Pushkin. Just a reminder for all of our Risky Business fans and listeners. Next week, on the eleventh of December, which is a Wednesday, Nate and I will be hosting a meetup poker game at the Bellagio Poker Room. So again, that's December eleventh at noon at the Bellagio. We hope to see you there. There is an RSVP form, It's a Google docs. Please fill it out. If you're planning on coming, it's going to be in the show notes, so check those out. Click on the form and we hope to see you next week.
Yeah. The Belagio, by the way, is in Las Vegas, Nevada, actually technically in like Paradise. I think Paradise, but you fucking know what the Belagio is. If you're if you're a poker player who listens to this show.
Yes you do.
Not the one in Italy. I'd been to the one in.
Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova.
And I'm Nate Silver.
What are we going to be talking about on the show today.
Night, Well, today we'll be talking about Hunter Biden and the failure of Joe Biden's presidency, which you disagree probably on that characterization as well as the particulars.
No, actually, you'll be surprised to hear that I do not disagree on that particular thing. But we'll be talking about that and then we'll do something a little bit lighter, the GTO Guide to Gift giving, our game theory, optimal guide to giving presents, and also broader question can there even be such a thing as gto gift giving? Or does that go against the whole spirit of the enterprise. So, without further ado, let's get to it. Hunter Biden, Nate, do you want to give just the quick summary of
what happened? What breaking news alert I got this weekend?
Yeah, So Sunday, we're coming out of the end of a holiday weekend, people watch a little bit of NFL, and then President Biden says, I am pardoning my fail son for a blanket eleven year period that goes from twenty fourteen through through November twenty twenty four. There was actually like a six hour window on which Hunter Biden basically had the purge he could commit any crimes because
he was like pre pardoned for that day. But Biden, despite repeated promises on the campaign trail not to pardon his son, including promises made by the White House Press secretary after the campaign was lost to Donald Trump. After Harris's campaign was decided to issue the pardon anyway.
He did. Indeed, And as we've talked about on the show before, because there's been a lot of breaking news that happens in these kinds of periods. Whenever you want to bury news, when do you do it? Exactly? You do it on holidays, on.
Weekendriday, Sundays and people are traveling, right exactly. I mean, often these pardons are made at the very end of an administration, but this was not.
Yep. Now, this one was made during Thanksgiving, after President Biden spent time with his family. I think that timing is actually probably meaningful, especially given the kind of moblin wording of his Yeah, yeah, I'm pardoning him as a father. Nate, you said in the introduction that you thought that I was going to really disagree with you. I thought when I saw that breaking news headline, I was like, what
the actual fuck? For a few different reasons. Reason number one, Repeatedly, he said he was not going to pardon Hunter and members of his administration repeated that up until like November fourteenth, Right, that's the last time that I heard it, but maybe it was even later. But just like recently, right a few weeks ago, they were saying absolutely no pardon. So that was just a blatant lie if he knew that
this was going to happen. And second, like the way he did it, Oh, as a father, dude, you are the president of the United States of America, right, Like I get that you're a dad and you have other obligations, but you do not get to make decisions based on those things. You have to make decisions as the most powerful leader in the world, right as the president of
the United States. And you don't just get to do things because you know your a dad or your family member does this, And that's something that should you know, apply to everyone. That's one of the reasons that we have a democracy and not you know, a kleptoocracy or a monarchy or you know, any for a dictatorship or any form of government where a nepotism is kind of a thing, right, and where you get to do whatever you want to those close to you. Now people have said, oh, well,
you're holding democrats to a higher standard. No, I want to hold everyone to this standard. And I think that how what Biden did right now really shoots Democrats not just in the foot, like in the face. This was like such a fuck you to the Democratic Party because now when Trump comes into office, he gets to point to this and be like, you don't get to judge me.
This dude pardon his son. And that is such I mean, you do not want to give him like he'll do whatever the fuck he wants anyway, but like you don't want to give him that ammunition, Like don't you want to try to save the country instead of make it more and more Trumpian?
