Economist Emily Oster On Rationality and Risk

On today’s episode, Ryan has a wide-ranging conversation with professor and economist Emily Oster. They talk about how to balance your life with children, how to communicate positive messaging, how the American government handled the pandemic, and more. Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University, as well as the bestselling author of several books. Her most recent book, Cribsheet, aims to help improve decision making during the early years of parenting. This episode is brought to you by GiveWell, the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. GiveWell’s team of researchers works countless hours to determine which charities make the most effective dollar-for-dollar contributions to the causes they support. Since 2010, GiveWell has helped over 50,000 donors donate over 500 million dollars to the most effective charities, leading to over 75,000 lives saved and millions more improved. Visit GiveWell.org/stoic and your first donation will be matched up to 100 dollars. This episode is also brought to you by the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan's podcast is one of the most interesting ones out there, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. Sign up for Daily Stoic’s parenting course, The Stoic Parent: http://dailystoic.com/stoicparent***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Emily Oster:Homepage: https://emilyoster.net/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProfEmilyOsterInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/profemilyoster/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profemilyoster/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom in everyday life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us, dailystoic.com.

• 0:27Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, I'm a proud father of two little boys. If you're a parent, you may be familiar with the work of today's guest. I'm talking about the economist Emily Oster. Actually, I wrote an article about Emily for Daily Dad, which is my other podcast and the other daily email we do. And it's funny, I thought I'd tell you this little story. So I try to be very gender balanced when I write. I try to, Robert Greene gave me this great advice, you always want the reader to be included. So it's something I consciously think about. But when I was writing about Emily, and I was talking about some of the interesting parenting tactics that her parents had done.

• 1:12Ryan Holiday?

  And I said, if you're not familiar with Emily Oster, your wife probably is. That being, you know, sort of as a daily dad. So I thought, and I got a nice note from a man who said, hey, you know, I really like your email. I read it every day. But I didn't like this because you said that your wife might know. And he's like, my husband and I have passed Emily's books between us many times. And we get her newsletter, which I also recommend. She has this great Substack newsletter. And he said, you know, I felt a little excluded by this. And he was totally right. Look, the reason I was thinking wife is that one of Emily's books, the book I think she's sort of most known for, got a lot of attention,

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  is this book Expecting Better, which is primarily for pregnant women. But her other book, Crib Sheets, is of the same length. It's much less gender specific. Basically, what Emily does, and this is why I work so important and why I wanted to have her on, is she looks at things sort of hyperrationally. So she doesn't look at You know, what the old wives tales about raising kids are. She doesn't look at the tropes. She doesn't, she looks, she goes, what does the data show? And, and as an economist, she really looks at the data. And, and she's been a godsend during the pandemic. She, she's one of the few people that actually look at the data of whether you should be sending your kids back to school or not.

• 2:40Ryan Holiday?

  And I actually don't totally agree with her conclusions, but I like the idea of let's actually look at this. Let's not, let's ignore what everyone else is doing. Let's ignore what the pressure to do this or that. Let's ignore what, all of that. And let's just look at the data. And so she's got this brilliant mind. It, it, she's kind of like a Peter Thiel in a way where it's not that she's contrarian, but I think Emily thinks independently on these issues because she went to the, to the first principles. So Emily's work is great. This is an awesome conversation. Her perspective was super helpful to me. I came home, I was talking to my wife about it. And, and then as it happens, a shout out to my UK publisher profile. Emily and I share the same publisher there in the UK.

• 3:23Ryan Holiday?

  We don't get as much into Stoicism as maybe I like. There's a few connections, although Emily is a professor at Brown University where they, as I've said, are in the middle of trying to tear down a Marcus Aurelius statue, which is totally insane. But we don't get into that. We do talk about being rational, looking at the data, managing risk. These are all questions that Emily, of all people, is qualified to answer and give us insights on. So I hope you enjoyed this interview with me and Emily Oster. You can check out her book, Expecting Better, her other book, Crib Sheets. And I highly recommend her Substack newsletter, Emily, Emily Oster from Parent Data. It's great.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  One of the few that I get and I really enjoy. So check that out, enjoy this interview and be safe, please.

• 4:16Ryan Holiday?

  I was fascinated by the Bloomberg profile of you and your family. It sounds like your mother and father had a very interesting way of raising you and your siblings.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Really? I mean, I think that they, yeah, I guess everybody's family is kind of weird in their own way. And so when you're in the family, you're like, oh, this is totally how everyone does it. And then, you know, when you meet your spouse and you go to their family, you're like, oh, I guess not everybody does it like that.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  But like, they were saying like alternating which days they cooked to show that the roles should be shared, even like how you got one last name and your other siblings got a different last name.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, for my mom, you know, she was a kind of 1970s feminist. And for her, a lot of these, this, like, there were a lot of aspects of modeling that that were just very in the concrete. So, you know, beyond saying men and women are equal, like literally trying to show us that, you know, you could kind of both do all of the things. I think that was just for her, that was a really important way to show that.

• 5:24Ryan Holiday?

  No, but I love that because, I mean, isn't that what parenting is supposed to be? Like, it's easy to say, here's what I believe, here's what's true. And then as a parent, I think you struggle to, you know, like, actually live up to what you think is important.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting because there's a sort of, there's a little bit of a problem from this from an economist's standpoint, because actually, within economics, it is not really that you should split the things exactly evenly, right? Like, people should do the things that they are relatively better at.

• 5:55Ryan Holiday?

  Comparative advantage.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Comparative advantage. And so, actually, my father is a terrible cook, like legitimately terrible. And so, like, it was like, you know, every, it wasn't really that great an idea to have him cook every other day because he only could go like two things.

• 6:09Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  And so you had, you know, and my mom is a fantastic cook. So it would be like, every day, you know, you come home, you're like, who's cooking today? It was dad, it was like, sesame chicken. That's it.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And so, you know, there was this sort of tension about like efficiency versus equity.

