Did the LA Clippers Take a Page from the Mob?

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Pushkin

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

I'm Maria Kanakova.

And I'm Nate Silver.

On October 21st, the NBA season will be back.

One team will end the year with a dark cloud hanging over it, the Clippers.

Have you heard of the company Aspiration?

I heard of it when preparing for this segment.

So that's what we're going to start the show off with.

And then we're going to talk about a very important question, which is, does New York City need more millionaires?

Millionaires or billionaires?

Millionaires, millionaires, but billionaires too.

I think, does New York City need more very wealthy people?

All right, Nate, let us start with your wheelhouse, which is the NBA and the Clippers.

So So do you want to get us set up here since this is something that you know a lot more about, at least background-wise, than I do.

So the NBA has a salary cap.

It's kind of an attempt to prevent owners, many of whom are extremely rich.

In fact, one of whom is the principal here, Steve Ballmer, owner of the Clippers, Microsoft guy, one of the, I think, six to 10 richest people in the world.

But it's a way in part to protect these guys who are very competitive and basically have infinite amounts of money from

spending irrational amounts to have their toys be cooler when they're in the box and their team makes a deep run in the finals or wins a championship.

So the league accepts these rules and increasingly in the NBA, these rules are getting pretty strict and the idea of circumventing the rules is taken very seriously.

Several weeks ago, the journalist Pablo Torre, journalist, kind of, people might call him a talking head, but he did, he also has a show where he does, at times, very serious journalism, discover that this fraudulent carbon credit company, allegedly fraudulent carbon credit company called Aspiration, which had been a sponsor for the Clippers.

It's a great name for a fraudulent company, by the way, Nate.

Aspiration.

But basically, it turns out that this fake tree planting company, Aspiration, was paying the Clippers Kawhi Leonard, probably their best player.

Some Ivika Zubach stands might disagree, but their most famous player, right?

Multiple-time NBA champion, was paying him $7 million a year to do literally nothing for them, right?

The fact is that for anybody who scoured this, right, you know, he could have tweeted something or done one little ad that got 100 views on YouTube that showed him like planting trees or something.

He did not do any of that, right?

There's also been disclosures by other news outlets that Kawhi Leonard received $20 million

in equity in Aspiration, which is now worth precisely zero, to be fair.

But a total package of like $48 million in cash and equity.

And it also turns out that Steve Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers, made a $50 million investment in aspiration or the official sponsor of the Clippers, right?

So that set of circumstances alone is pretty suspicious.

Pablo Torre also had an anonymized source, somebody who went through the kind of vocal processing that gave him like a very millennial vocal fry, right?

Say that

this company is going bankrupt, right?

And they actually hire legitimately famous people and the famous people are getting paid way too much to actually do something for the company.

Robert Downey Jr.

was one, for example, grandly voiced ad, right?

Kawhi was getting paid $7 million

to totally ghost this company, right?

And

when people ask, why is this bankrupt company paying this guy who has done nothing at all for us?

Nobody even knows he's in a relationship with us $7 million a year,

people would say things like, it's CAP circumvention LOL in text messages, right?

So yeah, the theory, the theory is that Steve Ballmer, I'll be vaguer, the claim is that the Clippers

found a way through this company aspiration that their owner is also an equity investor in to pay Kawhi Leonard a bunch of extra money so he'd sign in LA with the Clippers and not the Lakers or not stay in Toronto or back to San Antonio or or the Houston Rockets or whatever else.

And if you're into NBA gossip, Maria, this story, what's normally a slow time for the league

has been the hot dish.

Is that a real thing?

I don't use those terms.

Hot dish is like a Minnesota thing.

I don't think that's a real term.

I think I fucked that up.

The hot dish.

It's okay.

It's okay.

We'll, we'll pretend.

We'll, we'll make it a thing.

It's all like Amy Klobuchar brings to the Minnesota State Fair.

I don't think that's.

That's a very funny visual.

You know, it's so funny.

So when I started researching this, because, you know, this is not in my wheelhouse, the first thing I thought about was mob stuff and specifically on the Sopranos where they had these contracts where they had no show jobs, right?

And you were guaranteed a certain number of no-show jobs where like that was just a way of getting kickback, getting money around, right?

