Trump’s First Three Weeks: What Actually Matters?

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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Konakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

Today on the show, we're talking about the Super Bowl, which was a tremendously...

disappointing result if if if you don't like seeing men crying or the kansas city chiefs america's team losing, but we'll talk about how that went and our bet.

Yes.

And then we're going to talk about Trump, what's been going on in the last few weeks, and kind of what the important things are to focus on, right?

Where should we be

diverting our attention?

What should we be not looking at at all?

Because obviously there's a barrage of things that are being flung at us.

And it's very important, as we've said over and over, to focus.

And then how to find the Holy Grail, a nice apartment in New York City.

Yes, good luck with that search, Nate.

And after that, we will actually have a special segment for our Pushkin Plus subscribers, answering a timeless question from a listener.

How do you pick a good doctor?

All right, Nate.

Let's talk about the Super Bowl.

As one of the few people rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs and betting not necessarily for a plus CV bet, but following my heart, my partners from Kansas City, I thought that game was a fucking nightmare, I have to say.

I don't know.

And to see, I'm not anti-Tom Brady, but to see Tom Brady gloating that he's going to keep his GOAT status for now, Patrick, you know, I've been in this situation 19 times and Patrick.

It just fucking bugged me.

It was an, I really am bothered by sports, right?

You assume you lose half the time.

And this like, this bugged me, Maria.

I mean, I like Philly.

Philly is a good city.

Let's, let's say that, like, I'm usually pro-Philly.

That whole region, that whole Philly, Baltimore, sure, Maryland region's kind of a weird region.

You know, they have interesting accents, interesting food, right?

I feel like it's, it's, I take that region over New England.

Oh, interesting.

Well, as a New Englander, I actually happen to agree.

I'm, you you know, I'm a Bostonian who's not, who's not a huge Boston fan.

So there you have it.

But I actually have the same beef with Philly that I have with Boston, which is that their sports fans can be really nasty.

I don't like nasty sports fans.

I like people who like are sports fans, you know, and have good spirit, but don't get don't get like really mean when they win.

And I don't know, Philly's not as bad as Boston, but Boston, I think we've talked about this on the show before, is awful, right?

When the Red Sox finally won the World Series and reversed the curse, they were setting cars on fire in Harvard Square.

Like, what the actual fuck?

I mean, you're kind of deprived of like sunlight up there.

There's not much fucking sunlight in Boston in the winter.

That's very true.

That's very true.

But there's not much sunlight in New York right now either.

So, so yes, I don't like it when sports fans get really nasty.

But I do like Philly.

And I think that this is all good.

I also don't like gloating.

So I'm with you that the Tom Brady thing is a little bit off-putting luckily i did not listen to you i did not put any money on the chiefs so i'm good even though you advised me to you know at least it wasn't a bet where you ever had hope you know the hope was immediately like i said that one interception in the first quarter

yes and by the way dear listeners i did watch the whole thing um because first of all i needed to watch from the beginning because i needed to know that i won our prop bet about crying which i i'm not even sure have we reviewed the video on this i'm not even sure about this is this is so funny so all of the sports books have called it in my favor and nate and i had a text exchange at the time we had different terms we had different terms he said a tear i saw tears not crying but a tear i saw tears in eyes and there was even someone wiping away a tear to which nate wrote so this is our text exchange i i i actually sorry nate this is this is about to become a public record so someone one of our um you know loyal listeners on Twitter, the moment this happened, tweeted at us, at both of us saying, they just showed a player wiping away a tear during the national anthem exclamation point.

And I was like, hell yeah, I know they did because I'm watching.

If a tear falls in the forest and no one is there to see it,

is the man crying?

And so, and so I sent this to Nate and Nate said, saw tears being wiped, but maybe not actual tears.

And I said, dude, no.

And I still stand by my dude no.

Resolute.

We're going to have to go to the video.

I mean, this is a small bit.

I'm not going to, you know, I mean, the Chiefs thing already has me devastated, right?

But like, you know, I don't know about that.

Nate, you have to, you have to embrace it.

I win.

We negotiated the terms carefully.

