Curious if you'd be open to including timecodes in the descriptions for future episodes that show where you cover different topics. I want to hear the discussions on RFK Jr and Caitlin Clark, but... I'm not all that interested in poker (sorry).
I find the WNBA/Clark dynamic fascinating because it reveals both the power of collective bargaining and its limitations. Professional sports are the kind of situation where unionizing is best suited: labor creates a tremendous amount of the value, but teams have disproportionate power because positions are so scarce and careers are so short. It’s also a situation where working conditions matter tremendously more to labor than team (e.g. medical treatment, quality facilities, etc.).
But, the WNBA is a start-up league where success is far from assured. The only way that the WNBA will reach its potential is for stars like Clark to get it there. Teams’ and players’ incentives are strongly aligned - even bench players depend on starts to elevate the WNBA so that the pool of money grows. A smarter labor union would have fought for pay structures like a startup: equity stakes or the equivalent for stars who increase viewership, regardless of whether they’re a rookie or not. But labor unions are averse to trying to make the league more successful, taking a zero-sum view of the world. The future of the WNBA is so tenuous that would be crazy for players to get the 50/50 split that NBA players receive — especially as the the fixed costs of running a team aren’t that different between men’s and women’s basketball — but creating ways for teams and players to more dynamically share risk and reward would help everybody.
This feels like a failure of imagination on both sides.
PS - although I’m an avowed capitalist, I’m baffled by conservative positions that are per se anti-union. Firms aggregate supply of resources to increase their negotiating power - why can’t people organize to do the same? That’s capitalism at its finest. I’d sympathize a position of: I’m fine with unions, but I don’t support the government passing laws that force companies to allow them to organize. But I’ve never heard it articulated by anybody.
On the union thing I think a lot of people have trouble separating public and private unions. Private unions are usually good in my estimation, at least so long as they aren't given lots of extra power by the state, monopolies are bad in nearly all areas. But public unions seem straightforwardly bad, rather than negotiating with a counterbalancing interest of people with their money on the line they're negotiating with the people that they themselves often help put in office that have nearly no stake in the negotiation. This leads to places like Chicago where the unions cooperate with the politicians to make unsustainable deals at the expense of the taxpayer.
I completely agree. Plus, because public employee compensation is constrained by the appropriations process, government appropriators have an incentive to shift more of total compensation into the pension plan, which can attract the wrong kind of employee for some positions.
Listened to the podcast and was curious about the claim at the start about always making the first offer in negotiations. I had generally thought that, but learned in business school that newer research has suggested the anchoring effect of making the first offer is often stronger than the information you give up. Curious about your take on this in relation to poker (being able to choose the signal you send first) and other examples like salary (where we focused more in business school.
My understanding is that it is dependent on how much information you have. In general, making the first offer is best because it anchors the negotiation. But there can be two situations where it’s best to wait. #1 is where you believe that an aggressive anchor could lead to the other party abandoning the negotiation. #2 is when you have so little information about the range of outcomes and how others will value your offer that it’s best to wait.
I’ve twice used going second to my advantage in a situation where both #1 and 2 were in play. I had the opportunity to hire very seasoned and tenured for a role that they were overqualified for, but knew that they wanted to work for my company and me for non-financial reasons. I prepared the field of negotiation by making it clear that my budget didn’t allow for hiring somebody for their caliber. So, I asked them what they needed to come aboard. In both cases, they lowballed themselves and I accepted. Re: #2, I knew what they were worth in general, but didn’t know how low their range would be, so I waited for them to define their range. Re: #2, because they were so experienced (10+ years more than me), I was worried that my lowball would insult them.
That makes sense and fits with some of the research I was reading as a follow up. Agree with #1, but that aggressive anchor could also be a good bluffing technique, especially for poker, so the other person walking away could actually be a positive? Just something that you should prepare for before the negotiation. #2 I agree though if you need to gather information, but could end up in you still being anchored (studies show that still happens even when you know about it)
All of this fits with the #1 rule of negotiations which is being fully prepared and ideally more so than the other side. So that foots at least!