• 6:26Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's funny how, I mean, obviously, I'm sure in other cases, it's not true, but it is. It is interesting how much sort of like gender roles can be revealed in the course of these sort of ordinary parental tasks. Like, I remember my dad, my mom worked a lot, so she would work at night sometimes. She was a school principal at a school that also had night classes. And when my dad would cook, my dad would cook us, he'd cook like ramen noodles, and then he would melt cheese in it. Like, he would put, he called it cheesy soup. And in retrospect, it's so disgusting to even comprehend eating that. But you're also learning the lesson, the same one your parents are teaching, which is that like, the parent's job is to cook dinner for the kids, not the mom's job or the dad's job.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  No, I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, I will say, in my family, I do all the cooking. But, but my husband does all of the dishwasher. So we've sort of split it in a slightly different way. But at least, you know, the kids see kind of both people are in that, both people are contributing to like, making sure the house is functioning.

• 7:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, right. And you kind of also have to choose your battles as far as like, what lessons, like, where do you really want to show, like, here's, I mean what I say. Is it, is it to the point where we all have to eat inedible food? Or should we find, you know, bigger battles to fight?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. There's like a sort of, there's like, which hill do you want to die on?

• 7:51Ryan Holiday?

  So going to this idea, some of the gender stuff, I was curious about it because I feel like this is partly why your books have resonated and why I like them, but, but why so many of my wife's friends have liked them as well. Am I wrong in picking up that like, moms seem to be like a thousand times harder on themselves than fathers? And where is that coming from?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think you're definitely right. How much of that is like societal pressure as opposed to like, you know, like how much you put on on yourself? I've never quite worked out like I think, you know, the sort of, there's this trope, which is of course a trope, but also not totally wrong, where people feel like, you know, if you like, when I'm watching the kid for the day, like, everyone should be thinking like, wow, I learned a lot and it was like, and I mastered a new skill and, you know, and, and also we had the 17 course Benjou meal, you know, and then when, you know, when he's watching the kid for the day, it's like, oh, they're not dead. So I, you know, and so somehow like the standards are really weird.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  And I do think that it's both society, it's both society and it's, you know, and it's probably partially pressure people put on, put on themselves.

• 9:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, there was a story I liked one time where Stuart Scott, the, the late ESPN broadcaster was having like, he was took his, his two daughters out to lunch and they're sitting there with a friend and their kids. And someone who recognized him came up and said, oh, it's so great to see you babysitting. And he said, I'm not a fucking babysitter. Like this is my, this is my job, you know, like, but there is an element where it's like, yeah, as a father, it's like, if the kids are alive, success and a mother, you're judged on, you're judged against the greatest mother who ever lived and, you know, the TV image of a mother and all these things.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Right. I, yeah, I think it's not even the greatest mother who ever lived. It's like what other people think that think is the greatest mother, whoever, you know, like, there's not like, there's one version of that that like you could aspire to. It's just like what they think that, you know, should, should be happening.

• 9:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And there, there's a thing, I think that, that the Stoics would sort of point out about that, that's interesting where it's like, there, there does seem to be this like kind of contest women are in with other women about like sort of who can be the most pure, authentic, you know, natural mother. And men obviously have tons of ridiculous contests that we get in with other men. But, but it's, it's, I think in both cases, it's sort of this idea is like, what is making your, you feel like a piece of shit about it? How does it make you better at that thing?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  No, I totally agree. I mean, I think it's not, you know, making other people feel bad is something that we seem to think is a way that we can make ourselves feel good, which is not obvious.

• 10:36Ryan Holiday?

  There's this thing where I think we, I guess what I'm saying is beating on yourself for not being good enough, for not doing it perfectly, it not only doesn't help you, but it doesn't help your kids or anyone. So there's this kind of guilt that we add on top that is not additive really in any way.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, exactly. It's sort of like somehow by, by feeling bad about things, I am somehow positively contributing to the experience of my, of my children. I think this comes up in pregnancy also around like sort of denying things, right? The idea that like, you know, well, if you're like, you know, well, if you can go without coffee, even if there's like no reason to do it, just the act of kind of making that sacrifice, that is what makes you a good parent. As opposed to like, just, you know, that's just something that makes you miserable and doesn't help your baby.

• 11:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right. And, and I know some of the studies of it have been sort of disproven or whatever, but I think personally, most people, it's like you only have so much willpower. I think we, we can kind of admit that, that we only have so much energy and we only have so much sort of self-discipline. What are you going to spend it on is a really important question.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think you have to like, and we only have so many like mental and physical resources, right? That like you just can't, you can't do all of these things and, and, or then you try to do all of them and you kind of lose it. And now you've, now you yell at your kid. But that, well, that's also bad. You know, now you did that thing wrong.

• 12:06Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. Yeah, no, you, you feeling like you're not good enough, you feeling like, you know, you're, you're crappy compared to other moms or dads, et cetera. It isn't making you better with this little person who, who needs you to be strong and confident in all, all these things that parenting

• 12:24Speaker 01

  requires. And happy. Like, I mean, your kids want, like, if you're, if you are happy, that is a way for them to also be happy.

• 12:34Ryan Holiday?

  So where does the premise of your work, which I think is interesting? I was just talking to Tom Ricks, who wrote this book called First Principles, which is really about what did the founders believe as they were creating America? But the concept of first principles seems to kind of be at the root of your work, which is in the sense that you're like, you know, instead of just assuming that all of these things are true, all these sort of lessons or rules or guidelines, why don't we actually explore them and see if this is worth doing, this is not worth doing? Is that sort of how you think about your work?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think about my work as basically saying, you know, people told you a lot of different stuff. And, you know, especially actually in this world in which you kind of can't do everything, where you're sort of, you're limited in your capacity or willpower, your time, or whatever it is, that it actually is pretty valuable to have those things right. And, you know, rather than saying like every single, you know, it's very important that you breastfeed and not go to sleep and that your kid is not in your, they're not in your bed, but they are in your room and that they do that for a year. And also, you know, that you do all these other 50 things, like actually identifying what does the data say about which of these is most important? And, you know, which of them are maybe, maybe even if they matter, that they matter less.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  And that lets you like make informed decisions in a world of constraints. I mean, economics is all about, right? Like optimizing under constraints. And I think sometimes we just assume that parents have like 75 hours in every day. So they know they don't face constraints, but that turns out not to be true.