Well, look, I mean there are a couple of things here. One is that you know, Democrats are the party that holds themselves to a higher standard, and so we are the defendanive of democracy, right whereas Trump says, you're all a bunch of hypocrites. And so if you agree that they're a bunch of hypocrites, then built Republican because we're going to have more fun and lower your taxes and
deport all these illegals and things like that. And so there is an asymmetry number one, number two, like if Biden had gone on TV and said, oh, I'm really feel for my son, then that would be one thing, and said it's a personal decision, a family decision. I just can't help myself. I lost my first son, and
what can I do here? Right? But instead he issues a very Trumpian statement where he says, there has been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober, in the face of unberlenting attacks and selective prosecution in trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it
will stop here. Enough is enough. So it's dressed up in this very paranoid Trumpian language, and like, I'm using the term paranoid deliberately because I don't think Joe Biden's mental health is very good, you know, I don't think.
I mean. There was also a whole series of interviews that the podcast pod Save America did with former Harris staffers, and apparently when he chose to drop out, and then forty minutes later whatever it was, or fifteen minutes later, I forget shortlier after issued a tweet saying, oh, and by the way, I'm nominating Harris. Apparently, no one had been tipped that. Now I don't know if one hundred percent believe that, but the staffer's official story is that, oh,
Biden just kind of like dropped this bombshell. We knew obviously that there's pressure on him to drop out, but then he just kind of dropped this bombshell that, oh, by the way, it's going to have to be Harris. And so this is not somebody who I'm sure is operating at the very least not in a highly conscientious way, and maybe not with the full deck. I'm not sure.
Yeah, well, and it did. I mean, like I said when when I mentioned that it seemed like a fuck you two Democrats, it actually kind of did seem that way that he was doing it, like for personal reasons, but also because he's still mad, right, He's still mad that he had had that he'd been cast aside. He's still mad that he's a one term president. He's pissed, and that is much more Trumpian than, you know, what
I would expect of Biden. And you know, if you put it, I was actually thinking about this, you know, because I'm working on a book about cheating and kind of thinking in those terms. If you think about it, like as a poker thing, right, and there's someone who's like cheats, right or angle shoots like consistently, right, what do you what do you do? Right? Do you start being like, oh, well he's doing it, so I get to cheat too, No, the game's going to evolve, right,
like there'll be no game left to play. Instead, you call that person out, you make sure that they get penalized for it. And you don't do that right, like you you actually try to uphold the game. And that's what democrats in this analogy. You know, Trump is kind of the constant angle shooter, the constant person like pushing the pushing the boundaries, pushing the rules. And what we want to see is, you know, they're being pushed back. And yeah, of course we want to see that he
doesn't get away with it. We want to see democracy standing up to him. We want to see institutions being resilient. We don't want people to get away with angle shooting. But what you don't start doing is doing it yourself and adopting those exact that exact same language. Like it's just a really bad look. And I was incredibly INCREDI disappointed. The thing I disagreed with you on was when you said, you know, anyone who doesn't condemn this within forty eight hours.
Like a made him being a little bit of a drama queen potentially, But like like a couple of Democrats did. Jared Polus, the governor of Colorado did. Jared Golden, the Democrat up in northern Maine who has really overperformed benchmarks in his district, condemned it. But like, I don't know, I mean, you have to have Biden's not very popular. People just rejected his vice president after basically having rejected him. They basically lost this race twice. As far as I'm concerned,
like when are you going to break with Biden? Right? Like what's what's the cost of doing that? And saying we are going to hold ourselves to like a higher standard potentially, But like I look, I know, Maria, this whole thing about like how you enable bad behavior when you don't call it out and the fact that the GOP has lots of problems. I mean, Trump has lost
the problems. I would never vote, never did, never would vote for Donald try, right, But like you kind of are reducing things to like the lowest common denominator and like as a voter then look, I don't know how to put it, but like I am done with as a default voting for the Democratic Party, right, it doesn't change my values as a voter. And you kind of know, if you follow me, I'm kind of center left, maybe center center left, with like a dose of libertarianism and
a dose of I don't know, contrarianism whatever else. But like, I think this party has behaved badly, and I think like it's managed a lot of crises badly. I thought the way Democrats handled COVID and Republicans was was poor. For example, you know, I don't know about its decision to spend so much money in terms of stimulating the economy. I mean, they did catch up with them in terms
of inflation and so forth. I think, you know, the institutions of the left and the center left, I think are failing to perform as well as they could, in part because of hypocrisy and politicization. And like, I just think the game theory is such that like you have to be willing to like look at alternatives. I guess, you know, I'm not optimistic that I'll get an alternative. I like, on the GOP side, and then I'll probably
default and vote for the Democrat. I don't know. I mean, certainly I look at independent candidacies more seriously, but like you know, everyone's a point where they kind of get fit up and says enough and like because again I think kind of like on the micro argument, if you're trying to calculate the expected value these choices, and you know, at least in terms of expected utility for the world
we've talked about before, probably Democrats are better. I'm not as sure about for me personally, but I can afford to be unselfish about this. But like in a macro sense, I don't know, the critique that the system is rotten and we have to blow things up. I mean I'm more and more sympathetic to that.
