Badrinath: Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Ideas and Insights, a show devoted to exploring novel perspectives on contemporary issues.

I and Badrinath Rao, your host.

In this episode, we shall discuss a topic we have often wondered about the role of luck and chance in our lives.

While some believe luck is paramount.

Others consider it inconsequential.

The truth, however, lies somewhere in the middle.

My guest is professor Mark Mark Herbert S Hadley, professor of social welfare at Washington University in Saint Louis.

He brings a unique perspective on luck and chance, as outlined in his new book, The Random Factor How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us.

Published by the University of California Press this year, professor Rank's argument is compelling.

Randomness, he maintains, exerts a profound influence in shaping our lives and the world around us.

The invisible hand of luck, Professor Rank Evers determines the trajectory of our lives, affecting everything from the circumstances of our blood, the relationships we get into, the careers we pursue, and the measure of success we achieve in our endeavors.

While Professor Rank emphasizes the centrality of randomness.

He is far from being a fatalist.

He asserts that an element of human agency interacts with randomness.

We may not be able to control chance, but we can exert agency and how we might respond to it.

Moreover, acknowledging the significant role of chance equips us to navigate its uncertainty as we gain a more nuanced understanding of the world and our lives when we recognize luck.

Engaging with randomness fosters humility, empathy, perseverance, and hope.

Importantly, it underscores the urgent need for designing policies that enable individuals to thrive in the midst of uncertainty.

He joins me now to delve deeper into these fascinating ideas.

Welcome to ideas and insights, professor Rank.

Thank you for joining us today.

Mark:Oh, it's great to be with you.

Thanks a lot.

Badrinath: In the interest of total transparency, let me begin by pointing out that I came upon your book by sheer chance.

I was looking for something else, and I saw the title of your book.

I was intrigued, and I ordered a copy.

Started reading.

Your book is Unputdownable.

Thank you for writing a wonderful book.

Let's now get into the, main themes of your book.

You talk about the role of randomness in our lives and in this world.

Why should we pay attention to what you call the random factor?

And what are we going to get by a heightened attention to luck and chance in our lives?

Mark:Well, first of all, I think the reason we should pay attention to the random factor is because it affects so many things, both in our life and in the world around us.

So in the book, I talk about some of those things.

If we look at the way history has unfolded or the way the natural world operates, the factor of chance and randomness are really important in terms of affecting, different things.

In terms, in terms of those aspects of, of our life.

If we look at our personal lives, then we also see that randomness and chance and luck are really, really important.

And we'll talk about some of those, I'm sure, in the next few minutes.

But the other question that you ask is a really interesting one, and I think a really important one and is and that is what can what can we learn from this?

What lessons can we take from this?

And those are some of the things that I talk about at the end of the book.

And I think there's some really valuable policy lessons and there's some very valuable personal lessons as well.

And I'm sure we'll, we'll, we'll get to some of those.

Badrinath: Indeed we will.

In the first and second parts of the book, you offer a detailed account of how luck and chance affect virtually all areas of our lives.

And let's take them one by one.

The first thing that you point out is that luck and chance are very central to what you call the arc of history, and you provide three examples.

The rise of Adolf Hitler.

You also talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and then you talk about the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972, which did not become law.

Tell us how luck and chance played a crucial role in these incidences.

Mark: Yeah.

So there's actually thousands of examples where history has been shaped and and bent by chance events.

So I pulled out in the book, as you know, three really striking examples.

The first is the rise of Adolf Hitler, Hitler as a youth.

His ambition was to become an artist.

And, he applied to art school, got passed the first round in Austria and didn't get past the final round.

And really, one of the factors there was the random factor.

We know that art is very subjective, and had this been on a different day, or a couple of different members of that committee.

Hitler may very well have become, an artist instead of becoming the dictator that he was.

And and that was really there was a lot of luck and chance involved there.

I given a second example with Hitler of how he almost in 1939, almost was killed by a bomb, but for a difference of about 10 or 11 minutes.

If his speech had gone on just a bit longer and it was scheduled to go on a bit longer, he would have been killed.