And when I was reading this, I was like, wait,

they're taking a page out of the mob playbook to try to circumvent caps and get money to the right person in a kind of kickbacky way

without actually having a paper trail, although this time they did have a paper trail.

But that's the first thing I thought about.

I was like, whoa, this is like a very mobby type of thing.

And then it also reminded me: do you remember

back this summer,

or maybe even earlier, and we mentioned it, I think, briefly on the show, there was a probe in Las Vegas, which, you know, when you think mob and no-show jobs,

Vegas is certainly top of mind as well.

When the ACEs were getting $100,000 sponsorships from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, I think we talked about that, right, to try to get around those salary caps.

So So it seems like this is a tactic that's been gaining steam.

And so to me, it's just very interesting.

If we talk about it from kind of a risky business game theory angle, is this the natural devolution of evolution, devolution of salary caps and of trying to curb some sort of behavior where people end up going around it, right?

And trying to figure out, well, I still really want this player or I really want this person to come, you know, to the Clippers.

I really want this person on the aces, whatever it is.

So let's figure out how we make it happen

and try not to run afoul of the letter of the law while just totally disregarding the spirit of the law.

Well, except it clearly violates, I mean, you know, the NBA Constitution is not the U.S.

Constitution, but like the NBA Constitution says that like.

Yeah, I know nothing about this, so please tell me what is what it says.

there are quite a lot of provisions that pertain to the anticipation of this type of activity right if you've watched the pablatory show he has thousands of pages of documents printed out and it gave me flush back to when i was on debate team going to copy at kinkos late at night um but like you know but the good old kinkos the constitution basically says that like

We can rely on sufficiently compelling circumstantial evidence if there is, I think I might actually use the term circumstantial, because it's not a legal standard, right?

And I, you know, if there is no rational explanation for what happened apart from the fact that it was cap circumvention, right?

There's like no rational explanation that I've seen offered.

Well,

let me take that back slightly, right?

You know, there's not really a rational reason for the value produced to aspiration to pay Kawhi Million $28 million over four years and $20 million in equity to do nothing, right?

I'm sure he's a smart guy.

I don't think he was like providing good advice to the board or anything either.

And if he was, then the board, you know, not a very successful venture by Kawhi, right?

Now, that, however, goes to an arbitrator, right?

So the league is going to have its findings.

They hired some three or four name white shoe law firm.

They will come back with a report.

Not anytime soon, by the way, probably in six months, if not longer.

And then it goes to arbitration.

And by the way, and what happens in the meantime while it's being deliberated and arbitrated?

Are there any consequences?

Are there any suspensions?

Is there anything like that?

Or does life just go on as usual while all of this is happening?

Well, the Clippers are a team that is kind of at a crossroads, right?

They were pretty good last year, lost in seven games to the Denver Nuggets, who were a better team, but like, um, but they're in the upper half of NBA teams.

They're also older, spent a lot of money this year on veteran players, right?

Um,

don't have that many draft picks going forward but like you know one punishment so joe smith was a minnesota timberwolves player back in the day that the team had a sweetheart deal with to say hey look we can only afford to give you this much now but we'll take care of you on the back end right

and

this somehow came out i think in like whether it was bankruptcy proceedings or by the way a lot of the stuff that comes out it comes out because somebody fucks up and there's discovery and a lot of things were like you get in legal trouble all of a sudden these things that no one ever believed would be public become public.

Um, but the Timberwolves were fined five draft picks, people were suspended, ownership was suspended for like a year, right?

The Clippers barely even have five draft picks.

But if I were them, I would trade my draft picks before while I still could.

You want to take my draft picks?

Sorry, we don't have them anymore.

We traded them for player talent.

So, so, thinking ahead in this game, if you think you're gonna get fined and you're going to be penalized, that would definitely be the thing to do.

And we'll be back right after this.

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The funny thing is, you know, in the case of the Aces, like there's a good case to be made that there was good reason for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to give them

money because they're bringing people to Vegas, right?

And they're they're bringing visitors and it's it's actually something that's mutually beneficial.

And as you say, Nate, like the dude could have tweeted once or made one statement that went out to a few hundred people to at least pretend.

