Nate Silver — On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything - with Frank Foer

Watch author Nate Silver's book talk and reading at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.

In the bestselling The Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver showed how forecasting would define the age of Big Data. Now, in this timely and riveting new book, Silver investigates "The River," or those whose mastery of risk allows them to shape--and dominate--so much of modern life.

These professional risk-takers--poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors--can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.

People in The River have increasing amounts of wealth and power in our society, and understanding their mindset--including the flaws in their thinking--is key to understanding what drives technology and the global economy today. There are certain commonalities in this otherwise diverse group: high tolerance for risk, appreciation of uncertainty, affinity for numbers, skill at decoupling, self-reliance, and a distrust of the conventional wisdom. For those in The River, complexity is baked in, and the work is how to navigate it, without going beyond the pale.

Taking us behind the scenes from casinos to venture capital firms, and from the FTX inner sanctum to meetings of the effective altruism movement, On the Edge is a deeply reported, all-access journey into a hidden world of power brokers and risk-takers.

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the New York Times bestselling author of The Signal and the Noise. He writes the Substack "Silver Bulletin."

Silver is in conversation with Frank Foer, a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World. For seven years, he edited The New Republic.

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