424. How to Make Your Own Luck

Podcasting started as a niche-nerd pursuit. Now it’s a $9 billion industry. Is that a lot? The strange economics of this thing we do. SOURCES:Jim Bankoff, chairman and C.E.O. of Vox Media.Ben Davis, head of digital at WME.Will Page, former chief economist at Spotify and author of ...  Show more

An economist calls America’s beef industry a “miracle.” An antitrust scholar calls it “broken.” Maybe they’re both right? SOURCES:Austin Frerick, agriculture antitrust expert, fellow at Yale University, author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry ...  Show more

Before she decided to become a poker pro, Maria Konnikova didn’t know how many cards are in a deck. But she did have a Ph.D. in psychology, a brilliant coach, and a burning desire to know whether life is driven more by skill or chance. She found some answers in poker — and in her ...  Show more

Why do intelligent people give money to self-proclaimed psychics or get sucked into Ponzi schemes? Why are most of us so bad at judging risk? Journalist, psychologist and professional poker player Maria Konnikova, PhD, author of the “The Biggest Bluff” and “The Confidence Game,” ...  Show more

Professional poker player, psychologist and author of two New York Times best-sellers, Maria Konnikova discusses her mentors, making decisions in environments of uncertainty, the importance of reflection, cooling down your emotions and Sherlock Holmes. -- Want even more? Members ...  Show more

Maria Konnikova is the best-selling author of the books The Biggest Bluff, The Confidence Game, and Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes. Topics discussed include: the human desire for certainty and story/narrative, and our discomfort with ambiguity and uncertainty; how ...  Show more