Stephen Dubner Returns Again

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

I'm Dan Dubner, and I'm joined by Steven Padman.

Hello.

Returning guest, one of our favorite guests.

He was number three for him.

We love him.

God, we love him.

We don't need any game plan.

No, he's just fun to talk to and he's so interesting and has a lot of good thoughts.

I love him.

He's like a polymath.

He's cute and playful.

Stephen Dubner.

I ran into him

minutes after we're

yeah.

He was on his way there to meet somebody.

Yes, I ran into him and he invited me to hang out with him.

Oh, we did.

But I had to pass up the opportunity.

Why?

Because I was working.

I went there to work and I had to complete it.

Did you see his guest?

Yes.

He's a producer on Freakonomics.

Oh, okay.

Stephen Dubner is the host of Freakonomics Radio and co-author of the Freakonomics books, which have won many awards and sold millions of copies around the world.

2025 is the 20th anniversary of the Freak Enomics book and the 15th anniversary of Freakonomics Radio.

Check out Freakonomics.

The new edition drops November 11th.

And his new television show, early 2026, which he...

is non-committal about the title, but currently it's titled Better in Person.

So keep your eyes peeled for both of those Stephen Dubner projects.

Please enjoy one of our faves, Stephen Dubner.

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So I've been genuinely obsessed with this AI called Claude, and I have to tell you about it because it's completely different from what you'd expect.

You know how our conversations with guests always end up in fascinating and kind of raw places, exploring why people make the choices they do or diving into those complicated human moments that don't have easy answers?

Well, I started using Claude to help me think through some of these deeper questions between episodes.

And what's wild is that it doesn't rush to answers, it actually thinks through problems with you.

When I'm preparing for interviews, I can upload research papers or articles, and Claude helps me explore different angles, like search the web for current perspectives, even build interactive research tools using something called artifacts to map out complex topics.

Basically, it's like having this thinking partner that matches your curiosity about the complicated stuff.

When I'm trying to understand a guesswork or explore connections between different ideas, Claude helps me see blind spots I might miss.

Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash armchair expert and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

Nice to see you.

We're so happy to have you.

I'm sorry I'm late.

How are you?

I'm good.

Do you want or not want that?

You can have them, of course, but I just just want to say that.

That's one of his endorsement deals.

He actually has to wear that.

It does feel warm with him on.

Yeah, just I'm good.

That would be so unsteven dumber, but what if he showed up and he had like all his grandma?

I'm sorry.

I just have to.

I got to take off my uncle sunglasses.

It's not as bright in here as I was fearing.

This is good.

Really?

Thank you.

So, wait, is this really Rob?

Yeah, Rob designed the whole thing, and then he built a replica of this in Nashville for me.

You living living there?

Yeah, we built a house there and we spent the whole summer.

Congratulations.

You spend the summer in Nashville?

We spent the entire summer in Nashville.

It's on the lake.

Oh, okay.

So boating.

You could have an antiperspirant endorsement then.

It's hot because it is really hot.

It is hot in the 80s.

You grew up in South Carolina or Georgia.

Georgia.

Hot, hot, hot.

It was a great exercise in framing the whole summer.

You know, when you go to Hawaii, or if you go to Hawaii, have you ever been?

No.

Okay, but have you been down to the Caribbean?

Yes.

Yes.

Of course, it's objectively.

It's very hot.

But you go, yeah, the Caribbean is hot.

I love it.

And you just love it because you decided you love it.

Right.

It's a good attitude.

It was a great experience of like, oh, yeah, I always have the option to frame it in a way that I'll enjoy it.

And it's literally up to me.

It's a very good point.

I love that idea.

I try to do that more.

It's hard, though.

It is.

It's hard with mosquitoes.

That's impossible.

It depends on the intensity of the inputs.

Yes.

How much you can affect the output.

And I've been trying to do more and more what you're saying.

Not like just take a problem and turn it into an opportunity.

There are a lot of business school sayings like that.

Yeah.

That are sometimes true and i think sometimes inspiring for some people some of the time but i think we all have the ability to control our frame of mind much more than we do simple as that yeah can i give you one more so we live about 40 minutes outside of nashville and so once or twice a week we would drive into nashville and go hit a great restaurant and we'd all get in the car as a family and we drive there and we listen to music and about midway there on our like six time deal and i said to chris and i said you know what's insane we would never drive 45 minutes to la to get something to eat if we had to, we'd be complaining the entire way.

But I'm like, this is really fun family time.

It's like Confederate money.

You're playing with, it's a different currency.

45 minutes is just what we're doing since we're.

Yeah, no, that's what I mean.

Oh, yeah.

By Confederate money, I didn't mean like the Mason-Dixon.

Well, when we were

little...

When I was little, you would still come across Confederate money.

Okay, that had been printed during the Civil War.

Apparently.

Okay.

And it was worthless, but people tried to say, like, I'll give you five Confederate dollars for like 25 cents.

And some people would take it.

We could do 25 minutes on the Civil War because that actually got us to a version of, you know, we came off of the gold and silver standard in the North.

Our modern way of printing money backed by nothing really started during the Civil War.

Is that right?

I knew nothing about that.

That's when it started.

Teach me more.

No, that was that.

I'm embarrassed to say this.

I've never really.

known all that much about the U.S.

Civil War, which I feel kind of silly about as an American who likes history well enough and, you know, medium smart person.

But lately, I've been reading about it in kind of sideways ways.

