Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to risky business show about making better decisions.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Kannakova.
Speaker 2: And I'm Nathaniel Silver.
Speaker 1: You just can't leave it alone. You can't just mean
Speaker 1: Nate Silver. I'm gonna call you Nathaniel. This entire show
Speaker 1: just watched you go to.
Speaker 3: Spend a litle time in Florida and there, Nate, n
Speaker 3: Ate is very often Nae if you have like for
Speaker 3: an example, Aver, so you know, Nathaniel might be might
Speaker 3: be needed in the mix a little bit here.
Speaker 1: All right, Nate, let's uh, let's get going today on
Speaker 1: the show. We have some poker drama.
Speaker 3: Nate.
Speaker 1: We haven't oh sorry, Nathaniel, we haven't. We haven't done
Speaker 1: poker drama for a while. But this is poker drama
Speaker 1: that's squarely in the intersection of the poker world and
Speaker 1: the non poker world. And that as a writer as
Speaker 1: a creator, really grabbed me and I'm guessing grabbed you
Speaker 1: as well. And it has to do with the No
Speaker 1: Limit documentary series that was released a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: But no, dear listeners, you will not be able to
Speaker 1: find it anywhere because it has since been scrubbed from
Speaker 1: the internet. So Nate, do you want me to give
Speaker 1: a little bit of a rundown for.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, So, first of all, this was a documentary
Speaker 1: that was created by a collaboration between Gigi Poker, which
Speaker 1: owns the World Series of Poker, and Artisans on Fire,
Speaker 1: specifically Dustin Ayanotti, who followed last year players during the
Speaker 1: inaugural twenty five thousand dollars Super Main event in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: which was the just ever guarantee in poker history. Lots
Speaker 1: of compelling storylines. I mean, it was a huge, huge event.
Speaker 1: I definitely remember seeing it from Afar. I was in
Speaker 1: Vegas at the time. I did not play in it,
Speaker 1: but being like wow, like holy shit, this is huge.
Speaker 1: So Dustin I Andatti followed players around. According to their
Speaker 1: original release, they had over six hundred and fifty hours
Speaker 1: of behind the scenes footage from the event. Six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty hours, Nate. That is a lot of hours,
Speaker 1: and it was edited down to eight thirty minute episodes.
Speaker 1: Six of them had been released by last week when
Speaker 1: it came out. And I say it came out because
Speaker 1: there was no you know, there were no intimations or
Speaker 1: signs that this was the case. But one of the
Speaker 1: main characters. Alan Keating had watched one of the episodes
Speaker 1: where he appeared and was like, hey, I didn't say
Speaker 1: this stuff, like what is actually going on? And he
Speaker 1: called out the documentary on Twitter and was like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: what's going on. Dustin admitted that he had used AI
Speaker 1: to advance the narrative and put words in Keating's mouth
Speaker 1: that Keating never actually said. By the way, both Keating's
Speaker 1: original call out and Ionatti's Mia Coolpa have since been
Speaker 1: taken off. Anyway, long story short, he said, oh, but
Speaker 1: this is the only time I used it, Like, not
Speaker 1: really a big deal. Then there was another Keating who's
Speaker 1: not at all related, Alex Keating, who's like, actually, wait no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to raise my hand to because also you know,
Speaker 1: I see it in my stuff. Anyway, documentary has been
Speaker 1: taken off. WSP apologizes and says that they are going
Speaker 1: to re edit everything and that's kind of that's where
Speaker 1: we stand right now. I have some very strong feelings
Speaker 1: on this that go far beyond this the poker world,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you do too. I'll let you start
Speaker 1: since I've kind of been hogging the mic with the
Speaker 1: background of the drama.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, it was a one off thing.
Speaker 3: It's like when people are like accused of handsiness or
Speaker 3: sexual harassment.
Speaker 2: Right, usually not a usually not a one off thing.
Speaker 3: It's usually a chronic behavior where you don't recognize a
Speaker 3: boundary of permission. Yeah, by the way, if you ever
Speaker 3: interview me for some shit like this, I hate watching
Speaker 3: myself on TV, so you could probably.
Speaker 2: Just make me say whatever.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: You're too lazy to ever check it.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that you said that. I was actually
Speaker 1: talking with my husband about this, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I would lose my shit if this happened to me,
Speaker 1: because I think both of us have appeared in dozens
Speaker 1: of documentaries, like I don't even know how many, but
Speaker 1: I never watch myself back, and I don't actually think
Speaker 1: that Keating watched himself back until somebody quoted him back
Speaker 1: to him and he was like, wait, I never said that,
Speaker 1: and then he watched Now.
Speaker 3: Look, in all seriousness, I am reluctant to give any
Speaker 3: interviews for something that can be edited, even fairly or
Speaker 3: relatively fairly.
Speaker 2: Right, if you're you know, if you're.
Speaker 3: Tapping an hour with me and you're gonna clip five
Speaker 3: minutes out of it, or maybe fifteen seconds out of it, right,
Speaker 3: Like that makes me very nervous, right, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: and I kind of feel like, and this is kind
Speaker 3: of advice to people in general. I'm sure we have
Speaker 3: a lot of influential listeners. Is like, yeah, you should
Speaker 3: understand kind of like what the journalist's motivation is. If
Speaker 3: the story's about you and your kind of primary character,
Speaker 3: that's one thing. If you're kind of invited in to
Speaker 3: provide like color commentary, then yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Would be a little bit wary.