I think even in even on the Sopranos, the no-show guys sometimes came to work to just wave and say, hey, yes, here I am, just to make a

show of it.

And here, we had none of that, right?

I think rules exist for a reason and people should face the consequences

if they try to do something underhanded.

What do we think is the probability of the Clippers actually getting fined in a significant way, in a way that's not a wrist slap, but something that is actually deters future behavior like this on the part of the Clippers and other teams?

Yeah, let me say I would give

an 80 to 90% probability that the Clippers, that somebody with the Clippers,

maybe not Steve Ballmer, maybe Steve Ballmer didn't know that much, right?

My Bayesian prior is an 89% chance that like this was intended by somebody who works for the Los Angeles Clippers, working working with someone or some things who are working for aspiration to circumvent the salary cap, right?

That might include scenarios where Kawhi himself doesn't know about it.

You know, he was known, his representation was known to be asking around for all types of things that are against the league charter that are way outside the lines, right?

So, you know, they have been investigated for that before.

But, you know, I think the true chance that, like, you know, the other explanations would be like

maybe somehow that if you give money to

Kawaii that's kind of just transferred to somebody else, then you get money on your balance sheet, and having money in your balance sheet makes your financial statements look better if you're getting other investors, right?

So, ironically, because this company was allegedly so shady, I just want to use allegedly because they're so sketchy, we're drawing to a gut shot, I think, right?

Now,

will the NBA

want to pursue a

death penalty five-draft pick type of situation, right?

Like, that's kind of more of a political question.

You know, I think the league constitution gives

the commissioner, Adam Silver, no relation, a fair amount of wiggle room, right?

The other owners aren't happy about this in part because like the Clippers already spend as much money as anybody in the league.

They built one of the most expensive basketball arenas, the Intuit Dome ever built, and people are already concerned about this, right?

And so like they might want punishment, but like

there are actually three things the league could do.

Adam Silver could say,

we have found that we believe that, you know, salary cap circumvention was committed and now we're going to go to arbitration for a ruling, right?

They could say,

this does not meet our threshold for punishment.

It was bad.

Does not meet a definition of cap circumvention beyond an extent to which we can prove we're going to take away a second round draft pick and find Steve Ballmer $5 million, which to him is like a parking ticket, kind of literally, if you do the math, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

And

call it a day, right?

And then the third scenario is like a plea bargain where they say, we don't want to have to arbitration.

We want this to last another two years, right?

So we think we could get

three draft picks and voiding Kawhi's contract and suspending Steve Ballmer for a year, but instead,

sorry, Steve, six-month suspension,

two draft picks, maybe one of which you can get back for good behavior, the largest fines, because you'll pay the money.

That's good for both of us because you don't care about the money and the other owners will be pacified, right?

Like if I had to if I had to guess, right, I'd say that like

20% chance slap on the wrist,

40% chance plea bargain, 40% chance that the league wants to come down pretty hard and it goes to arbitration, conditional on that 80% chance the arbitrators agree.

So the odds of like

the nuclear option happening, I think are lower than the odds of something happening, which in turn are lower than something actually having happened because like, you know, if it's borderline, then I think you get into slap on the best territory.

Yeah.

And I think that

the other part of this

is

what do they want, like if they're looking in the future, right?

What do they want to see happen?

Because all of those different scenarios reward, you know, we talk a lot on the show about how game theory is all about, you know, incentivizing different types of behaviors, right?

And that happens both with rewards and with punishments.

And so the three scenarios, Nate, that you've laid out

spell out very different

kind of

futures that the league might see and might be signaling that they want to see, right?

Because if you get like a slap on the wrist, they're saying, we don't actually care that much about this kind of stuff.

Keep on doing it.

And this is, this is why like you or I, right, who play

competitive games or follow competitive sports, right?

We have a very efficient market, right?

If you do not enforce your rules, I guarantee you that there's not going to be some gentleman's agreement not to violate them, that you will have, you know, you will have a bigger problem, right?

It's just fucking, it's guaranteed.

That's how an equilibrium works in an efficient market.

And the NBA is a reasonable approximation of an efficient market run by players that are very smart and agents that are very smart and owners that we'll talk about their intelligence in a moment, but certainly owners who are very competitive and accomplished and have financial means and social connections to accomplish what they want the large majority of the time.

