Freakonomics Radio - 183. “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know”

Episode Date: October 23, 2014

The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson.

Hey, podcast listeners. The new episode you're about to hear is called Tell Me Something I Don't Know. It's a live recording of a new game show that we just invented. As you'll hear, it was a lot of fun in person. The hope, of course, is that you will have fun listening to it as a podcast. Whatever the case, do me a favor and let us know what you think. You can tweet us at Freakonomics, leave a comment on our Facebook page or at Freakonomics.com, or even shoot us an email at radio at Freakonomics, leave a comment on our Facebook page or at Freakonomics.com, or even shoot us an email at radio at Freakonomics.com.

I'd love to hear whatever feedback you have, pro, con, or tangential. Thanks. All right. All right. So quiet, everybody. All right. Starting in three, two. Live from the green space at WNYC in New York City, welcome to this Freakonomics Radio live event.

Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. Thank you so very much, and welcome to the green space. Tonight, we are going to try something very different, okay? So not only is it a live show, which we've never done before, but it's a brand new show that we invented for this occasion. So I hope you'll understand if I'm a little bit nervous. I am, however, comforted by the fact that you all should actually be a lot more nervous than me because you, the audience, are going to be the stars of this show. By the time it's over, I run the risk of being slightly to tell you, A, things you always thought you knew but didn't, and B, things you never thought you wanted to know but do. For instance, you probably did not know that nearly 100% of the turkeys eaten by Americans are the result of artificial insemination.

Now, why would that be? The modern turkey has a quite large turkey breast, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create offspring. Yeah, I was expecting more sympathy than that gained, yeah. You probably do know that men are on many levels inferior to women, but did you know just how inferior they, we are when it comes to getting out of the way of a thunderstorm? Typically, 80 to 85% of the lightning fatalities

across the United States are men. You laugh at the men being struck by lightning and the poor turkeys. Okay, and I bet you didn't know this. If you work at a company with, let's say, 100 people, 100 employees who have college degrees, even advanced degrees, at least one of them is probably lying. Here's former FBI agent Alan Ezell. Let me put it this way. The United States, all the colleges and universities in our country,

award about 1.3 million degrees a year. Approximately 1% of that, we believe, is the amount of phony degrees that are sold in our country each year. Okay. So that's some of what we've told you over the years. But let me be honest with you. We're exhausted. Okay. It takes a lot of effort to come up with all this stuff to tell you that you didn't know. We are totally out of ideas. So we thought that we would do what any institution does when they're facing a crisis, which is think, how can we make our problem someone else's problem? And that's what this show is really about.

We thought, why don't we have all of you come and tell us something we don't know, okay? And we decided we'll call this new show, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. So how's this going to work? Well, the first thing we need are some judges. So let's bring them out. Please join me in welcoming Malcolm Gladwell, Anna Gasteyer, and David Patterson. Judges, welcome. Here are a few things that we know so far about you. Malcolm Gladwell, we know that you are a staff writer for The New Yorker. You've written five best-selling books, by which I mean best, the best-selling books ever. The first was The Tipping Point. The most recent is David and Goliath. We also know you were an excellent schoolboy middle-distance runner,

and that just recently, you ran the Fifth Avenue mile here in New York and placed fifth in your age group with a time of this is fantastic, four minutes and 54 seconds for the mile. Malcolm Gladwell. And this was nine seconds faster than your time last year in the mile. So according to my calculations, if you keep improving at

this rate, by the time you're 84, you'll be the first human to run a sub- the mile. So according to my calculations, if you keep improving at this rate, by the time you're 84, you'll be the first human to run a sub-zero mile. You see what I did there? It's math. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Malcolm, if you would, why don't you then tell us something that we don't know about you? When I was 18 years old, I interned for a summer with Justice Scalia, before he was justice, and he fired me. Black badge of courage, yeah. Why'd you get fired? Was it for cause? For cause, yeah, absolutely. Can you tell us a little, can you tell us a tiny bit of...

I was just incompetent, I think that was the... Has your competence grown? Not sure. What was he like? Well, impatient with incompetence. Ana Gasteyer, hi. We are so happy to have you here.

Thank you. We know that you were a cast member on Saturday Night Live for six seasons. Not only did you give us sweaty balls, which, by the way, set public radio back for years. I'm sorry. I apologize to the organization. Also, however, a Martha Stewart impression is so wicked that you are still apologizing to Martha Stewart. Yes, I am. I sent her back for years, too. You have starred in films including Mean Girls on Broadway as Elphaba in Wicked and on TV, including the ABC sitcom Suburgatory.