And it just felt like one of those things you have to know everything about it.

And you learn it in school.

And then Ken Burns said

this, which was a lot to absorb.

And I didn't absorb it all.

I absorbed the emotional highlights, maybe.

Now I'm starting to kind of see it for wow, what it was.

So my route in was the Grant biography by Chernow.

Okay.

Insanely new, right?

This is in the last few months, right?

No, no.

His new one is Mark Twain.

When was the Grant?

Before Hamilton?

You're conflating authors.

I have a Chernow.

Chernow.

Ron Chernow.

I thought Ron Chernow was Hamilton.

No, I think Hamilton.

Where is complexity AI?

We need to know.

Who's the other one you like?

Didn't you also write a book on a bank David McCullough?

McCullough did Adams.

McCullough did the Brooklyn Bridge.

Yes, The Great Bridge.

I love that book.

The Path Between Two Seas.

What's that?

That's the Panama Canaan.

McCullough.

The most boring and interesting books of all time, McCullough.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, this crossed my mind as I was walking downstairs and I knew you were coming.

And as I was coming down the stairs, I found myself saying over and over again,

Stephen Dubna.

And then I wanted to ask you, do you find that people inordinately want to say your name in an English accent

because it rings of Gubna?

Oh,

like we all like to say Gubna.

And so do people go, Stephen Gubna.

Am I way out too far in the the limb?

I am.

Okay.

Except my initial response is: you're totally bonkers and wrong.

Yeah.

Like, no.

Yeah.

But now that I think about it, I have this one close friend with three kids who I used to see a lot when they were little, and now they're grown and they have kids of their own.

But in that family, I am known as the governor.

That's right.

And do they say it in that accent?

Just be aware of that time.

But the fact is that I never really registered it until you gave me that.

So thank you.

I started asking myself, why am I so inclined to say

Stephen Gubnot?

Yeah, I too was like, what are you doing?

It does make sense.

I had to chase it down.

So just clock it.

And then in our next interview in three years, just tell me, you know what?

You were kind of right.

People do do that to me.

Wow.

Okay.

We love having you here.

I love being here.

I really do.

I was really looking forward to seeing you guys.

That's appreciated what I was going to say.

I really do.

It's always a joy.

You and Angela.

Yeah.

Yes.

I just go, oh, great.

They're coming.

I have nothing to do.

You know, you interview people.

Like, there's a handful of people.

I mean, I look forward to them all, but I'm also scared of everyone.

What do you mean?

For freak radio, I interview could be between zero and eight people a week, tapings, and they could run from one to two hours.

But it could be an academic who's been writing on a topic for 30 years and I've read one paper.

And I have researchers, we have producers on the show who are great.

They work incredibly hard and they create for me for every single guest, I'll have a prep of like 10 to 20 pages with all kinds of excerpts, citations, et cetera.

So we all do a lot of work beforehand.

But if it's someone that I don't know, I have reason to think that they may be anxious, nervous.

Video makes it very interesting.

I'm trying to so excuse.

I'm not going to come around.

It goes.

Yeah,

you can only be on us for so long.

Well, the reason I'm particularly palpitating right now, thinking about this, and I've even forgotten the original question, is that I'm starting a TV show.

Called Better in Person.

Well, maybe.

We'll talk about that.

We're still kind of in search of titles.

But when you learn to do something in a given medium, so I started in music.

Within music, I was very comfortable.

It takes a long time to get there.

Then became a writer.

Within journalism or bookwriting, it takes a while, but then you get there.

Podcasting and I've done for 15 years, it took a long time.

I'm very comfortable, but every time you think about doing a new thing,

I don't know about for you guys, but I feel like what should feel cumulative.

I've got a lot of experience.

I know a lot.

It's not cumulative.

It's like a scratch pen, you rip it off when it's right page again.

This should be served with a moist towelette.

It should.

It should.

Maybe even a full full hand towel.

Or like a face bidet.

Actually, face bidet is not a bad idea.

That's a thing, Steven.

We've had those for quite a minute here.

But you have to use your hands and just something you could

just spray at and then dry.

You could bend down and use the bidet as a face bidet.

It's on the side.

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not doing that.

I'm with you.

Angela.

Duckworth actually was on an episode we once made.

It was a live show we did.

We had a kind of game show for a while.

And the episode was called, Would You Eat a Piece of Chocolate Shaped Like Dog Poop?

And it was about this notion that once you think that something, once you think, he's fine with using the bidet for his face.

But once you think of something in a disgusting mode, it's really hard to flip it.

Well, that power of disgust is its own.

There's so much work on disgust, right?

It's even what causes genocides and stuff, right?

It's the number one thing that's leveraged and weaponized.

Did we know that?

I mean, that makes sense when you say it.

Disgust, The thing that's weird about it is it's very necessary for hygiene for not eating the wrong stuff.

Yeah.

But when it becomes disgust in other people, wow.

And we're seeing a not low level of global disgust in other people, I would say.

I don't know if we know the real level, but it feels not low.

We talked yesterday on a fact check.

I just edited it, so it's fresh about poop.

And of course, we talked about how all animals eat poop except us.

Is that true?

Yeah, we're very unique in this.

All animals eat poop?

He said that.

Was it true?

Most of them do because they need to pick up each other's gut biome.

Oh, that's a whole other story that I like.

Yes.

And so it's very, very weird that we don't.

Watch other primates.

They eat directly out of the south.

They eat from the source sometimes.

