point we have nine big lines in
the pot right starting to start the hand, plus the
eight that just went in, So that is so right,
(11:10):
that's that's my stack because I had bet two before
the before the flow. So basically this is huge. And
what do I do right? If I call, there are
still two people behind me, and it's a really huge
chunk of what I have left, and I'm going to
be in a really bad position if I don't improve.
And so I decide to run a big bluff or
(11:32):
semi bluff because I could improve, and I decide to
shove all my chips in the middle. I go all in.
And that's a very risky play because if either one
of them has anything and calls me, I'm out of
the tournament. They both have more chips than I do.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Or you make your or you hit your jack or
I hit my jack. Right, we call it a semi
bluff because there are some ways. You know, the jack
always makes you the best hand. You can sometimes hit
two kings in a row. Occasionally one acer king makes
you the best hand. Yep, So you have some equity
in the podos I do.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I do have some equity, and I also have some
fold equity, meaning I still have enough chips that my
shove puts a lot of pressure on them. Right, So
it's not like I'm shoving for four big blinds, which
is what they already bet right, I'm shoving for a
substantial amount more and the middle position player just folds instantly,
which I was kind of relying on. So at a
(12:28):
final table, especially, you will have been playing with these
players for a long time several days in this case,
and so you get to know their tendencies and how
they play a lot more, and so you can make
decisions that are much more fine tuned to these specific players.
And so I knew that this middle position player was
(12:49):
a recreational player who didn't really know what he was
doing I'm sorry, and also really loved love to bet
whenever anyone checked to him, like, I don't think he
passed a single spot to bet, and he would just
bet very random amount, so I was pretty sure he
had nothing. And the person who was on the button
was actually an old pro and he was someone who
(13:12):
I'd been playing with for a while, and I knew
he was very solid, good and very very capable of
making big folds, which is crucial because after he calls
with me to act behind, he has a good hand, right,
he doesn't have just air, and so I need to
be sure that this is a player who is capable
of folding, because some players aren't. And so he starts tanking.
(13:34):
And when someone goes into the tank that means they're thinking,
and he is tanking and tanking and tanking, and the
longer they tank, the likelihood that they're gonna call you
goes up, right, So the longer he thinks here, I
am sitting thinking, okay, well I guess I'm out of
the tournament. And then finally he shows a queen and
(13:55):
he folds his hand, so he folds top pair and
I basically double my chips without any showdown whatsoever. And
that was an absolutely crucial hand in the tournament because
it gave me breathing room and it enabled me to
make it to second place, which is what I eventually got.
(14:17):
How much money Maria fifty two thousand euros.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Which is Zero's good? Now there's like one point one. Yeah,
it's it's like.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Fifty six thousand something like that. Not as good as
it would have been last year, but still pretty good.
So one of the things that has been in the
(14:44):
news lately and has really gotten me a little bit scared,
to be perfectly honest, well, actually scared shitless would be
a more precise technical term for how I'm feeling about
it is how close this presidential election is, and the
fact that with how close it is, we have suddenly
(15:08):
these third part party candidates, and specifically I'm thinking about
RFK Junior, who is actually pulling ridiculously well for a
third party candidate, and makes me incredibly worried that there's
a chance that you know, this person who has a
brainworm or had a brain worm, I guess it's still
(15:30):
in his brain so that he and his running mate
the worm, who do not believe in a lot of
things that are science based and who are members of
the Kennedy family, that the two of them have a
real chance of making a difference in states where the
elections are close.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Marie, can you please, yeah, pers I need to interrogate you.
What state are you from?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I'm from Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Do you understand Americans the other four nine states don't
give a fuck about the Kennedies and don't understand the
entire Kennedy thing.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
No, Nate, I disagree. I disagree. I think the Kennedy
thing is a huge thing, and it is a very
big but yes, point taken.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Okay, let me give two other kind of points of
context for the listeners, one of which is kind of
like a meta abstract point. Right, Maria, you planned to
vote for Joe Biden? Is that right? Yes?
