Curious Worldview

Russ Roberts | Nassim Taleb, Hitchens, Ergodicity & Reflecting On 15+ Years Of EconTalk

• Russ Roberts • Episode 150

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#150 - Russ Roberts ladies and gentlemen.

One of the true OG’s of podcasting and in fact so OG, that Russ is one of the mediums earliest adopters, Russ has been at this racket for nearly 20 years now since he debuted EconTalk in 2006. 

And although economics is literally in the title, the show expands well beyond the narrow domain of theoretical economics – it is much broader and has transformed over the years into one of the most authentic reflections of a hosts shifting curiosities.

And with guests the likes of Milton Friedman, Thomas Pikety, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Lewis and even the great and elusive Nassim Taleb, you can see why EconTalk is one of the most appraised shows out there.


Time Stamps For Russ Roberts

  • 00:00 – Introduction
  • 02:23 – Christopher Hitchens
  • 07:32 – Good Communication Versus Good Talking… (Podcasting?)
  • 29:53 – Do Certain Cultures Create More Good Communicators Than Others?
  • 35:46 – Nassim Taleb All The Way Down
  • 59:08 – I Run A Theory By Russ + Russ Reflecting On EconTalk
  • 1:12:03 – The Role That Serendipity Has Played In Russ’s Life
  • 1:17:23 – Country Russ Is Particularly Bullish On
  • 1:22:51 – Conversation Between Any Two People Of History

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Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode

SPEAKER_03

Coming up on this episode.

SPEAKER_00

That's the highest level of communication. Very hard to do in conversation. It's easier to do in a book, but most people can't do it in a book. Luck is the residue of design. It's like it's like it's what's left over. But what it means is if you plan enough and you work hard enough, then you can squeeze luck out of it a little bit.

SPEAKER_03

That was Russ Roberts, ladies and gentlemen, one of the true OGs of podcasting, and in fact so OG that Russ is one of the medium's earliest adopters. Russ has been at this racket for nearly twenty years now, uh, since he debuted EconTalk back in 2006. And although economics is literally in the title, the show expands well beyond the narrow domain of theoretical economics. It is much broader and has transformed over the years into one of the most authentic reflections of a host's shifting curiosities. And with guests the likes of Milton Friedman, Thomas Piketty, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Lewis, and even the great and elusive Nasim Taleb, you can see why Econ Talk is one of the most appraised shows out there. It was a very special moment to have recorded this with Russ. I've been listening to his show ever since I got into podcasting. At this point, have consumed hundreds and hundreds of hours of Econ Talk. An episode not directly remarked upon in this chat, which I suggest nonetheless everyone else go and listen to, is Andrew McAfee's 2019 appearance, discussing his book More from Less. However, in this brief podcast with Russ, you can expect to hear some of the following Christopher Hitchens and what Russ makes of good talkers. Nisim Taleb, whether he and Russ ever got to speaking religion, plus whether Russ has come to a pithy conclusion for what he has learned from Nisim Taleb. There is talk of serendipity, and of course, as you can expect, much, much more as well. Again, I feel like I say this every week, but this is another high watermark for the show. So do be sure to pump that good juice into the algorithm with five stars, and do recommend the show to a friend if you feel like they'd be interested into it. Organically sharing the show is the single best way that it can grow. And the more it grows, the better guests we can come on, and the higher production level I can bring to this whole operation as well. So pump that good juice into the algorithm. With absolutely no further ado, here is the great Russ Roberts. Russ, I just wanted to play uh this audio for you to begin with. It's the opening exchange you had in 2009 with Christopher Hitchens.

SPEAKER_00

You start by saying that Orwell was right about the three big issues of the 20th century: imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism. Give us the flavor of what he was right about.

SPEAKER_02

Well, to take them in that order, which is the order in which they occur, and also I think probably the necessary order.

SPEAKER_03

So just that opening clip uh surmises for me why Christopher Hitchens was just such a phenomenal speaker and communicator. So he's famously one of the great speakers, so much so that he could take probably either side of any debate equally persuasively. Um was he one of the best speakers that you ever talked with?

SPEAKER_00

Uh he's incredibly articulate. Um Most of my British guests speak very well. Um it's not a random sample of the um English public, but but they do uh are very good at expressing themselves. Uh and his he was exceptionally good at it. That that was a very memorable interview for a variety of reasons. One, it was a bit of a stretch for me. Most of my interviews at that point had been about economics, and to drift into Orwell was a bit of uh an adventure. Uh, and of course, since over the years I've drifted a lot away from economics into many, many other things. But at the time, that was um a bit of a of a risk for me. And I I was in in Palo Alto, California, visiting Stanford for that summer, and Christopher Hitchens was also there, and I realized I could interview him, and basically had one day. It was only it had to be that Friday. And I went out that evening, Thursday night after he said yes and bought Orwell Manders and read it, his book on Orwell, and you know it's a wonderful book. And we did in those days, I occasionally did interviews face-to-face, now almost exclusively over Zoom. But I did that face-to-face sitting in his um house he was staying at in Menlo Park around the corner. And it could have been a set for a movie. It was a strange and surreal experience, constantly interrupted by workmen and other people doing stuff on the house. So it was a very uh I don't know if you can sense my unease uh in the uh the uh experience. I I also had to get the edits done that afternoon to get them to my producer. So uh after the the um recording was over and he we just kept getting interrupted, so it was it was a crazy uh uh intense thing. And um I'm pretty sure he offered me Scotch. The interview was at noon, and I met him. We sat by the pool before we did the interview, and I'm pretty sure we had a Scotch, which would be very hitches and uh Christophorus. Um anyway, it was a really fun, very memorable interview, and he died, you know, way too soon.

SPEAKER_03

Um soon after that interview, actually.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Did he cut you his famous Johnny Black with Perrier?

SPEAKER_00

I I didn't get I don't think there was Perrier. I think uh I'm ashamed I don't remember what the Scotch was. I I was I was much uh I was a Scotch drinker in those days, and it should have it should have been more vivid. But yeah, it was probably Johnny Walker Black, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.

SPEAKER_03

Did you reach out to him? Were you booking gone shows in the early days?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I sent him an email and uh fortunately he said yes. It's not the best sound quality, but um because I wasn't very good at that then, but the um content is just is spectacular and it still gets a lot of listens.

SPEAKER_03

It it's phenomenal. Um, you know, Hitchens, thank you. There's so much audio of him out there on the internet, and your interview with him is for sure in maybe the top five, in my opinion, of you know, pieces of audio that he's ever been captured on. Thank you. You know, particularly the little sidebar about um Orwell and Hayek, which you obviously jumped all over. Uh some really interesting stuff in there. Uh could you maybe explain a little bit more why it felt like a movie set?

SPEAKER_00

Uh it was a large house. There were the the um there was a pool and there were trees, big old trees, and uh and as I said, there were workmen working on the house and and they kept coming through. And it if you were gonna do a movie, if you were gonna film Hitch in America, it'd be a good place to do it. That documentary that never got made.