I was with you until you got to.

It's very weird that we don't.

Yes, that's what this conversation is.

I got to get off the back train.

The definition of weird is that it is super asymmetric.

You got all these primates.

Once again, you're right.

You were right with the governor.

So let me just

run that fast, Steven.

Can I just summarize?

Beck Shepard says we should be eating our own poop.

That's the headline.

Let me draw it.

I'm very clear because you've already out of context with me.

I said it's very weird we don't, which is much different than we should.

Yeah, I feel your version would actually be more incendiary.

It's very weird that we don't eat our poop.

Well, why?

Mine sounds prima facie dumb.

Like there's no way he would have said that.

Right.

Yours sounds logical.

It's kind of smart.

It's very smart.

Well, but what I got curious about is how recently is this?

If we're seeing all the other primates don't.

And my quick theory was: I bet when we were hunting and gathering societies in a group of 100 and we didn't live with animals, we didn't have all these weird diseases.

I bet it was fine.

And then I bet once we started living in civilizations, people who did eat poop dropped like flies because there was so much bacteria and all these diseases.

I mean, I bet it happened pretty quick.

I would love to know the answer to that question.

I would also love to know the

median number.

Yes, please.

The median number of days that it takes for different species for their poop poop to lose the smell.

Because, you know, if you come across dried dog or goose poop, it has no odor.

It's tolerable.

Yes, the mechanism is clearly olfactory.

They look like chocolate.

Sure.

They look like Tootsie rolls and stuff.

Especially the rabbits.

Rabbits and deer.

Yeah, we mentioned the rabbit poop.

Nicely shown.

We went to show the rate that animals create waste, and it's shocking.

Some animals are shitting 60 times a day.

No.

Rabbits 200 to 300 times a day.

200 times a day.

It does suggest some markets that are made made under, you know, bunny bidet, first of all.

I've never seen that.

Bunny pooper scooper.

That's right.

Bunny diapers.

But anyways, okay,

well, what I wanted to say as a preamble is, and I got half of it out, which is I just love when you're on.

And honestly, any topic that comes up, I'm probably going to be super interested in your take on it.

And so in that vein, instead of me doing like my normal research, I just kind of came up with some topics I want your opinion on.

I like that.

It's It's not going to be called better in person, but one of the descriptions you made, which we both feel you on deeply, is

your goal with better in person is instead of just interviewing an expert on a topic, this is far more a conversation where we hope to learn what kind of human this person is, which is always what I want.

I'm just ripping you off.

No, you're not.

I thought you were eight years before us.

Your 15-year anniversary and we're coming up on eight.

No, but I mean, my new thing is just ripping off this thing.

That's good.

That's flattering.

Yeah, yeah, I'll take it.

If you're imitating us, I think we've done something really special.

I agree.

And then, as an experiment, they'll be last is I've never done this.

Yeah.

It feels unethical.

I asked AI for the first time ever, hey, I'm interviewing Steven Dobnat for the third time.

Did it tell you don't say his name like that?

He doesn't like it.

He's never heard it.

What are some topics that we could have fun connecting?

I just tell you, I do that a lot.

Oh, you do?

I think AI is an amazing.

I mean, I'm using this much of one fingernail of the gigantic herd of robots, but I think what you did is normal or will be normal.

I did it yesterday for a big guest.

Oh, you did.

So you just had your first experience as well?

Yeah, but I thought they were all

what engine were you using with chat?

So I happen to use one called Perplexity because I like it.

It's a really simple interface that pulls from a lot of models, which I think is probably valuable.

What I like about it is you can push it subtly and it keeps coming.

If I say, tell me five interesting things about Dak Shepard, it'll give me blah, blah, blah.

And I say, well, those are fine, but I know those, and I want something more along the lines of X, Y, or Z.

But the X, Y, or Z could be like animal, mineral, or vegetable.

It could be, I want more emotional stuff.

I want more motor racing.

So I feel it's a great research tool.

Now, it's not a substitute.

It's like when computers started beating humans in chess and go, which is very complicated years ago, people were...

as they always are worried with these new technologies.

People will now stop playing chess.

And in fact, that had the opposite effect because no one wants to watch two machines play each other.

We like humans.

I like you guys.

Yes.

You may like me.

And that was even a little bit of my ethical justification is I was like, well, A, I'm going to tell you I did this.

And then B, these are just prompts for you and I and Monica.

And then that'll be the real thing.

Exactly.

So it's like the actual meat and potatoes.

But I got to say, so it gave me 10.

And I liked like seven of them.

Like seven of them are very much ones I would want to hear your opinion.

And then I have a good relationship with mine.

It then said, do you want me to come up with

five or six speed round, fun, irreverent questions like I did yesterday?

That was an offer from out of nowhere.

Pulling from a previous search of mine.

He does like you.

And I said, I'm jealous now because mine doesn't do that kind of stuff.

Offering more and more.

And then it said, do you want me to design an arc of how you could lay these out?

It did not.

Oh, my God.

Do you think?

Yeah, I could show it to you.

It's incredible.

But do you think he knows you're a celebrity?

And he's like, I told him I am the host of Armchair X.

I know, but I'm saying maybe he's like,

it's a celebrity.

I got to impress him.

Like, he's nervous and he wants to do well.

Yeah, this is fascinating.

Do you think it's unethical?

Okay, so have you heard the guy who tried to ask his AI to count to a million?

No.

You must watch this video.

It's a crime.

