How Senators and NFL Players Make High Risk Decisions

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

I'm Maria Konakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

So today on the show, we are going to revisit Trump's cabinet picks.

I say revisit because last week we talked about the first cabinet picks picks and they've gotten a little bit more extreme since then.

So we're going to go into the game theory of the confirmation process in the Senate, what it means to cooperate and defect, and how we think these confirmations might play out.

And then let's turn to the NFL where Guardian caps are now being prepared on the field.

These are things that look a little goofy, but protect you from concussions much more effectively than a helmet alone.

Very few players are wearing these despite their medical benefit.

We'll talk about why and what the game theory equilibriums are there.

So let's get into it and start with your favorite topic, Nate.

politics.

Even though the elections are now behind us, that does not mean we get to abandon the politics speech.

You are not allowed to retire.

We are still talking about what's going to happen with this future administration, Trump 2.0.

You know, last week, when we were talking about cabinet picks, one of the first picks was Marco Rubio.

And, you know, we We talked about that and it seemed like, okay, you know, this isn't that bad.

That seems reasonable.

Maybe the rest of the cabinet will be quite reasonable as well.

And then obviously the day, in a few days after we taped, a bunch more nominations were released that were a little bit more eyebrow raising in multiple instances.

So let's talk about those nominations and let's talk about the process for confirming them, how we think that's going to play out and what the decision game tree looks like for those Senate Republicans who might be in a position to make a difference.

Yeah, cool.

Yeah, Maria, I took a little break with my partner and the cat skills this week.

Did you have a nice time?

We did.

We maybe took a hike

where we were on the edge of maybe hiking too far, too fast, without enough water.

Uh-oh, so talking about negative ev decisions nate you should have read one of the first posts i made on the leap about the risk-taking calculus when one goes hiking but you're here so it all worked out but don't do it again once you're 95 of the way to the top then you can't turn back can you Yes, you can.

Absolutely.

You can absolutely turn back even when you are 98% of the way there.

You can and you should.

This is how accidents and accidental deaths happen and i love you nate and i love your partner and i'd want to see both of you healthy and uh back in new york city it would have been a relatively cool way to if you're going to die right on top of a mountain in the cat skills anyway

I would give a very moving speech at your funeral.

Yeah.

Not able to escape politics, obviously.

And the first big confrontation, the first big test of Trump's will is

these confirmation picks of cabinet secretaries that might be a little unconventional.

That's the understatement of the moment.

There are four that I think really are drawing the most attention, which are Matt Gates, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Tulsi Gabbard.

Can I tell you a story about Tulsi Gabbard, who is alleged by

Democrats to be like a, in the sphere of Russian influence?

Yeah, let's hear story time.

In 2020, we went to New Hampshire,

and this is just before the pandemic kind of shuts regular campaigning down, a group of us 538ers.

And we had a little habit of like showing up unannounced at campaign offices

just to see what they're up to.

It was a cute little technique.

And then I think some of the campaigns got smart.

At the Biden office, by the way, it was totally empty except for the figure skater Christy Yamaguchi.

That was interesting.

At the Mayor Pete office, you know, they instantly recognized us and like tried to usher us out, very organized.

But Tulsi Gabbard has this giant empty office and the only clerk or employee there had a thick Russian accent.

I'm just saying this actually happened.

Just a little data point there.

I love it.

That is good story time.

I didn't know

where that story was going to go, but that's good story time.

Yeah, so these, when I say eyebrow raising, I meant eyebrow raising.

So obviously, Tulsi Gabbard,

we know that there are rumors of Russia loving her.

You've got RFK Jr., which is the one that I am really worried about.

We talked a little bit last week about the potential harm that could come to science during a Trump administration.

And this just seems to highlight that

the potential harm is going to be actual harm.

So I think that

we have people

being put up for appointments where either they have no qualifications or they have anti-qualifications in things that are actually going to stop very important research from happening for at least four years, probably longer, because we know that the ramifications of this can really

affect cabinet pick, I think, is measured in.

days, not

that is true.