Speaker 3: But look, I think there are a couple of things
Speaker 3: going on here right, Like one is like a lack
Speaker 3: of recognition of what like good journalism or even journalism.
Speaker 2: Good or not really is So, what's the guy's name,
Speaker 2: like Ianetti.
Speaker 1: Some Dustin, Ionotti, Ionatti. Yeah, he I apologize if I'm
Speaker 1: mispronouncing it, and it's whatever.
Speaker 2: It's a it's an American eye.
Speaker 3: You go with Dustin, we get to pronounce the you know,
Speaker 3: if you're like Dante or something, then maybe you can
Speaker 3: italian ify it.
Speaker 2: Whatever. Dustin, we get to pick how to pronounce your
Speaker 2: last name.
Speaker 3: I feel like, Dustin, you're giving up your anyway. But
Speaker 3: mister Dustin posted a lot of not pretentious, but a
Speaker 3: lot of very long tweets on X where he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, poker is losing mind share to chess and
Speaker 3: f one and all these other things that should be
Speaker 3: comprolled to poker, and we do much worse. And there
Speaker 3: are a lot of reasons for this, but one of
Speaker 3: the reasons is that we're not We're not good enough
Speaker 3: at like storytelling and narrative, right, which, Okay, I think
Speaker 3: people some people might say, well, okay, is it used
Speaker 3: okay to use chatchpt to do like a little copy
Speaker 3: of it on your on your script. Sure, I would
Speaker 3: think it's totally fine. Right, Is it usefull to use
Speaker 3: AI tools to clean up literal visual defects? I mean,
Speaker 3: I think sure, it's probably fine. When you are attributing
Speaker 3: though a quote to some person, then you're not allowed
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 2: It's like a basic journalism thing. It's also weird.
Speaker 3: It's also just weird because like, you tape all this
Speaker 3: footage and like, yep, can you really not make the story.
Speaker 1: It's two hundred and fifty hours. I just keep saying
Speaker 1: that because it is mind boggling to me that you
Speaker 1: would have that much footage and say that for the
Speaker 1: sake of narrative, you needed to create something that you
Speaker 1: didn't have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of lazy, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, Like that in all that footage you
Speaker 3: can't find.
Speaker 2: The quote.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, yeah, sometimes when when you're writing, you're like, boy,
Speaker 3: I wish the subject had said that, right. Well, you
Speaker 3: can do though, if you're a writer.
Speaker 2: You can actually say it in your own voice.
Speaker 3: You're like, that's a good idea, right, or you can
Speaker 3: or or they are like legitimate ways to paraphraate. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, sometimes if someone like jumping around the meaning
Speaker 3: of something, then I mean, this is a little bit
Speaker 3: of a fine art. The BBC got in trouble recently
Speaker 3: for like splicing together two stippets of a Trump speech
Speaker 3: on January sixth that were like thirty minutes apart or
Speaker 3: something and made it seem like He's like.
Speaker 2: Go attack the capitol right now.
Speaker 3: Right, it was kind of like we need to go
Speaker 3: to the capitol blah blah blah, half an hour.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: He was long winded and go march there right now,
Speaker 3: and like okay, like that clearly was taken out of context,
Speaker 3: right like yeah, like I don't know when you use
Speaker 3: like the ellipses anyway, I'm getting like weird journalism stuff.
Speaker 1: The point is it, like no, but you know what,
Speaker 1: this weird journalism stuff is actually important because it's been
Speaker 1: around for a very long time, and there are standards
Speaker 1: for a reason. For instance, the New Yorker and I
Speaker 1: think most magazines actually that I've ever written for do
Speaker 1: not actually allow you to allow sources to look through
Speaker 1: their quotes before you publish, right, Like that's because you're
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want someone to be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't actually want you know, to be
Speaker 1: quoted saying this, Like you're on the record. You give
Speaker 1: the interview, like that's it, but you record, right, You
Speaker 1: have recordings, you have notes, you have all this stuff.