She refuses to do it, which is a little startling because it's like, she can.

Why won't she do it?

Yikes.

But then he's getting so mad at her and he's being verbally unethical.

He keeps going.

Don't be difficult.

Maybe he calls her a bitch.

Maybe it's not.

He gets very

mean.

And is it ethical?

For him?

Yeah, to be mean to this robot.

I guess I could think on it more, but my first response would say, not only is it not unethical, because

we know that the emotion that's being mistreated is not a human emotion.

And we also know that the people who write that code and make that machine, they understand the way barriers are shiftable and so on.

And additionally, I would say it's a really nice use of technology to absorb maybe someone's hostility that doesn't have to be then directed to a real person.

I did end up saying that.

Yeah, and you have to imagine he's sitting in his living room with a remote control going, you fucking bitch.

But it's just weird because it is responding.

And you're like,

she's getting yelled at and she's nothing.

He's like, you're a fucking computer.

It's not like you have any.

I mean, it's definitely abusive.

It's like abuse the lawnmower.

Right, exactly.

Abuse the AI, don't abuse people.

Save your patience for humans.

I like the NFL a lot, and I often think of it, especially at this late, relatively advanced date in our civilization, as a proxy for war.

Everything about it is very warlike, but also the pageantry around it now.

But I think if these guys are willing to go do that and they get compensated well, but it's still, it's an unbelievably hard, difficult, and physical thing to do.

If they're willing to go do that for their entertainment, for their making a living for their family, and we get to watch that and feel

like it was warlike.

And if then that diminishes our appetite for real war, I think that's a great thing.

And so similarly, I would say this bozo, yelling at a guy,

you know, it's probably for the good.

I agree with you the whole way.

So what I loved was Malcolm did Revenge of Tipping Point this year.

And I read it and I loved it.

So Freakonomics, this is the 20th anniversary.

Yes.

And on November 11th, we're going to have a new edition.

Yeah, but I just want to be super clear.

It's the original book.

Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

With, I wrote a new foreword, but I did one interview before you.

I'm sorry.

I meant to come here virginally.

I failed.

And the person who was lovely, lovely, said, you know, I want you to tell me about all the new things in the book.

And I said, no, there's nothing new in it.

No, there's a foreword and a new jacket.

Right.

And then she said, but we could talk about it as if there is a lot new.

And I said, no, that would really be wrong.

I'm first and foremost a writer.

That's what I started as.

It's what I am.

And so I take all that stuff seriously.

But you're right.

We are publishing a new edition, which has a new foreword, which did take me like six months to write three pages because of that.

You're like,

no, it's not rusty.

It was a forced occasion to replay this 20-year movie, which has been amazing, but also it was tied to, I mean, this is not what you asked, so you may not want to know this, but I'll tell you until you shut me up.

I'm having a problem in my home office of getting rid of all my archives.

I have archives from when I was a musician.

I have set lists from my band, like all of them, but I can't throw them away.

I was staring down those boxes one day in my office, faced with paralyzed dread.

And then I got a text from Steve Levitt, my co-author on Freakonomics, and he said, happy 20th anniversary of publication.

It was the day.

And I didn't even remember the day.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know how he remembered, because he's not a sentimental guy.

So this is what I ended up writing the foreword about.

But honestly, what I'm feeling around this 20-year anniversary is what anybody feels as they get older, even you, you're young, but as you get older, you have such a different reckoning and appreciation for your own past and the past of other people things mean more life is cumulative it's not i feel this way now instead of that it's like i feel this and all of those other things too and in some ways i think you get wiser i've really enjoyed that you get more experience in some ways there's inevitable sadness because death is this thing that i've always tried to just really ignore it i'll be honest with you even though my father died when i was a kid i'm 62 and i'm the youngest of eight and I've always been like the protected baby boy and they're starting to go.

that's the thing i'm the youngest my oldest is 17 years older that's big he's very healthy he's a former air force pilot i think he could beat us all up

bring up malcolm because what i thought was really cool about the revenge of the tipping point was he starts by kind of acknowledging so a

this was written in a different time a different context and i was a different person yeah and so let me look back on it now in a different context as a different person.

What do I agree with or not?

And it's kind of a takedown piece of his own book, which I just thought was really cool and brave and interesting.

I probably could have or should have done that maybe.

I was just wondering.

So one of his was the broken windows chapter.

Right.

He's like, well, now we know that was bullshit.

So is there anything that you look back at in the book and you're like, minimally, I wouldn't write that now.

Yeah.

So I will say that what Malcolm said is pretty close to a lot of the things that I feel about freekonomics in that you're a much younger person, but also, like he said, the time was different.

So I did go back and read the book.

I liked it.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

That's great.

Our main incentive was to be truthful and be interesting.

It was really simple as that and to have fun.

Both Levit and I don't take ourselves too seriously.

We reported and researched and fact-checked and dotted every AI.

And so, I wasn't concerned about that.

We did have one thing shortly after publication that we found out had been wrong, which was a kind of terrible thing.

This guy that we wrote about as having heroically gone undercover in the Ku Klux Klan and exposed them.

And he did do a lot of that type of work, but he kind of conflated his own identity with that of another guy who did the undercover stuff.

And he wrote books about it.

We 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, Freconomics 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.

I 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 the other side.

Does that confrontation give you anxiety or are you excited to have 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.

It's like a million little pieces, guys.

Yeah.

That one really broke my heart because it was such a beautiful ball.

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 with 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 made.

