Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakoma.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3: Today on the show, we'll talk about the ongoing wildfires
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles and we'll take a listener question about
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, the river and the village.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get into it. Before we get into
Speaker 1: the wildfires. You know, really serious, weighty topic, incredibly important,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about something a little bit lighter. Nate, you
Speaker 1: just got back from a trip to Tokyo and a soul,
Speaker 1: so you were halfway around the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, if I'm fifteen.
Speaker 3: We had this debate my partner like, can you really
Speaker 3: be like fifteen hours ahead? Doesn't that mean like eleven
Speaker 3: hours behind or nine? Can't be the fucking math. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm a little little guy, a little be the lag.
Speaker 1: As we say, welcome back to New York, and we
Speaker 1: hope that your your jet lag well evaporate soon enough.
Speaker 1: But tell us a little bit about about that trip,
Speaker 1: just because I think it's absolutely fascinating. Two great cities,
Speaker 1: such a fascinating part of the world, but also one
Speaker 1: where you had to make a lot of travel decisions. Right,
Speaker 1: A lot of risky decisions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, so one thing is so, first of all,
Speaker 3: I love both cities. We were lucky enough to have
Speaker 3: a good Korean American friend that we traveled with and
Speaker 3: caught up with another friend in Tokyo, so we had.
Speaker 2: The other friend helped to help got up.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know the other Fay, not our mutual poker
Speaker 1: friend who listen in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: No, no degenerate poker playing this start degenerously was merely
Speaker 3: no pachinko parlors.
Speaker 2: We just ate a lot.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, oh, I went to Asia and or Europe
Speaker 3: and actually I lost weight because I walked.
Speaker 1: So it's like, nah, I always find that that's bullshit.
Speaker 1: I'm like, God, just give me food.
Speaker 3: I mean, they are like they are in some ways,
Speaker 3: like Japan is kind of a more risk of society
Speaker 3: than other countries. You know, I'm not sure if I
Speaker 3: want to, you know, as Korea as in certain ways too.
Speaker 3: But like so, apart from the food, which was wonderful
Speaker 3: seeing these two countries.
Speaker 2: Back to back, where on the one hand, if you look.
Speaker 3: At the per capita GDP of Japan's may not be
Speaker 3: exactly precisely right, but like it's like basically the same
Speaker 3: as it was in the nineties, So the country has
Speaker 3: not really grown for for forty years now.
Speaker 1: Crazy where Korea.
Speaker 3: Has now per capital wise, caught up with Japan or
Speaker 3: surpassed it and feels more modern in certain ways. I mean, certainly,
Speaker 3: you know, Tokyo is a very comfortable place to live,
Speaker 3: but you know, solely the English they speak tends to
Speaker 3: be a little bit better. It's a little bit more
Speaker 3: modern in different ways. I think Korean culture, to make
Speaker 3: very broad way gay state has been this is like emerging, right.
Speaker 3: You have like all these oscar Ward winning films and
Speaker 3: the art we saw it was interesting, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's a culture that's gone from being for a long
Speaker 3: time a very poor country to being relatively wealthy in
Speaker 3: a hurry.
Speaker 2: It's interesting now.
Speaker 3: I was at both countries, but especially Korea have these
Speaker 3: very low birth rates, which is that's what we've talked
Speaker 3: about before. I guess neither of us have kids, so
Speaker 3: many were part of the problem, right, But like I know,
Speaker 3: just again dumb wake eye observations to arrive in this
Speaker 3: country that just as all of a sudden found itself
Speaker 3: as being like kind of a big player in the
Speaker 3: region and on the world stage. But now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think we're comfortable here, and maybe that's not It's
Speaker 3: just it's just interesting. I'm not sure how to how
Speaker 3: to like put without having too many stereotypes. I suppose, yeah, which,
Speaker 3: see the contrast back to back was fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. So. I've
Speaker 1: actually never been to Seoul, but I did last week
Speaker 1: watch Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway, which is a play
Speaker 1: about two robots uh in South Korea who end up
Speaker 1: falling in love and taking a trip to Jju Islands.
Speaker 1: So bonus shout out to poker players who like to
Speaker 1: play the Jju series. There is a poker scene in
Speaker 1: Korea as well, so so I I, you know, I
Speaker 1: felt like I was missing out on your trip, so
Speaker 1: I had to vicariously make it happen on Broadway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did.
Speaker 3: Travel only those two destinations, Seoul in Tokyo. So it's
Speaker 3: a little bit weird after a long year with elections
Speaker 3: and the podcast getting started, whatever else to like relax
Speaker 3: by going to these gigantic cities. But I think it
Speaker 3: was Actually I think we are grouped three of us
Speaker 3: we have planned maybe go to Kyoto or maybe we'll
Speaker 3: go somewhere else in Korea or both. And like I think,
Speaker 3: I think I advocate for having fewer yeah destinations, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm actually with you. I think this is a
Speaker 1: good you know, we did our gto travel episode and
Speaker 1: I think this is actually what I find. I think travel,
Speaker 1: you know, is different for different people, but one of
Speaker 1: my travel tips is don't put too many destinations on there.
Speaker 1: And I actually prefer to go to just one place
Speaker 1: and uh and stay there. And I know every single
Speaker 1: person is different, but for me, I think that's like
Speaker 1: maxid for for a trip that you'll really get a
Speaker 1: lot out of. On that note, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: LA fires. Obviously, you know, much more serious, much heavier topic,
Speaker 1: but I think it's a really important one for us
Speaker 1: to discuss because obviously there are so many topics of
Speaker 1: risky decision making, risk perception, how we act on risky information,
Speaker 1: and I think we want to talk about it from
Speaker 1: two different perspectives, right one. And this is something we've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show before, but I think it's
Speaker 1: incredibly relevant and kind of relevant for the future and
Speaker 1: for the entire country, not just for California, which is
Speaker 1: the insurance angle, right, and the future of the insurance industry.
