Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with me your girl Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks, I cannot express to you how much weather changes my mood. I don't know if I am the only one. I'm surely not, because there is a thing called seasonal depression.
But my god, I need sunshine. I need blue skies, I need birds chirping, because just dealing with this consistent doom, scrolling headlines of death and despair and just the grifters getting away with everything, you need something, you know, and nature is my thing. So happy, happy spring that we're beginning to see here in New York, and I hope
where you are, folks. I'm really excited about the conversation that I'm bringing to today by author Mark Renk, who is the author of the book The Random Factor, how chance and luck profoundly shape our lives and the world around us. I love this conversation because one of my favorite movies, which we discuss briefly in this episode, is Sliding Doors. It is a nineteen nineties classic with Gwyneth Paltrow set in London, and you know their metro has
sliding doors as do most. And the movie shapes up with her character making the train, and you follow that story, and her character missing the train, and you follow that story. And there are all of these moments that we have every day in our lives that if something were to have changed, we would not have met said person, talk to a person, you know, the course of our lives shift. And I think about that as it pertains to our
justice system, as it pertains to our education system. Think about it, you know, I think about having had some of the professors and teachers that I had in middle
school and high school and college. In some cases, if I had had and this is you know, a personal one, which is the only regret that I truly truly have in my life thus far, because I try to live a life where I don't have regrets and I can see the lessons and the learnings from the decisions that I've made, even if they have resulted in you know, grief and trauma, because it is unavoidable if we are really living life. But I had a professor in college.
And if you've been listening to me for years now, you've heard this story. I'm declared political science major, and my plan had always been to go from undergrad to law school. I'd always wanted to be a lawyer. And one of my political science professors, during his office hours, told me that I wasn't smart enough to go to law school. And you imagine this as this older white man telling a young black woman who is still a teenager.
I think I was maybe like eighteen or nineteen at the time, that I'm not smart enough to go to law school. And that was a really defining moment in my life and would be in my career because I didn't go. I would again think about it when I was in my mid twenties in my first job as a lobbyist, and everyone in you know, my office, was a lawyer. We were all making the same money, except I didn't have the law school debt. And I'd ask my boss at that time, you know, do you think
you know? I keep him in and hawing about whether or not I should go to law school, and he was just like, Danielle, I'm going to tell you something. Honestly, if law school were free, I would tell you to go right now, just for the sheer knowledge of it. I think that you would enjoy it. But the fact is that the trajectory that you're on and lobbying and
working on the hill and bah blah like it. You know, will just incur a lot of debt if you don't plan on going to a firm and essentially dedicating the next five to ten years to kind of paying off the debt that you're going to incur. And I think you would be miserable working at a firm. And it was those sliding door moments in my life that kind of set my life in the direction and my profession in the direction that it went in. I talk to
lawyers all the time. I engage, you know, with legal analysts and you know, and legal scholars and all of those things. And it is the one regret that I had that what would have happened if I had had a different professor in college on that day that said I think that you should go. I think it's going to take a lot of work and effort, but like, we need more minds like yours. Right, where would I have ended up? What would I have done? Who would
I have become? And I think about that often. And so this book by Mark Rang is really just interesting. I think that it has us kind of take a pause and think about our lives and think about the trajectory that we've been on, whether we've made different pivots and pauses and missteps and what have you, but how it really does shape and change our lives. So that
conversation is coming up next, folks. I am very happy to welcome back to wok Affi Daily, Mark Robert Renk, who is the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at Washington University in Saint Louis and is the author of the new book The Random Factor, How chance and luck profoundly shape our lives and the world around us. Mark, I think that the idea of randomness and chance is so interesting to me. I was just saying to you that one of my favorite movies from the nineties is
Sliding Doors with Gyneth Paltrow. And for folks who who may or may not have ever seen it, you know, it's a two track story of what happens when you know, this character gets on the train versus missus the train and how her life is completely different, and then we as the audience realize which is real and what really happened on that day with the train And talk to
us about this book. Your new book, and this idea of randomness and how it plays against I guess our thought in this country, at least what we've been indoctrinated into thinking about as rugged individualism, and this idea of pulling ourselves up and how that's counter to randomness and luck.
