Presidential Pardons and Other Family Gift-Giving Strategies

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

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

What are we going to be talking about on the show today, Nate?

Well, today we're going to be talking about Hunter Biden and the failure of Joe Biden's presidency, which you disagree probably on that characterization as well as the particulars.

No, actually, you'll be surprised to hear that I do not disagree on that particular thing.

But

we'll be talking about that and then we'll do something a little bit lighter.

The GTO Guide to Gift Giving, our game theory optimal guide to giving presents.

And also a broader question, can there even be such a thing as GTO gift giving or does that go against the whole spirit of the enterprise?

So without further ado, let's get to it.

Hunter Biden.

Nate, do you want to give just the quick summary of what happened, what breaking news alert I got this weekend?

Yeah, so Sunday we're coming out of the end of a holiday weekend.

People watch a little bit of NFL.

And then President Biden says, I am pardoning my fail son

for a blanket 11-year period that goes from 2014 through

November 2024.

There was actually like a

six-hour window in which Hunter Biden basically had the purge.

He could commit any crimes because he was like pre-pardoned for that day.

But Biden, despite repeated promises on the campaign trail not to pardon his son,

including promises made by the White House press secretary after the campaign was lost to Donald Trump after Harris's campaign was

decided to issue the pardon anyway.

He did indeed.

And as we've talked about on the show before, because there's been a lot of breaking news that happens in these kinds of periods, whenever you want to bury news, when do you do it?

Exactly.

You do it on holidays, on weekends, on Fridays, on Sundays when people are traveling, right?

Exactly.

I mean, often these pardons are made at the very end of an administration, but but this was not.

Yep.

No, this one was made during Thanksgiving after President Biden spent time with his family.

I think that timing is actually probably meaningful, especially given the kind of Maudlin wording of his.

Yeah, yeah, I'm pardoning him as a father.

Nate, you said in the introduction that you thought that I was going to really disagree with you.

I thought when I saw that breaking news headline, I was like, what the actual fuck?

For a few different reasons.

Reason number one, repeatedly he said he was not going to pardon Hunter.

And members of his administration repeated that up until like November 14th, right?

That's the last time that I heard it, but maybe it was even later, but just like recently, right?

A few weeks ago, they were saying absolutely no pardon.

So that was just a blatant lie if he knew that this was going to happen.

And second, like the way he did it, oh, as a father, dude, you are the president of the United States of America, right?

Like, I get that you're a dad and you have other obligations, but you do not get to make decisions based on those things.

You have to make decisions as the most powerful leader in the world, right?

As the president of the United States.

And you don't just get to do things because, you know, you're a dad or your family member does this.

And that's something that should, you know, apply to everyone.

That's one of the reasons that we have a democracy and not, you know, a kleptocracy or a monarchy or, you know, any or a dictatorship or any form of government where nepotism is kind of a thing right and where you get to do whatever you want to those close to you now people have said oh well you're holding democrats to a higher standard no i want to hold everyone to this standard and i think that how what biden did right now really shoots democrats um not just in the foot like in the face this was like such a fuck you to the democratic party because now when trump comes into office he gets to point to this and be like you don't get to judge me this dude pardoned his son and it that is such, I mean, you do not want to give him like, he, he'll do whatever the fuck he wants anyway, but like, you don't want to give him that ammunition.

Like, don't you want to try to save the country instead of make it more and more Trumpian?

Well, look, I mean, there, there are a couple of things here.

One is that,

you know, Democrats are the party that holds themselves to a higher standard and says we are the defenders of democracy, right?

Whereas Trump says you're a bunch of hypocrites.

And so if you agree that they're a bunch of hypocrites, then vote Republican because we're going to have more fun and lower your taxes and deport all these illegals and things like that.

And so there is an asymmetry, number one.

Number two, like if Biden had gone on TV and said, oh, I really feel for my son, then that would be one thing.

and said it's a personal decision, a family decision.

I just can't help myself.

I lost my first son.

And what can I do here?

Right.

But instead, he issues a very Trumpian statement where he says, there has been been an effort to break Hunter, who has been five and a half years sober in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution.

In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me, and there's no reason to believe it will stop here.

Enough is enough.

