Speaker 1: Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
Speaker 1: better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2: Live on tape from the beautiful Pushkin Studios in the
Speaker 2: Flying In District of New York City, New York. I'm
Speaker 2: Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is correct. This is the first time that
Speaker 1: Nate and I are both in the studio in the
Speaker 1: same place since the pilot of the show. Nate.
Speaker 2: But if you detect an extra special chemistry, it's very
Speaker 2: close quarters. You're actually it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And today we've got some some stories for you.
Speaker 1: First up, the Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 2: Failing Atlantic Monthly.
Speaker 1: Has a quite the scoop, So we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about Jeffrey Goldberg's signal, information security and what not
Speaker 1: to do on your group chat.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk ketchup on our NCAA brackets recap, for example,
Speaker 2: how team Nate so far in the lead against Team
Speaker 2: Maria and Monty. And we'll talk about women's basketball and
Speaker 2: why on earth are women not allowed to join the
Speaker 2: WNBA until twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it, Nate, but before we do, you moved.
Speaker 1: You are now in a new apartment.
Speaker 2: Now I moved from a neighborhood which might generously be
Speaker 2: called Chelsea, but really is South Penn Station.
Speaker 1: To thank you, name you finally, now that you moved
Speaker 1: on final New.
Speaker 2: York Times On the New York Times Leader map, it
Speaker 2: was considered seventy percent Chelsea. All right, all right, Chelsea
Speaker 2: Midtown West High correct.
Speaker 1: Now that you're out of there, you can acknowledge that
Speaker 1: it really was not Chelsea.
Speaker 2: No, And like there is something about being like in
Speaker 2: an actual like neighborhood. Yea, Like you know, South Penn
Speaker 2: Northeast Chelsea as I call it, serves kind of this
Speaker 2: transient community, right, so people commuting in and out of
Speaker 2: the city. It's there are some working spaces there, right,
Speaker 2: people go into Nixon Rangers games. I like Nick and Rangers, right,
Speaker 2: But like you know, Massiesquare Garden like dominates in some
Speaker 2: ways that profile the neighborhood. And so yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a real neighborhood. And like they're you know, I'm reading
Speaker 2: the esperate climb. But there's an abundance, right, Not only
Speaker 2: do you have your independent coffee shops in the morning, right,
Speaker 2: you have your French Vietnamese independent coffee shop on your
Speaker 2: Scandinavian independent coffee shop. Right, you have your vaguely Russian,
Speaker 2: Eastern European, mostly vegetarian wine bar. It's like, and they're
Speaker 2: all pretty fucking good.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm glad you're now in your a new neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're finally moved, because, as we all know,
Speaker 1: moving sucks the process that is, So I'm glad that's
Speaker 1: behind you. Let's talk about something a little bit less fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, on some level it's kind of hilarious, which
Speaker 1: is that this week there was an absolute bombshell You know,
Speaker 1: bombshell is usually overused, but I feel like this was
Speaker 1: a bombshell piece in the Atlantic, unprecedented as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, in the amples of national security, where
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic, was
Speaker 1: inadvertently included on a signal chat with members top members
Speaker 1: of US national security that we're discussing a then imminent
Speaker 1: attack on the whoties. Let's start off by just talking
Speaker 1: about info sec or information security and how the fuck
Speaker 1: something like this happens.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I am a top Information security is my
Speaker 2: top issue. Right. The reason I voted for Donald Trump
Speaker 2: and twin Syxs teenage because of Hiller Clinton's email server.
Speaker 2: I thought that was the most important story in the country.
Speaker 2: I thought there was too little press coverage of it.
Speaker 2: If anything, Sorry, I vote for Trump.
Speaker 1: Yes, everyone who thought that they was serious night did
Speaker 1: not vote for Trump in twenty sixteen. This was he
Speaker 1: was being sarcastic.
Speaker 2: Are you a group chat girl? Person?
Speaker 1: I am only in a few group chats, and those
Speaker 1: group chats are like three people, you know, Like I'm
Speaker 1: in a group chat with you and your partner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm in a similar group chat with you know,
Speaker 1: my college roommates and a few others. But i hate
Speaker 1: group chats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not a big awful. I'm not a big
Speaker 2: I think it's probably because now this is where I
Speaker 2: sound like a fucking snob, right, But like Maria, you
Speaker 2: and I like have we're kind of like we're able
Speaker 2: to communicate. We kind of communicate professionally for a living, right,
Speaker 2: And so like I could see the value of like
Speaker 2: a group chat if like, if you want this cool
Speaker 2: people that you're like who care about your opinions, right,
Speaker 2: But like if you're writing all the time, I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's with emails too. I want to fucking write a
Speaker 2: long email. Now I'm making a fucking newsletter. Montize that
Speaker 2: shit talk about in the podcast Monetize that shit. I'm
Speaker 2: not giving free stuff away in group chats.
Speaker 1: Sorry, no, that's absolutely true. So I've had to set
Speaker 1: up group chats a few times for various reasons, and
Speaker 1: whenever I do, I'm actually super paranoid about putting the
Speaker 1: wrong person in the group chat. So Nate, for instance,
Speaker 1: let me use you as an example, because I've had
Speaker 1: to add you to group chats for scheduling purposes, and
Speaker 1: I have several Nates in my phone, and you are
Speaker 1: never the first Nate to come up, probably because you
Speaker 1: don't have an iPhone, so my iPhone doesn't like that
Speaker 1: and always is like, no, don't, don't use this Nate.
