Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kuanakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: Today on the show, we'll be starting off by talking
Speaker 1: about Emmanuel Macrond, the President of France, calling snap elections
Speaker 1: and what that means for how leaders think about risk assessments,
Speaker 1: especially when they are huge gambles as in this case.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about the heat wave that's been predicted
Speaker 2: to hit the eastern United States this week, kind of
Speaker 2: as an excuse to talk about climate change, an issue
Speaker 2: I hope we can address on the show once in
Speaker 2: a while, and communication versus reality on long term risks.
Speaker 1: And finally, we're going to be talking about one of
Speaker 1: the single most important effects of climate change, which is
Speaker 1: the potential shortage of one of my favorite condiments, siracha
Speaker 1: hot sauce.
Speaker 2: Even a hot sauce is a hot sauce.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, we get we'll have we'll have this debate
Speaker 1: after the break to come. Okay, So, Nate, as as
Speaker 1: you've heard, Emmanuel Macron just did something that is completely
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not completely unprecedented, but it's incredibly risky.
Speaker 1: So we had EU elections right, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that his party did not do that well. National Rally,
Speaker 1: which is the Party of Marine Lapenn got thirty one
Speaker 1: point four percent, and this is the far far right
Speaker 1: party in France, and the New Popular Front, which is
Speaker 1: the left wing alliance, got a total of about twenty
Speaker 1: six percent, and his party got fourteen point six percent.
Speaker 1: So he's the president right ruling party not not doing
Speaker 1: that well. And instead of saying, you know, we need
Speaker 1: to kind of rethink this stuff, we need to do something,
Speaker 1: he decided to call snap elections three years ahead of schedule.
Speaker 1: So on June thirtieth and July seventh, France is going
Speaker 1: to go through two rounds of elections. And this is
Speaker 1: a decision that as far as we can tell, Macron
Speaker 1: did not consult with his government on. The Prime Minister
Speaker 1: was absolutely shocked and it could have huge repercussions for France,
Speaker 1: for Europe, for kind of the rise of right wing
Speaker 1: nationalist movements in Europe. And the reason why I thought
Speaker 1: it was really interesting for us to talk about this
Speaker 1: is because there are some echoes of the types of
Speaker 1: high risk maneuvers that we've been talking about that might
Speaker 1: be an option in the United States, but of course
Speaker 1: it's a huge, huge gamble.
Speaker 2: I already have a couple of points of pushback here, Maria, Yeah,
Speaker 2: please push back night. One point I pushedback is I
Speaker 2: think labeling everything right wing is not very revealing sometimes
Speaker 2: because it neglects differences, including why in France and other
Speaker 2: places that the you know, right wing conservative movements have
Speaker 2: become more popular and more effective. You know, Marine le
Speaker 2: Penn has been trying to soften her party's image.
Speaker 1: But let me, I'm just going to interrupt you right there.
Speaker 1: But we know what the Front Nscionale is, right, and
Speaker 1: we know that it was founded by her father, Jean
Speaker 1: Marie Leapenn, who was just a rampant anti summit. Like this,
Speaker 1: this is not a good party. This is a party
Speaker 1: that's anti immigration, anti Semitic, anti all minorities, racist like this,
Speaker 1: this is like as bad as it gets.
Speaker 2: But you're thinking like an elite. I am a man
Speaker 2: of the masses. I think it's important to understand the
Speaker 2: and democracy. We want to understand why more right wing,
Speaker 2: veiled ideas might sometimes become popular in some cases because
Speaker 2: they're paired with economic liberalism or maybe should say economic
Speaker 2: or left wing policies where you have a welfare state,
Speaker 2: you're not too concerned about budget deficits. You might even
Speaker 2: tax the rich to some degree. Look, if I go
Speaker 2: to my hedge fund poker game or whatever, people there describe.
Speaker 1: Themselves of the.
Speaker 2: People describe themselves as socially liberal but fiscally conservative or
Speaker 2: moderate right. Those are not typical people. What these parties
Speaker 2: have figured out is that if you're going to have
Speaker 2: right wing populism, you don't necessarily need right wing conservative
Speaker 2: economics to go along with that. Well, they will. They
Speaker 2: will claim to want to protect the welfare state. They
Speaker 2: are not very concerned about things like budget deficits, which
Speaker 2: are seen as the province of centrists. Even Trump, to
Speaker 2: some degree, he's not Paul Ryan in terms of talking
Speaker 2: about like performing entitlement programs. Is willing to balloon the
Speaker 2: deficit to cut taxes without necessarily cutting spending. They did
Speaker 2: try to kill Obamacare in Trump's first term in office.
Speaker 2: They've talked less about that this time. Maybe Democrats should
Speaker 2: talk more about it. But, like you know, cultural grievances
Speaker 2: that are often based in senophobia or racism, paired with
Speaker 2: the welfare state, which is a very popular program sometimes
Speaker 2: kind of left leaning economics is part of the reason
Speaker 2: these parties around the world have been more have been
Speaker 2: more effective now.
Speaker 1: And I think that that actually is a very important point. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you know everything that I that I said, I think
Speaker 1: stance about this party and why Marine the pen is
Speaker 1: actually incredibly dangerous. However, I think it's important to note
Speaker 1: that in these elections that just happened, the party one
Speaker 1: ninety three percent of communes, which are the local districts,
Speaker 1: came in first, right out, out of all of the
Speaker 1: parties in ninety three percent of the communes in France,
Speaker 1: which is huge because it means that they are finally
Speaker 1: making inroads into places where historically they never have before.