We also know you are a fantastic singer. Your new record is called I'm Hip Just Out, and you describe it as moxie jazz. What the heck is moxie jazz. Yeah. What the heck is moxie jazz? It's happy jazz. Happy jazz? It's jazz you get drunk to, mostly. Nice.

All right, Anna, can you tell us now something we do not know about you? Well, some people know this, but I grew up in Washington, D.C., and I was a childhood friend of Amy Carter, the president's daughter, and was invited to Camp David for the weekend as a fifth grader. But the most crazy thing is that I watched Star Wars with the Sadats. Wow. Wow. Which was, you know, most of the big event for me, because, you know, it was Star Wars. I'm curious which side they took while watching

Was that a bad thing to say? Governor Patterson, is that a bad idea? No, it was fine David Patterson, we know you were the 55th governor of this very great state of New York That's good These days you are the distinguished professor That's good. week. Despite being legally blind, you've been known to be a basketball player. One opponent, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is quoted as saying you've got, quote,

some kind of sonar for the basket. I couldn't tell. Was that a compliment? No, you don't get compliments from him. How good a basketball player are or were you? I had one moment when Governor Cuomo threw me a pass, and I made a layup. And as I was trying to make the layup, someone knocked me down. I flung the ball, and it went in the basket. And these people from CBS came over right on the court, and I'm lying on the floor. And they said, well, you're blind. How did you make that shot? And I said, I guess I got over it. And I ran down the court.

And I knew that would be on TV that night, so I called all my friends and my staff and people I owed money and told them to watch TV that night. And it didn't come on. You know why? No, why? That's the night O.J. Simpson went up the highway with a white Bronco.

And I kept saying, kill him, kill him and put the news on. Now, Governor Patterson, it was your turn to tell us something we didn't know about you, but I feel you just got in the confessional and went on us. So is there anything else? No, that's it. All right. All right, then. We are ready to play Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

Here's how it's going to work, okay? An audience contestant will come on stage and tell us their I don't know, heretofore known as an IDK, after which you, each of the judges, will give each contestant a score. And each of you will rank each one from zero to ten points, which means that a perfect score from all three judges would be a 30. Now, what are we actually hoping to hear tonight and to learn tonight? Well, most of us like to learn things purely out of self-interest. It's exciting to learn new information, but the pursuit of knowledge merely to possess that knowledge

can be a bit narcissistic. You might sound smart at a cocktail party or on a podcast, but what's really exciting, what we're really hoping to hear is some knowledge that can be leveraged into something useful in the world. So it can be fun, but if it's useful, all the better. So we want to learn things that we don't know and that are in some way worth knowing. And one last thing, your IDK should be demonstrably true. To that end, we've got our one-man BS detector, Jody Avergan over in the corner. Jody is a producer at WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, and he's the host of Ask Roulette, a podcast and live event series. And here's one more thing you may not know about Jody.

He's a professional athlete. He's a veteran of Major League Ultimate, as in Ultimate Frisbee. Welcome, Jody, please. Thank you, Stephen. And, Jody, do you want to just tell us how you'll actually be doing this super secret atomic verification? Yeah, I've got my LexisNexis password and I've renewed my subscriptions to all the scholarly journals. But mostly I've got a tab open on Google and a tab open on Wikipedia. Okay, let's play.

Every contestant as a reward for playing will receive a Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or mug. The winner of each round will move on to the final round and compete for a grand prize. And believe me, I do mean grand. Okay. Contestants and judges, I want you to keep in mind the criteria. Number one, we didn't know it. Number two, it's worth knowing. And number three, it's demonstrably true. Okay.

Or at least true-ish. And so first, let's call up our first contestant. Seth, is it Porges? Seth Porges? Porges. Porges as in gorgeous. Hi, Seth. How are you doing?

I'm great. Who are you? What do you do? I'm a journalist and co-founder of an app called Cloth. So what do you have to tell these guys, all of us, something that we don't know? Did you know that pinball machines were illegal in New York City for more than three decades, during which time the city engaged in a series of prohibition-style sweeps through the city, including with a dedicated NYPD pinball squad, over which course they would confiscate and smash with sledgehammers

thousands upon thousands of pinball machines wow when was this pinball machines were illegal until 1976 oh my goodness why were they illegal they were thought to be a game of chance and not skill and thus according to the logic of the 30s and 40s when the band started gambling, they were also thought to be a mob racket. And unlike other gambling devices like slot machines, they were thought to be a game that appealed to children and thus especially evil and nefarious sort of gateway gambling devices

that would lure kids into their traps and never let them go. Were they a mob racket? You said thought to be. Maybe. Some of them probably were. Do you believe that pinball is a chance game? Well, back in the day, flippers didn't exist.