SPEAKER_03

The um reason why I decided to play that clip is just because of how quickly and aesthetically he reframes the three points you gave to him. Um and it's very informative, but as well, it's entertaining, it's beautiful, it's rhythmical to listen to. You said a lot of British people are like that. Um I would still put Click Hitchens right on top of that. So maybe wonder that question is asking you how valuable is it to be a good talker?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think communication is underrated, uh, and I think it's also uh denigrated a bit as obviously a form of show or marketing as opposed to the content. Um but I often think about the fact that the most famous economist of all time is probably Adam Smith. He was an extremely effective writer, and some of his ideas were not novel. They had been written about by other people, including by his friend David Hume. And I think part of the reason, not the only reason, but part of the reason that Smith is immortal is because he wrote well. Uh, I don't know how he spoke. Um I suspect he was pretty articulate also, but his writing and the um clarity of it, the occasional humor, and the eloquence of it, I think is part of the reason he endures. And I think in general, uh writing and um and speaking are are underrated. And of course, not everybody's good at both. There, as I'm sure you know, as a host, a brilliant writer can sometimes be a poor speaker. A mediocre writer can be a great speaker, and uh they don't always go together.

SPEAKER_03

So, like you've identified at the end there, on the pie chart of communication, there is more than just writing or speaking or whatever. But I really want to ask you particularly about the talking component. How valuable is it to be a good talker?

SPEAKER_00

Um I don't know. Uh it's you know, in our world in 2023, it's I suspect it's more valuable than it was in 1759, but I'm not sure that's true. You know, in 1759 you um you didn't have any w way to amplify your voice, both in the literal physical sense or the virtual sense. So your charm and eloquence as a as a sp as a s as a talker would be extremely important. But of course, in today's world, because of the internet, um an eloquent person, a great speech, uh a great presentation, uh can have a huge effect. I sometimes think about David Foster Wallace's commencement address, This is water, that he gave at Kenyon College. Um it reads pretty well, but it's spoken extremely well. It's delivered extremely well. I guess that's orate or rating, maybe you'd call that. In terms of talking, I think there's two elements of talking. There's what you might call banter, the back and forth of two people who enjoy each other's company and and are amusing and charming and thoughtful. And then there's the higher level for me is the ability to create a something close to jazz, an improvised interaction between two people, uh, where something emerges that isn't intended by either one. You know, polite conversation means not talking while the other person's talking, but it's a big difference between not talking and actually listening, and not talking and being able to create new threads and directions for a conversation that weren't anticipated. So uh a great talker can do all that.

SPEAKER_03

Is it something you're conscious of yourself? Do you check yourself and try to make sure you're speaking as elegantly, as clearly as possible?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I live in Jerusalem. I moved here two years ago. My Hebrew is better, but not very good than when I compared to when I arrived, and I have to still give a reasonable number of presentations here in Israel, either to my students or to my staff, my colleagues, uh who mostly speak Hebrew. They all speak some English, but they they're more comfortable in Hebrew than in English, and I'm more comfortable in English than Hebrew. So when I speak English to them, I work very hard at avoiding phrases that I know that they won't have they will not understand. Uh and that is a bit paralyzing. It um I know that because sometimes I'll speak to American audiences either back in America or here visiting, and I notice how more articulate I am, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, that's because I'm not censoring myself and aware, being aware of phrasing and speed that I might uh have to focus on if I'm speaking to a non-native English um audience. Also, as a podcast host, um I'm very aware when I'm not at my best and when I'm better versus worse. And I you know if I'm tired um and doing an interview too late in the day after too many other things, I struggle to stay um linear. I can drift into I can drift into into what I would consider incoherence, which I find just depressing.

SPEAKER_03

Where have we caught you right now?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I'm in a good space. I think I'm okay. We'll see. It's early.

SPEAKER_03

You mentioned um between two people. Uh obviously that's a different dynamic when you're thinking about the straight up quality of good talking, but uh you mentioned jazz there. Do you how often do you feel like you've reached jazz? You've done hundreds and hundreds of interviews by now. Um we talking a uh you know right at the end of the tale or maybe 10-20%?

SPEAKER_00

No, I've I've done over a little over 900 interviews that you know that are obviously I've been in thousands, hundreds, thousand hundred thousand conversations, but in terms of formal interviews for econ talk, uh I think it's the far end of the tale. You know, I I I can be happy, I'd say I'm happy with most of the interviews. I'm glad you know I think they went well, but there's a handful, you know, maybe it's 20, not two handfuls, four handfuls, uh twenty times where you know the interview ends, and in the old days the technology was a little bit shakier. I would be recording on the phone with a portable recording advice that talked to the phone system. And I never lost an episode, but I always had some unease about it. Now I do them over Zoom, so I have a backup. On Zoom, the quality won't be as high, but you know, I have a backup. And when I there's a handful, maybe again, handful is not quite the right word, but maybe 20 times I have this um deep yearning that that the conversation not be lost because I was happy that it went a certain way. And sometimes, you know, the ideal is a conversation that has a an arc to it that could ebb and flow in terms of intensity and um and then builds into something more effective because often I'm talking to people I don't know and I'm talking to them for the first time, like we're doing now. It's hard. People are uneasy sometimes being interviewed, and uh you don't have the time to put them at ease. Um and sometimes it just is choppier than you'd like. But uh a few times more than 20, you know, a story gets told that's precious to me, that that I'll cherish, and I hope my listeners will like as as much as I do. And um that's the I was gonna say that's the sweet spot. It's not quite the sweet spot. I spend more of my energy, perhaps mistakenly, trying to convey, give the author or interviewee a chance to convey their ideas, their work in a thoughtful and lucid way, asking clarifying questions. Uh, I don't necessarily focus on creating a great conversation. I'm thinking of myself in that setting as more of a teacher or a guide or a curious student would be a better word than teacher. The curious student and letting my listeners be the students who are listening alongside me. And that's different than trying to create, say, a magical uh interaction that that's unforgettable. And so those are rare. And I think they'd be rare anyway. I'm not sure it'd be healthy to try. It's probably better to let them come along when they come and not try to create the max ante. But um I wish I could get better at my craft. I I know I'm better than I was 17 years ago when I started, but I'm sure I could be you know significantly better still, and I don't I don't really have the time to hone that art um other than just through practice and experience. I don't do it in a thoughtful way, and I wish I did sometimes.

SPEAKER_03

Well, the the sort of underlying theme of all of that goes back to what you said at the very beginning, which is communication. You feel like it's a um um undervalued skill one could have. I would also say, and I have said before, it's the most valuable, transferable skill one could really endow themselves with. Your relationships become better, um, your career has more opportunities, um, and then as well, you know, you can just communicate the better you can communicate what you're thinking brain to mouth, and then also reinterpret what everyone else is thinking their brain to mouth, it just does improve your overall quality of life. So, thinking about that, how are you teaching your kids to be great communicators? Since it's so valuable as you've recognized.