The worry about insulting them with a lowball makes sense too- almost making them insult themselves with the offer. One could argue that you are making the first "offer" by giving the messaging that the offer will be lower than current expectation too. We learned that too where making the first "offer" doesn't necessarily need to be a number, but can be other messaging (which sounds like you did really well)
Excellent points. I agree and should have said that letting the other party make the first offer is more the exception than the rule.
My experience has been that aggressive anchors are most dangerous when there are strong norms around the negotiated amounts. I see this most frequently with hiring, which is also a space where you expect both parties to be reasonably informed about market rates given the amount of publicly available information. I've also seen it to a somewhat lesser degree in M&A. I've always made first offers on acquiring businesses and I always anchor. But I have often tempered my aggression when making offers because it can lead the party to disengage if it's seen to not resemble a semi-reasonable valuation of the business, especially when negotiating with founders.
It’s great to hear two people I’ve enjoyed listening to in the past (is this bullshit is for example is one of my favorite segments). As the election draws near, do you plan to have any Fivethirtyeight people on the show (esp. Clare Malone)?
Obviously exaggerated for effect, but the ad load in this episode was noticeably and annoyingly high. Definitely demotes it to the playlist where I have access to controls to skip ahead, instead of one where my hands are busy and I just listen through.
Yes, that was the best bit of the show—but even that segment would have been better still if Nate could have used his time to discuss useful and interesting things about RFK rather than having to waste time refuting Konnikova's inane groupthink.
Personally, I'd like to see more coverage and commentary about Kennedy only because there's such a concerted and obvious effort on the part of the MSM to ignore his campaign and/or disparage him at every opportunity ("Even his own family thinks he's a kook," etc).
For me, Kennedy trying to win a presidential election as an independent who has to "go around the gatekeepers of the news" is a fascinating story. Despite all the powerful forces aligned against him, he's making some progress - which is why both Biden and Trump don't want him to be on any debate stage with them.
Yes, absolutely! Fascinating for elections nerds to see the highest-polling third-party candidate in a generation. And instead we had to spend the whole time listening to one half of the podcast parrot the “gatekeeper” line. Such a wasted opportunity.
Related, is there or will there be any way to listen to it on Substack itself? (I listen to podcasts including paid ones in the Substack app all the time)
Embarrassing on a supposed statistics podcast to hear someone idiotically claim that Clark is the greatest player because she scores more against women than any men do against men. If Clark is really that good then she should play in the men's league. But she won't, and we all know why.
Honestly, my main take-away from listening to this first episode was that Konnikova didn't add anything to it, and arguably subtracted from the experience.
“I get paid less for speaking engagements than male counterparts who don't have a PhD”
Yes, because you're a bad public speaker. Your voice cracks and wavers all over the place. You allow your personal irrational emotions to make you proffer bad takes like the above. Having a PhD or any other particular certificate does not make you listenable, or even mean you have much to contribute, and it is deeply damning that you think it should give you a free pass.
Sad to consider how much better this podcast would have been if it was just Nate, or Nate and someone like his best sparring partners from FiveThirtyEight. Listening to Konnikova was like the Clare Malone fiasco all over again.
Actually my favourite insult based on this username was from an Antifa account who angrily accused me of being a fascist because “talking about your thoughts is a fascist dog-whistle”. Woke more correct, as Covfefe Anon would say.
Has this foul woman been informed that AstraZeneca has recalled their COVID vaccines worldwide due to side effects ? Maybe you should tell her that before she gets her 10th booster shot.
What a foul feminazi 'MUUUUH GENDER PAY GAAAP ORANGE BLUMPOFFF BAAAD' such a stereotypical pink hat-wearing nutjob complains that multi-millionaires aren't paid more millions for playing in a sports league nobody watches she also cries that other people get paid more for speaking than she does the answer as to why is very obvious in this video what a foul irritating woman.
2. The US has free and fair elections, regardless of what Trumpist election deniers and their weak sauce kin (Kennedy conspiracy nuts) have to say. Any presidential candidate has powerful enemies.