And on his train ride back to Nuremberg or back to Berlin, he was told at Nuremberg about this bomb exploding and what he said was, A man has to be lucky.

Well, he was very lucky and we were very unlucky as a result of that.

The second example is a really powerful one in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And I'll just make it make it short in 1962.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in October was taking place.

And what happened was Russia was sending missiles, nuclear tip missiles to Cuba to be assembled there.

The US found out about this with a U-2 spy plane.

And President Kennedy at the time, decided to place a blockade around Cuba in terms of not allowing ships to come in.

Well, what happened was there were four Russian submarines, each one, unbeknownst to the United States, was armed with a nuclear tipped torpedo.

And one of those submarines approached the blockade.

They were being harassed on the surface by the US fleet trying to get it to surface.

Finally, it had to surface to recharge the the the sub's battery.

And the captain of the submarine was on the conning tower, and he felt that they were under attack because they were surrounded by ships.

Shots were being fired across the bow.

Planes were flying overhead and he gave the command dive the submarine and and and.

Let's get ready.

Let's get the nuclear tipped torpedo ready for firing.

Now, what happened in that moment was there were two other people on the conning tower ladder and one a Russian sailor got his foot stuck on that ladder.

And in that split second, the second in command realized that the submarine was not under attack.

And he said, stop the order.

They're signaling.

Now, if that sailor had not gotten his foot stuck on that ladder at that moment, we would have probably had a nuclear catastrophe, because that Russian submarine would have submerged and within five minutes fired its nuclear tipped torpedo.

And can you imagine world War three was prevented by a chance event.

And this is the former secretary of state, Dean Atkinson said, you know, the only reason we didn't have World War Three in, know, during the Cuban Missile Crisis was because of dumb luck.

The third example is the one about Phyllis Schlafly.

And that's a really interesting one.

And I'll I'll keep it short because we have other things to talk about.

But basically, she was the person who really prevented the era, the Equal Rights Amendment from becoming the 26th amendment in the United States.

And I interviewed her here in Saint Louis.

And the only reason she got involved in that fight was because she got a random telephone call out of the blue asking her to give a lecture out in Connecticut at a library.

She wasn't interested in the topic, but the person said, oh, I think you might find this interesting.

Well, to make a long story short, she gave that lecture, she became interested, and she was the key person to stop the Equal Rights Amendment.

And I asked her in my interview, if you hadn't gotten that telephone call out of the blue from a librarian in Connecticut, would you have been involved in this?

She said, absolutely not.

So think about this.

History was changed by a random telephone call.

Now, those are just three short examples.

And there are many, many more that that are out there.

Let me pursue this, matter a bit further.

You also state in your book that several contemporary socio economic processes are triggered by and influenced by random factors, and you provide the example of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, who was killed, by the police.

You give the famous example of Rosa Parks and her act of defiance in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955.

Yeah.

And you mention Muhammad Bouazizi self-immolation in Tunisia, which triggered the Arab Spring.

Now, some might have a question about this, and they might say that what you call a random factor actually is preceded by a whole series of antecedent developments, and hence these movements that emerge after all.

Not all that random.

What do you have to say to that?

And here's what I would say.

What those events represented was a spark that triggered the movement.

And so absolutely, the conditions that led to that happening had had been occurring over years and decades.

But it took some spark to trigger the movement.

And that's what happened in the case of Rosa Parks.

That's what happened in the case of Michael Brown.

And so one of the things I talk about Badri in the book is that life is not all just randomness and chance.

And life is not just all decision making and agency and determinants.

Life is a combination of the two, and it's the interaction of randomness and chance with social forces that give life its dynamic quality.

We will talk about the interaction, between randomness, and social forces in greater detail momentarily.

But let me come to, a new point that you make in the book.

You, of course, say that, you one can find randomness in the natural world.

You argue that our very existence on this earth is a matter of chance.

You discuss serendipity in scientific discoveries as well.

And then you move on to the role of luck and chance in our lives.

You say how getting into Harvard is a matter of luck, given the, minuscule rate of acceptance.

I think 3.4% of people who apply get accepted.

About 57,000 apply in 1900 and not get accepted.