• 14:10Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and even I think there's also probably some guilt slash fear of optimizing, which implies compromise as a parent, as opposed to just doing everything perfectly, exactly how you'd want it to be.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people want, people, people don't want to say like, well, I, you know, even though this thing was like a little bit good, I kind of didn't have the capacity to do it. But I think we should be able to say that because of course, like if you, you know, if you... You may literally be impossible to do all the things that people tell you to do.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I feel like from what I've read of your stuff where it's like, look, if you know that the choice you're making is for the most part rooted in data, then you can feel good about it, even if other people think you're crazy or weird or, you know, Marcus really says this great line where he says, "We love ourselves more than other people, but we care about other people's opinion more than our own." There seems to be an element of parenting where it's like, even though we all have pretty good intuition and maybe we have our own experiences, we really just want to make sure we're not doing something weird compared to what our kids, friends, parents are doing.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the other, I think the other piece of it is not so much, it's part of it is sort of knowing like what the data says, and then part of it is just knowing that you thought about it. So I think that some of what I'm sort of delivering in the books is like, look, here's like, like, here's a kind of opportunity for you to sit down and think about, you know, what are the choices I'm going to face? What does the evidence say? How should I think about my preferences? And then to kind of come out and say, okay, well, I decided like to breastfeed, or I decided not to breastfeed, and I decided it because I looked at the evidence and I thought about it, I thought about what worked for me. And then when someone is like, oh, you're not breastfeeding, then it's a little bit easier to be like, I'm not breastfeeding, and I thought about it, and I'm not doing it because it's not the thing that works for me, as opposed to just being like, oh my God, that person is judging me, like, maybe I am doing it wrong.

• 16:02Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And also, I'm not like knowing that you're not not doing it because it's hard, right? You know what I mean? Like, you're doing it, there's a, there's a logic to your actions.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. That you made that decision for a reason, not just because you just like, like on a whim, one day, you know, decided that that just wasn't going to be for you.

• 16:23Ryan Holiday?

  I feel like too, and you've been writing about this a lot during the pandemic, but, but it's sort of like separate, when you look at risk, or when you look at a decision, it's like, what parts of this are in your control, what parts of it are out of your control, which is a very sort of stoic concept, and then the parts that are within your control, how can you minimize risk? So then if you do, if you do make a compromise because this is your job and you have to, or because, you know, you're going to lose your mind if you don't, that you've, you've at least done it in the most responsible way possible.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think in the COVID, you know, in the COVID times, that this sort of risk piece comes up way more than it does in our normal, in our normal lives. And again, you know, they're like, I think that we have, we have gotten to a place where people are kind of like, we can't ever take any risks. And I think that's not, you know, I'm sympathetic to that, given how much we're, we're sort of talking about this, how salient these risks are. But the fact is that you are taking risks all the time in other, like, other kinds of risks.

• 17:25Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  And so I think there is a piece of sort of like, by structuring this a little bit and saying, like, you need to minimize risk, we kind of do recognize, all right, well, this is a risk like other risks. It's not a totally different new thing that we've never thought about before. Like, it, the pandemic is really different. But, you know, this is something where you have the capacity, I think, through these choices.

• 17:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, life is risk. The idea that you would, you could live in a totally risk-free way is, if you were trying to live in a risk-free way, you should, you should have never had kids in the first place, because giving birth is a risk.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, everything, you know, I've talked to people about, they're like, you know, how could I possibly, like, it seems so selfish to have, like, you know, a childcare provider, you know, with my kid. It's like, but you, you know, you're set, like, you, you wouldn't have thought for five seconds about this in a serious flu season, even though, like, people are sending their kids, they never even think about it. But actually, like, the flu risk for kids, not for adults, but for kids, the flu risks are probably more significant than the COVID.

• 18:22Ryan Holiday?

  That's true. Although I think one of the things I've struggled with, sort of friends of ours, or people that I know, which is, they go back to what we were talking about earlier, they have a childcare at their house, or they're sending their kids to school, not because they've broken it down like you're talking about, but because it's uncomfortable, and so they haven't thought about it. So they're just defaulting to what's, what's least inconvenient for them, which is an alarming thing to see happen.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think these are not, it's, it's like, there are good, there are reasonable people would choose different options here, but just being like, well, I don't want to think about it. Like, I'm just gonna like, do whatever, because I just don't want to, like, think about what's, what's happening. I think that's not, you know, that is not a good, is not a good decision.

• 19:09Ryan Holiday?

  So maybe this is crazy, as sort of a, a rule of thumb, but so you, of all people, would be able to disabuse me of it. One of the things my wife and I have thought about is sort of like, okay, in 20 years, our kid is going to ask us, they're going to say, you know, okay,

• 19:26Ryan Holiday?

