Nate Silver: Do risk-takers run the world?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Big stakes poker player and elections analyst Nate Silver is no stranger to a calculated risk.
In his new book, On The Edge, he makes the case that people willing to take massive calculated risks are winning in the modern economy.
Tim Harford talks to Nate about the mindset that’s driving hedge fund managers, crypto true-believers and silicon valley investors.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Beth Ashmead Latham Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound mix: Nigel Appleton Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Annie Matt Manus and my name is Nick Grimshaw. How long have we known each other babe? |
| 0:05.1 | Probably 20 years now and in that time we've always worked in and around music right? |
| 0:10.6 | We have. So it kind of makes sense that we do a podcast better. |
| 0:13.4 | It sounds like he's been 20 years in the making. It's not a avatar for podcasts, basically, |
| 0:17.6 | but it is good. So we put the world to rights with regards to music. |
| 0:21.5 | It's all the stuff that you'd want to chat to your mate about over a pint. rights with |
| 0:23.3 | your mate about over a pint. |
| 0:24.8 | Sidetracked with us, Annie and Nick, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.3 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. We're a show which looks at the numbers in the |
| 0:35.1 | news and in life and I'm Tim Harford. Nate Silver made his name as the political polling nerd behind the 538 website |
| 0:48.0 | which used smart analysis of probabilities and risk and a whole lot of data, polling and economic to accurately |
| 0:55.1 | predict the 2008 and 2012 US presidential elections. |
| 1:01.5 | He is also, as it happens, a high stakes poker player. |
| 1:05.0 | Again, probabilities and risks. |
| 1:08.0 | You can see the theme. |
| 1:10.0 | Having left 538 is set out by himself, he's written a book that combines his passions, |
| 1:14.9 | which tries to explain how a certain kind of person, his kind of person, has come to rule the world. |
| 1:21.9 | I sat down with Nate in London to talk about on the edge the art of risking everything. |
| 1:28.0 | Welcome to more or less Nate. So this book is about people who inhabit what you call |
| 1:37.8 | the river is a poker team. Basically calculated risk takers. |
| 1:43.0 | So can you give me a specific example of the kind of risk taking and the calculation that you have in mind? |
| 1:49.0 | We have been doing this little media tour around London and we've often had questions about we |
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