Speaker 1: And so you know, barstool Nate, he is also in
Speaker 1: my phone, Wow, And he is the one who is
Speaker 1: always coming up before you. And I am always paranoid, Sorry,
Speaker 1: barstool Nate, but I'm always paranoid that I'm going to
Speaker 1: add the wrong Nate to one of these things. And
Speaker 1: I triple check to make sure that you know, I
Speaker 1: don't inadvertently say, you know, Ad, and I'm adding the
Speaker 1: wrong person now I'm only highlighting this to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: when you're starting a group chat, and this is just
Speaker 1: about scheduling, you probably care about who's in it. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine your schedule. You're doing a group chat about bombing
Speaker 1: a country, right, or bombing a group? Shouldn't you double check,
Speaker 1: triple check, quadruple joke? I mean, okay, wait, what am
Speaker 1: I even talking about? Why are we starting a group
Speaker 1: chat about national security? Rule number one? And you probably
Speaker 1: have learned this as a journalist. You never put anything
Speaker 1: in an email or in a chat that you don't
Speaker 1: want on the front page of the New York Times,
Speaker 1: potentially because.
Speaker 2: And that's the other reason why I don't like, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty circumctanted about what to say over email or even
Speaker 2: you know, even a private event. I'm just careful about
Speaker 2: what I gues say, whereas I kind of in call,
Speaker 2: you know, I say lots of shit like yeah, well
Speaker 2: the podcast and on Twitter and whatever else in the newsletter,
Speaker 2: but like, but yeah, I don't assume that things stay
Speaker 2: private without like explicit Yeah, understand.
Speaker 1: You can't assume they stay private, and you can't assume
Speaker 1: that things don't get passed along. That basically the only
Speaker 1: people who see them are going to be the people
Speaker 1: who you are sending them to. So nothing should be
Speaker 1: done over chat that is sensitive. That's not how you
Speaker 1: communicate national security, that's not how you communicate war plans.
Speaker 1: But in this case, that is what happened. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the things I learned when I was back when
Speaker 1: I was working on the Confidence Game, I actually talk
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who do information security, who
Speaker 1: do cybersecurity, because hacking and you know that that kind
Speaker 1: of social engineering is huge for con artists. And they
Speaker 1: all told me, I don't care what kind of a
Speaker 1: security system you have, you know, I don't care how
Speaker 1: up to date you are, who's your you know, who
Speaker 1: does your infosec all of this stuff. You're only as
Speaker 1: strong as your weakest human link. And it's always going
Speaker 1: to be human. It's never going to be technological, right,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be that dumb person. And if
Speaker 1: I can get to that dumb person, then I can
Speaker 1: take you down, right, I don't, I don't. I can
Speaker 1: get behind any firewall, I can get past anything. And
Speaker 1: this that's just like one oh one ABC, And this
Speaker 1: is like the textbook case of wait. I didn't even
Speaker 1: need to do anything, right, you just fucked up so
Speaker 1: badly that you know you just here here is the
Speaker 1: weakest link, and the weakest link happens to be at
Speaker 1: the top of our national intelligence.
Speaker 2: So one thing I'd say is you are bringing a
Speaker 2: lot of people that don't have a lot of experience
Speaker 2: in government. Right. I listened to the as Recline podcast
Speaker 2: with I think it was Ben Buchanan, who was like
Speaker 2: a basically one of Biden's heads of AI policy, and
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, you go into the government and like
Speaker 2: there are rooms where you're not allowed to use the internet,
Speaker 2: and there are all these protocols that are quite cumbersome,
Speaker 2: and if you come from the private sector, I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's like extremely annoying. Right. And so the fact that like,
Speaker 2: you know, JD. Van's only two years in government, right,
Speaker 2: Pete Haig Stiff no years and government less, I'm forgetting
Speaker 2: about something, Right. You bring in people that are like
Speaker 2: our kind of Fox and count I think, you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of could be state on media. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you're bringing people who like are just like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're kind of treating this like a group chat, like
Speaker 2: we're negotiating some VC deal or whatever, and like, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, it's kind of like, how do I
Speaker 2: put this, the casualness of the language, I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think any of them come off especially badly
Speaker 2: in the text that are referent. I mean, if anything,
Speaker 2: they're kind of like, if anything that seemed like, I mean,
Speaker 2: there are internal politics, Like Steven Miller comes in. He's
Speaker 2: the kind of Trump advisor and he's like, don't go
Speaker 2: too far and interpreting crumps shit, right, and then they
Speaker 2: kind of shut up, right, But like, but you know, look,
Speaker 2: I'm sure Jadi Vance is a smart guy, right, I
Speaker 2: think he might be in over his debt. I think
Speaker 2: he's like a smart guy. And it's kind of fun
Speaker 2: to watch them to chatting. But yeah, why is this journalist?
Speaker 2: Why is this journalist copied on this chain?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And and no one and no one catch which
Speaker 1: is that he's on the chain at any point and
Speaker 1: apparently so we don't know, but apparently there are very
Speaker 1: sensitive details shared. And at this point, so just in
Speaker 1: terms of journalistic ethics, you know, people are joking and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a journalist, why didn't you stay in
Speaker 1: the chat? Well, it's because Jeffrey Goldberg actually understands the
Speaker 1: repercussions of this, and at the moment that this was
Speaker 1: actually said that this is that this is correct right,
Speaker 1: that this isn't because at first he didn't know if
Speaker 1: this was a spoof or like what this was right?
Speaker 1: But once it was confirmed that this is legit, he left.
