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