  You know, 300,000 cases a day, 3,000 people a day were dying. Like, what were you guys doing? You know? And I think it's, you know, like, let's say it's school. It's like, oh, we sent you to school. And they're gonna be like, oh, because the schools did a really great job, you know, protecting kids against the virus? And you'd be like, no, not really. And then you'd be like, and you, you know, you, you never went to any stores? Well, you know, we went to the grocery store pretty often. You're like, oh, because you had to? And it's like, no, they actually had this magical technology that meant you didn't have to. And like, I feel like a lot of the decisions that people I know are making are gonna be so baffling to their kids when their kids are old enough to ask about it. So that's, that's kind of a rubric we've been using to guide our decisions is like,

• 20:10Ryan Holiday?

  how is this gonna look when the immediacy of our needs fades from the equation?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think that like, you know, I, so I, I actually haven't thought about it like that. Um, and you know, what would I say? Like, we sent our kids to school. Um, and I think about what they would, what they would ask. And I think that like realistically, I would say, you know, we chose to send you to school because like we saw how hard it was for you in the, in the spring. And we thought about like whether there were cases in the school. I mean, and part of this is a little tricky because like, this is like, I'm now spending like, what am I gonna say? Well, I was spending 150% of my time like figuring out if schools were seen. And so, you know, I was like, but I do think, um, I do think there's a little bit of a frame of like, how, I, I thought about this when we were thinking about like, you know, seeing family for holidays and so on. Like, you know, we didn't, we didn't end up seeing my family for Thanksgiving,

• 21:02Speaker 01

  and they actually all saw each other. Um, and, uh, and I think part of it was I didn't feel like I, like, I didn't feel like I could look my kids in the eye and be like, oh, yeah, yeah, we're doing this. You know, you know, your school is like, don't do it. And the governor is like, don't do it. And everyone's like, don't do it. We were just like, oh, we're just gonna do it.

• 21:20Ryan Holiday?

  Right. Right. Yeah, it's, it's, I saw a great tweet last night that was like, one of the things the pandemic has revealed for me is that everyone has a very different definition of, I've been very safe.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Right. Yes. No, it's true. My friend was telling me the other day, she went to like, sort of sit outside with some other people and they were like, you know, and they were all sitting really far apart around it. It was like, whatever they were particularly activity was safe. But then everybody was like, oh, we've been so safe. And then one person was like, oh, you know, but like, we, like, we go out to eat with different couples, like every Thursday. And, you know, our kids are in like nine different youth sports. And she was like, what do you like, she was like, I haven't like, haven't left my house.

• 21:59Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And this other person was like, well, I'm dating, but like, I don't see people that frequent.

• 22:06Ryan Holiday?

  I think it does reveal how hard it is for the human brain to be disciplined and consistent, consistently logical. So you'll talk to somebody, but I'm very safe. I washed down my groceries, etc., whatever. And then they're like, but I mean, I did get a massage last week. And you're like, you went in a windowless room with a stranger, you know, like, for, for, so your muscles would be slightly less sore. Like, like, it's not, it's not that either of those decisions is necessarily bad. It's that logically, they are completely mutually exclusive.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think part of what, part of what's been sort of interesting here is I think there are a lot of parallels to this kind of, these like, things we ask people to do in early parenting.

• 22:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And, and, and some of the errors that I see in the public health messaging are basically the same error. That we're sort of telling people, do like, here are all the things that you can't do. And they're all equally bad. And actually, like, and you know, LA, like, I don't, it's like, LA had this thing was like, don't go outside with a people who are not in your pot. Like, even running six feet away from someone with you both wearing a mask, like, that's really unsafe. That's not really unsafe.

• 23:13Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Is it in principle possible that someone could get COVID in that way? I guess. But it's like, so banishingly unlikely.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  I think you're more likely to be eaten by a cutie. You know, like, it's just like really, really unlikely.

• 23:26Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  And so, you know, and somehow, but then we tell people like, don't, you know, don't go over and have dinner at other people's houses. You know, don't go in like a windowless room with other people. Also, don't like run outside with them. And we don't rank them. Then people are like, well, I can't achieve all these things. Like, it's like, I'm like, I'm going to like literally. Like, I'm having serious mental health problems and you just see other people. You've told me all these things are risky. I guess I'll just have people over to my house, even though I would be just as happy going running with them because I don't really have any idea which of these things are bad. And so I think we really, we do need to think a little bit about the messaging in a world where it's just really hard to kind of go to whatever is like the safest bubble apparatus.

• 24:10Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 24:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's a, it certainly highlights the, the essential nature of communication as a, as a leadership strategy. And I'm not sure there's, at least in the US, I'm not sure there's really any figure of any political party that has done a good job intelligently and rationally explaining this to average, ordinary people.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  No, and I think probably like it was very people, there were a lot of things people didn't understand early on. So I think part of it was like, there was a sort of like issue with, you know, just, we don't know. That was like one piece. And then, you know, and then even once we knew, you know, communicating that nuance was, is just really, is really difficult. My husband was saying, apparently Japan did a much better job with this by sort of like really emphasizing early on, just like, don't be insuffered with other people with no information. You know, and like, just like really being like, that's the thing you don't want to do. Just don't do that. And then, you know, like other things are okay. And of course there are some risks and whatever, but like this is the one thing we really, really, really don't want to do.

• 25:26Ryan Holiday?

  It's like you look back at like World War I and World War II, they had all these posters, you know, like keep calm and carry on and, and what are some of the others like loose lips, sink ships, you know, all these like sort of propaganda messages and we sort of laugh at them at how simple and silly they are. And then you look at COVID like a historical event worse than those things in some, some capacity. And like the only thing that's come out of as far as a messaging thing is that phrase, social distancing, which is impossible to define and gives people no clarity whatsoever.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. It's saying people are like, it's not the same. Physical distancing is not the same. Social distancing, it's not the same. Doesn't mean don't see other people, but does mean don't see them, but you should see them in certain ways. Also be distant. If you can't be distant, wear a mask. But definitely if you're wearing a mask, you should still be distant because it's just sort of like, what is it?

• 26:19Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And then someone from the side comes in and goes, and by the way, masks don't work, you know, and then, then, so it's like, not only is the messaging not clear to people who want to clearly hear what the message is, but then you're also having to contend with disinformation and misinformation in a, in a way that's, you know, never happened before in history.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yes. You agents have been poor.