Speaker 1: And I think that that is the ethical thing to do.
Speaker 1: Although there's obviously a part of me that is like, oh,
Speaker 1: but what else could you have learned? But I think
Speaker 1: that that is the ethical and the legally safer thing
Speaker 1: to do, because you know, people will try, I think,
Speaker 1: to come after him, and it was smart to leave.
Speaker 2: I think you can debate it. I mean, look fundamentally, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's let's ask you. Let's say that you're added to
Speaker 2: the group chat. What do you what do you do?
Speaker 1: Well? I think at first, especially given you know my
Speaker 1: my background and the books that I've written, the book
Speaker 1: I'm working on, I would assume that it's fake. I
Speaker 1: mean that would be my initial assumption. How could you
Speaker 1: not assume that it's fake?
Speaker 2: When he did say until he kind of performed this
Speaker 2: out of sample test where he, like I guess, he
Speaker 2: said he drove to they make a movie about it, right,
Speaker 2: wrote he drives to some suburban grocery store and waits
Speaker 2: in a parking lot, and it was like, well, if
Speaker 2: they announced in the next fifteen minutes that were bombing Yemen, right,
Speaker 2: and this is real? This is real and yeah, and
Speaker 2: the Trump people kind of caught off guard, kind of
Speaker 2: did acknowledge this was a real chat. Right. Where their
Speaker 2: heads will roll because of this, I don't know, probably
Speaker 2: depends on who Trump's mad at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I doubt heads will roll, And I think that
Speaker 1: probably the the two heads that might roll are the
Speaker 1: head of the person who acknowledged that it was real
Speaker 1: immediately and Goldberg, right, like, they're they're going to try
Speaker 1: to find a way to pin this on him instead,
Speaker 1: because that is there, you know initially, you know, the
Speaker 1: when Pete Hegsas was asked about this, he said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fake, this isn't real, right, but the government had
Speaker 1: already acknowledged that it was very much real.
Speaker 2: Have you ever gotten a scoop just by kind of
Speaker 2: being in the reference at the right time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have. I have, especially because I'm female and
Speaker 1: so people tend to forget that I exist as an
Speaker 1: actual person. With a brain. No, it's true. It's true.
Speaker 1: It's true. I can, like I blend into the background
Speaker 1: and people forget to take me into account. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: with you, it's probably less likely that people are you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's always just thing like kind of what people
Speaker 2: And it's probably as different if you're male and in
Speaker 2: white whatever, you know, mistakenly taken for heterosexual in my case.
Speaker 2: But like what people feel comfortable sharing with you, I
Speaker 2: mean this is true even at the at the poker table,
Speaker 2: in both public games and private games and poker, there
Speaker 2: is kind of, I think a pretty strong unspoken understanding
Speaker 2: that like, you know, if something relates, if someone relates
Speaker 2: to me at the poker table, then if I don't
Speaker 2: have a relationship with them, right, I would kind of anonymize. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: But people do have a lot of trust, right, I
Speaker 2: mean I've heard people discussing wildly illegal things at the
Speaker 2: poker Oh for sure.
Speaker 1: For sure, they do have a lot of trust, and
Speaker 1: they do often forget that you're a journalist and you
Speaker 1: do have to remind them. But but yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's very interesting that not only Hexath, but like the
Speaker 1: Trump reaction to this was, you know, what's the aleotic
Speaker 1: failing magazine. Right, nobody cares.
Speaker 2: About this, I'm sure a million plus page yeah and.
Speaker 1: So and so if you if you think about, you know,
Speaker 1: what is ideal risk mitigation strategy? Right, like, Okay, you
Speaker 1: fuck up? What do you do now?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, from a risk management mitigation standpoint, what is the
Speaker 1: best thing to do next? And I would argue that
Speaker 1: the best thing, the way that people usually come off
Speaker 1: the best, and this comes from both organizations in on
Speaker 1: an individual level, is to immediately acknowledge it and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: fucked up, sorry, and then like we'll get back to you,
Speaker 1: and then you know, issue whatever, apology, et cetera. But
Speaker 1: you always always always look a million times worse and
Speaker 1: it spirals out of control and it gets like a
Speaker 1: much bigger story. Right, It becomes much worse if you deny,
Speaker 1: it becomes much worse if you try to, you know,
Speaker 1: put a rug over it, me spill no, no, look,
Speaker 1: the floor is beautiful. And so I think that this
Speaker 1: is just being handled completely backwards. And you would think
Speaker 1: that people who have media training that's something he does have,
Speaker 1: would know better, right, would know that that always always
Speaker 1: always backfires. I don't think there's a single case that
Speaker 1: I can think of when it doesn't backfire, when the
Speaker 1: person looks better because they initially denied and then they
Speaker 1: were forced to acknowledge.
Speaker 2: So ignoring is often a good strategy. Right. There is
Speaker 2: a strissand effect thing where like the news cycle moves
Speaker 2: on quickly. So a lot of you'll pay expensive money
Speaker 2: for a PR person, or you'll have you know, if
Speaker 2: for a big corporation, that PR team will come in
Speaker 2: a lot of time to say, don't say anything. We'll
Speaker 2: do a little bit of work in the background with reporters.