Speaker 1: You give all of that to fact checkers who actually
Speaker 1: go through and make sure that this all happened and
Speaker 1: this all exists. The reason that we do this is
Speaker 1: that in the past there have been egregious malpractice issues
Speaker 1: with journalists who made shit up right and who actually
Speaker 1: did craft the perfect characters or the perfect stories because
Speaker 1: it suited their story whatever they were trying to tell,
Speaker 1: and some of them got away with it. So at
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, someone who absolutely broke my heart was
Speaker 1: Joseph Mitchell, who died before I don't know if he
Speaker 1: died before I was born, but you know, this is
Speaker 1: a different era of New Yorker journalism, and Joseph Mitchell
Speaker 1: was someone I had really really looked up to as
Speaker 1: like a cub writer because his stories were just filled
Speaker 1: with these amazing characters, these amazing quotes, these amazing scenes,
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, I wish I could do that. Right,
Speaker 1: he writes nonfiction that's like fiction. He finds all of
Speaker 1: these amazing things and he brings you there, and it
Speaker 1: turns out his nonfiction was fiction. So as it turns
Speaker 1: out he actually did exactly what you were suggesting that
Speaker 1: and he's like, I wish this quote existed. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to make it up and I'm going to create
Speaker 1: a composite character based on the reporting I did, who
Speaker 1: says all of these things that are very convenient for
Speaker 1: me to say. Now. Like I said, different era, at
Speaker 1: different time, the vaunted fact checking department did not work
Speaker 1: the way that it does today. It slipped through, and
Speaker 1: like I said, it broke my heart because it sets
Speaker 1: you to an absolutely unattainable standard. I was looking at
Speaker 1: this like, oh, this is what journalism is. No, this
Speaker 1: is what fiction is. And the reason it was so clean,
Speaker 1: with you know, all the bows beautifully tied, is because
Speaker 1: it was fiction. Now he's a beautiful writer. But he's
Speaker 1: a novelist, right, He's a fabulist. He is not actually
Speaker 1: someone who is a journalist. And the reason I felt
Speaker 1: betrayed was because he wasn't saying this is inspired by
Speaker 1: He was portraying it as this is literally what happened,
Speaker 1: and these are literally the people I talk to. When
Speaker 1: you are a documentary filmmaker, you are saying I am
Speaker 1: a documentarian, and we're not talking about someone like Ken Burns, right,
Speaker 1: who's doing a historic documentary about people who are no
Speaker 1: longer alive, and you have historic recreations, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: What you're trying to be you know, true to the characters.
Speaker 1: But you know John Adams and alive. Sorry so we
Speaker 1: can't go and interview him. But when you're doing a
Speaker 1: documentary in the modern era, in real time where you're
Speaker 1: following people around, and you are saying, I am creating
Speaker 1: a real experience, and I am showing you the unvarnished truth,
Speaker 1: and then you use AI however, you use it without
Speaker 1: telling anyone that you're using it, without asking people is
Speaker 1: it okay to use it? There are just so many
Speaker 1: issues here that I think are going to become more
Speaker 1: and more important to deal with as AI becomes more prevalent. Right,
Speaker 1: but this is something that's existed in journalism long, long
Speaker 1: long before AI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like Jonah Lair. I mean, look, I would
Speaker 3: see as a kissing cousin of this at least is
Speaker 3: also the data fraud scandals in yes, academic absolutely which
Speaker 3: often kind of found was like Jonah Lair, who is
Speaker 3: Stephen Glass. Jason Blair was another or maybe young but
Speaker 3: like but where like, yeah, it makes a narrative a
Speaker 3: little bit too meet and perfect, right, And maybe I
Speaker 3: have like a more general critique of like journalism where like,
Speaker 3: you know, whenever I hear the word storytelling as it
Speaker 3: pertains journalism, I get a little bit nervous, right, because
Speaker 3: I think that often involves, at least over simplification. It
Speaker 3: often involves you know, turning characters into like good and evil,
Speaker 3: sometimes caricatures a little bit. And look, I think I
Speaker 3: mean in Marie, the books that we write take a
Speaker 3: long time and involve a lot of research, right, you know,
Speaker 3: to me, it's also laziness kind of thing, right, where
Speaker 3: like you should be able if you know, I talked
Speaker 3: to two hundred people from my book, I should be
Speaker 3: able to find and I can also consult source material,
Speaker 3: I can read other books, right, Like, if I can't
Speaker 3: find interesting stories out of those two hundred interviews, yeah,
Speaker 3: then okay, that's a problem.
Speaker 2: It's a problem. I mean, what's weird about this world?
Speaker 3: Shirts poke video is like the quotes from uh Keating
Speaker 3: are like similar to things that he would say.
Speaker 2: And they're not really advancing them there.
Speaker 1: It's like it's just no, it was just it was
Speaker 1: just it was very Yeah, I don't understand. But by
Speaker 1: the way, for listeners, just a bit of context. You
Speaker 1: threw a lot of names out. Jonah Lair was a
Speaker 1: journalist with The New Yorker as well, and he was
Speaker 1: fired for just major issues of fabrication. The reason he
Speaker 1: was caught was inventing a quote by Bob Dylan, right,
Speaker 1: the one person who you would never invent a quote
Speaker 1: from because the fans Bob Dylan fans man, first of all,
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan's still alive. Secondly, Bob Dylan fans, they have
Speaker 1: gone through every single word that man has ever said
Speaker 1: with a fine tooth com and believe me, immediately when
Speaker 1: this quote came out, people were like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: when did he say this? It's such a beautiful quote
Speaker 1: about the nature of creativity. Never said it right, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was very convenient. So that was yeah,
Speaker 1: that was jonah Laire And I think your similarity the
Speaker 1: similarity with data fabrication is if you're a scientist who
Speaker 1: has kind of a hypothesis in mind and the data
Speaker 1: almost fit, you know, it can be very tempting to
Speaker 1: be like, let's set massage this a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: let's take out these data points, let's control for this variable.
Speaker 1: P hacking right, Like that PA hacking is the nice
Speaker 1: version of it where you don't actually fabricate anything, but
Speaker 1: you start controlling for random things so that your P
Speaker 1: value becomes significant, so that you hit that significant point
Speaker 1: five thresholder and you're like, ha, I told you. But
Speaker 1: then when asked like, hey, why did you control for this?