So it's dressed up in this very paranoid, Trumpian language.

And like, I'm using the term paranoid deliberately because I don't think Joe Biden's mental health is very good.

You know, I don't think, I mean, there was also a whole series of interviews that the podcast Pod Save America did with former Harris staffers.

And apparently, when he

chose to drop out and then 40 minutes later, whatever it was, or 15 minutes later, I forget, shortly after, issued a tweet saying, oh, and by the way,

I'm nominating Harris.

Apparently, no one had been tipped off to that.

Now, I don't know if I 100% believe that, but the staffer's official story is that, oh, Biden just kind of like dropped this bombshell.

We knew, obviously, there was pressure on him to drop out, but then he just kind of dropped this bombshell that, oh, by the way, it's going to have to be Harris.

And so this is not somebody who I'm sure is operating,

at the very least, not in a highly conscientious way, and maybe not with the full deck.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, well, and it did, I mean, like I said, when I mentioned that it seemed like a fuck you to Democrats, it actually kind of did seem that way, that he was doing it like for personal reasons, but also because he's still mad, right?

He's still mad that he had had, that he'd been cast aside.

He's still mad that he's a one-term president.

He's pissed.

And that is much more Trumpian than, you know, what I would expect of Biden.

And if you put it, I was actually thinking about this because I'm working on a book about cheating and kind of thinking in those terms.

If you think about it like as a poker thing, right?

And there's someone who is like cheats or angle shoots like consistently, right?

What do you do?

Do you start being like, oh, well, he's doing it, so I get to cheat too?

No, the game's going to devolve, right?

Like there'll be no game left to play.

Instead, Instead, you call that person out, you make sure that they get penalized for it, and you don't do that, right?

Like you, you actually try to uphold the game.

And that's what Democrats,

in this analogy, you know, Trump is kind of the constant angle shooter, the constant person like pushing the, pushing the boundaries, pushing the rules.

And what we want to see is, you know, there being pushback.

And yeah, of course, we want to see that he doesn't get away with it.

We want to see democracy standing up to him.

We want to see institutions being resilient.

We don't want people to get away with angle shooting.

But what you don't start doing is doing it yourself and adopting that exact same language.

Like, it's just a really bad look.

And I was incredibly, incredibly disappointed.

The thing I disagreed with you on was when you said, you know, anyone who doesn't condemn this within 48 hours, like that.

Hurry up and be a little bit of a drama queen, potentially.

But like, you know, like a couple

Democrats did.

Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, did.

Jared Golden,

the Democrat up in northern Maine, who was really overperformed, benchmarks in his district condemned it.

But like, I don't know.

I mean, you have to have Biden's not very popular.

People just rejected his vice president after basically having rejected him.

They basically lost this race twice, as far as I'm concerned.

Like, when are you going to break with Biden, right?

Like, what's the cost of doing that?

And

saying we are going to hold ourselves to like a higher standard potentially.

But look, look, I know,

Maria, this whole thing about like how you enable bad behavior when you don't call it out and the fact that the GOP has lots of problems.

I mean, Trump has lots of problems.

I would never vote, never did, never would vote for Donald Trump, right?

But like

you kind of are reducing things to like a lowest common denominator.

And like, as a voter, then, look, I don't know how to put it, but like, I am done with, as a default, voting for the Democratic Party, right?

It doesn't change my values as a voter.

And you kind of know if you follow me, I'm kind of center left, maybe center, center, left with like a dose of libertarianism and a dose of, I don't know, contrarianism, whatever else.

But like, I think this party has behaved badly.

And I think like it's managed a lot of crises badly.

I thought the way Democrats handled COVID and Republicans was was poor, for example.

You know, I don't know about its decision to spend so much money in terms of stimulating the economy.

I mean, they did catch up with them in terms of inflation and so forth.

I think, you know, the institutions of the left and the center left, I think are failing to perform as well as they could in part because of hypocrisy and politicization.

And like, I just think the game theory is such that like you have to like be willing to like

look at alternatives, I guess.

You know, I'm not optimistic that I'll get an alternative I like on the GOP side, and then I'll probably default and

vote for.

the Democrat.

I don't know.

I mean, certainly I'll look at independent candidacies more seriously.

