Stephen Dubner Returns Again

22:36We interviewed him. He'd been in all these histories of civil rights movement and Klan and it turned out that he had exaggerated. So I'd never heard or read a word about any claims like this, but when we published our book, Freakonomics 2005, someone wrote to us who had been a collaborator of that guy much later, working on a book together. And this guy had had access to a set of very robust and valuable archives that were essentially private archives. They weren't on the public record. So I went into those archives, looked at everything, found out that this guy who was saying that our main character had exaggerated was probably very accurate.

23:15I went to our subject. This guy's name was Stetson Kennedy. He's gone now, but he was quite old then. And I said, I need to talk to you about something kind of important. He was in Florida. I flew down to Florida. Does that confrontation give you anxiety or are you excited to have it? No, anxiety. Anxiety. Sadness. Sadness. Because I am 99.9 % I'm right. So I envision what's he going to say. He's either going to deny or it's going to be like, oh, shit. Right. And none of those are good. This is like the Brian Williams thing. Oh, yeah, that's right. I don't take any joy in finding out a fit. Or it's the million little pieces, guys.

23:48Yeah. That one really broke my heart because it was such a beautiful book. Yeah. And it didn't matter. But Oprah felt very betrayed. Although the one emotion I hadn't considered for myself was feeling betrayed by him, even though that probably wouldn't have been inappropriate. Right, exactly. Anyway. Okay, so you fly there. I do. And I sit and I tell him the whole story. I tell him the guy who gave me all this information because he knows him. He worked for him. Right. And he just said, none of that makes any sense. I don't know what you're talking about. I was convinced that we were right. So I ended up writing in the New York Times a column that explained this mistake we'd made.

24:18But that's what journalists do. That's what writers do. If you get had or if you make a mistake, You have to admit. So anyway, that was a long way of saying that I don't think there's anything in Freakonomics that we would do really differently for the people we were then. But you would agree, right? There's a great spectrum of conclusions. In some ways, you might look at the exact same data and maybe make a very similar point, but it might be a little bit over here to the left or the right. I agree. And I think a good example of that is probably the most famous claim from the book about the relationship between legalized abortion and crime.

24:46There are kind of two tracks of that. The first track is that Steve Levitt and this guy, John Donahue, who's now at Stanford, I believe, a legal scholar, had done this paper before I met Levitt. This is how Levitt kind of got on the map that showed a causal relationship between the legalization of abortion and the crime rate. It was not a complicated argument. It takes a long time to describe it only because there's a kind of collage of evidence that goes into making it up. But the argument essentially is that abortion often serves as, I was going to say, a form of birth control. That's not really right.

25:18Preventing an unwanted child. It's a decision that happens often when a would-be mom feels like the time and place are not right. And I would make the umbrella that large because there are a lot of things that can go into that. Maybe you're very young. Maybe you've already got kids and the time is not right. Maybe you or your family are in bad financial situations. Maybe you're starting to get divorced from the father. Maybe you were raped. Maybe you live in a place with so much violence. There's so many. So there's a lot. And there is a body of social science research that argues unquestionably that when a child is born into a wanted situation, let's call it, whatever the family is.

26:00Yeah, planned. Well, not even planned necessarily. That's true. Because honestly, I'm the eighth of eight. I don't know how planned I was, but I was very loved. On my birthday, all my older sisters write about the day I came home from the hospital and how happy they were to have a new baby boy. Killed for an older sister. Yeah, I mean, I have four if you need one. I am one. Have you written a lot of letters to Neil about the day he arrived? I held him when he was little and stuff like that. But older sisters are great. Older sisters are great. Anyway, wantedness is good. Unwantedness is bad. The odds are if a baby is born into a home where that baby is not wanted, there is a higher chance that that kid will have a bad outcome in life.

26:42When I say bad outcome, meaning lower education, higher crime, lower income, et cetera. This is inarguable, OK? So the argument from Steve Levin and John Donahue was that the legalization of abortion provided a way to reduce unwantedness. And if, therefore, you reduce unwantedness, what is one of the many other effects you might have down the road? Maybe fewer people committing crimes because they're growing up in a better circumstance. The crime one is so juicy in so many ways because all of us have been watching this plummeting crime rate and everyone's got to take. This was broken windows. That was yet another stab at how it came down.

27:16The one I heard that was absolutely shocking was in Sweden. I'm pretty sure Sweden, somewhere in Scandinavia, they had a reduction in these small petty crimes and they really wanted to know what they were doing that had caused this. And after studying it for a very, very long time, what they ended up finding out was people just stopped reporting them. People in Sweden came to accept it as just a part of life. You have things stolen from your car and you just accept it. And it's like, oh, wow, who's going to think of that? The same amount are happening. They're just not being reported. It's such a dynamic situation.

27:49It's not one size fits all either. But we're so inclined to find out so we can triple down on it and eliminate it. I see the incentive. Your example is so good because also we've all been herded into and almost what's the cattle prod, you know, electric shock. Like our brains are just getting prodded every day to be more binary in our thinking. Hate, love, yes, no, black, white, et cetera. Whereas one of the great strengths of the human mind is that we're not binary thinkers. We're extremely variegated in time and dimensions. I am astonished still. I love talking to people. I love hearing how there are just these little synapses happening in your muscle, just like mine, but they come to something totally different.

28:29What you're actually discovering when you talk to people is what the ratio is of these binary options. It's almost like we are all somewhere on this spectrum. If you reduce it to the polls, it's binary. But really what we're discovering is like, no, no, I'm 39 % liberal, right? Or I'm 46 % in favor of the death penalty. Like that's what's interesting. Do you also then discover in the course of a conversation, what is the Venn diagram between you and that person and the types of synapses that are firing? That's where I start. Right. When I'm researching someone, I'm just trying to earmark all the things that we have in common.

29:01that can jump off from there, right? Oh, you were dyslexic. We know this experience. How did that downriver it start? I look for all the ways in which I'm inferior when I do that instead of having common. Isn't that funny? I'm always looking for advice. I'm like, you know something I don't. Maybe my method is bad. Yours is good and yours is good. Looking for things in common so that you can have an actual conversation makes perfect sense. I don't know why that is. Yours is good. But you just brought me to the actual thing I most want to tackle with you. That is potentially most dicey. Do you think that we have entered a moment where silence is the biggest protest imaginable?

29:42I'll be honest with you. I don't participate very much in the online world. I use digital stuff all the time. But if we think of the online world as kind of like a second conversation that's happening for many people, that's not a conversation I really get involved with. I'll be honest with you. And therefore, I'm aware of it because I have people who are in that conversation, but I'm not really in it. And so this sounds bad, but one of the many things I don't like about living deep in that online world is that there are these compulsions that don't really seem to jibe with actual human nature.

30:15There are expectations that if you don't think or say or feel a certain thing about it could be anything, then you're going to be either outgrouped or thought less of. And I think that that's just never the way that humans have thrived. When I look at human history, and I'm not a great historian, but I love history. I love reading it. I love talking to historians because I'm like a child. I just don't know that much. I didn't really like history when I was a student at all because I didn't get what older people say about history being instructive. To me, you read history because you had to. Right.

30:49And sometimes it happened to be interesting. And you would remember the interesting things. Now I read history because it's the reason that people read philosophy. It's the reason people read old religious stuff. The human condition has changed a lot, but I don't think the human has changed that much. No, no. And therefore, it can be thrilling, intoxicating, scary, et cetera, et cetera, to see what history has brought for us that we can remember now. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. This message is brought to you by Apple Pay. Dax, can you believe it's already fall? This year's flown by.

31:28I know, right? But fall is my jam. Remember that farmer's market we hit up last weekend? Yes, all those vendors with their yummy apple ciders and the big pumpkins. I love big pumpkins. Artisanal apple cider, don't forget. And the smell of fresh baked goods, heaven. But here's what blew my mind. So many vendors accepted Apple Pay. It was so convenient. I love Apple Pay. Everywhere I saw the contactless symbol, I just double click the side button on my phone to bring up my card and then just a quick little face ID scan. Tap. Boom. So easy. Apple Pay has been my MVP this season to buy festive fall treats and drinks.

32:04And, you know, I'm on a mission to find the best fall theme latte in town. You know this. I do know that. How's it going? That maple one you were telling me about sounded pretty insane. It was so good. And get this. You can also use Apple Pay at lots of cafes. No fumbling for your wallet. Just double click, tap and sip. It works at millions of places anywhere you see the contactless symbol in stores or see the Apple Pay button online and in apps. Exactly. Making it easier to enjoy all the fall goodness. Speaking of which, I'm totally set for Halloween. Apple Pay made it a breeze to purchase the perfect decorations online right from my iPhone.

32:39I just tap the Apple Pay button at checkout, double click to authenticate and boom, payment complete. No long checkout forms. No fuss. Fall festivities have never been more fun or easy. Pay the Apple way. Terms apply.