Should we even have debates if they no longer swing elections?
How do you know a Trump-Biden-Kennedy debate wouldn't swing an election?
What if Biden, who has dementia, was a complete disaster and Kennedy - a proven lawyer and solid debater - made both look silly?
It just takes 20,000 to 100,000 or so votes to "swing" in seven swing states (or even swing cities) to swing/decide an entire presidential election.
I'm pretty sure Kennedy can't help his election cause if he's not allowed to participate in the debate.
I also note there's a subliminal message being sent with these stories about the presidential debates - that messages is that there's only TWO (real) candidates for president. This view certainly doesn't help Kennedy, who is not even being considered a legit candidate. This "narrative" is no doubt by design as well.
I'd generally qualify myself as center left, but Maria's reflexive left wing comments on Trump, Republicans, and Kamala's "obvious" disadvantage in the race are a real turn off. I tune in to hear a somewhat dispassionate, data driven, or PoliSci/Econ driven discourse, but she keeps bringing up unchallenged liberal received wisdom. I'm sympathetic with the aim, but don't think this is the right forum to air those passionate views.
I noticed this at the Women’s Final Four in 2023 so it’s related to Caitlyn Clark. And this is 100% on the Bidens and I’m not disparaging the young women who did nothing wrong. Jill Biden somehow screwed up the optics of inviting the LSU basketball team to the WH and at the time I believed this was a sign that Biden couldn’t win because he failed to get young Americans invested in his presidency. So you need investment in order to have energy for your campaign and right now energy is what matters for federal elections. So it seemed Angel Reese and the other basketball players had no clue who the Bidens were!?! Angel even commented that she would never go to the Biden WH and that she and her teammates would visit Michelle and Barack. This all made the news at the time although nobody thought anything about it…but I remember it because I’m a politics junkie!! For whatever reason young Americans weren’t buying what Biden was selling and it was obvious in summer 2023.
Regarding the decision to block nonpaid people from commenting on further notes:
A lot of us mute feeds that do this. It’s up to you whether you care about this, but I don’t generally want to be reading anything that intentionally makes it hard for me to add/nuance/disagree with on any forums they might have; it’s frustrating.
Great episode. As someone who considered themself as very liberal back in the days when centrists supported the Iraq war & wanted a tiny/nonexistant stimulus in 2009, and centrists also didn't support gay marriage, it's interesting to listen to people on the left now as I've become more center-left. Re: Caitlin Clark -- while it's a shame women's basketball gets a smaller share of revenue than the men, they also get a much larger share of profits, and it's profits which should be the basis for judging. I'm pretty sure the WNBA has been subsidized since inception, and likely doesn't typically run any profits at all. That's all fine, but one could make a case that the reason their salaries are as high given historic profitability is kind of the opposite of anti-female sexism. With Caitlin Clark's interest, seems likely the WNBA will turn a real profit. I think you could probably make a more sophisticated argument that this potential niche had been overlooked in part for sexist reasons -- and is something that needs to be built up over time. 1970s-1980s era views on women likely weren't consistent with huge WNBA profits, but then again, I'm not sure the NBA was super profitable until the 1980s either. Changing views now are probably more amenable to excitement over the WNBA.
Hi Nate, any chance that paying subscribers to the newsletter could get ad-free podcast episodes? Or would you consider setting up a Patreon to give supporters an ad-free feed?
Curious if you'd be open to including timecodes in the descriptions for future episodes that show where you cover different topics. I want to hear the discussions on RFK Jr and Caitlin Clark, but... I'm not all that interested in poker (sorry).
I find the WNBA/Clark dynamic fascinating because it reveals both the power of collective bargaining and its limitations. Professional sports are the kind of situation where unionizing is best suited: labor creates a tremendous amount of the value, but teams have disproportionate power because positions are so scarce and careers are so short. It’s also a situation where working conditions matter tremendously more to labor than team (e.g. medical treatment, quality facilities, etc.).