But like, you know, everyone has a point where they kind of get fed up and says enough.

And like, cause again, I think kind of like on the micro argument, if you're trying to like calculate the expected value of these choices, and, you know, at least in terms of expected utility for the world, we've talked about this before.

Probably

Democrats are better.

I'm not as sure about for me personally, but I can afford to be unselfish about this.

But like in a macro sense, I don't know, the critique that the system is rotten and we have to blow things up.

I mean, I'm more and more sympathetic to that.

Yeah, I just

I totally agree that, and you know, as I said, you need to call out bad behavior and you can't shy away from calling it out within your own party as well.

Like every, you have to hold people to standards.

What I don't want to do is equate the bad behavior of what's happening in the Democratic Party with the Republican Party.

And I don't think you want to either, right?

Like, but I think it's a false equivalency, right?

I think that what I think

that what the Republicans have done, I think that the party of Trump is worse.

I think when you think everything's a false equivalency, then you, then you get away with,

not all of it's worse.

I mean, Biden, I think Biden being president now is a scandal, right?

We should.

We haven't seen his medical records, right?

We don't know if he's fit for office.

Like, to me, that's really bad.

That's an existentially bad thing because we live in a world of like...

existential risk.

I think that's very, very bad, right?

I think the pardon is medium-bad, but on a scale with with the medium-bad things that Trump has done.

And if you kind of like zoom out the lens and look toward institutional decisions, I mean, things like school closures under COVID, one of the most consequential events of like the past several decades, right?

I mean, it's almost like if you look at the impact of learning loss, there's some dispute about it, but it's really quite bad.

I don't know.

I still,

you know, I agree that there have been mistakes and there have been bad things, but I do not think that they're equivalently bad.

And I think that we have, you know, sure, Biden being president right now is not ideal, but Trump,

what he has done, what he has pledged to do, what he has shown himself capable of doing is like a constant existential threat, right?

Like his appointees to the judicial system, his appointees to the cabinet, which we've talked about, and continue, continuing, you know, continuing that trend, you know, like the cash patels of the world, you know, all of these things are a big fuck you to democracy, constantly over and over and over, saying he's going to shut down media, you know, fake news, anything he, who, anyone who criticizes him.

And a lot of his, you know, policies are aimed at

basically trying to

weaken democracy as much as possible.

And he has also, you know, doled out pardons to less than ideal people.

Now, like I said, this does not excuse the fact, like, I'm not trying to excuse Biden, right?

I think he needs to be held to account.

I think this was an awful awful decision executed in an awful way.

As you said, this pardon could have been much better, right?

Had he not constantly said, I'm not going to pardon Hunter, had he just not lied about it, and had he like just owned it and been like, look, like, I understand that I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm doing it anyway.

Like, I'm sorry, right?

Like, that would have been very different.

The way he did it was Trumpian, but the fact that we have this adjective Trumpian means that, right, that, that there is, I think that we can't say like A equals B.

Like these are two different things.

And the Republican Party has repeatedly shown itself unwilling to stand up to Trump and basically trying to go into his mold instead.

And I think that that's very frightening.

Again,

this does not mean we do not hold the Democratic Party to account.

As you said at the beginning of this segment, they are held to a higher standard.

They should be because they are trying to preserve democracy.

But I do think we just want to be careful not to paint a false equivalency here.

Are they trying to preserve democracy or is that like a sloganeering?

I mean, they tried to get...

That's what you said.

Okay.

I'm giving you back your quote.

I think intellectuals generally care about democracy, although there's also things like, you know,

Democrats don't really talk very much about free speech anymore.

Republicans talk about it hypocritically.

Very hypocritically.

I don't know.

I mean, some of the COVID stuff, I mean, you had decisions that were made by

public health agencies that had a lot of power that were not democratically elected, for example.

And like, I don't know.

I think that branding doesn't work particularly well.

If you look, actually, talk to swing voters and say, who is the party of democracy?

Then,

look, look, what Trump did in trying to overturn the election in 2020 was very bad.

And the fact that

it's kind of been memory hold is really, really bad, right?

But I just think the equilibrium where anything you do is held held to this benchmark of like January 6th, and therefore anything you do is false equivalence.