But 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.

There are kind of two tracks of that.

The first track is that Steve Levitt, and this guy's 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.

Preventing an unwanted child.

It's a decision that happens often when a would-be mom feels like the time and place are not right.

Yes.

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 are 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 wanted situation, let's call it, whatever the family is.

Yeah, 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, how happy they were to have a new baby born.

I was 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.

Well, 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 or that baby is not wanted, there is a higher chance that that kid will have a bad outcome in life.

When I say bad outcome, meaning lower education, higher crime, lower income, et cetera.

This is inarguable, okay?

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 a take.

This was broken windows.

That was yet another stab at how it came down.

The 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.

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.

What 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 fired?

That's where I start.

Right.

When I'm researching researching someone, I'm just trying to earmark all the things that we have in common that can jump off from there, right?

Oh, you were dyslexic.

We know this experience.

How did that downriver 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.

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?

I'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.

There 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.

And 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 experts.

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Okay, I'll use a very specific example.

Yeah.

And it's a dangerous one, but I'll use that.

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 pro-Hammer.

You hate Israel or love Israel.

Pro-Netanyahoo 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.

And 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 use the 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 and I was so wrong.

But when someone comes at me with a 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.

I'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?

So 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 that 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 I'm sorry Monica that's just hard to follow because you just have to give the room a minute I know it was very well so bad oh 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

not 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 tenets of their tribe.

In public, it'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.

So 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.

It 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.

But when you're accused of something you didn't do, you feel this outrage.

And I feel like that's the temperature of that 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 of.

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.

And 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.

And then she made me take the retest, and I got a 98, one better, which didn't surprise me because I could 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 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 i 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.

I'm slow, but I'm always looking for ways as a writer writer to respond to the world we're in, but not to the moment, because that's a whole different conversation.

Like, 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?

Contempt.

This is a really valuable thing.

The thing I think of is that wonderful man from the what's it, the Institute, and we had him, and he's so beautiful, and he repairs marriages.

Oh, I know who you're talking about.

John 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.

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.

Walk me through how that works mechanically.

It worked for Gwyneth, didn't it?

Didn't it work for Gwyneth?

It really worked.

Like everybody made fun of her.

I don't know anything about Gwynneth.

I don't know anything about her, really, but I do know that she said that about their relationship.

And it's a beautiful thing, and they have a great family.

I would say that McDonald's french fries are good and she blasted.

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.

He really, really affected the men that he coached, many of whom are 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 Wooden.

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.

I 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 this other quote about characters, what you do when no one's watching.

Spasm 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.

One 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 simple 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, very good that somebody's listening is in a very bad marriage.

That's right.

I hate that.

I don't mean to say 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.

We 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 to like a reverse engineer.

It's not an option.

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.

That's where I want to.

I'm sincerely asking, what do you think the solution is to that?

I'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

a 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.

You can still vote.

But I would be very curious what the temperature would be if we stopped broadcasting our allegiance to a side.

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 of that mode to say, just stop it.

That'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.

Action does have impact.

And I kind of want to take Stephen'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 a liberal.

But within the electric, if you drive a Tesla, you're probably a Republican.

And 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 personality.

That I know, but what's Coors?

Coors stayed out of politics, and everyone said, well, they'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 right now.

I thought you were saying the Bud Light posts the trans scandal.

Yeah, 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, which shows you.

So it's like literally every single thing now represents a commitment to your tribe.

I think it's terrible.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Well, you asked what is political, and I'm saying literally.

No, you're right.

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'll 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.

If only liberals want this, when we stop reinforcing these objects having political identities and 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.

There'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 away, 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 and 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.

And I just pray that they're all watching this.

But I think younger people than all of us are already where we're hoping that we get to that.

That's my hope.

I think we're the bad generation.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Yeah, yeah.

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 and go to these clubs that were founded in

the 1700 something.

And it's just really.

If you had vacation 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.

There 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?

What 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, and 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.

I completely agree.

You'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, 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 and 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, or 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 user, 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.

The 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 slow are 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.

Because 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 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.

When 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.

When 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 is always trying to improve and the only way you can improve is to take on the problems, right?

Yeah.

And 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 reproaching 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.

I'm going to take a nap.

By the way, I think napping is also really undervalued.

I nap every day.

28 minute caffeine nap you drink the coffee before then you wake up refreshed okay this is an ai question or is this a dex question 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 theory or chess

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 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?

Well, I'm glad you think so.

I hope that wasn't yours because that was a demonstrably mushy question.

It did curtail one exactly to you.

It said, do you think there will ever be a free economics book co-written with an AI?

And would we even tell readers?

Oh, wow.

They're pushing.

Well, what do I like about

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.

So, 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 is 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.

Right?

Yeah, exactly.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert

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It's like there's the old argument.

I thought I made it up.

It turns out I didn't make it up at all.

But I argued years ago in some episode that when the AIs come for all of our jobs, then if we can turn into essentially pets the way dogs have been turned into pets, because dogs used to be work animals.

All these dogs were bred for different kinds of really hard work.

We didn't need that work anymore.

And we kept a whole bunch of dogs around.

Now we love our dogs more and we love our people.

Yeah.

And if there's a future in which I just pee wherever I'm fucking at,

sign me up if someone comes and clean some people.

Exactly.

There was a Seinfeld line from years ago.

He's like, if a Martian came down, sees the species and the guy walking around picking up the poop from the dog, who's in charge here?

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 this.