Speaker 1: And so I think that you're making a very valid
Speaker 1: point that even though we might see, okay, this is
Speaker 1: what the real agenda here is. And it's really scary
Speaker 1: for voters who are looking to okay, you know, how
Speaker 1: do we make our daily life better. We don't like Macron,
Speaker 1: we don't like that he raised the retirement age. He's
Speaker 1: making us work right, Macron is not popular. We're going
Speaker 1: to vote for this for this other party, So kind
Speaker 1: of I think one of the bigger there are two
Speaker 1: big things here. One is the one that you just
Speaker 1: pointed out that they are making inroads and they have
Speaker 1: figured out a way to kind of connect to the masses,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's something we're seeing in the
Speaker 1: United States too. But I think the other thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, how risky then is it to try to
Speaker 1: call a snap election right now and say, well, fine,
Speaker 1: you really want these guys, Let's see what happens. Because
Speaker 1: I think that this is actually potentially there are two
Speaker 1: things that he could be thinking, at least in my mind.
Speaker 1: Number One, we're going to win, right like Number one,
Speaker 1: when push comes to shove, I'll be able to assert
Speaker 1: that people actually want more moderate politics, that they don't
Speaker 1: really want this far right. Number Two, we're going to lose.
Speaker 1: And that's okay because the presidential elections aren't for several years,
Speaker 1: and people are actually going to get a taste of
Speaker 1: what it means to have this far right force kind
Speaker 1: of controlling a lot of the political agenda. They're not
Speaker 1: going to like it. And then come election time, Marine
Speaker 1: Leapen will not win the presidency and our party will
Speaker 1: be in a much stronger position. Both of these things
Speaker 1: are incredibly risky ways of thinking to my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a couple things here. I mean, first
Speaker 2: of all, thank you for the clarification on how this
Speaker 2: is not a presidential election, which is not scheduled until
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven. For people's context, in the previous election,
Speaker 2: which is twenty two, they're five years apart. In France,
Speaker 2: Macron defeated the Pen by quite a bit, fifty nine
Speaker 2: percent to forty one percent in the second round runoff. Right,
Speaker 2: there are a whole bunch of different parties in France.
Speaker 2: There actually are like kind of a viable left, center
Speaker 2: and right plus weird i don't know, Gallic, Celtic whatever
Speaker 2: parties here and there. But in that final two, in
Speaker 2: that head to head match against matchup against the Pen,
Speaker 2: despite being unpopular himself, he won by a pretty healthy margin.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, frances is still one of the
Speaker 2: most liberal and kind of many senses of that term
Speaker 2: countries in Europe. The prime minister is uh, this young
Speaker 2: gay guy for example, Right, I mean, it's a country
Speaker 2: that like has always kind of had like a proud
Speaker 2: tradition of of political diversity, but including being you know,
Speaker 2: proudly left wing in certain ways. So part of way
Speaker 2: when I talk about this summary with you is when
Speaker 2: people say the term risky. There are a couple of
Speaker 2: ways in which that can be abused, I think right
Speaker 2: one is that sometimes risky is just a euphemism for stupid,
Speaker 2: Like it may have been really fucking stupid for McCrone
Speaker 2: to call this election at this time. Right, it's a
Speaker 2: bad time not just for incumbent parties in France but everywhere.
Speaker 2: In the UK election set for July fourth, Conservatives are
Speaker 2: set to get destroyed to the point where the Tories
Speaker 2: may not even be the second largest party anymore. Now.
Speaker 2: In the US election, Joe Biden is currently losing we've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show by a little bit in
Speaker 2: the polls to Donald Trump. In India, Mody just saw
Speaker 2: a big demotion in the number of seats that his
Speaker 2: alliance had, so the timing like couldn't be much worse.
Speaker 2: And if you look at polls, then his group, which
Speaker 2: is called Ensemble, there's some fancy or French name. I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna try renaissance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're talking about Macron's party, Crown's Party.
Speaker 2: His party is in third place behind the right wing
Speaker 2: coalition in the lift wing coalition and has only declined
Speaker 2: in the one or two polls since the announcement was made.
Speaker 2: And listen, it's a different system where the campaign takes
Speaker 2: place much more quickly than in the US. That means
Speaker 2: the polls can move more quickly. But like, but this
Speaker 2: is not a good time to be an incumbent centrist technocrat.
Speaker 2: It's not happy times for that for that type of politician.
Speaker 2: And and Macron is like swimming upstream into that. So
Speaker 2: risky may just mean stupid. There's also a bias, I
Speaker 2: think toward assuming that the status quo is safe and
Speaker 2: any change is risky. Right, Like I've argued in the
Speaker 2: US that maybe and it saysn't maybe people take mistake
Speaker 2: me as saying no, Joe Biden definitely should have make
Speaker 2: sure why But like, you know, in some ways, if
Speaker 2: hypothetically Biden were to improve Democrats' chances of defeating Trump
Speaker 2: by stepping aside for somebody else at the convention, is
Speaker 2: that risky? I mean, I mean, in some ways it
Speaker 2: makes the risk of Trump less. If I don't know
Speaker 2: that's true, I'm just saying it's like within the realm
Speaker 2: of possibility, right, you know here, I mean, so here
Speaker 2: he did make a surprising change that is a deviation
Speaker 2: from the status quo, but like sometimes pursuing the status quo,
Speaker 2: like in climate change, as we'll talk about. Right, if
Speaker 2: we were to be just like, oh, we're not gonna
Speaker 2: bother with any of these greenhouse gas reductions, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: that would be the status quo. It's riskier than probably
Speaker 2: switching to alternative energy, no.