So the game entirely involved nudging the ball into holes, and it would actually knock into pins. So the games look nothing like they do today. There's certainly a lot more skill in the game today than there was back then. Malcolm, Ana, Governor Patterson, anything more you want to prod? Who actually liberated us of this curse? Well, that's a really great story.

So first, the most virulent anti-pinball force ever was Mayor LaGuardia, who it's really not an exaggeration to say the number one priority of his entire administration was getting rid of pinball machines from New York City. He tried for more than a decade to do this until just a couple weeks after Pearl Harbor. He uses the fact that we're distracted with U-boats to push through what he always wanted for more than a decade, which was a citywide total universal ban on pinball machines. Within one day, they confiscate more than 2,300 pinball machines. And they remained this way until 76 76 when the pinball industry finally got what it wanted which was a hearing in front of city council where they could

prove that pinball was a game of skill and not chance and thus the whole logic behind the ban was nolan void so what they do is they bring in the best pinball player they can into city hall with a pinball machine and there's a 26 year old editor of gq magazine named roger sharp who was known as a really good pinball player. So they bring him in with a pinball machine, and he plays pinball in City Hall, surrounded by city council, cameras, microphones, and he basically calls his shots. He says, I'm going to pull the plunger back. I'm going to hit the ball here. Nobody's really impressed.

So he pulls the plunger back to start a new ball, and he says, based on my skill alone, the ball will land in the middle lane at the top of the playing field so he pulls the plunger back the ball bounces to left bounces to right goes right where he says was almost on the spot new york city council votes to overturn a 34 year old ban on pinball machines wow that is a beautiful thing yeah all right seth seth seth gorgeous as in gorgeous, yes? Yes. Jody, what can you tell us? Does Seth's evils of pinball story seem to pan out from what you can tell? I have fact-checked this, and it is true, and I want to buy the rights to make this movie. This is amazing.

I am looking at an amazing picture from 1949 of the New York City Police Commissioner, William O'Brien, smashing a pinball machine with a sledgehammer in some sort of like pinball speakeasy or whatever they had. This is great. And one little tidbit that Seth didn't mention was that during World War II, the pinball industry, much like the rest of manufacturing in America, had to turn towards wartime efforts. And since copper wiring was so important in pinballs, they had to sort of shut down and send all their copper towards the war effort. GTN, good to know.

Okay, so judges. Sorry, that's a family. I know it's wrong. It's the way our family spells it, okay? Come from a family of bad spellers. Lay off. Judges, time for you to give it a score. Now, remember, you want to judge it on

Something you didn't know, something that's worth knowing And something that's Verifiably, demonstrably true Score maximum of 10 Malcolm, what do you say? I'm going to give it a 24 You can only go up to 10 It's okay, no, no, no

You do the run in, we'll do the count I was telling you I had 30 in my mind Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was speaking for the whole group No, no, no. You do the run-in, we'll do the count, and it's okay. I was getting out of 30 of my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was speaking for the whole group. No, then I'm going to say eight. Eight. Okay, lovely. Malcolm Gladwell gives it an eight.

Anna Gastine. I'm going to give it a nine. Nine. They love you, Seth. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Governor Patterson. I'd give it a 24. Sorry.

A nine. I was tempted to go to. Sorry. A 9. I was tempted to go to 10. Go to 10. Seth Porges, 26 points out of a possible 30. Well done. Fantastic. Okay, our next contestant is named Erin Thompson. You can clap. Hi, Erin.

Hello. Love your glasses. Thank you. This is good radio talk, you know. What do you do? I am a professor of art law and art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Oh, I didn't know they had that. That's neat. Okay, good. Tell us something we don't know. Well, everybody knows that museums have billions of dollars of art hanging on their walls. But did you know that the security at many museums is so lax that burglars can incredibly easily steal these masterpieces? In fact, in the most recent Spectacular Museum break-ins,

the tools used have been so simple as a pair of pliers to jimmy open the back door of Rotterdam's Kunsthal Museum, or a ladder to climb up and break the unreinforced window glass next to Munch's The Scream, or even nothing at all, as was the case in one night in 2007 when a group of drunken revelers broke into Paris' Orsay Museum and punched a hole through a Monet. So why don't museums have the elaborate laser systems that we see in the movies? Well, for one, museums know that the more valuable and thus more recognizable a work of art, the more easily it will be recovered. But more importantly, there's the issue of ROI, return on investment. Museums have incredibly limited security budgets. And museums know that art thefts are rare, whereas a surprisingly high percentage of all museum visitors would touch, write, or even spit on works of art, if permitted. So museums spend their limited security budgets on preventing the threat that faces them every day, the threat of petty vandalism, displaying economic rationality by leaving their masterpieces exposed to the very occasional threat of an impressionist snatching Thomas Crown. So, Erin, the message here is we should all steal more art.