Speaker 1: Like why did you control for that? Like is there
Speaker 1: any a priori reason or hypothesis. Oftentimes the answer is like, well,
Speaker 1: because it became significant only then, So that's kind of
Speaker 1: the benign version. And the less benign version is when
Speaker 1: you literally create data points or take away data points,
Speaker 1: or fabricate data out of out of thin air, which
Speaker 1: happened with allegedly happened with Dan Arieli and Francesca Gino
Speaker 1: in some of those studies that are being investigated as
Speaker 1: we speak.
Speaker 2: I'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get different rationales for this, right. Sometimes it's
Speaker 3: kind of this like post modern Oh, everybody's doing it.
Speaker 2: It's all a game for power and influence. Right.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it can have like more of an ideological basis,
Speaker 3: like you know what, we're on the right side of
Speaker 3: things and the other chide embellishes and cheats and so like.
Speaker 3: And by the way, you can play plenty of examples
Speaker 3: of Democrats doing this, but like one that comes to
Speaker 3: mind is jd Vance, the vice presidential nominee in the
Speaker 3: campaign last year, was like, Yeah, these media narratives I'm paraphrasing, this.
Speaker 2: Is not direct quote.
Speaker 3: These media narratives about Haitian immigrants and dogs and cats
Speaker 3: might be a little bit exaggerated. However, democrats lie about
Speaker 3: shit like this all the time, and we need something
Speaker 3: to grab them me to use attention. It was kind
Speaker 3: of like a masscof moment where he's like a little
Speaker 3: bit more honest about that, and and you know, you
Speaker 3: see that kind of thing happen all the.
Speaker 2: Time, right, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, and there's a difference again between
Speaker 3: like lies and exaggerations. I mean, some of the during
Speaker 3: the racial recogning, I think, you know, the behavior of
Speaker 3: certain people was exaggerated very much. I mean, there's lots
Speaker 3: of misinformation out there. Still, there's a lot of information
Speaker 3: about like there's a big controversy on Twitter about like
Speaker 3: AI data centers and how much water they use. I
Speaker 3: mean there's a lot of but like, but it's also
Speaker 3: sometimes like a lack of like formal training. Right, if
Speaker 3: people kind of get into, like I guess more and
Speaker 3: more people that kind of get into like content creation
Speaker 3: don't kind of I don't know if it's actually empirically true, Right,
Speaker 3: I imagine a fewer them kind of go to school
Speaker 3: for journalism or whatnot. Right, they can kind of go
Speaker 3: like viral in their own ways potentially.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, when I was kind of the editor
Speaker 3: in chief of five thirty eight, which is partly a
Speaker 3: ceremonial title, but you did kind of notice difference. We
Speaker 3: mostly did hire people that were like, had a background
Speaker 3: in kind of capital jay journalism, and I think that
Speaker 3: helped with this kind of thing at least.
Speaker 1: Sure. Yeah, well, you know, I think you're making a
Speaker 1: really important point in that, you know, we are living
Speaker 1: at a time where it's it can be really difficult
Speaker 1: to discern, you know, what's the truth and what isn't right,
Speaker 1: where like the lines are so fungible, like there's so
Speaker 1: much misinformation on every side, and it's true in politics
Speaker 1: and and everything, that it feels like when you then
Speaker 1: intentionally do it right, like you're you're just muddying already
Speaker 1: muddy waters. And to me, it's all, you know, as
Speaker 1: as our listeners know, I'm working on a book about cheating,
Speaker 1: and it's all kind of these you know, forms of
Speaker 1: kind of cheating with what your profession is supposed to do. Unless,
Speaker 1: like I said, I don't actually necessarily have a problem
Speaker 1: with using AI if you say, like how you're doing it,
Speaker 1: if you ask people for permission, if you kind of
Speaker 1: explain what you're going to be doing if you disclose it, right,
Speaker 1: if you say, like, hey, like this some of this
Speaker 1: has been generated with the help of AI for narrative clarity, right,
Speaker 1: like whatever it is, I personally wouldn't do that, but like,
Speaker 1: at least do that and at least kind of have
Speaker 1: the decency to ask permission from the people who you
Speaker 1: are interviewing, right to say, like, is it okay if
Speaker 1: we if we edit you in this way? Is it
Speaker 1: okay if we use AI to kind of to move
Speaker 1: forward the narrative. I don't even remember what the wording is.