We did, but there was a tear and it was being wiped away.

Okay.

The terms were, is there a player or coach who has a tear in their eye during the national anthem?

I think, I think you have to actually

see the tear, not just the implication of the tear, but that's, that's, those were the terms that we carefully negotiated.

There was you could see the tear and whenever you saw the players eyes You could actually see them welling up which is one of the things I said you know the welling up with tears Okay, let me say this.

Let's say we bet that a McDonald's hamburger would be shown on the broadcast and what you see is the residue of a Big Mac.

You see the wrapper and some of the, I don't know, but no, we saw the big we saw the Big Mac.

We saw the final bite of the Big Mac being consumed and that would count.

Because yeah, we saw the final bite and then someone wiping away their mouth.

So,

I think that I won this bet.

Nate clearly

has some issues with it, but I will side with all of the sports books, with our loyal fans who all say they also saw tears.

Nate, I think I got this one.

And I think, what did you, I think you lost 10 bucks, right?

We're okay.

I'll buy you a beer for your tears.

All right, perfect.

I don't drink beer, but you can buy me half a glass of wine.

Okay.

Because I don't think $10 is going to do the, we'll do a half pour.

You owe me a half pour of wine.

Ironically, the less you pay for wine, the bigger, the better the poor.

It's a little secret.

Yeah.

Oh, I also wanted to.

correct the record from last week when we were talking about the coin flip.

So I actually tracked down the study that looked at this.

And it's by Percy Diakonis, who does really fun work in statistics.

And it turns out that the coin is slightly more likely to land on the side from which it started.

So that's when it's a human person tossing it.

So if it starts with heads up, it's more likely to land heads.

Like 50 point, it's not, it's not, it's less than a half a percent.

Like it's tiny, tiny, tiny, and you need thousands and thousands of tosses.

But when it's a human being and not like a computer, not a simulation, it turns out that the coin is more likely to land on the side, which was facing up at the start of the toss.

So I just want to throw that out there for people who are doing these bets.

I think I did sight tales, right?

I got that right and the Chiefs got that right.

And that was the only thing.

Yeah, so that was also the only thing that went right over the course of the entire.

Yep.

So the weight also matters.

So we're both, I just wanted to make sure to put that study out there because I think it's a lot of fun.

And I think it's kind of cool that there's human error, right, that's introduced in the way that we the way that we toss coins.

I mean, you know, they could do rock, paper, scissors, right?

Which adds like an element of strategy and game theory.

Yeah, that would be fun.

They should, they should should get the

Japanese team to do this because I think they're the best at Rochambeau.

I think they always win the championships.

So they need like a backup team, their quarterback to do the rock, paper, scissors.

WSORPS, World Series of Rochambeau or Rock, Paper, anyway.

Yep.

There you go.

All right.

So that's the Super Bowl.

Nate.

I'm sorry that your team lost.

I'm happy that I won our prop bet.

And,

you know, I think we both agree that people gloating is never a good look.

No, I mean, so, you know, for example, for example, you wouldn't have mentioned the prop bet five times here, I think.

Just once in our summation of the segment, which we always do.

We always sum up what we've talked about.

You're also bragging about a bet where you minus 400.

I bet the sum will come up tomorrow, minus a million.

All right, all right, all right.

We have other things to discuss.

That is true.

We have important things to discuss.

So let's talk about what has been going on in the last few weeks of the Trump presidency.

So he's been, you know, splashing around quite a bit.

trying different things, all of these executive orders, seeing what's going to stick.

And as we've said before on the show, a lot of this is distraction, right?

That is his tactic.

How do you distract people from figuring out what's actually important and keep them just constantly putting out small fires so that when the big one one comes along, you kind of just let it go.

So let's talk about what is actually important to focus on and what we can ignore for now.

So maybe as a start, Nate, let's just talk about some general heuristics, some good rules for choosing what to pay attention to.

So when you try to figure out, okay, what should I be focusing on?

What comes to mind?

How do you figure out priorities, whether it's Trump or anything else, just in general?

What am I going to pay attention to?