Speaker 1: How to think about risk from that perspective, both as
Speaker 1: the insurance company, but also as the individual purchasing property,
Speaker 1: purchasing or electing not to purchase insurance. And then I'd
Speaker 1: also like to talk about kind of the individual psychological
Speaker 1: risk perceptions here, not just the insurance component, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, what happens if you're in one of these zones,
Speaker 1: how do you handle risk? How do you respond? I
Speaker 1: think that those are two related but distinct areas, and
Speaker 1: I think that both are really interesting and core core
Speaker 1: risky decision metrics. So let's start with the insurance angle.
Speaker 1: We've talked a little about this before in California, not
Speaker 1: just in California, all over the country, you know, Florida,
Speaker 1: some other states. Insurance have been pulling out of regions
Speaker 1: where the risk of disasters natural disasters has risen, and
Speaker 1: that is a lot of different parts of the country.
Speaker 1: And in the last few years insurers have started using
Speaker 1: different models, right, because insurance isn't backwards looking business in general, right,
Speaker 1: you look at risks and then you try to kind
Speaker 1: of extrapolate, and that's not working anymore with climate change,
Speaker 1: with all of these things happening, and so especially I
Speaker 1: don't know whether all insurance companies are doing this, but
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of insurance companies and a
Speaker 1: lot of the insurers in California have started using AI
Speaker 1: and other things to try to change their risk models
Speaker 1: to take into account the fact that the world is changing.
Speaker 1: And they even flagged the Palisades as an incredibly dangerous area.
Speaker 1: And so some of those you can't get insurance anymore. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about it. Let's hear some of your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this process and on what it means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, in addition to the challenge with doing any
Speaker 3: type of statistical modeling, which is always more difficult than
Speaker 3: people want to let on, if you have disaster risk
Speaker 3: it's affected by climate change, then you don't really have
Speaker 3: an empirical baseline, right, You're probably doing more elaborate forms
Speaker 3: of modeling or maybe actually trying to do some climatology
Speaker 3: or whatever else. Right, But it's a lot of like
Speaker 3: educated guesswork. I guess, i'd say, right from what little
Speaker 3: research I've done on you know, what's the effect of
Speaker 3: climate change and particular types of disasters.
Speaker 2: I think it's not quite so linear as you might assume.
Speaker 2: It's probably bad, but.
Speaker 3: You know, some of the models say, for example, that
Speaker 3: the hurricanes are fewer hurricanes, but they're more severe, probably worse.
Speaker 3: Net from like a climate modeling perspective, right to a
Speaker 3: fewer but more devastating storms, and we had some this year,
Speaker 3: it's probably worse. But you know, if you're seeing you
Speaker 3: get into different problems, you also get an issue that
Speaker 3: like it's not like a thing where like, I know,
Speaker 3: if you have like some home insurance, we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: my home gets broken into whatever. Like that's more stochastic
Speaker 3: and random, not perfectly. There's probably some correlation, whether there's
Speaker 3: some gang of I don't know, bandits or thieves or whatever.
Speaker 3: But like, but you know, if this disaster all comes
Speaker 3: at once and all of well not all of Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: should emphasize. By the way, LA is a very it's
Speaker 3: a very large area. I mean I was very briefly
Speaker 3: in LA on the way home, and you know, we
Speaker 3: were in the part of LA which wasn't on fire.
Speaker 3: But it's a very large area and certainly the you know,
Speaker 3: expensive area too, and so so you know, one issue
Speaker 3: is like the modeling issue.
Speaker 1: So yes, so we have we have these issues of modeling.
Speaker 1: But even even with those problems, I think that you
Speaker 1: know something that you just started mentioning is when you
Speaker 1: have risks that are highly correlated, right, it's very very
Speaker 1: difficult to to try to figure out, Okay, how much
Speaker 1: should I charge in premiums. And in some place like California,
Speaker 1: you also have another thing where there's regulation right where
Speaker 1: insurance companies are required to have a certain number of reserves.
Speaker 1: Until very recently, they couldn't raise their premiums as much
Speaker 1: as their models said they needed to raise their premiums.
Speaker 1: So instead they just said, okay, fine, like fuck it,
Speaker 1: we're not going to ensure these places like you can't
Speaker 1: renew your insurance, you can't, you can't do anything. And
Speaker 1: that puts a lot of people in very difficult situations.
Speaker 1: And the areas that are burning in La Sure, you
Speaker 1: have the Palisades with some incredibly expensive housing, some of
Speaker 1: the most expensive real estate in the country, but then
Speaker 1: you also have parts of you know, Altadena and other
Speaker 1: parts of LA where there are lots of people who
Speaker 1: are poor, who have been there forever. And you know
Speaker 1: what in the world happens right when you can no longer,
Speaker 1: when either the insurance says we won't ensure you or
Speaker 1: the premiums are so expensive, then you're like, I can't
Speaker 1: afford this anymore. You do, and there are families that
Speaker 1: chose like last year, right, I'm not going to renew
Speaker 1: my insurance coverage, and then this happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean.
Speaker 3: This has been in the news a lot because of
Speaker 3: like these beautiful, glamorous properties and like outside Malibu when
Speaker 3: the Palisades burning, for example, but like, yeah, it's affected
Speaker 3: all types of.
Speaker 2: Areas of LA and LA is like more of a.
Speaker 3: More of a middle class kind of working class town
Speaker 3: than I think some people realize. Really, right, the average
Speaker 3: per capita income isn't that high, you know. Look, so yeah,
Speaker 3: there are these three issues, like we mentioned with insurance.
Speaker 3: One is that the modeling itself is difficult, involves a
Speaker 3: moving target. A second is that there's some degree maybe
Speaker 3: less so with like home insurance, but some degree of
Speaker 3: adverse selection is a term where if you're someone who
Speaker 3: buys insurance and not everybody does, and maybe you're more
Speaker 3: of a risk than the model would let on, right,
Speaker 3: you're buying insurance. I mean the anauochy I give is
Speaker 3: like if you have like an all you can eat buffet, right,
Speaker 3: there is adverse selection for who comes and eats at
Speaker 3: the all you can.
Speaker 2: Eat the fe right.
Speaker 3: Probably if you don't you don't want to have it
Speaker 3: all you can eat buffet set up outside like a
Speaker 3: sumo wrestling tournament for example.