Like, I just, where does that end?

It ends in the Democratic Party behaving really badly and also losing elections, frankly.

Well, that's not what I'm trying to say.

I'm just saying there is a, you are trying to draw a false equivalence.

That does not mean we don't have to hold Democrats to a high standard, right?

There needs to be change.

Both parties are rotting and

there's horrible stuff happening, right?

Like our two-party system is not working very well.

And as you know, as I've said on this podcast before, I'm not a fan of the two-party system.

I never have been.

I think that that is not

a good way of going about things.

So I am all for holding them to account, reforming, like trying to really question

what's going wrong.

I just want to make sure that we're not saying, oh, well, Biden's now just as bad as Trump.

He is not.

And like, do not say that.

I know you know that he is not.

Don't do this for rhetorical purposes.

Like this is too important for, like, we're not doing a high school debate.

Like,

this is actually too important for rhetorical flourishes.

I was a champion debater.

I can rhetorically flourish too, and I'm choosing not to.

Where's Biden ranked historically among the presidents?

Let me bring up some historical.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

Not very high now in my mind, because I think that he has made certain decisions.

I think I would have ranked him much higher a year ago, right?

I think that this

got a lot done in the first two years.

Democrats had a relatively good midterm.

I would have ranked Biden a lot higher just a year ago because I think he got a lot done and he, you know, he was, he had a good presidency and then he made such shitty decisions in the last year

that it's really my my ranking has plummeted.

I can't give a ranking right now.

I think it's always

very

it's ill-advised to try to rank people in the moment, right?

You need a little bit of time.

Like you need, you need a little bit of a window, a little bit of perspective to just kind of see how things play out, because you also can't see kind of the tail end of some decisions, right?

Like maybe this Hunter Biden pardon will end up like not really mattering, and maybe it will end up mattering a lot.

Maybe the fact that he hasn't stepped down right now and hasn't made Kamala Harris the next president and the first female president, maybe it won't matter.

Maybe it will end up mattering a lot, right?

Like maybe something is going to happen in the next four weeks that's going to make that really consequential.

Maybe the fact that the Democrats lost is going to end up mattering a lot.

Maybe it's going to end up mattering a little bit less.

So I think that before we rank him, we just need to see how some of these things shake out and how they

not be in the emotional moment, heat of the moment.

But right now, I'm really pissed at Biden.

And

I think he's made some really, really poor choices running for re-election, what he's doing right now,

the Hunter-Biden pardon.

I'm not a very happy camper right now when it comes to Biden.

By the way, this was not the expected outcome, right?

If you looked at Polymarket, I think there was like a 25% chance or something that Hunter was going to be pardoned.

And so this was not like

priced in.

People kind of took the White House at its word.

I don't know.

I don't envy the job of the White House press secretary.

No, neither do I.

Neither do I.

This is quite the mess that he's now embroiled everyone in, right?

Because he's he's made a lot of people look like liars.

Because a lot of people have said, no,

this pardon is not happening.

So on that lovely note, let's potentially

take a break and

switch over to a much lighter topic of gift giving during the holidays.

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I'm so curious about this.

I just, I'm so interested in what your general approach to gift giving is.

This is something I don't actually know about you.

I've known you for a long time, but it's not like we constantly engage in gift exchanges.

So how do you think about it?

I don't know if I'm a very good gift giver, Maria.

Well,

your partner is.

So for my birthday, your partner has given me incredibly thoughtful gifts from the two of you.

So thank you to him for

taking that.

Being in a long-term relationship with someone who is good at giving gifts.

Although with my,

can I say this?

I'm kind of trying to...

Predict if there'll be like relationship stress out of this.

With my partner, we tend not to give each other a lot of gifts.

I'm not sure how we got into that equilibrium.

I guess the gift of being with each other every day is a gift enough.

And so we just kind of got out of the habit of like giving gifts.

And yeah, I don't know.

How about you and how about you and your husband?

We do give gifts to each other, but we,

you know,

we're not big on like we don't celebrate Valentine's Day and kind of bullshit like that.

Like, but we will give gifts to each other for,

you know, the holidays and for our birthdays.

Those are basically the two times when we give gifts.