Well, my process is weird because I'm thinking about like, what things can I write about?

So, and also I have this kind of like disdain for like

the daily politics crap.

Like I never watch cable news, right?

I read the newspapers, I guess, or read the digital version of the newspapers.

But like, so I, you know, to me, it's easy to say, like, the thing that gets partisans wiled up on like X, Blue Sky, whatever else, like, don't pay attention to that, generally speaking, right?

Because they are trying to like,

you know, it's like following your the Yankees or your favorite baseball team where it's like, yeah, there's got to be a headline every day.

And like, it probably isn't that important in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah, I think, I think that that's actually

an important thing.

I too try to kind of stay away from daily news because it's really, really easy to get completely kind of caught up in this attention hijacking, right?

And like the culture of momentary outrages.

Oh, he said this, this happened.

And if you're too online, I think that nothing hijacks your attention more than that, right?

Like the overly like being too involved in all of this discourse and every single thing that comes up.

I think that that distracts you from bigger picture things.

So something I always ask myself is, okay, you know, how important is this in the long term?

What are the implications?

Is this something that we're going to care about in a week?

Right.

Is this something that we're going to care about in a month?

If the answer is yes, okay, maybe pay attention to it.

If the answer is no, then I can safely avoid this particular conversation and not be a part of it.

Like if you go to like msnbc.com right now, right, read the headlines.

One's about Kanye West, one's about like Steve Bannon and then Eric Adams, right?

One's about Rob Lagovich, the former governor of Illinois, who has got pardoned or is going to get pardoned.

You know, Trump's frustration with deportation numbers will likely lead to more chaos, right?

Is a headline of one article.

So it's all stuff that like

is designed to get an emotional reaction out of partisans.

Yes,

can i make a confession and i hope that they uh well they will take it personally but i hope this does not affect my future career i don't think i've ever gone to msnbc.com to the front page like that is just not a website that i have ever visited unless someone has given me a link to a specific article that I should be reading for some specific reason, right?

There are places that are meant to hijack your attention.

And that, to me, just like Fox News, like on the other side, to me, those are, those are places that are meant to kind of foment outrage and hijack your attention.

And I just try to stay out of that, right?

Like that is not how I want to consume my news.

And we'll be back right after this.

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So, Nate, what are some of the things that Trump has done that are actually important, meaningful, consequential that we should actually be paying attention to?

The fact that the Trump administration seems a little bit indifferent toward separation of powers.

You know, I had this article called 113 Predictions About Trump and like lists of various things could go right or or wrong.

And, you know, I had what's the chance that he'll disobey a Supreme Court order, which I had a 10%, which sounds low because usually it's concerned Supreme Court, right?

So it's like he would if he could, but like, but, you know, we are getting more and more issues where

they're like, okay, go ahead and we're going to do a bunch of shit that we know is illegal and

go ahead and stop us.

We have first mover advantage and then we will interpret very liberally every ambiguity and things like that.

And, you know, and so

that whole thrust of things, I mean, I, you know, I,

people start all of a sudden saying, no, this is a coup and Auto Gope is a self-coup where you get in power and then destroy.

And like,

I think the problem is that like the audience for this message are people who are like already convinced.

And because it's this like abstract thing

and, you know, the thing is, like, he's targeting USAID,

You know, foreign assistance, even though if you kind of look from an EV standpoint, probably has a lot of utilitarian benefit.

Foreign aid is not a very popular program, right?

A lot of the other executive orders are doing are things that are popular enough or they have a mandate to do based on the election, on the immigration stuff, for example.

And so I don't know.

What do you think, Maria?

No, I mean, I totally agree with you that like number one issue, which underlies a lot of what's going on, is a lack of regard for separation of power.

And I don't think that this is just Trump.

I think that this is also kind of Congress lacking a backbone and not being like, hey, you're taking away powers that should be ours, right?

Instead of doing that and being like, hey, guys, like this is ours.

We're the ones who control the purse strings, right?

We're the ones who do these allocations.

The budget committee matters.

Instead, they're like being, okay, you know, you gave us an, you gave another executive order.

Okay, that's cool.