SPEAKER_00

Well, my kids are 23 years old and uh the the youngest is 23, the oldest is 30. So most of what I taught them is water under the bridge, although I occasionally share insights that I think might be helpful to them even as uh as adults, but I I think um I think listening is grossly underrated. So we've been talking about how conversations underrated or communication. I think listening is wildly underrated. I think um I think people spend too much time explaining making the I also call it making the case for themselves, which we do when we're selling something or going to a job interview or um often in just daily life, and I think it's a very human impulse to talk about oneself or to speak rather than listen. And so listening takes concentration, it takes focus, it takes uh an awareness to to for me at least. It could just be me. It's hard to know. But I in my experience with other human beings, it's hard to restrain oneself. So not talking is is is a low level, but the higher levels I suggested is listening and what that actually means. Um I think um you know giving people your presence, E N C E presence, um is an art that isn't cultivated very well by our culture or our classroom or our families generally, or classrooms or our family. So, you know, if I were to give young people, my kids, or other people advice, uh I I would um I would encourage listening and then I would encourage curiosity, which is a form of listening. Uh it's one thing to talk about yourself, it's another thing to talk about the other person. And asking questions, being curious about the other person is a form of curiosity. For me, being a host of a podcast is very helpful. It was very helpful to me in in cultivating my own ability to be a better listener. Um I was not a particularly good listener if you go back to the episodes in 2007, uh, 2006 when I was first starting, and it took me a long time to realize that less was more and it was a better just for my humanity and and general skills. So uh as you say, the relationships between family and others. Um you know, there's certain again, there's two levels of of of even that. One is you think of something to say and you restrain yourself. The higher level is to be so engaged with the other person that you don't have to restrain yourself because You're listening, uh, there is a trade-off there. You you do conversation does stimulate ideas and and responses. And I sometimes find myself, certainly as a podcast host, but often as a friend, thinking, Oh, I should tell them about this. And then I worry, what if I forget it? And I think if you if you're not careful, you spend your whole time while they're talking thinking, don't forget to tell them, don't forget to tell them, don't forget to tell them. Um what I it takes a while to realize that if you forget it, it usually comes back to you. So you can just put it down, give the person your attention while you're while they're talking, and uh you'll you'll reclaim that that nugget. It'll come back.

SPEAKER_03

It's good to qualify as well that um I wouldn't consider this what we're having necessarily, you know, a normal conversation. Um, which I think podcasters I I hear them sometimes talk about it like it is. The fact is it isn't, it's performative. And it's also there's a very clear power dynamic here. You're the person who we're here to see and you're we're here to listen to. So therefore, if the two of us were in a you know, I don't know, in a sharing a plate of uh Peter and Hummus in in Jerusalem, I mean it would be s it would be very different, I think. Um but uh I I I hear the dynamic of like, you know, you hear something, you're like, oh, that's interesting. I want to return to that trunk of the tree while we go off on this branch here, but I can't just let this branch peter off into wherever it goes.

SPEAKER_00

I I do think some I think it's a good insight that this is a performative act that we're engaging in here. I think there are podcasts where people just talk to each other. I don't find that very interesting, and I don't I suspect most people don't either. We don't really want to overhear the literal conversation. We want to overhear a stylized conversation, I think. Um have you seen the have you seen the the uh series The Bear on Hulu? So it's about a tormented uh master chef who comes back to run his family's restaurant in Chicago. And uh I loved the first season. I thought it was spectacular. The second season I found very uneven, and although it's redeemed by one 35-minute episode that's unbelievable. But but a lot of the second season is what I would call the this kind of conversation that that I said people aren't so interested in. It's a a certain dance of phrasing and interruption and pauses and uh habits that people develop who talk to each other, who have their own specific verbal ticks. And the show's very good at that. It's spectacular, right? The dialogue is amazingly uh vivid and real. Uh, but in the second season, I feel like they overdid that, even though I'm sure that's how they would have spoken if they really were in the second season of Burning This Restaurant, but it just didn't work as well for me as the first season did. And I think um I think it says something, you know, it's an interesting question in art, in fiction and in film, uh, about quote the realism of dialogue. You know, some and what I'm taking you to say, I don't know if this is what you meant to say, so I'll let you tell me what your brain was saying, but I think there's a certain sense in which great dialogue in movies and in certainly in fiction has to be somewhat stylized, uh and not quite, quote, realistic. Um, especially if we're reading it. It's a whole interesting question of how we read spoken the spoken word in a novel or in a a nonfiction memoir, say. Um our brain makes some corrections, I think, for that, um and misses others, and I think probably great writers are good at taking account of that.

SPEAKER_03

I would agree for sure it's stylized, and if it weren't stylized, it would be too close to everyday life that it wouldn't feel special enough to give it our attention almost. Yeah. Um if if you think about Hitchens, the point you made at the end there, how um you know great dialogue and great writing read on the page, if spoken out loud, it's so beautiful and rhythmic and performative that it is special for that reason. It's not normal necessarily. And great talkers like Hitchens or this other guy I would enter into the equation, a fellow called Tim Butcher, um another Englishman, uh, they speak as if it is final edited prose. Yeah. One sentence compliments the next, they don't reuse the words, there's rhyme to it, it's a fully formulated point throughout the entire thing, and it just flows out of them. Uh and I'd you know, I just stand back in awe thinking that's so incredible. I aspire to that if possible. Um but to move it on a little bit, on your Mount Rushmore of great talkers, who is that?

SPEAKER_00

Well, uh maybe I'll stick to my guests um because uh I feel like I don't I mean I've seen some great speeches at my time, but that's again, that's not really what we're talking about here. So you know certainly Christopher Hitchens would be one. Um uh a second would be Richard Epstein. I started interviewing Richard a lot in the early days of EconTalk, and he has the ability, as you described, to speak in full paragraphs and pages. There's one interview I did with him, I was I think I was stuck for a guest. I haven't missed a week other than um in the early days of Econ Talk, we took a break between Christmas and New Year's, and we missed we only did like 50 or 51 episodes, but since pretty early on, I haven't missed a week. So, you know, it's been something like 600 plus episodes, maybe 750 that I haven't missed a week. And in the early days, I was often scrambling because it's harder to get guests when you get started, and and I I had uh I think I had to interview Richard Epstein, you know, maybe a day after or the day of another interview. I might have done two or three, even in the old days, I probably sometimes did three in a day because I was in trouble. And um the scheduling was such that that was the case. And I I think it's on property rights. Richard's a legal scholar, and uh I asked him about some introductory question about property rights, and I think he talked for 10 minutes. And you know, in those days, I would I would often interrupt, and I would often interrupt because I was afraid it was going too long, it was getting you know boring, or and I tried to do that as little as possible now, but I didn't have to interrupt that. It's it's like 10 minutes of perfection. It's like he was reading it off a off a piece of paper, but it it was still spoken. So it was it would that was masterful. And he's he's done that many times uh when I've interviewed him. I don't know if anyone else I've I'll have to think about it, Ryan. If I come up with somebody else, I'll I'd have to go through my list.