And otherwise, you know, we like to do experiential things together.

So like instead of like for an anniversary, instead of giving gifts, like we'll either like we'll do a trip or we'll do a nice dinner or open a really nice bottle of wine, something that we can enjoy together.

And sometimes we've agreed in the past not to give each other gifts.

And instead of a gift, we'll do X or Y.

So we talk about that in advance.

So I think that that's really nice.

And I actually think that experiences often make the best gifts.

The other philosophical point I have is that I think if you're not giving an experience or something,

and one of their important qualifications,

you're not

dealing with a person where they could really use like the extra

income, right?

I mean, you should give a gift that's like a little bit something they wouldn't get for themselves, right?

That's a little bit in the offbeat or like slightly impractical zone, right?

You know, a couple of years ago, we bought my dad like a really nice new watch.

It was like a little bit more on a watch that, and he's a guy who's always worn a watch, right?

Then, than he would spend on himself, right?

Or even things like we bought my mom like a

iPhone a couple of years ago.

She's getting older and like,

you know, actually has lots of use for an iPhone if something bad happens or whatever else, a cell phone.

But she probably was not going to buy it for herself because it was too expensive and too much rigmarole to go to the store and whatever else.

And so things like that.

I mean, it's a little paternalistic, I guess, ironically, giving.

No, you know, I actually, I think that the, well, let me, before I say that, like, what's one of the most memorable, like, what are the

memorable gifts that you've gotten other than experiences?

I'm not sure I have it.

I mean, my, when I was in

Seattle for a book tour event right my like cousin gave me like a customized deck of like playing cards with family photos like that was a really thoughtful gift that's amazing right yeah that's amazing and that I think shows something incredibly important right that gift shows thought right shows forethought shows an interest and an understanding of what you do of what you like and doesn't cost a lot of money right like don't give people cash right like if you think about this is why I like said the premise of GTO like you might think that like optimally like just give people money and they can get exactly what they want but I think that that actually goes against the spirit of like what what gift giving is all about which is about paying attention to people knowing people kind of being thoughtful and as you said something they wouldn't get for themselves like something they don't know they want I'm also very against gift lists where like people you know you ask people to tell you what they want because like

you know then

what's the point right like I'd rather just not even exchange gifts if i need to and gift certificates

i'm not into because i mean nope you basically give people money but with restrictions on how you can use it you know i guess there's some thoughtfulness put in maybe if it's like some promotion or something but but for sure yeah the one exception that i will give gift certificates to people too um is like i will give a gift certificate to a massage at a spa where i know that they will never treat themselves to it and i'm like okay i want you to go and get a fucking two-hour hot stone massage at this place that is amazing you would never pay this amount of money.

Like you deserve it.

Like you need a rest.

Here you go.

But that's also, I think, goes along with what you were saying.

It's not something that they would give for themselves.

And there's actually a lot of psychological study of gift giving and of how it works, like how it activates different parts of the brain.

And it turns out that like we are actually, we get a lot more satisfaction out of kind of these acts of generosity than reciprocity.

It's not like a homo economicus type of thing, right?

It actually like gives us more pleasure to give a gift that someone, you know, that might not have the material value, but that actually has kind of that attention spent to it.

And we can even be generous to straight, like we get a kick out of being generous.

This is one thing that women are much better about than men, right?

Like they

send follow-ups after you hang out, right?

I had a little hangout with my male friend yesterday

sent like a no saying, hey, a good time tonight.

I'm like, wow, that's rare for he's heterosexual that's rare for heterosexual men to do that i'm prompted i i wasn't gonna ask but you mentioned it yeah yeah

but but no those gestures actually they do matter and i think that that that does underpin a lot of kind of the psychological satisfaction um and that sort of gift-giving interaction um you've got your classic story like i think oh henry got the spirit of the thing you know the gift of the of the magic his most famous story you've read it i'm assuming

Sorry, not trying to put you on the spot.

When you assume you make an ass of you and me.

So I made an ass of you and me.

It's a very famous story, very short.

I think it's three pages long, something like that, three or four pages, about a young couple who don't have a lot of money.

He has a beautiful gold watch.

It's his only good, nice possession.

She has just this beautiful, luxurious hair.

