Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova
Pushkin Industries
Risky Business is a weekly podcast about making better decisions. The hosts, Maria Konnikova and Nate Silver, are both journalists who moonlight as high-stakes ...
Nate and Maria discuss the California wildfires. How do incentives in insurance markets drive decisions by homeowners – and by insurers? What’s the best way to make rational decisions about the disaster risks we all face?And they discuss a question from listener JM who asks what happens when the River and the Village mix it up in Washington? Further Reading: Colm Toíbin on the loss of Gary Indiana’s personal library in the Palisades fire An overview of California’s insurance issues from the WSJ For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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47:44
Nate and Maria’s 2025 Predictions
Nate and Maria share their predictions for the year to come, covering everything from the price of Bitcoin, to the fate of President Trump’s cabinet picks, to whether Nate will wear skinny jeans. For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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40:10
Learning From Failure, Avoiding Regret, and Managing Risk with Restaurateur Henry Rich
Maria talks to her friend Henry Rich about how he’s managed to find success in one of the world’s riskiest industries: restaurants. Themes include learning from failure, accounting for ruin, and finding meaning at work. For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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45:16
Luigi Mangione, the Rise of Bluesky, and High-Stakes Chokes
Nate and Maria talk about what Luigi Mangione can show us about the danger of black and white thinking, and how platforms like Bluesky and X create bubbles that make matters worse. Then, with the reigning world chess champion dethroned after a surprising choke, they discuss how they deal with high-stakes situations. Risky Business will be off next week. We’ll be back with a new episode on 1/2/25. Happy New Year! For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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41:17
The Riskies: The Best, Worst, and Most Interesting Decisions of 2024
What were the best, worst, and most interesting decisions of 2024, and what can we learn from them? Nate and Maria award the year’s most notable decisions in our first annual Riskies awards show. Also: degen of the year, nit of the year, and the cognitive bias that best explains 2024. Then, they give a quick poker update and answer a listener’s question about the expected value of learning multiple languages. For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
About Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova
Risky Business is a weekly podcast about making better decisions. The hosts, Maria Konnikova and Nate Silver, are both journalists who moonlight as high-stakes poker players. On Risky Business, they bring their analytical framework to everything from politics to poker to personal decisions.
Maria has a PhD in psychology and is the author of several books including, most recently, The Biggest Bluff. While researching the book, she inadvertently became a professional poker player, with over $500,000 in tournament winnings. She is a PokerStars Team Pro.
Nate is the founder and former editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, and one of the country’s leading election forecasters. He has over $800,000 in lifetime poker tournament winnings and his forthcoming book, On the Edge, is about gambling and risk.
Risky Business is a co-production of iHeart Media and Pushkin Industries.
UK