SPEAKER_03

Nice. Okay, well maybe subconsciously the the gears can turn and find one at the end. Um for me, this is a very Russ Roberts econ talk question, but it sort of just came to me as I was doing the preparation on this great communicator's part. Do you find that certain cultures have more good talkers come out of them than others?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I don't know, but I but I do think, I like to think, and it's just a speculation, that that language itself is uh in the structure of language obviously determines some of that. My Hebrew is a much simpler language than in English. And I would argue that American spoken American English is simpler than than British um Engl, you know, English English. Um, a footnote to that would be there there's a lot of creativity in American English. There's a lot of new coinage of phrases, new coining of phrases. Um but Hebrew has a much smaller vocabulary, and it would be interesting to talk to someone who is fluent in both, of which I'm not, to see if they notice. I mean, for example, Israelis are famous for being blunt. Uh is that bluntness related to the language? Which direction does it run? Causation, it could be that the simplicity of Hebrew leads to a simplicity of of uh communication style. You know, somebody told me uh recently that Israelis don't do lofty, meaning they don't like grand, eloquent, uh lofty formulations of things. And I like lofty. It's part of my toolkit, but or I attempt to to use it. But it's an interesting question of if it's true that Israelis, quote, don't do lofty, you know, why is that? Is that the nature of Hebrews, the nature of the culture? And of course, again, they I think they probably they probably work together. Um, you'd have to think about what Russian is like, what French is like, Italian. I I I don't know if you know, as an American European romance languages sound so fluid and beautiful. Languages like Hebrew, German, Russian are more guttural and and harsher to the American ear, but I don't know if that's fair. Um I've been watching uh the other show I've been watching recently is The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which is in Korean. And we watch it in my wife and I watch it in Korean with English subtitles, and I love listening to the Korean. Uh it's got a beautiful lilt to it. I I I think my vocabulary now is about three words. Um the show, it's 16 episodes, I think it is. But um that's an interesting question. I'm sure there have been PhD dissertations written on it, but I don't have much more to say, I don't think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I reckon having I've lived um I live now in Sweden before the Netherlands, before Mexico, but I'm from Australia. Um and having had this, always sort of noticed this, I think there is for sure, you could say, some cultures that promote that loftiness or that aesthetic nature of talking above others. Like it's so flat, so egalitarian in northern Europe, that to differentiate your point, it it doesn't rely on persuasiveness because everyone's opinion is equal. So it's not like it's not, you know, sort of trained out of you. Whereas I think in Australia, um, you know, we're descendants of the Brits largely, um, but we as well have a much more less sophisticated English than uh than the than the Brits do, similar to America. But Australia's created its own language as well, which uh I think actually when when used properly is one of the most, and this is my own proximity bias, but one of the most persuasive, funny, and like pithily great ways of communicating, get to the bottom of things.

SPEAKER_00

Um Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think it's easier maybe for Americans to appreciate it, but I think Americans find most Australians charming, and I think uh they feel the same way about English uh men and women. They just sound better, both of them. British and Australian. It's still English, there's no doubt about it. We understand every word, more or less. There, you know, there are some words that are harder for Americans to get, but but I think um uh there is a fascinating uh love of a British accent for I think most Americans, and Australian and South African and etc. The different parts of the old empire.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Hechens had this old joke that I have heard him roll out a few times. He lived in DC, I think from the eighties onwards. He was in his early 30s when he moved there and died in America, died in 62, 61. Uh so had his had his real had his career in in the US. Um and he would get on the phone and some you know lovely person at the other end would be like, Oh, keep talking, I love your accent, and Hitchens would say, but it is you with the accent.

SPEAKER_00

That's a nice line.

SPEAKER_03

Um So although this might seem like a very forced transition, there is in fact a link between Christopher Hitchens and the Synthelep. Did you ever see the religious debate where they were on the other side of each other?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I may have. I've seen I've seen Talib uh debate religion with someone. I don't remember if it was Hitchens, I just don't remember. Uh it was um it was pretty interesting, but I but I I don't remember any of the details.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it was um fascinating to see it because um as well, I was surprised to see Taleb apply his risk philosophy management to religion. Um because I personally would find that counterintuitive. But um you've interviewed him ten times and presumably had correspondence with him offline as well. Have you two ever gotten to speaking religion?

SPEAKER_00

Um not in a serious way. We talk about it a little bit. Uh, you know, I've like I say I've interviewed him a lot, I've spoken to him, you know, on the phone a few times, and I've s I've hung out with him a couple, I've had the good fortune to spend some casual time face to face with him. I don't think we've had I wouldn't no, I would say we've never had a serious conversation about religion. I would say the thing that distinguishes him from other intellectuals is he's very respectful of it. Um and you know, there are a lot of reasons for that in his intellectual makeup and his personal life and so on. But um, you know, in in the modern world, a lot of uh intellectuals are not respectful of religion. So I know he's respectful of it. He's he's deeply interested in Hebrew and languages generally, so we we've joked around about that, but um I've never had a heart to heart with him about his personal beliefs or my own. Um just hasn't happened.

SPEAKER_03

Interesting. So not even a casual anecdote for him trying to get to a broader why we hear worldview question.

SPEAKER_00

No, I don't think so. Maybe I've had enough uh wine with him. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Sure. Yeah, you two need to dig into a few bottles of red and then hopefully it can all come out. Um it's funny with Taleb, I have met a number of people who uh who who know him personally, um, and everyone just says how lovely uh of a rix respectful guy he is, um you know, open-minded, etc. Yet his online persona is the exact opposite. Um do you have any thoughts on this that are worth saying?

SPEAKER_00

I wouldn't say it's the exact opposite. I would say he's he's not the same person online as he is in person, and I think that might be true for many of us. Um and of course, we're not the same deep down inside as we are in person or in online, whatever that means. Um You could think of I guess as different types of performance given you know the language we used earlier. Um but um some people have have um asked me why I have him on my show. Um and the simple answer is I've learned a lot from him. So uh and I continue to learn a lot from him. So I you know, it's rare. There aren't a lot of people I've learned a lot from, very few. So most people, if I'm if we're if I'm lucky, I've learned one thing from them. I've learned more than one from Nasim, so Nasim. So it's pretty uh he's got a very high uh ratio there.

SPEAKER_03

Having listened to you interview him now for several years, and as well the sort of commentary you have whenever Taleb is spoken about, I get the sense that he has actually been quite fundamental in sh in shaping some parts of your worldview. Oh, for sure. And you said in your podcast with Tim Ferris that you were working on an article explaining what you've learned from Nasim Taleb. Have you further organized your thoughts around this?