Like, it's what we want, so it's fine.

But I think that it's very short-term thinking, and I think that's incredibly dangerous, right?

So that to me is very worrisome because we want a government that does check each other, that, you know, that is responsive.

And we do want a judicial system that is listened to.

Like, it's actually going to be very scary if.

Trump just flat out defies a judicial order, right?

Like, what's going to happen then?

Is the rest of government going to grow a spine or not?

So I agree with you that that is very important.

And I also, but there are other issues that I think are part of this that I think are also worth paying attention.

I actually think that cutting the funding to USAID is

a major issue and not good because you can obviously frame it in, oh, like we only care about America, right?

America first.

But if you think about what aid is actually being cut, right, people are not getting life-saving medications.

Like you actually have a body count, right?

You will have people who will die without access to these medications, without access to some of these programs.

And so I think that's a huge deal.

And people are just looking the other way and saying, well, I don't care.

It's not me.

Could be you, right?

Like that, that's actually incredibly important.

Look, it could be an opportunity for private charitable organizations, which are sometimes more efficient than the government, to step up.

But yeah, look, you almost can kind of like.

The equilibrium is such that you know it probably is pretty good from utilitarian standpoint because it's unpopular, right?

For America to do something that doesn't help us directly, and of course, you know, having more stability in the world can help us directly, can help us alliances, but like, it kind of has to be good in order for us to tolerate it.

You know, exactly.

The third thing that I would say, though, since I do come from academia and I am very well aware of the importance of research, I'm actually very worried about the NIH funding as well, which is part of what Trump has been trying to do over and over and over.

Like he has tried to do this repeatedly.

And I think that it's really going to,

if it holds, right, because people are actually trying to protest this, then capping the indirect costs at 15% is going to be a huge blow to research in the United States, to innovation in the United States, to the number of people who can and will stay here.

And I think it's actually something that will make us a...

whole lot less competitive on the global arena than we currently are.

Like it's a big fuck you to research.

By the way, this is from someone who has written about and talked about the fact that there's tons of administrative bloat in academia, right?

This ain't the way to get rid of it.

And this is aiming at something very different, despite what the rhetoric might say.

Yeah, I mean, this is also one of the, you know, I've had enough fights with enough like woke academics over the years and criticisms over the politicization of research and just not politicized, but just kind of crappy research that's, you know, p-hacking and things like that.

You know, look, the good news is that in a long word, it might make all of this more popular again, but like we're only three weeks in and I understand that people feel overwhelmed.

Yeah.

And as you say, like it is showing a disdain for a very real public good, right?

For things that help both the United States and people individually for really crucial research.

And, you know, I was I was talking to my sister who is an MD PhD who runs a lab whose funding is getting cut, who, you know, it doesn't know if the NIH grant that she was supposed to get is actually going to come through.

And she's doing like life-saving work with infants and infant health and all of these different things.

And we were just talking about it, and I was trying to calm her down because obviously like she's very upset.

And I was like, look, like, you know, if this makes him unpopular enough, if he tries to do too much, then in two years, you know, Democrats should be able to win the midterm elections and blah, blah, blah.

And she's like, yeah, but two years could actually be enough to kill a lot of crucial research programs and to get people to leave the United States, right?

To get some research, to go to Europe, to go to Asia, to go to places that will actually be able to carry out the types of work that they need to be carrying out.

And so I think that in general, we've seen both from Elon and from Trump this like anti-public good, but also anti-science stance that is really playing out here.

And it affects not just science, right?

One of the reasons that

the NIH was so important was because the federal funding actually helped a lot of other research go forward that wouldn't have otherwise been able to go forward.

Because private corporations tend to give a lot less money and tend to have a lot lower limits on that overhead.

universities were able to kind of make up the shortfall because they had NIH funding.

And this helped funding in the arts, right?

Funding in areas in the humanities that won't otherwise get funding because

there ain't much money for them.

I mean, look, maybe forcing people to be more efficient isn't such a bad thing.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

It's like.

This isn't efficiency.

This is, it's already incredibly efficient is what I was telling you.