Speaker 1: But you have to ask for permission. Nay, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that before you do documentaries like like I do, you
Speaker 1: go through an appearance release form right where you actually
Speaker 1: have to got all these things and sign it. I
Speaker 1: read that shit, and I actually read it really carefully,
Speaker 1: and I make changes, and I make changes that say
Speaker 1: that no, like, actually, you can't edit this way. No,
Speaker 1: I don't consent to the use this way. No, you
Speaker 1: must ask my permission if you're doing this or that
Speaker 1: all of these things. And I've had times when I've
Speaker 1: walked away when I haven't appeared in projects because they
Speaker 1: weren't okay with my edits. And I had one particular
Speaker 1: time last year that was really frustrating because it was
Speaker 1: for this huge Canadian show and we spent multiple hours
Speaker 1: filming and it was all this stuff, and then they
Speaker 1: gave me, like almost as an afterthought, this absolutely batshit
Speaker 1: crazy release that I then edited the crap out of
Speaker 1: and we couldn't come to an agreement. So it was
Speaker 1: they had spent tons of money, right, they had flown
Speaker 1: out a whole crew, rented at a hotel room like,
Speaker 1: done all this stuff with me. I had spent all
Speaker 1: this time, you know, it was a day gone out
Speaker 1: of my life. And I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: but I'm sorry, you're not going to be using this
Speaker 1: because I'm not comfortable with the liberties that you may
Speaker 1: or may not take. Right. Maybe they it would have
Speaker 1: been unedited, but the things that I was agreeing to,
Speaker 1: I was like, I am not okay with that. I
Speaker 1: want to know exactly how the things. And it was
Speaker 1: political too, right, it was about Trump, so Nate, you know,
Speaker 1: like that kind of stuff. You just have to be
Speaker 1: so careful that people are not going to be using
Speaker 1: it out of context, juxtaposing it with images or with
Speaker 1: things that make it seem different from your intention that
Speaker 1: they remain true to kind of what you said and
Speaker 1: how you intended it to be perceived.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anything, This is very inside baseball. Anything involving traditional
Speaker 3: produced television or video or film, right, is like quite
Speaker 3: labor intensive relative to the amount of time that the
Speaker 3: eventual and product uses up, including what they able to
Speaker 3: shoot a lot, a lot a lot of footage with
Speaker 3: you and you got to go to some studio, and
Speaker 3: it just usually it always takes there's multiple takes. It
Speaker 3: just always takes longer to produce good taped television than
Speaker 3: you might think, right, which is kind of why I'm
Speaker 3: I'll go on a podcast, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I don't have to like retake things. We very occasionally
Speaker 3: retake things because we stumble on our words and stuff, Maria.
Speaker 2: But like, look a.
Speaker 3: Lot of times when there's bad behavior, people say, well,
Speaker 3: what about this other thing that's also bad, and it's like, okay.
Speaker 3: We can debate about how much of an ethical sin
Speaker 3: is it to quote somebody out of context, or how
Speaker 3: much of a sin is it to let's say, you
Speaker 3: give a long interview to documentary and they take fifteen
Speaker 3: seconds out of that it's meant to portray you in
Speaker 3: a bad light out of the three hour interview for
Speaker 3: whatever grudge that they have.
Speaker 2: Right, we can.
Speaker 3: Debate is that unethical? Is it tantamount to like a
Speaker 3: journalistic sin?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And I might say more than most people that it
Speaker 3: is actually right. However, the things that are clearly journalistic
Speaker 3: sins we should not absolve because of the EDU case.
Speaker 2: This is not an edge case, right, This is not
Speaker 2: this is this.
Speaker 1: Is not an edge case. And I hate the excuse that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that much in the grand context of things. Right,
Speaker 1: it's only a little, it's only a few lines here,
Speaker 1: it's only it's not all the players, it's only no
Speaker 1: that that doesn't make it more okay, Right, Like I
Speaker 1: only fabricated this one quote in my article, Natee. The
Speaker 1: rest of it is from well almost certainly, No, I
Speaker 1: only I only fabricated that one data point to make
Speaker 1: it all max, which.
Speaker 2: Is almost certainly.
Speaker 3: Like why would you like, yes, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean if you're like, oh, I have this one annoying
Speaker 3: thing that like it's going to take extra time, but
Speaker 3: in order to do that, I have to like cheat
Speaker 3: and like, you know, just so it's just so it
Speaker 3: was also like it it's also kind of arrogant to
Speaker 3: think that I believe this guy, by the way, isn't
Speaker 3: he like the video producer for Alan Keating too?
Speaker 1: He is? Yeah, that's the weird thing. So this guy
Speaker 1: who actually blew the whistle is someone who employed this
Speaker 1: company to run his is YouTube channel and so had
Speaker 1: been working with them for about a year. So that's honestly,
Speaker 1: like to me, that's even that makes it even worse,
Speaker 1: Like Nate, imagine like one of our producers on Risky Business, right,
Speaker 1: we've been working with them, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: we find out that they just ai generated an episode
Speaker 1: for us without asking us, Like that would that would
Speaker 1: make it worse if they actually then said like, hey,
Speaker 1: but we've been working together for multiple years now, so
Speaker 1: we have a great working relationship. So it's okay, Like
Speaker 1: we and we remain true. We know Nate and Maria.
Speaker 1: We've worked with them for so long that we know
Speaker 1: what their thoughts are and where their minds are, and
Speaker 1: so we promised that this episode was true to their
Speaker 1: spirit unless we both die in a fatal accident, which
Speaker 1: I hope doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: I hope, there's.
Speaker 3: Never imagine let's I mean, now there's these things, these
Speaker 3: fucking AI companions like your dead fucking husband, yeah.
Speaker 2: Child or stuff animal.
Speaker 1: By the way, producers, producers just like just to just
Speaker 1: to make sure that you understand, it's still not okay
Speaker 1: if we die tragically, just do an episode yourself.
Speaker 2: You can.