Yeah, yeah, first of all, it's great to be with you Danielle again. And yeah, that movie is one of my favorites, and it really kind of exemplifies what the book is about. So I, you know, a lot of my prior work has been on issues of poverty and inequality and things like that. But in an earlier book on the American Dream, I interviewed a lot of different people and sort of delved into their lives and how
their lives played out. And one of the things that I hadn't anticipated was that so many people mentioned, you know, well, if this hadn't happened, if that had, if this chance kind of event, if I hadn't had that telephone call or missed it or whatever it was, my life would be really, really different. And I started looking around, and there really hasn't been a lot written in the at least of the social sciences on the role the chance
and luck and randomness play. So that's how I got kind of involved in this, and it's just a fascinating subject. And as you point out, I think we, particularly as a Americans, tend to downplay the role of chance and luck. You know, we we do it on our own, the rugged individualist, you know, we have control of our destiny. Well, you know what, it's it's not that simple. There's a lot of randomness and chance things that affect our lives. And so that's what the book really kind of plays
out in many different ways. So, you know, the first part of the book is looking at kind of the world around us and how history and natural science have been shaped by that. Middle part of the book kind of focuses on our lives and how they have been shaped by chance and luck, And the last part of the book talks about what we can learn from this of living in a random world, what lessons can we learn, which is which I think is also really interesting.
Because I think that this idea that I think even just the idea of their being destiny right, of their being universal unknowns right, and the fact that things sort of just happen, right, and if they sort of just happened, I think that that means for some people, then we're not in control, right, Like we're not in control of our destiny. It's all been pre written, right. But I think that what you're discussing here is the fact that a lot of things that we even understand as our norm.
Let the one of the examples that you give is around like penicillin, right, and the fact that how is that discovered by accident? Right of leaving a Petri dish out right and then figuring out what happened the next day. And so this idea that randomness doesn't necessarily mean well, I guess let me ask you this, Does randomness mean that we're just not in control? Right in the in the extreme sense of the thing, like I might as well just lay down on the couch because everything is already written.
Right right?
How do those two things play?
Yeah, yeah, great question. So I think there's two ways to think about that. One is that, yes, there's a lot of randomness and chance that occurs in individuals' lives. But the other side of that is what do you do when a chance event happens to you? What do you do when something lucky or unlucky? What is your response to it, So it's not simply a fata complete.
I mean, there are lots of things we have no control over, but we do have control over how we respond to those things, So there's an interaction that's going on. The Other thing that I talk about in the book is, you know, I'm a sociologist by training, and so you know, sociologists look at the role of social class and race and gender and the effects that those have on our lives. And those are all you know, absolutely those have a
strong effect. But the way that I describe it is think of those as strong currents that are pushing our lives in certain directions. But within those currents are all kinds of ripples of randomness and ripples of chance. And that's the way to think about how some of these larger forces come fine with randomness to have an effect in our lives. So it's not simply one or the other, it's really both working together. And I think that's an interesting way again to think about this.
Yeah, you know, and I think that what happens is when we have conversations about destiny, about randomness, right about luck, is that it is a lot more layered than people think. It isn't as black and white. And I want to get into the conversation around why you say that those that happen to be in lower economic classes or status like are seemingly more affected by quote unquote bad luck than others. So let unpack that for us.
Yeah, that's again a great question. And so so what I talk about is that certain events that are chance and random can have different implications depending on where you are, for example, in terms of your social class, your economics sort of well being. So folks that are you know, lower income or in poverty, certain events, random events, for example, just say your car breaks down, it's going to have much more of a profound influence than it will for
somebody that has a lot of money. And this is another interesting component I think in this book, which says that chance and luck can actually exacerbate inequalities. You know, Billy Holliday had the famous you know the song God Bless the Child where where she said them that's God shall get them, that's not shall lose. So the Bible says,
and it's still is news. And the idea is that if you have advantages, probably you're going to have more good breaks than if you don't have advantages where you're going to have more bad breaks. And in this way, chance and luck can widen the inequalities that we find in society. And that's a really I think again, that's a really interesting way to think about a lot of
people don't talk about that at all. So so that's a way in which a chance event can have very different implications depending on where you are sort of in the social structure, you know.
And it's interesting when you use like kind of this idea of let's say you know a car breaking down, right, which is you know, don't necessarily know when that's going to happen. Or let's say you're getting it, you get a flat tire, right, Well, if I'm driving and I get a flat tire, but I'm not a wage worker, right, so I'm able to call in and say, hey, I'm not going to make it into the office today. You know, I had this happen, it is more likely, I guess.
The question is is it more likely then that because you're at a higher economic status, there's a bit you have more control in some sense right of how you're perceived and how a situation will be taken, where it can be still an inconvenience, but not catastrophic.
Right, That's exactly right. So in other words, think of it as having the person with more resources, it just has more leeway in terms of dealing with that chance event. Whereas if you are right living on the edge and you're you know, a wage worker and you've got to get into work and this happens to you, it can be catastrophic. You can lose your job. You know, that might be it. And so again the same event, the
flat tire, but playing out very differently. Another example that I give in the book is coming down with a medical diagnosis of say cancer or something like that, you know, which is you know, certainly awful. But if you have the resources, you probably got an earlier diagnosis, you probably have access to more healthcare resources. Then if you're in poverty where you might not have that, And so the same event plays out different The same chance event plays
out differently. We know that actually a lot of cancers are simply random. It's random mutation. You know, there's an environmental effect and there's a genetic effect, but there's also very much of a random effect.
