Nate and Maria’s 2025 Predictions

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

I'm Maria Konakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

Nate, today is going to be a fun show.

You're taping from Tokyo, I'm taping from New York.

So, from opposite sides of the world, we'll be talking about our predictions for 2025 on a whole number of things, a whole bunch of topics from economics and politics to pop culture and lots of things in between, sports, fashion choices.

I think you'll enjoy this one.

Let's get into it, Nate.

Happy 2025, everybody.

Happy 2025.

It's a quarter effing century.

It's a big deal, right?

Yeah.

That's insane.

God, what were you doing

on

New Year's 2000?

On New Year's 2000.

Oh, my God.

I was still in high school.

I was.

Oh, my God.

Yeah,

I was in high school.

So I was with my family.

Where were you 25 years ago?

I was on a beach in Key West, Florida.

Nice.

Doing

various substances that may or may not have been legal in the state of Florida.

And we'll leave it at that.

Sounds good.

I think you're good on the statute of limitations.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

So let's get into it.

So we have a bunch of different topics ranging from, you know, crypto to pop culture.

Do you want to start it off with kind of one of the big topics that we've talked about on the show multiple times, which is Bitcoin?

What do you think, Nate, will be the highest price that Bitcoin will reach this year?

And what do you think will be the lowest price Bitcoin will reach?

If you want, I can start us off too.

I mean, so we're looking at Polymarket, where I'm an advisor,

says that the over-undermark is roughly 120K

by March 31st.

That's not the end of the year.

Yeah.

And 80K on the lowest and by March 31st.

So, you know, look, I mean, if you had to like, this is a really hard question.

It is a really hard question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me say the high is

the high is 140 is my over-under, and the low is

60.

Right.

Okay.

All right, that's how I'm just doubling.

I'm just doubling polymarket.

I trust that people on polymarket, a lot of crypto-friendly types there.

I trust that the market is smarter than I am.

And I'm just doubling the range

that they have for March 31st through the end of the year.

Okay, that's pretty smart.

I am going to go higher than you.

I am going to say 180 high

for 2025.

So I think that there are a lot of people, a lot of smart crypto people who think it will hit 200 and might even go over 200.

I don't think it will go that high, but I'm going to be bullish and I'm going to say 180.

And on the low side um

i'm not sure i will say 70.

um i will say 70 as the low so are you buying i mean that sounds pretty asymmetric where you should be buying bit are you buying bitcoin um i am not currently buying bitcoin um but i think that bitcoin is actually something that um potentially i should start buying especially um as donald trump comes into office we know that he hasn't necessarily delivered on you know things that he's promised in the the past, but so far there are positive signs that he is going to be pretty pro-crypto.

And if all of those things come to pass, normally the way that you look at markets is, oh, smart people have already priced this in, right?

So the price of Bitcoin already reflects people being optimistic about Donald Trump and what he's going to do and his policies.

But I think that with crypto, it doesn't necessarily work that way.

And the market doesn't price things in quite the same way as the stock market.

I would say that it's less efficient in some ways and much more volatile, right?

We see, you can see

in the cryptocurrency world, you can see something go up 500%, right?

That just does not happen on the regular stock market.

So I would say that there's the upside is asymmetric right now.

See, I'm going to argue that crypto is almost by definition very vibes-based, right?

And it may over-anticipate, it may overly be pricing it in.

You know what I mean?

Yeah,

that's also very possible and in general i wonder if there's like a little bit of irrational exuberance i mean being president is hard right um

he's inheriting a pretty unhappy electorate he will be surrounded by a mix of people some of whom are competent many of whom aren't he has very narrow majority in the house right um

yeah he's old he and elon will probably have a falling out this is true at some point no longer be a bff

i don't know i i think there's kind of a a i i i think the average

Trump new convert enthusiast, crypto enthusiast is, is

a little high on fumes

right now.

And I remember, you know, kind of whenever there's a new president, when there's a switch of parties, right?

Like people, people don't understand how difficult it starts to look three to six months in, right?

You do your hundred days stuff, although it's harder now than it used to be, but Trump will do some executive orders.

We'll talk about that in a bit.

And then, I don't know, I think there's a

short-term

bear case on Trump, I think, is probably worthwhile.

And how that translated to crypto is not linear entirely, but like, it's hard to be president is all I'm saying.