Speaker 1: That's another that's a business model.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that if you know, for some people, the
Speaker 3: expected value of insurance, I mean you know this is complicated.
Speaker 3: On the one hand, it has to do with like
Speaker 3: hedging catastrophic risk and diminishing marginal returns. Right, Like if
Speaker 3: your home is worth two million dollars, your net worth
Speaker 3: is four million dollars, so it's half your net worth, right, Well,
Speaker 3: then probably in principle there is negative expected value for
Speaker 3: most forms of insurance in terms of like the pure
Speaker 3: dollar amount. Right, the risk of your house burning is
Speaker 3: supposedly lower than than the premium that you get from it.
Speaker 3: But you know, you much rather pay the small amount
Speaker 3: then than have to have to uh lose half your
Speaker 3: net worth in one inverno basically, But yeah, the third
Speaker 3: issue is at California is a state with lots of
Speaker 3: I wouldn't even say well intended regulations necessarily. I mean
Speaker 3: it's I don't think it's the most economically literate state, frankly,
Speaker 3: or the postumakers are especially smart, uh, frankly, but you know,
Speaker 3: based in a combination including by the way, some of
Speaker 3: these are things that like are ballot measures passed by
Speaker 3: you know, to stay with a bunch of referendum right,
Speaker 3: everything goes to direct democracy. People like me might think
Speaker 3: this is kind of wonderful in the abstract it's ruled
Speaker 3: by true democracy and not ruled by the expert class,
Speaker 3: et cetera.
Speaker 2: But like it creates issues.
Speaker 3: I believe the rules that basically any insurance increase has
Speaker 3: to be appointed by an insurance commissioner in California, which
Speaker 3: is like a regulated industry, instead of kind of letting
Speaker 3: them market take care of it. So, yeah, these insurance
Speaker 3: cups are correct. I think to say that if you
Speaker 3: have limits on what we can charge and we have
Speaker 3: now have negative expected value, then fuck you, We're not
Speaker 3: going to offer insurance in the first place. And that's
Speaker 3: a rational reaction.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: On top of the other risks, it is completely rational.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to remember that insurance companies are
Speaker 1: also businesses, right, They're not pro bono organizations. This is
Speaker 1: not like a federal relief fund that is there to
Speaker 1: catch you it is. It is something that you know,
Speaker 1: even if the returns are low, you need some positive returns.
Speaker 1: It's not a business that's going to be a money
Speaker 1: losing business. And so you understand that, but then you
Speaker 1: end up in this situation where like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: do you do?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: If I am a person who you know has always
Speaker 1: lived in California and who lives in California and I,
Speaker 1: you know, my house burned down, what do I do? Right? Like?
Speaker 1: It puts people in these impossible situations, and it's it's horrible,
Speaker 1: Like I you know, I'm just a little bit of editorializing,
Speaker 1: but like we shouldn't be in a situation where people are,
Speaker 1: you know, sharing GoFundMe campaigns for everyone, right like that
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be the case. There should be especially if
Speaker 1: you're somewhere like California where you know this is a
Speaker 1: thing there, they should figure out a way to make
Speaker 1: this work or you know, or not and just not
Speaker 1: let people live there. You know that it's kind of
Speaker 1: one of these one of these very very stark contrasts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I mean there is a backup state program
Speaker 3: called Fair fai R.
Speaker 2: The mechanics are a little bit complicated.
Speaker 3: It looks like if it runs, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: you can buy a premium, right, it's not particularly cheap.
Speaker 3: If fair overall runs out of money, I think there's
Speaker 3: some pocket they're taking from private insurers who are selling
Speaker 3: insurance in California, which ultimately makes insurance more expensive to
Speaker 3: sell in California. And so you know, it's one of
Speaker 3: these other perverse incentives. But but there is there is
Speaker 3: that option at least available up to some limit, I
Speaker 3: think up to three million dollars worth of coverage. So
Speaker 3: let me be a little bit of the turn in
Speaker 3: the punch bowl for a second. Right, you don't see
Speaker 3: a lot of efforts to like be honest and forthright
Speaker 3: about the about the fire risk here, right with the
Speaker 3: way different properties are built and the amount of distance
Speaker 3: between for example, the amount of distance between this.
Speaker 2: Like shrubbery, what's called chaparral or chaparral. How do you
Speaker 2: say that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. That's one of those words that
Speaker 1: I read and never say out loud.
Speaker 2: So I've never said that word out loud, have.
Speaker 1: I know I have good syndrome. There are so many chaparral, chaparral, chaparral, chaparral.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I like how that AI bought
Speaker 2: said that.
Speaker 3: But you have a lot of this kind of shrubbery
Speaker 3: and they're not like forests per se. They're catching on fire, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've been to California maybe get a
Speaker 3: little bit of this and Vegas then not quite right.
Speaker 3: But you have those kind of dry, bushy area, right,
Speaker 3: it's not super dense, but where fires can to spread
Speaker 3: pretty fast. Right, they're not doing a lot of cultivation.
Speaker 3: You can do controlled burns and areas that are fire risks.
Speaker 3: There is reluctance to do that. Whenever you do one
Speaker 3: of those things, you have to go through five years
Speaker 3: of regulation and environmental studies and whatever else. Right, But
Speaker 3: there's not a lot of honesty about like the way
Speaker 3: these properties are designed to mitigate fire risk. And maybe
Speaker 3: that will be there will be more now, right, but
Speaker 3: like you know, and that kind of puts homeowners at risk,
Speaker 3: and so you know, so if your home can be
Speaker 3: covered by insurance, then that can create a moral hazard.
Speaker 3: It's the other famous insurance turn along with ever selection, right,
Speaker 3: where like if I am covering, I mean the classic
Speaker 3: example is like the bank bailouts, right, where if the
Speaker 3: government steps in and prevents whichever companies Morgan Stanley you
Speaker 3: I want to accuse because companies, I'm sure all the
Speaker 3: all the all the big Wall Street firms had like
Speaker 3: something's evolved, right, But if they're going to come and
Speaker 3: bail you out if you fuck up, h then you
Speaker 3: have an incentive to like make risk your bets, right.