32:59Okay, I'll use a very specific example. And it's a dangerous one, but I'll use it. You are going to dinner with people. You are having dinner parties. You are out and about. And I think there is this absolute insistence that you declare whether you are. Do you hate Israel or love Israel? Netanyahu or pro Hamas. And I'm over here going, guys, you've presented me with the two shittiest fucking options in the world. I understand. I don't want either of these options. They both fucking suck. And you should stand up and say they fucking suck. And we should not get drug into this situation that's been ongoing.

33:32And now we all get sucked into it. But I do think the most dangerous thing is to go like, absolutely not. I'm not saying that side's right or that side's right. The most I can tell you is both sides suck. So I'm glad you used this specific. I'll have a conversation with anybody, anytime about anything. It's what I like to do, especially in the last 10, 15 years or maybe 20. I've met types of people that I never thought I would have met just because of the nature of what I've ended up doing professionally. And then I became a golfer and that introduced me into a world that I had these preconceptions about.

34:04And I was so wrong. But when someone comes at me with the binary, you're for us or against us. What I try to do, what I probably do do mostly is I say, first of all, let's define terms. And that's a trick I think I learned from academia. Let's take it away from the fascism. If you're going to call someone in economic terms a communist or a socialist, let's define terms. Are we talking about the socialism of 2025 Denmark? We talk about the socialism of 1925 Vienna. It's a big difference now. What do you mean by that? So this goes back to, I wonder if you've ever come across this in talking with Angela or anyone else in that realm.

34:41I'm probably going to get all these facts wrong. But in my memory, there's something called the illusion of explanatory depth. Basically, if you go to a family gathering, let's say, right, people know you, you know them, you have some prior expectations. Just go up to them and start asking them about hot button issues, whatever you think they are. People get pretty heated pretty quickly. But then if you take one of those hot button issues, let's say it's gun control or immigration or something, and ask them in a non-obnoxious way, which is hard, but ask them to explain, like, what do you mean exactly by border control?

35:12So it turns out that people just don't know what they're talking about most of the time, but we all pretend to. The reason I don't like that is we pretend to, in order to have a position, in order to be in a tribe that I want to get out of. I think this idea that we've all allowed ourselves to be herded into two political parties. Even more offensive, that people feel unique in expressing the opinion that 50 % of the country all have. I got another point. Yeah, I heard it from everybody on your fucking team. You all have the same fucking point. Come to me when you've had an original thought. I also think...

35:45I'm sorry, Monica, that's just hard to follow because you just have to give the room a minute. I know. That was very well done. Because he's so mad. No, that was very good. Because you don't have to pick a side. But if someone cares about something, that's also okay. Oh, of course. Not of course to everyone. You're saying Dax is not of course. This is a great example. We would have to agree on terms. Do I not want people to care about stuff? That's not at all what I want. What I don't want is for someone to be heralded as brave for repeating the already agreed upon tenants of their tribe in public.

36:22It's not a conversation. They didn't sit with someone and converse. They broadcasted the talking points of their tribe. And people are like, so brave, not brave at all. Being brave is going against your tribe, saying the opposite thing that's been agreed upon. That's bravery. The other thing is grandstanding. But there is a reality to the world in which you do need a big. It's like what we heard about protesting. It works because you see that there are so many people who do think like you think, who are willing to stand up against something else, and you get emboldened by that. So there's a reality that voices and numbers help.

37:04So I agree with you, and that's the emperor wears new clothes analogy that Steven Pinker just gave us, and that's totally true. What if they're already completely known? That we already know, we know, we know. So the person that's standing up and continuing to yell, it's already been acknowledged. We all know, we all know. Now this is a pointless endeavor. And additionally, the arrogance that you think you have converted somebody, you haven't converted anyone. Not one of the people yelling has converted someone from the other side. So it's pointless. It's not brave. It's grandstanding. And it's further cementing us in this tribe.

37:40It is the actual problem. I'm glad you two came to me for help because it's obvious there's an irreconcilable difference here. I think there might be. And I'd like to say in all honesty, I think you're both right. I wouldn't even say these things are opposite. They plainly can coexist. What I hear you both saying is that one of the most painful things I know for me, I think for everybody, is to be somewhere between being misunderstood and being accused of something you didn't do. That is a great human injustice and it always has been. We've all been accused of things we did. We've all gotten off with things we did and didn't get caught.

38:16But when you're accused of something you didn't do, you feel this outrage. And I feel like that's the temperature of the far end of the spectrum. It does feel like it's threatening your existence in this bizarre way. I think it triggers your actual sense. I thought I was living in a world that made sense and now it doesn't. I had one in ninth grade, maybe in school. So I was a good student. It came kind of naturally. We had good brain power in the family and I was the youngest of eight. And so I kind of knew the stuff before I got to the grade, which was handy. I knew the French just because being in a family was like being in school.

38:51And I was decent at math. I liked math. On a math test, I had the teacher bring it back to me. Like she made me stay after class. So this teacher, she was convinced that I had cheated on the test. I got like a 97 on the test. I didn't know what to say. I'd never cheated. I had people cheat off of me. But I was also very shy as a kid. So if I weren't shy, I would have said, what are you talking about? Or I would have said to my mother when I got home, like, this is going on with Mrs. So-and-so. But I did none of that because I was very shy and obedient and willing to take a beating as a kid. I don't like that at all.

39:21And then she made me take the retest. I got a 98, one better, which didn't surprise me because I had seen the test before. And you know what she did after? Nothing. Because she was now embarrassed. Nothing. Then I was so pissed because it felt like an injustice. So I feel like now the world is full of people who have some version of that feeling. Something is being done to them, taken from them, said about them, or done to, taken from, said about people that they know and love. It's a strange mix of reactions. Where are you at personally on this, we would all agree, the most divisive moment in my life of 50 years?

39:58I am in the give a stranger a hug mode. any more of that type of emotion, argument, anger, frustration, all of which are legitimate? Contempt. I want to get rid of the contempt. Do you know Arthur Brooks? He's a scholar trained as an economist and he's written a bunch of books. And we did an episode with him on a book he wrote about contempt a few years ago. And I was just re-listening to it. I think I want to replay it for our show because you're always searching for like what to say about the moment. And my show, Freak Radio, we're not a news show at all. We have a series coming out this winter that I had an idea for two years ago.

40:32I'm slow, but I'm always looking for ways as a writer to respond to the world we're in, but not to the moment because that's a whole different conversation. When anytime you're talking about something in the moment, you're almost certain to be reacting. It's just not me. There are a lot of people who are great at it, who thrive at it, who love it. I hate it. I'm bad at it. So what am I going to do? But contempt is a really valuable thing. The thing I think of is that wonderful man from, what's the Institute? And we had him and he's so beautiful and he repairs marriages. Oh. Oh, I know who you're talking about.

41:01John Gottman? Yes, the Gottman Institute. This was in blank. And the fact that he could watch a couple in couples therapy talk for six minutes and predict at a 90 plus percent rate whether they would get divorced or not. And the single component was contempt. So having learned that, when I think about the level of contempt right now, and ultimately we're in a marriage and we're not breaking up. Divorce isn't an option, unfortunately. Yeah. So given that we're married for life, can we afford to have contempt for each other? I don't think we can. There is conscious uncoupling. Let's not forget. Yeah, please.

41:35Walk me through how that works mechanically. Well, I mean, I agree. Didn't it work for Gwyneth? Oh, yeah. I think it really worked. Like everybody made fun of her. I don't know anything about her. I know. I don't know anything about her really, but I do know that she said that about the relationship. And it's a beautiful thing and they have a great family. She could say that McDonald's french fries are good and she could blast it. It's awesome because she doesn't care. She really doesn't. Thank God. That would be my first answer to your question going back is you can't care. There's a quote I like by John Wooden, the late great UCLA basketball coach who coached these teams some absurd number of college championships in a row, but was also known to be a great, it sounds like such a cliche, but a leader, a teacher, a coach.

42:17He really, really affected the men that he coached, many of whom were very famous and many of whom became NBA players afterwards. But anyway, he said two things about character that I like, because character is something I think about a lot. Yeah, you like character versus reputation. Oh, exactly. So you did your homework. So this is from John Wood, and I could never make this up. He said two things about character. One of them is fairly famous, and I don't love it. He said, character is what you do when no one is watching. That's fine, but it's got a little bit of a godly, moralistic feeling to it.

42:46I grew up in a family where that was a feeling, and it's not my preferred mode of feeling. Anyway, the other thing he said, though, is that people should worry more about their character than your reputation. Because reputation is simply what other people think of you. Yes. Whereas character is who you really are. That, to me, is the essence of it. And maybe that is the same as his other quote about characters, what you do when no one is watching. But that chasm can be so shocking, right? And the more you worry about the reputation side, the harder it is to stoke your character. That's the way I see it.

43:17One of the advantages of getting older is not just actual history, but personal history and understanding how people are, how people change, what you need to accept about other people and about yourself. I believe in all the cliches. Good character is really important. Being really, truly loving and kind to other people is really, really, really important. All the other things that we do for reputation or money, they're necessary. They're understandable. They're fantastic in moderation. Ambition is great. the most dangerous part about the worst parts of our attention economy, I think, is that they incentivize people to be unkind.

