CM 130: Allison Schrager on Rethinking Risk

What if there were a better way for us to think through life’s riskiest decisions?

That’s where Allison Schrager comes in. She’s the author of the book, An Economist Walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk. An economist, journalist at Quartz, and cofounder of LifeCycle Finance Partners, she led retirement product innovation at Dimensional Fund Advisors and consulted for international organizations, including the OECD and the IMF. Allison has also been a regular contributor to The Economist and Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and she teaches at New York University.

For her book, Alison spent time with high-risk professionals, like big-wave surfers, movie producers, and sex workers. She learned how they manage risk and shares what we can learn from them. Along the way, she learned some surprising things about herself, like what it felt like to play in her first poker tournament: “We start at 8:00, and it’s like midnight, and I’m like ‘When does this game end?’ And people are like ‘When you run out of chips.’ And I’m like, oh my god, I’m going to be here forever.”

When it comes to risk, Allison believes we can learn to overcome our biases and manage risk effectively. She explains, “There’s been so many books [on the topic] …but they always write everyone off as being sort of hopeless when it comes to risk or thinking probabilistically, and I really believe everyone has it in them.”

You can learn more about Curious Minds Host and Creator, Gayle Allen @CuriousGayle and www.gayleallen.net.

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