I totally agree with that, but because we're looking at by the, you know, this year in

total, right, we're not, we're not actually doing a prediction of where it's going to be next month or where it's going to end up.

We're just saying, like, what is the high for 2025?

And I actually think that the irrational exuberance will get us to, to, one, to that high at some point.

And then it might crash right precipitously.

And the reason I'm not buying Bitcoin, by the way, is that I'm not confident enough in my ability to predict, you know, when those crashes will come and when those changes in sentiment will come.

But I do think we're going to see something like that.

So I think that there's...

there's a lot of a lot of things to be said for for caution, but also for, you know, let's put some of those irrationally exuberant predictions in there.

Let's switch gears a little bit, sort of, sort of, because this is related to Trump.

So how about a prediction about Trump's, we've talked about the cabinet, right, and about his nominees.

Do you have a prediction for how many cabinet nominees, and this is starting now, so Gates does not count, will either be rejected or withdraw?

No Gates.

Yeah, let's, so Gates does not count because that has already happened.

So starting now.

Let's benchmark here with Polymarket.

Polymarket says Pete Hag Seth has an 86% chance of being confirmed.

Tulsi Gabbard, 75%, Cash Patel, 89%,

RFK Jr., 85%.

And then there are some other people that probably nobody cares about, right?

So let me do math.

15, 25,

50, 60, and then a little pocket change we get.

So

Polymarket says that the best bet is probably one

or zero.

I'll go with zero.

I think that, like, we saw the scalp with Matt Gates, right?

I think if you're going to have somebody ousted, it would have happened sooner in this kind of pre, because the further you go, the more embarrassing it is to Trump.

And most Republicans in the Senate actually don't want to embarrass Trump.

And so, I mean, you know, the market says that Gabbard is the most likely wild card.

And, but, um, but I think they've mostly survived.

I mean, I think they've survived the vetting, making them look good, right?

But there's no objective standard here, right?

It's do you have 50 votes in the Senate?

And I think, I think they've probably survived it in a way Matt Gates didn't.

So I'll go with zero.

I'll go with a bet a thousand the rest of the way.

I actually agree with you.

I was going to say zero.

I don't think that anyone's going to withdraw, and I don't think anyone is going to be rejected.

I think we're going to see the full slate confirmed.

I think that people will tow party lines.

And I think that

we're going to see everyone sail through.

I don't even think it's going to be particularly close.

Next question.

You were alluding alluding to this um maria

number of press secretaries in 2025

i am going to say that in 2025 he is going to have two that's going to be my prediction maria we're agreeing too much here i i'm two seems like the rational modal number it's a hard job it is i know i mean I kind of feel like press secretaries are the one people that should be allowed to lie.

You know what I mean?

Because you can't literally do the job without lying.

Well, I don't think, I mean, I think there's a difference and between lying and spinning.

And there is,

so

I do, I'm not trying to play semantics here, right?

So there's lying where like you're just like flat out saying something that you know is not true.

And then there are like misrepresentations, which in some ways is worse, right?

Because it's harder to be like, you lied.

You can be like, well, no, like if you parse this sentence semantically, I didn't, technically, I did not lie.

And I think that that's more what

press secretaries do.

They're more spin doctor-y

than they are.

It's like when poker players, you know, poker players, some poker players will not like actually lie about the contents of their hand, right?

You'll be like, do you have Pocket Kings?

And they'll be like, well, it's a big pair or something.

You know what I mean?

Like,

I just lie about the contents of my hand all the fucking time in poker.

It's like allowed.

It is allowed.

It is allowed.

I don't do it.

Pull the big hand there.

No, I was.

I don't do it,

but it is absolutely allowed.

And I totally don't blame you for doing it.

The funniest thing, by the way, can we just do like a poker aside?

Is when people lie about their hand on stream, on televised stream, when their cards are shown, and it will become very, very clear that they're lying.

Scott Seaver does this.

all the time and he'll just like with a straight face like be like fold you know i've got it or like he'll he'll or just like completely lie what hand he has.

And like, you can see he's lying and he just doesn't care.

So I think that, I think that that is definitely very accepted.

I am more of the, I don't like telling people, you know, what I had.

And I, I'll, if they, if they don't take that for an answer, I'll just say yes, right?

So they'll be like, did you have kings?

Yes.

Did you have queens?

Yes.

Did you have jacks?

Yes.

Did you have ace king?

Yes.