Yeah, I just I totally agree that. And you know, as I said, you need to call out bad behavior and you can't shy away from calling it out within your own party as well, Like you have to hold people to standards. What I don't want to do is equate the bad behavior of what's happening in the Democratic Party with the Republican Party. And I don't think you want to either. Rite like, but I think it's a false equivalency, right, I think that what I think, I
think that what have done. I think that the party of Trump is worse.
I think. I think when you think everything's a false equivalent, say, then you then you get away with not all. I mean Biden. I think Biden being president now is a scandal. Right. We shouldn't we have these medical records, right, we don't know if he's fit for office. Like, to me, that's really bad. That's it. That's an existentially bad thing because we live in a world of like existential risk. I think that's very very bad, right. I think the pardon
is medium bad. But you know, on a scale with the medium bad things that that Trump has done, and if you kind of like zoom out the lens and look toward institutional decisions, I mean things like school closures under COVID one of the most consequential events of like the past several decades, right, I mean, it's it's almost like a if you look at the impact of learning loss. There's some dispute about it, but it's really quite bad.
I don't know. I still, you know, I agree that there have been mistakes and there have been bad things, but I do not think that they're equivalently bad, and I think that we have you know, sure, Biden being
president right now is not ideal. But Trump, what he has done, what he has pledged to do, what he has shown himself capable of doing, is like a constant existential threat, right like his appointees to the judicial system, his appointees to the cabinet, which we've talked about, and continue it continuing, you know, continuing that trend, you know,
like the the cashpitels of the world. You know, all all of these things are a big fuck you to democracy, constantly over and over and over, saying he's going to shut down media, you know, fake news, anything, he who anyone who criticizes him, and a lot of his you know, policies are aimed at basically trying to you know, trying to weaken democracy as much as possible. And he has
also you know, doled out pardons too less than ideal people. Now, like I said, this does not excuse the fact, Like I'm not trying to excuse Biden, right, I think he needs to be held to account. But I think this
was an awful decision executed in an awful way. As you said, this pardon could have been much better, right had he not constantly said I'm not going to pardon a hunter, had he just not lied about it, and had he like just owned it and been like, look like, I understand that I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm doing it anyway, Like I'm sorry, right, Like, that would have been very different. The way he did it was Trumpian.
But the fact that we have this adjective Trumpian means that right that there is I think that we can't say like A equals B like these are two different things. And the Republican Party has repeatedly shown itself unwilling to stand up to Trump and basically trying to go into his mold instead, and I think that that's very frightening. Again, this does not mean we do not hold the Democratic Party to account. As you said at the beginning of this segment, they are held to a higher standard. They
should be because they are trying to preserve democracy. But I do think we just want to be careful not to paint a false equivalency here.
Are they trying to preserve democracy or is that like a sloganeering. I mean, they tried to get.
What you said Okay, I'm giving you back your quote.
I think intellectuals generally care about democracy, although there's also things like, you know, Democrats don't really talk very much about free speech anymore, Republicans talk about it hypocritically. You know, I don't know, I mean some of the COVID stuff.