• 26:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Well, I feel like even I've seen smart people that I know say stuff like, they'll go like lockdowns don't work. And even then there's nuance, right? It's like, like sure, abstinence, like abstinence works, right? Abstinence only education does not work. And there's a large difference between those two. Lockdowns, like if you're trying to design a strategy to prevent people from getting COVID, lockdowns would be a great strategy. If you're trying to have the world continue to exist, lockdowns are not a good strategy. But you see smart people sort of repeat these phrases that I can't even tell what they're doing. If they're fooling themselves or is it that they're trying to rationalize things they want to do? I'm not quite sure.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I sort of have, I struggle in general with like what, like what people think that they're saying in a lot of these, in a lot of this messaging, or you know, even like, I feel, I feel like a lot of the messaging, just as people listen less, the messaging has just gotten like more and more extreme and like, you know, it's kind of like, let's just yell louder. You shouldn't do things, but like, people didn't listen when you were yelling quieter. And so I don't know why you think yelling louder is going to help. And, and somehow we just keep like yelling louder.

• 27:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. What do you think of, so it's like, on the one hand, there's these people sort of who clearly have almost been infected, like Marcus Realist talks about, and Marcus Realist was writing during the Antonine Plague, which is much worse than COVID. But he was talking about, there's like multiple, he says, there's, there's a plague which can take your life. And then he sort of, there's this other pestilence that can destroy your character. And so it seems like, I'm sure people we both know sort of been infected with these other ways of thinking. And, and I think a lot of people have talked about the conspiracy theory. I'm interested in smart people I know who sort of fall in prey to like magical thinking, you know, like the, the like,

• 28:36Ryan Holiday?

  oh, I'm following the rules, except when it's important to me, for example, like people who are like, have been really smart. And then they go, but Thanksgiving is important. And you're like, sure, but the virus doesn't, doesn't care that this is a special holiday.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  No, it was like these, when they did, there was like, sort of, we're not going to have any football except for bowl games. And somebody tweeted like, you know, coronavirus doesn't know if it's a bowl game.

• 28:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Like that's, you know, that's like not, and, and so, I mean, I think there is a piece there, which is like, which is like, well, what do they really mean? What they really mean is like, I'm, you know, I think is something like, I think of myself as having a risk budget. And there were some things that I'm willing, that are important enough to me that I'm willing to take risks. But it's sort of like, I think the way, and I think that Is an internally coherent

• 29:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Attitude, which you know, you could agree or disagree with, but is does like make sense. But then there's the then there's the sort of the way that the people end up framing that is by saying, well, it's not risky if it's Thanksgiving. That's not right. Like that's you're just saying like Thanksgiving is important to you. And so, you know, you're willing to to take some risks. And but I think if we recognize it more like this is really important to me. I have a risk budget. Then we could get back to more of this mitigation stuff and say, okay, look, you know, it's not that it's not risky, but let's talk about how you could do that. I hear you that that's really important to you. How can we make that as little risk as possible? Given that you're kind of going to do it anyway. And I think we have struggled to do that because we're the people who are just like pretending it's not risky if they they want it.

• 30:07Ryan Holiday?

  Well, sports is a great example of that too, where it's like, okay, I could see why we're having professional sports. There's millions of dollars on the line or billions. I can see why we're having collegiate sport because there's billions of dollars on the line and these are adults. It's interest and but but they've decided to consciously take a risk. And then they have all sorts of mitigation strategies in place. And then you read about like a high school football event where everyone gets COVID and you're like, well, of course, just because other people were playing football doesn't mean you should be playing football. And the magical thinking is in we're playing football with none of the protocols or mitigation strategies, but will be exempt because somehow football is exempt.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, the idea that somehow like just because the NBA managed to manage to run a bubble, like everyone come play basketball. Like, you know, they were testing everybody every day and they wouldn't let them like leave their hotel rooms. You know, it's not like there's nothing special about basketball. There's nothing special about the NBA's willingness to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to make sure that they could make even more millions of dollars, which is totally understandable. And, you know, probably a good decision, but it does not mean that high school basketball is cool.

• 31:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, it's I think the other thing that you're seeing is too, and I think this is compounded or is realized in your work, but then also in lots of different economists and psychologists, which is that we make increasingly bad decisions under fatigue or duress. So the quality of decisions that people were making in March and April and May, even under less information, we're now struggling. It's like, for instance, somebody who sent their kid back to daycare in Texas in May, maybe that decision was good in May, but now cases have quadrupled. Can you reevaluate that decision? Or are you, have you used up your decision making budget to go to your metaphor? And now you're just stuck?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the other thing is that like early on, there was this sort of almost benefit of the uncertainty that like it was, there was so much uncertainty that people were like afraid in a way that they're not, they're not like, like afraid anymore, even though they still sort of should be.

• 32:22Ryan Holiday?

  You should probably be more afraid, it's worse.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  You should really be more afraid, yeah. I mean, I don't know, we've learned, but like, yeah, basically like they should be at least as afraid, let's put it that way. And, and you know, they're kind of not because I think that the fear was such a, the sort of uncertainty was a big piece of the fear.

• 32:37Ryan Holiday?

  Is it just that as we become more familiar, like they've done like studies like when, like London during the Blitz, like you just get sort of immune to it? Is that what happens?

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think people get, I mean, you know, you gotta have a psychologist on to talk about that, but I think that like, there's a piece of this that's like, you know, people just get like accustomed to things and they get, they get sort of like inured to the, and they, I think the other thing is if you haven't had it, you're like, well, I haven't had it yet, like maybe I'm, maybe I'm not gonna get it, you know, maybe like, maybe I'm like secretly protected.

• 33:09Ryan Holiday?

  That's the magical thinking, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  It's the magical thinking, right? Like, you know, and I, so I think that's not, I think there's kind of that piece, there's the piece that people are just really, really tired of COVID and they just kind of wish it would go away and they sort of think if I just like pretend it's not there, maybe it would just kind of like not be there.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, we've exhausted a lot of our like emotional reserves for thinking around, thinking about these things.

