Give Politicians a Raise, Smuggle Smartphones into School, and go Full Donk! Cautionary Questions with Risky Business
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can game theory be used to win a world cup? Can you pay the way out of political corruption? And are there winning strategies in life we don't use because we're too embarrassed? Tim teams up with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova, poker connoisseurs and the hosts of podcast Risky Business to answer your questions, tackling everything from sports, to tariffs, to the evils of smartphones.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:08.8 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:15.4 | Hello and welcome to another episode of cautionary questions, where I team up with clever people to answer your clever |
| 0:22.3 | questions. And this time I'm joined by Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova. They are the hosts of |
| 0:28.2 | the Risky Business podcast and they are here to answer questions from both sets of listeners. |
| 0:34.6 | Nate is a political analyst. He's the author of On the Edge, and Maria is the best |
| 0:39.4 | selling author of The Biggest Bluff, How I Learn to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. |
| 0:45.9 | They're both fantastic books. Both Nate and Maria are also journalists, and they are both |
| 0:50.6 | high-stakes poker players. I'm a journalist too and an undercover economist, |
| 0:55.6 | and I'm not much of a poker player, but between us we should have some good answers for all |
| 0:59.7 | of the smart questions that you've been sending in. We will be tackling smartphones in schools, |
| 1:05.2 | tariffs, and how to use game theory to win at sports. Nate, Maria, welcome to cautionary tales. |
| 1:12.4 | Thank you, Tim. |
| 1:13.2 | Thanks so much, Tim. |
| 1:14.6 | Well, should it be cautionary business or risky tales? |
| 1:17.3 | Risky caution? |
| 1:18.7 | Risky caution. |
| 1:19.6 | That's good. |
| 1:20.3 | That's good. |
| 1:21.2 | You've been podcasting for how long? |
| 1:23.3 | About a year. |
| 1:24.4 | About a year. |
... |
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