43:51Simple as that. We know that. The science is pretty proven, but we got to stop that. Back to the marriage thing, because I think it's relevant. I do want to say, though, in case anyone's listening, who's in a bad marriage. By the way, the odds are very, very, very, very, very good. That's somebody... Because someone listening is in a very bad marriage. That's right. I hate to guess that it might even be more than half. Yeah, my guess. And none of us should be saying that with a laugh in our voices. It's just a recognition of how fucking hard it is. It's hard. Life is hard. Life is hard. But also, I think if you say, like, we're married, I know what you mean because we're one country.

44:27We have to make it work. That's the reality. But also, abuse from one another is not okay. And you would say in a marriage, if that's happening, to leave. Right. Where do you go in this case, though? Exactly. That's what I'm saying. You got, like, a reverse engineer. It's not an option. But abuse is happening. And I think part of why it's getting so hot and escalated is because there's nowhere to go and there's abuse. It's getting so intolerable. And I don't know what the answer is, but that's the reality of this marriage. That's what I want to—I'm sincerely asking, what do you think the solution is to that?

45:03I'm not smart enough to know. I can say I don't know. I have a solution. I don't know that it would work, but I have thought of what the solution is. It is a one-year moratorium on talking about politics. You still vote. You still do everything you do. But for one year, you put down the political identity. Just for one year. And that's a moratorium enacted by or carried out by whom on whom, though. Right. We don't live in any type of country that could do that. But if I had a magic wand and I got to ask a wish, I would ask everyone to try one year of not talking about politics. The country's not going to fall apart if you don't talk about it.

45:38You can still vote. But I would be very curious what the temperature would be if we stopped broadcasting our allegiance to a site. I just am curious what that would look like. I think it's a good idea. I also think that knowing what I know about human behavior, when people recognize that they have a habit that they don't like, even if they want to get rid of it. And we could all name many, many bad habits that we've all had that we'd like to get rid of, but we know they're hard. And there are different stages or dimensions of addiction, let's say. It's really easy for someone outside of that mode to say, just stop it.

46:07That's the obvious answer from the 30 ,000-foot parental view. But everybody knows that if you're doing a thing, just stopping is hard because it's an activity. It makes you feel a certain way. Well, there's stuff also happening. If there was a vote at the end of every month, I would agree. You should stand up and try to get people to go and vote in the direction you want. But just given the reality that there's no outcome of the talking until the election happens. There are things that happen from people talking. it just happened. Disney just felt a big hit from people. And so they made a decision.

46:43Action does have impact. And I kind of want to take Steven's advice and say, like, what is the definition of politics? If we're saying like we shouldn't talk about it, what is the definition of that? Yeah. So I wrote down how much I believe this is metastasized. I think if you were an alien and you were looking at us and you said, okay, so your diet's politics. If you're vegetarian, you're probably a liberal. If you're a carnivore, you're probably a Republican. Your automobile choice. If you're electric, you're probably liberal. But within the electric, if you drive a Tesla, you're probably a Republican.

47:18And if you drive a Chevy, you're probably a liberal. Especially a Tesla truck. If you shop at Lululemon, you're a liberal. If you shop at American Eagle now, you are a Republican. If you drink Bud Light versus Coors, your health. Oh, is that true? Bud Light and Coors are the opposite? Well, Bud Light had the trans person on top. No, but what's Coors? Coors stayed out of politics and everyone said, well, we're going to now drink Coors. Because I remember when Coors was considered a right-wing beer. That's what I'm saying. Coors would represent the Republicans, Bud Light represent the liberals. I thought you were saying the Bud Light posts the trans scandal.

47:45Yeah, I would say Bud Light is now. Can I just say, this is terrible. I hope they're not your sponsors, but I think anybody who's drinking either Bud Light or Coors can do better. But your health, if you believe in psychiatry, you're probably liberal. If you believe in vaccines, that's a political decision. Patriotism, if you have an American flag, that's political. School, do you believe in private homeschooling? That's probably Republican versus public school. TV shows, what shows you. So it's like literally every single thing now represents a commitment to your tribe. I think it's terrible.

48:18Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way. Well, you asked what is political, and I'm saying literally everything now. We've dragged that label into the rest of our lives. It is metastasized in the sense that it has spread. But that's sort of my point. If you're saying all of that is political, then how can we not talk about politics? If it's everything now, which I think it's crazy that people are doing that. But if you're saying that's true, then how will anyone talk? Well, what will happen is if everyone has to stop talking for a year about I won't drive a Tesla because it's Republican. Well, the Tesla is going to slowly stop representing that.

48:53If only liberals want this. when we stop reinforcing these objects having political identities in everything in our life and we're constantly broadcasting our political identity, if we stop that, I do think slowly we can depoliticize the world around us and then just go vote. I think this goes back to what we were talking about a while ago about taking control of your own state of mind. Here's what I think without evidence. I think that most people who make everything political for themselves or for other people, which we would agree has a bad effect. I would argue that most of them probably don't really think that much about why they do it, but they've been suggested into it.

49:36There's currency for it. There's incentives to do it. But there's a certain point at which you feel like it's not having a good effect on your mind and body. Here's an example. This is also hard to prove, but one argument for why the crack epidemic went way down, not a way, but way down, was because the demand fell so much because the next generation of user saw their older siblings or aunts and uncles using it. They said, oh my God, I want none of that. Yeah, they saw the wreckage. That's kind of the way I feel about social media now. My glimmer of hope is like all future generations, they will hate what the one before them did.

50:09And I just pray that they're all watching this. But I think younger people then all of us are already where we're hoping that we get to. That's my hope. I think we're the bad generation. Yeah. Seriously. Because we also have more leverage to make chaos. We do because we are the CEOs of the company. We're at that age group. And so we decide whether we are going to align ourselves. I also think it's just a choice. I visited Scotland recently for golf. It was amazing. I went with members of this golf club of mine. So it was kind of a group effort. And it's something that if you had told me 20 years ago, you're going to be wearing a bright red club jacket.

50:44It's great. Why not? I think it's cute. 1700 something and it's just really... If you had vacationed in Martha's Vineyard your whole life and you were telling me this, that's where my judgment would come in. But I kind of like this for you. I think of life as anthropology. For me, coming to LA is like, oh my God, this is live anthropology. I love... Everything is different. Every telephone wire is different here. Every building, the angle of the sun, it's being in a museum. So anyway, over there, what was really interesting is I met a lot of different people from all different kinds of realms.

51:14There is a plain spokenness in Scotland that just doesn't exist among the people that I usually hang out with here. Because here we're usually like, you're just describing, well, if so-and-so does this, then they're aligned with that. And if they're aligned with that, that means that. And over there, a lot of conversations were much more like, that's a rock, don't trip over it. This is what I think about when I'm making a show. I always think I don't want to make an about episode. I want to make an of episode. I feel like way too many of us are spending way too much time doing about thinking. What do I think about this as opposed to what am I?

51:48What am I doing? What am I accomplishing? And you can decide that as an individual. The problem is once it gets up into the corporate realm where we are all as individuals, customers. Anybody who thinks that Twitter is their friend because it provides an open platform to do this and that. Yes, that's partly true. Most people by now understand that we are the product to a large degree. It's like the New York Times, where I used to work, in which I still love as an institution. I think it's still one of the greatest papers that ever will be. I think a lot of the Times coverage in the last 15 or so years has been much more geared toward telling people how they should think about a particular news story as opposed to what the story is.

52:25I completely agree with that. They'll have the what the story is piece, but then it'll be surrounded and followed for days and weeks sometimes by opinion pieces. I don't really need opinion pieces. But the problem is that it's very, very, very marketable. I'm glad The New York Times is thriving. A previous, you know, I guess CEO or publisher, Mark Thompson, came in. As far as I can tell, he saw that news is important. But if we can sell recipes and games and we can pay for the news, and that's a reorientation, and that really worked. Did that make the news slightly less robust, serious? I think it probably did.

52:58Or it's just the nature of how journalism has changed over time. But even the New York Times and our social media and our friends that we run into, we all are pushing each other into these ridiculously tiny little silos. And I think it's up to every individual to just say, like, you know, the would-be next generation crack use. Like, not for me. I would rather go surfing, go read a book, go play golf, go hang out with friends and do something and live a life that is of rather than be an observer and think this is what that is about. Right. For a lot of people, including myself, one thing that's hard to not do or that comes naturally, at least to me and many other people, but not all people, that I've tried to just diminish a lot is the impulse to judge.

53:42The impulse to judge is, I think, a very, very smart, healthy evolutionary trait because everything from life on the savannah, is that one going to eat me? So you have to make judgments, you know, Danny Kahneman, I'm sure you guys have dug into that, thinking fast and thinking slower, two viable ways of assessing things. But often when we make a consequential decision that should be thought through slowly, we make it fast. So that's really bad. And I feel we do that all the time internally, but then externally too. And when your first response is to judge something as literally on a spectrum, positive or negative versus, and this is what I try to do, but don't always succeed, just observe and figure it out.