Speaker 2: We're working on the story, but don't say anything. Go
Speaker 2: take go to the woods for a couple of days,
Speaker 2: and it'll probably go away. Right, Yeah, this is I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're in the White House, it's a
Speaker 2: little bit different than this has national security implications. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: part of the issue is in general, you know, you're
Speaker 2: a powerful person. You're the vice president, or you're the
Speaker 2: secretary of Defense, or you're somebody who thinks you're kind
Speaker 2: of like doing some of the most important work in
Speaker 2: the world, and you're busy and you don't care that
Speaker 2: much about like security, Right, that's someone else's problem, and
Speaker 2: so it's kind of like the annoying thing that like,
Speaker 2: I'm mean, I'm worried about this, like in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways I'm worried about like hacking of a labs.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure they take it somewhat seriously, but like
Speaker 2: knowing that personality type, you know, I don't think they
Speaker 2: probably take it seriously enough. It's seen as like is
Speaker 2: pureaucratic shit. You have to like jump up. By the way,
Speaker 2: I tell you something, if you want to use the
Speaker 2: the men's bathroom at the at the Pushkin Studios in
Speaker 2: Flat Iron, there's a four digit code. I'm telling you
Speaker 2: it's it's not the most difficult code to guess.
Speaker 1: Speaking about information security.
Speaker 2: That's easiest.
Speaker 1: Well, you'd be you know, can we can we just
Speaker 1: go go way back in history. One of my favorite stories.
Speaker 1: I love the writing of Richard Feynman. I think you
Speaker 1: know he was a brilliant mind, brilliant writer, but he
Speaker 1: has a hilarious story about information security where he had
Speaker 1: a complete fascination with safe cracking, Like he would go
Speaker 1: down these rabbit holes with different things, and at some
Speaker 1: point he became fascinated with cryptography and safe cracking, and
Speaker 1: he became very adept at cracking into safes, and mostly
Speaker 1: how he did it wasn't he didn't you know, traind
Speaker 1: with criminals and you know, figure out, like in the movies,
Speaker 1: how do you listen to all of that? No, he
Speaker 1: figured out that it was always easy to get the
Speaker 1: code right because there was always a secretary who like
Speaker 1: had written it down somewhere or something like that. And
Speaker 1: then there was actually an incredibly important safe, and there
Speaker 1: was a series of them that had national security secret
Speaker 1: stuff because he worked in really important on you know,
Speaker 1: important projects, important energy projects, things that were highly classified.
Speaker 1: And he was like, oh, I wonder if I can
Speaker 1: crack into these safes, and he couldn't find anyone writing
Speaker 1: down the combination. He was striking out, and finally he
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I'm going to try the
Speaker 1: factory code, and he did and the safe opened.
Speaker 2: Oh no, and he was like huh.
Speaker 1: So he went to the second one. There was three
Speaker 1: of them. He tried the factory code, the safe opened
Speaker 1: and the third one as well. So he wrote notes
Speaker 1: in all three and it was like yeah, and left
Speaker 1: them and then the guy opened them in the wrong
Speaker 1: order and didn't realize that it was fein men, you know,
Speaker 1: making a point and thought that they had been like
Speaker 1: severely compromised and freaked the fuck out as he should have.
Speaker 1: Just this goes to show, right that people are dumb.
Speaker 2: And I mean there are trade offs, right if you
Speaker 2: like need to go with draw money from your bank
Speaker 2: and they're like, you know, you face this as a
Speaker 2: poker player, right, They're like, what's it for. It's like,
Speaker 2: it's my fucking money. You have custody of it, right,
Speaker 2: give it to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, no, this there these these types of
Speaker 1: things happen all the time, and but I think we
Speaker 1: do need to be worried, like the bigger implication. I
Speaker 1: think there are a few big implications here. First, it happened,
Speaker 1: and they're saying, oh, well, it only happened once in
Speaker 1: two months. Okay. First of all, it's never happened. That's
Speaker 1: that it's never happened before. Like this is huge, and
Speaker 1: they're denying it. They're taking it like no big deal.
Speaker 1: It is a big deal, Like they were lucky that
Speaker 1: it was Jeffrey Goldberg and not someone else who was
Speaker 1: by mistake on this chat. By the way, maybe other
Speaker 1: people and other chats had other actors on there that
Speaker 1: were there by mistake, Like, this is a big deal.
Speaker 1: Information security is incredibly important. Denying is not the correct
Speaker 1: strategy if you want to mitigate risk. And we should
Speaker 1: be really really worried about this. This is not something
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: Like an't even supposed to have signal government phones. No,
Speaker 2: you're not saying private phones, which is kind of what
Speaker 2: people were mad about with Hillary, and like.
Speaker 1: Exactly, I mean everything about this, from start to finish
Speaker 1: is incredibly worrisome. So I mean.
Speaker 2: Triump Literally, do you know that if Anthony fucking Wiener
Speaker 2: hadn't been sexing? Right? Like, yeah, probably know, Clinton becomes president?
Speaker 2: Maybe trup because president in twenty twenty to be honest, right,
Speaker 2: and then what happens in twenty five?
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, But so many, so many stupid
Speaker 1: miss so much stupidity here and so much mail you go,
Speaker 1: I have to say that that results and things like this.
Speaker 1: But yes, from a risky business standpoint, this is one bad,
Speaker 1: risky decision after another. Nate, let's take a break and
Speaker 1: let's talk about some March madness. Brackets. Can we start
Speaker 1: with a spoiler alert? Nate is currently winning our brackets competition, and.
Speaker 2: Worse Maria and Monty have to root for Duke is
Speaker 2: their only pathway back to victory.
Speaker 1: And Tennessee.
Speaker 2: First of all, it's probably gonna put me further ahead, right, but.