And so they want to give each other a gift.

And she sells her hair to buy a chain for his watch.

And he sells his watch to buy

you know, these combs for her hair that she had admired, that were beautiful.

And so it's, you know, the gift of the Magi.

They can't actually, neither one of them will ever be able to use their gifts.

Well, she will because hair grows back.

But

it's kind of this beautiful story about kind of the intent of gift giving.

All right, so let's just close with a gift-giving lightning round.

Um, what's the best gift you've ever received from another poker player?

You know, the one that comes to mind, I was doing like a charitable event, um,

poker tournament, right?

And like, I busted out, and then Annie Duke

had made the final table, and then she had to leave.

So she's like, Nate, you got my seat now.

So it was kind of, it was kind of in the range between a gift, but it was a very nice gesture to do both because it showed she had some respect that

I'd hopefully play my hand with honor.

And, you know, I tried to play aggressively.

I tried to like play well.

You know,

I had a huge chip lead and then

just ran really bad on all ends.

So I finished third.

And there was some threshold where you got some actually cool prize first and second.

So I should have been looking at the bubble.

Our PokePlayer fans will know, right?

Basically, there was like a bubble for second place where you get like a cool award, a gift in the top two positions are like the same thing.

I forget what it was, a plaque or I don't know, but something that was worth playing for.

And then third place, you get like a gift bag.

And like, I should have played for second place, basically.

That's a good gift.

All the best gifts I've gotten from poker players have been experiences, right?

Where someone has like treated me to a really memorable meal that I would never have otherwise been able to go to.

And those are the things that I really, you know, cherish and remember.

Best gift for the Rivarian.

So if you've read my book, you know, there are the two typologies, the village, which is like the East Coast establishment, and the river, which is poker and gambling and VC and all these things so

the best gift for a revarian this is where i wish we had like a

sponsor from like a poker training company be like get 20 off on gtoexpress.com

with pasco maria and nate 2024.

um i that was a great pivot nate to a company that does not actually exist well done

No free promotion.

If you want free promotion, this is not the place.

Hey, I'll give you a free sports spin on FanDuel.

Share that.

You probably don't want to, I'm not sure you want to do something like that and potentially hook somebody or whatever.

But no, yeah, I do think

like a poker trend.

Like, I think most of the best poker training materials now are online.

We're not going to go about recommending particular sites, but like, yeah, I mean, giving someone, because those training sites aren't cheap either.

So if you can afford it, maybe something people wouldn't think about buying themselves, but like a poker training course could be a good gift for sure.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

How about best gift for the villager?

So, you know, listeners of our show probably know at this point what the village is, but the village is your

answer to the river, the kind of the establishment, right?

The

kind of the

collegiate types of the world.

Maybe like a gift shift get to Substack.

I don't think those things exist yet, but like go read outside the village, read some heterodox.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or maybe, or maybe they're the one that needs like,

to learn how to take a risk.

Maybe you just give them, okay,

you get, I guess you can't like comp a casino, or maybe you can't, right?

Can you like gift someone here's $100, spend it Caesars or something?

I don't know.

Maybe, yeah.

Well, so, so, but if you're doing that, then I think the best gift for a riverian would be not a poker course, but something that would, that would actually like even them out.

I would give them the, like, the Paris Review interviews, which is one of my favorite gifts for people.

It's a four-volume set of interviews with some of the best writers and thinkers of the 20th century.

I think they learn a lot from that.

So I would go in that direction.

Let's even everyone out.

How much time should you spend picking out a gift before you buy something and move on?

I think it really depends because, you know, for the people who are kind of the closest to me, like I, it's one of these things where I'm constantly thinking about gifts, not on any conscious level, but like you pay attention to them, right?

You pay attention to what they like, what they don't like, and so you kind of have ideas.

It's not like all of a sudden I sit down and I'm like, okay, this is what I want to get.

But some people are really, really difficult to shop for.

Like my dad is, he'll appreciate everything.

Like he's always, you know, really grateful.

But like, he's a hard person to think of gifts for because he's someone who is not at all materialistic.

And like, you know, he appreciates things, but like he doesn't want anything.