Speaker 1: For sure, for sure, And I think that it's really
Speaker 1: important to qualify what we mean by risky here. And
Speaker 1: I think that some people, so Sarkazi actually came out
Speaker 1: very vehemently against this and said that he probably thinks
Speaker 1: that it's risky in the first sense of the word,
Speaker 1: as in stupid, that this was a really really dumb call,
Speaker 1: and he was very vocal about that. And I think
Speaker 1: he called it playing Russian Roulette with the French government,
Speaker 1: which is an interesting way of looking at it. But
Speaker 1: if we look if we just look at precedent, right
Speaker 1: when these types of gambles have happened over the last
Speaker 1: few years, like Brexit didn't go so well, David Cameron
Speaker 1: didn't do so well, like when you when you when
Speaker 1: you do these sorts of like okay, well, find let's
Speaker 1: throw it to the people. I think your second point
Speaker 1: that this is just not a great time for throwing
Speaker 1: it to the people in this particular way, at this
Speaker 1: particular moment. If you're someone like Macro, to me, that resonates,
Speaker 1: and so I wish you know, I wonder we obviously
Speaker 1: don't know what's going on behind the scenes. You would
Speaker 1: think that with such a consequential decision that you would
Speaker 1: consult people. Right, with decision making, it's usually good to
Speaker 1: consult other people who might have a point of view.
Speaker 1: But it was very clear that like the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: was not consulted, that very key people were not consulted.
Speaker 1: And so to me, that's a very strange way of
Speaker 1: making a risk assessment that has potentially very long reaching
Speaker 1: consequences for your country.
Speaker 2: Well, what if mccron, like most politicians, is an ego
Speaker 2: fucking maniac and is doing the thing you were talking
Speaker 2: about earlier, Maria, which is to set himself up for
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven right that if you empower the right
Speaker 2: wing more right and make la Penn who he beat
Speaker 2: by whatever it was, seventeen points last time, he may
Speaker 2: figure that you'll see the right wing getting power and
Speaker 2: you know, in most of the world, certainly the United States,
Speaker 2: which I know the best. Obviously, there is a phenomenon
Speaker 2: known as thermostatic public opinion, which means that you tend
Speaker 2: to turn the temperature in the opposite direction of where
Speaker 2: the environment is. Right, if it's too hot in the room,
Speaker 2: you turn the thermostat down. If it's too cold, you
Speaker 2: turn the thermostat up. So a dose of right wingism
Speaker 2: coupled with dysfunction, right, I mean, I don't think anyone's
Speaker 2: saying anyone's gonna have a particularly compelling majority in France
Speaker 2: is weird. Technically Macron appoints the prime minister, but subject
Speaker 2: to like a recall vote basically from the legislature. So
Speaker 2: you could have like it an you know, ugly two
Speaker 2: headed step child McCrone governing with some conservative and so
Speaker 2: dysfunctional mess and maybe he figures, Okay, that's going to
Speaker 2: elevate La Penn and then and then I win the
Speaker 2: runoff against her the second round against her again in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven. So maybe that's maybe that's why you
Speaker 2: don't consult other people or like, look at Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: You know, if you could be persuaded that it's in
Speaker 2: Joe Biden or in Democratic Party's best interest to have
Speaker 2: another Candy or maybe better. I mean, I think clearly
Speaker 2: a year ago, if he had an open primary, that
Speaker 2: would have been better off. It may not be in
Speaker 2: Biden's best interest though, right, and the average politician, even
Speaker 2: the nice liberals, Maria, even the people you're inclined to
Speaker 2: think are the good guys, are fucking egomaniacs. I can't
Speaker 2: imagine that he thought that. I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: know them.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, but yeah, go ahead, good, No, you say,
Speaker 3: we just got our ass kicked in these EU elections,
Speaker 3: Let's have another election in a few weeks Like that
Speaker 3: seems fucking stupid, unless you're playing some type of long
Speaker 3: selfish I guess i'd say long game for twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, And that was the very cynical part of
Speaker 1: my mind that kind of crafted that as the potential
Speaker 1: motivation behind what he's doing. But I think that it
Speaker 1: might actually be the more accurate reason. And so and
Speaker 1: so I do think that that you're right, I mean,
Speaker 1: to get to the pinnacle of politics like you do,
Speaker 1: have to be How did you call them fucking egomaniacs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that that's a good that that's a good
Speaker 1: way of thinking about it. And so it might at
Speaker 1: the end of the day be an ego play, but
Speaker 1: you know you are, you are playing with the fate
Speaker 1: of Europe. So I think that as we kind of
Speaker 1: as we think about this, as we look at the
Speaker 1: next few weeks, it will be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: how this plays out in Europe, and Nate, let's let's
Speaker 1: revisit this after those elections to see if it in
Speaker 1: any way affects your thinking about Biden's resignation potentially and
Speaker 1: how like a high risk gamble like that might look
Speaker 1: in the United States.