There, you know. I also think about homelessness, right, I think about homelessness in the sense that you have the people that will say, well, I'm not going to give my hard earned money to this homeless person on the street over here with a sign they need to quote unquote get a job. But the way in which our system is set up is that you need to have a phone number, you need to have an address, you need to have all of these proofs of identity right
in order to even be considered. And so again, if you have had the unfortunate luck right of losing housing and you're in and out of shelters or on the street, the idea that you're going to be able to pick yourself up and move into a different economic station is almost nonexistent.
Right, And this gets back to sort of your original point about rugged individualism that we think of. You know, well, just anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and so on and so forth. And what you're pointing out is, no, that's not necessarily the case. That you know, depending on where you are in society, there's a lot of forces and factors that may be working against you and make it much more difficult. You know, one of the things
I talk about in earlier work on poverty is. I give the example of sort of an altered game of monopoly. So we often think about you know, let's imagine there's three players. They all start out with fifteen hundred dollars. They you know, who's going to win and lose. Well, there's going to be some luck involved the roll of the dice and some skill involved. Okay, but now let's imagine an altered game of monopoly, which I would say is much more of the way the United States operates
in other countries. Player one starts out with five thousand dollars, player two with fifteen hundred, and player three with two hundred and fifty dollars, and maybe player one has some properties too. Well, we're still going to have the same rules, we're still going to roll the dice, but given those prior advantages, player one is going to win almost all of the games because it's just stacked against players two
and three. And that's really the reality. So again, you've got chance in luck playing out, but the implications are much different.
I mean, you just laid out like that's the difference between equality and equity. Right reading about that, I'm I'm like, that's like, that's that's it. Right there, which is equality. Is like, well, we all will have the same chance to roll the dice, right, isn't that Isn't that fair? Well, it's like, well no, because we are all starting in a different place with more or less amounts of money.
So what difference does it make if we have the same chance to roll the dice if we're actually not starting in the same place.
Right, It's so funny, you should say, because I just like an hour ago, is reading an article about equity and equality. It is so funny. But that's exactly right. I mean, this is a good example of that of that equality and equity are quite different in this context.
Yeah, because I you know, I think about it too. And let me ask you this. You know, because you're in a in a in a university setting. You know, we're looking at right now at tax on diversity, equity and inclusion, right that are that are coming in and they're in they're targeting universities, and they're targeting you know, thought centers and intellectualism, which is what universities and colleges
are supposed to be. And the idea around diversity, equity and inclusion is just that to create more inclusion, to create more opportunity from those that have been barred from admission into into different universities and colleges, into different industries of employment, and creating some way, right, some path forward of equity, and it not just being about the roll of the dice. We need to be more intentional about
who has been included and excluded. How does it How does this randomness right and this idea of you know, of D and I and where we are with the pushback kind of play into how policies are created again around this rugged individual like, oh, everyone should be able to quote unquote pull themselves up, but we know factually that that is not the case.
Right, And so here's here's an interesting sort of angle on this, and that is, you know, we've been talking about rugged individualism. The other thing that that America has really put a strong emphasis on is the idea that we are a meritocracy, that you get what you deserve.
And in the book I talk about there's some really interesting analysis that show that those who have extreme wealth as well as those who experience poverty, there's a lot of luck in Now that's not to say that, you know, hard work and individualism aren't important, but for those who really make it. There's a strong luck component. For example, think about the entertainment industry. If don't to anybody there, they will always tell you if I hadn't gotten that break,
I wouldn't be where I am today. And that's just sort of a little example of that. So, you know, we think, well, we live in a meritocracy and people get what they deserve. Well, you know what, with chance and luck, people don't always get what they deserve. Maybe they get more than they deserve, or maybe they don't
get what they should deserve. And so, in going back to your point about policy and thinking about policies, one of the things that this injects into the discussion is the idea of the importance of a social safety net and social insurance because what happens. You know, this is my work on poverty, which shows that most Americans will experience poverty at some point in their lives. And people say, how can that be. The reason is, over thirty or forty years, things happen to people out of the blue,
losing a job, getting sick, a family splitting up. And when those things happen in the United States, there's not a lot to protect people from poverty. So one of the things that I one of the big arguments I make is that because of chance and luck, and particularly bad luck, we should think about having a robust social safety net to protect people when these things happen. And European countries do a much better job of that than we do in the United States.