I mean, you had decisions that were made by public health agencies that had a lot of power that were not democratically elected, for example, And like, I don't know, I think that branding doesn't work particularly well if you look actually talked to swing voters and say who is a party of democracy? Then look, look what Trump did and trying to overturn the election in twenty twenty was very bad, and the fact that it's kind of been
memory hold is really really bad. Right. But I just think the equilibrium where anything you do is held to this benchmark of like January sixth, and therefore anything you do is false equivalents, Like, I just where's that end? It ends in the Democratic Party behaving really badly and also losing elections.
Frankly, well, well that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm just saying there is you are trying to draw false equivalence. That does not mean we don't have to hold Democrats to a high standard. Right, there needs to be changed. Both parties are rotting and there are there's horrible stuff happening right, Like our two party system is not working very well. And as you know, as I've said on this podcast before, I'm not a fan of
the two party system. I never have been. I think that that is not a good way going about things. So I am all for you know, holding them to account, reforming, like trying to really question what's going what's going wrong. I just want to make sure that we're not saying, oh, well, Biden's now just as bad as Trump. He is not, and like, do not say that, I know you know
that he is not. Don't don't do this for rhetorical purposes, like this is too important for like we're not doing a high school debate like this is this is actually like this is actually too important for rhetorical flourishes. I was a champion debate or I can rhetorically flourish too, And I'm choosing not to.
Where's Biden ranked historically among the presidents? Let me bring up some historically.
I don't know, Yeah, I don't know, not very high now in my mind, because I think that he has done made certain decisions. I think I would have ranked him much higher a year ago, right, I think that this last.
Yer, he's a lot done. In the first two years Democrats had a relatively good mid term.
I would have ranked Biden a lot higher just a year ago, because I think he got a lot done and he you know, he was he had a good presidency and then he made such shitty decisions in the last year that it's really my my ranking has plummeted.
I can't give a ranking right now. I think it's always very it's ill advised to try to rank people in the moment, right You need you need a little bit of time, like you need you need a little bit of a of a window, a little bit of perspective to just kind of see how things play out, because you also can't see kind of the tail end of some decisions. Right Like, maybe this Hunter Biden pardon will end up like not really mattering, and maybe it
will end up mattering a lot. Maybe the fact that he hasn't stepped down right now and hasn't made Kamayers the next president, first female president. Maybe it won't matter. Maybe it will end up mattering a lot, right, Like, maybe something is going to happen in the next four weeks that's going to make that really consequential. Maybe the fact that the Democrats lost is going to end up mattering a lot. Maybe it's going to end up mattering
a little bit less. So I think that before we rank him, we just need to see how some of these things shake out and how they know not be in the emotional moment heat of the moment. But right now, I'm really pissed at Biden, and I you know, I think he's made some really really poor choices running for reelection. What he's doing right now, the Biden, the Hunter, Biden pardon. I'm not a very happy camper right now when it comes to Biden.
By the way, this was not the expected outcome, right If you looked at polymarket, I think there was like a twenty five percent chance or something that Hunter was going to be pardon, and so this was like not like priced in. People kind of took the White House at its word. I don't know, I don't envy the job of the White House Press Secretary.
No neither do I. Neither do I This is this is quite the mess that he's now embroiled everyone in right, because he's made a lot of people look like liars because a lot of people have said, no, we were this pardon is not happening. So on that lovely note, let's potentially take a let's take a break and uh and switch over to a much lighter topic of gift giving during the holidays. I'm so curious about this. I just I'm so interested in what your general approach to
gift giving is. This is something I don't actually know about you. I've known you for a long time, but it's not like we constantly engage in gift exchanges. So how do you think about it?
I don't know if I'm a very good gift giver, Maria.
Well, you your partner is. So for my birthday, your partner has given me incredibly thoughtful gifts from the two of you. So so thank you to.
Him for Yeah, be in a long term relationship with someone who is good at giving gifts. Although with my can I say this, I'm kind of trying to predictive they'll be like relationship stress out of this. With with my partner, we tend not to give each other a lot of gifts. I'm not sure how we got into that equilibrium. I guess the gift of being with each other every day is a gift enough, and so we just kind of got out of the habit of like
giving gifts. And yeah, I don't know, how about you and how about you and your husband.