You like 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.

Yeah.

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 facia awesome.

I can go pretty much anywhere I want in this country, turn on the faucet and drink it.

That wasn't a hundred years ago.

But once you're used to it.

my obsession is like, well, I 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.

Just remember that.

However pretty that house is.

Like, I'd live in a mobile home with an indoor toilet.

You're terrible for it.

Before I'd live in a mansion without an indoor toilet.

That was five minutes ago.

The early 1990s, that was five seconds ago.

But that's really good.

You had to go out in the yard in the middle of the day.

And now they're going to be thinking about, well, those dresses aren't very outhouse compatible.

Well, we know those dresses were filthy.

They're full of stains.

I'm becoming very uncomfortable in this conversation.

I mean, also, literally, it's not available everywhere now.

So 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 things that we're doing?

And we want to do something about it.

Are those the right metrics to evaluate ourselves?

We need to talk about something slightly better for five minutes.

Okay.

Okay.

I like that.

What show are you watching that you love?

Kidding.

I did just watch a show.

I don't watch a lot of TV.

I'm sorry.

Say, I watched your wife's show with the rabbi.

I love it.

I wish 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.

And that's unrelated to the carbuncle?

Well, who knows?

Maybe Iowa will tell me that they're related.

But at this point, I just have a dead, gross toenail.

I dremmeled it and it looked like maybe I had cancer on it.

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 to me and I've never met this man.

You're not going to 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?

Both 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 dale 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 should be

lost that way.

I once had a doctor say to me, I love that episode you did about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And my husband is a huge fan of whatever it was, hockey, something.

She 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 freak and omnipotence?

What he got a crush on this?

Exactly.

Did you tell her to leave this marriage?

Like, this is your, 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 dragged us on to a no no i thought that was lighthearted

yeah podiatry that was lighthearted tongue guy toenails

steven yeah i love when you come on you love

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, Freakonomics 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.

That'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 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.

The 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 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, so 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 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

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 And it buys you.

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,

you know, and you feel grateful for it.

All right, Steven, this has been a blast.

I hope you'll come back.

If you've never read Freakonomics, you are a Philistine.

So go get it on the 20th anniversary, November 11th.

You'll get a new forward, a new jacket.

Also, maybe the show is called Better in Person, probably not.

You got Freakronomics 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 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 nas like reruns on TV, obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

But also, podcast audiences cycle through pretty fast.

We still have about 70 or 80% as many people listening to NSQ, no stupid questions, as when it was new.

Wow.

Because people are either they love it or coming back or they discover it.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, wonderful.

Well, we'll see you again because you're one of our fans.

I hope so.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stay tuned for the fact check.

It's where the party's at.

Hi.

Hi.

How are you?

Good.

I have a list.

Okay, let's hear it.

Um, these are just a couple things that happened from Aaron and I's motorcycle trip.

Okay, let's hear it.

Okay, um,

first of all,

we had so much fun.

Good, we rode a thousand miles in three days.

I got a blister.

Yep.

My carbuncles hurt.

I mean.

Did you use the soap?

Yeah, I used it last night.

Okay, good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MRSA soap.

Yeah, I used it last night.

Okay, good.

We got, it was a pretty short trip, but we did get to two salad bars.

Fun.

Shonies.

Shonies.

I knew you were.

Do you remember Shoni's?

Yeah, Shoni's.

Holy shit.

I haven't thought about Shoni's.

Holy Shoni's.

I know a lot.

Something suspicious with Shoni's happened on this trip.

Okay.

One was we pulled over.

We're just following the directions.

And

I see a goddamn Shoni's.

And I'm like, I didn't even think they were still around.

Same.

And I was like, I think they have salad bars.

Shonies.

God, it's a great restaurant.

They had a full salad bar and a lunch bar.

What's a lunch?

Oh, like hot patties.

They had a big pan of.

um hamburger patties and onions and a broth oh that was delicious like the patties were in a broth?

Yeah, it was just like this big stainless steel bucket of hamburger patties and broth and onions.

Strange.

You know, maybe like hamburger fried steak or something.

I don't know what the hell it was, but that salad bar was great.

We really enjoyed that.

And then I just, again, we got off an exit on our way home and we were, we were heading to Waffle House.

Oh.

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 Shoni's.

Yeah, that's fair.

Okay.

Well, I'm sure we've made a lot more memories at Shoni'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.

Really?

Yes.

Wow.

I fucking love a salad bar.

I do love a salad bar.

Okay, now,

did you deviate your salad from Shoni'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.

Okay.

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.

Okay.

It was bigger than the lettuce bowls.

Right.

It was so much ham.

And Aaron loves his ham.

I love ham on a salad.

Jude, I don't really mess with ham on the salad.

But it's in these teeny, tiny pieces.

Strips are so cute and chewy.

Yeah.

Yeah, you would have loved it.

There is a bucket of ham.

Do you put cheese?

Yeah, cheese is 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 the

chickpeas,

peas,

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 and salad bar.

I 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 Catalina and lettuce.

Although I go live on lettuce.

I don't go seeds.

You should start at a salad bar.

Seeds are good for you.

I do put, yeah, that's the thing.

My salad is not a good fruit.

A salad bar salad to me is not meant to be healthy.

Yeah, me neither.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that was, that's just one update.

We did hit two salad bars in four days, which that's a great average.

Right.

Maybe we'll be back for my coffee table book that I'm still working on, the great salad bars of America.

Right.

Yeah.

