Speaker 1: Push Kim.
Speaker 2: Hey there, Michael Lewis here as we eazon over into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, I wanted to share a fun awards
Speaker 2: show that my friend's over at Risky Business just held.
Speaker 2: That show is all about being smarter when it comes
Speaker 2: to risk, about how to make better decisions. It's hosted
Speaker 2: by the statistician Nate Silver and the psychologist Maria Konakova.
Speaker 2: They both also happened to be professional poker players, and
Speaker 2: the two just gave out a bunch of awards for
Speaker 2: the best, the worst, and the wildest gambles of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. It's a surprising and fun look back on
Speaker 2: the year, and I think you'll love it. We'll be
Speaker 2: back with our regular season very soon in the new year.
Speaker 3: Nate, I'm really excited for our first of what I
Speaker 3: hope will be annual Risky Awards, the Riskies to talk
Speaker 3: about good and bad decisions of the year in all
Speaker 3: walks of life. So obviously, you know, we talk a
Speaker 3: lot about politics on the show, so we'll have some
Speaker 3: from politics, but also from business and from sports and Hollywood,
Speaker 3: just talking in general about risky decisions, Which ones worked out,
Speaker 3: which ones didn't, which ones were good, which ones were bad?
Speaker 3: So let's get started and talk about awarding the first
Speaker 3: risky for the Hero call of the year. So a
Speaker 3: decision that looked like it might have been a little
Speaker 3: crazy at the time but turned out to be brilliant, right,
Speaker 3: just like a hero callin poker when you're thinking, you're
Speaker 3: thinking you have jack high and it's for your tournament life,
Speaker 3: and you end up calling and you're right because the
Speaker 3: other guy was bluffing with eight high or whatever it was. Nate,
Speaker 3: do you have a hero call of the year?
Speaker 1: I think THEO the French Whale has to get the
Speaker 1: Hero call of the euro Awards. So what do you make?
Speaker 1: He uh, eighty five billion dollars? So he here the
Speaker 1: French Whale was on polymarket, which I'm an advisor to,
Speaker 1: and that copious amounts millions of dollars that Trump would
Speaker 1: win and kind of even like distorted as a loaded term,
Speaker 1: but like the whole market was effected by this one trader.
Speaker 1: Poly market has good volume, but not but you know
Speaker 1: it's not it's not the equities market or something like that.
Speaker 1: Apparently did some polling where he asked people, who are
Speaker 1: your neighbors owning? For this technique is not that proven,
Speaker 1: but look it worked. A hero called, by definition is
Speaker 1: like if you get the answer right for lots of money,
Speaker 1: then you have to get some amount of some amount
Speaker 1: of credit.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: A lot of people didn't have the story of conference election.
Speaker 1: Our forecast literally had it, literally had it more random
Speaker 1: than a coin flip. And so I'm going to give
Speaker 1: the French whale THEO this award.
Speaker 3: I think that that's a beautiful Uh, that's a beautiful answer.
Speaker 3: The absolutely deserves Hero Call of the Year because we
Speaker 3: even talked on the podcast, We're like, this is insane,
Speaker 3: like right, who is this way?
Speaker 1: Like what is going on?
Speaker 3: And yeah, he ended up making a shit ton of money.
Speaker 3: So congratulations THEO, You've made our Hero call of the Year.
Speaker 1: Congrats, Yes, and come on the show.
Speaker 3: Yes, we'd love to. We'd love to talk about how
Speaker 3: you think about it.
Speaker 1: Yes, we.
Speaker 3: Nate promises he will not do his friench accent for you.
Speaker 3: You show all right. So you know, a flip side
Speaker 3: of the hero call is when you make the wrong decision, right,
Speaker 3: what was the worst fold of the year. So a
Speaker 3: decision that you know, ended up making people think, you know,
Speaker 3: what were you thinking? How could you fold there? I
Speaker 3: have one for this, but yeah, you go ahead. It
Speaker 3: seems like you're excited about this one.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, is a so on brand I have to
Speaker 1: go with, Like this, she should have picked Shapiro thing.