Like, I will, and if you start asking me more than one hand, you will realize that I'm just saying yes to everything.

So I'll just do something like that,

which, you know, will normally shut people up.

But I don't like to tell people what I have.

As we've talked about before on the show, and I think this is an important point outside of poker, information equals power.

Do not give people information when you don't have to, right?

Have them know as little as possible about your intentions, how you play, everything else.

So yeah, two press secretaries.

First ones never hold on.

I mean, Trump just goes through press secretaries like none other.

I wouldn't even be surprised to see three, but I think two is the right prediction.

All right, we've got one more.

Trump has, well, we have more than one.

Trump has said he will declare a national emergency on his first day in office to begin mass deportations.

Do you think he will do this on January 20th?

Is there going to be a national emergency declaration?

Again, there is a market to calibrate to.

Polymarket says 80% chance on day one.

He does issue the executive action.

I have.

That seems high.

Yeah.

well, look, I mean, one of the things you can say Trump had a mandate to be elected on was immigration, right?

And he clearly

cares a lot about, I mean, it's kind of core to his brain.

I think it's within the purview of

the White House to issue executive action.

So I'm going to say

yes, right?

I have no reason to like, like, this is kind of what you promised.

This is what he promised to do.

If you voted for Trump, this is what you were supposed to get.

And I think he's going to do it.

I, I mean, I think you're probably right, but I'm just going to give a completely, so this is the opposite of what we do here on risky business, which is use our rational minds to do predictions.

I'm just going to say he won't do it because I don't want him to.

That is not how you make decisions.

So the rational answer is, yes, I think there will be a national emergency.

My emotional answer is,

I hope there isn't.

And I hope that there are no mass deportations.

But you're absolutely right that this is something that people, that people, you know, did vote for.

And so.

I mean, if

the reason why I think you want to take the yes and bet is like, if he, for whatever reason, is influenced by,

I mean, Silicon Valley doesn't care as much about the illegal immigration, but if he's influenced to like take a softer line, I think he would still issue an executive order of some kind.

It would, and it would have fewer teeth, or they wouldn't fight for it as much in the courts, or, or, right?

Like, I think he kind of has to like

do this to kind of maintain faith.

What if he gets in and he's like, it's all long con, it's all long con.

I've been a Democrat the whole time, including the first term.

I don't know what voice that was.

Um, that was not Trump.

I'm not sure who that was, Adam Sandler.

Never.

I know, I know.

Let's, that was embarrassing.

Most embarrassing moment of spot.

Let's move on to the next question.

Um, will Elon Musk become the world's first trillionaire in 2025?

His His current net worth, according to Bloomberg, is $426 billion with a B dollars.

I say no.

I say he will not become a trillionaire in 2025.

And I say this because Tesla has had disappointing sales this year.

I realize that that's only one small part of his net worth, but

it's an important one.

And I also think that there's going to be some fallout with his association with Trump,

including a fallout with Trump at some point, because I don't know of anyone, like any high-profile marriage that Trump has had that has lasted, obviously, including his actual marriages.

But

what I mean right now, you know, marriage with any kind of close political confidant, right?

He's broken up with all of them.

He elevates advisors.

He's like, you know, they're BFFs.

They're really close.

And then always there's, you know, I don't know if it's ego clashing or what it is, but there's always a falling falling out.

And I think that that's going to hurt Elon.

And I think that's going to happen in 2025.

So I don't think he's going to become poor, but I definitely do not see him becoming a trillionaire.

There's also the AI component.

And, you know.

I think it does matter whether you're bullish or bearish on the financial prospects of AI.

And I don't think they're going to figure out their cash flow finances, you know, how to actually make money in the coming year.

What do you think, Nate?

So if someone else becomes a billionaire, a trillionaire before Elon, you also lose this bet.

Is that correct?

Yes, because he's the first trillionaire.

Okay.

I mean, yeah, look,

the long-term average for super rich guys is that they increase their net worth by

probably around 20% per year, which is very, very good relative to how most Americans do.

But take 450, whatever is now, and add 20%, and you're not that close.

There's a little bit of a thing before about like to the extent that like assets that Elon owns have been priced up.

That's kind of priced in to some extent already.

I tend to agree that, like, I mean, you've seen these periodic reports that Trump was like, Elon's getting a little carried away here.