We do give gifts to each other, but we you know, we're not we're not big on like we don't celebrate Valentine's Day and kind of bullshit like that, Like, but we will give gifts to each other for you know, the holidays and for our birthdays. Those are basically the
two times when we give gifts. And otherwise, you know, we like to do experiential things together, so like instead of like for an anniversary, instead of giving gifts, like will either like we'll do a trip, or we'll do a nice dinner or open a really nice bottle of wine, something that we can enjoy together. And sometimes we've agreed in the past not to give each other gifts and instead of a gift, we'll do X or Y, So
we talk about that in advance. So I think that that's really nice and I actually think that experiences often make the best gifts.
The other philosophical point I have is that I think if you're not giving an experience or something and one of their important qualification, you're not dealing with the person where they could really use like the extra income. Right. I mean, you should give a gift that's like a little bit something they wouldn't get for themselves. Right, it's a little bit in the offbeat or like slightly impractical zone. Right. You know, a couple of years ago, we bought my
dad like a really nice new watch. It was like a little bit more on a watch that and these guy who's always worn to watch, right then he would spend on himself, right. Or even things like we bought my mom like a iPhone a couple of years ago.
She's getting older and like you know, actually has lots of use for an iPhone if something bad happens or whatever else is cell phone, but she probably was not going to buy it for herself because it was too expensive and too much riham or roll to go to this tour and whatever else, and so things like that. I mean it's a little paternalistic, I guess ironically giving no.
You know, I actually I think that the well let me before I say that, like, what's one of the most memorable, Like, what are the memorable memorable gifts that you've gotten other than experiences?
I'm not sure I have it. I mean my when I was in Seattle for a book tour event, right, my like cousin gave me like a customized deck of like playing cards with family photos. Like that was a really thoughtful gift.
It's amazing, Right, Yeah, that's amazing, and that I think shows something incredibly important. Right That gift shows thought, right, shows forethought, shows an interest and an understanding of what you do, of what you like, and doesn't cost a lot of money, right, Like don't give people cash, right, Like, if you think about this is why I like said the premise of gto Like you might think that, like optimally like just give people money and they can get
exactly what they want. But I think that that actually goes against the spirit of like what what gift giving is all about, which is about paying attention to people, knowing people, kind of being thoughtful and as you said, something they wouldn't get for themselves, like something they don't
know they want. I'm also very against gift lists, where like people you know, you ask people to tell you what they want, because like, you know, then then what's the point, right, Like I'd rather just not even exchange gifts.
Might need to tell you I'm because I mean, no, you basically give people money, but with restrictions on how you can use it. You know, I guess there's some thoughtfulness put in, maybe if it's like some promotion or something, but for sure, Yeah.
The one exception that I will give gift certificates to people too, is like I will give a get certificate to a massage at a spot where I know that they will never treat themselves to it, And I'm like, Okay, I want you to go and get a fucking two hour hotstone massage at this place that is amazing. You would never pay this amount of money like you deserve it, like you need a rest here you go. But that's also I think goes along with what you were saying.
It's not something that they would give for themselves. And there's actually a lot of psychological study of gift giving and of how it works, like how it activates different parts of the brain, and it turns out that like we are, actually we get a lot more satisfaction out of kind of these acts of generosity than Russet prosody.
It's not like a homoeconomicus type of thing, right. It actually like gives us more pleasure to give a gift that's someone you know that might not have the material value but that actually has kind of that attention spent to it. And we can even be generous too, straight Like we get a kick out of being generous.
This is one thing that women are much better about than men, right, Like they send follow ups after you hang out. Right, I had a little hang out with my mail friend. You say, you send like a like a no saying, hey, a good time tonight. I'm like, wow, that's rare for that's rare for heterosexual men to do that. I'm prompted.
I wasn't gonna ask, but you mentioned it.
Yeah, yeah, that's nice.
But no, those gestures actually they do matter, and I think that that does underpin a lot of kind of the psychological satisfaction and that sort of gift giving interaction. You've got your classic story, like I think, oh, Henry got the spirit of the thing, you know, the gift of the of the magic, his most famous story. You've read it. I'm assuming m oh, sorry, not trying to put you on the spot.
When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.