54:24Because I'm a writer and because I was very shy as a kid, I've always been very comfortable just being on the edge of the back wall and just watching and listening and taking it and trying to figure out who loves who, who hates who, who's mad at who, who's trying to impress who. And I feel like if you do that, at the very least, what you're going to do is you're going to start to empathize. And by empathize, I don't mean sympathize. I mean, you can feel yourself in that person's position a little bit. And that, for me, at least changes the calculus. I have a very overlapping thing, which is I encourage people to have drastically different opinions.

54:54When a different opinion than yours signals a character assessment about the owner of the opinion, we've got a big problem. Right, then it's a problem. You've decided that the way you think is proof of character. If you had character and you were a good person, you would think this way. So just to say, oh, wow, yeah, they have a different opinion, but I grant them they want this place to be the best. They're in pursuit of what they think would be best for everybody. I can grant them that. We totally disagree on the best route there. That is healthy. Having a difference of opinion and having debate and discourse, that is wonderful.

55:26When you are making character assessments of people because they don't agree with you, I think you're in trouble. I agree. Do you want to try an AI thought question? Yeah, I do. Can I just say, though, I love this conversation. It's really exhausting. no no no but i mean in a good way yeah you're kind of just getting to the core of what it means to be a human at this place in time and we're all narcissistic and we all think no other humans have ever felt like that it's totally baloney and you could argue the fact that we are so distressed about the things that are bad is a good sign because the human species always trying to improve and the only way you can improve is to take on the problems right Yes.

56:03And it's optimistic. But it's exhausting in a good way, but that I feel like all of us, the planet, I feel is kind of exhausted. It's been a really wild, disorienting several years. That's my other hope. My two glimmers of hope are the new generation who will just be lame that we did this. And then also I do believe people fatigue. And I'm just praying that we're approaching the fatigue rate where it's like we all throw our hands up and be like, okay, I'm just too exhausted to do this anymore. Going to take a nap. By the way, I think napping is also really undervalued. I love it. 28-minute caffeine nap.

56:36You drink the coffee before, then you wake up refreshed. Okay, this is an AI question. Or is this a Dax question? No. He's saying it's an AI question. You're hiding behind an AI question. Why do we keep rebooting the 90s? Is it comfort food or a cultural panic button? I need some terms, Siri or chat or whoever you are. It says the economics of retro branding, why people buy the past, whether nostalgia can actually predict the future. Those do sound much less like you and much more like the AI. Those are fine. We could talk about that. It would be kind of like having two robots play chess. Aren't you happy that yours are so much better than theirs, though?

57:10Well, I'm glad you think so. I hope that wasn't yours because that was a demonstrably mushy question.

57:19It did curtail one exactly to you. It said, do you think there will ever be a Freakonomics book co-written with an AI? And would we even tell readers? Oh, wow. They're pushing. Well, what I like about it to me, to me, to me, right with you, Stephen? To me, that shows integrity. It's not afraid to have you debate whether this thing should exist or not. This almost disproves this fear that they have a consciousness they'll try to protect. My response to that question would be, well, let's define terms. What's AI? What everybody's now calling AI is one version of artificial intelligence, but it's very close to many other versions we've already had and will have.

57:52So when I first moved to New York, I'd quit playing music. I was going to graduate school for writing and I didn't have any money. So I earned money by doing word processing. It was as big as like a Buick. It was a massive machine. You had to put in these big floppy disks for each function. So it was like the create a file floppy disk, save a file floppy disk, spell check. But spell check and saving documents, all these things were some version of what we think of now as AI. It's just basically using compute power to do stuff that we've already known how to do, but do it better and more efficiently.

58:25is a dictionary, not AI. It's not my intelligence. I'm looking up what somebody else figured out and they get passed on from generation to generation too. It's a cumulative thing, which is really wonderful. Like the reason that we don't have to learn calculus to build a microphone is because generations of people did it. Now we buy it for like$200. How nuts is that? So what does that free us up to do? That's the same question we're asking now about AI. Are you? Right? Yeah, exactly. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

59:30It's like there's the old argument. I just pee wherever I'm fucking at. Sign me up if someone comes and cleans it up. There was a Seinfeld line from years ago. He's like, if a Martian came down, sees a species and the guy walking around picking up the poop from the dog, who's in charge here? The dog is in charge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The first time that you were recommended a book on Amazon based on a previous book, you thought, wait, what's that? Or on Netflix. Watch that. And then the second time you thought, oh, that's kind of either weird, creepy, wonderful. And then the third time you're like, that's what it is.

59:58Yeah. And that's the way all technologies are. This is something tangent, but when you get used to things quickly, what the psychologists call habituation, that can be a bad thing, too. Yeah. Because you start to lack gratitude for things that are prima facie awesome. I can go pretty much anywhere I want in this country, turn on the faucet and drink it. That wasn't 100 years ago. Yeah. But once you're used to it. My obsession is like, well, watch these movies with my daughters, like little women. And they're in this big mansion and everyone's dressed so beautifully. and I say, you know they had to go out in the yard and shit.

1:00:29Just remember that. However pretty that house is. Like I'd live in a mobile home with an indoor toilet. You're a terrible father. Before I'd live in a mansion without an indoor toilet. You can't ruin that fantasy. And that was five minutes ago. The early 1900s, that was five seconds ago. That's really cruel. You had to go out in the yard in the middle of winter. Because now they're going to be thinking about, well, those dresses aren't very outhouse compatible. Well, we know those dresses are filthy. They're full of stains. I'm becoming very uncomfortable in this house. I mean, also, literally, it's not available everywhere now.

1:00:55So forget that long ago, even places in this world don't have it. The trend is good, but it's not everywhere. I feel like we always do this. We whip out the prosperity chart and say, you see, things are getting better. But there's still so much anger and suffering and frustration. And again, what are the terms of this debate? Are those the right metrics to evaluate how we're doing? We need to talk about something slightly better for five minutes. Okay. Okay. What show are you watching that you love? I did just watch a show. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm sorry to say. I watched your wife's show with the rabbi.

1:01:26Love that. Of course you did. As it turns out, everybody saw it. It was really good. Can I tell you one funny thing about that? If you want to have a funny thing. I do. So I go into my GP because I have this disgusting dead toenail. Is this unrelated to the carbuncle? Well, who knows? Maybe I will tell me that they're related. But at this point, I just have a dead gross toenail. I dremeled it and it looked like maybe I had cancer. So I'm finally going to go to get it looked at. He's about to look at my ugly toenail. And he goes, oh, yeah, what do we got here? You tell your wife. she's our shiksa and i go you got it i will he goes you know what i got a guy across the hall i'm friends with him i bet i could get you into him right now he's a podiatrist i want him to look at it and i go sounds great you know i have a referral and right now i'm going in he walks me and i've never met this man you're not gonna believe this i swear to fucking god it's true pull off my sock now he starts looking and he goes by the way you tell your wife she's our shiksa And I'm like, did you guys talk in the hallway earlier and say like she's our shiksa?

1:02:26Both doctors, while looking at my disgusting toes, stopped to tell me that my wife is their shiksa. All right, so I'll say two things about that. It's pretty weird. Number two, I love the fact that both these doctors are comfortable enough with you to rather than go straight to the toe tail to go to that. Yeah, it feels like a HIPAA violation somehow. I don't actually think it is, but it feels like it. Like it feels like some information shouldn't have been crossed that way. I once had a doctor say to me, I love that episode you did about ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, and my husband is a huge fan of whatever it was, hockey, something.

1:03:00She said, I wish I could tell him about it. I said, what do you mean? What are you talking about? She said, well, I'd be uncomfortable telling him I listened to it because you're a patient. Oh. And like, because he might ask me like, why do you listen to Freakonomics? What, he got a crush on this? Exactly. Did you tell her to leave this marriage? Like, this is your husband. You can't tell your husband that you have a patient who makes the radio show? That, unfortunately, is also good. I really respected her. She takes patient. Integrity. Confidentiality. All right, where were we? I feel like I dragged us onto another.

1:03:31No, no, no. I thought that was lighthearted and fun. You wanted a light moment. Oh, that wasn't, yeah, podiatry. That was lighthearted. Fungi toenails. Steven. Yeah. I love when you come on. You love me being so uncomfortable. I literally, I want you to do it a hundred more times. I guess that's my last question. I want to end on this. 15 years into this for economics radio. Yeah. Do you have moments where you're like, I can't do it? I kind of need to hear that you have those moments. Okay. Short answer. Yes. But this is defining terms. I don't say I can't do it. It's hard. I think making anything that you care about, if you're making dinner for your family, if you're starting a company, if you make a thing like you're making here, like I make, if you care about a thing, it's hard.

1:04:12It's just the way it is. So that's number one. Number two is I love, love, love what I do. And I'm very grateful for that because I know there are a lot of people in the world that do the work they do because they need to earn a living to take care of their family. I respect that more than I respect I get to do what I like. So it's kind of like play. So I feel a little bit guilty about that, but I've gotten over feeling guilty about it. The hard part is even with all the tools, even with good AI, even with a great staff, even with more experience, et cetera, you have to be on your game all the time.

