Night Waves - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2012

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the banker-turned-philosopher who predicted the 2008 financial crash, joins Rana to present his argument on being ‘antifragile’. Jeremy Jennings and Patricia Thornton consider why it is that, according to rumours, the new Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping is turning to a political text by Alexis de Tocqueville. And Sarah Dunant reviews The Hunt, the new film by Thomas Vinterberg which chronicles the chilling story of a teacher falsely accused of abusing a child.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds.
0:32.1	This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.
0:41.1	And tonight, we're looking at Xi Jinping's e-reader and asking whether China's new Supremo
0:46.8	has deleted his copy of Mao's selected works to make way for 19th century French thinker,
0:52.7	Alexis de Tocqueville.
1:00.4	We've got the word in on The Hunt, the controversial new film from prize-winning Danish director Thomas Winterberg.
1:05.3	And we'll be speed dating for ideas with some of Radio 3's New Generation thinkers.
1:09.4	But first, the world's richest ornithologist.
1:13.7	Because when the financial world came tumbling down in 2008,
1:20.3	one man who spotted a rare and dangerous bird was hailed as a prophet, Nassim Nicholas Talib.
1:25.7	The bird, Taleb, wrote about, was the Black Swan, a metaphor for the idea that very random, unexpected events could have huge consequences for the financial system.
1:30.5	The Black Swan got rave reviews and sold millions,
1:33.5	and Talib's self-definition as a fiscal conservative, opposed to government debt, led David Cameron to seek his advice.
1:40.6	Now Talib is back with a new book and a new concept, anti-fragile.
1:45.8	He argues that in a world of increasing volatility, it's not enough to be robust.
1:50.7	You have to take shocks and stress and actually benefit from them.
1:54.7	When I spoke to him earlier, I asked him to start by explaining his theory of anti-fragility.
2:00.2	There are simply things in life that like volatility and need it as fuel.
2:05.5	It's not just that they like volatility and need it as ingredient for growth, prosperity, and even to survive.
2:13.3	The things that die, they don't have a certain category of stressors.
	...

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