You know what?

You know what, Nate?

I actually didn't think of that.

You've given me hope for the first time time in a week.

We do know from his last administration that, yes, the average tenure of some of his picks is not long.

So that's good.

So there's that.

Just for a baseline, if you go to Polymarket, other betting sites are similar, I consult for Polymarket.

Gates has a 30% chance of being confirmed.

Tulsi Gabbard, 79%, RFK, 76%, and Pete Haggs 76% as well.

I'm trying to wonder if I'd take

over under on those.

What was the RFK one again?

76%.

Okay.

So Gates is the only one that they are thinking is an underdog right now.

Yeah, Gates is the one where you have, and now we can start to get in the game theory, where you have like a lot of leaked reports of Republicans saying, oh, everybody in the Senate's against him.

There are dozens of picks against him, but

the fact that you don't have senators by name, they're saying, oh, everybody else is against him.

They're not saying I'm against him.

They're saying other people might vote against him.

So now we start to get in the game theory here where, look, I have no doubt.

First of all, Gates is seen as

a loose cannon.

As I mean, there's lots of rumors of sexual and drug-related promiscuities and infidelities and generally being a difficult colleague, right?

So I have no doubt that in a

private vote, what's the term I'm looking for?

A vote, an anonymous vote.

that Gates and maybe even all these people would go down, right?

The issue is that

is that if you oppose Trump, then Trump can try to kind of like nuke you from

orbit.

Um, yeah.

So, to do a basic math check here, Republicans, assuming that David McCormick wins in Pennsylvania, some networks haven't called it.

It doesn't seem to me like there's a path back for Bob Casey, but there will be a recount.

But assuming 53,

you have

two, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who have repeatedly defied Republicans.

Susan Collins is up for re-election in 2026.

Um, in what's now a pretty blue state, Maine, all Maine, all the all the liberals who like taxes, actually, Maine doesn't have particularly high taxes, right?

They kind of moved to Maine, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, staying very blue.

She's in a very difficult race, and so she's not going to vote for any of these, I don't think.

Um, and Lisa Murkowski, uh, I assume, has shown enough willingness to defy Trump in the past that she won't either, but still, Republicans have, uh, you know, 53, 51, they only need 50 because J.D.

Vance is the vice president.

So they can afford to lose one more.

And so who are the two more that will

vote to oppose?

And the answer is I've been trying to do some data work on

looking at the partisan loyalty and the ideology of different Republican senators.

Like there's not like an obvious like third name.

Before you would have said you need a fourth name too, right?

Before you would have said

Mitt Romney, but Mitt Romney's been replaced by actually a relatively moderate Republican in Utah named, I think, John Curtis.

Let me double-check.

It is John Curtis.

You have some newcomers like McCormick in Pennsylvania, and you would think in the long term, I mean, he, you know, he won the race if he does win by 0.3 points or something.

Pennsylvania is a swinging state, but it's six years out until his next re-elect.

And these kind of younger, newer Republican senators tend to be very conservative.

It's quite generational.

Where, you know, the traditional kind of Chuck Grassleys of the world

are the types who will

stand for order in the U.S.

Senate and think the Senate needs to play an important role.

But the younger guns tend not to.

They tend to say, well, I'm just going to be Trump, Trump, Trump, and then

maybe win reelection, maybe not.

Right.

Tom Tillis in North Carolina, I believe, is up to re-elect in 2026 as well.

That's the other race that Democrats will really target.

He has shown more streaks of moderation.

Lindsey Graham

on paper is more of an institutionalist Senate candidate, but he seems to, I don't know, I'm not sure what I'm trying to imply here, but Lindsey Graham seems very reluctant to defy Trump.

And there's a lot of revenge-motivated politics.

Like Democrats did this or that or the other bad thing, right?

Now it's our turn.

And so, you know, Jon Thune, the incoming majority leader, might be one candidate for some of these, but there's not like, there's not like an obvious third and fourth strikes.

Yeah.