1:04:41The thing that would worry me is if I stop having ideas. You're only as good as your ideas. And this is all I do. I don't have a job. I don't have that many commitments. I'm a good dad and father, but my family has really supported me when I have to go or do or think because when you're a writer, you're just in your head a lot. It's all I do. And so I keep having ideas and I like having ideas. And I think ideas are one of the single best things about us humans and that the AIs will have facsimiles of it, but not the way we do. I don't know if I'll do it in another 15 years. I do get a little bit bored with certain kinds of episodes.

1:05:13So I'm constantly trying to change things up. I do more series now. I'm trying to do more series that are a little bit more like writing a book, doing a series right now on Handel's Messiah, that piece of music that I happen to love. What it sounded like to me is that it's the ideas that keep reigniting you. Yes. You also have a taste for novelty. Everybody does, right? Me in particular. I'm a novelty junkie. With that attitude, you would be a very good golfer. Oh, really? Because most golfers were pretty terrible. We'd try our best. We'd get better. But it's really hard. But then you hit that one shot.

1:05:43And it buys you 20 more. And you go to bed at night and you just think about how it smelled, how it felt, looking at the ball and the light. And then you still were sucky that day. I would argue that's kind of what life is, though. It's like a lot of what we all go through. It's not what we'd want to do. Yeah. But you go through it because you need to and you're living your life, supporting your family, et cetera. But then you get hit with the highlight and you're like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you feel grateful for it. All right, Stephen, this has been a blast. I hope you'll come back. If you've never read Freakonomics, you are a Philistine.

1:06:12So go get it on the 20th anniversary, November 11th. You'll get a new forward, a new jacket. Also, maybe the show's called Better in Person. Probably not. You got Freakonomics Radio. No stupid questions. You still doing that with Andrew? No. We did three years. It was awesome. We rerun the archive, which is actually in the podcast world now. Like, you guys will have this experience one day. A dormant show can still be a great show. A show that's not being named. It's like reruns on TV, obviously. But also, podcast audiences cycle through pretty fast. We still have about 70 or 80 % as many people listen to NSQ, No Stupid Questions as when it was new.

1:06:42Wow. Because people are either they love it or they're coming back or they discover it. Yeah, that's cool. All right, wonderful. Well, we'll see you again because you're one of our favorites. I hope so. Thank you. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

1:07:00Hi. Hi. How are you? Good. I have a list. Okay, let's hear it. These are just a couple things that happened for Maren and I's motorcycle trip. Okay, let's hear it. Okay. First of all, we had so much fun. Good. We rode a thousand miles in three days. I got a blister. Yep.

1:07:25My carbuncles hurt. I mean. Did you use the soap? Yeah, I used it last night. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mercer soap. Yeah, I used it last night. Okay, good. Um, we, we got, it was a pretty short trip, but we did get to two salad bars. Fun. Shoney's. Shoney's. Do you remember Shoney's? Yeah, Shoney's. Holy shit. I haven't thought about Shoney's. Holy Shoney's. I know a lot, something suspicious was Shoney's happened on this trip. Okay. One was we pulled over, we're just following the directions, and, um, I see a goddamn Shoney's and I'm like, I didn't even think they were still around. Same.

1:08:03And I was like, I think they have salad bars. Yeah, Shoney's. God, it's a great restaurant. They had a full salad bar and a lunch bar. What's a lunch? Oh, like hot food. They had a big pan of hamburger patties and onions and a broth. That was delicious. Wait, the patties were in a broth? Yeah, it was just like this big stainless steel bucket of hamburger patties and broth and onions. Strange. Maybe like hamburger fried steak or something. I don't know what the hell it was. But that salad bar was great. Okay. We really enjoyed that. And then I just, again, we got off in an exit on our way home and we were heading to Waffle House.

1:08:39Oh. And I looked to my right and I was like, Ruby Tuesdays. Oh, yeah. Haven't been to Ruby Tuesdays in 40 years, I think. For some reason, that one doesn't get me as excited as Shoney's. Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Well, I'm sure we've made a lot more memories at Shoney's. Yeah. But I just was like, oh, when I went 40 years ago at the 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan, I think they had a salad bar. So I pulled into Ruby Tuesdays and Eric goes, wow, Ruby Tuesdays. And I go, I think they might have a salad bar. He goes, well, let's check. Sure enough, walk in. Gorgeous salad bar. Yes. Wow. I fucking love a salad bar.

1:09:17I do love a salad bar. Okay. Now, did you deviate your salad from Shoney's to Ruby Tuesdays? Well, there were some more options at Ruby Tuesdays. The price point's a little different. Okay. So we did have my sunflower seeds. I love more seeds and stuff for me at Ruby Tuesdays, which was great. Did you get this teeny tiny small pieces of ham? No, but it's funny you'd say that the bucket of ham was the largest bucket on the salad bar. It was bigger than the lettuce bowls. Right. There was so much ham. And Aaron loves his ham. I love ham on a salad. You do. I don't really mess with ham on the salad.

1:10:01But it's in these teeny tiny pieces. Strips are so cute and chewy. Yeah. Yeah. You would have loved it. There was a bucket of ham. Do you put cheese? Yeah. Cheese just to remind you. It's mushrooms. Okay. It's chopped egg if they had it. Right. Neither place had that. Okay. That's a check mark. Okay. Garbanzo bean slash whatever. Chick peas. Chick peas. Peas. Okay. Okay. Seeds, I always say, cheddar cheese, then blue cheese dressing and the Catalina and a little bit of honey mustard. Mix all three. Oh, my. Okay. Yeah. And then several trips. It's just so—we just have such different tastes in salad bars.

1:10:44I know. I know. I know. I know. But that's great because we would never be competing. Yeah. If you got up there and there was, like, minimal blue cheese dressing left, I'd be panicked. You wouldn't care. No. The only crossover we have is the cheddar cheese and the lettuce. Catalina and lettuce. Although I go light on lettuce. I don't go seeds. You should start doing some seeds. At a salad bar. These seeds are good for you. I do put, yeah, that's the thing. My salad is not a good for, a salad bar salad to me is not meant to be healthy. Yeah. Yeah, me neither. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that was, that's just one update.

1:11:22We did hit two salad bars in four days, which that's a great average. Great. maybe we'll be back for my coffee table book that I'm still working on, the great salad bars of America. Oh, right, yeah. They deserve Shoney's. Okay, well, here's the Shoney's ding, ding, ding. So then I go out with, Aaron flew home and I was there for one more night. So I picked Huey up in my Corvette. I was like, let's have a night on the town in the Corvette. Okay. It was so fun. We went to Brick Tops. We had a delicious meal. And then on the way back, we just were cruising all over Nashville and going through different neighborhoods.

1:11:55and he's showing me things. And then we see this huge palace. This house, it was a palace. I was like, what is that? Like 20 some thousand square feet? And he's like, yeah, at least. And he goes, that's the old CEO of Shoney's. And I'm like, what? That's the CEO of Shoney's? That's so Sam. I thought they were out of business. Also, did he do a good job? He did. He did, obviously. He owns a palace. is. But should the place be out of business and you own a palace and you're a CIA? Doesn't that feel a little. But it's not out of business, I guess you went to one. Virtual. Well, yes, I went to one.

1:12:32I found one. And when I posted a picture of it, every single person that comes like, oh, my God, there's still a Shoney's. That's not the biggest sign of success. Can we look up how many Shoney's are left in the United States? That's a great search. This guy still has his palace despite whatever happened. Okay, well, like, I don't know if he doesn't deserve, he gave people a lot of food for a long time. Clearly, it was very profitable for some period because his house was outrageous. Wow. There's 58 of them across 15 states. Are there any here? They never were. No. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

1:13:13So all the saps, really. They still have them in Georgia. Now, will you look up what the maximum they had was at their peak? This is 44 % of the total. That can't be right, man. I saw Shoney's everywhere, and this Shoney's just was like, it was a diamond in the rough. Anyways, I loved it. Was it crowded? It was exactly what you think. We're both 50, and we were the youngest by 30 years. Yeah. In 1998, there were 1 ,834 states. There we go. 1 ,800 down to, what did you say, 50-something? Yeah. Yeah, 58. So that's not 44%. I'm so surprised there's even 50. So he must have built that palace when they had 1 ,800 locations.

1:13:52Okay. Now, second thing that happened was, so the first two days we rode, we rode too much, really. Okay. Went on the dragon's tail. This is a very famous road. There's like a kabillion turns in 22 miles. Maybe the curviest road in America, Huey said. That was beautiful. So fun. We got there. Next day, kind of a tactical blunder. I, as a surprise to Aaron, I had looked up if there were any cider mills in the area. There was granddaddy's apples. So I said, first stop, I have a surprise. We went to the cider mill. Line was so long. Back to your Vista story. It was like, it was a good two hour wait.