And he can can be you know he it can be hard because i think everyone loves him very very much and wants to give him gifts that he'll really appreciate and so you have to just kind of think like okay what is something so like recently it was his 70th birthday and we ended up um kind of all of the kids got him um

we

a number of bottles of vintage port because he's a big port drinker from all the decades.

And that was, you know, that was something that

we had to, we had to think for a while before we came up with.

But, you know, it's people who are not materialistic can be hard to shop for.

All right, Nate, I have another question for you.

Who is the most important, non-obvious person to get a gift for?

Like, you're building super office gossip, the least scrupulous dealer at the wind.

Like, who's that?

Who's someone who you think is not someone who you'd immediately think about?

I was hoping you'd have a better, I mean, we give,

we, you know, we treat our door guy pretty well, usually.

Apart from that, like, I don't know, maybe I'm inconsiderate and don't like tend to be a little bit more.

No, I think that, I think that we, we definitely, we leave tips for everyone who works at the building.

Um, and we actually give a gift.

Um, so there's a guy who's in charge of like the receiving area.

That's like where all the packages go, and he's a very, very important person because he can like bar entry for people or he can like facilitate things for you a little bit like you know letting you use the service elevator like slightly later than he's supposed to or slightly earlier and like you know facilitate all of that process because like you know everyone all of the contractors like all deliveries everything has to go through that service entry not food deliveries but like appliance deliveries or like big deliveries um and you know so we know that he um loves nuts because he had mentioned it at some point.

So we give him like one of those huge baskets of like fruit and nut assortments and he really appreciates that.

And I think that he likes us more because of that.

So I think that that's, you know, we like to give him something that's not money to make him know that we that we appreciate him.

So I think that, you know, those types of people are really important.

And you want to give them special acknowledgement.

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Re-gifting, yay or nay?

Absolutely.

I think that regifting is totally fine, depending on what it is, right?

Like if someone gives you a gift that's like nice, but not something you'll ever use, right?

Then give it to someone who will use it.

Now, if it's like a personal gift, then don't regift, obviously.

And if it's something like, I've gotten things that are just like, these are usually from like

sort of family members, like, you know, extended family,

where you're like, oh my God, this is just so ugly.

It's not even funny, right?

Like, what am I going to do with this?

Like, or it might not be ugly, but it's just so not my taste, right?

Like, it's just not something that I would ever want anywhere in my house.

What do I do with it?

I don't want to give it to someone else because it's not reflective of my taste or what I would want.

But I can't throw it out because I feel bad.

And then I feel like there's like a statute of limitations on like how long you have to keep a thing before you can toss it.

And I always, I still feel a little bit bad throwing it out, but I have thrown things out in the past because at some point you're like, okay, when does this just like there's a statute of limitations, right?

On when like, on how long you have to keep bad gifts.

But I've definitely, especially if I'm open about it, I've re-gifted things.

Like, you know, if someone gives me something nice and I'm like, hey, like, this is amazing.

I already have one.

Do you mind if I like give it to my sister?

You know, or something.

Oh, that is difficult, right?

Because, like,

in some sense, the things that people

will like, they probably have, you know, that's tricky if you don't know somebody that well to avoid, like, yeah.

I mean, what's the, there's fungible versus non-fungible.

I mean, like, if someone likes whiskey, then they're never going to complain about getting more whiskey, right?

Whereas, like, uh, if they have a certain book, if they already have a copy of On the Edge, The Art of Risking Everything, or The Biggest Bluff, did that have a subtitle?

What's the subtitle?

How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.

Good subtitle.

Yeah, although the author of those books might be happy if they already have a copy, then that can be tricky if you're trying to guess what's in their library.

Books are probably in a tricky category there.

Yeah, and there are some books that I have various copies of and various editions, but there are also books that like I will gift to someone else.

And I think that that's totally fine.

And you never want to be that person, by the way, if you're listening to the show.

Don't be the gift giver who's like, hey, I haven't seen gift X around.

Like, what'd you do?

Like, do not ask about your gifts.

That is not the point.

Like, you have given the gift.

Like, that's it.

Right.

Like, do, if, if someone offers

feedback, amazing.

If they don't, like,

this is not the reason you gave a gift, right?

That's why I also like, I get, I get mad when people are, like, when people expect thank you notes.