And yeah, I think this is a,

it's not impossible to imagine, but I'd say, like, um,

I think there's maybe a one in

five chance,

and then tweak that 20% down to like

18 because every now and then someone else gets there first.

Like in the AI scenario, where this is the year where you have like a big AI boom,

then like the NVIDIA people and other people that like are a bit more like directly tied to

AI might benefit first, right?

But yeah, okay, so we agree on this one as well.

And we'll be right back after this break.

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What's up next?

Let's do some poker.

Poker.

Over under on Nate and Maria's net tournament winnings for the year.

I.e.

winnings minus buy-ins.

Let's assume this is all

live tournaments, right?

So we'll ignore any

sketchy

online stuff that we might or might not do.

So it's trackable in theory.

It's It's hard.

You know, tournaments are so incredibly, it's such a volatile thing, right?

And there's so much variance there that it's really, really difficult to have predictions.

I mean, I've had years where I've been down a lot and I've had years where I've been up a lot.

And,

you know, I would like to have a nice optimistic prediction that,

but, but, um, and I think you have to, if you're a tournament player, you have to be optimistic.

It's kind of like an entrepreneur.

You realize that, you know, most people lose money, but in order to do it, you have to believe that you're one of the few that's going to succeed.

So I think you kind of have to have that mindset.

I mean, look,

in the book, I did some simulations for a

assuming a very good tournament player, maybe

if we're being honest, probably not too far from where you and I, Maria, but maybe a little bit better in that book than, you know,

but in that vicinity, right?

And if this player, Penelope, I named her, if she plays 200 bullets,

200 entries, that is, bullets.

We don't want to use violet imagery, but that's what pokers say.

When you buy into a tournament, you fire a bullet.

She buys into 200 bullets per year in live poker tournaments with a schedule that probably looks a lot like what you are.

I might play Maria, the mixer tournaments, um,

and she loses money about 40 to 45% of the time out of 200 entries.

I might play 50 entries this year.

You might play more.

You might be, I don't know, where are you?

7,500 or something.

Like, we'll probably, the, the brutal truth is that the odds are that we will have a losing year, or at least I will with 50 entries.

It's hard to win money with 50 entries.

Sometimes you win a lot of money, but like probably 60-ish% of the time you wind up with a losing year with that, with that volume, even with

an edge.

I assume poker turns will remain pretty soft.

But like, so yeah, probably my over-under is like negative 10,000.

Okay.

I won't speak for you.

All right.

I'm going to, I'm going to be optimistic, but I'll be, I'll be cautiously optimistic.

We'll stay in the

five figures instead of six figures.

So I'll say that

I predict my net tournament winnings this year to be 45,000

in 2025.

I don't know where that number is coming from.

It's tempering expectations, but

trying to

hope for the best the thing is it's it's actually kind of hard to have the 45 000 plus it's like like you kind of have like you almost want to say like negative 50 000 or like i think something in 300k right or five you know what i mean because that's kind of where the distribution it's true it's true but you know like thinking of this past year um you know i had a horrific world series

but i had a really good year at the end but i had you know i had some really big scores, but because my World Series was so bad, I was, you know, down over $100,000.

Like that really detracted from the big scores.

So, so at the end, I was positive, but it could have, you know, could have very easily, it took a number of big scores to get me to the positive part.

Right.

So, so what's on the, what's on the schedule even?

What's on the schedule?

Because fucking France, I was going to go to France.

I know, I know.

It's very sad.

It's fucking EPT Paris.

It's very sad.

EPT Paris, which was supposed supposed to be the first European poker tour stop.

PokerStars, my sponsor.

I'm an ambassador.

You know, we've got lots of disclaimers this show.

Unfortunately, because of French regulations,

that got canceled.

They're trying to reschedule it.

I'm really hoping that it will be rescheduled.

But right now, the first EPT stop is going to be Monte Carlo.

That's going to be in April.

I will be there, and you should come, Nate.

Monte Carlo is gorgeous.

It's right on the water.

Absolutely beautiful.

Robbie.

You look at Monte Carlo?

Yes.

It's a beautiful hotel.

It's probably a pretty easy, beautiful hotel.

Probably pretty easy to persuade, right?

Beautiful location, great fields.

It's a really wonderful event.

I think you should come and

we can do some bets for the show and for our listeners.

And we can do a podcast episode from Monte Carlo.

So

let's then move on to AI.

Oh, I hate this question.

It's so sad.