Speaker 1: Like if Tennessee wins, it doesn't put you further ahead.
Speaker 2: Hundred dogs, Maria, I know, I know, but they might win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have Purdue. We have one victor over Nate.
Speaker 1: So far, we had Purdue as a pick and Nate
Speaker 1: did not.
Speaker 2: Okay, what I have at a Colorado State? Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: So how is a tournament going? I would say it's
Speaker 2: a good tournament if you're betting on all the favorites
Speaker 2: to win, right, you know, you have all the sixteen
Speaker 2: teams left in the men's tournament are from major conferences. Right,
Speaker 2: you have I think one double digit seed. You have
Speaker 2: all the one seeds intact, all but one of the
Speaker 2: two seeds intact. So and I read the article before
Speaker 2: nand saying, hey, we have more and more upsets than
Speaker 2: say tournament it's gradual, but it's happening this year. This
Speaker 2: year we did not. We had lots of chalk. As
Speaker 2: we defind the term lost swee, which means that like
Speaker 2: you know, the one seeds go forward, the favorites.
Speaker 1: Win, except there were some upsets in the earlier rounds, right.
Speaker 2: Which is that is that some of the more like
Speaker 2: the Colorado sticking they were like the lower seed who
Speaker 2: they'd beat, but like they were actually a favorite in
Speaker 2: our in our model, right, Like there were no you know,
Speaker 2: Saint John's lost to Arkansas, which was I believe it
Speaker 2: a ten seed, and you know, Saint John's kind of
Speaker 2: was a foul trouble. They benched their best player and
Speaker 2: kind of otherwise played like crap, right, but you know,
Speaker 2: but you know Arkansas had one beating a pretty a
Speaker 2: Kansas team, right, It wasn't like a yeah, very and
Speaker 2: that's the biggest episode of the events so far. But
Speaker 2: there have been like at most eighty twenty upsets, none
Speaker 2: of the ninety five to five variety that are are
Speaker 2: quite fun, right, And so like, you know, how do
Speaker 2: you evaluate that from like a bracket standpoint. On the
Speaker 2: one hand, if people are going to like the silver
Speaker 2: built in model and picking the favorites, are probably pretty happy,
Speaker 2: right if you're doing something we're trying to like calibrate
Speaker 2: relative to the odds of an upset, like you know,
Speaker 2: full disclosure. I do make bets on these games, right,
Speaker 2: and yeah, in general I was betting more underdogs than favorites.
Speaker 1: Why is that name?
Speaker 2: So I think our our model, I think thought that,
Speaker 2: like there's more parody in college basketball to a degree
Speaker 2: that like maybe other systems aren't accounting for. So this
Speaker 2: trend toward parody has reversed itself. Whether that's a small
Speaker 2: sample sized thing or I mean, there are things that
Speaker 2: are changing. So in college now there are nil deals,
Speaker 2: which I believe standsford name, image and likeness, and so
Speaker 2: now maybe there's more incentive to go to like a
Speaker 2: big program like a Duke or a Kentucky, where I
Speaker 2: mean all those big programs already had that advantage, right,
Speaker 2: but maybe that could be changing things. Maybe some I mean,
Speaker 2: Duke is clearly a very strong team. Maybe the one
Speaker 2: seeds are particularly particularly good this year, you know, some
Speaker 2: of the more plucky teams like Gonzaga is a minor
Speaker 2: excuse me, a mid major team that our model thought
Speaker 2: was like super underrated, but we're an eight C, which
Speaker 2: means you faced the one seed. I believe it was
Speaker 2: Houston in the around of thirty two, and like, so
Speaker 2: you know, the teams that we thought had good potential
Speaker 2: to overperform or in disadvantageous positions where they faced other
Speaker 2: very good teams. Right, So that's part of it too.
Speaker 2: The women's side, I mean, this is kind of how
Speaker 2: it goes, right. I mean, there are in any given year,
Speaker 2: you know, between like one to five or six women's
Speaker 2: programs that are just like so much better than the rest, right,
Speaker 2: the programs where men's college basketball is treated as like,
Speaker 2: you know, co equal to to the men's program. Right,
Speaker 2: that's not everywhere. It might be a dozen to two
Speaker 2: dozen schools and a game in a year. A few
Speaker 2: of those are really good, but like it's it's it's
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of colleges are not aspiring to
Speaker 2: treat women's basketball is like a revenue sport, as it's called,
Speaker 2: whereas ones that are can do quite well. Right, But
Speaker 2: there's you know, gigantic gaps. And if you look at
Speaker 2: women's college basketball tenants and a gigantic gaps from some
Speaker 2: team selling sixteen thousand seats a game to some literally
Speaker 2: sell one hundred seats a game, right, and so and
Speaker 2: so you see that, you see that lack of parody
Speaker 2: play itself out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that all makes that all makes sense. And
Speaker 1: in full disclosure, I have not watched any of the
Speaker 1: women's games, and.
Speaker 2: You watch the guys.
Speaker 1: I've watched some of the guys, yes, because we had
Speaker 1: a bracket.
Speaker 2: How many hours over under.
Speaker 1: An probably around two hours total, two hours more than
Speaker 1: I would normally have watched. I'm baby steps, Nate, baby steps,
Speaker 1: baby steps, I'm you know, I'm getting there. I was
Speaker 1: really rooting for Illinois. I really wanted them to win
Speaker 1: because they were one of my one of my Videosyncratic
Speaker 1: picks your Rackett. No, I still haven't. I haven't. I
Speaker 1: haven't bet any money on this. Yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to have a free and clear
Speaker 1: consultation with Monty. I did not want to use any
Speaker 1: of his uh you know, any of his insights to
Speaker 1: actually make money, although I think we would have lost money. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it depends on how the bets went.