Speaker 1: I know, it's I know it's very politics heavy, but like,
Speaker 1: you have this very charismatic politician who's like literally the
Speaker 1: popular governor of the most important spring state, which by
Speaker 1: the way, turned out to be the tipping point state, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and she picked Tim Walls, who was kind of weird
Speaker 1: in practice, and like, it just seemed like a no brainer.
Speaker 1: And I can try and dissect why the campaign did this,
Speaker 1: but like that, that's a decision that's kind of the
Speaker 1: oposite of the hero call. Right, It's like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: obvious play if you don't make the obvious play, right,
Speaker 1: if you have this amazing semi bluffing opportunity, you have
Speaker 1: a straight draw and a flush draw, and you have
Speaker 1: full equity, and you choose to play the hand differently
Speaker 1: in some weird way than it better worked out well
Speaker 1: or if not, we have the right to criticize you.
Speaker 3: So there's another award that comes a little bit later.
Speaker 3: But I'm going to reference it now because I think
Speaker 3: it's very Germane and it's an award that we're borrowing
Speaker 3: from the podcast The Town, So thank you very much
Speaker 3: the Town, and it's the suck itt Haters I was
Speaker 3: right award and that Nate, I'm going to give to
Speaker 3: one of the visions that you've been talking about all year,
Speaker 3: which is she should have chosen Shapiro, should have chosen Shapiro.
Speaker 3: So I actually I went outside of politics sort of
Speaker 3: and I said the worst fold was anyone who ended
Speaker 3: up selling bitcoin at the beginning of the year, during
Speaker 3: the bear market in January. Yeah, I think that that
Speaker 3: was the worst fold, Like the people who were you know,
Speaker 3: we like all in on bitcoin and then we're like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I changed my mind, Like this is bad,
Speaker 3: Like it's down to forty k Like shit, I bet
Speaker 3: those people are not very happy right now. So I
Speaker 3: think that and I don't think that it was I
Speaker 3: think that it was pretty obvious that they should not
Speaker 3: be folding, right because you know how cyclical this market is.
Speaker 3: You know how the bear bull cycles work, Like if
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing, you do not sell like
Speaker 3: at a bottom right there. But yeah, so that was
Speaker 3: that's who I gave the uh the Worst Fold of
Speaker 3: the Year award two, so I think we can we
Speaker 3: can both give out one.
Speaker 1: Next up we have Cooler of the Year who had
Speaker 1: a great hand but still lost.
Speaker 3: So here I went outside of our usual purview, right
Speaker 3: we were normally kind of very politics business, some sports
Speaker 3: heavy here. Decided to go to Hollywood, and I am
Speaker 3: giving this award to Greta Gerwig, who was the writer
Speaker 3: and director of Barbie, who just got completely shut out
Speaker 3: at the Oscars, losing everything, losing even some nominations. She
Speaker 3: wasn't even nominated for directing and she lost for writing.
Speaker 3: And I think that she was just like completely She
Speaker 3: had a great hand. I think Barbie was a great
Speaker 3: movie that did incredibly well, and for some reason she
Speaker 3: was just like completely shut out of the Oscars this year.
Speaker 3: That happens every year, you know, there's always someone, but
Speaker 3: this one, I feel like, yeah, I felt a little
Speaker 3: bit personal about it because I think, you know, she
Speaker 3: she's female, she's talented, she's great. And I actually did
Speaker 3: not like Oppenheimer at all. I thought it was a
Speaker 3: horrible movie. I thought it was really boring. I did
Speaker 3: not think that it should have gotten all the awards.
Speaker 3: It got so like, I actually disagreed completely. This is
Speaker 3: from a personal thing, but these are our awards, so
Speaker 3: they get to be personal. That was my wors That
Speaker 3: was my cooler of the year.