Will a consumer AI model be able to host risky risky business by the end of 2025 that will be indistinguishable from meat space, you and me?

And if not, then in what year will that be possible?

So, what's our p-doom for podcast hosts?

No, I agree.

And I think it will be a while, if ever.

I mean, like, I think

personality is a very high-fidelity

problem that like, I don't think there's like enough,

I don't know, yeah, it's, it's hard to, yeah, it's pretty hard.

I mean, like, it can kind of like make inferences about people that are very smart, right?

But like,

cause it kind of sees what the essential features are, I think, but like the nuances are very, are very tricky.

Like AI is not a very good

stylist at writing.

I mean, I don't think it's very good at like art.

I think people misunderstand art.

This is a rant that like is for another time, but like I'm not worried about this in the short term.

I totally agree with you.

I don't think it's good at creative things in general because it's good at regurgitation and at making things formally look like they're like on the surface good formalistically, but it I don't think it's able to have creative insight.

It's not able to connect ideas or answer questions in ways that haven't been done before because it doesn't actually think, right?

It doesn't actually have a brain.

All it's doing is kind of connecting information.

And

there's also the garbage in, garbage out.

As more and more people are saying, you know,

don't train AI on our shit,

then you see that the AI output actually degenerates pretty quickly.

So

I don't think they're coming for our jobs yet.

And I'm not sure I agree that it doesn't think.

Well, thinking, so

I guess this is a much deeper philosophical discussion, which we can have on another episode of the show because it will take too long.

But I think this is a very interesting question about what thinking actually is

and how we should define that.

But yeah,

let's table that and let's have an episode about that because I actually think it's really interesting.

Nate, there's a question that's specific to you.

You have $10,000 and you can...

bet it on any line in sports this year, but you have to bet right now.

I mean, I think the Oklahoma City's Shea Shea Gilgis Alexander is a good bet to win the MVP award.

And he was at something like minus 120 before, which implies, what is that?

Like 55, 60% chance.

I think he's more lucky than that to win the award.

He is averaging.

Let me look up his stats.

So he's on the best team in the league.

He's averaging 31.3 points per game.

five and a half rebounds, six assists, almost two steals per game, on the best defense in the league, on the best team in the league.

Nikola Jokic is the main competition, great player, but the nuggets kind of suck.

I think he is more likely than Vegas assumes to win the MVP.

And when I get back in any country where betting is legal, I will be betting, probably not 10K, but betting some amount of money on that.

All right.

Well, you heard it here first.

Nate, does this mean that I should quickly open a sportsbook account and bet that?

I don't have

never done any sports betting, by the way, ever in my life.

Minus 420 is 55%.

I don't know what I said said 60.

So the answer is probably,

probably not.

Okay.

Right.

I mean, because like, well, if you get like all the bonuses from the sports betting account, then sure.

Right.

Like a reason why like you don't want to make like in theory, these long-term futures bets are fairly profitable, right?

But in principle, if I am betting

now on January, that ties up my capital for

several months, right?

And then in theory, that like takes like a little tax on it, where like in theory, if that's in the SP 500 over four months, then you make whatever two and a half percent or something like that.

And so, like, that's a little bit of a tax.

It's meaningful, but look, I don't know.

I think it's a good bet.

I'm going to make that bet when I can.

All right.

Sounds good.

And we have

a question for Maria.

What cognitive bias?

They're all excited.

They went to to the cognitive bias New Year's party.

And can you imagine like different cognitive biases at a party?

Oh my God.

That would be a hilarious skit.

Well, what cognitive bias will win the second annual Daniel Kahneman Memorial Cognitive Bias of the Year award for 2025?

Right.

So we just had the Golden Globe Awards and now cognitive biases are looking to see which one of them is going to win.

I am going to vote for the recency effect as the bias of 2025.

And what the recency effect, also known as the availability bias, it means that basically we overvalue

what's happening, what just happened, things that are easily available to memory and kind of forget the rest, right?

Like it's a kind of amnesia where you forget, selectively forget history and what's come before, and you overweight your decisions based on the information and the events that have just happened and that are most easily accessible in your mind.

And I think we already started to see that.

You know, it's funny, I just made the joke about the Golden Globes, but you already saw that in the Golden Globes, where basically no one talked politics, right?

It was like, if you remember what happened after Donald Trump's first election, everyone had it in their speech and there was all this stuff.