1:14:32So I said. Two hours? Yeah. Are you sure? Yeah. You might've moved faster. Maybe. I don't think so. So I said, let's just go get cider. You could go get cider. What was all the donuts was the line. So I said, let's go grab some cider and let's go just sit at a picnic table and hope someone's had their fill and then buy the donuts off of them. That was my approach. And it worked. We sat down next to this couple and I bought two donuts. Well, I bought one donut for$20. I said, I'll give you$20 for a one donut. My God. And they were ethical. So they gave us two, which was nice. Wow. And so at first, the sticker shock of$20 for two donuts, right?

1:15:14I get it. That's gluttonous. Yeah. No one liked two donuts. And shameful. Yeah. Unless you look at it this way. Get this one four-day trip of the year. Two hours in that line. I said to Erin, for anyone who makes more than$10 an hour, what we did was cheaper. Yes. But like work is shitty, especially if you're probably working at a place where you're getting paid$11 an hour. Yeah. So to spend two of those hours that suck towards one to two donuts. If you're trading the two hours in line for two hours at work, yes, you'd probably be in line. You'd rather be in line. But I still stand by my math.

1:15:58That's like that's a good way to look at it. How come you still stand by even though I poked a good hole? Well, you're saying that the hours aren't comparable. But for me, they're worse. It goes the other way. I'd rather do this show for two hours and stand on that line for two hours. And the people who bought the donuts are so happy because they were going to throw those away. And they basically were neutral. They didn't have to pay for their donuts. We got donuts without spending the two hours in line. So everything felt really clean. Okay. This is kind of, I mean, this is very reminiscent of the Taylor Swift concert when I paid someone to buy my shoes.

1:16:31I know, but mine's a little different because I actually didn't add to the line in any way whatsoever. Because those people had already gone in the line. They had bought their dozen donuts. And I didn't show up and say, will you buy a second thing of donuts? These were going in the trash. So I didn't really impede anyone else's day. You still found a workaround to get what you wanted and with money. With money. So this is Taylor Swift sweatshirt. That part of it's identical. Okay, great. Great. I just didn't have to step in front of anyone and get dicey. He didn't step in front of anyone. Oh, okay.

1:17:05She was already in line. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how you talked to her if you didn't get in line. Oh, I mean that, but that's just standing. Yeah, everything's great. You did a great job. Great. We got these donuts, everything. Were they good? Oh, so good. So we leave there, and I want to go to Looking Glass Falls. And so I put that in my nav on my phone, and I have it on the handlebar. And then we get, and then I add that as a way, like as a stop along my route to go to Old Edwards Inn, which is much further away in a town called Highland. Okay. So we get to the falls. We take some pictures.

1:17:40Everything's great. Go to put my phone, like resume my thing. Well, it like turned it off. And now I have no cell service because we're in the middle of the mountains. So I just started continuing riding. All this to say when I finally got cell service, I think that blunder added about two hours to our ride that day. And it was chilly that day. Oh, no. We get all the way to this town. That's a side note. You can't eat. We walk. Oh, I don't. I've been debating whether or not I want to complain about this or not. There was a weird thing going on culturally on this trip, which is we went into many, many restaurants that were near empty.

1:18:15And they told us the wait was one hour. And I don't really understand what is going on. But it had happened so many times that when we got to Highland, we walked in this restaurant. And I said, hi, too. Mind you, it's like 3.40 p.m. No one's eating lunch at 3.40 p.m. And she goes, it'll be an hour. And I'm looking at the dining room and I just couldn't resist. There were like three tables taken out of 25 tables. And I said, it's going to be an hour to sit in the empty dining room. Uh-oh. And she goes, there are 10 parties ahead of you. And then I look around and we're the only people. What? And I go, where are you hiding the 10 parties?

1:18:52You did. You couldn't. I couldn't resist. There was not 10 parties. And the fucking dining room was empty. Maybe they went down the street and it's like you buzzed them. I prefer they just said, I don't want to work. And I go, that's cool. I get it. I don't want to work a lot of times too. I'll leave. I don't want you to have to work if you don't want to work. But don't lie and then lie again to back up the first lie. Yeah, I don't like this. I was annoyed by this. Can we say potentially maybe they just had one server working? And again, I think one server could have handled a fourth table. There's something, there's, this was pretty consistent.

1:19:30Really? Yeah, I left a bad taste in my mouth. Weird. Yeah, it was very weird. I don't know what was going on. It was, I think what's going on is it's a really busy time of year in that part of the country. A lot of people are going to look at the leaves turn. Yeah. Even though they weren't turned at all. So I think they're overwhelmed. Okay. I don't know what's going on. Forget that. Anyways, point is by the time we got back to the hotel, we had ridden so long and it was fucking cold. My hands were numb and the whole nine yards. So I woke up on the next morning and I'm like, I got to tell Aaron, I don't want to ride today.

1:20:06How did you feel identity wise? It's challenging. Yeah. It's challenging. But I was like, oh, this is an opportunity for growth. Because the old me is like you're riding every day and you're riding hundreds of miles a day because that's what you came to do. But it was Sunday. There was football on. and I text Aaron and I said, I hate to say this, but I think I want to just lay around all day today. And he said, I'm so glad you just sent this text. I was like panicked. You're going to want to ride more. We needed a break, right? So then I went online and I found a massage and I wanted us to have, I just was lazy.

1:20:42I didn't want to try to book two different appointments that felt like, because everything was so busy. I just went to couples massage because that way I know we can get a massage at the same time. Yeah. So I book a couple's massage for 7 p.m. on Sunday night. Great. I want to say the name of the place. Romantic. Can I say the name of the place? Because it was so great. The name of the place in Asheville. If you're there, you must try it. Blazing Lotus Healing House. Oh, nice. OK. OK. So I also wrote in the comments, hey, it's two it's two dudes. So we don't need to be in a couple's room if that's easier or harder.

1:21:16Whatever. So we arrive at the thing and I say, I don't know if you saw my thing. She goes, yeah. So we have two different rooms. I go, okay, let's do that. And she said, but we have a male and a female massage therapist. And I said, I'll take the dude. I go with Phillip and he's incredible. If you're going to go get Phillip, he's insanely good. It was one of the best massages ever. I was so lucky. But while I'm laying there getting massaged, I was just thinking in my head about people getting couples massages. And I was thinking, I can't imagine. Oh, I know I'm not. But I'm on the far edge of this spectrum I recognize.

1:21:57So then I got curious. You don't think when a man and a woman go get a couples massage and the dude's laying there getting a massage from a woman and then his wife's getting a massage by a man. I don't think that man is ever getting jealous or worried that there's a man stroking his wife right next to him. I don't know. I don't think so. Or they wouldn't do it. Right. And so then I just started thinking about that. Like, oh, this is a very interesting thing that this happens. Couples massages and a man's watching or is next to his wife getting rubbed by another man and they don't care at all. And then I was like, okay, well, why don't they care?

1:22:36A, mostly probably because they're just focused on the fact that they're getting rubbed. Well, they're there. Like, I feel like they're like, nothing's gonna happen. I'm right here. Truly. Yes. Yeah. But it's framing. So that's fine if a man rubs your wife and gives her lots of pleasure. Sure. If it's her coworker, you're going to have a lot of problems. If it's a friend. This is such a. If it's a friend. You think it's a stretch? The activity is objectively the same. I know, but the judgment isn't about the activity. It's about what it means. It's intimate. A massage is not weirdly, even though it's so pleasurable.

1:23:20It's not intimate. Right. And if it crosses into intimacy, it's actually very uncomfortable, except for that one time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's be honest here. One time. If it's a coworker. But let's say the coworker has not attracted to your wife. They're not going to put themselves in the position to do that unless they are. Yeah, I'm trying. I'm not being a good. I'm not doing a good job making my point. The activity is objectively the same. Yeah. The motions. Rubbing muscles with lotion. Sure. And so if you have a problem with one version, again, you've got to say, oh, he's attracted to her where it becomes a problem.

1:23:59Or they're not a professional. Or, or, or, or, or. Yeah. It's just you recognize what I'm saying about the fragility of the mind that in this this scenario, it's totally fine. I don't even think about it. But if it's anyone but this person, the activity itself is now objectionable. Yeah, because of the nuance of what it means. There's no safety. Yes, there's no professionalism. There's no safety. The person is not sitting, even if it's not a couple's massage, even if it's just a woman goes and gets a massage from a man. the husband isn't there. Right. They probably don't. Although. It's like a compartment we have in our head where we go like, it's totally fine if a stranger rubs my wife's naked body in this context.

1:24:46Yeah, because there's boundaries around that context. Whereas if it's a coworker. That's a great, isn't it? Don't you like the term coworker? Because it's crazy. It is so crazy. Yeah, that's like, they're pushing a boundary. Uh-huh. The massage therapist at Glen Lotus. Yeah. Close. Is, you know, like they could get sued. Like there's boundaries. But the, sure, they could get sued. But you got to make all things equal. So the coworker's not attracted to your wife. You can't make it equal. This is the nuance. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The motion, the physical motion is the same. Yes.