You know, And I think about it too as you're saying, that's what just popped into my mind, right, which was a social experiment in and of itself, is COVID, right Lee. So here we have this global health pandemic hits every single continent, hits you know, every single person in a
different way. But those again who had the privilege and the ability and the economic status to be able to work from home versus those whose work were quired them to be in person, to put themselves in harms way for folks who had maybe some cushion in terms of the ability that if they were to lose their job,
they weren't going to lose their homes. Or we saw food lines right in communities and in neighborhoods that we never even knew had food pantries, right, And so again it was this randomness to some extent of this global health pandemic, but how it hit. We couldn't look away and say that people didn't need help, like, oh, you were getting what you deserved in terms of the outcome here.
Right right, right, No, that's a great example. It's like, yeah, nobody deserved what happened with COVID and that was a very and again it was actually very random. There was a mutation, you know, it started in the fish market in China and stuff like that and spread, but the impact that that had was very It had a very different impact depending on where you were again in society. So again it's another example, and it's example of things.
Bad things can happen out of the blue, and what we should think about is, Okay, why don't we put some things in place to protect people. That's the whole idea, For example, of insurance. This is why you buy home insurance or automobile insurance. You don't think I'm going to have an accident tomorrow, but you do think I might have an accident at some point. My homemate burned down, and I want to have protection if that should happen.
And that's the same idea of a social safety net and having kind of a robust social safety net.
How do you think that we go about and I feel like this happens probably every presidential election cycle, but particularly this one, where you have Republicans, for instance, talking about taking away social safety nets, talking about letting, you know, folks essentially roll the dice on their life and if it, you know, if you're not wealthy, then go with God. Right. But it's this idea that again, people get what they deserve. So if you are poor, that is of your own doing.
It's not the government's quote unquote responsibility to do anything for you. And then again on the flip side of that, if you are wealthy, well then you must be a genius, right and you you know what I'm saying, and so and and celebrated in that way, and we equate that wealth with celebrity and celebration the way that we equate poverty with you know, damnation and you know and pity.
Oh yeah, I mean absolutely. You know, I've we talked earlier about you know, I've done a lot of work on poverty and inequality and the whole idea of you know, deservedness underlies the whole issue of poverty, as it does with wealth. I mean, there's no question about it. And that's why this goes counter to that story. This is saying, you know what, it's not simply a meritocracy and people get what they deserve. There's a lot of randomness involved.
And you know, just as an example, I've talked to hundreds of people. You know, I'm pretty dire economic straits, and to say that, you know, they deserve what happened to them is ridiculous. These are folks that work just as hard as me or you or anybody else. They want the best for their family and their kids. But they were dealt a bad hand. They got a bad hand.
And you know, it's not to say that. Of course, there is such a thing as as agency and motivation and all that stuff, but we need to put it into this wider context. And that's that. I just think that's so important. So, but you're exactly right. I mean, there's this story of you know, well, folks that you know are poor deserve it, and folks that are wealthy
deserve it too. And therefore the position that comes from that is, well, then we don't need to have social policies to address this because it's your own problem, it's not mine.
Right, And I think that that again it goes back to the top about rugged individualism versus the responsibility of community. Right that if I can put the onus on you to make your to make your life better, then I don't take I don't have any shared responsibility and how your life turns.
Out exactly that's exactly right. So it's it relieves me of any responsibility. Look, it's your problem, not mine, and therefore I don't need to pay taxes to support you. So that's the other thing, you know, And again this is this is not the reality. Like I'm into. I'm into sort of research and evidence, and I can tell you that is not the reality of the situation.
Yeah, well, well, Mark, what are your hopes for the random factor and what folks take away from your new book?
Well, first of all, I hope it does exceedingly well, yes, let's keep our fingers crossed. And yeah, you know, I think the message you know what I said at the very beginning, it's sort of at the end of the book.
I have a couple chapters where I stop and I say, well, okay, if you have this idea that there's a lot of randomness, what can we learn from this, How can we better ourselves as a result, you know, And there's many example sort of lessons like you but one is just to have more empathy towards folks and to realize, you know, there but for the grace of God go I also to have a bit of humility, like you know, maybe I had some good breaks and I should be kind
of humble about that. And as instead of saying, well, I deserve everything I get. So I think there's there's there's a lot of really interesting components there, and I hope folks, you know, pick up on this. And I must say, I think it's a great read. I think it's it's so fascinating and people I think will really enjoy it.
I love it, folks. The book is the random factor, how chance and luck profoundly shape our lives and the world around us. It is out now. Mark, always a great conversation when you come, always always getting me thinking and in different ways. So I hope that you'll you'll come back again soon.
I'd love to come back, Danyelle. And my last words of wisdom are to count your lucky stars.
Very I love that.
That is it for me today, Dear friends on woke app as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.