Speaker 1: But no, I've never been on sports. You know. I
Speaker 1: actually feel like I don't like for me, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not fun, you know, just like I don't I
Speaker 1: don't play table.
Speaker 2: Just watched two hours more of because but yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1: It's a fun bracket, but I don't have money on it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a sweat I you know, it's
Speaker 1: like a you're kind of a pure I.
Speaker 2: Want my team to I'll give you a little free bets.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the first one's on me.
Speaker 1: Gateway drug, Gateway drug. But no, I mean, in all honesty,
Speaker 1: you know, I have zero edge in sports betting. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to do I wouldn't want to engage in
Speaker 1: an activity that I felt I had no edge. And
Speaker 1: you have models like you actually have an edge, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're one of the sports betting is hard, and
Speaker 1: you're one of the well you're one of the few
Speaker 1: people who actually.
Speaker 2: The tournament last year and then this year. I'm down
Speaker 2: a little bit cheer before that, I was up a
Speaker 2: little bit, like it's but you know, look, if you
Speaker 2: go so now, listen, you're I've lost more of the
Speaker 2: women than I've made on the men's right. But if
Speaker 2: you go through and say, okay, so so far are
Speaker 2: the bets I've made, I'm down four percent? Right, ROI
Speaker 2: what is the house's cut? Four percent? Right? So if
Speaker 2: you haven't a year where you're winning someone losing someone
Speaker 2: going fifty to fifty then that four percent gets straying
Speaker 2: from your bank roll over and over again. And I
Speaker 2: do think that probably you know I'm gonna but also
Speaker 2: you know, but also you run in a shit like
Speaker 2: where you're I'm restricted to kind of like two and
Speaker 2: a half sights. As I complained about last week, some
Speaker 2: of them don't take very much money on women's games.
Speaker 2: I guess it's to my benefit this year's and so
Speaker 2: the women's picks haven't been going great, but yeah, they're
Speaker 2: much more they're much more cautious about about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's so it's increasingly more difficult to make money,
Speaker 1: even if you do have an.
Speaker 2: Inch you have to, like I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like the one thing about the tournament is like if
Speaker 2: you were really dedicated like college basketball, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like this short season but like yeah, basically, like, first
Speaker 2: of all, the more serious experiment I did was like
Speaker 2: trying to seriously bit the NBA for the book twenty
Speaker 2: three season. This is probably like two hours a day
Speaker 2: of work for seven I mean, that was real effort, right,
Speaker 2: and that I was basically break even, right, which is
Speaker 2: better than ninety nine percent of people, but like, and
Speaker 2: that's break even so it's like, okay, if I want
Speaker 2: to And by the way, at the start of that,
Speaker 2: I have nine looks like a bet on New York
Speaker 2: Im the end I have two and a half, right,
Speaker 2: and so like so you know, first of all, to
Speaker 2: make money, I'd have to like ad to vote more
Speaker 2: than two hours a day, which is you know, my
Speaker 2: time is valuable, it's real time. And then spend even
Speaker 2: more time figuring out like okay, which friends can I
Speaker 2: ask find a way get money down with or you know,
Speaker 2: it's not like these like betting sites take appeals necessarily, right,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you can get some hamo fish, so
Speaker 2: give me back. But like so it's like it's like
Speaker 2: quite hard to make a living. You have to like
Speaker 2: be kind of I don't know, I mean there's different
Speaker 2: you can kind of capitalize it, right, Like you're a
Speaker 2: smart guy who can get down money and you find
Speaker 2: people who build a model for you and you can
Speaker 2: do things like that a little bit. But like it's
Speaker 2: not an easy way to It's like bookern noway, it's
Speaker 2: not an easy way to make a living.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not. Well I hope that uh this week,
Speaker 1: I hope you do well financially and I hope I
Speaker 1: do well in our bracket bets. So even though I
Speaker 1: hate saying go Duke, go Duke, you you've put me
Speaker 1: in this position. You have forced me. I know you
Speaker 1: have forced me in the go Duke and go Tennessee position.
Speaker 1: You don't mind the Tennessee.
Speaker 2: You know they got a nice I like that orange.
Speaker 2: I like that orange color.
Speaker 1: On that note, show to tell.
Speaker 2: Me for our our landing pages, for the tournament stuff
Speaker 2: we have, like this thing we have to like manually
Speaker 2: enter the team, some very sensitive like which shade of orange,
Speaker 2: the burnt orange kind of Texas. By the way, it's
Speaker 2: a night I like the orange shade.
Speaker 1: Nice. So you have so you have used all your
Speaker 1: Crayola colors from childhood? You know know what a burnt
Speaker 1: sienna and all the others. You know exactly what they
Speaker 1: look like. Yeah, do you do you remember those Crayola colors.
Speaker 1: I have some of those colors just etched into my
Speaker 1: mind because they were such cool colors. Relian was my favorite.
Speaker 2: Is it like a blue?
Speaker 1: It's a blue, but it just sounds so cool. Soulian.
Speaker 1: How cool is that word?
Speaker 2: I like it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'd never heard it before, right, So I
Speaker 1: just it really appealed to my writer's sensibility. What was
Speaker 1: your favorite?
Speaker 2: I mean, I like the red orange feels like a
Speaker 2: Nate color.