• 33:34Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like as there's a, there's a part of your work, which is a lot of work for people, like to be constantly calculating the risk and thinking about it. In a way, it's almost easier to, even though there's more social pressures and it might not be as safe, it's almost easier in some ways to just do what other parents are doing than to, to, to think for yourself is exhausting.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:57Ryan Holiday?

  You're swimming upstream.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. I mean, it is. And I think sometimes people are like, you know, this way of like approaching this parenting stuff, or any of these things where you're just like, how about these steps and it's, it's, it's all like, what is that? Like, that takes forever. But I think the thing that sometimes people then realize if they do that is like, actually, if you thought carefully about the decision, you know, like, and then you don't keep revisiting it. But I think part of what's hard about decision making is when you like make a decision and then like the next day you think about whether it's really is right, is it right, is it right? And you kind of keep having to make the decision over and over again. I think that's really frustrating. That's really frustrating for people and like occupies a lot of your emotional space. I sort of, I said at some point, really one point, like, you know, these kind of decisions should take,

• 34:40Speaker 01

  like, you, you need to give them the space they deserve, but not all the space. And it shouldn't, you know, and, and once you make it, then hopefully you can sort of move on to other decisions.

• 34:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Has, has watching how people have responded to this and how it's played out changed how you understand certain other statistics or, you know, sort of like tricky things that people think about? Like my, my wife was saying this the other day, I was laughing about it, where she was like, I don't know how I can ever go back to driving on the road with some of these people. You know, like, like as you watch people be so bad at mitigating risk and being rational, then, then it's like, we're just all supposed to go back to being friends afterwards. It sort of struck me like all the horror stories you hear when, as you're becoming a parent, all the things you have to be worried about, all the statistics. I start to wonder, you know, watching people, you know, like, like the joke, the joke I heard was like,

• 35:35Ryan Holiday?

  there can never be another zombie movie without large portions of the cast running towards the zombies, denying that they're real, you know, like, like this whole idea that we'll respond rationally and with fear to a scary thing. It's been widely disproven by COVID. So it's, it's almost like all these statistics you hear, it makes me go like, were these parents following these rules at all and just lying about it? Like, how, how could, how could the same people that acted this way be acting totally reasonable everywhere else?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  I know, it's true. It's sort of like you're, you're like, faith in humanity is shaken by the fact that like, people won't put a piece of cloth on their face, even though like, obviously that's a good idea. Yeah, no, I mean, I think this has revealed a lot of pretty, like, deep divisions, maybe is like, there's a lot of, I feel like we are not going to come out of this seeing all the people that we know in quite the same, quite the same way that we did before.

• 36:31Ryan Holiday?

  Does it change some of the, the thing, like, it, not that it makes me question data, but it makes me question, like, the, like, when they'll say, you know, this is the leading cause of death for infants or whatever, and you go, sure, but the same, that includes the same people that wouldn't wear a mask, you know, in a pandemic. Like, you gotta imagine that there's just, it's like, I guess what I'm saying is, people must clearly be operating on different levels of both competence and sort of rule following. And then that gets muddled in the general data that we have about stuff.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Ah, yes. So that's interesting. So what you're sort of saying is like, basically, are people going to better understand the idea of like confounding? And that, you know, it's very hard to learn about all these behaviors because, you know, people who are doing one thing are also doing all of the other things, or not doing them, or whatever it is. Yeah. You know, so that's interesting. So that's not something I learned, because that's like, I, that's like the main thing that I think all the time. But I, I do wonder if maybe it will be, I certainly have spent a lot of the COVID era explaining causality to people, and I wonder if it will get easier if you sort of point out like, hey, think about those people who didn't wear a mask and all the other stuff that they're probably doing. And then you feel like, oh, yeah, it could be.

• 37:44Ryan Holiday?

  Right, right. No, the, the one that, that gets me, that helps me is I, I read a study one time that was like, It was like 27% of the population thinks that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. And I was like, oh, this, this, that's a, that's a large, 25% of the population is like millions and millions of people. And those people have beliefs about other things and, and that I have to account for that as I go through the world.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think it gets back to this question of like, what is a good, how, like, how do we make clear messaging in a way that like, you know, like, I mean, yeah, how do we, how do we do clear messaging in a way that people can kind of understand? And recognizing that, you know, there are some issues around like really complex nuance messaging that it's hard to communicate sometimes.

• 38:35Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 38:43Ryan Holiday?

  There's a, there's a Stoic exercise called premeditatio malorum. And Seneca says that you should, he says like, uh, which just means premeditation of evils. He says like war, torture, shipwreck, exile, ironically, all things that happened to him, he said, should be, should be in your mind at all times, meaning that you can't go through the world expecting only good things to happen. You have to have a sort of a plan for the worst case scenario. How does, how does that line up with, with how you think about the world? Do you, do you just look at the, the risk and you go, that's very unlikely? Or do you also sort of, if you're like, hey, I'm going to take this risk. Here's my plan for the worst case scenario.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  I think that I am like, I mean, I think a lot of what we know about psychology is people are sort of by nature, either like pretty optimistic or pretty not optimistic. And I think I'm more of a like, sort of I act and then like, I don't kind of think about the, as much about the bad stuff that could, that could happen. I mean, I think that's not entirely true, like. You know, when I think about, should I see my family? And so when I kind of think down, okay, like, what are the, you know, what are the bad things, the bad things that can happen? But I think that, like, I guess for, for me, like, I, I talk a lot, I do a lot of, like, talking, writing myself that's fairly controversial. And I always, when people criticize me, I always feel really bad. Like, I have, like, a really, like, I just, I always feel really bad.