Speaker 1: How about your name maybe the New York Yankees, son Off,
Speaker 1: you're a baseball fan. Juan Soto, this amazing young outfielder
Speaker 1: who is kind of like the Ted Williams of his era,
Speaker 1: signed with the crosstown rival New York Mets for almost
Speaker 1: eight hundred million dollars the Yankees offered him. So when
Speaker 1: I was sixty million after making their first World Series
Speaker 1: run since two thousand and nine, I guess because apparently
Speaker 1: the Yankees were just cheap, Like George Costanza working for
Speaker 1: the Yankees, and Seinfeld were like they wouldn't give Juan
Speaker 1: Soto a sweet They apparently like harassed his family and
Speaker 1: his driver, and so he was like, fuck you, I'm
Speaker 1: actually going to Steve Cohen and the New York Mets.
Speaker 1: Be rare to see a crosstown free agency move like that.
Speaker 3: All right, up, next tilt of the year. So what
Speaker 3: was the most emotional decision of the year? Do you think?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm going back to politics.
Speaker 3: Here mind politics.
Speaker 1: Yep, Joe Biden deciding deciding a a run for reelection
Speaker 1: and that he was indefatible, and then the then the
Speaker 1: pardon of fail Sun Hunter. Yeah, I've got.
Speaker 3: The pardon as mine. So so let's uh, let's unanimously
Speaker 3: give the tilt of the year to Biden for making
Speaker 3: some very emotional decisions, the deciding to run and the
Speaker 3: pardon of Hunter. I think that that is absolutely you know,
Speaker 3: that was tilt. The definition of tilt is letting emotions
Speaker 3: into your decision process, right that you are no longer
Speaker 3: evaluating things based on their you know, expected value, based
Speaker 3: on their actual kind of decision matrix. You are letting
Speaker 3: emotions that are incidental and not integral to the decision
Speaker 3: into the decision. And that's exactly what Joe Biden did.
Speaker 1: Gto call of a year game theory optimalist call for
Speaker 1: the most balanced, mathematically sound decision of the year.
Speaker 3: Okay, so this one I went outside of politics. I
Speaker 3: went into the business side because this is so incredibly rare.
Speaker 3: I wanted to kind of compliment Apple on abandoning their
Speaker 3: for into electric vehicles, because most companies, after spending billions
Speaker 3: on something, don't have the foresight, the knowledge, kind of
Speaker 3: the perspicacity to say, you know what, we're not going
Speaker 3: to be competitive here, it's not working. We're just going
Speaker 3: to write it off and move on. And the market's
Speaker 3: rewarded Apple. Actually, even though some people were like this
Speaker 3: is insane, like, right, how can you step away from
Speaker 3: a multi billion dollar investment? So I think that that
Speaker 3: was Actually that is what gto is right, is actually
Speaker 3: being able to make those types of really really tough
Speaker 3: decisions because you realize, you know what, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: We already spent that money and we can't get it back.
Speaker 3: And if we realize we're not competitive, like I'm going
Speaker 3: to fold my hand right and I'm gonna and I'm
Speaker 3: going to walk away, and that's going to be okay.
Speaker 3: And most companies are not capable of doing that. Most
Speaker 3: CEOs are not capable of doing that. So I want
Speaker 3: to reward Apple for a really good decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me baking a little shout out here to Dan Campbell,
Speaker 1: the head coach of the Detroit Lions. The Lions nearly
Speaker 1: made their first Super Bowl ever, blew it. That probably
Speaker 1: saved me. And I don't want to even say how much
Speaker 1: it's going to save me on it last like a
Speaker 1: Super Bowl trip. But Campbell's very aggressive about going for
Speaker 1: it on fourth down. I'm making other aggressive play calls
Speaker 1: which the GTO says is correct and didn't work out,
Speaker 1: but they trust the system. And now the Lions are
Speaker 1: the best team in the NFL so far this year.