Speaker 3: And I don't think homeowners individually are are quite as
Speaker 3: calculating as like the banks might be. But like I
Speaker 3: almost as a rule that like, if you create a
Speaker 3: rule where there is financial upside to basically what we
Speaker 3: what we term like an exploitative strategy in poker, right.
Speaker 2: Then people will exploit that.
Speaker 3: In the capitalist system, people will build right up to
Speaker 3: the edges kind of figured oily or literally, and so
Speaker 3: that can be that can be a problem to potentially, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think this is a good kind of pivot point to
Speaker 1: to looking at this from the individual side as opposed
Speaker 1: to from the from the insurance company side. Because people,
Speaker 1: you know, when we've we talk about this all the time.
Speaker 1: People are not rational when they're evaluating risks, and they're
Speaker 1: especially not rational when it's like a personal thing like
Speaker 1: you know, I've always lived in this area, right, or
Speaker 1: or you know, I you know, I want to do this.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they're gamblers, right, sometimes they're actually risk seeking
Speaker 1: in this particular case because they kind of take the
Speaker 1: gamble that, oh, sure, like there's a risk of a fire,
Speaker 1: but like my house isn't going to burn down because
Speaker 1: it hasn't burned down for you know, however many years,
Speaker 1: and there are properties. So one of the one of
Speaker 1: the places that burned one of the businesses that burned
Speaker 1: down in La is real In, where I've been. You've
Speaker 1: probably been there too. It's on the way kind of
Speaker 1: on the road to Malibu. There's only one road by
Speaker 1: the way, which is also not great in terms of
Speaker 1: natural disaster and like trying to get away and trying
Speaker 1: to get the fuck out of there when it's burning,
Speaker 1: which is why people have had to abandon cars and
Speaker 1: bad things have happened. But real In burned down and
Speaker 1: it was there for I think over thirty five years, right,
Speaker 1: that specific business. But if you've been there for thirty
Speaker 1: five years. You think, oh, well, yes, they're fire risks
Speaker 1: in Malibu, blah blah blah. But we've always been fine, right,
Speaker 1: so we're going to just continue to be fine. People
Speaker 1: do have this tendency to be ostrich, like right, ostriches
Speaker 1: are the ones that bury their hand in the sand,
Speaker 1: and do I have the right analogy? And you want
Speaker 1: to when it's convenient to ignore these things. You want
Speaker 1: to ignore it because you want to be comfortable, Like
Speaker 1: you don't want to make the tough decision of saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what, we need to sell our house and
Speaker 1: we need to move to a different part of the state.
Speaker 1: We need to move all the way out of California. Like,
Speaker 1: people don't want to make those hard decisions, and so
Speaker 1: instead of doing that, they're just going to fudge the
Speaker 1: risk in their mind and take something which to us
Speaker 1: looks like, you know, an irrational or very gambly decision,
Speaker 1: which might not actually align with their risk preferences. Right.
Speaker 1: I doubt that all the people who had houses that
Speaker 1: burned down were risk seeking. Some of them might not
Speaker 1: have cared, right, like some of the If you're very
Speaker 1: wealthy and you just say, Okay, if my house burns down, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll just rebuild, right, Like, That's that's one way of
Speaker 1: looking at it. But I'm talking about like the lower
Speaker 1: middle class people who aren't thinking that way. They might
Speaker 1: appear risk seeking because of that choice, but in their
Speaker 1: minds they're not right. They just they do they miscalculate willfully,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a famous story for my book
Speaker 3: where Elon Musk sells his first company, buys a McLaren
Speaker 3: sports car which is worth like a million bucks or something,
Speaker 3: and then crashes it on the way to the pitch meeting.
Speaker 3: And he doesn't have insurance on this car, right, and
Speaker 3: part because he I think thought he was invincible.
Speaker 2: But also he might say, hey, look I just told this.
Speaker 3: Company for seventeen million dollars or whatever it was, and
Speaker 3: this car is worth one million dollars.
Speaker 2: So like, I am far enough along that.
Speaker 3: Diminishing returns curve right where I don't kind of carry
Speaker 3: their way about a million dollars, Right, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to pay because insurance again ought to be in principle
Speaker 3: negative expected value in a narrow sense if you don't
Speaker 3: account for diminishing returns right, And he's at the other
Speaker 3: aspectrum where it's like, Okay, well who cares, right, I'll
Speaker 3: just wire another million bucks to the McClary dealership buy
Speaker 3: a new car, right. It doesn't really affect me much
Speaker 3: either way, and so like, so I don't think it's
Speaker 3: necessarily I want to be very careful, right, But like
Speaker 3: if having your home destroyed by an earthquake or a
Speaker 3: flood or a fire is something where you'd make out okay, right,
Speaker 3: notwithstanding the psychological damage and the damage to the artifacts
Speaker 3: and the belongings and your pets and whatever else, right,
Speaker 3: and you're safe, well, like, it may not be rational
Speaker 3: to buy insurance, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, Well, that's why I try to distinguish
Speaker 1: between the people who can afford to lose it and
Speaker 1: the people who can't. And I'm wondering if as these
Speaker 1: things because we know with risk perception, right, so much
Speaker 1: of it is personal experience and what has typically happened
Speaker 1: to you or two people you know. And I wonder
Speaker 1: as kind of these risks are spreading to communities that
Speaker 1: you know before thought that they were relatively safe, as
Speaker 1: we have so many properties that have been destroyed, so
Speaker 1: many people that have been displaced, if that's going to
Speaker 1: start changing, right, Like, I'm in Las Vegas right now,
Speaker 1: and I've heard multiple conversations around Las Vegas about you know,
Speaker 1: is Las Vegas going to see an even greater inflow
Speaker 1: of Californians than it has in recent years after this? Right?
Speaker 1: Are people going to actually change their kind their risk
Speaker 1: preference is based on the newly available data. There are
Speaker 1: some Hollywood executives who are starting to look at building
Speaker 1: studios here right. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are saying, Okay, you know, this might have been the
Speaker 1: tipping point. And I think that that's also interesting to
Speaker 1: observe and to see what will happen.