Right? I would have to catch you if you did, but... Is there an example of a museum that really does have fantastic state-of-the-art security? The Getty Museum has the best security, mainly because if you've ever been there, you have to go and take a little tram up the hill. So if something is missing, they shut down the tram and everybody is stuck on the hill until they search it.

Is there a museum in the White House? I was just wondering why the guy went in there. Jody, what do you know? This generally checks out the 1994 theft of the Scream in Oslo. The thieves who basically waltzed in and took it, they left a note that read, quote, thanks for the poor security, end quote. And Aaron mentioned limited museum budget,

so I actually wondered how much a museum guard makes, and it's not great at the Met. It's about $10 to $12 an hour. But this led to a 2010 New York Times article about how many Met Museum employees are actually aspiring artists themselves. And in 2010, the museum launched an art journal

featuring the art of museum guards called Swipe. And this showcased their work. Jody, you are a hell of a Googler. I'm a really good Googler. Judges, time to give Aaron's IDK a score here. Anna, tell us what you want to score it and why.

I'm going to give you a six because it is really interesting. And I didn't know it, and I look forward to talking about it at a party like I thought of it myself. If it were less interesting, it would have gotten a seven then, right? Six for really interesting? Yeah. Well. Oh, sorry. You weren't done.

I interrupted you. Well, if you're going to get mad at me, I'll go up to a seven. We should call it off. I'll go up to a seven. I mean, eight for the baby. Fine. To our listening audience at home, Aaron's with child. Okay.

Sorry, Jodi. Are you with child, too? Can you Google that, Jody? Governor Patterson? Eight. You want to tell us why or you want to keep that to yourself? No, actually, I thought the information was very good. I would like to have been a little more persuaded that I needed to know this.

That's what I was trying to say, but not as well. Malcolm? that I needed to know this. That's what I was trying to say, but not as well. Malcolm. Well, I figured this... I'm puzzled by why the two previous judges don't find this useful. This is really useful. Way more useful than pinball. I'm going nine. Nine.

Aaron Thompson. Grand total of 25 points For Why is Stealing Art So Easy Lovely, lovely, very well done Next contestant, Will McLeod Come on up Hi Will Hey there Stephen What do you do?

So I'm an engineer I work with tech startup companies in hardware. Keen Home, my startup right now, is making wireless learning HVAC vents. Tell us something we don't know here, would you? Cool. So I think a lot of people have spent time thinking about losing weight.

But have you ever asked yourself, when you lose weight, where does that weight actually go? Wait a minute. Have we all thought that? Okay. It's a mystery, and I like to think things through. I think a lot of people, when they think about losing weight,

when you Google that phrase, where does the weight actually go, what you'll find is a lot of pages of articles saying, weight becomes energy. Well, did you know that when you lose weight, you actually lose it through your nose? I like to hear that. That's good. That means people didn't know. I got the novel point, right? All right. So I think what a lot of people think when you Google the phrase, you'll see that energy, weight becomes energy, but that would be nuclear fusion. If you were turning mass into energy, we would all be walking nuclear reactors. We're not radioactive,

so we're not doing that. So then the question becomes, where does it go? Well, I think a lot of people think maybe it goes in the toilet. That's a good hypothesis. Is that at least partially true? Yeah, you do a little bit, but when you're actually talking about digesting fat, it was one way you could run an experiment and see whether or not that's true. So if you go to bed at night, weigh yourself right before you do. Exactly. Weigh yourself in the morning before you go to the bathroom again.

You'll find that you lose some weight. I lose about two pounds in the morning. You're actually lightest when you wake up. So the question is, where is it going? Since it's not going to the toilet, unless you need to change your sheets, it's going somewhere else. Edit. Sorry.

No, no, that's fine. That's fine. It's public radio.. Edit. Sorry. No, no, that's fine. That's fine. It's public radio. You can really say anything. All right. So we know it's not going into fusion. It's not becoming energy. We know it's not going to the toilet.

