About this podcast
The Risky Science Podcast features conversations with scientists, insurers, investors, portfolio managers, and others about the evolving science of predicting and modeling risk across both natural and man-made perils.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 54 episodes
- Hal King on Food Safety, Outbreak Risk, and Financial Cross-Contamination · 50 min · Episode 54his summer's record cyclosporiasis outbreak did something unusual: it took money out of companies that had nothing to do with it. Five food companies cut or constrained guidance…
- Karen Clark on AI, Frequency Perils, and Why Reinsurers Stopped Trusting the Models · 44 min · Episode 53Karen Clark, founder and CEO of Karen Clark & Company, returns to Risky Science to discuss KCC's new white paper on artificial intelligence in catastrophe models — where AI…
- Insurance Isn't Just Transferring Risk Anymore · 53 min · Episode 52Private credit didn't just find a new source of capital—it may have changed the role of life insurance itself. Andrew Granato and Pranjal Yadav explain why insurance regulation…
- Can Big Tech Become The Next Insurance Company? · 42 min · Episode 51For years, the biggest competitive battles in insurance have been between insurers. Underwriting. Pricing. Capital management. But artificial intelligence may be changing the…
- Private Capital, Public Flood: Risky Science Live · 55 min · Episode 50Listen to the full replay of the latest Risky Science Live "Private Capital, Public Flood: Risky Science Live". The panel examines what a larger private flood market actually…
- Jane Kim and California's Insurance "Hostage Situation" · 33 min · Episode 49Jane Kim just finished first in the race to become California's next insurance commissioner. She's a former San Francisco supervisor and worked for Bernie Sanders. And where…
- The Price Is the Forecast · 37 min · Episode 48Weather derivatives have struggled with liquidity for 25 years. Jim Huang thinks prediction markets can finally fix that — but only if the contracts are built around events…
- Risk Doesn't Disappear, It Gets Allocated · 39 min · Episode 47In this week’s episode we are digging into California's insurance market — and specifically, into the fight over who actually owns wildfire risk. Is it the insurers pulling back…
- Venezuela, The Built Environment And Lessons of a Catastrophic Earthquake · 38 min · Episode 46This week we focus on the tragic catastrophe in Venezuela, where powerful earthquakes tore along the San Sebastián fault and devastated Caracas. As a result, buildings collapsed…
- Sticky Liabilities, Illiquid Assets and the Private Credit Perception Gap · 29 min · Episode 45A year ago, I sat down with Carmi Margalit, Managing Director and the Life Insurance Sector Lead at Standard & Poor’s Annual Insurance Conference to talk about private credit on…
- 2026 Hurricane Season: Risk, Markets, Models · 1 h 6 min · Episode 44This is the audio recording of our June 11 panel on the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season — three people who actually price this risk for a living, in conversation for an hour. The…
- Ebola, Statistics, and What Pandemic Science Can Teach Markets · 55 min · Episode 43The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the middle of its 17th Ebola outbreak since 1976 and the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern. There are no…
- Wildfire's Garbage-In Problem With Brian Bastian · 25 min · Episode 42California’s homeowners insurance market, backed by privae capital, is still in retreat. The publicly-backed FAIR Plan is financial buckling. And somewhere in the gap between…
- Modeling Every Risk for Every Client with Willis' Ben Fidlow · 25 min · Episode 41Ben Fidlow is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and leads analytics and risk advisory at Willis. In this episode, he explains how brokerage modeling differs…
- The Wrong Model for the Wrong Job With Roy Wright · 25 min · Episode 40In this episode of Risky Science, recorded at ClimateTech Connect in April, IBHS CEO Roy Wright breaks down why catastrophe models were never designed to price individual risk…
- The LA Fires and the Risk Market Value Chain With Joy Chen · 43 min · Episode 39The Eaton and Palisades fires are now the most expensive wildfire disaster in U.S. history — and what's happening in Los Angeles right now is a real-time stress test of the…
- How Catastrophe Models Work and Where They Fall Short With Anil Vasagiri · 28 min · Episode 38This episode is part of a series of live conversations recorded at Climate Tech Connect 2026 in Washington, D.C. Anil Vasagiri, Head of Risk Data Solutions at Swiss Re is a rare…
- Why Mixing Catastrophes With Prediction Markets Is More Dangerous Than It Looks With Jamie Pietruska · 48 min · Episode 37The LA wildfires burned more than a hundred thousand acres. They destroyed thousands of homes. And while they were still burning, people were placing bets on them. Not insurers…
- AI, Models, and the Limits of Climate Assumptions with Sarah Kapnick · 27 min · Episode 36We sit down with Dr. Sarah Kapnick at Climate Tech Connect in Washington, D.C. in a conversation covers the time-horizon problem at the heart of climate finance, what the PG&E…
- Can Models Still Work When Everything Changes at Once? With Christiane Baumeister · 53 min · Episode 35This week I speak with Dr. Christiane Baumeister, a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on global oil market dynamics — disentangling the supply and…