Speaker 3: And we'll be right back after this break. One thing
Speaker 3: I think you sometimes see happen is that when you
Speaker 3: have these tumultuous and tragic events, they accelerate processing that
Speaker 3: were already underway.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So one example is that you have the pandemic, actually
Speaker 3: a bunch of these with the pandemic, right, Yeah, the pandemic,
Speaker 3: people stop going to the movies, and then the movies recover,
Speaker 3: but to some substantially lower baseline, right, And people are
Speaker 3: just kind of calculating, well, you know what, you have
Speaker 3: so many ways to watch a movie in your beautiful
Speaker 3: home theater or whatever. Set up that like just a
Speaker 3: special occasion kind of thing now, and like that's kind
Speaker 3: of a permanent change that maybe happened in two years
Speaker 3: when it would have happened in ten years instead. Look,
Speaker 3: California has been losing population. It's gonna lose I think
Speaker 3: it's lost an electoral vote and will lose more, probably
Speaker 3: at the next redistricting process. So in a relative sentence
Speaker 3: relative the rest of the country, it's no longer a
Speaker 3: growth state, exactly. You have movement all over the West
Speaker 3: right to Nevada, to Idaho, to Colorado, also like Texas
Speaker 3: and Florida, which are fairly good substitutes for it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I know, I don't know how many people
Speaker 3: have actually been put out of their home, but you
Speaker 3: can imagine.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. When I've been to.
Speaker 3: California recently, I mean it feels like a little bit sleepier, right.
Speaker 3: I don't think New Yorkers have the jealousy of California
Speaker 3: that they kind of once did. Maybe you do, dude,
Speaker 3: have vice versa a little bit. I mean, you do
Speaker 3: have Silicon valley that is still booming, at least as
Speaker 3: an industry, right, I don't know as a town, but like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's still attracting talent from like all around
Speaker 3: the world, and with AI being another potential boom, then
Speaker 3: that seems not to be going away very much. But like,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I don't know, I don't think i'd want
Speaker 3: to live in No.
Speaker 1: It's definitely changed the way that I look about it,
Speaker 1: that I that I look at it, that I think
Speaker 1: about it, because there was part of me that always thought,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, you know, maybe at some point I'll
Speaker 1: live in LA And at this point, I'm like, no
Speaker 1: fucking way, right, Like, you know, why would I do that?
Speaker 1: Certainly would never buy property there because you know, I
Speaker 1: think that the risk reward I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: rational decision right now, And you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people are going to disagree with that, because everyone's risk
Speaker 1: preferences are different and everyone's you know, decision matrix is different,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's that's important. Right, We're right
Speaker 1: now we're talking about personally the calculations. One final thing
Speaker 1: that I wanted to talk about is the actual experience
Speaker 1: of fires, right because there are people who died, and
Speaker 1: some of those deaths couldn't be prevented, but others were
Speaker 1: because of just frankly, absolutely asinine decisions where like you,
Speaker 1: you know, decide that you're going to pick up a
Speaker 1: hose and protect your home from the fire, which is
Speaker 1: endangering you and endangering firefighters. You know, that's it's when
Speaker 1: people say evacuate, you're supposed to evacuate, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, looking from the side, you say, that is
Speaker 1: really asenine. But for some people, if they've never experienced
Speaker 1: a fire, right, if they've never seen how quickly fires
Speaker 1: can spread, it might have seemed rational. They might have
Speaker 1: been like, oh, the fires a block, like it'll it'll
Speaker 1: be fine, right, I have time. And what you don't
Speaker 1: understand because you don't have kind of the experience, the
Speaker 1: visceral experience of it, and your brain can't comprehend it
Speaker 1: when people are telling you go now, it's just how
Speaker 1: quickly fires can spread, like it is insane. You remember
Speaker 1: last year we had a fire in our backyard in
Speaker 1: New York when there was an explosion in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night of batteries and of the of a
Speaker 1: restaurant and our building almost burned down. But I just
Speaker 1: remember from the moment of the explosion to like the
Speaker 1: fires being taller than our windows, which is a fourth
Speaker 1: floor apartment. It was seconds, right, and I was like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, Like it went from what's going on too?
Speaker 1: We need to get out right now? In under a minute,
Speaker 1: and so I think that and that's not even a wildfire, right,
Speaker 1: That's that was a very different situation. That was an
Speaker 1: electrical fire. But it's I think that people's risk in
Speaker 1: the in the moment, you know, in that hot situation,
Speaker 1: your risk assessment can be off and you can say, oh,
Speaker 1: I have time, I can do this, I want to
Speaker 1: protect my home, and so you just lose perspective that
Speaker 1: actually the only thing that matters is your life and
Speaker 1: the life of firefighters, and so people make just really
Speaker 1: really stupid decisions, which is why I always say, like
Speaker 1: you need to in hot situations. This is like poker too, right,
Speaker 1: and like being on being on tilt and poker, like
Speaker 1: you need to think of it in advance, like how
Speaker 1: am I going to react to this situation, because in
Speaker 1: the moment, you're going to make a bad decision if
Speaker 1: you don't know what you're going to do. If you
Speaker 1: haven't thought it through. You might think that you'll be
Speaker 1: able to think clearly, but you can't write when you're emotional.
Speaker 1: When you're stressed, clear thinking goes out the window unless
Speaker 1: you already have a plan of action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it kind of happens fast.
Speaker 3: I was trying to explain to someone the other day
Speaker 3: who has not played much poker about how you know
Speaker 3: if you're playing a five to ten no limic game, right,
Speaker 3: and like and the effect stacks are like five thousand dollars, Well,
Speaker 3: how do you ever get kind of like the whole
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars involved when when they're only fifteen dollars
Speaker 3: in blinds to pick up initially? Right? I maybe it's
Speaker 3: not the best analog, but the point is that, like,
Speaker 3: danger can happen quite quickly, and you don't necessarily have
Speaker 3: a moment to like kind of catch your breath, right.
Speaker 3: I mean there are different cases with with hurricanes, which
Speaker 3: is something that we deal with a little bit more
Speaker 3: on the East Coast, although not in New York that
Speaker 3: we wouldn't like Florida or something like that, Like there you.