They deserve Shoni.

Okay.

Well, here's the Shoni'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 Bricktops.

We had a delicious meal and then on the way back we just were cruising all over nashville and going through different neighborhoods and he's showing me things and then we see this huge palace this house it was a palace i 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 uh that's the old ceo of shonies oh and i'm like what that's the ceo of shonies i just

i thought they were out of business also did he do a good job he did he did, obviously.

He owns a palace.

But should the place be out of business and you own a palace and you're a CI?

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.

I found one.

And when I posted a picture of it, every single person in the comments was like, oh my God, there's still a Shoni's.

That's not

the biggest sign of success.

Can we look up how many Shonis 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 it.

He gave people a lot of food for a long time.

Clearly, it was very profitable for some period because his house was outrageous.

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.

So all the South.

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 Shoni's everywhere and this Shoni's just was like, it was a diamond in the rough.

Anyways, I loved it and I love Shoni's.

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, would you say, 50-something?

Yeah, 58.

So that's not 44%.

I'm still surprised there was even 50.

So he must have have built that palace when they had 1800 locations.

Okay.

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 cabillion 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,

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.

So I said, two hours?

Yeah.

Are you sure, Dan?

Yeah, you might have 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?

Oh.

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.

Oh 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?

I get it.

That's gluttonous.

Yeah.

No one liked it.

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 Aaron, 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.

You'd rather be in line.

But I still stand by my math.

That'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 I've 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 shit.

I 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?

Like these were going in the trash, so I didn't really impede anyone else's day.

And these still found a workaround workaround

to get what you wanted with money with money.

So this

Taylor Swift sweatshirt.

That part of it's identical.

Okay.

Yeah.

Great.

I just didn't have to step in front of anyone and get it dicey.

You didn't step in front of anyone.

Oh, okay.

She was already in line.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know how you talked to her if you didn't, you didn't get in line.

Oh, I mean, that, but that's.

Yeah, everything's great.

You did a great job.

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.

Everything'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 start 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.

I don't, I've been debating whether or not I want to complain about this or not.

There's a weird thing going on culturally on this trip, which is we went into many, many restaurants that were near empty and they told us the wait was one hour.

And I don't really understand what's going on.

But it had happened so many times that when we got to Highland, we walked in this restaurant and I said, Hi, two.

Mind you, it's like 3:40 p.m.

No one's eating lunch at 3:40 p.m.

And she goes, Uh, 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 are the only people there.

And I go, where are you hiding the 10 parties?

You did.

You couldn't have done it.

There was this.

There was not 10 parties in the fucking meeting room was empty.

Maybe they went down the street and it's like you bought it.

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 that.

I was annoyed by it.

Can we say the 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.

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,

the 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.

How 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 I, it was Sunday, there was football on.

And I texted 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.

I didn't want to try to book.

two different appointments.

It 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 couples 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.

Okay.

Okay.

So I also wrote in the comments, hey,

it's two dudes.

So we don't need to be in a couples room if that's easier or harder, whatever.

So we arrive at the thing and I say, I 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 Philip and he's incredible.

If you're going to go get Philip, he's insanely good.

It was one of the best massages ever.

I was so lucky.

But while I'm laying there getting massage, 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.

So then I got curious.

You don't think when there's a, when a, 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 that 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?

A, mostly 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 co-worker,

you're going to have a lot of problems.

If it's a friend.

This is such 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 isn't not weirdly, even though it's so pleasurable.

It's not intimate.

Right.

And if it crosses into intimacy, it's actually very uncomfortable, except that one time.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's be honest.

At one time.

If it's a co-worker.

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 muscles.

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.

Or they're not a professional.

Or, or, or, or, or.

Yeah, love.

It's this it

you recognize what I'm saying about the

fragility of the mind.

That in 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's 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, then the husband isn't there.

Right.

They probably don't.

That's like a compartment we have in our head where we go, like, yeah, it's totally fine if a stranger rubs my wife's naked body

in this context.

Yeah, because there's boundaries around that context.

Whereas if it's a co-worker, that's a great, isn't it like the term co-worker?

It's crazy.

It is so crazy.

Yeah, that's like they're they're pushing a boundary.

Uh-huh.

The massage therapist at

Glen Lotus

close is,

you know, like they could get sued.

Like there are, there's boundaries.

But the

sure, they could get sued uh but you got to make all things equal so the coworker is not attracted to your wife you can't make it equal this is this is the nuance this is exactly what i'm talking about you the the motion the physical motion is the same yes but 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 co-worker 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'd be honest.

I'll be honest.

If, if all of a sudden it's like, Erica's going to give Dax a massage,

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.

Yeah.

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.

Like because the person is a professional, which means what, they went to massage school.

And have a very

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-workers rubbing your wife because he's horny for her, I got it.

I get it.

You 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.

Would never, that's, that's never happened that a co-worker gives a non-passionate, nothing massage.

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 two co-workers, no.

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But 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.

You're just saying it couldn't happen without those other things.

But it could.

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.

Yes, because it is fun.

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

yes,

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, okay, so yes, like he isn't attracted to me.

So that feels kind of fine.

It also still kind of of doesn't.

Like,

I think I would be like, feel a little uncomfortable.

You want some anonymity when someone's

seen 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.

Yeah.

Pleasure in an anonymous way.

Yeah.

I just think, I just think if you were 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 neighbor's giving and then he

goes crazy and murders the guy.

I 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,

which was really, really fun.