Like, you know what?

Like, thank you notes are really, really nice.

But, like, don't put obligations on people.

Like, you know, I don't expect a thank you note, like, but there are people who just feel like everything needs a thank you note.

I know someone who writes a thank you note to a thank you note.

And I'm like, dude, like,

when does this end?

Like, when do we stop thanking each other?

You know, just, just like smile.

Nate, do you ever ever engage in any sort of like a tit-for-tat strategy when you come for when it comes to gift giving?

Like, you know, with basically part of this deterioration, we're basically we kind of it's very sporadic if we'll give gifts and things like that.

And there's probably some tit-for-tat element there.

Yeah.

Right.

Oh, you didn't give me a gift.

So that's the opposite tit-for-tat.

What about, what about like, you know, do you,

because I have like some of my closest friends, like, I always exchange gifts with like material gifts and then others like we we don't do that and we'll like go out for dinner right like we'll we'll do something like that as a gift and that's a lot of regular platonic dinner dates and there's certainly some conscientiousness about like the whole strategy about like who pays because you're trying to like assess

you know if someone is way wealthier um

then but sometimes people want to pay especially men feel like if if you always pay right so you kind of have some like equilibrium where if like if you're the wealthier person and you're not like

family or you're not like someone's former boss or something right then the equilibrium is like the richer person pays like 80 of the time i think or something like that probably

yeah well i i think that also you know i like exchanging dinners too like

i i think that there are lots of different ways for for doing that but yeah it it is interesting how different equilibriums will establish themselves in different different situations.

And I don't think that that's like a conscious tit for tat, even though with you and your partner, maybe it was.

There's a lot of strategy in relationships, by the way.

You know, there's a book I read by a guy named, I believe, Kevin Zolman, about like a GTO guide to parenting, basically,

where it's like, yeah, kids are quite strategic.

And, you know, you have to bargain and it's a repeated game and things like that.

And

I think there's something to that for many dimensions of a relationship.

Are there particularly nitty or degenerate gifts that you've ever received?

Let's see.

I don't know.

Those are hard questions for me to answer.

Like, what even is a nitty gift?

Is a nitty gift, like, how do we define that?

Is it a cheap gift?

Or is it like, or is it a like play it safe gift, like a gift certificate, right?

Like, I think that both of those things are nitty, but like, I mean, my family one time

they gave out gifts of like the Iraq Study Group report.

I thought that was kind of a nitty gift.

That's amazing.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah.

What about the most D-Gen gift?

Once again, how do we define that?

Is it like ridiculously expensive, splurgy, or is it like a hundred bucks to spend at Caesars, which is a very DGen gift, by the way?

Or here's like some slot credit.

Again, very DG.

You know, in college,

I had a rave

phase uh

and i think the statute of limitations on this has passed so i can so anyway um

so my friends and i went to like a rave called even further i think it was in either rural illinois or maybe wisconsin um drive to get there it's outdoors for a couple days right and like um that seems like a good location for a rave and my friend

was going around trying to uh

get drugs and uh

don't know if I should be telling the story, but I guess I'm halfway through, so I have to continue now.

And this guy was tripping his balls off and gave my friend an entire sheet, 100 tabs of acid, of LSD.

Whoa.

So

that's pretty degenerate, I would say.

Yeah.

He probably regretted that once he was no longer tripping his balls off.

Yeah, no, I don't know what the retail value in 1998 or whatever is kind of middle.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's kind of be the top D gem category for me.

I can't top that, Nate.

I cannot top that.

And on that note, may you all have a very pleasant gift-giving experience this holiday season.

And remember, it's, I know this is a cliche, but we've talked about in the past some cliches are good cliches and they're cliches for a reason.

And it's the thought that counts really is a good cliche, right?

Like, it really is the thought that counts.

And that would be my GTO way of giving gifts.

Maria, you and I will see each other next week.

And we'll like literally see hopefully some of the listeners at the poker meetup, which again, Maria, what's the date?

December 11th, which is a Wednesday at noon.

It's 2024.

That's this year.

Yes, yes.

At noon at Bellagio Poker Room.

Really excited and hope to see and meet some of you there.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at 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 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 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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