• 40:09Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Um, and yet, I, like, I never, I, I keep doing it. You know, like, I just, like, and I, I, I sort of know, but I never think, like, okay, I'm gonna feel bad. Like, let me prepare for, like, how I'm gonna feel bad about, you know, what I'm gonna have to happen if I'm wrong, whatever. And like, I'm just like, oh, I'll just, like, do it, and then I'll, I'll find out. So I think I'm, I'm more of a, oh, I'll do this now, and then I'll.

• 40:31Ryan Holiday?

  But don't you think, but maybe it's that having written something, and then, you know, been attacked for it, you are aware that that's basically the worst-case scenario of saying a controversial thing. So then, then you don't, you don't go through your work afraid of making a mistake, or, or afraid of being criticized, whether you're right or wrong, because you're like, oh, I can take that.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. But I wish that I could also, I mean, I think that's a good point, except that I wish that also then, I didn't feel exactly as bad as I did every single, I would have thought that that would translate to, like, sometimes just being like, oh, it's fine. Like, today, people, I wrote something in my newsletter about, like, milk, and like, what kind of milk was written. And then a few people wrote, and they were like, oh, you know, I don't know, like, you use the word obesity, and like, that's like judgmental, and whatever. And I felt really bad. And I was like, why, like, like, I, why do I feel so bad about this?

• 41:25Ryan Holiday?

  No, that goes to the, the idea we were talking about earlier, which is that we, we care about ourselves more than other people, but then their, their opinions matter to us so much. Like, like, uh, because I love your newsletter, and, and I do one, too, I do this daily newsletter. And it's like, I had to, I had to make sure that the response, that when I first started, the responses would go to me. Now they go to an inbox that I never check, because, uh, because it, it's like, one person, let, the email goes out to 300,000 people every day, but one response from one asshole would make me feel like that was representative. Logically, your mind doesn't go, 299,999 other people found this not even worth remarking on, but this one person is gonna hit you the way that it hits you.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and I mean, I write about that sometimes in my newsletter, how I like feel bad when people do this. And I think that's, you know, I think that's actually helped me a little bit, sort of like to, you know, not that it makes people not say bad things, mean things, which they definitely do, but it's sort of like, it's been good for me to like articulate that. And then, you know, to hear kind of people come back and say, you know, you know, like, I also feel like that, or I, I don't know, I really like, I really like the newsletter. I'm like very.

• 42:37Ryan Holiday?

  You really like getting the responses?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  No, I like writing it. I mean, yeah, like some of the responses too. But I've been like, I've just been really like, this is something I started at the beginning of the pandemic. I've like found it to be a really productive way to interact.

• 42:50Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it's just a much better model. It's like I see you write articles different places. I do the same. It's like when you're writing for the Atlantic or the New York Times or whatever, you have to do this piece, and then you have to hope that they'll accept it. And then they give you notes, and they're always cutting it down. And it's like, there's this whole process. And it's like, the newsletter is like, no, no, I'm having an ongoing, even if it's a one sided conversation, it's an ongoing conversation with a large group of people every day, which is why you were attracted to writing in the first place, I feel like.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like this sort of, and it's not, it's not as one sided as these, as these pieces that you write for like other things. Because of course, sometimes, you know, people like, some people will write, you know, in this news in the milk thing, okay, people, a lot of people wrote, and they were like, I really need to know about like vegan diets and other milks. I got many emails that were like, what about other milks? Should I have milk at all? Like, and so now there's an opportunity, like in a few weeks, I can come back and be like, okay, like a bunch of people ask, here's some like follow up stuff. And I think you just can't do that in other, it's been hard to do in other modalities.

• 43:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and you can, it's almost like if, if some of these government entities we're talking about had more direct ways to communicate with people, it might have been better in the pandemic, as opposed to everything being filtered through reports. And like, there isn't that ongoing conversation. So there's not that trust also that says like, hey, I really thought about this. Here's the complicated thing. Please, please go ahead.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, also, and I think that, you know, I think what the other problem is like, some of these messaging, it's hard to, it's hard for them to understand what people don't get, like what people don't understand. And so there's sort of, there isn't that feedback about like, well, I, you know, I just like, I'm sorry, I don't understand, like, this is a piece I don't understand.

• 44:35Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  And then instead, they just sort of like communicate.

• 44:38Ryan Holiday?

  Well, have you even, I've, I've found it's given me, not leverage, but it's given me clarity, even with my publisher, right? Because like, so let's say I want to do something a certain way on one of my books, the publisher, you know, they go, oh, we don't like that, or the sales staff doesn't like that, or, you know, whatever. And it's like, that's great. But I have talked to these people every day for, you know, five years, you know? I know, it's not from an ego place, but it's, it's from, you have a greater knowledge and sort of relationality to the audience that a person who sells a book to a salesperson to a bookstore who sells it to a customer just fundamentally doesn't have.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think it gives me, it gives me a good window into the questions that the people that I am, that I'm like writing for, like what they're, what is in their head and what they're going to want and what they want to know.

• 45:33Ryan Holiday?

  I have one last question for you. We can kick this around a bit and I hope it doesn't come, it has nothing to do with you. I'm just curious about it. So I wrote this book a few years ago called Ego is the Enemy. And I think ego is the enemy of good thinking. It's connecting with the audience. It's, it's, it must be fascinating in your position, you, you have all these different expertises, you've built this audience. And I think we're seeing in the pandemic, different people get way, not out of their lanes, but it's because it's worse than that. People talking about things they have no idea about, just because other people are asking them, or because there's a market for that. How do

• 46:12Ryan Holiday?

  you, how do you maintain sort of intellectual humility in the midst of something like this? Do you get what I'm saying?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I mean, I'm not sure people would say that I have. I mean, I like, you know, I tend to, I like, I tend to be sort of generically out of my, my topic lane. And so, you know, my books are out of my lane and, and, you know, I'm doing all the school stuff, which is kind of like out of, out of my, you know, which is out of my lane. And, you know, I

• 46:44Speaker 01

  I guess I try to, I have, I have tried to stay in, in what I see as, as my weird lane, which is like a sort of science communication and like communicating data and to some extent, collecting data, which and thinking my statistics, which I think of as, as kind of where, like where I am. But I have struggled a little bit with this, with this question in COVID, particularly around this whole stuff. Because I feel like I'm, you know, I'm in a space that is different than I have been in before. It's a space that I've had to learn pretty fast. And I did not expect to find myself as the person with the best like school data in America. It doesn't really seem like that should be, that should be true.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And at the same time, I kind of feel like there's some obligation to, I don't know, like help people be at school. So somehow like, even though it's not really my, my lane, like maybe I'm the only person in the lane. And so I, I don't know, quite that analogy falls down sometimes.