Speaker 2: Do have some.
Speaker 3: Advanced warning, right, It's not like the hurricanes come exactly
Speaker 3: out of nowhere. But you know, but you have the
Speaker 3: risks that, like, you know, if you evacuate people too
Speaker 3: early in New Orleans with Hurricane ktwna hit. There have
Speaker 3: been kind of a long history of New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Having good luck with storms.
Speaker 3: That were bad but not as bad as feared or forecasted.
Speaker 3: Right there, I think, you know, I think the literature.
Speaker 3: I wrote this in the first book of mine more
Speaker 3: than ten years ago. I think the literature is pretty
Speaker 3: consistent that there are real consequences to false alarms. Yeah,
Speaker 3: any type of natural disaster, and people really feel invincible
Speaker 3: if like, oh, last time he said it's gonna be.
Speaker 2: Bad, yeah, and it wasn't, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that it creates this it's kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, coming full circle to what we were talking about.
Speaker 1: It creates this perverse incentive where you personally feel more
Speaker 1: invulnerable than you should because you've gotten away with it
Speaker 1: in the past, Right, like California, while my house hasn't
Speaker 1: burned yet, Right, You've told me to evacuate before and
Speaker 1: everything was fine, So I'm just going to be comfortable
Speaker 1: and it's all going to be fine, and once again
Speaker 1: head in the sand, because that's just that's easier, right,
Speaker 1: that's the path of least resistance, and you know it's
Speaker 1: scary to just leave and to do it quickly. Do
Speaker 1: you have a Do you have a go bag Nate
Speaker 1: by the way or no? No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I maybe we should.
Speaker 1: I think I think we should. Yeah we yeah, we
Speaker 1: have we have go bags. And it's something that you know,
Speaker 1: I thought through, like, you know, because in New York
Speaker 1: there have been situations so like obviously nine to eleven
Speaker 1: where you think about, like, you know, what happens if
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here, what happens if
Speaker 1: I need to get out of here on foot Hurricane Sandy,
Speaker 1: you know, we lost powered, had no cell phone reception.
Speaker 1: So after after those experiences, I have thought a lot
Speaker 1: about you know, go bags and the fact that this
Speaker 1: is something that you just need to be able to
Speaker 1: grab and it should be light, right, there shouldn't be
Speaker 1: too much in it. Mine is like passport, copies of documents. Cash.
Speaker 1: It's really important to have cash, even though we're turning
Speaker 1: towards the cashless world. But if you know, if there's
Speaker 1: no connectivity, if you can't use Apple pay, if you know,
Speaker 1: if if shit goes bad, like cash is actually an
Speaker 1: important thing to have. Laptop, right. I when when my
Speaker 1: apartment you know, was threatened by fire last year, I
Speaker 1: grabbed my notebook because I write all my first drafts
Speaker 1: by hand. So and I don't you know if that's lost,
Speaker 1: like you know, huge chunks of my next book are lost,
Speaker 1: So I grab that, you know, laptop, passport, and you're
Speaker 1: out of their cell phone. But I think that it's
Speaker 1: important to just figure out what are those things that
Speaker 1: you need immediately, and also the things that you can't replace, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have photographs, I my grandmother's letters to
Speaker 1: her sister, which are you know, handwritten. It's their correspondence
Speaker 1: and it's you know, the only thing I have left
Speaker 1: of her. So like I would grab that even though
Speaker 1: it weighs a ton, right, it's not like a it's
Speaker 1: not a life changing thing. But to me, it's something
Speaker 1: that like I could never replace, and that's really really important.
Speaker 1: So I think that you have to there's like a
Speaker 1: balance of obviously water some bars, but you need to
Speaker 1: replace that stuff, right, Like some stuff goes bad in
Speaker 1: your go bag, you need to replace it constantly so
Speaker 1: that it stays fresh. And so it's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a pain in the ass, but once you have it,
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess, I guess. I guess our main risk
Speaker 3: in New York is probably a terrorist attack. I mean
Speaker 3: because with the hurricane you have some warning time, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you can get severe summer weather in New York.
Speaker 3: The winds are but yeah, the main risk, for being
Speaker 3: honest is like some terror attack. And the fact that
Speaker 3: I live in Manhattan, right, you're kind of on kind
Speaker 3: of on an island. Right, there's only so many physical
Speaker 3: ways to like connect with the rest of the United States, right,
Speaker 3: and so and so that gets a little bit frightening.
Speaker 2: I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, one of my friends who lives in Tribeca,
Speaker 1: actually after Sandy, they ended up buying and you know,
Speaker 1: one of those like inflatable boats so that they could, okay,
Speaker 1: because also thinking about terrorist attacks, like what happens if
Speaker 1: all the roads are closed, So they bought a little
Speaker 1: inflatable raft that they can take to the Hudson River
Speaker 1: and get out of there. And at first I laughed
Speaker 1: and that I was like, huh, should we get one
Speaker 1: of those? Right? Like how far do you want to
Speaker 1: take this? And obviously there's like a you know, there's
Speaker 1: a full spectrum from no go bag whatsoever. I'm totally
Speaker 1: fine to prepper right, and I've got a bunker. I'm
Speaker 1: that I paid for that I'm going to go to
Speaker 1: and like I know exactly, you know, off grid what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do. So there's there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of room in between. But I think that doing the
Speaker 1: bare minimum is a good thing to do. It's just
Speaker 1: that to me is like where I where I come
Speaker 1: out rationally. I did not end up buying an inflatable boat,
Speaker 1: by the way.
Speaker 3: You didn't, Okay, now I do a little nitty I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so I do not have an inflatable boat.
Speaker 1: By the way, that friend moved from Tribeca to La
Speaker 1: and just and had to evacuate was in one of
Speaker 1: the evacuation zones, so sore that the inflatable boat is
Speaker 1: not very helpful over there. Yeah. So I think that
Speaker 1: these are all these are all important decisions something you
Speaker 1: have to think through for yourself. But it's something you
Speaker 1: do have to think through. I just want to like
Speaker 1: make one last push. People do like to nor things
Speaker 1: that are scary, that are inconvenient, that forces them to
Speaker 1: make difficult decisions. Don't do that, right, and instead, like
Speaker 1: actually sit down and do a rational calculus, look at
Speaker 1: the numbers, look at the risk, and try to figure
Speaker 1: out if it's worth it or not.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, you don't have to make a commitment, right.