SPEAKER_00

Uh I've I've I've outlined it. I haven't written it down, but um when his first book came out, Fooled by Randomness, a lot of people um it comes back to our earlier point about communication. A lot of people said there's nothing new in there. Uh I found it to be a revelation when I first read it, uh, which is probably, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, something like that. Um in theory, there was nothing new in it for me. I was trained as an economist. Um in theory, I understood something about randomness. I understood something about probability theory. Um but the reason I loved that book, and I recently reread it and studied it with some students here, is uh at Shalem College as a um uh lunchtime non-u-credit class. The reason I love that book is that the communications in it, the style, is so effective that you actually remember what you read, but more importantly, you absorb the lesson and have a chance to actually use it when the time comes that you need that lesson. And I think uh that's the highest level of communication. Very hard to do in conversation. It's easier to do in a book, but most people can't do it in a book. Um there are many, many. So if I made you a list of the things I've learned from from Sam, one example would be um you should spend a lot of time worrying about the downside risk. Okay. Uh and we're talking, I was talking with my students. My students are 25 years old, roughly. Uh they've been in the army here in Israel. Some have worked before they came here. So they're not 18, is my point. They're not like an American college student. Um, and we're talking about the downside risk and why it's so important. And we're they were puzzled reasonably as to why it's hard to remember. I mean, why how can you not think about the downside risk when you're going through making a decision? There are only two sides to it. There's the upside and the downside, and surely they both should matter. And you know it's uncertain. You don't, you're not a fool, you don't think that it's going to work out for the best no matter what. Nope, no people, most people aren't that irrational or ignorant, meaning ignoring of the risk. And yet I know it's hard. And uh one of the virtues of reading all of his books, and one of the virtues of interviewing him many times, and one of the virtues of doing that over a fairly long period of time, is I've kind of drilled that particular lesson into my brain. So it comes naturally to me. It did not before. And so when my students ask, Why would it be hard to remember that? And I think the answer is, you know, what I told them was, you'll see. Live for a few years, you make a few decisions, you'll you'll kind of start to notice that you didn't think about it. But I, you know, I think the sensitizing yourself to that aspect of decision making is uh is both crucial and hard to do. Um so that would be an example. But you know, I just talked about it for what, a minute and a half, two minutes just now. If you're listening to this, you're thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. But The virtue of his books and the conversations I've had with him is that you have a chance to actually think of it when it's time to make a decision. And some of the smartest people I know and have known in my life have ignored those risks often in making those decisions. So you have to ask yourself, you know, why, as my students ask, why would that be hard? And whether it's in business or your personal investing or your friendships or your uh the various decisions you make around day-to-day life, vacations, and so on. And uh I think it's actually quite illuminating to think about why it's so hard. But it's hard, trust me. So when I tell you worry about the downside risk, and you say, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that, of course, that's uh it turns out not enough. Just interesting.

SPEAKER_03

So not only decision making, where his um books have been a constant reminder to you to measure the downside, but what about in broad more broader how you make sense of the world? How you look at different uh domains being distributed according to extremist and mediocre stand, you know, how you look at things like the Lindy effect, um, how you think about the precautionary principle via negativa, all these ideas that come from him. What other things have you learned from him apart from remember the downside?

SPEAKER_00

Well, those it's interesting, the examples you gave via negativa and the Lindy effect, um I haven't absorbed those. I know they're in his books. I could even I'm pretty confident I know what the Lindy Effect is, but either I'm not 100% convinced if it's universality, or I'm not sure if it's practic practical application, uh, that it isn't in that toolkit. He would that would not be one of the things that I would mention I've learned from him. I mean, in theory, I've learned it from him. I read the book and I do remember it, and uh it has to do with the probability of something uh being around the longer it's around, the higher the probability it'll stay around. Okay, fine, I got it. But I can't use that the way I use worry about downside risk for whatever reason. Uh, you know, the certainly uh a lot of what I have learned from him is about uh it's certainly not about investment uh uh alone or decision making. It's just about the nature of reality and the riskiness involved and the challenge of uh remembering your own biases. And a lot of people work in that vineyard. Uh a lot of that work I don't find interesting, but his I find very compelling for what, you know, whatever reason. I interviewed uh UCLA econometrician Ed Lemer a number of times, very thoughtful uh thinker, and you know his uh he has a line that human beings are pattern-seeking storytelling animals. And I think that's a very powerful summary to think about uh the nature of ourselves, and it also reminds us of where our weaknesses are. And I think Taleb has done a superb job uh alerting us to the pattern-seeking uh impulse that we have. And again, he's not the only one. That's what you know. I said earlier, people said, oh, there's nothing new in that book. A lot of people know that we're prone to see patterns that aren't there, but he writes about it in a way that helps me remember it. But uh, you know, I think about my own life, uh my own sense of uh success or failure, um judging the people around us. You know, when you realize that there's a large random component in life, it's it's it changes how you look at the world, it changes how you treat other people, it changes how you see yourself. Um a lot of what I learned from him is a variant on that, which is how do you consume information? How do you consume data? So when you you know, especially in today's world where data is so important, you know, we're constantly tempted to overstate what we know and don't what we know and forget that there are things that we don't know. Um and of course, by the way, you know, we talked earlier about Adam Smith. Uh, you know, one of my favorite stories that that Talib tells is that is the turkey who day after day is fed by the farmer's wife, puts out grain for him, and and every day the turkey gets more information that about the nature of his relationship with the farmer's wife. Obviously, it's very positive. She's feeding him every day, she's taking care of him, she's making sure he's doing well, and then the third Thursday in November comes and he's the turkey is eaten on Thanksgiving. Something went wrong there. Um what went wrong was that the underlying process that was producing the data, the information that was being consumed, was not uh accurate. It was uh the data misled the turkey into a hypothesis that was false, couldn't get out of that hypothesis, and saw all the subsequent data as confirming the hypothesis that the farmer and his wife were his friend. I think he got that story from Bertrand Russell. I don't think that's his story. I bet he tells it better than Bertrand Russell. Uh and he uses it in a more rich and effective way. Uh so that again, that's part of his uh effectiveness, is his communication communicating ability, his writing ability.

SPEAKER_03

Again, similar to what you opened up with of how Smith maybe communicated the ideas of Hume a little bit better. Perhaps Taleb is also repackaging all of these old ideas, which he actually admits to himself. He doesn't pretend like these are his insights. Uh it's rather just his distillation of them.

SPEAKER_00

Having said that, I think you know there's a there is a tr a healthy amount of or maybe tremendous amount of novelty in his work. Um one of my favorite insights from him is that um that people who do risky things remove themselves from the pool. So bad drivers uh get in accidents, um bad investors lose their money. And I've always um understood as an economist that skin in the game is a powerful incentive, that if I know that my decision will lead to my reward or my decision will lead to harm to me, I'm gonna pay more attention. His insight, which I've never heard until I read him, and I don't and I think it's his, I think it's a novel insight, is that it doesn't matter whether you pay attention or not, it doesn't matter whether it affects your incentives. If you make bad decisions, you'll be removed from the game. You'll be removed from the pool. And so even if you're oblivious to incentives, skin in the game matters. And that's um that's profound. Uh I I I think about that uh quite a bit uh as an economist because we're obsessed with incentives, and he is saying that incentives actually are not as central in that domain as you might think, and that's a fabulous insight.