It turns out the place it's actually going is super interesting. It's going into the air. The air we breathe out is heavier than the air we breathe in. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are heavier than the oxygen and a little bit of carbon dioxide and water vapor that we breathe in. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are heavier than the oxygen and a little bit of carbon dioxide and water vapor that we breathe in. And we kind of know this from what we learned in high school, the Krebs cycle or citric acid cycle, but that's a really boring, abstract way to think about something that's so cool and interesting. So think about another way, you can think about a potted plant, an acorn that you put into a pot on a scale and you you put a bowl of water next to it, and every day you water it from that bowl.

So as that acorn turns into a tree, it's going to get heavier, right? But where's that weight coming from? It's not from the soil. The soil is already on the scale. It's not from the water. The water is already on the scale. It actually comes from the air itself. The air becomes the tree, and that's what carbon sequestration is.

It's that process of turning these floating molecules of carbon dioxide into the tree. And that's what carbon sequestration is. It's that process of turning these floating molecules of carbon dioxide into the tree. And people do the opposite. We're like these walking fires turning solid fuel into gases, just like a car turns liquid fuel into exhaust or a fire makes smoke. But our smoke is cleaner. That's what we breathe out. And what I think is so cool about that is once you know that you start to ask yourself questions like, well, if I'm losing weight, does that mean that every time I breathe, I lose a little bit more and just breathing faster, it'd make me lose more weight. Yeah. That's what exercise is. Will, awesome. Judges, you want to know more? I'm super psyched. I'm not Jody right now. I got nothing.

Losing weight through nose. But wait, does this say, this is a really, really dumb question. So if I simply sit here and go, is that a means of losing weight? You'll pass out, unfortunately. Which could also be fun. But it does. So the way to make sure that you don't pass out, unfortunately. Which could also be fun. But it does.

So the way to make sure that you don't pass out is to work out. And that means that if you ask yourself which exercise is best for losing weight, it's the one that gets you breathing just like that, harder and faster. Jody, losing weight through the nose? Well, Will is right. When you Google the phrase, where does the

weight actually go, you get no good results. So thanks for that, Red Herring, Will. But I then made the mistake of Googling, do you lose weight by breathing? And I got lots of tips on yoga techniques. But I also found an article about the latest weight loss program to sweep America, Oxysize. In 15 minutes a day just by breathing. Over 750,000 followers claim it transforms body shape, sheds pounds within weeks, and improves muscle tone and boosts energy levels. I believe every word of that.

Oh, yeah. 750,000 breathing Americans. Can't be wrong. But he is right that carbon dioxide weighs more than oxygen. Okay. Keep in mind the criteria here. Is it novel? Is it worth knowing?

And is it true? And let's score this puppy. Governor Patterson, what do you want to give Will and why? So, well, everyone talks about weight. So obviously it's worth knowing. And is it true? Apparently it's true. And it's great to know that the mass weighs less than the energy.

I never knew that. And neither did Albert Einstein. But I'll give it a nine. The hecklers are out. Nice. Malcolm. I'm going I'm going to go six. It didn't as interesting as it was. I feel like I kind of knew that the way to lose weight was to do something that caused me to breathe heavily. Fair enough. Six points for Malcolm Gladwell. And Anna Gasteyer. Yes. I'm going to do a seven similarly because it was it was in super intriguing also knew about the fast breathing i thought you'd get a great job explaining it but i um would absolutely get stuck on the the tree in the water story at a dinner party like like i would i would pull the

party to a grinding halt and everybody would be excited to know about the weight loss through the nose and then i'd be like well should we should we make dessert? And then we'd move on. So I have to give you a seven, because the walk away isn't clean enough for me. But it was good. It was interesting. Will McLeod, 22 points, but also Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or mug. Thank you so very much. Well done. Thanks, guys.

Great job. Great job. We're going to have one more contestant in this first round. Her name is Melissa Schneider. Melissa, will you come on up? Here we go. Hi, Melissa. Hello.

How's it going? Pretty good. What do you do? I am a dating and relationship counselor. I'm wearing a heart shirt. You are wearing a heart shirt. And you're sitting next to a fella. He's my husband.

Success story. Your work is done. That's right. All right. And now you do this for other people, presumably. That's right. For a fee. What do you get? $125,000 a session. $125,000? Yes, that is correct.