But, the WNBA is a start-up league where success is far from assured. The only way that the WNBA will reach its potential is for stars like Clark to get it there. Teams’ and players’ incentives are strongly aligned - even bench players depend on starts to elevate the WNBA so that the pool of money grows. A smarter labor union would have fought for pay structures like a startup: equity stakes or the equivalent for stars who increase viewership, regardless of whether they’re a rookie or not. But labor unions are averse to trying to make the league more successful, taking a zero-sum view of the world. The future of the WNBA is so tenuous that would be crazy for players to get the 50/50 split that NBA players receive — especially as the the fixed costs of running a team aren’t that different between men’s and women’s basketball — but creating ways for teams and players to more dynamically share risk and reward would help everybody.
This feels like a failure of imagination on both sides.
PS - although I’m an avowed capitalist, I’m baffled by conservative positions that are per se anti-union. Firms aggregate supply of resources to increase their negotiating power - why can’t people organize to do the same? That’s capitalism at its finest. I’d sympathize a position of: I’m fine with unions, but I don’t support the government passing laws that force companies to allow them to organize. But I’ve never heard it articulated by anybody.
On the union thing I think a lot of people have trouble separating public and private unions. Private unions are usually good in my estimation, at least so long as they aren't given lots of extra power by the state, monopolies are bad in nearly all areas. But public unions seem straightforwardly bad, rather than negotiating with a counterbalancing interest of people with their money on the line they're negotiating with the people that they themselves often help put in office that have nearly no stake in the negotiation. This leads to places like Chicago where the unions cooperate with the politicians to make unsustainable deals at the expense of the taxpayer.
I completely agree. Plus, because public employee compensation is constrained by the appropriations process, government appropriators have an incentive to shift more of total compensation into the pension plan, which can attract the wrong kind of employee for some positions.
I've loved Nate since Baseball Prospectus so I'm TRTILLED to pay Nate whatever is he wants for content.
BUT, listening to Maria on the gender pay gap was painful.
Listened to the podcast and was curious about the claim at the start about always making the first offer in negotiations. I had generally thought that, but learned in business school that newer research has suggested the anchoring effect of making the first offer is often stronger than the information you give up. Curious about your take on this in relation to poker (being able to choose the signal you send first) and other examples like salary (where we focused more in business school.
Some brief articles: https://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/thought-leadership/wharton-at-work/2012/09/negotiation-advantage/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandradickinson/2017/05/31/why-you-should-be-making-the-first-offer-in-a-negotiation/?sh=1f2a03f21af3
My understanding is that it is dependent on how much information you have. In general, making the first offer is best because it anchors the negotiation. But there can be two situations where it’s best to wait. #1 is where you believe that an aggressive anchor could lead to the other party abandoning the negotiation. #2 is when you have so little information about the range of outcomes and how others will value your offer that it’s best to wait.
I’ve twice used going second to my advantage in a situation where both #1 and 2 were in play. I had the opportunity to hire very seasoned and tenured for a role that they were overqualified for, but knew that they wanted to work for my company and me for non-financial reasons. I prepared the field of negotiation by making it clear that my budget didn’t allow for hiring somebody for their caliber. So, I asked them what they needed to come aboard. In both cases, they lowballed themselves and I accepted. Re: #2, I knew what they were worth in general, but didn’t know how low their range would be, so I waited for them to define their range. Re: #2, because they were so experienced (10+ years more than me), I was worried that my lowball would insult them.
That makes sense and fits with some of the research I was reading as a follow up. Agree with #1, but that aggressive anchor could also be a good bluffing technique, especially for poker, so the other person walking away could actually be a positive? Just something that you should prepare for before the negotiation. #2 I agree though if you need to gather information, but could end up in you still being anchored (studies show that still happens even when you know about it)
All of this fits with the #1 rule of negotiations which is being fully prepared and ideally more so than the other side. So that foots at least!
The worry about insulting them with a lowball makes sense too- almost making them insult themselves with the offer. One could argue that you are making the first "offer" by giving the messaging that the offer will be lower than current expectation too. We learned that too where making the first "offer" doesn't necessarily need to be a number, but can be other messaging (which sounds like you did really well)
Excellent points. I agree and should have said that letting the other party make the first offer is more the exception than the rule.