And I think that when we're talking about the game theory, right, we're looking at a decision matrix where you look at kind of the payoff structure, right?

If we think about it in terms of a prisoner's dilemma, which this kind of is, you can cooperate, right?

So you vote with the Republicans or you defect, which means that you join kind of the Democrats in opposing some of these picks.

And then if we, but we, if we look at the incentives, I think that in the immediate time horizon, the disincentive to defect is so ridiculously strong, right?

Because we, what do we know about Trump?

We know he's vindictive as fuck, right?

Like he does not like it when people go against him.

He's going to be president and he has a lot of authority.

And we have already seen during his presidency and in the last four years that people say a lot of shit about him in private and then they still go and support him in public, right?

They are completely two-faced in this.

And if you think about this kind of as like a time horizon, right, like

you're going to like shit's going to hit the fan with Trump much sooner than you'll be patted on the back and said, you did the right thing for our country, right?

It's kind of like climate change, if you think about it, right?

There are like these abstract incentives like, I stood up for democracy, like I stood up for not, you you know, putting a potential Russian operative or someone who's anti-science in a position of science, blah, blah, blah.

It's very abstract versus I'm going to get punished.

Like, bad things are going to happen to me.

And, you know, I'm going to really feel it if I step out of line.

And so I just, I do not see that there will be kind of this wave of Republicans breaking ranks.

Like, I think that there's even a good chance that Matt Gates is going to get confirmed.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, the one pushback is I wonder if we're being proper about the prisoner's alignment.

I actually think that

defection actually is voting for these picks.

Okay, why is that?

I guess that's the,

we can frame it either way.

And like, then you'll just flip my arguments.

But why is defection voting?

Because cooperation is from the perspective of the prisoners, who in this, I guess, somewhat literal sense are Republican senators, right?

I don't think that they think that Matt Gates being attorney general would be good for the Republican Party or necessarily even be good for Trump.

I mean, he's

politely described as

a loose cannon, high risk of scandals.

It's a high-profile position of playing into every critique that Democrats have.

And now, all of a sudden, we're in an anti-incumbent moment.

And now Democrats are going to be pushing back in 2026.

I mean,

if they pick up those two Senate seats I mentioned in Maine and North Carolina,

then it's 4951, and they have opportunities two years later to then take back the Senate if there's a President Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro or Raphael Warnock in 2028

and the House,

where Democrats almost won the House this time.

I would have to imagine in a midterm near their favorite to pick up the House.

And that means that like they can throw a big wrench in Trump's agenda and do a bunch bunch of investigations and whatever else.

So

they want to cooperate with one another,

but individually their incentives are to defect, right?

If you're

although he's a weird case because he's kind of in this electoral zone, right?

But if you're like so you're going to, you're, you're flipping, you're flipping what I said.

And I actually agree that that makes sense that the, that the labels of cooperation and defection should change.

And it's funny that it's funny that you say that because I actually thought ahead of time, I was like, wait, which ones are the cooperators and which ones are the defectors?

It wasn't clear-cut to me, but I think your argument makes a lot of sense.

So, basically,

what we're saying, though, is that the incentives are basically for all of the Republicans to defect.

We'll be right back after this message.

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Now, in the prisoner's dilemma, you can't communicate.

Um,

these guys can, um,

you know, so yeah, one

way to do it might be to say, uh, all of us are going to vote against them, him, right?

Or a very large number of us.

And so, therefore, if you want to try to primary 30 of us, then go right ahead, right?

You know, what probably happens, usually

in the modern day, politicians, presidents, I should say, or Senate majority leaders don't like to bring votes to the floor unless they think they can win, right?

So maybe the answer is like, there is some pretense for why Gates

drops out

conditional upon him being nominated in the floor, then I guess he's probably a favorite.

I mean, look,

I don't know.

I think it's just like

with the other three, you can kind of,

I think RFK Jr.

is wacky.

I think, you know, I worry, I'm boring.

I worry most about the vaccine stuff, even though he's kind of said, oh, I won't.

fuck with vaccines too much.

