Risky Science Podcast

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In this episode, I’m joined by Roger Pielke Jr., a researcher known for his work on the use—and misuse—of models in risk and policy decisions. Pielke is a polarizing figure in climate research, particularly for his views on how climate change should—and should not—be incorporated into catastrophe models used for annual insurance and reinsurance decisions.

It was a timely conversation, especially as Pielke has recently used his Substack, The Honest Broker, to critique the current state of climate-risk analytics and modeling. Whatever your view of his conclusions, they offer a challenging and well-informed perspective on how risk models are being used today.

Register here for the January 8 Risky Science Podcast Live

This week on the Risky Science Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Phillip Mulder of the University of Wisconsin, co-author of a newly released research paper examining how these insurance pressures are influencing who buys, who moves, and who can no longer afford to stay.

The research has drawn significant attention, including coverage in The New York Times. Dr. Mulder explains how one of the primary underlying forces in this emerging economic crisis is a series of “reinsurance shocks” — repricing events driven in part by catastrophe model estimates that are reverberating throughout the U.S. economy.

Our guest is Tim Boyce of TP ICAP, who has spent more than 25 years in financial markets,  from US-dollar swaps in London to commodities in Singapore, before returning to the UK to build out the firm’s European weather business. 

Tim describes weather as a “sleeping giant,”  a market that should be much bigger given how energy, logistics, agriculture, and retail all rely on predictable weather and stable demand

We’ll talk about where demand is growing fastest, how better forecasting and satellite data are transforming hedging strategies, and why Tim sees weather derivatives and insurance as part of the same risk ecosystem — working together to get businesses the protection they need. 

On today’s episode of the Risky Science Podcast, we’re stepping outside the usual finance lens and into a conversation that will push many of your assumptions about how risk, capital, and human health actually interact. Dr. Susan Erikson: medical anthropologist and author of Investable!, brings a perspective that most risk and financial professionals rarely engage with, but absolutely need to hear. Her work on pandemic bonds and the financialization of global health doesn’t just critique the structures we use; it forces us to rethink what “risk transfer” can and can’t solve when the underlying asset is human wellbeing.

Investable! When Pandemic Risk Meets Speculative Finance

China was once seen as a vast, untapped frontier for global risk finance — drawing interest from New York to London. Yet a combination of geopolitical headwinds and trade tensions has cooled expansion plans for many executives hoping to grow their Asian footprint.

That hasn’t stopped real innovation — especially in weather and physical-risk finance, where the market potential is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

In this episode, we speak with Jim Huang, founder of climateHedge, a firm with operations in both the U.S. and Shanghai. With a background in product strategy at the CME Group and a deep passion for opening Asian markets to weather-derivative trading, Jim is on a mission to educate the Chinese market. We discuss his on-the-ground progress so far — and how he sees weather derivatives, insurance, and reinsurance products evolving over the next decade.

Risk Market Briefing: Inside China’s Bid to Industrialize Weather Risk Trading

This week I’m joined by Meyer Shields of KBW, one of the most followed insurance analysts on Wall Street. We get into what’s driving that split, how AI and modeling are — or aren’t — starting to show up in real financial performance, and whether today’s property catastrophe discipline is a genuine structural reset or just another hard market waiting to unwind.

This week’s guest is Dr. Hansi Singh, an Earth system scientist who’s worked at the U.S. Department of Energy, taught in academia, and now leads a startup called Plannette.AI, which blends physics and AI to deliver long-range weather forecasts for industries including finance and insurance.

In this conversation, Dr. Singh explains why AI’s biggest weather-forecasting success have been within the seven-day window—and why pushing beyond that horizon remains so hard. We explore how AI can enhance—not replace—traditional physics-based models.

We also get into the practical side: how finance, insurance, and even energy traders are using AI-driven forecasts, what the rise of AI agents means for accessibility, and why transparency and back-testing are critical to overcome the industry’s skepticism toward “black-box” models.

Dr. Paul Wilson, Head of Catastrophe and Climate Research at Twelve Securis, a leading insurance-linked securities asset manager, sits down for a live recording of the Risky Science Podcast.

We sit down with Dr. Seth Baum, Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and research affiliate at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. We explore how societies understand and prepare for global-scale threats—from climate change and pandemics to nuclear conflict and artificial intelligence. Dr. Baum explains why uncertainty is the defining feature of catastrophic risk, why markets struggle to price the unthinkable, and why collective action and governance are essential to tackling the crises that no private market can solve.

Join the Risky Science Podcast for a live discussion with Dr. Paul Wilson, Tuesday, September 23, 11 a.m. ET.
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