The Importance of Tails in Business and Investment

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There are something like 180,000 English words, but fewer than 200 of them make up half the words that people speak and write. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic once told me, money is more of a vaccine than a performance enhancing drug. In astrophysics, there's something called Benford's law of controversy. A lot of problems come from doing the right thing, just in the wrong dosage.

This episode has little to do with money. But in some ways it has everything to do with money.

That's the riddle I want to unpack.

I want to share a bunch of examples of what one field can teach us about another.

What can we learn from biology that teaches us something about money?

What can we learn from physics that teaches us something about business?

If you find something that is true in more than one field, you’ve probably uncovered something particularly important. The more fields it shows up in, the more likely it is to be a fundamental and recurring driver of how the world works.