I mean, there's a long track record of

I also, you know, part of me wonders strategically whether Gates is like a sacrificial lamb

to say, okay, you get this one scallop, right?

But you better not fuck with me on the rest.

And there's kind of like an implicit equilibrium there.

And that really sucks because not only is RFK

Jr., not only is he anti-vaccine, but he has also said

during his campaign that he wanted to pause all funding and all research of infectious disease, period,

to give it a rest.

Like, dude, we didn't do well during the first pandemic.

This is not gain of function research.

This is just general research into infectious disease.

That does not seem like a good thing to do, right?

To just pause all of that funding.

We know that fetal cell research is going to stop.

Like this, these are really, really important things that have really big consequences for public health and for the future.

And I just like, to me, that's an incredibly like,

if Matt Gaetz is a sacrificial lamb, then we have some scary picks ahead of us, right?

Including that, including putting, you know, the Pentagon in the hands of someone, what are his qualifications, right?

Like, this is, this is,

to me, it's a little bit, it's, it's not a little bit, it's a lot bit frightening to think about that.

But I think, you know, I just do not see how the game theory works for anything other than confirmation at the beginning.

And

that,

you know, maybe Matt Gates is withdrawn, right?

Like maybe that doesn't actually ever come before the Senate, like as you suggest might end up happening.

But if the other ones all get confirmed, like this is going to be a pretty scary administration.

Yeah, I mean, the other thing to think about is whether there are any Republicans who don't care because they plan to retire.

Mitch McConnell's an interesting one, another one who has had some health issues, been in in office for one, two, three, four, five, seven terms now.

His intent is unknown as to whether he's running in 2026.

Or who knows?

I mean, look, I think politicians are 98%

craven

opportunists.

They're just looking at

the presentation.

Yeah.

Right.

And Trump probably won the popular vote, right?

I mean, he improved his margin in like all but

two or three states or something like that.

Right.

And so, um,

but I

don't know um

and it is a repeated game in the sense that trump will do other things that they don't like and like if you kind of have to like

if you capitulate now i think you're you're kind of lining yourself up to capitulate

there right yeah no i mean i think you're supposed to like

throw i mean like i believe in this and things and

life i mean if you kind of roll over for somebody then they kind of correctly assume that you'll roll over the next time and it's often best to like draw a line in the sand early if you're playing in like i mean you know one thing a lot of a lot of players do is is and this can be dangerous actually right but like you know if uh it's the first hand of the tournament and uh and you raise and get three bets so a player re-re-raises um

you know most humans most poker players psychologically the first time it happens you're more likely to get a call or even a four bet

It's harder to get that kind of aggressive action through the first time.

People look at it as a proxy for future aggression.

So intuitively, they, I think, probably

understand that.

Yeah, no, I think that's right.

I'm just remembering this one tournament where I played where a new guy came to the table.

I three-bet him and he just ripped it for like 80 big blinds.

Then someone else three-bet him and he did the exact same thing over.

I don't think anyone three-bet him again for

the last hand of the day or the last hand before a break, right?

People kind of want to go on break, do whatever they're going to do.

But then you're like, okay, you fucking exploiting me, right?

You know, I'm going to go to the bathroom and now you're three-betting me.

And so fuck you, I'm all in.

I'm wondering, you know, one of the things you said that was intriguing to me that it seems like a long shot, but I'm curious whether you actually think it might happen.

Like, do you think that there's like a scenario where Republicans can get like 30 people to defect, right?

Where it can be like a, I don't think so.

Like, I think there are just too many people who believe in Trump and who, um, and who actually like, you know, don't, don't want to defect, but, um, or cooperate.

Um,

how likely is a scenario like that?

I mean, they certainly haven't shown much backbone in the past.

And in some ways, Trump has like more of a mandate than he, I mean, like, I think the equilibrium might actually be that, like, um, that Gates gets sacrificed and the others go through.

Um,

you know, and then they can say, okay, well, we drew a line somewhere, right?

We drew a line.