SPEAKER_03

To really um go a little bit deeper on that insight, could you tell the the opening anecdote that you asked Luca Delana to give about his uh cousin Skia, um which as well is just further like hammers that point deep into the base of your brain.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a it's a fantastic uh example and it illustrates what we're talking about, about how communication brings us back to our first part of the conversation about communication, also brings back Ed Lemer, the econometrician, who said human beings are pattern-seeking storytelling animals. We are storytelling animals, and stories are often how we remember um anything. Uh I wonder sometimes how little I'm I'm I'm shocked at how little we remember of various things, and stories help people remember things. And when you started talking, you said, you know, the conversation with Luca Delana, thinking that was uh that was a few months ago, maybe a month or two ago when I recorded it three months, I'm not sure. And I start I got a little bit of anxiety because I'm thinking, what if I don't remember that story? But of course I do because it's such a good story for illustrating the point. The point is when you look at skiers in a championship, you think you're seeing the fastest skiers, which is definitely a reasonable first thought. Uh and certainly the winner of the championship is the fastest skier that day. But more than that, we think these are the best skiers, these are the fastest skiers in the world. And his point, and it's a little bit uh stylized because you know one could imagine disagreeing with this in various ways, but it doesn't matter whether it's literally true or not, because it's deep. The truth is you're not seeing the fastest skiers. You're seeing the fastest skiers who have not been injured and can't ski anymore. So the fastest skier might have been the fastest for a while, but then hit a tree, broke their leg, and never skied again because the reconstruction, they couldn't ski as fast after that. So his claim is, and this comes even back to yet another thing we've been talking about, is about the downside risk. The downside risk of you ski quickly, you win the race. You ski quickly, you might lose the ability to be in future races. You take yourself out of the game. Uh so the skin in the game, the fact that if you hurt yourself skiing, uh you might preclude yourself from participating in the future, is um very effective because the the fastest skiers actually are eliminated from the competition because they're getting they get hurt in you know devastating ways. And the the point that's important there that I want to emphasize as again, as an economist, uh very low-level statistical thinker, is it's not just about the trade-off between the upside and the downside. That that's the standard way it's discussed. The standard way it's discussed is well, if you if you if you go really quickly, uh you'll win the race, perhaps, but if you go really quickly, you might hurt yourself. And so there's a trade-off. Uh but the question is what do you do with that trade-off? I mean, does that mean you should ski slowly? Uh so obviously the fact that there is a trade-off, that skiing on the edge of disaster is how you win races, but not past that edge, which of course is hard to find. If you ever watch um, I think it was Franz Klammer, the Austrian skier in the Olympics. If you ever watch his gold medal run in uh I don't know what what year it was, but you can Google it. You can find it on YouTube. It's exhilarating because it looks like he's on the edge of death constantly through the entire run. He's pushing the limits of his skis and himself. And the reason it's so exhilarating and moving and inspiring is that he's right on that edge. Um But the point is, is it's not the trade-off. The point is that you have to avoid ruin. If you don't ruin meaning a deb a loss so low, it's not, oh, avoid losses, then you don't play. It's avoid losses so large you can't play later and take advantage of opportunity. So if you make what you're wiped out, but not just wiped out in that race, wiped out from your career, wiped out from harmed, injured so badly you can't race again, uh, which would happen to Lucas Cousin, which is why he it's such an effective, powerful story. You know, if you gamble recklessly in the casino, you cannot benefit from even the odds that are against you in a casino. The odds of the casino are rigged against the player. But a lucky player can win some evenings. A lucky player can win for some length of time. And a really wise lucky player couldn't quit while they're ahead, perhaps. It depends what your goal is. But if you stake all on the roulette wheel's color, the ball falling in red, and it falls in black, you're done. And you do not get the shot at the urn anymore. And that insight, which is what we've been dancing around, that is profound. Um and and Luca, you know, write wrote a lovely book um on this. Uh the concept, it's a terrible name, is ergodicity. Um, but he correctly, and he got it from Taleb and Old Peters and others who've been who've been talking about this. Uh it applies to lots of things besides investing and playing roulette. It applies to your marriage, it applies to your friendships, right? Betrayal ends the game. It there's some point where you can't apologize anymore, and you don't get the shot at overcoming your poor behavior. So uh it's a really good lesson to know. I recommended learning it. Question is can you learn it by reading about it, or do you have to live it? That's a tough one.

SPEAKER_03

So, therefore, the ones who made it to the top who won the skiing are the great risk managers or extremely lucky, but not necessarily the best skiers. Yeah. And that's like amazing uh for me earlier asking you about okay, that's applying it to risk management, but what about your broader worldview? How do these insights actually inform how you live? So um tell me, I want to get your gut check on this. You just mentioned I'm playing ergodicity elsewhere. Gut check, is this an application of ergodicity and also is this even true? And it's to do with podcasting. So, you know, you're recognized as one of the true OG podcasters and of having one of the great podcasts. I would assert that any good individual podcast episode is 80% due to the guest, 20% due to the host. However, a good podcast overall is 80% due to the host, and then 20% due to the guest.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. Also, I giggled because I'm there's so little that's OG about me besides maybe podcasting, so I always find it charming.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, you you produce rap videos too. I think there's a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00

I did, but that's another I have a couple aberrations in my in my um my work. But um I think that's true. I think that's a great insight. I think um and it's complicated because you know if if you run a good podcast, you can get good guests. And you can't have a good episode without a good guest, so that that certainly matters a lot in that meta sense that you're talking about of a good podcast versus a good episode. Um I mean it's a related question. I don't know exactly what you're getting at, but you know, after you do a certain number of episodes, you um for better or for worse, you get in a groove or a rut, depending on how you look at it. You constra you're constrained is the way I would say it. You know, there's certain things that listeners come to expect. Um I don't know about you, but you know, every once in a while I do something on econ talk that I'm a little bit anxious about in the middle of it. Typically uh, you know, reciting a poem, singing a song. I've done that a few times. Not not it's not often, but I occasionally do that. And you know, the first time I did it, I was pretty scared. I'm thinking uh people are gonna think this is stupid. Am I gonna look stupid? Am I gonna be off key? If it's a song, uh is it self-indulgent? And um I'm sure there are podcasts where that's can't be done. It's too weird. And maybe that was true of mine originally. Um I like it that I can step outside a little bit. I like it that uh listeners might hear something unexpected. But if that's all they got, then it's it just might just be funky, weird, eccentric. And then it's uh it is 80% the host, though, and and you don't get much of a you don't get much uh positive effect of that. But I I think that's true, what you said. I um you know it's kind of like you could think about it as a um a TV show that has different directors for different episodes. So the writing is usually pretty constant, but if it is, and sometimes some people use different writers for different episodes too, but if you had one writer across the whole series, but you allowed different people to direct, there's a certain unpredictability about any one episode, but it generally falls under this umbrella of the arc of the show, and I think that's what happens in podcasting if if you're or if you're around for a while. Um there's certain things that are allowed that you might otherwise not get away with and that listeners come to expect, and uh it allows guests to fall into that too, I think.

