This is Trend Following Radio, where great thinking comes alive.

Nobel Prize winners, legendary traders, bestselling authors, and the pros that know what drive us irrational human beings.

I am your host, Michael Covel, not filtered, raw, honest.

That's my passion. My guest today is Mark Blythe. He is the Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University. He is also a professor of political science and international public affairs.

Mark's research focuses on, and gee, you're going to see why I wanted to have Mark on, but his

research focuses on how uncertainty and randomness impact complex systems,

particularly economic systems, and why people continue to believe stupid economic ideas

despite buckets of evidence to the contrary. Mark is a great talker, a great Scott.

He brings it straight, no BS, right to the heart of the matter, strong opinions, strong research, a really wise individual. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Mark Blythe.

My first big picture question that I think perhaps is even the most important question that I can possibly ask today, which is, did you start deadlifting because of Nassim,

or were you doing it on your own in advance?

Not in advance. It was coterminous. What happened was we actually hadn't been in touch

for a little while after the publication of anti-fragile. Not because it's fallen out or anything

like that, just, you know, schedules, agendas, the whole thing. I remember actually I read the I-Y-I intellectual yet idiots,

piece and medium, which I just thought was hilarious, brilliant, and, you know, insane at the same

time, in a good way. At the end of it, it says, and they don't deadlift. And I went, well, I do,

and I have been doing since, actually, I mean, I've been deadlifting, well, I'm 50 now. I've been deadlifting since I was 42. So I've been doing this for a long time. I used to do heavy squats for a long time.

I'm more of a crazy yoga maniac these days, but I appreciate the deadlifting. There's no getting

around what that is. It's hard, it's work. That's just the bottom line. It's one of those things. When you get to 40 as an academic, there's a fork in the road.

And you can look around the university and you can see the people that haven't actually

done anything after the age of 40.

And they don't look good.

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