Even though, even though, like I said, academia?

No, academia is bloated.

Like we started this conversation.

I am very anti-academic bloat, but this isn't the way.

This is like taking a hammer and being like, let me just crush academia.

And I think you agree with that, as opposed to saying, like, okay, let's figure out where inefficiencies are.

It's the opposite of what we talked about last week with the FAA and like how you were saying, well, just throwing more money at it.

And I was like, no, don't throw more money at it.

Try to figure out how the money's allocated.

How do we do this more efficiently?

Here, it's the exact opposite.

It's just saying, well, let's just take money away.

There are entire universities that actually cannot have a research program.

program without this.

You know, sure, like a Harvard, a Yale will probably be fine, even though the research is going to get worse because they can figure out how to deal with the shortfall.

But schools that aren't like that are not going to be able to.

I mean, they're charging students, was it 80,000?

You know, I mean, look, use that money.

Hey, they do.

That's the thing.

Use your money.

Use your endowments.

They do.

They have way more money than endowments than they need.

Start actually using those endowments.

You don't need to be a little hedge fund.

So I'm saying Harvard and Yale will be fine.

But what about everywhere else?

Those aren't the only two schools where research happens.

All I'm saying is like, you know, it's like, you have to, because there's so much, when you're trying to cut costs, there's so much like special

pleading, right?

You can always make an exception for this program or that program.

And so I think strategically, like the notion of like ripping the band-aid off and, you know, if you're trying to like.

This isn't.

This isn't ripping the band-aid off.

This is cutting off the arm.

And I think we will see that.

If this actually holds, I am willing to bet that research in the U.S.,

advancements in the U.S., the U.S.

as an innovator in any field of science is going to just go away.

Well, we're innovators because of the private sector, mostly.

No, we're in, but you forget how much of the private sector is done by academics who went into academia, who have that knowledge.

People are going to stop, right?

If you know you can't get funding and you can't do your research, why in the world would you go into a PhD program?

Why would you?

run a lab, right?

People go from academia to industry.

Where does industry get its superstars?

From academia?

Where is that pipeline going to go if we don't have funda?

They are going to go abroad.

They are going to places where they can do their work and they can do their research.

So I think that you need to think more strategically, more long-term about this.

And I think you actually agree with me because you agreed with me at the beginning.

And right now you're just disagreeing with for the hell of it, which is never a good reason to disagree.

Like, I think there's like, I mean, a big guy who, a big believer in mean reversion, right?

And like, I don't think you can like take these three weeks, which have been dramatic and have been in some ways very effective for Trump, far more well-planned from an effectiveness standpoint than his first term.

Um,

I know you can, like, extrapolate that forward, right?

Well, I hope not.

I hope not.

But so, so, like I said, like, it would be great if this were temporary, you know, if we can't extrapolate it forward.

But I'm just saying, our question is, what should people focus on?

What's actually important and not distraction?

I think that this is important and not distraction, right?

People actually need to focus on this so that it will reverse, right?

So that it will revert so that people realize that this is an important issue, unlike a lot of other things.

So what we're talking about right now is how to set priorities, how to focus on the things that actually matter.

And I think we both agree that this is something that actually matters.

Once again, the easier thing to do, the lazier thing to do is just look at the talking points and be like, yeah, I agree with that.

Yeah, cut bloat.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, this is all good, right?

That's, that's just a very lazy intellectually way to look at it to look at the talking points that are being thrust at us and just be like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Of course, right?

That's the that's the point of talking points.

So I think that as we prioritize, as we think about what should we pay attention to of the last three weeks, separation of powers, USAID,

NIH and other science funding, I think these are three things that actually matter.

And there are a bunch of things that don't matter or that won't matter or that will be reversed.

Like I don't actually think that the birthright citizenship is that important because that's going to get blocked, right?

Like that is, and if it it doesn't get blocked, like, holy shit, then we have much bigger problems, right?

Because that's unconstitutional.

Yeah, look, I mean, there's a, there's a, you know, so I would say that, you know, Trump has some degree of mandate on immigration stuff and DEI stuff.