1:25:33But what's behind it is not the same. Right. So then, exactly. So let's go through it because you got to be specific. So what's the issue with the coworker and not the person at the massage? Intimacy. Emotional intimacy. But you're assuming that there's, like, Erica from our pod could give me a massage. There would be nothing going on at all. Like, we would all agree. Well, I don't know that we'd all agree. I'll be honest. I'll be honest. If all of a sudden it's like Erica's going to give Dax a massage. Yeah. I think we'd all be like, why? But that right in this scenario, you if it's a physical therapist or something, friend, if it's a physical therapist, friend.

1:26:20Yeah. That's different to me because that is like medical. I know, but it's funny because we've like, again, it's just a very arbitrary bracket we assign. Because the person is a professional, which means what they went to massage school. And they're in a business. The act of touching my naked partner is fine because of X, Y, and Z. They're trained. Well, not just because they're trained, because they have stuff to lose. There are parameters around that. They work for a business or own a business. I guess what I'm saying is if you could establish the co-worker's rubbing your wife because he's horny for her, I get it.

1:26:59You got a problem. You got a problem. If the co-worker's dispassionately doing the exact same thing that the massage therapist is, it's funny that that's a big difference. It just would never—that's never happened. That a co-worker gives a non-passionate nothing. I couldn't get you on board. Unless the co-worker is getting his massage therapy license. That's a situation where it's like I have to practice. I have to get so many hours in. That's different. But this regular office to co-workers, no. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:27:52But again, I think what you believe you're objecting to is this coworker wants to rub my wife. But I'm asking for the scenario to be the same as the masseuse, which is the coworker doesn't want to rub your wife. Then why is he? Because your wife asked him and they have a massage table at work. I don't know why. But this is, but, but, but, you're just saying it couldn't happen without those other things. Yeah. But it could. childhood. How? Because I've rubbed lots of people's shoulders and stuff. All right. Well, I really thought I was going to have something here, but I don't. I think it's just really funny that it's fine to have a dude rub your naked wife in one context, and then it's completely objectionable in another, I think, is funny.

1:28:39Yes, because it is. I hear what you're saying, but the difference is boundaries and no boundaries. And that is real. Those are real. Yeah. I just don't think people then get specific about what that means. What are the boundaries that are being crossed? Is it that no one can touch your wife? No, because in this scenario they can. Is it they're attracted to my wife and want to rub her sexually? Yeah, that's a huge objection. But Jess, your friend could give you a massage and none of those things would be on the table. Well, he's not. Because he's gay. Yeah. He has. There's no. But but even. OK.

1:29:19So yes, like he isn't attracted to me. So that feels kind of fine. It also still kind of doesn't like I think I would be like feel a little uncomfortable. You want some anonymity when someone's Yeah. Seeing you nude. It's nudity. Is best done anonymously. Is either for a partner for the most part. I mean, this is not like, you know, or for, yeah, like pleasure in an anonymous way. Yeah. I just think if you're the alien in the spaceship and you saw this man like watch his wife's getting rubbed by a stranger next to him and he's completely at peace and he's getting rubbed. Everything's groovy. and then he walks in his house and the neighbors get in and then he goes crazy, immerse the guy.

1:30:08I think if you're the alien, you might just be like, oh, this is really funny. I guess. I mean, this is a ding, ding, ding because I had friends in town from Georgia. Yeah. Which was really, really fun. And one of the people. Hairplay. Yes. One of the people, Gina. Gina is my hair play and massages partner. Uh-huh. So we've been doing hair play and massages since we were 11. Yeah. And if we're ever like together, we make sure that happens. Yeah. And it is like, you know, everyone always has this like. Your friends don't like it. Yeah. Or they like it, but they're like, I think they think it's kinky.

1:30:47Yeah. And it is always really funny because it is so not. Like it is so benign. It's nothing. Yeah. Um, so I guess in some ways this is sort of what you're talking about. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. But it's different when it's a man and a woman if they're heterosexual. Like, me and Gina are heterosexual, so there is something about, like, it's fine. But I don't—I—I just don't think everyone's attracted to each other because they're opposite sex. I mean, I think it's a very tiny— Well, you are. You say that about everyone. You say, I'm attracted to everyone. It's definitely not a tiny.

1:31:27I think most men who see a woman naked mostly. Could fuck. Are going to be like attracted. Yeah, I don't think that's the case for women. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. So I'm not worried that my wife's attracted to the massage therapist. Yeah, and I don't think it's reverse really where a woman, a wife is all that worried about their husband going to a massage therapist. massage therapist woman. Right. Which is ironic because that's who should be nervous. My example is because, as you just said, a guy will take a blowjob from a billy goat. A man shouldn't be that worried about his wife getting a massage because in general, the wife's not just randomly attracted to every guy that would be rubbing her.

1:32:14Yeah. Yeah. And I'm this whole thing started with me being the man dealing with your wife's naked, getting rubbed by another man and you don't care. And you should probably not care too much, period, because I don't think most women are going to get horned up over a random dude giving them a massage. Yeah, but exactly. So it's a co-worker is not a random dude. But I bet your wife's not attracted to 99 % of her co-workers. Well, if she's getting a massage from a co-worker, she probably is. It's the one she's not attracted to. I said it can't be about attraction. The massage can't be. Because then you have a real problem.

1:32:50Your wife is engaging with someone she's attracted to in an intimate activity. Yeah, yeah. But my scenario is she's not attracted to the coworker. He just doesn't have this title. So you make a big argument. We're done with it. We're done with it. Wow. Wow, I guess that was it. Oh, but hair play and massages were fantastic. We didn't get to massages because it was too late. I understand the hair play, but what are the parameters of the massage? Do you guys get bare naked? No, not bare naked. Normally. Is it full body massage? No, just back. Okay. Back massage. Full body changes it a little bit, right?

1:33:34Um, yeah. Like your friends working on your butt cheek, working on your glute. She is a physical therapist. So like I would maybe let her do that. Yeah, you should. And she should do it to me too. God, it's been a minute since I think shirts are off. Oh, wow. But you're laying down. Okay. So no one's— Bras off? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is a bit kinky. But no, because you're laying down as if you are in a massage. Yeah, of course. And then we normally sit on the butt. Sit on the butt. Is there lotion involved? No. It's a dry rub. Yeah, it's dry. It's a Memphis dry rub. Aren't the shirts off? Now I don't remember.

1:34:16They must be off. Oh. Might be a shirt on massage? It might. God, you can't even remember. I'd be so hurt if I were her. Fuck, should I tell you? Like, if you, like, yeah, I would be hurt. No, I think it's shirts off. Yeah, it's got to be. It's shirts off. What's the point? Let's get these shirts off. And hair play is the main. Best part. Yeah, it's the best part. So you guys did find time to play with each other's hair. And how does that work? It's a 10-minute chunk or 15 or is it honor poke? It's honor. Now you need a timer. I know. You wouldn't like that. And sometimes I do stress out about it a little bit.

1:34:51Like, what if I don't get, what if I don't reciprocate the way I'm supposed to because I am not paying attention. Normally I go first. You receive first? Yeah. Okay. Explain that. Why is, how come that's the system? I don't know. It's just like something we've been doing. Muscle memory. Yeah. And so I am like, oh, I wonder how long it's gone. So I know what to do. Yeah. But I normally try to let that go. Just look at the clock before it starts. It's so fun. And brushes. Oh, there's brushing. And like braid. Like you'll do braids. Do y 'all's hair look crazy afterwards? Is it like all super big?

1:35:28Not really. I just picture everyone's hair like this afterwards. Like ratting it and twisting it and combing it. It feels so good. Yeah. It feels so good. But even that, that's a distinction, right? Like I think people would be jealous. Like it can feel so good and not be sexual. Of course. Right. But I think people think anything feels good. They're triggered. Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. That's true. You think, but again, a massage is like that. A regular massage is like that at a place. It's, it feels so good, but there's zero. I mean, again, there are some exceptions, but zero sexual feelings or intimacy.

1:36:12and we're chit-chatting during hair play and massages. Okay. So we're catching up. Time's flying. Yeah, time is flying. Do you think you did the same amount she did to you or a little less? I just think maybe I did a little less. You're worried. Yeah. This is your donuts. Yeah. Yeah, I just think our framing of things is just so funny and arbitrary. It is interesting. I mean, it is a strange sim because I did have that thought, the same thought sort of, which is like it's so funny that they all think – they can't imagine a world in which our hair play and massages isn't kinky. Right. Like they can't imagine that.

1:36:54Yes. They think it's weird. So, yeah. And great. So we bond on that. Yeah. I'm regularly just like I can't grasp the level of jealousy everyone else experiences. Like I just can't find purchase in it. Yeah. And then I'm always just looking at these like what I think are mental hiccups or inconsistencies with the whole thing. It's just like, yeah, you'd be totally fine with this. Yeah. It is context though. Again, that's why I think I'm like, you just need more information to know whether jealousy should happen or not. When it's two heterosexual females who've been doing this since they were 11.