Speaker 1: So maybe I'll be spending my hard earned dollars on
Speaker 1: a trip to New Orleans instead in the super Bowl.
Speaker 3: Great that I'm on board with that, all right. How
Speaker 3: about the Danny Kahneman Memorial Cognitive Bias of the Year Award.
Speaker 3: What cognitive bias best explains twenty twenty four. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to say that the bias that best encapsulates twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. And We're going back to politics. Here is
Speaker 3: the sun cost fallacy, which is the inability to walk
Speaker 3: away from sunk costs. And I think that the Biden campaign,
Speaker 3: which is something that is going to you know, be
Speaker 3: will be feeling the repercussions of that for years to come,
Speaker 3: suffered from the sun cost fallacy. Right the fact that oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I am already I said I'm running like
Speaker 3: I'm not going to turn back on it. I'm going
Speaker 3: to keep putting good time and good money after bad,
Speaker 3: after it was becoming more and more clear that he
Speaker 3: shouldn't run again, that he should step away, and the
Speaker 3: sun cost fallacy I think literally cost them the election
Speaker 3: because they, you know, he did not step away. We've
Speaker 3: talked about this so many times, but you know the
Speaker 3: fact that they didn't pivot, the fact that they could
Speaker 3: have didn't take the risk and take on the new
Speaker 3: strategy and realize, you know what, we're only hurting ourselves
Speaker 3: by continuing to put good time, good money, good energy
Speaker 3: after bad. I think that that was the death, the
Speaker 3: death knell of this of this campaign. So to me,
Speaker 3: the sun cost fallacy is the decision error that best
Speaker 3: encapsulates this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe I'll go with good old fashioned group think.
Speaker 1: I suppose it's like also contained to the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: where and inability. Look, I think it's fundamentally and kind
Speaker 1: of writing an article about this now, I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing, but Democrats adopt this philosophy. They kind
Speaker 1: of claim to be working on behalf of like all
Speaker 1: these oppress minorities, and then all the oppressed minorities shift
Speaker 1: a long way toward Trump. And I think what that
Speaker 1: is is that you're actually looking at views among other elites,
Speaker 1: and Democrats have kind of lost touch with with how
Speaker 1: people outside their group think and what messages are appealing
Speaker 1: and which aren't. And so I we you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to deter too much, but I'll kind of
Speaker 1: broadly give it to the Democratic Party. And how capture
Speaker 1: among all the you know, cognitive elites actually can be
Speaker 1: a problem in some ways makes sense. Here's a fun one,
Speaker 1: Djen of the Year. This is one of the most
Speaker 1: prestigious awards.
Speaker 3: It is, well, I'm giving it to Epay Musahara seen
Speaker 3: million dollars. I don't think it doesn't get more d Jenny.
Speaker 1: Can we call it the Epay Musahara Memorial Djen Award
Speaker 1: the Year in the future?
Speaker 3: I think in future years, I think that's what we
Speaker 3: need to call it. And for people obviously who who
Speaker 3: can't immediately put that name to a face. That was
Speaker 3: Otani's interpreter who pleaded guilty to making at least seventeen
Speaker 3: million dollars worth of sports bets gone wrong and using
Speaker 3: Otani's accounts to cover those.
Speaker 1: And the Nit of the Year. Do you have a
Speaker 1: good one for this? Harris Are okay, Kamal har Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are two. The Irmila Harris memorial.
Speaker 3: Yes, I got that.
Speaker 1: She refused to distance herself from Biden, even though they
Speaker 1: didn't campaign on Biden's agenda either. They just said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: let's help people ignore this and and yeah, the risk
Speaker 1: a version of this campaign. And by the way, how
Speaker 1: much is this her versus her campaign managers? I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but like that's the.
Speaker 3: Campaign right at the end of the day, it's her campaign,
Speaker 3: and if she disagrees with her campaign manager, she needs
Speaker 3: to be like, no, fuck this, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be in it. So at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it's on her, just.