I'm offering a package. What can you tell us tonight that we don't know? Okay. So if you're single or dating or married, you might find this interesting i've got one person um so people always want to know like what should i be looking for in an early dating relationship like what predicts that it's gonna be successful or break up there is great research done in 2010 looked at 37 37,000 dating couples in different

countries, and they looked at 30 factors that have been studied at least four times to figure out like what actually matters, like what makes a difference in who stays together and who breaks up. And the number one factor was a big surprise to everyone conducting the study. It wasn't commitment or love or trust or the things you would expect. It was something called the awesomeness factor. That's what I call it. It was actually called positive illusions. Positive illusions? Yes. Illusions with an I? Illusions, yes. You can ask me a question about that. But I like to call it the awesomeness factor because the criteria was basically that you think your partner is great. You think your relationship is kind of better than all of your

friends' relationships. We wouldn't tell them that. And you feel like your partner is great. You think your relationship is like kind of better than all of your friends' relationships. We wouldn't tell them that. And you feel like your partner is close to your like quirky sense of ideal for you. And it didn't just matter in dating. It actually also mattered in marriage. One study that looked at newlyweds and kind of evaluated this factor found that three years later, satisfaction had dropped for everybody except one group. Guess who it was? The people who

had a high awesomeness factor the day they walked down the aisle. And I just celebrated my third wedding anniversary, so I can give an anecdote. Now, are both of you awesome or just one? Does it take two? Like, is he awesome and you're eh? That's a good question. It's actually like your

perception of your partner. And they have found slight differences if your partner just thinks like you're lame, you know. Well, I'm really glad you cleared this up. I always thought that the test was whether or not the passenger opens the driver's seat door like in a Bronx tale. So you're saying, when you say positive illusions, you mean to say that those who have this are people who are misled about the virtues of their partner. In other words, they think their partner is better than their partner actually is. Yes and no. So I think the early researchers, maybe it had like a hard time with dating. You know, like if you read their papers, they're like, ah, the rose colored glasses, they don't know what they're looking at. But it actually turns out that if you think your partner is awesome,

they actually become a bit awesomer like over the course of your relationship. So there's kind of like the self-fulfilling. It's your perception of their awesomeness that counts. It's that they could be like super gross to somebody else, super unawesome or foul, one might say. Like you personally find that person to just have a super awesome quality. That's right. Perception is reality. So if you think that's true,

it like impacts your whole experience of the relationship. So it is, it is rose colored glasses, but in a, but, but, but manifested over a lifetime. And they seem to matter. Yeah. But aren't people deceived that way by the same process? Now you sound like the early researchers. So perhaps.

Well, I knew them. Jodi, is there such a thing as the awesomeness factor and does it work? Well, I did find this 2010 study and it's called predicting non-marital romantic relationship disillusion colon, a meta-analytic synthesis. So I think awesomeness factor is a better name. And I'm with the judges. I mean, everything I Googled in the last 30 seconds about a positive illusions really does talk about it as a, of self-delusion and then projection. But you seem to say it has good effects. The one other thing that came up – Seems to be able to stay together.

Yeah. The one other thing that came up was this idea of perceived superiority, which is how you view your relationship in relation to others. And that apparently makes a really big difference, not just your partner. So find friends with a bad relationship. You shoot right up. relation to others. And that apparently makes a really big difference, not just your partner. Find friends with a bad relationship. You shoot right up. And one study I found, I like this. One study I found concluded that in men especially, satisfaction was particularly related to the perception that one's relationship was superior to others. Whereas in women's, satisfaction was related to the assumption that most others

were just as happy if not more happy than you. And that's why we get struck by lightning. Exactly. Malcolm, what do you want to score this and why? Well, you know, I feel like I've already established with my votes on the other people

how high the bar is for particularly for novelty and also usefulness. I mean, knowing you can rip off a museum at a moment's notice is like so useful. This, high, but not as high. So I'm going to say seven. Very good. Malcolm, thank you. Anna? Yeah, I'm completely subjectively scoring this.

I'm going to give it a nine for the opposite reason. As a long-term married person who really enjoys being superior to others, I'm going to... I find it incredibly useful, and I'm going to talk about it my whole 18th wedding anniversary. A couple weeks. Governor Patterson? So I'll give it a nine two because

obviously nine point two or nine also you can go decimal oh that's a new twist yeah we're holding it out for the second round but you throw it out of me but i i thought that um that she delivered it in a very kind of relaxed way and and didn't't sort of say that it always has to work, but that it just seems to be a trend. And our whole lives are really in many ways about myth and why shouldn't they be in our relationships? That's right. I like that she got awesomeness factor votes for her awesomeness factor. Yeah, exactly right. And the shirt, yeah.

Melissa Schneider, 25 points. Thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great, great job. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our first round and we have a winner with a total of 26 points is Seth Porges

who wowed us with the evils of pinball. Way to go, Seth. Seth, congratulations. We will see you again in the final round now. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of Tell Me Something I Don't Know from Freakonomics Radio and WNYC. Thank you. From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know from Freakonomics Radio.