So I made an ass of you and me. It's a very famous story, very short. I think it's three pages long, something like that, three or four pages about young couple don't have a lot of money. He has a beautiful gold watch. It's his only good, nice possession.
She has just this beautiful, luxurious hair, and so they want to give each other a gift, and she sells her hair to buy a chain for his watch, and he sells his watch to buy you know, these combs for her hair that she had admired that were beautiful, and so it's, you know, the gift of the magi. They can't actually neither one of them will ever be able to use their gifts. Well, she will because hair grows back. But it's kind of this beautiful story about
kind of the intent of gift giving. All right, So let's just close with a gift giving lightning round. What's the best gift you've ever received from another poker player?
You know, the one that comes to mind. I was doing like a charitable event poker tournament, right, and like I busted out and then Annie Duke had made the final table and she had to leave, so she's like, Nate, you got my seat now. So it was kind of it was kind of in the range between a gift, but it was a very nice gesture to do both because it showed she had some respect that I'd hopefully play my hand with honor. And you know, I tried
to play aggressively. I tried to like play well, you know, had a huge I had a huge chip lead and then and then just ran really bad on all ends. So I finished third, and there was some threshold where you got some actually cool prize first and second, so I should have been looking at the bubble or poker player fans will know, right, basically, there was like a bubble for second place where you get like a cool award a gift. In the top two positions are like
the same thing. I forget what it was, a plaque, r I know, but something that was worth playing for. And then third place you get like a gift bag, and like I should have played for second place. Basically that's a good gift.
All the best gifts I've gotten from poker players have been experiences right where someone has treated me to a really memorable meal that I would never have otherwise been able to go to. Those are the things that I really you know, cherish and remember.
Best gift for the raveriance. So if you've read my book, you know that the two typologies the village, which is like the East Coast establishment, and the river which is poker and gambling and VC and all these things. So the best gift for ravarian This is where I wish we had, like a sponsor from like a poker training company'd be like get twenty percent off on gto express dot com with Pasco Maria and Nate twenty twenty four.
That was a great pivot Nate to a company that does not actually exist. Well done. No free promotion if you want if you want free, if you want free promotion, this is not the place.
Hey, I'll give you a free sports bin on Fanduels Shure, you probably don't want to. I'm not sure you want to do something like that and potentially hook somebody or whatever. But no, yeah, I do think like a poker train Like I think most of the best poker training materials
now are are online. We're not going to go about recommending particular sites, but like, yeah, I mean giving someone because those training sites aren't cheap either, So if you can afford it, maybe something people wouldn't think about buying themselves, like a poker training course could be a good gift for sure.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. How about best gift for the villager? So you know, listeners of our show probably know at this point what the villages, But the villages you are your answer to the river, the kind of the establishment, right, the kind of the collegiate types of the world.
Maybe like a gift certificate to sub stack. I don't think those things exist yet, but like, go read outside the village, read some heterodox yeah yeah, yeah, or maybe or maybe they're the one that needs, like to learn how to take risks. Maybe you just give them, Okay, you get I guess you can't like comp the casino or maybe you can't, right, Can you like give someone here's one hundred dollars to spend it Caesars or something?
I don't know. Maybe yeah, well, but if you're doing that, and I think the best gift for a ribeian would be not a poker course, but something that would that would actually like even them out. I would give them the like the Paris Review Interviews, which is one of my favorite gifts for people. It's a four volume set of interviews with some of the best writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. I think they learned a lot from that, so I would go in that direction. Let's even everyone out.
How much time should you spend picking out a gift before you buy something and move on?
I think it really depends, because you know, for the people who are kind of the closest to me, like I, it's one of these things where I'm constantly thinking about gifts, not on any conscious level, but like you pay attention to them, right, You pay attention to what they like, what they don't like, and so you kind of have ideas. It's not like all of a sudden I sit down and I'm like, Okay, this is what I want to get. But some people are really really difficult to shop for.
Like my dad is. He'll appreciate everything, like he's always, you know, really grateful, but like he's a hard person to think of gifts for because he's someone who is not at all materialistic, and like, you know, he he appreciates things, but like he doesn't want anything, and he can be you know, it can be hard because I think everyone loves him very very much and wants to give him gifts that he'll really appreciate, and so you have to just kind of think, like, okay, what is something?