And I don't think Adam Silver is smart enough to know that, right?

I mean, look, the other defense I've heard prominently by Mark Cuban,

former Dallas Madvericks owner, another smart, accomplished guy, has been a big defender of Ballmer.

His defense is Steve Ballmer couldn't do something this stupid.

To which I always say, have you ever fucking met a billionaire before?

Like the billionaire, I haven't met Elon Musk, right?

He was until recently advising the president of the United States.

And I think I have a high opinion about some aspects of Elon Musk, but like, but, you know, I also have the opinion that Elon Musk would be one example of how billionaires can

believe in wrong and things and be sloppy and be very arrogant.

And like, I think arguably also, like, you know, maybe it's like rational for him to say, okay, we didn't expect this company to be fraudulent and to have all this discovery that uncovered these under-the-table relationships.

And

okay.

we know what's the worst case they're not going to take away the team they're not going to take away the teams maybe you have a 20 chance of discovery times a 50 chance

conditionally that you get punished for it right so like a 10 chance that you get suspended for a year and yeah, you'll lose some draft picks.

The clippers are pretty fucked anyway, right?

You know, when you don't have many of your draft picks, removing the remaining few, I mean, he can just sell them and go buy a

soccer team or WNBA team or whatever else, right?

So it might be quite rational, even given the possibility, but not the certainty of this harsh punishment.

I mean, isn't all the literature that like it's the certainty of punishment, not the severity that actually deters crime?

Maybe it's maybe it's actually wrong.

It's both.

It's both.

But the certainty is definitely quite important.

And I think, I mean, the hilarious thing of the calculus that you've just laid out is it's one of these like, oh, shit.

Like, I didn't realize that my crooked dealings would come out because the company that I'm using has even bigger crooked dealings.

We didn't realize that that wasn't part of the calculus.

We thought the company was more legit, which

is quite amusing, right?

When you're doing something wrong and it turns out that you get punished because

the entity that you're you're partnering with

did something even more wrong.

And there are other perverts, like Kawhi Leonard always gets hurt in the playoffs, right?

Like, if you removed his salary from their books, they might not mind that so much.

You know what I mean?

It's so there's all types of perverse incentives.

And like, arguably, if you're not willing to, like, say, Steve Balmer, you have to sell the team, or we're moving the team to Seattle, even though he just built this new arena, the Lakers can move in there instead.

How pissed would he be then, right?

If you know, I mean, that would create a real deterrent, but like, yeah, yeah,

no, no, people, people need real deterrents.

And I think the NBA understands this, although Adam Silver is not the draconian ruler that former commissioner David Stern was necessarily.

You know, the other thing about billionaires, they can just be sloppy, right?

They, they, they delegate

and they're smart enough to know that like, you know, this is partly why the league, smartly in the Constitution says that like we have to look at circumstantial evidence because, like, you know, you don't do this in an email, you do this in a phone call, or better than a phone call, you do it in a meeting over

coffee at some lemonade at the country club.

Um,

and you have the conversations there, and then you hire, like, a middleman who might have slightly more fingerprints on it, right?

Or you're kind of informed, you know, you tell somebody, hey, um,

do you have any know anybody who could maybe help Kawaii get some sponsorships, right?

Or maybe go a little step further and say, you know what, anything within

the, you know, within the higher end of market value, you know what I mean?

Like if you instructed somebody to do that, they would kind of get the right impression.

If you're a billionaire caterer, I imagine you're quite good at like taking the implicit instructions from your billionaire so as not to create legal liability for them.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think this is the one thing that they did not take from the mob playbook.

They got the no-shows correct, but the one thing the mob always knew is that someone is always listening, someone's always watching, right?

Watch it and don't leave a paper trail and never communicate things on, you know, landlines or things that might be tapped and try to hold meetings while walking outside, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think that billionaires forget that and do get sloppy because they think they can afford to be.

And so you do need to have punishments that are larger, kind of a magnitude larger, in order to deter that kind of behavior.

And it's very interesting to me to see, yeah, to see this playing out in a

realm that I know very little about.

And it turns out that it has all these parallels with realms I know a lot about because billionaire behavior turns out to be pretty similar across the board with thinking you can get away with shit and skirt the rules.