I'm Stephen Dubner. Our next round is called Judges' Choice. Before the show, we asked each of our three judges what they wanted to know more about, and now our live audience is going to try to help them out. Okay? Ana Gasteyer, former Saturday Night Live cast member, just out with a new record called I'm Hip, and I love your video.

It's so great. Oh, thank you. You're fantastic. Ana, I understand you are eager to know more about the Civil War. Why is that? Because I took a summer school class that covered it, and I was pretty out to lunch. So I got the big picture, but it's kind of an embarrassing thing not to know anything about.

Do you remember who the teams were? Very vaguely. And my son's name is Ulysses, so the heat's on. Yeah. David Patterson, former governor of New York, now a professor of health care and public policy. You would like to know more about astronomy, says you. Why is that? I went to the Hayden Planetarium on one of those class trips

when I was seven or eight years old and kind of got caught up in trying to figure out the universe. Now I want to govern the universe. LAUGHTER out the universe. Now I want to govern the universe. And Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and staff writer at The New Yorker, you told us that you wanted to know more about tax law. Sexy. Why is that, Malcolm? When I came to this country 20 years ago or so from Canada and discovered something that amazes me to this day, which is that, what, 75% of American politics is just about taxes.

So why wouldn't I want to know more about that? Lovely. That's the answer I was not expecting. Here's how a judge's choice will work, folks. Members of the audience, we need you to line up at the microphone right over there. If you can tell us something we don't know about the Civil War, astronomy, or tax law. Now, this is a lightning round, so make it fast. If you hear this bell, that means you should stop talking and return to your seat. All you need to do is tell us your name and your IDK.

I don't know. Everyone who plays is going to get a Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or a mug, and the winner of this round will qualify for the final round. Judges, at the end of the round, we'll ask each of you to pick your favorite IDK that was directed at you and give it a score, again, anywhere from 0 to 10 points, based on the same criteria, something you didn't know, something that's worth knowing, and that's demonstrably true.

Okay, let's go. First contestant, please step up. Tell us your name and something we don't know. My name is Michael Oldham. This fact is cited in a recent book by Randall Munroe called What If. If a supernova occurred where the sun is,'t worry the sun was not going to go into supernova but if it did it'd be so bright it'd be brighter than if a hydrogen bomb exploded at the surface of your eyeball not only would it be brighter it'd be a billion times brighter a supernova from the sun would be a billion times brighter than if a hydrogen bomb exploded right here. Hi there. Come on up. Tell us your name. My name is Daniel. This is for Mr. Gladwell. Did you know that in Ireland and Denmark, there's a flatulence tax

on cows to reduce the emissions that are brought out by them? And this is important because this might end up happening in America as well. So every cow that a farmer owns is taxed. Beautifully done. Thank you so much, Daniel. Step on up and tell us something we don't know. Hi, my name is Malhar.

And did you know that on January, oh, this is astronomy. And did you know on January 2nd, you usually celebrate January 1st as the new year, but in January 2nd, there's an astronomical event called the perihelion, which is when the earth is closest to the sun. Think about how close if January 1st is really an arbitrary number. Imagine if January 2nd was the new year. How cool would that be? Okay, very good. Hi there. Hi, my name is Jackie. And for those who want to retire with a little bit more money, there's a tax loophole where you can contribute to your traditional 401k and then roll it over

to a post-tax Roth 401k without any tax penalty, saving you upwards of 30%. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Hi there. Tell us your name and something we don't know. Hi, my name is Alex. Malcolm, I'm a long-time fan of your hair. That's probably what you do know about me. So this is an astronomy fact, continuing the supernova theme, but according

to a recent projection, every second there are 30 supernovae in the observable universe. That's for every baby born, there are seven stars that explode. Beautiful. Hi there. Does anyone know anything about the Civil War? Nope. Put it this way, I don't know anything, so it's all going to be good for me. Yeah, yeah. It's a high score. Hi, what's your name? My name's Aaron Wiener. Hi, Aaron.

And I have something about tax law in the Civil War. Oh. Hi, Aaron. Oh. Thanks. Oh, boy. In which galaxy? So during the Civil War, the South levied taxes at a rate consistent with what its Confederate money was worth at the time.

But then as its territory shrank, as it lost, there was effectively a large amount of inflation because they had the same amount of money concentrated in a smaller and smaller area where it was legal. So they ended up not living enough taxes, and it was a vicious cycle contributing to the inflation and the decline of the economy, which hurt their ability to wage war. Very well done. Tough to beat.