So Like recently it was his seventieth birthday and we ended up kind of all of the kids got him a number of bottles of vintage port because he's a big port drinker from all the decades, and that was, you know, that was something that we had to we had to think for a while before we came up with. But you know, it's people who are not materialistic can be can be hard to shop for. All Right, Nate,
I have another question for you. Who is the most important non obvious person to get a gift for, Like you're building super office gossip, the least scrupulous dealer at the wind Like, who's that? Who's someone who you think is not someone who you'd immediately think about.
I was hoping you'd have a better I mean, we give we you know, we treat our door guy pretty well usually apart from that, Like, I don't know, maybe I'm inconsiderate and don't like tim No.
I think that I think that we we definitely. We leave tips for everyone who works at the building, and we actually give a gift. So there's a guy who's in charge of like the receiving area that's like where
all the packages go. And he's a very very important person because he could like bar entry for people, or he can like facilitate things for you a little bit, like you know, letting you use the service elevator, like slightly later than he's supposed to or slightly earlier, and like, you know, facilitate all of that process because like you know, everyone all of the contractors, like all deliveries, everything has to go through that service entry. Not food deliveries but
like appliance deliveries or like big deliveries. And you know, so we know that he loves nuts because he had mentioned it at some point, so we give him like one of those huge baskets of like fruit and nut assortments, and he really appreciates that, And I think that he likes us more because of that. So I think that that's, you know, we we like to give him something that's not money to make him know that we that we
appreciate him. So I think that, you know, those those types of people are really important and you want to give them special acknowledgment. After a quick break, we're going to be back.
Regifting, yeah or nah?
I absolutely I think that re gifting is totally fine depending on what it is, right Like, if someone gives you a gift that's like nice but not something you'll ever use, right, then give it to someone who will use it.
Now.
If it's like a personal gift, then don't regift obviously, And if it's something like I've gotten things that are just like these are usually from like sort of family members, like you know, extended family, where you're like, oh my god, this is just so ugly. It's not even funny, right, Like, what am I going to do with this? Like, or it might not be ugly, but it's just so not my taste, right, Like, it's just not something that I would ever want anywhere in my house? What do I
do with it? I don't want to give it to someone else because it's not reflective of my taste or what I would want. But I can't throw it out
because I feel bad. And then I feel like there's like a statute of limitations on like how long you have to keep a thing before you can toss it, and I always I still feel a little bit bad throwing it out, but I have thrown out in the past because at some point you're like, okay, when does this just like that, there's a statute of limitations right on on how long you have to keep that gift.
But I've definitely, especially if I'm open about it, I've regifted things like you know, if someone gives me something nice and I'm like, hey, like this is amazing, I already have one. Do you mind if I give it to my sister?
Well, that is difficult, right because like in some sense of things that people will like, they probably have you know, s's tricky if you don't know somebody that will to avoid Like yeah, I mean, what's that there's fungible versus non fungible. I mean like if someone likes whiskey, then they're never going to complain about getting more whiskey, right Whereas like if they have a certain book, if they've already have a copy of On the Edge, The Order
Risking Everything or The Biggest Bluff? Did that have a subtitle? What it's the.
Subtitle How I Learned to pay attention, master myself and win good subtitle? Yeah?
And although the author of those books might be happy if they already have a copy, then that can be tricky if you're trying to guess what's in their library. Books are probably in a tricky category there.
Yeah, and there are some books that I have various copies of and various editions. But there are also books that, like I will gift to someone else, and I think that that's totally fine, and you never want to be that person. By the way, if you're listening to the show, don't be the gift giver who's like, hey, I haven't seen gift X around, Like what'd you do with? Like
do not ask about your gifts? That is not the point, Like you have given the gift, Like that's it, right, Like do if someone offers feedback amazing if they don't, like, this is not the reason you gave a gift, right, That's why I also like get I get Matt when people are like when people expect thank you notes, like you know what, like thank you notes are really really nice, but like, don't put obligations on people, like, you know, I don't expect a thank you note, like, but there
are people who just feel like everything needs a thank you note. I know someone who writes a thank you note to a thank you note, and I'm like, dude, like that, when does this end? Like when do we stop banking each other? You know, just just like smile Nate, do you ever engage in any sort of like a tit for tat strategy when you come for when when it comes to gift giving, like you know, with basically.