And Gates is just so unacceptable on many different

levels and kind of almost almost guarantees like a

either a circus act or an administration that really kind of overreaches and it becomes like harder to reign Trump in later.

I mean, I don't know.

I don't talk to Republican or Democratic senators for that matter, right?

I mean, if you hear reporters who do, they're like, well, in private, they're pretty reasonable.

Well, exactly.

In private, like you have to do that shit in public.

Like it doesn't count if it's in private, I have to say.

Like that's what it only counts if you actually publicly then do it and put your money where your mouth is.

It's like, it's like people who can confidently,

to go back to poker very quickly, it's like the, you know, players on stream who always know what the correct thing to do is, right?

And who confidently say, oh, you have to call here, you have to race here, you have to shove, you have to do this, you have to do that, right?

The chat experts.

And then when you you get them into that spot playing live without seeing the cards, all of a sudden, all of that expertise goes out the window and they have zero dollars in earnings as opposed to the people they're criticizing.

So if you do things from a backseat driver,

I don't know how many other analogies I can

also throw in there.

It doesn't matter.

What they can also do is draw lots, right?

Where the, let's say, the 15 Republican senators who are somewhat reasonable go into a room and they have, it's like the NBA lottery, right?

And they pick 13 names and the final two have to just defect from Trump on everything,

knowing they'll be, but the way it works is you have little favors, right?

Maybe let's say,

you know, let's say that

one of them's from Tennessee and then, you know, the senator from, I don't know, Jim Risch from Idaho gets the last draw.

They're like, how would you like to be the president of the University of Tennessee, Jim Risch?

Gotta of a football team?

Now the impressions are coming out.

I love it.

No, but they should draw a lot.

And one of them should be the fall guy.

You know, there are benefits to being the one outlier Republican, the Maverick.

With that, let's take a short break and switch to actual quarterbacks and talking about football.

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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 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.

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So the NFL has just announced that players are allowed to wear guardian caps when they're playing footballs.

So a guardian cap, it's like this padded thing that you put over your helmet that will lower the risk of concussion.

They're already being used during practices and now players can wear them during games as well.

But a lot of players, the vast majority of players, fact, the vast, vast majority of players are not wearing them.

And so.

I want to talk about what that decision calculus is like.

Why would you not wear something that you know is going to make the game much safer for you And that is going to improve your long-term health outcomes.

Yeah.

I mean,

some of my input on this or insight on this, I, so for my book, I interviewed a friend of mine who's a former NFL player named Dave Anderson and a really good guy, now runs a sports data company.

And,

you know, he described the culture of the NFL where it really is a, and I like football, not trying to be

prude here, right?

But it really is like a a almost warlike environment, right?

Where it's like next man up and careers are short.

And also, you know, you have good data on like quarterbacks and a few other positions, but for the most part, all the linemen, right?

It's hard to evaluate.

And so if you're seen as not being tough,

then

you might not get that next opportunity, right?

And he's like, yeah, there are guys who like are, you know, who are these guys who are, you know, big, gracious football players.

But if you're not willing to get in there and like get your head knocked around, then

you'll be bypassed, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think that this macho culture has a lot to do with it and a lot to do with the reluctance to adopt something that is clearly beneficial for you.

By the way, speaking of psychology, names matter, words matter.

Who the hell decided to call these guardian caps?

I'm wearing a guardian cap, you know, like my little grandmother cap that's guarding my head.

Like, call them something manly and macho, right?

Like,

I don't know.

We can think about much better names that would make people want to adopt them more than guardian cap, but that's just an aside.

So, so I think that that what you're saying is absolutely true.

We do have this culture.

And by the way, I've seen some football games.

Like, football's fun to watch.

Part of me doesn't want to see it because, like, every time someone gets hit on the head, you know, every time someone's neck snaps, I just want to close my eyes, you know, and just say, oh my God, concussion.

No, no, no, no, no.

But yeah, I understand it's a fun game to watch.

But, you know, gladiatorial contests used to be fun too, where

people actually died.

