Risky Business with Nate Silver and Maria Konnikova

With all the frenzy last week around Jeffrey Epstein and ColdplayGate, you might have missed an important story: Trump’s new AI Action Plan. Released alongside three new executive orders on AI, the plan emphasizes deregulation, open sourcing, and “anti-woke” models in a race for industry dominance. Today, Nate and Maria get into the details and declare it… not bad? Further Reading: AI Action Plan [https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf]  Zvi Mowshowitz America’s AI Action Plan Is Pretty Good [https://thezvi.substack.com/p/americas-ai-action-plan-is-pretty?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=573100&post_id=169073886&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=rfro6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email] For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap [https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/] from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin [https://www.natesilver.net/] from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

To wrap up our coverage of the World Series of Poker, we bring you a poker interview extravaganza. This year, Leo Margets became the second woman ever to make it to the Main Event final table—and the first since 1995. Nate and Maria chat with Leo about her approach to poker, why having fun helps her play better, and how she felt about her historic 2025 WSOP. Then, they interview poker legend Erik Seidel, who taught Maria to play the game. He talks about the camaraderie of the poker world, and shares his personal “no suffering” rule. For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap [https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/] from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin [https://www.natesilver.net/] from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Nate and Maria share some updates from the final days of the World Series of Poker, and reflect on the importance of making peace with randomness. Then: the Trump administration’s sudden about face on the Epstein Files is ruffling feathers in his usually unruffle-able base. Will he be able to convince the true believers that there is, in fact, nothing to see here? And, how should we think about conspiracy theories in a world where conspiracies are sometimes real? For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap [https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/] from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin [https://www.natesilver.net/] from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Early in the COVID pandemic, the US closed schools and sent kids home. And then, the schools stayed closed—even as they began to reopen in other parts of the world. Experts and officials claimed that these measures sprang from “an abundance of caution.” But what was the evidence on the necessity of keeping kids home? And, looking back, did the benefits of prolonged school closures outweigh the costs? This week, Nate interviews author and journalist David Zweig about his book examining COVID policies and school closure decisions during the pandemic. They get into why we tend to find cost-benefit analysis so difficult, how political polarization shaped decision-making during the pandemic, and how the COVID models failed. Further Reading: David Zweig’s book is An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262549158/an-abundance-of-caution/] For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap [https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/] from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin [https://www.natesilver.net/] from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.

Nate and Maria take a quick break from the World Series of Poker to tape a live episode at the Aspen Ideas Festival. They give some updates on a scandal at the World Series, then discuss Zohran Mamdani’s recent win in New York City’s Democratic primary, and what it might mean for elections moving forward. They also discuss the language we use to convey probability, and why talking about it can be so difficult. Plus, they answer some audience questions. Further Reading: From Adam Kucharski’s newsletter, Understanding the unseen: Possibly a serious possibility [https://kucharski.substack.com/p/possibly-a-serious-possibility?ref=thebrowser.com] From Silver Bulletin: Zohran delivered the Democratic establishment the thrashing it deserved [https://www.natesilver.net/p/zohran-delivered-the-democratic-establishment] For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters: The Leap [https://mariakonnikova.substack.com/] from Maria Konnikova Silver Bulletin [https://www.natesilver.net/] from Nate Silver See omnystudio.com/listener [https://omnystudio.com/listener] for privacy information.