The sterioration where basically we kind of very sporadic if we'll give gifts and things like and there's probably some tit for tat em.
Right, Oh, you didn't give me a gift, So that's the opposite tip for test. What about what about like, you know, do you because I have like some of my closest friends, like I always exchange gifts with like material gifts, and then others like we we don't do that, and we'll like go out for dinner, right, like, well we'll do something like that as a gift.
That's just a lot of regular platonic dinner dates. And there's certainly some conscientiousness about like the whole strategy about like who pays because you're trying to like assess, you know, if someone is way wealthier then but sometimes people want to pay, especially men, feel like if if you always pay right, so you kind of have some like equilibrium ware of like if you're the wealthier person and you're not like family or you're not like someone's former boss
or something, right, then the equilibrium is like the richer person pays like eighty percent of the time, I think, or something like that. Probably, Yeah, well.
I think that also, you know, I like exchanging dinners too, Like I think that there are lots of different ways for doing that. But yeah, it is interesting how different equilibriums will establish themselves in different situations. And I don't think that that's like a conscious tit for tat, even though with you and your partner maybe.
There's a lot of strategy and relationships by the way. You know, there's a book I read by I believe Kevin Zolman about like a gto guy to parenting basically huh, where it's like, yeah, kids are quite strategic and you know, you have to bargain and it's repeated game and things like that, and I think there's I think there's something to that for many dimensions of relationship. Are there particularly nitty or degenerate gifts that you've ever received.
Let's see, I don't know that those are hard questions for me to answer, Like what even is a nitty gift? Is a nitty gift? Like, how do we define that? Is it a cheap gift? Or is it or is it a like play it safe gift like a gift certificate? Right? Like, I think that both of those things are nitty.
But like, I mean my family one time they gave out gifts of like the Iraq study Group report. I thought that was kind of a nitty gift.
That's amazing.
I love it, Yeah, I love it. Yeah?
What about the most degen gift? Once again, how do we define that? Is it like ridiculously expensive splurgy or is it like one hundred bucks to spend at Caesar's, which is a very deja gift by the way, where here's like some slot credit again very You know.
In college, I had a rave phase, and I think the statute of limitations on this has passed, so I can so anyway, So my friends and I went to like a rave called even further. I think it was in either Roal, Illinois maybe Wisconsin. Drive to get there. It's outdoors for a couple of days, right, and like.
That seems like a good location for a rave And.
My friend was going around trying to get drugs and uh, I don't know if sheould be telling the story, but I guess I'm halfway through, so I have to continue now. And this guy was tripping his balls off and gave my friend an entire sheet one hundred tabs of acid of LSD. WHOA, So that's pretty that's pretty degenerate. I would say, yeah.
He probably regretted that once he was no longer tripping his balls off.
Yeah, I know, I know, with the retail value in nineteen ninety eight or whatever is kind of my little yeah, but but yeah, that's that's kind of be the top d GM category for me.
I can't top that night, I cannot top that. And on that note, may you all have a very pleasant gift giving experience this holiday season. And remember it's I know this is a cliche, but we've talked about in the past some cliches are good cliches and their cliches for a reason. And it's the thought that counts. Really is a good cliche, right, Like, it really is the thought that counts, And that would be my gto way of giving gifts.
Maria, you and I will see each other next week and we'll literally see hopefully some of the listeners at the poker meetup, which again, Maria, what's the date.
December eleventh, which is a Wednesday at noon.
It's twenty twenty four, that's this year.
Yes, yes, at noon at Bellaggio Poker Room. Really excited and hope to see and meet some of you there. Let us know what you think of the show. Reach out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kondikova.
And Bobby Nate Silver.
The show is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.
If you like the show, please rate and review us so all the people can find us too. And if you want to listen to an AD free version, sign up for Pushkin Plus For six, ten and nine a month you get access to AD free listening. Thanks for tuning in to
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