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
And we're doing shows on politics. I think Maria is
not going to make any hidden attempt to pretend that
she's not a you know, don't know if you're a
Democrat or not, but you're going to vote for Joe Biden.
And I plan to vote for Joe Biden too. For
what it's worth, however, I am not in these politics.
I've been's going to make as many assumptions about what
(16:44):
our audience necessarily thinks. Right. I hope we do have
some Kennedy listeners and some Trump listeners whatever else. You're
welcome to listen no matter what. But Maria is kind
of going to be playing more of a partisan hat role,
and I'll have more of a non partisan hat. So,
and the second kind of assumption here is, I think
you're assuming that Candy will draw more from Biden than
from Trump, when I'm not so sure that's true. So
(17:07):
in polls, Kennedy overall is at ten point two percent
of the vote according to the five thirty eight average,
which is the highest share of anybody since Ross Peruro
in nineteen ninety six. If he wants up realizing that, well,
debate in a moment how the numbers are more elected
than not to fade. But ten percent is a serious
chunk of the electorate. However, I mean, as you mentioned,
(17:29):
Maria RFK Junior is not some liberal, progressive, pro science
democrat with one of those yard signs we believe in
xyz in front of in front of their house. He
has some beliefs that the scientific consensus would not endorse
about things like vaccines. For example, he is not to
Biden's left on issues like abortion or Israel Palestine. He's
(17:51):
to the right, although sometimes inconsistent in what he says,
although at times he's been kind of linked with a
libertarian nomination. Has kind of views all over the place
on economic issues, a little hard to play, So he
kind of seems to me like an anti establishment. You
can say this nicely or not too nicely. Heterodox is
a nice way to say it. Maybe kind of low
(18:14):
information mix is a not so nice way to say it.
Right to me, that reads like it's coming from the
Trump pile as much as the Biden pile. And then
the polls is all over the place. There are some
polls where Candy draws more support from Trump, similar he
draws more support from Biden. You could say examples, but
(18:34):
you can have you can you know, every which way
potentially in terms of the effect on November. By the way,
there's also Cornell West and Jill Stein who are definitely
running to Biden's left and are I think purely harmful
to Biden. But I think look, if I'm Joe Biden,
I have a lot of concerns right now, including the
fact that I'm eighty one years old, the fact that
(18:55):
you know, voters are still concerned about inflation, the fact
that you have kind of a lot of pushback against
the left. Now, I'm not sure if RFK Juniors had
my top five concerns at the moment.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So then, but in it all, that's at least right now,
so close, right, So many polls have them just neck
and neck, fifty to fifty more or less. Some have
you know, Trump ahead, some have Biden ahead. You know,
it depends on the state. But when we're talking about
states that actually matter, So Nate, you vote in New York,
and I voted in Massachusetts. Then I voted in New York.
(19:30):
But now I actually get to vote in Nevada, which
is a purple state and a state that is actually
a swing state. So my vote finally matters. It actually
matters who I am voting for. And in places like Michigan,
you know, votes definitely matter. So in those cases, right
in those states where every single vote is actually crucially important,
(19:50):
do we think that collectively third party candidates, including RFK Junior,
are going to be in a position where they actually
might swing the outcome of the election.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So historically, third party candidates get less of the vote
in swing states because voters, even before a podcast Maria,
some voters were rational. They would understand that, like, if
you're running in New York and you want to send
a message to Biden and Democrats or the two party
system by lending a vote to a third party, it's
(20:21):
not going to actually affect the outcome in the election.