And so that stuff's not, that's

pressing.

It doesn't seem to be generating that much outrage.

Even some of the, you know, trans stuff seems to have a relatively muted reaction.

I mean, I don't know who's reacting to anything, really, right?

It's part because there are these issues that are like cultural touchstones that like

you can read some mandate and have the electorate voted.

Then you have these things that are like these abstract, very bad things that people like you and I might say are the highest EV concerns, Maria, right?

And then there's this third bucket of like

distractions like the Elon Musk like

Nazi or Italian, whatever you're calling it, salute and just like the stupid shit Trump says from day to day and the owning the lib stuff and like, you know,

and it's like the problem is like the most, you know, the tariffs are like

important economically,

but like the tariffs are like, okay, if you want to be Machiavellian about it, then like let Trump implement these tariffs and like fucking cause inflation and

fine, you're going to lose popularity, right?

So it's like not like, you know, I don't know if you want any people like marching in the streets against tariffs.

Exactly.

It's hard to know.

I think they're playing, I think they're playing a pretty effective tactical

game of like not giving Democrats things that are like...

Oh, absolutely.

They're crushing it.

I mean, there are things that they're on the wrong side of public opinion, but there are things that are abstract and hard to actualize, right?

And then things that are right that outrage Democrats, but it just kind of, I don't know, it's been, it's been, you know, what I would say for Democrats is like, it will get worse for Trump.

It may get worse for people who don't like the things Trump's doing, but like,

you know, he starts out less popular than any president, except for his first term.

Now it's a little bit of an exception because like he was president before, it's kind of a continuation.

So he is more popular.

I mean, he is net popular now, right?

But like, that probably won't be true in

six months, nine months.

And having a little patience, you know, I mean, you know, I don't think public can like blame Trump for like planes literally falling out of the sky two weeks into his term, but they might

two years into his term.

And like, that's a reasonable heuristic it's actually pretty smart that like yeah the day you take over it's probably not your fault but you know after that it it might be and so i don't know he is

spending his political i mean one lesson from democrats is like

spend you have a fucking game plan for the first hundred days but although even then right a lot of things biden did in the first hundred days was like

through both policy and rhetoric kind of open up the border a lot more and you know passed a lot of executive orders that included environmental regulations and racial equity regulations and things like that that later made the stimulus packages harder to implement and slower so like a lot of things that were kind of hidden from the public eye wound up costing um biden and harris down the road and so maybe democrats could take like a little bit of a a lesson from that right that trump is pushing a lot of buttons not knowing we're all about leads and the consequences might not be clear until a year, two year, four years from now, but like he's running a lot of liability.

Okay, so it seems like we're both agreed that you know the single most important thing is that the separation of powers is eroding, is not being honored,

and that this is the thing that could actually

wind up, if it goes too far,

being very difficult.

I'm not going to say impossible, but very difficult to kind of roll back, unravel.

This is the thing that if you're going to pay attention to one thing, it's this, right?

That we need the separation of powers to be honored.

USAID, NIH NIH funding, all these things, also important.

But separation of powers,

if we're going to say one thing to focus on, it's going to be that.

I agree.

And then, you know, in terms of like what not to focus on, I mean, Trump has always been very good at

having distractions.

I think some battles were lost in public opinion with respect to like immigration and things like that.

And the goal there is probably to try to rebuild public opinion from the ground up.

But like, if there's any issue on which Trump like had a mandate, it's it's immigration and inflation, which is actually kind of fucking up by implementing tariffs.

That is absolutely true.

Also, egg prices are not doing anyone any favors.

Let's take a break and talk about housing.

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If you feel like people on the other side of the political divide are from Mars, Left, Right, and Center helps you understand where they're coming from.

I'm David Green.

We invite people from the left and right to our show each week.

We unpack our political differences, not to smooth them over, but to bring clarity to what's really at stake.

I'm excited to bring you our approach of discussing divisive issues respectfully.

You can listen to Left, Right, and Center every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts.

Nate, last time we spoke, you were looking for an apartment in New York City.

First of all, wow, like I never thought you would leave your apartment.