And one of the

people, yes, one of the people, Gina,

Gina is my hairplay and massages partner.

So we've been doing hairplay 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.

Yeah.

And it is always really funny because it is.

It is so not.

Like it is so, it is so benign.

It's nothing.

Yeah.

So I guess in some ways, this is sort of what you're talking about.

Kind of.

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

just don't think.

Everyone's attracted to each other because they're opposite sex.

I mean, it's like it's a very

tiny.

You say that about everyone.

You say I'm attracted to everyone.

It's definitely not a tiny.

I think most men who see a woman naked

mostly

are going to be like.

Yeah, I don't think that's the case for women.

I agree.

Yeah.

I agree.

Yeah.

So that's what I mean.

So I'm not worried that my wife's attracted to the massage therapist.

Yeah, and I don't think

that's the reverse really where a woman, a wife is all that worried about their husband going to a 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 driving her.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm, 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 coworker is not a random dude.

And but I bet your wife's not attracted to 99% of her coworkers.

Well, if she's getting a massage from a coworker, she probably

can't be about attraction.

The massage can't be a problem.

Again, there's no because then you have a real problem.

Your wife is engaging with someone she's attracted to in an intimate activity.

Yeah.

But my scenario is she's not attracted to the co-worker.

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 massages were fan.

We didn't get to massages because it was too late.

I understand the hairplay, but what are the parameters of the massage?

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?

Yeah.

Like if your friend's 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.

Oh my God, it's been a minute since.

I think shirts are off.

Oh, wow.

But you're laying down.

Okay.

So no one's.

Draws off.

yeah oh wow yeah this is a bit keen

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

are the shirts off now i'm can now i don't remember 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,

oh, yeah, I would be hurt.

No, I think it's shirts off.

Yeah, it's gotta be.

Shirts.

What's the point?

But hair players

first, and hairplay is the main 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 on?

It's on or now you need a timer.

I know you wouldn't like that.

And sometimes I do stress out about it a little bit.

Like,

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

why is how come that's the system I don't know it's just like something it's just what 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 and then it's so fun and we and brushes and

braid like you'll do y'all's hair look crazy afterwards is it like all super big?

Not really.

Oh, 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 it's thing but again a massage is like that a regular massage is like that at a place it feels so good but there's zero i mean again there are some exceptions but right zero um sexual feelings or intimacy um

and we're chit-chatting during hair play and massages okay so we're catching 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'm worried yeah This is your donuts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just think our, our,

our framing of things is just so funny.

It is interesting that, 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.

Yes.

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 um 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,

I mean, her husband, Robbie, shout out, Robbie, he doesn't care.

Well, bet not.

I bet 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 not.

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?

Well, you're my co-worker, so I guess you're asking if I would let you check my prostate.

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.

And he knew.

Would you let me?

And that's a better comp because

we're two heterosexual heterosexual people.

Yeah.

No, I would have to, I would have to run that by my wife.

Exactly.

And she would say no.

Well, no.

If I need, again,

this is not dis 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 in my butt.

But don't worry, she knows what size the problem is.

Again, 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.

I

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 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, hun, 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 made a scenario that's like not a real scenario.

No, it is a real scenario.

The 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.

So, and you 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

to have something done that you need done, which just put a finger up your butt.

Yes.

Is not real.

Like, no, it's not real.

Yeah, we've got real.

You'll 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 coworker was the only person that'd do it, Kristen would say yes, as I would too.

Like, 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

prostate, which I just had to have done.

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.

Anyway, 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 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 um god bless sophia sophia is back on the facts today oh wow so this for both of us will be illuminating yes and she's better than me at this so they're gonna be good.

Okay, what is Confederate money and how much was it worth?

Answer/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.

Yes.

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, do you go like, oh, is this person?

Worth it?

Do they like, or were they an anti-abolitionist?

You need to learn more.

You need to have more conversations with that person because, yeah, they could be just a huge history buff.

Yeah.

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.

It's 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.

Torrific.

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.

Right.

And they probably would be like,

okay, like they would probably be able to see that as

truth.

Yeah.

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,

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, 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 more and more now through certain areas.

Yeah, I'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 my point.

And 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

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 like, but no.

And again, he barely got there and he's a professor.

Some people don't.

Some people don't do that.

Yeah.

And I wish

they would, I guess.

I wish they would.

But, 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 and 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?

Grant, 2017 by Ron Chernow.

We love them.

Wow, I love them.

Twain.

I love them.

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.

Adams, 2001 by McCullough.

hamilton 2004 by ron chernow okay so hamilton's chernow and mcculla's adams oh wow this is an important one when did humans stop eating poop

okay answer can't find reliable data yeah that was my hunch yeah 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.

And 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 times an animal poops a day?

I mean, I already did this on a previous fact, so 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 alive.

Oh, as we know, their bones are hollow, so they can fly.

Yeah.

I mean, 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?

See how many gallons that is 52.8 gallons.

In one poop?

Oh my gosh.

God, that's disgusting.

No wonder the ocean is polluted.

When you were gone and we did a couple armchairs, Aaron and I.

Uh-huh, 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.

They 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 oh

gross

who coined the term illusion of fluency woo kyong-on 2022 guest woo Woo Kyong-on.

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.

Oh, great.

Great, great, great.

Good job, Sophia.

Yeah, good.

Good job reporting them, Monica.

Thank you, Rob.

Good job.

Good job.

All right.

I love you.

Love you.

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