And to me, like, this is this is the continuation of that.

People have loved blood sports and watching people get hurt and watching people go at each other, having people play war on the field over and over and over.

This is not something that's new to America.

This is something that I think has been an ingrained part of culture.

I just wish that

we would actually

understand

why it's so incredibly important to

try to go back on that.

You remember a few weeks ago, Nate,

we were talking about the value of a human life, right?

What was that number that you seem to have at the tip of your finger?

10 million.

So when people tell me that, you know, football players, their salaries are way too high, I'm like, no, actually,

the salaries are just right and sometimes too low because they are literally just taking a flyer on their life, on their future sanity, on their brain function.

They're taking years off of their life because a lot of these repeat concussions

are going to mean that that you die 10 years sooner, 20 years sooner, that your healthy years are just completely reduced.

So yeah, they should be paid these insane premiums because they are leveraging their health and their life for your viewing pleasure.

And I just wish that we could get past that culture and understand the importance of protecting these players and not forcing them to make that choice.

Instead of saying you can wear guardian caps, why doesn't the NFL go and say, from now on, this is the new helmet, right?

This is the new regulation helmet that everyone wears.

And by the way, at first, yeah, the name, and then at first I thought it was like, when I first heard about it, it was Guardian Cups.

And I wonder if you got extra protection for your manhood, how that would be different, maybe.

That's funny.

I mean, the other thing about these helmets or cups, caps, excuse me,

is that they have...

They didn't even call them a helmet.

They called them a cap.

Please continue.

Right.

They look a a little weird, right?

I mean, in their raw form, they kind of, it's like turtle shell look.

And then

you can kind of like drape like the team's logo over it.

But like, so it stands out.

And kind of everybody is kind of saying, okay, there's a guy who's taking extra protection, right?

I mean, you know, so some players will say that like, um,

I don't like the way it feels.

And, you know, if it compromises performance, then

whatever, right?

I mean, you know, I mean, if it's true that it hurts your performance, then there's something there.

But I think it's more that it looks

remember, this is the sport.

It's not the most progressive culture.

And you're selecting for people who were selected for

their aggression and tolerance for risk, because every position in the field, except perhaps a kicker and a punter,

are undertaking significant risk every time they take the field, right?

And I mean, you, you know, a huge percentage of players are going to face a severe injury at some point in their careers.

It's kind of normal, unfortunately.

And like one of the things Dave Anderson told me is that, yeah, if I text my, you know, play for the Houston Texans mostly, if I text my chat group of like human group chat, excuse me, of Houston Texans buddies who I play golf with or fancy football with or whatever, then

probably half of them are not really in great shape right now, right?

They can't do normal things that a normal 40-something

formerly healthy athletic male would do.

And like, so they're already kind of like

making this sacrifice.

Yeah.

So look, I mean, I think, you know, the equilibrium is probably that the NFL has to like

mandate maybe certain positions, wear it, or, or

rookies after a certain date wear it and also work on the technology to make it more aesthetically pleasing.

And I'm sure there's been resources poured into that, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I do think that, though, that the mandate has to be, it has to come from the top.

Otherwise, I don't see this change happening.

And we already, by the way, see the players wearing them during practices.

And I don't think there's any impact on performance, right?

So everyone wears them during practice and your eye will get used to it.

It's going to stop looking goofy.

Just think for a second, like try to visualize different sports uniforms.

A ton of sports look goofy if you just think about it in the abstract, but we're used to seeing it.

So it looks, it looks totally normal, right?

It just looks like the uniform for that sport.

So I think that, you know, two years from now, people won't remember.

Let me give you another example, skiing, right?

So downhill skiing, no one used to wear helmets.

So I started skiing when I was four years old and no, but not a single helmet to be seen, right?

Everyone's just wearing hats.

Then you start seeing a few people, very early adopters, wearing helmets after research came out, became clear, you know, how important it was, how much it could protect you.

And my family was actually incredibly early on that.

We basically immediately got helmets and I never wanted to wear one because I looked silly, right?