If you're in Pennsylvania or Arizona or Nevada, Georgia, Michigan,
then it might. And I think people like actually are
are relatively rational about that. We've had in the last
two elections what I call tipping point states, a fancy
term for the states that make the differen between who
gets two hundred and seventy electoral votes and not came
(20:42):
down to a percentage point or so. So yeah, in theory,
if you have a guy taking ten percent or let's say,
because by the way, it usually does go down. Because
right now, people kind of use RFK as like a
free parking space for deciding what we'll do later to
demonstrate their lack of satisfaction with these two very old
men who are running again in a rematch. A lot
(21:02):
of Americans do not want. Although Canny himself was I
think over seventy years old.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
He is, and he had a warm parasite the brain
who ate part of his brain.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, I mean, you know, look, I'm not sure what
it told people that personally, if I if I have brainworms,
I'm not going to do a brainworm segment on this.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
He didn't.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
He didn't.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
It came up because he used it during a divorce trial,
where let's just say so, I have a background in
con artists. My second book was about con artists the
confidence game, and con artists are known for telling people
what they want to hear or what's strategically good in
that particular moment, which has a high overlap with politicians
in general. But during his divorce proceedings, RFK Junior was
(21:42):
trying to argue that his cognitive capacity was greatly diminished
and so his future earnings potential was a lot lower,
so he had to pay less money during the divorce
and would have to pay a lower settlement. So this
was a matter of record, and journalists dug it up.
And now of course he's saying, oh no, no, no,
cognitive capacity not diminished at all. What are you talking about.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
We don't think he was lying in the divorce anyway.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
He was lying in one of the two.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
The point is, if you had to project historically, so
for example, Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, was polling at
maybe around ten percent now or eight percent of remembering
this offhand, and got more like five percent. Russfrow bounced
around a lot in nineteen ninety two. He was at
one point leading in the polls believed it or not,
and then dropped out and then rejoined the race. God,
(22:30):
I'm going off memory here, nineteen percent or something like that.
So if you had to project where Candy will wind up,
you've probably take an over under of like seven points
and not ten. Right with that said, look, seven points
will almost certainly be bigger than the margin of difference
between Biden and Trump in a state like Michigan, for example,
So if Kennedy were to take most of that vote
(22:51):
from one side, that would be a problem for whoever
lost those voters. But again, I think it might wind
up being fairly even. And if the Biden campaign knows
what's doing. I mean, you've seen actually Trump advisors begin
to express more reservations about rfkus right as people learn
more about him, they learn more about the vaccine stuff,
(23:14):
they learn more about how he's not some typical liberal Kennedy.
He may compete more with the kind of disaffected, sort
of Trump voter archetype instead.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
So just to kind of sum that up, we're not
sure at this point. We're not sure what's going to happen,
but this is put a potential issue. So how you know,
we're getting new polling data all the time. You know,
the New York Times just released a big poll this week.
How should we read the polls? How should we think
about the polls going forward in the months leading up
(23:45):
to the elections? Or should we just ignore them up
to a certain point.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
At like this, if you're a Democrat, I'd be worried
because Biden is losing the Trump right now, I wouldn't
care so much about RFK Junior. It's like not my
first concern. You know, you almost if you're losing Maria
in a poker hand or something. You want more variants,
You want more things that are in the mix. And
right now, if you had an election today, Biden would
probably lose at least in the swing state. So give
me more RFK Junior. Right, the more worried you are
(24:11):
about Biden's position overall, the more you should welcome chaos,
I think.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
All right, So with that I will welcome chaos. Welcome
to the race, RFK and worm and let's see what happens.
And as a Democrat, I hope that I don't need
to hit the panic button quite yet, but I'm ready
to just in case.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
Some Maria. A couple of weeks ago, my finance bro
buddy texts me and says, do you want to go
to the New York Liberty game in a couple of weekends?
Right with his is a divorced dad with his young daughter,
And I'm like, sure, you know, I mean, it was
a little surprising in this particular friend of mine, not
to profile too much, wanted women's basketball tickets, but he
(25:08):
has a young daughter who's forty, so it kind of
makes sense, right, And then I learned that it's the
game against the Indiana Fever, which is the team that
drafted Caitlin Clark, the superstar point guard from University of Iowa,
who is maybe the most famous female basketball player in history,
probably more famous than any amateur NCAAA men's player, at
(25:30):
least as of the date of the NCAA tournament, and
I was excited about this and any texts again and says,
by the way, we're in. We're in the bleachers for this.