SPEAKER_03

At it you're at the point now with Econ Talk, as is say Tim Ferris with his show, as is say any top of the Tell Tale Ender podcast uh podcasts out there, where you're no longer tuning in for the guest. You are tuning in because you trust the host's curation enough that you you're there for them, you're there for the podcast for the experience. But early on, you're only going in for the guest. Sort of uh that I think that as well maybe feeds into that dynamic.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you know, my podcast is called Econ Talk, and after, I don't know, maybe seven, eight years ago, I stopped having the main theme of the show be economics, and started being a bunch of different things. So I added the tagline conversations for the curious, and I think I've lost a lot of listeners who came for the economics originally. Some of them came to like the new stuff, but others wanted a Bitcoin episode every week, or a monetary theory episode every week, and I disappointed them. Um and it it both flatters me and depresses me that people will often say about an episode, I didn't expect I was gonna like it and I was gonna skip it, but I'm glad I didn't. And it's like, I guess I haven't earned enough respect from you yet. Um for whatever reason. I you know, I recently did an episode with uh English sheep farmer about a book, a memoir he wrote about being a sheep farmer. It's a fabulous book. Some of the best writing on nature, it's uh the author's James Rebanks. Um and it's a fabulous book, and I loved the book. I love talking to him, and it didn't get nearly as many downloads as my average episode, and I assume that's because people assume it's either going to be boring or not interesting. I'm thinking, you're missing out. Don't miss that one. It's great. I love talking to him. And I understand that everyone's not like me. That's a good lesson, right? They they I could be interested in sheep farming and they're not. Uh but anyway, you're right. Uh there's a certain trust that I think does develop if you're lucky. Um but it's interesting to me how there's a lot of episodes I do, people don't they just skip them.

SPEAKER_03

It's also it's also skin in the game, because if you had just continued to do um monetary policy and bitcoin episodes because your show was econ talk and your guests you were guaranteed downloads, um, then maybe the podcast wouldn't even still be around. You would have just gotten over it. I don't want to do this anymore. But rather, the skin in the game is it's it's following your authentic interests. Um and it might mean you have less uh downloads over time, but those downloads will matter more, I suppose. Like that's the upside of having skin in the game.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and of course One of the lessons that we talk a lot about on the program, and uh I think it's incredibly important, is um measuring things can lead to trouble. So downloads are what we tend to use as our measure of success in this business. Um we forget that that doesn't mean listens. But okay, it's close, it's correlated, so if it's going up, it must be good. But I the things I cherish are the letters I get from listeners, which are, you know, occasional. Uh most most listeners don't write. Um, but occasionally I I get letters that move me deeply and make me incredibly grateful that I'm able to have this, you know, the program I have. It's it's the best. It's much the value to human beings, whatever that is, however small, is so much more important than how many people listen. But your brain looks at the chart and wants to see listening, listen go up, downloads go up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Um for us, I mean, it really is the best. Um and as well, um surely is I'm sure you you you take this into account, but the serendipity that comes from the show is probably worth more than any type of financial upside you could ever capture from the show or fame or whatever. Um who's to say whether you would have gotten uh this position you have now as president of a college in Jerusalem if you know you didn't have a very uh well um respected uh show, global show. Who's to who's to know? We don't know the false correct whatever it is, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But I agree with you. I think the the things that have come into my life because of Econ Talk. I get Econ Talk is sponsored by Liberty Fund, which is the Foundation of the United States. They they have a fabulous set of economic education web pages, of which EconTalk is part of, called the Library of Economics and Liberty, EconLive. Um they produce gorgeous books, definitive editions of books that are don't sell very many copies because they think it's important to keep them in print, and they run amazing conferences for people to get together and read and talk. Um and they pay me a little bit uh for doing econ talk. So there's a financial part to it. And I've never looked at whether I can make more or less doing it on my own separately. I I have a relationship with them, they've treated me well, and so I'm totally fine with with that. It is obvious to me, as you say, that the benefit of that program is is so dwarfs the financial part. There's just so many wonderful things that have happened to me directly because of Econ Talk. You mentioned the Keynes Hayek rap videos. I did this with John Popola, I think they have 13 million downloads, uh views. Even if they're only three seconds, it counts as a view. Uh I don't know, there may be a cutoff for YouTube, I don't pay attention to that. But um, you know, John was a listener to Econ Talk, reached out to me in I think 2007 or 8, went to a project together, didn't think anything would come of it, but tried it. And because of that, it's one of the most interesting and satisfying projects I've ever done is to create those two rap videos. And just one thing. There's just, yeah, it's uh the more important thing, I just I should say it, it's made me a much better person. Uh having to be a podcast host it has made me uh it's made me a better listener, and it has ensured an intellectual vibrancy that I don't know if I would have maintained if I had just done something more mundane. The number of people that I've talked to, the peep, the books I've read, um, you know, we we talked about Talib, there's so many others who have uh enriched my life intellectually and personally from understanding things. Uh it's a great educational experience. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03

How quickly can we do this? I got one more prepared question and three that I ask every single guest. Do you think we can do four? Yeah, sure. Okay. So finally, to just round off Taleb in this particular chat, I think this is a novel idea from him, and as well, it'd be great to apply it to podcasting. Could you please explain why podcasting downloads are a domain of extremist in?

SPEAKER_00

I don't think so. You tell me, Ryan.

SPEAKER_03

No, I I would say there's certainly a domain of extremist then because Why? Um I was in the top five percent downloaded last year in Spotify, and I can tell you it was probably the amount of downloads you would get in the first 15 minutes of publishing an econ talk episode, right? And that puts me in the top five percent. So I'm already at the tail end of the distribution. Whereas yourself, Tim Ferris, uh forget Joe Rogan and stuff. Truly, 99% of all downloads is captured by 0.0001% of podcasts. Yeah, it's as it's as it I I would say, it's as firmly in a domain of extremist standards anything else. Um that's why I asked the question, but I mean I've answered it now. I I think Russ, you've got to be the one that answered it.

SPEAKER_00

I don't have much to say about it, sorry.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, well then no worries. Um final three questions, Russ. I ask this to every single guest if I can. The first being, you've definitely already touched on it with the rap videos, but I won't I would rather I would like to for you to maybe look more into your personal life life to answer this one. What is the role that serendipity has played in your life?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the rap videos are just an example of it, but I think um serendipity is underrated. Um, to the extent is it's thought about, I think it's thought about somewhat incorrectly. Um Branch Ricky, the general manager in baseball, who uh brought Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player into the major leagues in America. He had an expression, which I think is very popular among uh sports figures in, I think, in life, which is and I think it says, luck is the residue of design. It's like it's like it's what's left over. But what it means is if you plan enough and you work hard enough, then you can squeeze luck out of it a little bit. You can you can that's at least that's what I always thought he meant by that. And I took that to heart in some intellectual sense. I don't know if I really took it to heart, but I think a lot of people believe that. Cover every base, prepare, uh, you know, work really hard, uh do what a friend of mine calls best efforts. Leave no stone unturned. And I think that's generally it's pretty good advice, but it doesn't leave much room for serendipity. Uh, and if you're not careful, you miss opportunities for serendipity. Um my last book, uh, which is Wild Problems, uh, A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us, really makes the case for serendipity. It's Talebian, by the way. You know, it's it's it's the it's the virtue of being a flannur, someone who strolls without purpose versus a person on a mission. You know, and I I contrast um you know the tourist with an itinerary versus a tourist who just hangs out in a local cafe or walks around a neighborhood. And I think uh serendipity, and maybe this is what branch wiki really meant, so I don't I don't want to be unfair to him, but you know, serendipity means um making room for luck and uh putting yourself in a position and paying attention uh to things that might come across your path. Um I think I talk about this in my book, you know, the virtue of saying no. There's a lot of self-help books and experts who say, you know, you gotta learn how to say no. And I used to think that was really good advice. It is, except when it's good to say yes, because things happen that you didn't expect or anticipate. And if you always say no, because you think you know what's gonna make you more productive by you know turning down this so-called distraction, you're gonna miss a bunch of things. A lot of my life, as you suggested, uh, and I think it's true of many people, is unscripted. The best of things are often unscripted. Um saying yes, doing something that is out of your comfort zone, doing somebody a favor that you shouldn't really rationally do, and something comes of it that you shouldn't rationally do it in the narrow sense of rationality, but something comes of it that you didn't anticipate that's delicious or profitable or just fun. Uh that's delicious, I guess. So I'm a big fan of it. Um but I do think there's an art to uh making room for it. It's a good idea.