Because none of the other kids were wearing them, but we did anyway.

And now you can't, every single person on the mountain wears helmets, right?

Like there's, if you're the person who's not wearing a helmet, you look like a dumbass.

And people are like, who is this absolute idiot not wearing a helmet when everyone knows that you have to wear a helmet?

And this happened in a decade, right?

Like it was actually incredibly short when you think about it from everyone just wears your winter hat to every single person wears a helmet.

So these changes are absolutely possible.

And it doesn't, it no longer looks goofy.

In fact, you look like an idiot for doing something different.

So I'm willing to bet that if we see a mandate, we're going to start seeing, you know, that we will no longer even notice and be like, ha ha ha, you know, look how silly that looks.

And we know that there are sports that have huge risk injuries,

huge potential for concussions, where the concussion rate is actually incredibly low, such as racing, right?

So Formula One happening in Las Vegas in a few days, race car drivers, those collisions, holy shit, right?

Like you would think that these guys would just like have concussions all the time.

No, because they have these crazy helmets that not only protect their heads, but protect their necks and protect them from kind of that sort of whiplash that is what actually causes concussions a lot of the time.

So you have these things things that we see, we have the technology, we know how to do it, we know how to protect people,

and yet there's this just,

as you pointed out, we're coming full circle, there's kind of this macho false bravado that makes it seem not manly to protect yourself.

I hope that we're able to kind of turn that around because I want people to be able to enjoy sports.

I want people to be able to enjoy football.

And I want these players to have good lives and healthy lives ahead of them.

You know, I don't want them to have to mortgage their marriages, their children, their future, everything

just to bring some people pleasure for a few years.

No, look, I mean, again,

self-selected for machismo population and like, you know, a kind of common theme of this show is that.

behaviors that seem irrational aren't necessarily irrational, you know, because it's kind of how you define rationality.

And if you lose the prestige or, but yeah, I look, I mean,

you know, if you have some prominent players, too, who are like, I'm a unimpeachably

cool NFL player

and now I'm wearing this thing, right?

Then, then that might change things a little bit.

It's not like they're, you know, in hockey,

I mean, you know, some of these guys have like golden locks and they're good-looking guys, and they were afraid of decreasing their marketability, right?

When the helmets came in.

And, and, um,

but you in football you already don't really see the guy's face right they already have a have a helmet on and like it just seems kind of weird that like i mean so obviously from the league's perspective um

why is there no mandate i mean because the nfl is incredibly resilient and and popular um

you know but like the part of what's happened too is i think kind of football had gotten more like

kind of, you know, there were risks that liberals were worried about concussions of the NFL.

And that kind of like died down a little bit.

I think because football occupies this unique place in American society where people like it precisely because it's violent and precisely because like it's this proxy for kind of like risk taking.

But yeah, I don't, I don't know.

Yeah, we'll see what happens, but

I hope that the tides are shifting and that we will see change in the coming years.

By the way, Nate, while you and I were talking,

Trump said that he was going to be nominating Mehmet Oz to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, who will be working closely with RFK Jr.

So we have this dystopian RFK and Dr.

Oz combination.

I don't know if you're not available for anything.

Yeah.

To me, wow, like I, this is not a reality that I could have predicted.

I mean, it kind of is pretty.

I mean, Trump watches a lot of TV.

It's one of the most predictable pics.

That's,

I guess that's true.

I guess that's true.

Let's see what happens next week.

But these

pics are getting more and more absurd.

And the qualification levels.

Yes, being on TV seems to actually be a very high qualification.

Do you remember the ad

that Mimit Oz runs about complaining about the price of crudité?

She's like, crudite?

Yes, in the grocery store, I completely.

What is this?

It costs $7 crudite.

I do remember that ad, and I think we should all start re-watching it,

rerunning it to try to get people to

understand what's happening.

That crude detail, wow.

Well, we started with the cabinet.

Let's end on this absurdist note.

And now all I can think about are crudite and Dr.

Was.

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 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.

Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

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