Freakonomics Radio - 100. Our 100th Episode!

Episode Date: November 5, 2012

Turkey sex and chicken wings, selling souls and swapping organs, the power of the president and the price of wine: these are a few of our favorite things.

Oh, hang on. Why don't you say, why don't you pretend that you're introducing the episode of the 100th anniversary? So be like over-the-top radio guy. I'm Steve Leavitt from Freakonomics, and I want to welcome you to the 100th, whatever. Something like that. You want to try that? No. No.

You sure? You're better at that. Let me just, here, let me just tell you what, we'll do it line by line. Hi, I'm Steve Leavitt. Hi, I'm Steve Leavitt hi i'm steve levitt from freakonomics radio from freak freak freak freakonomics and uh i'd like to say thank you and i'd like to say thank you for listening to our previous 99 podcasts for listening to our previous 99 99 Podcasts. And I hope you enjoy this number 100. I hope number 100

is the most special of them all. That's okay. Good job. From WNYC and APM American Public Media, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. This is the 100th Freakonomics Radio episode. And to thank you for listening to all the other 99, we wanted to put together a kind of greatest hits package. Problem is, we didn't actually have any greatest hits or any hits of any kind. So instead, we decided to put together a kind of retrospective to show you what we think about the show, how the show was made. Maybe you're thinking of starting up your own podcast. So if that's the case, rule number one is this. Do not invite boring people to be on your show. I run a large organization composed of bounty

hunters. For the first three years of my life, my mother told me we slept in an air raid shelter every night. I'm Stephen Dubner from New York. Thomas Payne, sir. Very nice to meet you. I hope you're being wary of the loyalists up there in New York. I trained as a physicist, and then I worked with Stephen Hawking on quantum field theory and curved space time and the origin of the universe. I'm the editorial page editor of the New York Times. I'm Don Rumsfeld. I'm Alice Waters.

Glenn Beck. I'm an entrepreneur, reluctant, believe it or not, commentator, and dad. My name is Steve Sexton. I am a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley studying agricultural and resource economics. I'm Allison Sexton. I'm a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota studying health and information economics. All right, so I'm a little suspicious. Share a last name you've related to each other, perhaps? We are. We also shared a womb.

My Freakonomics partner is the inimitable Steve Leavitt. If you want to ask about what economists do, I'm probably the wrong person to ask because I do things that are quite different than what the typical economists do. I study strange things like sumo wrestling and prostitutes and terrorism and things like that. I don't think mathematics is necessary to understand reality. I always think to myself, why don't more people commit suicide? I just don't want to have to go places, talk to strangers, things like that. One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society is to test them with repugnant ideas, because economists are pretty much immune

to repugnance. I try to talk my grad students into quitting all the time. Quitting grad school? Quitting grad school, yeah. As I look back on my life, one of the greatest regrets I have is that I spent my youth thinking that I could get a date when I never could get a date. You love kind of teenage girl novels. That's kind of your favorite genre. I know. The Hunger Games is next on my list. I haven't had a chance to get to that yet. Just take a little can, like say a baby food jar, and fill it with vomit. Okay? And wear it around your neck. Think about what a great conversation starter that would be.

With what kind of people? Who are you trying to start a conversation with? The ladies at ladies' night at the bars. And we can't figure out why people don't like economists. I don't understand. Most of our stories fall into one of two categories. The first category is things you always thought you knew but didn't. One in five American adults said their greatest chance of accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars was through the lottery. That number jumps to 40% for folks making less than $25,000 a year.

Signaling theory is another way of talking about showing off. It's all about what we do to look good, or at least not to look bad. The truth is, I don't have to be very financially literate in order to get along very well financially in life. Regions with a higher quality of life have a higher suicide rate. Believe it or not, violence has been in decline for long stretches of history, and we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence. Walking drunk is one of the most dangerous activities you can engage in.

In all honesty, I do sometimes think, you know, what if my kids don't turn out well and then everyone blames me? And, you know, I would still say, well, the data just say it was going to happen anyway. This is what in economics we call the Cobra effect, where you have a well-intended scheme, but instead of solving the problem, it makes the problem actually worse. Amartya Sen looked at the total number of women in Asia and compared it against the number of women who should be there if the continent had a natural sex ratio. And in 1990, he found that there were 100 million women who were missing, who hadn't been born, but who should have been born.

And the second big category of Freakonomics radio material, things you never thought you wanted to know, but do. Rene Descartes had this, apparently this room sort of with heads of cows and livestock in different stages of disassembly. And he would sometimes, when dinner guests were over, he would open the door to this room and say, these are my books. And you kind of had to think that after a while, people didn't want to go over to Rene's house for dinner very much.