Speaker 1: You can introduce yourself as hosts and and talk about
Speaker 1: you know what pain pains in the asses we were
Speaker 1: to work with while we were still alive, and do
Speaker 1: a nice episode without our own voices. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: you know that in some ways makes it even worse
Speaker 1: because they're betraying an existing relationship, right, there's a level
Speaker 1: of trust there where like, if it's someone I've worked
Speaker 1: with a lot, I would trust that they wouldn't do
Speaker 1: that to me, right, that they would actually respect what
Speaker 1: I said, how I said it, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: To have someone it's almost it's worse to have it
Speaker 1: be someone I've worked with than to have it be
Speaker 1: someone that I'm working with for the first time. So
Speaker 1: I don't actually think that that absolves them in any way.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was actually a very interesting impulse
Speaker 1: on Allan Keating's part two air this on Twitter as
Speaker 1: opposed to going directly to the producer behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: because if he had gone behind the scenes, I don't
Speaker 1: think any of probably this would not have come out.
Speaker 1: But I think that he clearly felt betrayed, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's a very public way of doing it. And then
Speaker 1: the original apology. I don't remember what his response to
Speaker 1: it was, but it was like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Like the snow like that's not an apology. Yeah, apparently
Speaker 1: he said that the apology does not deserve a response,
Speaker 1: and you know why, So he was pissed, right, So
Speaker 1: this is a way to take it to the public form.
Speaker 1: I'm not actually sure why he took it down.
Speaker 3: These guys who are like very promotion e They're like, oh,
Speaker 3: y'all help promote your shit, and you're like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: guy seems a little cringe. But maybe I need some
Speaker 3: cringe help, right, Maybe need some cringe help who will
Speaker 3: boost my social media channels and blah blah blah. I mean,
Speaker 3: how much poker content do you watch?
Speaker 1: I watch poker content in the form of like instructional videos, right,
Speaker 1: Like I will watch run it once videos, I will
Speaker 1: watch the course that Isaac Caxton and you know, Nick
Speaker 1: Petrangelo and Dan Divores put out for gto lab I
Speaker 1: will watch kind of some of the videos that like
Speaker 1: gto Wizard does. I usually watch poker content to learn,
Speaker 1: and I don't usually watch kind of the dramatic what's
Speaker 1: happening in the world of poker content. I did watch
Speaker 1: the first episode of this documentary. I ended up watching
Speaker 1: it on two time speed because it was really I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Even before I knew about the AI, I was not
Speaker 1: enjoying it. I found it quite boring. I don't usually
Speaker 1: like to say I didn't say this at all publicly
Speaker 1: because I didn't. I don't like to say anything negative
Speaker 1: about content that might bring more people, you know, into
Speaker 1: poker or whatnot. Like it's not like there was anything
Speaker 1: bad about it. I just didn't really I think it
Speaker 1: was good. But now that we know that it was
Speaker 1: boring while taking these liberties with with people's uh speech,
Speaker 1: now I feel perfectly entitled to say that after one episode,
Speaker 1: I did not think it was good and I never
Speaker 1: watch video on more than one X speed. I actually
Speaker 1: am someone who listens in real time. I do not
Speaker 1: speech it up. I spoke up that tells you something.
Speaker 2: I'm a you know, I'm a good one point too.
Speaker 3: By the way, Listen, you gotta be careful with the
Speaker 3: one point two one point three in the show.
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty a pretty fast talker.
Speaker 3: You can't apply your generic one point two's and one
Speaker 3: point two fives and one point threes to risky business.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you. I'm telling you that much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this perpetual debate in the kind of poker
Speaker 3: media world about like content that's made for pros versus
Speaker 3: content that's made for for.
Speaker 2: New players rec players.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I probably agree with a critique that, like,
Speaker 3: too much of this content is too pro driven. Right,
Speaker 3: the content has shifted more toward heigh stakes cash games
Speaker 3: stream cash games because like you get a little bit
Speaker 3: more personality in there.
Speaker 2: I mean, all the.
Speaker 3: Critics are like partly true. Like one critique is that
Speaker 3: like before computers and solvers, there was more variety in
Speaker 3: how people played, and so you have more personalities and
Speaker 3: more different playing styles.
Speaker 2: Right, I think that's basically true. Right. I think now
Speaker 2: that like with a theoretically unsound.
Speaker 3: But good poker sense kind of skill set, I mean,
Speaker 3: like this Rocky might have that, frankly right, which is
Speaker 3: part of why he was instantly inducted into the Hall
Speaker 3: of Fame.
Speaker 1: And for people who don't remember, Mike Musraki is the
Speaker 1: winner of the World Series of Poker main event this year,
Speaker 1: the Grinder, and he also won the Players Championship, and yes,
Speaker 1: was immediately inducted into the Hall of Fame after unprecedented
Speaker 1: no one's ever done that before.
Speaker 3: Pretty good, pretty good summer, I would say, But in general,
Speaker 3: you've had a shift away from like mainstream broadcast stuff toward.
Speaker 2: Like poker Go. And you know, I like poker Go,
Speaker 2: I like their tournaments.
Speaker 3: However, that's a subscription service targeted toward people like you
Speaker 3: and me that are either proker junkies or have some
Speaker 3: professional or adjacent to professional interests in the game. Ye
Speaker 3: you know the large field WPT and World Series of
Speaker 3: Poker tournaments right where like you have a big four
Speaker 3: or five day event and then you narrow that down
Speaker 3: to a small handful of players, a few of which
Speaker 3: you just by luck of the draw, have good stories,
Speaker 3: right Like is is the main evouent of the World
Speaker 3: Series even on like linear TV anymore like a little
Speaker 3: bit on.