And this time it was just like, ah, okay, right.

Like

moving on,

we're not going to talk about it.

We don't really care.

And so it just goes to show that, you know, our memories are short

and we accept kind of new normals very, very quickly.

And I think we'll see a lot of collective forgetting happening in the year 2025.

I was going to, I don't know if this is the same or the opposite.

I was going to kind of go with

the hot hand bias, right?

I think Trump and Republicans are likely to overreach and overestimate their popularity.

And like we talked about before, being president is hard,

but we'll see.

I think that's also quite likely.

They're not mutually exclusive.

I think both of these things could absolutely be true.

And we'll be back right after this.

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Let's move on to a multiple choice round about TikTok.

Okay, what's going to happen to TikTok?

A, banned in the U.S., so

gen alpha riots.

B, sold to a non-Chinese company.

C, nothing remains under Chinese corporate control.

Or D, none of the above.

So Trump has asked the Supreme Court to pause a law that could ban TikTok.

I'm going to, I'm going to, Maria, why don't you inform us while I cheat by looking at polymarket?

I think it is going to be

sold to a non-Chinese company because,

so that's, that's option B.

I don't think it's going to be banned.

I think that's too politically kind of risky.

And Donald Trump does not like to do something that's going to hurt his popularity that much.

But he,

you know, with tariffs, et cetera, it's not like he cares that much about alienating china on some level so i think that that might be the the compromise that that ends up uh that ends up winning out so sold to a non-Chinese holy market all right tell me there's a 43% chance that TikTok is banned in the U.S.

before May 2025 and so like if you extract that out to any time and that's surprisingly high but like so we do have this law in place, right, that required it to be sold.

So Trump would kind of have to go out of his way

to prevent that, right?

And I guess you're right, right?

Because like, I think Trump concluded that like TikTok was probably

helpful to him in the general election, right?

Like it seemed to be boosting a lot of the campus protest type of stuff, right?

But Trump is also hawkish on China.

I'm going to follow the polymarket logic, but I'm going to go that like

TikTok will be banned in the U.S.

with above 50% probability by the end of the year, not by May.

I'm going to, I'm trusting the market here at 43% by May, and then yeah.

All right.

So, so we'll see what happens.

Does it get banned or does it get sold to a non-Chinese company?

Apparently, the loser of this has to post to TikTok.

We'll see about that.

I'm not committing.

Not committing.

I haven't thought of it.

So

if I'm wrong, so if you're wrong, TikTok is banned, so you don't have to post.

That seems unfair.

That is unfair.

Yes, true.

We'll figure out another.

That is funny.

That is very funny.

All right, let's do a lightning round for pop culture.

I don't know if you care about this, but I've been following.

Will the Oasis Brothers have a fight on stage during their 2025 world tour?

Absolutely, they will.

Those two guys cannot coexist.

I think they've thrown shit at each other every single time they've been on stage, or one of them has stormed off every single time that they've tried to do a reunion tour.

If they care about their bottom line, I think the only reason they're having a reunion tour is because one or both of them wants money.

They'll probably try not to do it at the very beginning.

Yeah, it might be a fake fight, but like they'll have a, I mean, that's a pretty logical bet.

I agree.

All right.

Kim Kardashian visiting Mar-a-Lago.

Has she taken a stance on Trump?

No, but I think she will because I think she, you know, she was married to Kanye for so long or whatever he's calling himself now.

Yee.

Yeah, Yi.

So I think, I think there's a good chance that

she goes there.

And she's also very business savvy.

So I think she will do whatever's better for her bottom line.

And I think that she'll probably,

that that means cozying up to Trump.

So

I would say there's a good chance she does it.

I have no opinion.

I'm proud to have no opinion.

Sounds good.

Best picture winner.

Do you have an opinion?

I don't know.

Is the Bob Dylan movie good?

I have not seen it yet.

So I don't know.

I'll put,

let's put the brutalist there.

Seems like a good one.

Oh, this is interesting.

I'm going to have to speculate on this.

Chance that Nate wears skinny jeans, which are supposedly back.

So you know with 100% certainty whether it's yes or no.

And

I don't know.

Where is the threshold for skinny jeans?

I don't know.

This is very interesting.

And I think it's probably different for men and women because straight leg jeans for women are not skinny jeans.

For women, they really have to be like skin tight.

But I feel like for men, there's more of a, there's like more of a window for them to be like a little bit less than skin tight.