Speaker 1: Like the campaigns with her, they're like, yo, yo, you
Speaker 1: gott get your shitting gear, Kamala exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: So it seems like you agree with my Djen and
Speaker 3: Knit of the Year picks.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, these are pretty easy ones. I think the Risky
Speaker 1: Business bracelet, who had the better which of the two hosts?
Speaker 1: This is an easy one. They're only two answers, had
Speaker 1: the better poker, had the better poker year?
Speaker 3: I don't know in it? Are you up or down?
Speaker 1: I have to I'm definitely down. In tournaments and then
Speaker 1: I have a quite good year in cash, and so
Speaker 1: I don't actually know.
Speaker 3: All right, well, the bracelet, I think we should do tournaments, right,
Speaker 3: since bracelets.
Speaker 1: Are Yeah, it's very viable, right, Yeah, it's very fable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm up in tournaments, So I guess I
Speaker 3: get the bracelet for this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm down a fair bit and I'll need to
Speaker 1: have a good series here at the wind, but the
Speaker 1: cash is gone. I'm trying to think myself is more
Speaker 1: of a cash player's kind in some ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's wonderful, and I look forward to seeing you
Speaker 3: on some big cash streams. And we can change this
Speaker 3: from the bracelet award to something else so that we
Speaker 3: can just say poker prowess, whether cash or tournaments, I
Speaker 3: don't know. So now we've got two awards that are
Speaker 3: being taken from another podcast, The Town, which gives awards
Speaker 3: the mea Cool By I was Wrong Award and the
Speaker 3: Second Haters I Was Right Award. So these are for
Speaker 3: I think, personal decision and you know, personal things that
Speaker 3: we've done. This is where I said that you should
Speaker 3: be the second Haters I was right. I didn't have
Speaker 3: one for me, but I had it for you, which
Speaker 3: was that she should have gone for Shapiro. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that that's I think that you get that award
Speaker 3: and the Mia Coolpi was wrong award. I actually so,
Speaker 3: I think that I was wrong when we had talked
Speaker 3: on the podcast about kind of how important crypto was
Speaker 3: to the election, and I'm like, it's a tiny percentage,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really matter. I actually think that it ended
Speaker 3: up mattering a lot more than I thought it would.
Speaker 3: And you know, and especially kind of given the amount
Speaker 3: of money that was donated given kind of some people
Speaker 3: who I think came out and became single issue voters
Speaker 3: for Trump because of his take on Crypto. I actually
Speaker 3: think I was a little bit wrong on that. I
Speaker 3: think I underestimated the Cryptovo.
Speaker 1: I'll give myself an award for nearly betting on with
Speaker 1: Keith for boy who was a venture capitalist on y'all
Speaker 1: came in floor where Keith claimed he lives in Miami
Speaker 1: now very proudly so that Kamala Harris would lose Florida
Speaker 1: by eight points or more and at the time she
Speaker 1: was down only three points in the polling average. Got
Speaker 1: in a spat on Twitter and offered to bet one
Speaker 1: hundred k and actually kind of tried to facilitate this
Speaker 1: and sent an email to a mutual friend saying, Hey, Keith,
Speaker 1: if you want negotiate terms, here's person why who can
Speaker 1: confirm this? And he didn't respond for four days, right,
Speaker 1: and then the some morning a New York Times pull
Speaker 1: comes out and has Harris down like thirteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: points in Florida, and I'm like, fuck this. You know
Speaker 1: you don't have a free option to make this bet whenever,
Speaker 1: so the offer is rescinded, which he agreed it was
Speaker 1: too late to accept the bet, certainly not recognizing the
Speaker 1: complete collapse of the Democratic Party in Florida and being
Speaker 1: lucky to be able to pull out of that bet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a good one. And the second hitters,
Speaker 3: I was right. Do you like my choice for that
Speaker 3: a lot?