Speaker 1: CDs, right yeah, it is. It is after the fact,
Speaker 1: so not so during the event. You have live streams
Speaker 1: and then those are edited down to I believe thirty
Speaker 1: minute kind of broadcasts that are more made for TV,
Speaker 1: and so there are kind of there's limited uh, limited
Speaker 1: coverage after the fact where you have new announcers, sometimes
Speaker 1: new announcers, sometimes the same announcing team, where they actually
Speaker 1: kind of do new coverage, new kind of new soundtracks
Speaker 1: and make it into more of a polished final product
Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, let's watch all of these
Speaker 1: hands hand by hand so that it looks more dramatic, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, I totally respect that. I think if
Speaker 1: you're going for a wide TV audience, poker can be
Speaker 1: so boring day right, Like you you can sometimes be
Speaker 1: like sitting and for.
Speaker 3: Us like work, oh yeah, I'm gonna be in Vegas,
Speaker 3: but mostly playing poker.
Speaker 2: They're like, can I come watch you? I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly can. It would be table be boring as.
Speaker 1: Fuck, right, even at the final table. You know, I
Speaker 1: actually always encourage people like it's nice to have people
Speaker 1: on your rail, which are you know, the people who
Speaker 1: are watching. But I would never force someone I love
Speaker 1: to come on the rail and watch because you can't
Speaker 1: see the cards. It's much more interesting to watch the
Speaker 1: stream on a screen where you can see what people
Speaker 1: have and you can follow along when you're there live,
Speaker 1: like all you see are the all in confrontations or
Speaker 1: when you know a hand goes to showdown. You don't
Speaker 1: see the cards otherwise, But even if you're watching on screen,
Speaker 1: it can be quite boring because there are so many
Speaker 1: different things happening. So I understand the desire to bring
Speaker 1: people to you know, to craft narratives, to have drama,
Speaker 1: to bring people to the game in a way that
Speaker 1: makes them excited about poker. But you know, how did people,
Speaker 1: you know, craft narratives that make people excited about chess
Speaker 1: or or Formula one or whatever it is. It's by
Speaker 1: being a good storyteller, finding the stories, finding the people
Speaker 1: using the material that you have, rather than kind of
Speaker 1: taking liberty and creating material on your own. So just
Speaker 1: to kind of bring this full circle, I think that you,
Speaker 1: by the way, like we would be doing this. I
Speaker 1: think we'd be having this conversation even if this documentary
Speaker 1: had just smashed everything in the sense that people were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is phenomenal this is so good,
Speaker 1: and it had just like through the roof viewership, which
Speaker 1: it did not. Someone took a screenshot of the number
Speaker 1: of views of each episode before they were taken off
Speaker 1: of YouTube, and it was like, I think it was
Speaker 1: like twenty thou thirty, Like it was not big numbers, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it was much worse than a lot of the great
Speaker 1: poker content creators who actually have, you know, many more views.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest one had like forty thousand views
Speaker 1: or something, and with every episode, it just like it
Speaker 1: went down. And so if it had been huge and
Speaker 1: hugely kind of successful with millions of views, this would have,
Speaker 1: I think, in some ways been even more of an issue,
Speaker 1: right like that you had to create that, you had
Speaker 1: to lie that, you had to make shit up to
Speaker 1: bring in an audience. But now like you did that
Speaker 1: and and it was boring, right Like, you did that,
Speaker 1: and you didn't do anything new. You did that, and
Speaker 1: you didn't actually craft drama bring people in, like, you know,
Speaker 1: come create something that made people excited about the game
Speaker 1: that wasn't already somebody who loved the game, right And
Speaker 1: so I think that that that's sort of beside the point,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's also it's absolutely not an excuse.
Speaker 1: In some ways, the more people, like if you're writing
Speaker 1: for an audience of one, Right, like if I had
Speaker 1: a private newsletter that was like on a private thing,
Speaker 1: and I used AI to try to experiment and do
Speaker 1: things that I didn't really have to do, Like I
Speaker 1: don't have to tell anyone, Right, I'm my own audience. Right,
Speaker 1: I can just do I can just do whatever and
Speaker 1: like play around. But if I have as my audience grows,
Speaker 1: then I start having a responsibility to other people to
Speaker 1: actually kind of uphold some sort of standards. And so
Speaker 1: in some ways, like the bigger the success, the more
Speaker 1: responsibility you have to your subjects, to your audience, to
Speaker 1: the sport. Right, you have a responsibility to poker. Why
Speaker 1: is it nate that every single time we talk about poker,
Speaker 1: unless you or I have won something and there's like
Speaker 1: fun news that way, it's almost always some sort of
Speaker 1: a scandal, Right, It's something it's something negative, like why
Speaker 1: don't we actually try to do things the right way
Speaker 1: to bring people into the game for the right reasons.
Speaker 2: We'll be back right after this.
Speaker 3: One problem is that there's a shipload of variants you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Like, what's the chance this year
Speaker 3: is an exception that the main event of the World
Speaker 3: Series of Hooker will be won by somebody that like.
Speaker 2: Even you or I had both.
Speaker 3: Heard of, let's say, in events of the tournament, right,
Speaker 3: like right, and we probably know a lot of people,
Speaker 3: and I do think there are large edges to like
Speaker 3: the pros and the main event, right, but like, yep, yeah,
Speaker 3: by the way, some of the names that one.