It's hard to imagine that there was any Bostonian during his time period who did as much damage to the environment as Henry David Thoreau did. I was talking with one of my colleagues here at Harvard. They confessed to me that they dyed their hair gray. And I said, why would anyone do that? And he says, well, I want people to take me more seriously. Americans will probably eat about 40 million turkeys this month. Now, I hope this doesn't kill your appetite, but what percentage of those 40 million birds do you think were the product of artificial insemination? Really? That's the question.

That's the question. It is really the question. Wow. Okay. 82.6. I don't know. Great guess. Great guess.

The truth is it's actually pretty close to 100%. Wow. As we all know, Freakonomics Radio is kind of, sort of about economics. When I met Dubner, he knew nothing about economics. But somehow, we almost always end up talking about food. Not just on the show, but while we're in the studio making the show. Can you talk for the show. Hello. Steven Levitt.

Chicken wings. 45 minute wait. What a pain in the ass. I would like to hear the tape. Yeah. You know what? Let me grab my salad. Man, doesn't that make you want a Big Mac?

I'm starving. Could we spare Jeff? I'm starving. Could we spare Jeff? I'm buying. Kind of made me want tacos. Hey, you want to go get tacos? Pizza time. Beef, pork, bacon, milk, cheese, yogurt, potato chips, corn chips, beer, wine, liquor, coffee, tea, soda pop, illegal drugs, which I don't really do anyway. You cheat with bacon.

Not in my own kitchen, but I'll go out and order bacon and pancakes. You cheat with bacon. Now, does your husband know about this? He knows because you tell him or because you come home with the scent of your lover on your lips? A little of both, I have to admit. If we did a bunch of them, even if they're all bad, it would be good. How to get the most bang for your buck, trick for your treat, Snickers in your knickers. I got a laugh cramp. So, Levitt, this is our 100th episode of Freakonomics Radio. What do you have to say about that?

That's 99 more than I expected when you started off on the first one. Maybe 100 more than I expected. And if you had to pick an adjective for how it makes you feel, proud, blah, blah, what would the adjective be for having participated in 100 episodes of this podcast? Gratified. Really? Truly? I'm so surprised. Why gratified? You know, because I just thought it was such a bad idea from the beginning, and I thought it was such a waste of your time and a little bit of my time and it's turned out that wherever I go nobody really wants to talk about the books or

the movie everyone wants to talk about the podcast somehow somehow the podcast turns out to be the medium that works great for us why do you think that is? Sure, it's free. I think it's a fact that you can listen to the podcast while you do something else, and it takes about half of a person's brain to capture what we're trying to say. In addition to thanking people, what do you want to say to our listeners on the occasion of our 100th episode? I would say let's raise our glass to 100 more. Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC, APM, American Public Media, and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes Susie Lechtenberg, Catherine Wells, David Herman, Beret Lam, Colin Campbell, and Chris Bannon. But many, many, many more people have helped produce the previous 99 episodes, and I'd like to thank them, too. and Lindsay, David Maxson, Jeff Mosenkis, Amy Machado, Chris Neary, Michael Raphael,

Kate Rope, Paul Schneider, Jake Smith, Stacey Vanek-Smith, Sean Nguyen, Veralyn Williams, and Molly Webster, whose voice you may recognize. It sounds like this. Are you ready? Okay. Afreecanomics. Sorry. Also, a big thanks to all the folks at American Public Media and Marketplace, especially Deb Clark, Peter Clowney, Megan Larson, Judy McAlpin, Sitara Nieves, Coyote Rizdal, Celeste Wesson, and JJ Yor, who answered the door when we first knocked a few years ago.

And thanks to everyone here at WNYC, especially Dean Capello, Ellen Horn, and Laura Walker. Thanks to Peter Fields, even though he's a lawyer. And thanks to the folks at iTunes and Stitcher and everybody else that gets this podcast into your ears. And most of all, thanks to you for listening, for spreading the word, and for sending us your comments, ideas, even your complaints. Keep those emails coming at radio at Freakonomics.com or just come visit us at Freakonomics.com. And if you subscribe to this podcast at iTunes, you will listened to the end of our credits. Well, you know what comes next then. Yep, it's the bloopers. It's the bloopers. Hey, give me, give me, give me a longy dong blue Okay, you ready?

I feel like I sound froggy. Do I sound froggy or no? Froggy, froggy, froggy. Here's the thing. No? Okay. Does it sound as weird in there as it does in here? We go down, we go down, we go down, and we go down. We go down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. We got tape and we got tape and we got tape and we got tape and we got tape and we got tape and we got tape, tape, tape. Okay, you're still rolling? I want you.

I can't do it. Show me the way. What? I didn't touch anything. No, no. You thought I was making my voice like helium reverb? Oh my God. I'm on fire. Fire!