I'm going to, I can't even speculate on this.

No.

No.

Okay.

I'm turning.

47 years old in a week, Marie.

I'm not going to be wearing skinny jeans, I don't think.

All right.

Well, I'll talk to your partner about this and see.

I think it

depends on how the styles go.

If I win an event at Monte Carlo, then I'll celebrate by buying some

skinny jeans in Europe.

Let's do it.

And finally, do you have a long shot bet for 2025?

The thing that probably isn't going to happen, but you'll look like a genius if it does.

Yeah, I actually do have one.

What is it?

Remember

the drone thing?

Yeah, the New Jersey drones.

There are reports of all these drones over New Jersey, and then it kind of went haywire, and then it died out.

Yep.

And, you know, people forgot about it.

I think there's like a

one in three chance that later reporting reveals that the initial spark of something

was something

real.

Okay.

That's, I think that's a really interesting prediction.

Yeah, because the issue is like,

once it became this big viral viral thing, then like the signal to noise ratio went way down and people were like just seeing like planes landing at Newark and every old, you know, the moon and shit like that, right?

But like you did have like the initial reports seem more credible and like also like if you were like and there are a lot of military bases around there.

If you were like, I don't think it's anything like super exciting, right?

But like let's say you were testing out some new type of surveillance drone, right?

And you're running them back and forth between different military bases.

And the US military by the way like has lots of drone technology it doesn't deny that it's an important part of a defense arsenal these days right um I think it's like reasonably likely that like they were doing this a little too much and like some people who were noticing carefully detected a change in the number of drones relative to baseline

and then kind of people got carried away and they were like and their denials weren't very they were like well there are lots of things that are drones in the sky which is true right?

And became more and more true as more reports surfaced.

But if you were doing that shit, like, let's say you have like a little pilot project,

or no pun intended, I guess, unpiloted project.

You probably cut the fuck shit out of that once you get scrutiny on it, right?

So I think there might have been something real there.

I think the media was like not very Bayesian in how I thought about the story, right?

And like, the military has drones and like there have been reports about activity over Air Force bases for years

that are fairly credible and reported by outlets like the Wall Street Journal.

And I thought people were much too smug about that.

And in the Trump era, there's a certain type of story where like

where greater skepticism of the establishment, I think, might be

might be helpful.

Yeah.

So that's my weird, I wouldn't take it at even money, but like I'd say one in three that some credible news outlet publishes a story, probably opaquely sourced, saying like, yeah, there was a little something there.

It was no big deal, but like people weren't totally making this up.

And there was like a discrete increase for a couple of weeks there in New Jersey.

Yeah, I mean, that sounds very plausible to me.

Um, you know, when I, you know, living living in Vegas near a lot of a lot of military bases, you actually see weird shit in the sky all the time,

including drone displays.

And so, I think that you know, there you're just kind of used to it.

You're like, there's Nellis, you know, there's all this stuff.

And

I think that there, I'm actually,

I think your prediction is a pretty solid one.

Mine was not nearly as fun or as interesting or as technology, well, sort of technology oriented, but I'm predicting that 2025 is going to be the year that we see a nuclear power resurgence, that all of the countries that have brought their power plants offline are going to bring them back online and we're going to see the first new nuclear power plants open for a long time.

What makes you say that, Maria?

AI.

Energy needs are.

Power.

We need power.

Energy needs are rising

and companies don't know how to meet them and nuclear, this will make them much friendlier to nuclear power than they ever have been before.

And I'm actually very pro-nuclear power.

I think this is a good thing.

I think that could be one of the good consequences of AI because I think it's a really nice clean energy source.

So that's my prediction.

On that note, Nate, I think you have to get to an airport, right?

You're in Tokyo.

You're about to fly.

And I need to get to a comedy show.

I am seeing Alex Edelman, and I'm very, very excited about that.

So yes, we will.

We're both heading two exciting destinations, mine a little bit more exciting than yours.

I mean, I'm going to the airport.

I'm not even the nice airport in Tokyo.

I'm going to Haneda.

All right.

There you have it.

Safe travels, and we'll see you next week.

Happy 2025, everyone.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kondakova.

And by me, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries 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 other people can find us too.

And if you want to listen to an ad-free version, sign up for Pushkin Plus.

For $6.99 a month, you get access to ad-free listening.

Thanks for tuning in.

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