Speaker 2: Eth it now our household names. I would not have
Speaker 2: known that name.
Speaker 3: I'd be like, that guy look like some fucking Norwegian player, right,
Speaker 3: but like I wouldn't know that fucking person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I love Espen. We're very friendly now. But
Speaker 1: prior to Espen winning the main event of the world
Speaker 1: here as of poker, I had no idea who he was.
Speaker 1: He's a lovely, lovely human, great guy. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but but if you but if you actually I actually
Speaker 1: have done this. I've gone back like ten years and
Speaker 1: started looking at the winners' names. I don't know most
Speaker 1: of them, right, they were probably players who people knew
Speaker 1: at the time, and like, if you were.
Speaker 2: You're still and I'm trying to the banners.
Speaker 1: Ryan, I know, Ryan and I know Martin, but but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of players who I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: just I literally have never heard this name before, which
Speaker 1: which is to say, yes, there is a lot of variance.
Speaker 1: But there is drama. There are all these stories, and
Speaker 1: there is I mean, there is good material here, right,
Speaker 1: Like you actually, you absolutely can make something that's compelling,
Speaker 1: and I would, I mean, you know, that's a hill
Speaker 1: I'm willing to die on. Like you can make compelling
Speaker 1: television and out of poker and people have and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just like the high stakes shows of the
Speaker 1: past that had a huge viewership. But there are fictionalized
Speaker 1: accounts like there are there are documentaries, there's reality TV.
Speaker 1: By the way, these are all different things, right if
Speaker 1: you're making a reality TV show, like okay, that's script,
Speaker 1: that's not a documentary series, you already know it's going
Speaker 1: to be used differently. But you can make a compelling documentary.
Speaker 1: There are human stories, there's human drama. You just have
Speaker 1: to be a good filmmaker. You just have to be
Speaker 1: able to find those threads. Two journalists can go to
Speaker 1: the exact same assignment, right and write a story like
Speaker 1: have the same assignment, write this story, and one can
Speaker 1: craft a Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece, on the other like
Speaker 1: just a boring piece of who knows what, like on
Speaker 1: the exact like even talking to the same people, because
Speaker 1: somebody can see the story, can see the vision, knows
Speaker 1: how to kind of make it into something great, and
Speaker 1: the other one doesn't. And that's what I Oftentimes people
Speaker 1: like when they find out what I'm working on, They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: aren't you afraid that someone else is going to steal
Speaker 1: that idea and write the same thing. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: because no one else is going to write it the
Speaker 1: way I do, right, Like every everyone like.
Speaker 2: Probably like this person.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, but they they suck. They suck, right,
Speaker 3: not everybody. Sometimes they suck. And I'm like, I don't
Speaker 3: know if I can care they suck. Their upside is
Speaker 3: cat But yes, it's hard. It's hard to plant around
Speaker 3: like this content when like your stars are are usually
Speaker 3: not going to win, right. I mean, this year's World
Speaker 3: Series mainavment had like way way wait, it was like
Speaker 3: the ninety eighth percentile interesting character.
Speaker 1: This is very true. So do you know what you do? Nate?
Speaker 1: In that case, you tape six hundred and fifty hours
Speaker 1: of content. You follow all of these different storylines and
Speaker 1: you don't know which ones are going to end up
Speaker 1: being the prominent ones and the ones you want to use,
Speaker 1: and then you actually make something that's good and compelling
Speaker 1: out of it. So let's I mean, I would like
Speaker 1: to issue at the end of the show, I don't
Speaker 1: like to issue a challenge to creators, not just in poker,
Speaker 1: to always just be here, like, do better be good,
Speaker 1: use you know, use whatever tools you need to use,
Speaker 1: but be honest, do not cheat, Do not be lazy.
Speaker 1: You cannot tell good stories if you're being lazy. Nate,
Speaker 1: You've said the word lazy multiple times in this episode,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what it is. It's intellectual laziness. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just laziness all around. So don't be lazy.
Speaker 1: Actually find the good stories. And yes, in poker, it
Speaker 1: is hard, right, It's not like Formula one where if
Speaker 1: you follow the best drivers, you'll probably be following the winner. Like,
Speaker 1: but but if you cast a wide net you can
Speaker 1: still figure it out. You can make it happen. Do it, like,
Speaker 1: let's create something good and.
Speaker 3: You the passage of time, right, you know, shooting six
Speaker 3: hundred hours of footage at like one tournament won't give
Speaker 3: you the passage of time for like narrative arcs and
Speaker 3: people's lives get better and worse, And hooker does created
Speaker 3: share dramatic moments.
Speaker 1: Maria, Yes, it does indeed. So that is our take
Speaker 1: on documentary Gate twenty twenty five. Let us know what
Speaker 1: you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Speaker 1: Risky Business at pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
Speaker 1: by me Maria Kanakova and by.
Speaker 2: Me Nate Silver.
Speaker 3: The show was a cool production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3: This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer
Speaker 3: is Sonya gerwit Lydia, Jeane Kott and Daphney Chen are
Speaker 3: our editors, and our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
Speaker 2: Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: so other people can find us too, But once again,
Speaker 1: only if you like us. We don't want those bad
Speaker 1: reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.