1:37:35Yeah. I mean, her husband, Robbie, shout out Robbie, he doesn't care. Well, bet not. But he's sitting in the corner with his playing pool pocket. Pocket pool. Don't say. Pool pocket. Pool pocket. No, he knows it's nothing. Is it kinky if he plays pocket pool while this is happening? Yes, that takes it up to a different level. Okay. Would you let a coworker check your prostate? um well you're my co-worker so i guess you're asking if i would let you check my prostate let's go if you could accomplish what needed to be accomplished and i needed to know yeah you would not i would if i needed to know okay when he knew when you let me and that's a better comp because because we're two heterosexual people yeah you know i would have to i would I'd have to run that by my wife.

1:38:32Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she would say no. Well, no. If I, again. This is not a diss on her. No. What I'm saying is if I needed to find out if my prostate was big or I, because then next steps needed to be taken. Yeah. And you, for whatever reason, you knew just as well as my doctor if it was enlarged. And we were stuck somewhere. And I called her and said, I got to find out if I got to go to the emergency room. The only way is Monica has to put her finger on my butt. But don't worry. She knows what size the prostate is. There's so much context. There's a lot of context. But what I do know about her is if I needed that to be done, she wouldn't care who did it as long as the thing I needed to get done got done.

1:39:20I don't know about that. And it's not anything to do. It's nothing about her. It's just she is, oh, it's okay for her to have boundaries. It's okay for her to say, you know what? I'm actually not all that comfortable with that. I'd prefer you go to the emergency room. Right, but that's not an option. That's why I painted it very specifically. No, it's everything. I'm not calling her to say, hey, hon, can Monica put her finger in my butt for fun? That's a call I'm not making. And she's not saying yes to. I know, but now you've made a scenario that's like not a real scenario. No, it is a real scenario.

1:39:54The whole reason I just let a man put his finger up my butt right now is because I had to. Yeah, but he's a doctor. Yes. I had to have that done. Yeah. And if nobody was around to do the thing I had to have done. I know, but Dax, my point is that scenario you're saying right now, nobody's around. Yeah. To have something done that you need done, which is put a finger up your butt. Yes. Is not real. No, it's not real. Yeah. It's not real at all. You will never be in that situation where you can't get to a hospital and only a female co-worker is with you. My point is if something had to be done for my health that involved you or any female co-worker was the only person that'd do it, Kristen would say yes, as I would too.

1:40:42Like if you have to have something done, I can get over my jealousy. Right. For you to be healthy and safe. Sure. I mean, massage is a little different. No, but we went to. Yeah, we moved it over. We went to prostate, which I just had to have done. But. Not because I wanted to. Right. Yeah. And not because he wanted to put his finger in my butt. Yeah, he's a professional, so there's boundaries there. Yeah.

1:41:12Anyway, let's do fast. Yeah, okay. Now, I'm not going to do what I did last time this happened. where I presented the facts and everyone in the whole world listening, including you, was like, these are really good. These are really intricate. You really did it this time. A real deep dive. I don't know what got India, but it was a deep dive. And it turned out. It was Sophia. Yeah. God bless Sophia. Sophia is back on the facts today. Oh, wow. Wow. So this for both of us will be illuminating. Yes. And she's better than me at this. So they're going to be good. Okay. What is Confederate money and how much was it worth?

1:42:01Answer slash correction. Confederate money or Confederate States dollar was paper currency issued by the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865 to fund the Civil War. It was backed only by the future payment after Southern victory. It started out roughly the same value as U.S. dollar, but by 1863, it was worth six cents per U.S. dollar. And by 1865, it was worthless. Uh-oh. Today, given rarity, it could be worth much more. Oh, more than valueless. That seems like a low bar. Right. Yeah, or less than six cents on a dollar. Right. And it probably depends on where you are, where that would be worth something or not.

1:42:44Yes. Who's that? We have, who's the guy we have on who collects the hair? The presidential hair? Cohen. Jared Cohen. Jared Cohen. Jared Cohen. He might have some Confederate money. Yeah. He's a collector of history. It's, boy, how do I say this? I do not want to offend the South. But it's adjacent to people who collect Nazi memorabilia. It's haunting. It's so powerful. My whole point is like, if you walk into someone's house and they have all these Confederate dollars, you go like, oh, is this person worth it? Or were they an anti-evolutionist? You need to learn more. Yeah. You need to have more conversations with that person because, yeah, they could be just a huge history buff.

1:43:29Yeah. Like, I could own some Nazi plates and it would not make me in any way a Nazi or someone who thought anything that Hitler was about was good. This is so complicated. Yes, because, yes, you could definitely own that as like, whoa, this is like a piece of world history. How wild. Yeah. And. It's a piece of the most dramatic chapter in modern history. Horrific. The most horrific. Yeah. But here's where things get tricky. It's like. If a Jewish friend comes over and you have these like Nazi plates. displayed. Yeah. And you're like, oh, this is just because I'm a history buff. Right. I also have Genghis Khan's belt over there.

1:44:18Right. And they probably would be like, okay, like they were probably able to see that as, as, as truth, but they are not going to be able to look at that and not feel pain. Yep. Yeah. And same with Confederate dollars. So, you know, because this goes back to the whole Confederate flag. Yes. And it's like, Yeah. Okay, I understand that to you it doesn't mean that, but to so many people, and it did mean that. I accept both realities. Yeah. And there's a third, which is there are a lot of people that love the Confederate flag because they are displaying their racism. Sure. Like, that's definitely happening when I drive through certain areas.

1:45:03I'm like, I know what they're saying. Yep. Um, and there are some people like the hunting, fishing South and pride of the South. I really believe them. I believe them too. But that's exactly, that's my point. I have a, one of my best friends, um, I think struggled with this for a little bit. He's Southern. Um, and he is, he's like a hunter, fisher, also like a professor. He has a PhD. He's very, uh, introspective and smart. Yeah. And so I think he was struggling with this for a while because he's like, no, it represents this. But he did come around. Yeah. But no. And again, he barely got there and he's a professor.

1:45:45Some people don't. Some people don't do that. Yeah. And I wish they would, I guess. I wish they would. But yeah, it's... Anywho. Okay. Did printing money in the U.S. start during the Civil War? First federally issued paper currency, the greenbacks, was introduced during the Civil War in 1861 under the Legal Tender Act. Paper money dated as far back as 1690, but not on the national scale. So money was largely coinage or banknotes before 1861. The U.S. dollar in coin form originated in 1792. But yes, nationwide legal tender notes began by the Treasury during the Civil War. Okay, who wrote the Grant, Twain, Adams, Hamilton biographies, and when were they written?

1:46:35Grant, 2017 by Ron Chernow. We love him. I love him. Twain. I love him. 2005 by Ron Powers. No, that's not the one I'm listening to. Well, we are listening to the new one now. Yeah, yeah, which is Ron Chernow. Yeah, but this is an old one. Oh, okay. Okay. Adams, 2001 by McCullough. Hamilton, 2004 by Ron Chernow. Okay, so Hamilton's Chernow and McCullough's Adams. Oh, wow. This is an important one. When did humans stop eating poop? Mmm. Okay, answer. Can't find reliable data. Yeah, that was my hunch. Hard to know. Really hard to know. We'd need a cave painting of a man eating a pile of poop that had just fallen out of another human.

1:47:22And then the next painting where he's not doing that. There's a circle with a line through it. Don't do this. You sicko. Okay. Do rabbits poop 200 to 300 times a day? What is the average number of time animal poops a day? I mean, I already did this on a previous fact, so it turns out I am pretty good at this. Right, because now we're just rehashing. But I'll go through them again. Rabbits, 200 to 300. Moose, 13 to 21. Birds, 12 to 40. Geese every 12 minutes. Gross. Penguins up to 140 times a day. I wonder if the geese and birds have to poop that much evolutionarily to keep themselves light. Oh.

1:48:03As we know, their bones are hollow so they can fly. Yeah. Maybe like you can't carry around a pound of dong. That's true. Dong. Dong. Okay. Fun fact. Blue whales supposedly excrete 200 liters of poop in one single bowel movement. 200 liters. How much is that? How many gallons that is? 52.8 gallons. In one poop? Oh my god. Gross. God, that's disgusting. No wonder the ocean is polluted. When you were gone and we did a couple armchairs, Aaron and I, one of the guys was a submarine worker. Uh-huh. Submariner. Uh-huh. And yet they squirt their tanks out, their waste tanks. Into the ocean? They have to.

1:48:52They don't come up for six months. Oh, right. Yeah. And he said there is a feeding frenzy outside the... Ew! And I bet there is when these blue whales let loose too. Gross. Who coined the term illusion of fluency? Woo Kyung On 2022 guest Woo Woo Kyung On Kyung She was so playful and fun We loved her Yes Cognitive psychologist and professor of psychology at Yale She talks about a lure of fluency can trick us into thinking we can do something simply because it felt easy Which leads to the illusion of fluency Yeah She was cool Go back in the archive, listen to her Yeah, she's great Yeah, that was a good episode And that's it for Sophia's facts on Stephen Dubner.

1:49:44Oh, great. Great, great, great. Good job, Sophia. Yeah, good job. Good job reporting them, Monica. Thank you. Rob, good job. Good job. All right. I love you. Love you. Thank you.

1:50:25Tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.