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Never Tell Us the Odds!

It's a bit of a stressful time at BNDWGN HQ, thanks to the Chicago Cubs' derring-do in the postseason. We discuss this (at length), plus some announcer rivalry, plus an ode to possibly the best TV sports drama ever. Hint: It has nothing to do with the Cubs.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Impossible

Guest: Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Today on Focus, we're joined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an expert in the sciences of uncertainty, to discuss what Taleb calls "Black Swans": rare events with extreme impacts that occur well outside the realm of probability, but are quickly explained away in a way that makes them seem obvious and predictable. These events explain almost everything in our world, and yet, says Taleb, we remain blind to them if they are not explicitly pointed out to us.

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