Speaker 3: You can't say this is silly, the risk is low
Speaker 3: enough and we're probably fucked anyway or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right. You can do that calculation and then decide not
Speaker 2: to write.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at least do the calculation. Please. So on
Speaker 1: that note, let's take a break, and then let's take
Speaker 1: oh listener question. So we got a listener question from
Speaker 1: JM and Nate. This listener question is directly about your work.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, So Elon must if Ramaswami. Is that how
Speaker 2: you say it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Our meeting with top government officials and they also are
Speaker 3: trying to kind of formulate this quasi official agency called DOGE.
Speaker 3: It's a backronym for Department of Governmental Efficiency and also
Speaker 3: a meme coin and a meme coin Elon's favorite meme coin,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the question is how do you integrate the
Speaker 2: river and the village.
Speaker 3: So, if you have not read on the Edge the
Speaker 3: Art of risking, everything published in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: But these are my.
Speaker 3: Terms where the the village is the you know East
Speaker 3: Coast establishment risk averse government, at least when Biden's in office.
Speaker 2: Right, government and academia and media.
Speaker 3: Right, these people who were super concerned about Cohen risk
Speaker 3: and the types of risk, and they're you know, they're
Speaker 3: the ones who are doing more speech policing and things
Speaker 3: like that, right, And I mean they're kind of become
Speaker 3: like the liberal establishment, the expert class, right, whereas the
Speaker 3: River are the risk taking degenerate types and finance and
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley as well as a poker world and the
Speaker 3: in the gaming quote unquote world more general. But parts
Speaker 3: of the River have had an increase in their political power.
Speaker 1: So typically you know, government seems more villagy, right, you know,
Speaker 1: old establishment, et cetera. But people like Musk and Ramaswami
Speaker 1: are more from the River and are trying to inject
Speaker 1: some of those ideas into kind of old Washington. So
Speaker 1: how how does that play out? How do we integrate
Speaker 1: the two together? Right? How do you how do you
Speaker 1: make the two mesh and how do you actually make
Speaker 1: it a productive thing as opposed to you know, two
Speaker 1: sides entrenching against each other and and polarizing even further,
Speaker 1: which is obviously one one possible outcome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, look, there's long been a
Speaker 3: conservative critique that there is a lot of waste, fraud
Speaker 3: and abuse that taxpays are on the hook for, which
Speaker 3: I'm relatively sympathetic toward. So you know, I guess one
Speaker 3: critique I would have.
Speaker 2: And you see it in like this La wildfire stuff, right,
Speaker 2: where like.
Speaker 3: You know, they'll make five accusations about how it's all
Speaker 3: the liberals fault. Right, I'm no fan of Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: or governance of California in general.
Speaker 2: Right, But then you actually kind of.
Speaker 3: Like check these and like maybe one of the five
Speaker 3: is basically true and one of the five is half true,
Speaker 3: and the other three and a half are just deranged.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: There's a big deal about, like, you know, the LA
Speaker 3: fire chief is like a lesbian and somehow this is
Speaker 3: like a DEEI thing somehow for reasons I don't entirely understand. Right,
Speaker 3: And you hear it claims about like where water takes.
Speaker 3: I guess there is one water take in Pacific Palisades
Speaker 3: that was up for repair or that seems not good.
Speaker 3: It seems like you probably want the repair time, you know,
Speaker 3: to be quicker than Oh, I'll get around to it
Speaker 3: at some point.
Speaker 2: But if you can go with scrutinize his.
Speaker 3: Claims, you know, Noah Smith, the writer of the blogger,
Speaker 3: has a good rundown. And again there are things, there
Speaker 3: are elements of it that have some degree kind of truth,
Speaker 3: but like it's not very precise, right, And you know,
Speaker 3: there is this like duality in the river the way
Speaker 3: I can see it, where on the one hand, the
Speaker 3: river is supposed to be kind of like the moneyballization
Speaker 3: of everything, where it's calculating and.
Speaker 2: Precise, right.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, there is this like degenerate gambler
Speaker 3: side Elin in particular as someone who I mean, look
Speaker 3: you got an added to him. He's we found it
Speaker 3: all these amazing businesses. He's clearly doing something right, including
Speaker 3: by the way, being a co founder of open Ai.
Speaker 3: But not a guy you'd say has like a lot
Speaker 3: of precision, really right, and like and like the giddiness
Speaker 3: of someone who's on a winning streak. Right, I mean,
Speaker 3: they not only have one in all sorts of ways
Speaker 3: in terms of becoming wealthier and wealthier, right, but also
Speaker 3: now this faction of the River. Again, I think the
Speaker 3: average person the river probably is a moderate Democrat. But
Speaker 3: this faction, I just said, this kind of kind of
Speaker 3: gigantic wind. Clearly, you know, they were backing Trump, and
Speaker 3: clearly they're going to have I think a fair amount
Speaker 3: of influence on Trump. It's already also also bolstered Elon's
Speaker 3: net worth in certain ways, right, even without kind of
Speaker 3: electing anything untoward. Right, His business are all subject to regulation,
Speaker 3: and if you have a more friendly regulator at office,
Speaker 3: is probably worth something to you.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's been disappointing to see this side
Speaker 2: of the river.