So talk us through that decision, how it's going.

Hopefully my landlord isn't listening to this.

My partner and I have always had these kind of

unusual

funky spaces.

Like we're both in the Midwest.

We kind of like having our space, right?

But like it's often in buildings that like where the space is oddly laid out or where the amenities

aren't great.

No, I know we just had like, I mean, the elevator in our building is broken.

half the time.

I don't want to say where I live, but I'm not sure it's totally up to code, right?

We had the water out for

three days in the middle of February where the pipes froze and things like that.

And like, it just, so one of my big GTO theories is like, you are paying for everything involved in your apartment bundle, whether you like use it or not, right?

So like, if you are paying a big premium to have like a

large space and you don't need all that space, then

then

you probably want it to downsize either you're saving money or, you know, in our case, I don't think the goal is to save money, but just to have like, to stop creating all these amenities for

space, because our amenities are not very good.

And also just like, there's shit like the fact that like, because the building is pre-war and old, like our heating bill is really freaking expensive because it's like very inefficient to like heat.

and cool the building and things and things like that, right?

If you have days where the water isn't working, if you stay in a hotel, I mean, you can deduct that from your rent, right?

But like, that's, that's a big, so, and also, like, we feel like having a new new neighborhood is exciting there's like some degree of diminishing returns we've been in like the same place for

gosh

12 years now and like new york's a big city right neither of us work at a permanent location and so therefore like you know that should make you relatively indifferent toward

where you live within reason.

I mean, literally, like, I, I kind of like, I just like made like a little map of like, you know, 15 points that we visit often, right?

From like friends places in Brooklyn to like our favorite restaurants, like the dentist to like, you know, sports arenas.

The airports are really important.

I travel a lot.

And so like, sure, are you more convenient to at least one or two of the three major metro area airports in New York?

That kind of thing is important.

And we kind of discovered that like, actually, like

basically anywhere within the lower half of Manhattan is kind of equally convenient to the places we need to go.

And so therefore, go ahead and like pick the neighborhood that you might find interesting.

We've been gravitating a little bit toward the east side.

I don't want to jinx anything by saying properties that we may or may not be in the midst of applying to now.

And this is just for rental, by the way, we're not buying.

But, yeah, it's trying to figure out what things do we actually value, and then

what things do other people value that we don't value as much, right?

Like, we went to like one place in Chelsea, it's like this ground floor apartment, kind of this

brownstone that has this like very attractive

dining

living room area with like an outdoor courtyard, right?

And then you go down to the basement where the bedrooms or office are and it's kind of dreary, right?

But you can imagine like for a certain type of person that like likes to have a lot of like house parties, right?

And like we've arrived in a certain kind of perfect Chelsea flat for this like exact purpose, but it's not as nice in terms of like the living areas and things things like that, which is kind of where we spend most of our time.

So it's like, if that's someone else's dream, you know, you don't want to pay for someone else's dream because it's factored into like the market price.

No, that makes sense.

I think, I think it's a really important point to say, like, what are my most important things?

What do I want to pay for?

What do I not care about paying for?

Otherwise, you might end up in, you know, nightmare situations or paying for an apartment that you don't really, that you're not happy in.

You know, another example is, you know, we thought briefly about like looking at a place in Miami.

This was kind of during the COVID era when Miami kind of came back online before.

And I'm mostly positive with somewhat ambivalent feelings toward Miami, but we were Miami faint, like a lot of middle-aged gains, I guess.

You know, and at first, we had a friend who lives in Coconut Grove, which is a very nice community, right?

But like, it's very desirable because like it has by far the better school options in terms of both public and private schools than other parts of Miami.

So if you don't have kids in school, then like

you really, really, really would have to love Coconut Grove in order to like to pay this premium for a service that you don't need, right?

Yeah, no, I think that that's really important

and something that people, by the way, underestimate how much of a toll it takes emotionally, psychologically.

There's a lot of research on this to commute long distances, right?

It's actually very not good for you.

So that is something that I would absolutely say, like, especially somewhere like New York, do you take that into account?

Schools are huge.