Speaker 1: I mean all the Biden related stuff like, actually, you're.
Speaker 3: Like I was right about everything.
Speaker 1: It hurts, I know, the Biden debate stuff where I'm like, actually,
Speaker 1: the debate might go so bad, yeah, that he'll have
Speaker 1: to pull out, Like people, that was kind of crazy, right.
Speaker 1: I would not have given like more than like a
Speaker 1: fifteen percent probability of that, but I kind of put
Speaker 1: myself out there with at least raising his chance and
Speaker 1: so all the Biden stuff. Yeah, I felt like was my.
Speaker 3: You definitely put yourself out there, and I think and
Speaker 3: I think you ended up being right about a lot
Speaker 3: of it. So yes, I'm there for it all. Right. Now,
Speaker 3: We're going to have two individual awards for for us
Speaker 3: to give out, So mine is the Maria Kannakova Award
Speaker 3: for the biggest bluff of the Year, and I am
Speaker 3: gonna I'm going to get a lot of people mad
Speaker 3: for this one, but I'm giving it to Sam Altman
Speaker 3: and open Ai for bluffing about the mission and the
Speaker 3: nonprofit nature of open Ai and getting you know, saying
Speaker 3: how it was all about, you know, just just being
Speaker 3: for the good of the world and then raising money
Speaker 3: and actually we're going to be for profit and all
Speaker 3: of this stuff that like obviously it was going to
Speaker 3: be a business and obviously like this is where it
Speaker 3: was heading. But I think a lot of people believed
Speaker 3: his initial bluff and this is something that's going to
Speaker 3: be really important and open Ai and is you know,
Speaker 3: how Sam goes about it. I think this is an
Speaker 3: important thing to to track closely. So I think it's
Speaker 3: good to realize that this is someone who is incredibly
Speaker 3: good at bluffing, incredibly credible at bluffing, and bluffs a lot.
Speaker 1: I agree, I think, no, I think I think that's
Speaker 1: a great pick. Maria, thank you. I mean he is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if. I don't know if he's convincing
Speaker 1: everyone necessarily, but but but he knows how to see
Speaker 1: their bluff through. I'll say that much.
Speaker 3: Yes, he does.
Speaker 1: The Nate Silver Award for Raverian of the Year. The raverian,
Speaker 1: of course, a term from my book for this group
Speaker 1: of I don't know, the Jennery kambling types. I think
Speaker 1: I think you have to give it to our boy, Elon.
Speaker 1: I just think you have to. He made this very
Speaker 1: big bet where he was kind of in more of
Speaker 1: a blue linen cultural space and has obviously gotten like
Speaker 1: red pilled in various ways. But look, he bet two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand, or people are still counting, maybe
Speaker 1: three hundred excuse me, he bet like several hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars of his own money on. Trump went very all
Speaker 1: in on this movement and now has been rewarded with
Speaker 1: heading a government or a quasi governmental agency named DOGE
Speaker 1: and getting this guy he wanted elected. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit like this thing we said before, where
Speaker 1: if you kind of make that hero call and not
Speaker 1: like the odds were that bad. I mean, Biden was
Speaker 1: evidently in trouble very early on. But I think you
Speaker 1: have to like and again, I Elon is not my
Speaker 1: favorite representative of the river right, even if you were
Speaker 1: such a conservatives. You know, someone like Jay Bonicharia, who
Speaker 1: was an early Stanford professor who was skeptical from the
Speaker 1: COVID lockdown stuff, now named director of the NIH like
Speaker 1: he is someone who I would personally like rather get
Speaker 1: a beer with or something. But Elon's the obvious choice.
Speaker 1: Not gonna deny him his good year.
Speaker 3: Well, this was this was a lot of fun. I like,
Speaker 3: I like the riskies, and and I like our renaming
Speaker 3: of some of the awards to the Award for DTA
Speaker 3: UH Forever More.