Speaker 3: Become become the side that one I guess, but you know,
Speaker 3: but look, I mean it's you know, one mester of
Speaker 3: the book is like these people are actually not so
Speaker 3: rational necessarily, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now that the definitely is is a message, and
Speaker 1: I think that from a psychological standpoint, you also have
Speaker 1: hit on something that is really important to remember as
Speaker 1: we see kind of these Ribeians making their move on Washington,
Speaker 1: which is there is a hubris that comes from being
Speaker 1: on a winning streak, right, and and that definitely makes
Speaker 1: you irrational, Like that irrational exuberance, right, and a lot
Speaker 1: of bad shit happens from that. And to bring it
Speaker 1: back down to kind of the poker level, right, think
Speaker 1: about poker players who are on a hot streak, right,
Speaker 1: who are running well, who are son running in poker terms,
Speaker 1: and then you know, they think they can't lose. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna I'm not going to mention the name of
Speaker 1: this player, but there was a player who went on
Speaker 1: this incredible streak a number of years ago and like
Speaker 1: just would would win everything and ended up winning, you know,
Speaker 1: shit ton of money and just like couldn't lose, and
Speaker 1: people are like, oh my god, this is like the
Speaker 1: best player in the world. And then the sun run
Speaker 1: ended and I remember one specific stream this was televised
Speaker 1: where this player lost, not even a flip, like it
Speaker 1: was just like lost and all in and was behind
Speaker 1: and stayed behind, didn't hit the miracle card, had always
Speaker 1: hit the miracle card in the past, and was you know,
Speaker 1: just expecting it to happen and it didn't and this
Speaker 1: was a huge hand and he was out of the tournament.
Speaker 1: I could say it was a man, right, because we
Speaker 1: know that ninety seven to ninety percent. I don't want
Speaker 1: to I don't want to put them on blast right now,
Speaker 1: but this is one of the this is one of them.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe another time. This was one of like it
Speaker 1: was an epic meltdown. This person like got up from
Speaker 1: the table and threw the chips, like just threw the
Speaker 1: chips at the other player and out the dealer and
Speaker 1: stormed off, And I was like, holy shit, Like this
Speaker 1: is someone who is not used to losing. And when
Speaker 1: you when you are at a poker table, like you
Speaker 1: can watch the stream and laugh and be like haha, right,
Speaker 1: sun run over, like and you do not your mental
Speaker 1: game because this person also pride in themselves on good
Speaker 1: mental game, Like mental game non existent, like you've just
Speaker 1: been winning. But when you when that happens now, like
Speaker 1: let's go back when when that happens in Washington, the
Speaker 1: stakes are much higher than you know, throwing chips at
Speaker 1: a player, which, by the way, if you play poker,
Speaker 1: big poker, no, no, you never throw your chips right,
Speaker 1: Like that is a that is a big etiquette no. No,
Speaker 1: Like chips should never fall off the table, like do
Speaker 1: not do things with a lot of force, like just
Speaker 1: be be nice about it. Splashing the pot not good.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, when that happens in Washington, consequences are much
Speaker 1: more dire and it's no longer quite as amusing. So
Speaker 1: when I always say, like, beware, people who've been on
Speaker 1: huge winning streaks, right, their decision making is going to
Speaker 1: be colored by.
Speaker 3: That American or euro could you say that much hero? Okay,
Speaker 3: the euro the heroes, I don't know, Eroes kind of
Speaker 3: believe in uh in luck.
Speaker 1: Guy.
Speaker 2: They're a little superstitious.
Speaker 1: I think, right, there's a rational superstition. I think in
Speaker 1: a lot of Riverians, right, a lot. And I don't
Speaker 1: even know. I don't know about Musk, like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if he has irrational superstitions. But a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are Riverians and who are kind of the
Speaker 1: these gambling types and who do you think about risk,
Speaker 1: they also are superstitious. And I just find it amusing
Speaker 1: and also, you know, sometimes disappointing. And some people are
Speaker 1: aware of it, like I Caxton, you know, in the
Speaker 1: Biggest Bluff, I have a section where I talked to
Speaker 1: Ike about superstition and he fully owned it and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know this is totally irrational, but like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it anyway, right, I'm going to have my like rituals,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But then there are other people who are like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not superstitious at all. Oh, yes, but this is
Speaker 1: the same shirt I was wearing from day one of
Speaker 1: the tournament because you know, I've been well in it.
Speaker 1: But no, I'm not superstitious at all. But I think
Speaker 1: I think that that's perspective that it can't hurt, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's probably it's not. It's it's bullshit, but like,
Speaker 1: can it really hurt? And my argument is yes, it
Speaker 1: can hurt because when your rituals, when your superstitions are disrupted,
Speaker 1: it can actually really fuck with your mental equilibrium. Right,
Speaker 1: Like what happens if that lucky shirt that you've been
Speaker 1: wearing every single day suddenly you can't find it, or
Speaker 1: like you know that if you're staying in a hotel,
Speaker 1: like you know, got lost somewhere, housekeeping took it, like
Speaker 1: and then suddenly like you have a day four restart
Speaker 1: day five, you're deep and like you're thrown off by this.
Speaker 1: And I wrote about this, but it's happened to Olympic athletes.
Speaker 1: It's like there was one Olympic athlete who lost her
Speaker 1: lucky necklace right before a run and like just completely
Speaker 1: fucked up her run right like, So, yes, there is
Speaker 1: a downside to this. It can hurt because when you're
Speaker 1: kind of reliant on that it can take, it can
Speaker 1: be really difficult to kind of to move past it.
Speaker 1: But I think this is a This is a good
Speaker 1: way to wrap up the show because in some ways,
Speaker 1: like there have been some themes that have gone through
Speaker 1: all all of our segments today, from fires to now.
Speaker 1: One of them is kind of the irrational exuberance and
Speaker 1: people people not making correct decisions because they're a little
Speaker 1: bit overconfident and misperceived risk, whether it's risk of fire.
Speaker 3: Or we're a quarter of the way now through the
Speaker 3: twenty first century. I'm getting that right, Yeah, we are,
Speaker 3: And irrational exuberance is still a thing.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to report.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is, and I think it's here to stay.
Speaker 1: And on that note, Nate gets some rest. Let's get
Speaker 1: over your jet lag so that you're fully awake, and
Speaker 1: we will see you all next week, where Nate will
Speaker 1: no longer be in a time zone that he doesn't
Speaker 1: even know what time it is anymore, So we'll see
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week. Let us know what you
Speaker 1: think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky
Speaker 1: Business at pushkin dot Fm. Risky Business is hosted by
Speaker 1: me Maria Kondakova.
Speaker 2: And byby Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 3: If you like the show, please rate and review us
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