Nate Silver’s election model is once again being pored over by millions of anxious voters. The gambler turned statistician talks about the race for White House, the risk-takers redefining our culture, and the probability of God

Is London a little bit tame for Nate Silver? The stats expert known for his hugely influential US election model is in town promoting a new book about risk, and can’t help noticing all the ways in which we play it safe on this side of the Atlantic. “You go to the tube in London and they have guard doors, which they don’t have in the subway in New York.” (He’s evidently been riding the Elizabeth line). Or, “You’re in an Uber and you don’t put your seatbelt on in the back seat, and there’s like the very polite British beeping,” he says, with a disarming, high-velocity giggle. Not that he minds too much – you get the impression he’s fond of the city, where he spent a year as a student, and in any case “both countries are making different trade-offs” – the US has less regulation and higher growth, but lower life expectancy: the very definition of live fast, die young.

It’s clear, though, where he feels most at home. “I spent a lot of time in casinos over the course of writing this book,” he confesses in the opening pages of On the Edge, describing one in Florida that boasts “200 gaming tables, 1,275 guest rooms, 3,000 slot machines and a glimmering guitar-shaped hotel that shoots beams of neon blue light 20,000ft into the sky”. A far-cry from the sedate charm of the Royal Society of Arts, where he sits, in a baseball cap and T-shirt, munching chocolate brought by his PR for a much-needed blood sugar boost (“It’s eight hours of back-to-back stuff today”). To go by his new taxonomy of contemporary power, we’re very much in “The Village”; that dopamine-doused casino he described is part of “The River”.