Speaker 2: We will definitely chick in Maria. These all these fucking
Speaker 2: European elections are interfering with my plans to focus only
Speaker 2: on poker during the main event. But but in between
Speaker 2: my time reaching day six again, I'll check in on
Speaker 2: how mcgrone's doing. We'll be back in a minute.
Speaker 1: Nate prepared to die. Let's hear heart. I've you know,
Speaker 1: I was talking with my parents the other day and
Speaker 1: my parents are in Boston and I'm in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: right now, and they were complaining. They're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's about to be one hundred degrees and like one
Speaker 1: hundred percent humidity, and it's already very hard to breathe.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, it's ninety degrees and zero
Speaker 1: percent humidity in Las Vegas. We have completely reversed. And
Speaker 1: I think this is the beginning of a week where
Speaker 1: that is true because a heat wave is hitting most
Speaker 1: of the country but not Nevada.
Speaker 2: Yeah, New York is protected to get up to the
Speaker 2: mid low to mid nineties later this week. Places like
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh maybe up to ninety nine one hundred degrees. This
Speaker 2: is not that that that that hot, except for the
Speaker 2: time of year. That is, we're still in mid to
Speaker 2: late June. It's technically still spring. By the way, Maria, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we got four more days or two more when you're yeah,
Speaker 2: we haven't.
Speaker 1: We haven't gotten to the summer solstice yet.
Speaker 2: Correct. But but these are potentially record breaking temperatures for
Speaker 2: for the time of year that they're in. This is
Speaker 2: not a meteorology podcast, but I did kind of want
Speaker 2: to use a segment as an excuse to talk about
Speaker 2: climate change and risk communication around climate change. It's early
Speaker 2: in the Lifeless Show. It's not an issue we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Yet I think one problem with climate change is that
Speaker 2: like it's something happening slowly and kind of constantly over time.
Speaker 2: By the way, if you look at data from the
Speaker 2: Met Office Hadley Center in the UK, and I'm aware
Speaker 2: I used to be more of a climate change nerd.
Speaker 2: I'm aware there are debates over these different measurements, but
Speaker 2: from this measurement, which is pretty consistent with what I
Speaker 2: see elsewhere, twenty twenty three was the hottest year in
Speaker 2: modern recorded history, with the mean global temperature anomaly one
Speaker 2: point one degree celsius. By the way, Celsius fucking sucks
Speaker 2: Fahrenheit so much better. Zero one hundred zero was cold.
Speaker 2: Hundred is hot, the best fucking scale on Earth. And
Speaker 2: you're trying to use celsius anyway, though this is denominated
Speaker 2: in celsius.
Speaker 1: Zia, the zero is actually the freezing in celsius. That's
Speaker 1: why that kind of makes sense. But I would much
Speaker 1: rather know when it's fucking hot, because that's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about climate change. That's what matters when we're talking
Speaker 1: about these kinds of things. So one degree shift in
Speaker 1: celsius is equal to more than two degrees shift in fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: So you have these jumps, you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you know it's one degree hotter today. Now I want
Speaker 1: to know that it's five degrees hotter, that it's ten
Speaker 1: degrees hotter. And so I think that when you're communicating
Speaker 1: as a psychologist, when we're talking about climate change, when
Speaker 1: we're talking about risk, when we're talking about heat, fahrenheit
Speaker 1: is absolutely the way to go, because that shit is
Speaker 1: way more impressive than celsius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can take your kilometers in your centigrade temperature
Speaker 2: scale and shove it metric system, give it to a
Speaker 2: cat or something. We're Americans. We have fahrenheit. Anyway, though,
Speaker 2: the table that I'm reading from claims credibly that global
Speaker 2: tempatures were one point one degree centigrade celsius higher in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three than they have been over the long
Speaker 2: term pre global warming period. So far in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: they're one point two to three degrees celsiu is higher
Speaker 2: than the long term trend you'd remembered for now these
Speaker 2: you know, this does fluctuate up and downward. These may
Speaker 2: prove to be particularly bad years. The long term trend
Speaker 2: is pretty unmistakable and we're already nearing the one point
Speaker 2: five degrees sort of best optimistic maybe now at this point, frankly,
Speaker 2: not the very realistic case that's been the target target
Speaker 2: warming rise of climate activists for years. So we're already
Speaker 2: kind of we're already kind of seeing the evidence of this,
Speaker 2: not that you need too much of a microscope to
Speaker 2: find it. The other thing too, is that, like I
Speaker 2: think our readers can imagine, like what a bell curve
Speaker 2: looks like a normal distribution, you can imagine that if
Speaker 2: you kind of shift that bell curve over to the right,
Speaker 2: because now the average temperature and yes there's tons of
Speaker 2: fluctuation over the course of the year, but if the
Speaker 2: average temperature is two or three degrees fahrenheit hotter, you
Speaker 2: can imagine that, like right tail the graph that crosses
Speaker 2: past like ninety nine degrees or one hundred that actually
Speaker 2: occurs a lot more often, And like the number of
Speaker 2: heat waves has roughly doubled in the US since the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, for example, according to the National Weather Service.
Speaker 2: So in some ways, heat waves are the best and
Speaker 2: most reliable signal of global warming. And I think if
Speaker 2: you are talking about climate change, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 2: I'm actually the minority that says that, Like, I think
Speaker 2: climate change is kind of a weird euphemism. I think
Speaker 2: global warming is more descriptive in some ways. And if
Speaker 2: you're gonna have global warming, you're gonna have not just
Speaker 2: warmer on average, but you're gonna have more warm extremes,
Speaker 2: and so like heat waves happening to this degree in
Speaker 2: June are a clear consequence of that, And so I
Speaker 2: think there's like an appropriate excuse to talk about this issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that it raises a lot
Speaker 1: of questions about, you know, how we think about global warming.