My experience has been that aggressive anchors are most dangerous when there are strong norms around the negotiated amounts. I see this most frequently with hiring, which is also a space where you expect both parties to be reasonably informed about market rates given the amount of publicly available information. I've also seen it to a somewhat lesser degree in M&A. I've always made first offers on acquiring businesses and I always anchor. But I have often tempered my aggression when making offers because it can lead the party to disengage if it's seen to not resemble a semi-reasonable valuation of the business, especially when negotiating with founders.
It’s great to hear two people I’ve enjoyed listening to in the past (is this bullshit is for example is one of my favorite segments). As the election draws near, do you plan to have any Fivethirtyeight people on the show (esp. Clare Malone)?
Any plans to post transcripts here on Substack for those of us who would rather read?
Don't worry, I can fill you in:
• 50% of the podcast was listening to other Pushkin podcasters advertise their boring podcasts;
• 30% was Konnikova whining about how hard it is to be a wahmen;
• 10% was Konnikova chatting about her holiday where she played some poker;
• 10% was Nate trying to persuade Konnikova that RFK isn't Satan for daring to challenge His Holiness Pope Biden I.
Obviously exaggerated for effect, but the ad load in this episode was noticeably and annoyingly high. Definitely demotes it to the playlist where I have access to controls to skip ahead, instead of one where my hands are busy and I just listen through.
I like the last 10 percent.
Yes, that was the best bit of the show—but even that segment would have been better still if Nate could have used his time to discuss useful and interesting things about RFK rather than having to waste time refuting Konnikova's inane groupthink.
Personally, I'd like to see more coverage and commentary about Kennedy only because there's such a concerted and obvious effort on the part of the MSM to ignore his campaign and/or disparage him at every opportunity ("Even his own family thinks he's a kook," etc).
For me, Kennedy trying to win a presidential election as an independent who has to "go around the gatekeepers of the news" is a fascinating story. Despite all the powerful forces aligned against him, he's making some progress - which is why both Biden and Trump don't want him to be on any debate stage with them.
Yes, absolutely! Fascinating for elections nerds to see the highest-polling third-party candidate in a generation. And instead we had to spend the whole time listening to one half of the podcast parrot the “gatekeeper” line. Such a wasted opportunity.
Yes, please! I *hate* podcasts. Give me the written word instead, even if it is AI-generated and filled with typos.
Related, is there or will there be any way to listen to it on Substack itself? (I listen to podcasts including paid ones in the Substack app all the time)
Embarrassing on a supposed statistics podcast to hear someone idiotically claim that Clark is the greatest player because she scores more against women than any men do against men. If Clark is really that good then she should play in the men's league. But she won't, and we all know why.
Honestly, my main take-away from listening to this first episode was that Konnikova didn't add anything to it, and arguably subtracted from the experience.
“I get paid less for speaking engagements than male counterparts who don't have a PhD”
Yes, because you're a bad public speaker. Your voice cracks and wavers all over the place. You allow your personal irrational emotions to make you proffer bad takes like the above. Having a PhD or any other particular certificate does not make you listenable, or even mean you have much to contribute, and it is deeply damning that you think it should give you a free pass.
Sad to consider how much better this podcast would have been if it was just Nate, or Nate and someone like his best sparring partners from FiveThirtyEight. Listening to Konnikova was like the Clare Malone fiasco all over again.
You should change your username to “Bad Thoughts About Stuff”
Many people are saying this.
Actually my favourite insult based on this username was from an Antifa account who angrily accused me of being a fascist because “talking about your thoughts is a fascist dog-whistle”. Woke more correct, as Covfefe Anon would say.
Nate, you need to get Pushkin to put fewer and shorter ads in your podcast, and have more variety.
Has this foul woman been informed that AstraZeneca has recalled their COVID vaccines worldwide due to side effects ? Maybe you should tell her that before she gets her 10th booster shot.