And you know what?

Usually you can.

So on that note, Nate, do you want to take a break and talk about whether New York needs more of them?

Do we need more millionaires?

Do we need more billionaires in the state?

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They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

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So,

Nate, there has been a report that recently came out by the Citizens Budget Commission that argues that New York needs more millionaires because it's been adding millionaires at a lower rate than that of other larger states.

And what that means is that the state is not getting as much in tax revenue.

So there's this,

you know, theoretical, unrealized potential revenue that it could be getting if millionaires were coming to New York at comparable rates to other states, and instead it is not.

And we see increases in Florida, we see increases in Texas, we even are seeing increases in California, which has some would say, even more punitive kind of tax rules than New York does.

But for some reason, you know, they're adding millionaires at a much faster rate than New York is.

So in between 2010 and 2022,

the New York millionaire population has almost doubled, but in the other states, it's more than tripled.

And so the argument of this report is that, you know, we should have more rich people so that they can pay more taxes.

First of all, Nate, you know, this is obviously

where we've talked about Mom Dani, affordability.

You know, we're getting to elections.

It's interesting timing for the report to come out.

But

what do we think?

What do you just think in general about this argument that, oh, shit, you're not keeping up with the Joneses, right?

You're not keeping up with other states in terms of the rate of millionaire acquisition as a metric.

Oh,

it's only doubled.

I guess it's a little surprising.

I don't know.

A little less than doubled in over 12 years.

Do you know where they're going?

Are they going to Florida or New Jersey?

So they're going.

I don't know

where the New York ones are going.

What we know is that, so the three states that are having larger increases are Florida, Texas, and California.

Look, the New York tax code is

fairly punitive to high earners, and there's a New York City tax on top of that.

So, you know, your

effective tax rate is over 50% if you're earning ordinary income as a high earner in New York City, right?

I mean,

you know, are you familiar with like the

Laffer curve?

This is kind of Reaganomics, right?

Yeah, talk about the Laffer curve.

So Art Laffer was a Reagan economist who drew a curve and said, well,

you know, there is some optimal tax rate where you maximize government revenue, but it is an inverted U because at some point, like if you tax every dollar, 100%,

then nobody works because there's no incentive to work because the government gets all the money anyway.

So there is some optimal tax rate, and there are all these debates about how to quantify, quantify, like where that optimal tax rate might be.

You know, I mean, it's possible.

And by the way, you know, even as if you're not on the other side, so if you're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve, then you actually make less money by taxing people more because people work less and/or relocate.

You know, even if you're not in the upper part of the Laffer curve, right?

Then, or at the peak, then you do still encounter diminishing returns.

You can imagine like a parabola, right?

I think New York City still offers a

pretty unique,

I mean, I'll be frank, like I choose

to live here and pay, I pay a lot of taxes.

And I also have a home in Westchester County where I pay a lot of taxes, right?

Because like I really like New York and there's not any particularly close second.

Maybe if maybe if Robbie liked Las Vegas better, it's been half the year out there with you or something.

But, like,

I think

progressives need to understand that, like, you do encounter diminishing returns when you just tax rich people more and more.

They can decide to work less, they can decide to,

especially with Trump having good at the IRS, right?

They can decide to legally

hide income or illegally hide income, right?

They can decide to move.

And like when you start to have, you know, if they feel as though that they're not getting their money's worth, if they feel like the quality of New York City is declining, right?

Like, I don't know, like, you know, if we had

the crime problems in New York City that they have in some other cities,

then I'm not super sensitive to crime, but then I might leave, right?

You know, if, if, if they hadn't rebuilt LaGuardia Airport, if the subway weren't, I think, still one of the best transportation systems in the world, if we didn't have so many, you know, beautiful.

We have the best rats, Nate.

We have the best rats.

We have a lot of trash cans.

We'd figure that out, right?

If we didn't have these beautiful parks and all five boroughs and

things like that, right?

If we didn't have those things, then I might say fuck it.

And, you know, you do have to worry potentially about like

downward spirals where, but like, I, again, I'm kind of a free market guy, right?

I also recognize that as an empirical fact, wealthy people have a disproportionate amount of influence in politics.