Speaker 1: I'm actually going to use that term as well, because
Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. I studied briefly when I
Speaker 1: was getting my PhD how to communicate risk around climate change,
Speaker 1: and global warming really is much more descriptive, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: that term became very politicized and is not popular anymore.
Speaker 1: But it is exactly what we're talking about. So I
Speaker 1: think it's good communication, which is one of the things
Speaker 1: I think that is an important question here, right, how
Speaker 1: do we communicate the risks and tell people like, look,
Speaker 1: this is important, we need to make changes. And I
Speaker 1: don't care you know what your politics are. This is
Speaker 1: something that affects all of humanity.
Speaker 2: It's one of those funny issues. And actually, like relative
Speaker 2: to other things, views on global warming have gotten a
Speaker 2: little bit less polarized of all things in the US.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're like kind of out of the al
Speaker 2: Gore polar bears era and things like that. You know, Look,
Speaker 2: what are the challenges in riscommunication is that in some sense,
Speaker 2: the more seriously people take climate change slash global warming,
Speaker 2: the less of a chance that will cause big scary problems. Right.
Speaker 2: If you look at CO two emissions, this is also
Speaker 2: data from our world and data they have leveled off
Speaker 2: to some degree. Now they actually fell a little bit
Speaker 2: during the pandemic years when economic output was depressed. They
Speaker 2: have since rebounded, but they've kind of rebounded to like
Speaker 2: roughly where they were a few years ago. If you
Speaker 2: look at more detail, you see that the West, meaning
Speaker 2: the wealthy countries in Europe and the EU, actually have
Speaker 2: seen declines in their carbon output, whereas China's have increased
Speaker 2: a lot. Other parts of developing world have increased quite
Speaker 2: a bit. So this is kind of like a little
Speaker 2: bit of a political problem too. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: that the rest of the world is entitled to the
Speaker 2: sort of prosperity that we have in the US. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen kind of projections of like, you know, we're
Speaker 2: now having decceleration and population growth. Maybe that affects things
Speaker 2: in the long term as well, But it is a diffical
Speaker 2: problem because you actually are kind of getting and kind
Speaker 2: of telling people like, yeah, I mean you know that
Speaker 2: China might have to pay for a mess that kind
Speaker 2: of you know, the West originally caused a little bit,
Speaker 2: but the West has actually cut its emissions in meaningful ways.
Speaker 2: So one question is, like, just from a peer I mean,
Speaker 2: from purely like empirical standpoint, how well do like scare
Speaker 2: tactics work, Because there are some liberals who think that,
Speaker 2: like the ocean is going to be boiling in like
Speaker 2: seven years, and that's just complete misinformation. That's like believing
Speaker 2: in like horse tranquilizers or something to cure disease.
Speaker 1: Wait, I do think that there are there are actually
Speaker 1: some good data that scare tactics are not great, and
Speaker 1: that that's not the way that you want to be
Speaker 1: communicating if you want people to change behavior on this
Speaker 1: type of thing. Scare tactics are great. It comes to
Speaker 1: very palpable immediate risks. But even then, like think about like,
Speaker 1: let's just go back to like childhood, right if you
Speaker 1: have a kid, and neither one of us has kids,
Speaker 1: but if you have a kid and you want them
Speaker 1: not to do something, and you're trying to kind of
Speaker 1: scare them, right and say, oh, if you do this,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah, you know, the Boogeyman's going
Speaker 1: to come and you're gonna be carried off and all
Speaker 1: this bad stuff's going to happen. The scarier it is, like,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll work up until age like two or three,
Speaker 1: and then when they some critical thinking abilities kick in,
Speaker 1: they'll be like, Okay, this does not make sense. This
Speaker 1: ain't actually going to happen. I'm going to do this
Speaker 1: and see what the actual consequences are for myself. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's actually a pretty good, pretty good
Speaker 1: illustration of the kind of the degree of scare tactics
Speaker 1: at work. Right. It does need to be grounded in reality.
Speaker 1: You can't start like telling people that the Boogeyman's going
Speaker 1: to come and boil all of the oceans and eat
Speaker 1: all of your trees and that the sky's going to
Speaker 1: turn black, you know that that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: But the unfortunate the unfortunate thing is, though there are
Speaker 1: no good data on what actually works well, it turns
Speaker 1: out that a lot of different tactics don't work particularly well,
Speaker 1: and that this is an incredibly, incredibly difficult issue to communicate.
Speaker 1: And one of the fundamental reasons is something that you've
Speaker 1: already alluded to, which is that it's not immediate. It's
Speaker 1: not something that I experience right now. It's something where
Speaker 1: I can experience a lot of things that kind of
Speaker 1: seem to disconfirm it. And people are really really bad
Speaker 1: at probabilistic thinking, as we've talked about, and we're really
Speaker 1: bad at long term planning, right We're really bad at
Speaker 1: kind of thinking like ten years ahead, one year ahead.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about fifty years ahead, one hundred years ahead.