And you say that's a matter of chance.

Professor Rank, there's one thing that stood out for me in your book.

I let me quote what you say.

You point out, quote.

Ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional to ability, unquote.

Professor Rank, if this is true, I want to say this is a most depressing thought.

What do you have to say to that?

Mark: So here's what I would say.

Let's take the example that you just gave up getting into Harvard in order to get into Harvard.

There are certain necessary conditions that you do need.

You need you have the grades.

You need to score.

Well on tests.

You need to have good letters of recommendation.

I've been on boards of admissions so I know about this.

So those are all things that you have to have.

But those are necessary but not sufficient conditions for getting in.

Because as you said, Harvard gets 57,000 app applicants and 2000 slots.

Now, sure, maybe 20% of those applicants don't have the credentials to get in, but 80% do.

And so how do we determine who gets in and who doesn't get in?

There is a tremendous amount of chance and luck involved.

I'll give you another example of how talent is is and skills are sufficient.

Are a sufficient a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

In the world of entertainment that I talk about actors and musicians.

If you talk to actors and musicians, what they often who really make it big, what they often will tell you is I got a lucky break early in my career, and in an earlier life I was a musician and I did get to know many, many talented musicians who never made it.

And one of the reasons was they never got that lucky break.

So here again, we have the situation of the interaction of chance and luck with things like skills and talent and so on.

And it's that interaction again that gives life its dynamic quality.

Badrinath: All right.

You have made a compelling argument in your book about how chance and luck suffuse all areas of our lives and how they affect everyone in this world.

That point is well-taken.

The larger question, however, is if chance plays a significant role in our lives, what do we make of human agency?

Now you say that there is a dynamic interchange between agency and randomness.

Could you tell us more about this?

Mark: Yeah.

And this gets to this sort of idea of some people that you talk when you talk to about chance and like they'll say, well, I make my own luck.

You often will hear that.

Well, what does that mean?

Here's what it means when things happen to you in your life.

Things out of the blue.

Chance events.

First of all, are you aware of them?

Do you have your eyes open?

And secondly, what do you do with that chance of that?

What do you do with that opportunity?

So let's go back to the example of Phyllis Schlafly when she was asked to give that lecture.

She could have said, no, I'm too busy.

I don't think.

She decided to do the lecture and she decided to look into this event.

Well, that then led to other things.

So the idea is that when chance and luck strikes, are you aware of it?

And do you do you think about it in terms of how might I take advantage of this event?

And that's where agency comes into play.

It's not a simply a fait accompli.

Another example that I give a personal example, this we can often times when you talk to people and, and and talk about who their significant other, their partner is, almost always people will say, well, it was a chance of that.

I was five minutes early or five minutes later or whatever it might be.

I met at a party, you know, and this kind of thing.

But when they did meet that person, did they follow up?

Did they engage?

And that's where we, again, we have this interaction between chance on one hand and agency on the other hand.

And there are many, many other examples of that.

But that certainly I think is one of the really important lessons is that it's life is not a simply a fait accompli with chance and randomness.

Chance and randomness is important.

But then what do we do with that?

How do we respond to that?

Those are that's a really, I think, important lesson for folks to to take away from this.

Badrinath: All right.

Let us now move to the last part of your book, part three, titled Lessons Learned.

And in this, part, you have three chapters.

The first one talks about the importance of framing social policies that factor in randomness and ensure that no one suffers on account of randomness, at least to the extent to which we can mitigate the effects of randomness.

Can you believe briefly tell us what policies you have in mind and why you think they're important?

Mark: Yeah.

So one of the things to learn here is in terms of chance and luck, is that what can happen is bad luck can strike individuals and they can strike really at any time.

And so what I say is once you accept the fact that, you know, at some point in my life, bad luck may strike me, I may get sick, I may a family might split up, a pandemic might occur, and so on.

And so forth.

At that point, you start to sit and think, maybe there should be some kind of social insurance.

Maybe I should have some protection down the road.

You know, this is why we buy home insurance and auto insurance.

We don't think that tomorrow my house is going to burn down.

But we realize at some point, bad luck may strike and an accident might happen.