So the apartment, we looked at apartments, I won't say the exact neighborhood where I live, but we looked at apartments that are literally a block apart, but they're in two different school zones.

And the price difference was insane, right?

Like it was.

it was an order of magnitude.

And we don't have kids.

Like it doesn't really matter.

I was like, screw this, right?

Like

that, but it's one block apart, literally.

Same size, same everything.

And so I think that things like that are actually

quite important and can be game changers if you're looking at an apartment in a smart way.

I have had, I don't know if you've had any nightmare apartments, but I've had one nightmare apartment where I should have known, right?

If something is priced in a way that makes no sense, there's probably something that you don't realize.

So I was able to rent a two-floor garden duplex, parlor garden duplex in the West Village on West 11th Street within my budget.

Like I was like, holy shit, right?

Like you can never, you can never afford something like this.

Turns out that the building was basically condemned,

that we, there were mice in the walls

and just like running.

everywhere there was no insulation so um in the winter like the wind just like literally went through the apartment um there was mold everywhere so we did an air quality check and like realized that holy shit, like the stuff we're breathing in is really not good.

And then the building ended up being gutted

after, you know, we and our neighbors left.

This was before I wrote the confidence game, but if something is too good to be true, it probably is.

So do your due diligence.

Yeah, and the reverse point, I mean, sometimes people put something on the market and just overestimate the demand for it.

So you can have things that are priced irrationally high, but like there's not really bargains relative to the overall demand function of the city.

Absolutely.

And I think that it's also the case where you're probably not going to be able to time the market, right?

You will either get lucky or unlucky, because especially in New York, places don't sit around.

Sometimes they do, right?

You could be in a really horrible market.

But oftentimes the best, the best case is to just go for it.

My two best rental apartments that were both tiny, but like they were just ridiculous deals that enabled me to live in parts of New York that I never would have been able to afford as a 21-year-old moving to the city.

I saw them before they hit the market, literally.

I was the first person to see both of them.

One, the guy reached out to me because I had posted on Craigslist.

This was back in the day when Craigslist was a big thing.

I was a senior in college, made a posting saying, hey, like, does anyone know of a, you know, studio apartment in the West Village?

This is my budget.

And this guy just reached out.

He's like, it's not on the market yet.

And I ended up getting a bus, like the Chinatown bus from

Boston to New York to see this apartment and just gave him money right away and ended up signing a lease that was, you know, started two weeks before I needed it to start.

But like.

I never, the apartment was $1,000 a month.

Oh, my God.

In the West Village.

$1,050.

Staten Island is it?

In the West Village.

In the West Village.

Yes.

It was on perry street oh my god the guy who actually it was yeah perry and like it was premium it was between bleeker and hudson like just absolutely premium location it was the parlor floor so huge windows it was tiny it was less than 100 square feet it was 90 square feet wait 90 square feet payoff yes it was 90 square feet so that was the trade-off i lived in a glorified walk-in closet but man i was happy to wake up in that walk-in closet every single day yeah my bed was lofted right under the ceiling um And I had like this rickety ladder that I had to climb up to make it up.

Like a capsule hotel, as I call them in Asia.

Exactly, exactly.

But it had a full bathroom.

It had a little kitchen.

Like it wasn't, it was all in one room, right?

Like it's, it was a mini fridge, you know, it wasn't, but it had a stove.

It had, like, it had everything I needed.

And I was, you know, I was 21 years old and I was in the West Village and I was so thrilled to be able to have that apartment.

You're baking and the bread catches on fire.

I mean, but look, if that's your partner, if you don't need space and don't pay for space, and let's at that point, I was still working in an office, I wasn't working from home, right?

This is when I was working in advertising as a copywriter, and I was very not happy at my job.

But hey, I had a great launch pad.

Good luck, night.

I hope that you are able to get one of the apartments that you want.

I hope

you have a lot of fun.

And I look forward, I will look forward to a housewarming in a wonderful neighborhood that you are excited about and that you get to explore.

Absolutely, Maria.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you.

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Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Konakova, and by me, Nate Silber.

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.

Sally Helm is our editor.

And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

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