Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova

Love Maria and Nate! I find their views on the various topics very interesting based on their backgrounds and education. I listen to many podcasts and I enjoy the science, economic, and statistical analyses on these every day topics. Seriously don’t understand the negativity towards Maria. She’s allowed to talk about her credentials- she earned them and it informs her views so she actually should disclose them in order to provide context for her opinions. I’ve heard men do it all the time in these kinds of podcasts and no one bats an eye. People should disclose their backgrounds to uncover potential biases or what levels of experience they bring to a view. Keep up the great work Maria and Nate! Enjoying the podcast so far!

This podcast is finding its sea legs and is a bit inconsistent at this point. It has a lot of promise and you can hear genuine emotion as well as rational and logical thought happening here. Interviews pop up from time to time and those are 10/10 excellent. I’d recommend they follow the “Prof G” podcast model where a different icon is used to visually highlight the interview episodes, vs the WSOP episodes, vs the political episodes which tend to be emotionally charged.

The podcast is at its best as Nate Silver demonstrates an astonishing ability to examine his own priors and biases, and a willingness to challenge Maria on hers too with an earnestness seldom seen. It gives a genuineness to conversation that is disarming, albeit frustrating at times—it feels like debating with friends in the best of ways.

I’ve always enjoyed Nate S’s political commentary. He is very good at identifying his own biases explicitly, and considers himself a mainstream, center-left voter. He is also pretty aware that he is in the Acela corridor bubble, even with occasional trips to Las Vegas. This makes his political commentary useful, and occasionally insightful, about establishmentarian thought. (I’m personally an independent who has voted R, D and L in the past 16 years. I’ve also had a great deal of math and statistics, so numbers are why I’m here). Nate’s co-host, Maria, unfortunately does not recognize her own biases and is more than happy to move to “feelings over facts”, as this line from the August 1st podcast shows: Maria: “Even if there's no settled science, I think we can say that there is a penalty.” The context was whether women automatically suffer a penalty for running for office in the US. While I suspect that they do, this kind of an approach moves us out of “Just the facts” to “Just the opinions”. Well, guess what. That’s the sort of non-analytical approach Fox News or MSNBC will use. It makes the podcast weak, and I’ve de-prioritized my listening after that.

I tend to trust Michael Lewis so when he recommends something I’ll usually try it. This show is nothing more than two people who believe they are very smart telling you that they are very smart and then bashing other people who don’t agree with their very smart opinion. Please do not waste your time. Otherwise you will leave feeling less intelligent and slightly slimy. I’m not kidding.

Nate is a great commentator: he is rigorous, analytical, and is excellent at explicitly recognizing his own biases. This level of rigor is what makes him stand out, and probably why he was not so successful on mainstream outlets. Maria, on the other hand, more often than not parrots widely held beliefs (like the proposition that women suffer a penalty when running for office), but not engaging in any kind of analytical reasoning. The September 25th show was the worst. Maria, at length, goes on about how Trump is a con artist, a loathsome man, and his voters are either a victim of his con or are cynics in a discussion about whether voters vote in their self interest. I don’t necessarily disagree with what Maria has to say, but this is not analysis. It’s just a low quality regurgitation Village opinions I can get from most political commentators. I urge Nate to search for a better co-host that builds on and compliments what he brings to the table.