Speaker 1: Right that was burnt Sana yea, yeah that was more brownie.
Speaker 2: I like you by the advance and there's like a
Speaker 2: separate red orange and orange red.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. Yeah, this is this is fun.
Speaker 1: A lot of a lot of kids were shaped by
Speaker 1: by Crayola colors. Guys, this will be a future episode.
Speaker 1: For now, let's let's talk about.
Speaker 2: Like the didn't have the white crayon, but the white
Speaker 2: crayon doesn't really.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do much. Yeah, there was a white one.
Speaker 2: Discontinue, Hey, Crayola advice, discontinue the white crayon. It's at
Speaker 2: best of placebos Well, I guess.
Speaker 1: On black paper. You can do it on black paper.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, alright, Crayole, please please take our advice account. Maybe maybe,
Speaker 1: maybe it's better than who knows.
Speaker 2: You just have nine planets eight.
Speaker 1: A lot of things have changed since we went to school.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about the women's side of things and that
Speaker 1: pesky eligibility rule. Last week, Nate, I learned something totally
Speaker 1: crazy from you. You just casually mentioned that women were
Speaker 1: not eligible for the WNBA until they were twenty two
Speaker 1: years old. That's just like totally bad shit. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about this a little bit more. This is something that
Speaker 1: is not true of men. And why in the world
Speaker 1: does this exist? Why is it a thing?
Speaker 2: So let me theorize, right when Caitlin Clark is probably
Speaker 2: going to offend people are sensitive out their women's basketball topics,
Speaker 2: I will say, right, people who are longtime women's basketball fans.
Speaker 2: And by the way, we been running women's models dating
Speaker 2: back the five thirty eight days for ten years now.
Speaker 2: It's something we've always taken seriously, right, you know, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make some broadstroke generalizations. Right, until fairly recently,
Speaker 2: the WNBA was not a very popular product and not
Speaker 2: making a lot of money. It did have a loyal
Speaker 2: fan base, and like the quality of the product is good.
Speaker 2: Certainly these players are spectacular players, right, But you know
Speaker 2: the reason why all these people were, like you know,
Speaker 2: Britney Griner who was detained in Russia, Right, it's because
Speaker 2: there was more money there than they were making from
Speaker 2: from the American sport where they might get paid. I
Speaker 2: mean it's kind of crazy, right, you talk about some
Speaker 2: of the best athletes in the world and they're like
Speaker 2: getting paid like, you know nothing, Yeah, some intern salary
Speaker 2: basically right. By the way, most sports leagues have like
Speaker 2: a rookie scale cap, right, where like you kind of
Speaker 2: are are restricted in your free agent negotiating power for
Speaker 2: some number of years. I don't know off handwo is
Speaker 2: you know in baseball it's six years of professional servitude,
Speaker 2: right or service time is how it's used. So there
Speaker 2: is a lot of like protection. So their combination thing, well,
Speaker 2: there's like there's protection of like the existing classes, right.
Speaker 2: Labor unions in sports tend to bargain in ways that
Speaker 2: fuck over young players and protect the veterans, which in
Speaker 2: some ways is like and I'm you know, generally whatever,
Speaker 2: I think. I'm a free country. People should form menions
Speaker 2: if they want to think they've done benefited people in
Speaker 2: some cases and maybe not in others. Right, I'm just
Speaker 2: saying empirically, in sports, what happens is they tend to
Speaker 2: protect the veterans, the aging stars, whereas they deny younger
Speaker 2: players the right to have full bargaining power. Right, Younger
Speaker 2: players are subject to a draft, and then they in
Speaker 2: most sports, do not make their market salaries or particularly
Speaker 2: close to it until they're several years in. Right, they
Speaker 2: might say that, uh, well, we're actually doing a player
Speaker 2: a service by developing him. It is true that like
Speaker 2: a bad a young player in the nw and the
Speaker 2: NBA is like is pretty bad. Right, So on, so
Speaker 2: on one hand, you have like a restriction of supply
Speaker 2: problem which is formulated by you know, you know, unions
Speaker 2: that maybe don't care as much about these younger players.
Speaker 2: And also, like from the league standpoint, they're probably kind
Speaker 2: of indifferent toward this. Because one thing I've learned having
Speaker 2: built basketball protection systems, and I haven't done it well,
Speaker 2: have done the team ratings for women. I have done
Speaker 2: player ratings for women. Right, in general, if you're a
Speaker 2: nineteen year old twenty year old playing in the NBA,
Speaker 2: you're pretty bad, right. I imagine the same is true
Speaker 2: for the WNBA, And generally speaking, from age eighteen to
Speaker 2: twenty two is when you do a lot of your
Speaker 2: physical maturation when you become an adult. In other ways too,
Speaker 2: maybe it's a little bit different. For do women hit
Speaker 2: puberty earlier than they do. Maybe it's a little bit different, right.
Speaker 1: It is, so everything you're saying though, should apply to
Speaker 1: men and women, right in terms of the unions protecting
Speaker 1: older players all of that.