So it's hard to, you know, I think it'd be great if New York had more billionaires.

My guess is that the current tax code is probably something close

to optimal for the overall welfare of the city.

If you try to increase it more,

I could see there being problems.

I mean, I think, you know, I have friends who are who are wealthy.

I should say, you know, I'm pretty wealthy myself relative to a lot of people.

And some of them, I think, seem irrationally concerned about Zoran because, like, tax policy in New York is largely dictated by New York State anyway.

And there are lots of political and practical constraints and other things.

Like, it's not, I'll put it like this.

It's even as a free market guy and a guy who pays a lot of taxes in New York, maybe a member of the class, even.

This is not the most sympathetic cause, I don't think.

Yeah, no, I agree with you that it's definitely not the most sympathetic cause.

By the way, I'm just looking at more data from this report, and their contention is that if New York City's rate of growth, rate of millionaires had kept up, that would have been $13 billion in additional taxes in 2022, which is the most recent year of data.

So that's kind of where they're coming from, numbers-wise.

But, you know, it is, it is.

Like, it's not a zero-sum game necessarily, as you say.

A lot of the migration, because this is something that you just asked about, Nate, like, well, you know, where are they going?

That a lot of the families that are leaving are actually not millionaires.

They're kind of the middle,

at least for New York, middle-class families.

For other parts of the country, they would be considered, I think, upper-middle class that make 200,000, 300,000.

Those are actually, that's the demographic that's leaving the fastest.

That's the biggest outflow.

A lot of millionaires are not that sensitive to like a marginal few percent tax rate

if they're living where they want to live because they want to live where they want to live, right?

Like that's part of the point of having, of being a millionaire, that you want to live in a place where you're

having economists call superstar effects, right?

And it ritually pertains to entertainers.

I think there probably are some cases where it can apply to something like a

a hedge fund manager, too, right?

Where, where they attract the most talent and they get more, larger funds to invest with, right?

Or an AI researcher.

Those more in california than in new york um but you know new york is kind of irreplaceable i think you know in fact i think kind of yeah california is struggling more in some ways i think you hear that san francisco is like rebounding a little bit but like hey you know since covid i haven't heard nearly as much la west coast jealousy from from new yorkers right i'd like to see more more housing at all levels of the ecosystem right um yeah i'd like to see more of that Right.

But like, you know, if you don't like it, then

leave.

And they don't, by and large, leave because New York still offers, you know, a high and improving, I feel like, value proposition.

Yeah, I agree with you that New York is still,

despite everything, a good value proposition.

And for a certain type of person, there is no other replacement.

So I think that, you know, my takeaway is that this is misplaced, right?

Saying, oh, we don't have enough millionaires.

i think that we'd be better served looking at some other areas where we can improve um in order to kind of just get a better experience for everyone in the city and that the millionaires are not going anywhere at least for now i mean that we're not we're not at that point the one thing i'll say is these things can have cascading effects at least at least in principle so like you know i said i would never need to leave

New York in the near future.

I have like lots of social ties here.

If half my friends left New York for Denver, right, that might be a different story.

You know what I mean?

And likewise, if you have a vicious circle where there's lux tax revenue coming in, so things I like about New York, the parks and the overly expensive, but now quite nice airports and the slightly dirty but very efficient subway and everything else, right?

If those things deteriorated, then

that can create a vicious cycle.

And we have seen cities fall into yeah absolutely which is why i think it's important to try to focus on that kind of stuff you know focus on the infrastructure focus on making the experience good obviously you need tax revenue for that tax revenue in new york has still been going up you know so so it's not like um we're we're not yet in that in that place, but I do think it's very important to keep that in mind and to understand that cities have gone through periods like that, right?

Even New York, New York has recovered, but there have been some pretty nasty

points in New York City's history.

But yeah, with that said, I think you and I are on the same page that we don't think that the millionaire problem is the number one problem facing New York City right now.

And so, yeah, we appreciate that this report is coming out.

billionaires there are lots of millionaire related problems and i don't think this is one of them um on that note nate i'm gonna enjoy the fact that i'm in new york right now and go enjoy this fantastic city

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 Konakova.

And by me, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isaac Carter.

Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.

Lydia Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors.

And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.

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