Speaker 1: And you know, our thinking really does break down, Our
Speaker 1: planning breaks down, our risky decision making breaks down. So
Speaker 1: it's a really difficult subject. And I wish that, you know,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be amazing if at the end of the
Speaker 1: segment we had a golden bullet. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: going to happen, but it's a really, it's a thorny question.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, and you get in the fact that, like,
Speaker 2: if I send some pollution up into the atmosphere, it
Speaker 2: spreads around the globe. Right, So I don't realize that
Speaker 2: cost necessarily directly myself. Right. There are even some countries,
Speaker 2: you know, the colder countries, I mean, Canada, Russia might
Speaker 2: benefit from global warming. That's just a fact right now. Look,
Speaker 2: I think more and more people feel like a responsibility
Speaker 2: to do something about kind of the shared humanity that
Speaker 2: we all have. But yeah, it's a notoriously tricky issue.
Speaker 2: And I think, as you're getting at before, like people
Speaker 2: are playing a long game here. I think too often
Speaker 2: elites again criticizing elites, of which I'm a fucking elite, right,
Speaker 2: I'm criticizing my tribe.
Speaker 1: Now, you're a man of the people who plays in
Speaker 1: high stakes hedge fund posts.
Speaker 2: I think my tribe often treats the masses contemptuously, not
Speaker 2: just treat some has contempt for the masses, and therefore
Speaker 2: they think these people are fools, right, And we can
Speaker 2: kind of tell like a little white line of them,
Speaker 2: and they won't figure it out, and it doesn't work, right.
Speaker 2: You know, there were efforts, for example, to repress maybe
Speaker 2: censor is slightly too strong a term, but like to
Speaker 2: repress discussion of like the theory that COVID originated in
Speaker 2: a lab, right, which is now considered by you know,
Speaker 2: roughly a fifty to fifty shot by like several major
Speaker 2: US agencies that have investigated, you know, that didn't actually
Speaker 2: work people the whole time if you ask polls, and no,
Speaker 2: science is not done by poll but people said, yeah,
Speaker 2: actually I would lean lab like if you asked me myself, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I think you know, there are efforts, for example,
Speaker 2: for Biden to tell people don't worry about the fact
Speaker 2: that I'm eighty one years old and Trump is fucking
Speaker 2: seventy eight years old, just turned seventy eight last week,
Speaker 2: by the way, right, it doesn't work. Not every fucking
Speaker 2: person cares about the tone of how the New York
Speaker 2: Times explained something that kind of verify information based on
Speaker 2: their instinct about whether you're honest and truthful and how
Speaker 2: kind of the evidence kind of checks out with their
Speaker 2: own experience in the world. That's one thing that I
Speaker 2: guess global warming has going for it is that people
Speaker 2: do correctly into it that you have things like these
Speaker 2: heat waves coming more often. That's definitely happening more often, right,
Speaker 2: that's unambiguous, whereas things like hurricanes it's more complicated the
Speaker 2: physics of the atmosphere and things like that, and those
Speaker 2: are rareer events. But like it, being really abnormally hot
Speaker 2: probably is more persuasive to people to do something about
Speaker 2: global warming than some rhetorical trick.
Speaker 1: Will be right back, Nate, we were just talking about
Speaker 1: something really serious, you know, climate change, global warming, heat waves.
Speaker 1: But to me, there's something that's really close to my
Speaker 1: heart that this issue is getting at, which is that
Speaker 1: we might be facing another shortage of everyone's, well not everyone's,
Speaker 1: but my favorite hot sauce that I like to add
Speaker 1: to everything, which is Huifong's Siracha sauce, you know, with
Speaker 1: its little green cap and it's little rooster. And there
Speaker 1: was a shortage of it a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: now there might be a second one, and I'm freaking
Speaker 1: out and thinking about all sorts of irrational things like
Speaker 1: should I stock Pilot while it's still available and create
Speaker 1: a shortage by my own irrational behavior? But anyway, I
Speaker 1: think that this is something that's very interesting to talk
Speaker 1: about By the way, did you know that it was
Speaker 1: pronounced si racha, not sri racha, which is the way
Speaker 1: I've been saying it my entire life. I watched some
Speaker 1: videos where Vietnamese individuals corrected pronunciation and I was blown away.
Speaker 2: Just get rid of that extra r doing anything, Just
Speaker 2: get rid of it. I'm just going to confuse people.
Speaker 2: But now it's just siracha. You can ignore the first R.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly exactly. But in all seriousness, I think that
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting aspect of risk assessment here from
Speaker 1: the corporate standpoint, not just the individual standpoint. So there
Speaker 1: are two reasons why we might be seeing a shortage.
Speaker 1: But one of them is because so the company that
Speaker 1: produces sir Rochessauceuifong, they broke off their relationship with their supplier,
Speaker 1: their long term supplier and their only supply supplier, Underwood Ranches.
Speaker 1: So that relationship broke off in twenty sixteen. So then
Speaker 1: they looked for producers in Mexico. And originally kind of
Speaker 1: the fallout of this was there was a shortage. Now
Speaker 1: there's going to be another shortage because in Mexico we
Speaker 1: have a heat wave and a drought, and so this
Speaker 1: is happening right now, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: there are two different issues. Obviously the climate change that
Speaker 1: we've just talked about, but also like, I'm sorry when
Speaker 1: I was reading this story and this whole saga of
Speaker 1: Underwood and Quifong in that partnership and how it came
Speaker 1: to be and how it broke up, like this was
Speaker 1: just a list of like what you do not do
Speaker 1: when it comes to risk assessment in business, what you
Speaker 1: do not do when it comes to diversification of your
Speaker 1: supply chain, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, And so
Speaker 1: it seemed like a lot of bad business decisions that
Speaker 1: might end with me not being able to get the
Speaker 1: sauce I want when I want it.