And so what I say is take that lesson and think about social policy, particularly in the sense of having a strong social safety net.

So a lot of my prior work has focused on poverty and inequality.

In the United States.

And what I've shown is that actually, over time, most Americans will experience poverty because at some point, bad luck strikes.

The implication of that is, is as a result, we should have a strong social safety net that protects people when bad luck strikes.

And that's the idea of having, you know, programs involved so that if you fall below a certain income level, you'll get some kind of help and some kinds of support until you get over that spell of bad luck.

So it's a really important social policy lesson that we can take from the recognition of chance and luck and randomness Badrinath: in the interest of, giving our viewers a complete sense of what you want to say, what you say in the book.

Sorry.

I would like to, point out that you, are a great advocate of universal basic income, universal health coverage, access to quality education and equality of opportunity.

Is that right?

Mark: That's exactly right.

And so those are all really important factors really in turn, I mean, basically what it comes down to in terms of social policy is having things in place that allow people to live up to their potential, whatever that may be.

And that's, that's that's the key.

Badrinath: Let us now move to the lessons one can draw from randomness, and the role of luck and chance and one's personal life.

You say that reflecting on randomness, recognizing the role of luck and chance fosters humility, empathy, kindness, perseverance, and hope.

Tell us more about this, and, give us a sense of how we can be more virtuous by recognizing luck and randomness.

Mark: Well, we could spend another two hours talking about this because I know we only have a couple minutes, so let me let me just think about this.

When you recognize the chance and luck involved in you even being born, the odds of that body of you being born and me being born are a zillion to one.

Think of this.

Your parents had to find each other.

Their parents had to find each other, their parents.

You know what the odds are.

And then the sperm with your name on it had to find that egg amongst millions.

The result of that is, you know what?

We should be really grateful that we're here in the first place.

And we should make the most of our time.

What?

What, the lottery of birth.

What what an unbelievable sense of of luck is, is involved there.

So that's one thing.

Another thing I talk about is the idea of, as you mentioned, humility and empathy when you realize that, well, I didn't do it all on my own.

I might have gotten some lucky breaks and people help me along the way.

That instills a bit of humility in terms of my accomplishments, and it instills a bit of empathy for folks who might have got some unlucky breaks in life.

I talk about the idea of perseverance.

I talk about the idea of hidden opportunities that we talked about a little bit earlier.

And one last thing that I think is really important is imagine this.

Imagine a world in which there was no chance or luck.

What a boring place that would b everything was a fait accompli, what would be the point of life?

The point of light.

This is what gives life its spice and its dynamic is we don't always know what's going to happen when we wake up in the morning.

We have an idea of what our routine will be, but something may happen out of the blue, and that's what gives life its dynamic quality.

And so, in a sense, we should be really grateful that our world has a lot of randomness, chance and luck to it.

Badrinath: Professor Rank, we are almost completely out of time, but I have to ask you one last question, and you have just about 30s to answer.

You have forcefully advocated for greater access to quality education, and that point is very well taken.

However, as you know very well.

There is not much talk about randomness, the role of luck charms and so on in our curriculum.

We do not talk about this in a big way, unless one is majoring in philosophy or in some areas in social sciences.

Don't you think that emphasizing the role of randomness would be an antidote to hyper individual ism, and will promote social solidarity quickly?

Your thoughts in just 30s?

Mark: Absolutely.

That is absolutely correct.

I mean, we in the United States are steeped in the idea of rugged individualism.

You do it on your own.

You know, this kind of idea, the idea of randomness and chance introduces again, some humility into this equation.

And I think, absolutely, that would be such a great idea to put into the curriculum.

And let's hope that my book maybe makes it into some of those curriculums around the country.

So absolutely, Badrinath: your book would make an excellent primer on this topic.

I again warmly congratulate you for writing a wonderful book.

Thank you professor rank for taking the time to talk to us.

We appreciate your time, your insight.

Thank you once again, Mark: Badri, thanks so much for my last piece of advice is don't forget to count your lucky stars.

Badrinath: Thank you.

I will keep that in mind.

That's it for today.

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