What a foul feminazi 'MUUUUH GENDER PAY GAAAP ORANGE BLUMPOFFF BAAAD' such a stereotypical pink hat-wearing nutjob complains that multi-millionaires aren't paid more millions for playing in a sports league nobody watches she also cries that other people get paid more for speaking than she does the answer as to why is very obvious in this video what a foul irritating woman.
Kennedy won't have as much "impact" on the election if he is kept from the presidential debates. Or kept off the ballots in all 50 states.
It seems to me powerful people and organizations are trying to accomplish both objectives - which, in Poker Parlance, might be a "tell."
1. Debates don’t swing elections anymore.
2. The US has free and fair elections, regardless of what Trumpist election deniers and their weak sauce kin (Kennedy conspiracy nuts) have to say. Any presidential candidate has powerful enemies.
Should we even have debates if they no longer swing elections?
How do you know a Trump-Biden-Kennedy debate wouldn't swing an election?
What if Biden, who has dementia, was a complete disaster and Kennedy - a proven lawyer and solid debater - made both look silly?
It just takes 20,000 to 100,000 or so votes to "swing" in seven swing states (or even swing cities) to swing/decide an entire presidential election.
I'm pretty sure Kennedy can't help his election cause if he's not allowed to participate in the debate.
I also note there's a subliminal message being sent with these stories about the presidential debates - that messages is that there's only TWO (real) candidates for president. This view certainly doesn't help Kennedy, who is not even being considered a legit candidate. This "narrative" is no doubt by design as well.
I'd generally qualify myself as center left, but Maria's reflexive left wing comments on Trump, Republicans, and Kamala's "obvious" disadvantage in the race are a real turn off. I tune in to hear a somewhat dispassionate, data driven, or PoliSci/Econ driven discourse, but she keeps bringing up unchallenged liberal received wisdom. I'm sympathetic with the aim, but don't think this is the right forum to air those passionate views.
I noticed this at the Women’s Final Four in 2023 so it’s related to Caitlyn Clark. And this is 100% on the Bidens and I’m not disparaging the young women who did nothing wrong. Jill Biden somehow screwed up the optics of inviting the LSU basketball team to the WH and at the time I believed this was a sign that Biden couldn’t win because he failed to get young Americans invested in his presidency. So you need investment in order to have energy for your campaign and right now energy is what matters for federal elections. So it seemed Angel Reese and the other basketball players had no clue who the Bidens were!?! Angel even commented that she would never go to the Biden WH and that she and her teammates would visit Michelle and Barack. This all made the news at the time although nobody thought anything about it…but I remember it because I’m a politics junkie!! For whatever reason young Americans weren’t buying what Biden was selling and it was obvious in summer 2023.
Regarding the decision to block nonpaid people from commenting on further notes:
A lot of us mute feeds that do this. It’s up to you whether you care about this, but I don’t generally want to be reading anything that intentionally makes it hard for me to add/nuance/disagree with on any forums they might have; it’s frustrating.
Great episode. As someone who considered themself as very liberal back in the days when centrists supported the Iraq war & wanted a tiny/nonexistant stimulus in 2009, and centrists also didn't support gay marriage, it's interesting to listen to people on the left now as I've become more center-left. Re: Caitlin Clark -- while it's a shame women's basketball gets a smaller share of revenue than the men, they also get a much larger share of profits, and it's profits which should be the basis for judging. I'm pretty sure the WNBA has been subsidized since inception, and likely doesn't typically run any profits at all. That's all fine, but one could make a case that the reason their salaries are as high given historic profitability is kind of the opposite of anti-female sexism. With Caitlin Clark's interest, seems likely the WNBA will turn a real profit. I think you could probably make a more sophisticated argument that this potential niche had been overlooked in part for sexist reasons -- and is something that needs to be built up over time. 1970s-1980s era views on women likely weren't consistent with huge WNBA profits, but then again, I'm not sure the NBA was super profitable until the 1980s either. Changing views now are probably more amenable to excitement over the WNBA.
Hi Nate, any chance that paying subscribers to the newsletter could get ad-free podcast episodes? Or would you consider setting up a Patreon to give supporters an ad-free feed?