Speaker 2: Look, I think there are certain types of products that
Speaker 2: are kind of correctly risk averse because they lean very
Speaker 2: heavily on brand loyalty. Right, So first of all, let's
Speaker 2: have a couple. You want to have an honest conversation
Speaker 2: about siracha sauce, Siracha hot sauce. So, first of all,
Speaker 2: it tricks you by having that extra R that you're
Speaker 2: not supposed to pronounce. The brand is also it is
Speaker 2: a great sauce. It's important brand who because some people
Speaker 2: think that, like some people think that siracha is just
Speaker 2: this what's puce you're call It's like who Quong Quifong? Right?
Speaker 2: They actually think that siracha is some like registered trademark
Speaker 2: of Quifong, and it's not. It's just the best known
Speaker 2: brand of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: An article friend from Mackenzie Filson, who is a writer
Speaker 2: for The Kitchen, a subvertical of Yahoo Life. Mackenzie tested
Speaker 2: did a blind taste test of one, two, three, four, five,
Speaker 2: six seven siracha sauces. Do you want to guess where
Speaker 2: the famous rooster bottle of Quifong ended up on that
Speaker 2: blind taste test?
Speaker 1: First? First, No, I'm assuming it's not first, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you would not be asking me. So what was first night?
Speaker 2: First is Ox brand siracha sauce, and then Ninja Squirrel
Speaker 2: Siracha hot sauce was right second.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to say, that's a really nice name.
Speaker 1: I like Ninja Squirrel. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: people are incredibly loyal and they want this sauce. But
Speaker 1: when they can't get that sauce, that's a big, big problem.
Speaker 1: And so it does lead to things that seem to
Speaker 1: be irrational, but to me on an individual level, seem
Speaker 1: completely rational. Like I really want to go after we
Speaker 1: finished taping, I have to go play poker, but I
Speaker 1: would rather go to the store and actually just like
Speaker 1: get five bottles of siracha and just have them just
Speaker 1: in case something happens. Is that a good thing for
Speaker 1: me to do? Or is that a bad thing for
Speaker 1: me to do?
Speaker 2: I mean, it might be selfish what the effective altruists
Speaker 2: say about your hoarding siracha sauce. And it does keep
Speaker 2: by the way, was doing research, it does preserve in
Speaker 2: your fridge for like literally two or fevers, which I'm
Speaker 2: not sure that's the best advertisement for it necessarily, But no,
Speaker 2: what you were saying, I mean, you know, the most
Speaker 2: famous mistake all those some people think it was kind
Speaker 2: of a long game to trick people when Coca Cola
Speaker 2: switched its recipe was kind of the most famous mistake
Speaker 2: in the history of like marketing. When you have an
Speaker 2: iconic brand that is actually a push come to shove.
Speaker 2: If you were to do a blind taste test, I
Speaker 2: doubt that risky business listeners would necessarily be able to
Speaker 2: tell Sirachia and or prefer it. But they have an
Speaker 2: iconic brand and you don't want to fuck with that, right,
Speaker 2: You don't want to say, yeah, it's going to taste
Speaker 2: a little bit different. You thinks actually better. You want
Speaker 2: to preserve that iconicness, and that means I think kind
Speaker 2: of correctly being risk averse when it comes to things
Speaker 2: that would affect affect your product quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. And you know, going so
Speaker 1: going back to that original dispute, I think that you know,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of mistakes there, given that you
Speaker 1: want to protect the taste and kind of the original
Speaker 1: recipe on the quality. Because first of all, they only
Speaker 1: had one single supplier, so we Fong and Underwood just
Speaker 1: work together. And Underwood's only client was we Fong, So
Speaker 1: they ended up just dedicating hundreds of thousands of acres
Speaker 1: of land too, you know, doing just growing these chili
Speaker 1: so that they could supply this one company. And it
Speaker 1: was a part partnership of the minds of the two
Speaker 1: Potter familiases, right, the two heads of the family. And
Speaker 1: they were all handshake deals, like they didn't have contracts.
Speaker 1: It was all just like okay, this year, we're going
Speaker 1: to give you this much and you're going to pay
Speaker 1: us this much. And I was just reading this and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, holy shit, Like, isn't someone at this
Speaker 1: point like maybe that worked like thirty years ago before
Speaker 1: this became a big deal. Now that we're talking about
Speaker 1: this huge business, isn't someone going to tell them this?
Speaker 1: Say't a good idea? Like as a poker player, I
Speaker 1: know that everything needs to be in writing, right, Like
Speaker 1: if you and I, like we have swaps and events,
Speaker 1: we have those in text messages, right, so we actually
Speaker 1: have the exact thing that like, this is the percentage
Speaker 1: that we've swapped. This is how the swap works, so
Speaker 1: that we have a record. How can you be making
Speaker 1: these deals with just one supplier? You know, no no backup,
Speaker 1: no redundancy, nothing, and it's all a handshake deal. Like
Speaker 1: to me, this is this is just a really weird
Speaker 1: way of thinking about risk as a business owner. So
Speaker 1: obviously to me this is more interesting as consumer because
Speaker 1: it causes these sorts of problems. But as a business owner,
Speaker 1: I think that you want to be thinking about risk
Speaker 1: and more in a way that includes diversification, includes redundancies,
Speaker 1: includes kind of these protections so that shit like this
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, especially when you have things like climate change
Speaker 1: which are already threats to your supply.