And the reason why is that, unlike a typical New
York Liberty game, the court side seats for this game
costs tens of the utter made, not tens, but you know,
(25:51):
high four figures worth of prices. The cheapest seats when
I checked yesterday were about one hundred and five dollars
with Ticketmaster fees. So that is actually more than a
typical Brooklyn Nets game, right at least in the post
Kevin Durant era, maybe not as much. Is like a
Knixt game, the Knicks are a very popular in demand
(26:13):
ticket but all of a sudden, women's basketball is when
Caitlin Clark plays, drawing on a par with the NBA.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I mean, that is crazy and quite the phenomenon. Just
to be clear, I know the names of two female
basketball players, Britney Griner for reasons that have nothing to
do with her playing basketball and everything to do with
the political crisis in twenty twenty two right where she
was detained by Russia as a prisoner, and Caitlin Clark,
(26:46):
and all of a sudden whenever something bleeps on my
sports radar. And for people who don't know me, I
am not a sports fan. I do not watch sports.
I have actually never been to a single basketball game
in my life though, name you say you want to?
You want to? Yeah, yeah, so Caitlyn Clark has popped.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, I bet the friend who's buy tickets this game
could also name those exact two women's basketball play and
maybe Sue Bird, maybe one or so other. Right, if
you go, for example, to the next game at Barclay Center,
the Seattle Storm at New York Liberty, I can buy
a good seat for twenty one bucks. So, as of now,
this is very much focused on the particular cultural phenomenon
(27:26):
that is Caitlin Clark.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Yeah. So obviously this is a huge deal. But then
what I started reading about her, the stories that I encountered,
were all about the contrast between how popular she is, right,
what a huge audience and viewership she draws. And then
we have her starting salary as at WNBA's number one
draft pick, which is going to be seventy six thousand,
(27:51):
five hundred and thirty five dollars. You know, I think
that's crazy given that in the NCAA March Madness Final,
she averaged well. Their game averaged eighteen point seven million
viewers and peaked at twenty four million between ESPN and ABC,
(28:12):
while the men's final averaged fourteen point eight million. Now,
let's compare the salary of seventy six, five hundred and
thirty five dollars to the lowest draft pick in the NBA,
not the WNBA. The last pick in the first round
of the NBA draft gets two million dollars in their
first year. So that is quite the contrast to someone
(28:34):
who has brought in record audiences to the sport. So
there are two things that I want to talk about.
So first of all, a lot of people point out, yeah,
but her salary isn't it right. She's going to get
endorsement deals, She's going to get branding deals, she's going
to get opportunities that most women's basketball players or men's
never get because she's a superstar. I want to talk
a little bit about the superstar effect here. But then
(28:55):
I do want to talk about that gender pay gap
and the fact that we're seeing these absolutely huge differences
between someone who's just a slam dunk top superstar and
what a superstar would be getting in the NBA. So, Nate,
do you have any initial thoughts on that, because I
could start going and it's going to be hard to
(29:17):
shut me up. So I'm going to let you get
an word in Edge West first.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
As an mostly underpentent capitalists most of the time, I
think the issues that the system is not capitalistic enough. Right,
that Caitlin Clark does not have leverage to demand her
marginal revenue product would be the way that an economist
(29:41):
would put it, and that I don't agree. I mean
just because she makes money from endorsement, so I mean, look,
she should also have the right to make money based
on the fact that she's bringing in five or ten
times more ticket revenue than any other player in the
w NBA. Right. One problem is that rookies and almost
every sports league are on a salary scale where they're
(30:03):
basically underpaid. Right. One reason why NBA teams tank, meaning
intentionally trying to lose, is but because you cannot only
get a player like Victor Womanyama for the Spurs. He
was number one pick in the men's league, and the
men's we have saying men's league in the NBA. He's
also paid far less than he's worth, and it has
to do with the dynamics of union bargaining frankly, and
(30:26):
the fact that like established players to some extent, are
screwing over rookies who do not have as much leverage
in the player union. Also, a lot of rookies are bad.