Speaker 2: So one thing, they're probably a few players who you know,
Speaker 2: if you're making whatever, like sixty thousand dollars a year
Speaker 2: in the wa and maybe maybe you run an ad
Speaker 2: and local subway chain or something. Right, So on the
Speaker 2: one hand, like then maybe the college experience is better
Speaker 2: if you're playing it like a South Carolina or a
Speaker 2: Yukon or an Iowa or a usc you know, maybe
Speaker 2: the college experience is actually better. It's it's probably also
Speaker 2: like less demand for your services, right, But yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: surprised there hasn't been more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that seems like that seems like a very
Speaker 1: paternalistic argument, right, like let them have the choice, Like,
Speaker 1: if the college experience is better, then let them stay
Speaker 1: in college. But let them also have the same choice
Speaker 1: as their male counterparts, which is to leave early. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I heard when I, you know,
Speaker 1: started researching this a little bit is that speaking about paternalism,
Speaker 1: that there was an argument made that you know, women
Speaker 1: need the degree more than men do. So force them
Speaker 1: basically to finish college because they will thank you for
Speaker 1: it later, because they'll, you know, they'll be lucky that
Speaker 1: they have an alternate career to fall back on, because
Speaker 1: this isn't this is probably not going to work out.
Speaker 1: And look, I understand that that like technically might be
Speaker 1: might be the case, but I once again, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that there should be you should be able
Speaker 1: to make that choice. So one of my closest friends
Speaker 1: was a professional dancer, right, a professional athlete, didn't go
Speaker 1: to college, right, didn't finish college and danced full time.
Speaker 1: You know, you know her as well, ended up after
Speaker 1: you know, finishing her dance career, going to Columbia and
Speaker 1: finishing a degree, writing a novel and becoming you know,
Speaker 1: an incredibly successful entrepreneur, jewelry designer, all these wonderful things.
Speaker 1: But she did that afterwards because she never went to
Speaker 1: college because she was a professional athlete. So it's not like,
Speaker 1: if you you know, leave at the age of nineteen
Speaker 1: or twenty to go play basketball, oh my god, you
Speaker 1: can never finish college. Right. I think a lot most
Speaker 1: colleges would be thrilled to have a professional athlete come
Speaker 1: back to finish their degree, because that's you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like you're closing off that option, you're not precluding it.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, so that argument is
Speaker 1: not doesn't suffice. And so it does seem like there
Speaker 1: are these vested interests, as there often are when there's
Speaker 1: something so crazy, right, when there's something that doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: usually it's because there are some old, vested interests that
Speaker 1: don't want it to change. And so what you were
Speaker 1: saying about unions about protecting older players, about kind of
Speaker 1: enshrining that that to me kind of makes more sense
Speaker 1: than oh, we're doing this for the good of the players,
Speaker 1: because that seems like a disingenuous argument at best.
Speaker 2: No, look, I mean you have you know, the other
Speaker 2: risk is that you get some if you you know,
Speaker 2: talk to college basketball players men, they'll sit now I'm
Speaker 2: talking to them personally. If you read interviews with them, right,
Speaker 2: they're like, look, I can't take the chance that I
Speaker 2: get like injured, right and therefore have no career at all.
Speaker 2: You know, USC's best player just tore her acl in
Speaker 2: there around thirty two win last night, right, and you
Speaker 2: know this is a long recovery and like if you
Speaker 2: have that happen after you sign your kind of like
Speaker 2: rookie contract, then like that gives you more protection, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in some ways it's better if.
Speaker 2: You can, like goodn to play professionally, and the professional
Speaker 2: league and the NCAA are kind of like, I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess it's not really the NCAA's fault, right, but
Speaker 2: the league is supposed to represent women's basketball, is kind
Speaker 2: of denying you a professional existence. I mean, it's kind
Speaker 2: of fucked up, right, Somebody should sue. Somebody sue the NBA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody should sue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is un American.
Speaker 1: Well no, it actually it is kind of fucked up
Speaker 1: that you are just unilaterally denied the opportunity to do this,
Speaker 1: and you know you you should have you should have
Speaker 1: the choice. You should be able to make a living
Speaker 1: however you want. And these days we have so many
Speaker 1: people arguing that, oh, well, college degrees aren't even what
Speaker 1: they used to be. You don't even need one, you know,
Speaker 1: Peter Tiele paying people money not to go to college.
Speaker 1: And yet here we are right that finish your college
Speaker 1: degree before you can play basketball professionally. I mean, it
Speaker 1: just it makes absolutely zero sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're good enough to be, uh, you know
Speaker 2: the WNBA, right, one of the one hundred and two
Speaker 2: hundred best players in the world, And like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that's more viable than a college degree. Absolutely it is.
Speaker 2: It's more unique, and like you build life skills, and
Speaker 2: absolutely it is, and we build.
Speaker 1: And you can always and you can always go back
Speaker 1: and ghetto college degree later if you want, and then
Speaker 1: you'll be a former WNBA with a college degree. Right.
Speaker 1: I think that's the kind of experience that you can't duplicate,
Speaker 1: whereas a college degree is actually quite easy to duplicate
Speaker 1: in a lot of different ways. So yes, let's I
Speaker 1: think that you and I agree on this. WNBA, get
Speaker 1: your shit together. This is not a good rule.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, let's see what happens next week. I don't think
Speaker 1: the WNBA rules will change, but maybe maybe I will
Speaker 1: be redeemed in our bracket competition. And if not, Nate,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have a survey of best burgers in
Speaker 1: both New York and Vegas, depending on where we are,
Speaker 1: and then we can pick a fun dinner whoever wants.
Speaker 2: Risky business is hosted by me, Nate Silver.
Speaker 1: And Me Maria Kannakovin.
Speaker 2: The show was a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Isabel carter or A. Social
Speaker 2: producer is Gabriel hunter Chen. Sally Helm is our editor.
Speaker 2: Our engineer is Sarah Bruger. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
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