• 47:43Ryan Holiday?

  No, it's, it's tricky because it's like, on the one hand, you kind of not like, a person should kind of stay in their lane. And it to get too far out of their lane is, it can be sort of tempting from an ego standpoint. But then also the, I'm an epidemiologist, what the fuck do you know? Is, is also a form of ego. So there's this kind of tension between like, who gets to say what? And how does truth get out into the world?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that, you know, I, I don't love when people are like, well, you're not an epidemiologist. So like, you should never be allowed to talk about these things. Like, why would that be? And, and you know, at the same time, like I, you know, I've tried to steer people sometimes to be like, well, can you? Actually, people often ask me to comment on the macro economy, a topic which I know nothing. Even though it would seem like it would be my lane and to be like, I just, and you should talk about like the, like the labor market and like interest rates. And like, can you just like come on our TV to talk about that? I'm always just like, I don't know anything about that. Like, you know, I understand you think that I might, but I don't.

• 48:46Ryan Holiday?

  Well, one of the things I've struggled with, it's a weird thing. Obviously, it's a little less now that you're not going around giving talks. But as you become sort of a, I don't know what you call a public intellectual, but a person who writes and opines about things for a living, is you get in this space where you feel like you should have an answer because someone asked you a question. And that's super tempting and dangerous. And it's really how you can get your head up your own ass.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  I totally agree. Yeah, you gotta be like, there's like a piece of like self-editing, like, no, no. Like, I don't, it's actually okay to be like, I don't know anything about. And, you know, and even though people expect exactly, like, people just think you're gonna be able to talk about whatever. Because like, you're a person who like goes on TV and talks and stuff.

• 49:29Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, or even, yeah, it's like, because you know it makes bad TV and you know it leaves the audience dissatisfied, to be able to say something like, I'm not sure, I haven't thought about that. Or, I actually have no idea. Or, like, those that require, that's an awkward thing to have to do, but is the most honest thing to do, even though it's not what people want from you.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is what, you know, they always like teach you that you're supposed to like, just answer a different question.

• 49:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Just like, you know, basically answer a question you do not have the answer to.

• 50:00Ryan Holiday?

  Right, and then there's also, I think you go in the, well, what happens when the people who are supposed to know fall down on the job or mess up? And then, like, for instance, like, it's not as if the the scientific community has done a stellar job since the beginning of COVID. We've had, you know, mistakes and they've walked things back or they've contradicted themselves. And so, that can also create the, well, if they don't know, then I know. Like, it's almost, it goes to certainty. And I think where some of these charlatans have sort of come on to is like, if you're willing to claim whatever you think, even though you don't really know it, the market almost gravitates towards that certainty and rewards it.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and I think particularly in this era of uncertainty, people are really like eager for certainty. And certainly, media outlets are eager for people who will be like, I think for sure, wow. And they kind of, there's not a lot of space for nuance. And that has meant that people who are willing to say... I'm, you know, I'm certain are getting like airtime even though and those people kind of have to be not that reliable since there isn't any certain.

• 51:07Ryan Holiday?

  And one of the benefits of the newsletter I found is that when you're talking to your audience, you can talk about nuance and you can say, I don't know, or you could, you could send out a thing to your newsletter that says, you know, here's, here's the contradictory, confusing picture about whether kids should go back to school. The New York Times is not going to publish that piece, though. You have to know, you know, and you, not you have to know, you have to claim to know, right? Like the, the, the things that get published elsewhere, it's sort of, there's a publication bias in the, in the cultural consciousness as well, like that nuance doesn't spread well on social media.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the other thing that this sort of like more continual interactions allows for kind of updating and saying basically like, here's where we are now, you know, here, and then to sort of revisit and be like, this is what we thought. Here is some new information, kind of, let's like, sort of, let's understand that this is an evolving picture, which doesn't fit well into like a piece.

• 52:09Ryan Holiday?

  Right. No, if the input, I remember in like, maybe June, I was reading a piece in, because I was heading to Florida, I read a piece in the National Review, it was like, where will Ron DeSantis go to get his apology? You know, because it's like Florida had done really bad, and then it, it was doing well for a minute. And then, so then, you know, the right sort of swings in and, oh, let me dunk on everyone who doubted. And it's like, actually, it swung right back. So, so there, I think the, the epistemic humility comes in, in the also like, hey, I'm going to actually, I'm not going to make it, I'm not going to have an opinion because there's not enough data yet. That's like the hardest thing to do. I'm like, I don't know.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. Find out.

• 52:55Ryan Holiday?

  Which, uh, which I guess is, goes to the, I think the core of your work too, which is we, nobody knows for sure, but we can go to the data and make pretty good guesses about what works.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And we can understand the limitations in different spaces. So, you know, where do we, where are we more sure and where are we less sure?

• 53:14Ryan Holiday?

  Emily, thank you so much. I love your stuff. It's been very helpful to me and my family. And please keep doing the newsletter.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Thank you. I will.

• 53:22Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could leave a review for the podcast, we'd really appreciate it. The reviews make a difference. And of course, every nice review from a nice person helps balance out. The crazy people who get triggered and angry anytime we say something they disagree with. So if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.