SPEAKER_03

Amazing, Ross. Thank you. Um and I'm sure you understand. I could go on about that a lot more, as I'm sure you could as well, because it is uh so deeply wrapped into the richness of life, you know. Just say yes, you know, go to that you know, go meet that person, you you know shake off the laziness and actually go and do it, and you just never know what the upside could be. And actually, uh it might be something I could share with you at some point in the future, but uh after having recorded 150 episodes now and asked that over 120 times, some of the stories uh it just reaffirms this idea that you how can you predict a future of infinite possibilities based off a finite experience of the past? You just are you're you're at the you're at the whims of random chance, and the best thing that ever happened to you is probably gonna be because of some random chance, because you optimize for serendipity.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the economist in me would say, and I think the economist in me would be wrong, but the economist in me in me would say, yeah, but if you say no to that, you're saying yes to something else, and it all it's all life. But often these are things that are outside your comfort zone, that are different, that you can find excuses for not doing. And um turn out pretty well. I like them.

SPEAKER_03

Two more for your Us. What is a country you're particularly bullish on?

SPEAKER_00

Uh not many. It's a tough time for the world. Um where I live, Israel is going through a huge political fight over on the surface, it's about judicial reform, but it's really about the identity of the country, and it's a very uh complicated situation. Israel's one of a you know handful of countries that doesn't have a constitution. Uh I think constitutions are overrated. Most people, countries that have constitutions don't pay any attention to them. So the challenge isn't to have a constitution, it's to have one that you actually live by. And most countries don't, and it includes the United States. I like to say that you know the first and second amendments in the United States are still somewhat binding, the rest not so much. Um Israel's having a tough time, but it's a remarkably joyous place when we don't talk politics, and it's a remarkably family-oriented place. And um that gives the country a different kind of texture. Um so I'm bullish on that part of this country, whether it can overcome their the political um issues that we're struggling with. And bottom line is we we need to figure out here what the rules of the game political game are. The constitution is one way to do it, again, if it's kept and you know, observed. But um I'm guardedly optimistic that Israel will overcome that issue. We'll see. But so many other countries uh have their own, you know, uh remarkably new sources of upheaval and challenge. Um I I'll just quote James Buchanan, the Nobel laureate and economist. He said, When I look to the past, he said, when I look to the future, I'm a pessimist, but when I look to the past, I'm an optimist. And by that he meant when you look to the future, um it sure looks depressing. Or there's a you know, populism is on the rise, we're angry, everybody's polarized, they're disrespectful of each other, they can't uh put themselves in the shoes of people who feel differently or think differently about political issues. That's very common. Certainly have been made worse by social media, but it's a fundamental human challenge. Um so the future doesn't look so good for the world. But if you look to the past, you're an optimist. Uh think about 1933. That looked pretty bleak, and it came out okay. So, you know, the world, a lot of people died. It was a horrible stretch uh between 1933, say and 1945. But the world got a lot better after that, uh, at least in some obviously measurable ways. Uh maybe it's not so good in other ways, but um I, you know, thinking about it, maybe it's just not the right question. Uh I think it's useful to think about it, but it might be useful to think about whether it's a meaningful question. I said I was thinking about this because of progress. Like, as economists, the world's richer. We have a higher standard of living. Is it real is life really better? Well, it is in the sense that we live longer, we can see our great-grandchildren more likely. Uh we can play tennis at 75 with an artificial knee. A lot of benefits from uh our higher standard of living, and many, many more people have access to that than did in the past. So are you bullish about the world? Well, somewhat. I see lots of bad things going on too. Despair, suicide, drug use, immersion in the virtual world to the exclusion of real human beings. So it's complicated how whether the glass is half full or half empty. I mean, I like the question, right? Don't take it personally.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe think about it. It does sadden me a little that you have uh, it seems like a rather pessimistic uh view of the of the future. Uh could you old? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know. I'm not I'm not actually pessimistic. I just um I just know I'm not as optimistic as I was when I was younger. It could be because of my age, or it could be because the world's gotten a little more um weird. Um I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

Or your proximity to what is very real stakes, political violence and tension and all the ugliness that humans can Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I did mention we're surrounded by people who want to kill us. Other than that life here is very significant. Yeah. Life in Israel is uh uh everything here matters. Yeah for good, for better or for worse. It makes life very rich and very uh dynamic and a lot. You feel very alive here, but it's uh it's an intense place.

SPEAKER_03

I just want to put this out there um and feel free to dodge it. But have you gotten any closer to a pithy response to what is a life well lived?

SPEAKER_01

No. No, I don't think so. Okay, then Russ.

SPEAKER_03

Our final question If you could witness a conversation between any two people of history, dead or alive, no language barrier, so you're listening to a podcast, who's it gonna be?

SPEAKER_00

Um that's a tough question. Um The easy answer for me, and I'd have to think about it to see if there's a a more interesting answer, but the easy answer for me is I'd like to have a scotch with Adam Smith and David Hume and hang out with them. They were lifelong friends, they were interested in the human condition in such a profound way, and uh I think they had a deep mutual respect. It'd be fun to to hear them talk. And there's a story that Smith was late at a dinner to a dinner party, um, and there were British statesmen and abolitionists and others there. And um when he came into the room, I don't know, in my mind there's 25, 30 people around this big, rich London table, or Scott, I think it was London. And when he walked in, they all stood up. And and he um he went like, I mean, what do we gonna sit down? And and uh the uh the statesman who I'm blanking on his name, I'll remember it in ten minutes, he said, Oh, you know, we're all your students. And um I I think Adam Smith had incredible curiosity, as did David Hume, and it would be really fun to hear them just have a conversation. I don't care what it's about, I'm sure it was interesting.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, Ross Roberts, mate. Uh, this has been a really um highly anticipated moment for me for a long time. I when I first started this three years ago, I had a list of you know, sort of dream guests. Not a long list, there's probably 15 names on there, and you're one of them uh because you are probably my gateway into podcasting. So uh yeah, it really is a uh an honor. Sounds cliche, but really it's a huge thrill and pleasure for me. So thank you, Russ. Thanks, Ryan.

SPEAKER_00

My pleasure. It's delightful.