Speaker 2: Okay, Maria, we've had fun with our hot Sauce segment.
Speaker 2: What is like the actual investigative takeaway that people can
Speaker 2: apply in their everyday lives here? What do we learn
Speaker 2: from today's episode?
Speaker 1: Well, I think that on an individual basis, we learned
Speaker 1: that it's good for me to stockpile, but nobody else
Speaker 1: should stockpile because that's a rational behavior. However, we did
Speaker 1: learn that long term planning is incredibly important on every
Speaker 1: single level, and that starts at the corporate level, right
Speaker 1: and on an individual level, you know, also planning ahead
Speaker 1: is good. That does not necessarily mean stockpiling, but it
Speaker 1: might involve diversifying your tastes so that you do, you know,
Speaker 1: look at the other competitors so that if there is
Speaker 1: a shortage, you can get what's that squirrel called ninja squirrel?
Speaker 1: You can music fryd ninja squirrel and see if it
Speaker 1: stocks up. So so I think that those are those
Speaker 1: are all kind of things that we need to think about.
Speaker 1: And all of these things, like everything we've talked about
Speaker 1: today is kind of centered on our lack of ability
Speaker 1: to think through risk over the long term, right as
Speaker 1: opposed to immediately and to have that sort of long
Speaker 1: term planning mentality.
Speaker 2: Look, if you're this Saratch company, you don't want people
Speaker 2: to realize is that this is actually not a hot sauce.
Speaker 2: It's a medium sauce, a delicious medium sauce. But like
Speaker 2: if people get hooked on like the Abanniro stuff and
Speaker 2: like the Ghost Pepper stuff, you're screwed, right, So you
Speaker 2: better you better shape up and have some inventory ready
Speaker 2: in Q three. I'll take you that much.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Please do not make me switch brands. I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I want to remain more to you help
Speaker 1: me do that. Thank you, And now, Nate, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be off to play my next event of the
Speaker 1: World series, which is still not going nearly as well
Speaker 1: as yours. I've had one men cash, Nate one min
Speaker 1: cash in the last.
Speaker 2: Week, Maria. It often tends to turn around. It's kind
Speaker 2: of literally random to some large degree. What's what's the
Speaker 2: event today?
Speaker 1: The event today is a two thousand dollars freeze out event.
Speaker 1: So I'm actually, yeah, I'm excited. I appreciate that. I
Speaker 1: really like freeze out events. So freeze out events for
Speaker 1: non poker players means you can only enter one time,
Speaker 1: and in some ways that's the truest form of poker,
Speaker 1: right If you bust your app, you're done. And I
Speaker 1: love that, and so I'm I'm excited for the freeze outs.
Speaker 1: The main event is a freeze out, So I hope
Speaker 1: Nate that today is a Marie event because so far,
Speaker 1: you know, I've had two cases this whole series. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've only played for two weeks, so it's one a week.
Speaker 1: But still it feels like I'm not I'm not doing
Speaker 1: that well and it's time to turn things around.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you're still playing your A game
Speaker 2: or or is it getting to be a grind?
Speaker 1: No? No, I think I think that it was really nice.
Speaker 1: You know, I took that week off and so I'm
Speaker 1: actually pretty fresh still. And then I took two days off.
Speaker 1: I didn't play Friday or Saturday, which I think is
Speaker 1: important to take these breaks so I actually practice what
Speaker 1: I preach right in my tips for the World Series,
Speaker 1: I said you need to kind of take brain breaks,
Speaker 1: and I did do exactly that. I went hiking on Saturday.
Speaker 1: I ran into a mountain lion, so it wasn't as
Speaker 1: relaxing as I would have wanted it to be. Yes,
Speaker 1: but here I am to tell the tale. But that
Speaker 1: was not the most relaxing hike in the world. PSA.
Speaker 1: There are lots of mountain lions in the Spring Mountains.
Speaker 1: Normally you never see them, but when they start growling
Speaker 1: at you, it means that you have inadvertently impinged on
Speaker 1: their territory, and it's probably a good idea to back
Speaker 1: away and get the fuck out of there, which is
Speaker 1: why I did.
Speaker 2: I didn't intuitively know that we're lion in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Oh, there are tons of mountain lions, so the Spring
Speaker 1: Mountains have a lot of them. Red Rock even has some.
Speaker 1: But yes, you are talking to someone who escaped from
Speaker 1: a mountain lion relatively unscathed. I have a I have
Speaker 1: a little uh. Yeah, I have a little cut cut
Speaker 1: up from a fall, as I had as I tried
Speaker 1: to get away. But otherwise I'm good.
Speaker 2: Do lions like siracha? Could it be like?
Speaker 1: Excellent? Excellent idea? I will I will try that next time.
Speaker 2: Join us next time and we will experiment with mountain
Speaker 2: lions and sches sauce A.
Speaker 1: Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova and me
Speaker 1: Mate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Speaker 1: Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: And if you want to listen to and add three version,
Speaker 2: sign up for pushkar Plus for six thirty nine a month.
Speaker 2: You get access to adre listening. Thanks for tuning in.