Sometimes rookies are playing for developmental reasons, so they tend
to lack leverage in general, and that carries over to
the WNBA. The other is she though, is that she
is a big outlier as far as her market ability,
(30:48):
even forgetting the rookie thing right, even if she weren't
a rookie, the entire WNBA salary cap is like what
like one point four million dollars I was looking up
a moment ago. The entire salary cap is, yeah, one
point four six three million dollars, which is less than
what a single NBA rookie makes. Now, that's because WNBA
(31:09):
historically has made much less revenue than the NBA. There
are debates about whether it's even profitable or kind of
like a loss leader for the league. But she that
doesn't work for her, right, she should have some special
provision where she probably is gonna make in Marshall revenue
probably ten fifteen, twenty million dollars a year, and she's
(31:31):
being exploited because if she decides she doesn't want to
play or go plays in China or something, which is
where she might ultimately have leverage, that is money out
of the coffers of the Indiana Fever and also visiting
teams like the New York Liberty that are you know,
people are going there to see her. My friend's daughter
will be wearing a Caitlin Clark jersey and not a
New York Liberty jersey. So she's getting screwed over by
(31:54):
by a lack of ability to kind of achieve what
she's really worth.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Yeah, I mean that seems to be pretty clear and
something that I didn't realize. So when you're talking about
how you know, the WNBA is a young league, doesn't
make as much money generally as the NBA, so you
know the salaries are lower. But what I didn't realize
was that the NBA players get fifty percent revenue share
that's kind of what goes towards their salary, whereas the
(32:22):
WNBA only get ten percent. So even if we account
for the lower revenue of the WNBA, they're still getting screwed, right,
They're still getting a much smaller percentage of the overall
revenue share than the male players. And this, I think
is something that is general to the league and not
just to Kaitlin Clark, even though obviously we know Caitlyn's
(32:44):
getting now doubly screwed because that superstar effect is not
actually applying to her, right, it is applying to her
in certain endorsement deals, but it's not applying to her
when it just comes to her basic salary. And that
pushes people like her, as you said, and like Brittany
Griner to go play abroad where they might get detained
because there's just no revenue opportunity in the United States.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yeah, I mean, look, women's basketball has not historically had
as much of an audience as men's basketball, particularly not
outside of the US. So in the NBA. The European
leagues are are relatively speaking more competitive, but in general,
there are genetic differences between men and women, and those
manifest themselves and things that are relevant to athletic competition,
(33:30):
like who can jump farthest or run fastest or things
things like that.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna interject here to say that
Kitlyn Clark was the top overall scorer in NCAA history,
which includes men.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
But she's competing against women. I'm not gonna get away. No,
that's that's a good point. I don't fine because she's
competing against women and not men. But for the most
part people, it's kind of socially constructed, Like why do people,
for example, watch college basketball at all? Right, the games
are much much, much worse than the NBA. It's because
people like are not watching for the pure sake of
(34:03):
athletic competition. And I think maybe a lot of mostly
male decision makers underestimated their market ability of women's basketball,
and now there's a big correction, and I think I
think that players should demand their restructuring, like sooner rather
than later. I mean, it may have been appropriate compensation
given what the league's ratings were up until Caitlyn Clark,
(34:24):
and now it's going to be in all likelihood different,
and you know, they should use whatever marketing power they
have to rectify that as soon as possible because now
they are being underpaid.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
Absolutely, And you said you said a phrase in there
that I think is absolutely crucial, which is socially constructed, right.
So I do think that a lot of this, a
lot of the compensation, a lot of the historical differences.
And this is not just true of basketball, This is
just now, you know, more broadly speaking, when it comes
to men versus women's gender pay gaps, et cetera, is
(34:56):
a result of generations of socially constructed norms and what
people you know, are doing versus not doing. And so
I think that that's absolutely crucial to remember as we
talk about, you know, moving forward, what is reasonable? What
isn't it reasonable? Because even you know that fifty versus
ten percent revenue share, now they can you know, can
(35:18):
they push for fifty percent?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Right?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Because that accounts for that accounts for the fact that
there are differences. They're not saying we need to be
paid as much money as the men. They're saying we
want to proportionally be paid as much money as the men.
And to me, that's absolutely reasonable. And you know, obviously
I'm a woman and I've been on the I've been
on the bottom end of the of the gender pay
(35:42):
gap from you.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, look, when you are charging one hundred bucks for
a cheap seat for a regular season WNBA game in Brooklyn.
That's real money. That really adds up there whatever eighteen
thousand people in that stadium, and Caitlin Clark, you're going
to sell out every arena as long as she remains
healthy and isn't a total flop. That's real money, and
(36:06):
the players who are generating that money deserve more of it.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Absolutely, And I think that we need to look more
at that argument as opposed to their gender differences, because
it's incredibly easy to get bogged down in that and
then to start using that as an excuse. So in
my own area, right, I'm a writer, I'm a speaker,
and I happen to know with one hundred percent certainty
(36:30):
because I've actually talked to people about this and compared
that I get paid less for speaking engagements, I get
lower advances, I get paid less a lot of the
time than male counter perhaps who don't have a PhD.
And by the way, I got that fucking PhD so
that I could have those three letters behind my name,
because as a woman, I need that in a way
(36:52):
that men don't. Just like Caitlin Clark to achieve what
she needed to, she has to be a million times
more extraordinary than a man, right, like, that's what you
have to do to get over that. And even still
I have people who say, oh, you don't know what
you're talking about in psychology, and they have an armchair degree, right,
They've never studied psychology at the level that I have,
(37:13):
and yet they say that to me all the time.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Look as the kind of dumb sports pro between the
two of us, Right, I somewhat object to how what
you can map those differences in things like speaking gigs
onto sports where there are more objective measures of performance.
(37:38):
But I think like championing women's sports is like something
that like young women and young men like. Right, the
social norm around that changed fast. I mean I have
heard more conversation about women's basketball from my sports breou
friends in the past six months than I have in
my entire lifetime before that, Right, And so I think
(38:00):
encouraging that behavior, I mean, I think, for example, the
Insane Tournament is a lot more fun. We need these
kind of two tournaments going on together. You can bet,
by the way, on on the women's game. I made
a fair amount of money betting on women's college basketball
this this march. That was that was you know, a
way to get into the sport too for certain people.
But lo, look, I think this is good, and I
think Kate and Clark needs to demand demand that she
(38:24):
is paid for the revenue she generates for the league
because this whole thing wouldn't be happening. Maybe it's not true,
maybe you'd have some other focal point, inflection point, but no,
she should. We should have a whole march on the
NBA offices on Park Avenue. Would have ever be like
pay Kate and Clark more. I agree on that on
that point at least, maybe not for the same reasons,
but like I agree with the conclusion.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
All right, excellent. So we can agree on the conclusion
and we can hope that when we're having this conversation
again on episode one thousand and one of Risky Business,
that we'll be able to look back and say thank
you to Caitlin Clark for being kind of the catalyst
for a revolution in the gender pay gap and how
people compensate women.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
For what they do.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Ki Business is hosted by me Maria.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Kannakova and me Nate Silver.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
This episode was produced by Isabel Carter Our Executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to Sarah Nix, Sarah Bruger,
Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Greta Cohne, Christina Sullivan, Kerrie Brody,
Owen Miller, Farah Daygrunge, Jordan McMillan, and Jake Gorsky. If
(39:37):
you like the show, please rate and review us so
other people can find us too. Thanks for listening.
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