Tough to beat. Hi there. How do you do? What's your name? So, hi, I'm Idris, and so this is tax law and the civil war again so um the union needed to pay for the war um because they were kind of wars were expensive so what they did was they established an income tax on the rich and so the way how they enforced

it was that they created like a registry so that you can look up any person and see how much they paid in taxes. And so anybody who thought that somebody was, you know, kind of living in a way that wasn't consistent with the income that they reported to what they would do is that you could report them and say, oh, well, this person is living too large. So, in fact, they someone managed to report abraham lincoln so on the tax reporters um like ledger what they did was that they had to go actually investigate this which is kind of funny i agree i agree thank you so much great job egypt great job hi tell us Tell us your name and something we don't know. Hi. My name is Mariana Yoich, and this is an astronomy fact. So did you know that the Illinois State Senate was so angry when Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006 that on March 13, 2009, they voted to reinstate it as a planet and named that day Pluto Day in Illinois?

Beautiful. Okay. Hi. Tell us your name and something we don't know. Hi. My name is Tom. We know more about the Civil War than we otherwise would have because of cancer. At the end of his life, President Ulysses Grant, because of a cancer diagnosis, was pressured to write his memoirs and record a lot of information about the Civil War that we might otherwise not have known.

Nicely done. And we've got time, I'm afraid, for just one more. So why don't you step up, tell us your name and something we don't know. Hi, my name is Steve Nazarian, and this is an income tax law fact. There are really two classes of income taxpayers in the United States,

people who can itemize deductions and people who cannot. And typically that's usually property owners and non-property owners. And of course here in New York we have a lot of renters. What most people don't know is that if they make some kind of large deduction or large contribution, like maybe donating a used car, that that donation can actually be held over for as long as five years. And when I was younger, I donated a car that I paid $100 for. I got a $2,550 write-off. I held it for four years. Then I bought a house, and I got a $900 credit off my taxes.

So netted out $800. You should have been governor. Great job. Great job. Thank you so much. Okay. Now, here's the thing. Judges, it's time for each of you to pick your favorite of those and assign a number score to it.

Okay? So, just to be clear, I can only vote on the things about the Civil War? Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Basically, we want each of you to pick a winner in your category. Got it. And give them a score.

Okay? Yeah. So, Governor Patterson, we heard quite a bit here about astronomy, your cherished topic. We did, and they were all very good. I think actually when they took Pluto's planet status away, they actually called it decommissioning. I never knew they had any commissions

on Pluto. Bring on Mulhar. So that was telling us about January 2nd Versus January 1st New Year Very good, very good And Governor Patterson, can you put a number score On that one, please Like a

Like a 10 10 Not even like a 10, a 10 Fantastic Malcolm Gladwell, you asked people to tell you about tax... I mean, they're only one day apart, and he sold it like it was like half a year apart. Malcolm Gladwell, you asked people to tell you about tax law.

They told you about tax law. What was your favorite? Oh, wow. They were all good. This is impossible. But I'm going to go with Cal Flatulence. Yeah. Did not see that coming.

Going to give him a nine. Anna? You know, it was a deadlock. Same thing. It's a nail biter between Aaron Wiener and Tom. It was, they're both incredibly useful facts. One involved tax law. One didn't.

One involved Ulysses. I'm going to say that I'm going to choose the factoid about Grant having cancer because I think there's something really applicable in conversation about how we record history and memory.

Beautiful. Okay, nicely done. Jodi, we have a contested contest here. Can you tell us anything about any of the winners and whether they're as factual as we think they are? They are all generally factual. With regards to the window, it is actually sort of a window around the 2nd of January where the Earth and the Sun are closest. And I think in 2015, it's going to be January 4th that the Earth and the Sun are closest. And I think in 2015, it's going to be January 4th that the Earth and the Sun are closest to each other.

But I guess he was wrong. You're 12. Jody, you're trying to tell a 12-year-old boy who just got up here and told us this that you're going to dock him for being a couple? Malhar, literally the first page of Google results. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. It's not that hard, buddy.

Alright. Now, in Denmark, you will get taxed $110 per cow, per fighting cow. In Ireland, it's only $18. So, you know, you've got to put them on a ship and get them over there and take advantage of that discrepancy.

Okay. Arbitrage. So here's the question. That is an arbitrage opportunity. So here's the question. Governor Patterson, having heard Jody tell us that Malhar is a little bit off, do you want to dock him points? Do you want to take away his 10? No.

That was easy. Nicely done. Okay, and so what we've got here is we've got... What would Google know about time? All right, so we've got two winners. We've got a dead tie for the judges' choice round. We've got Malhar with January 2nd, and Tom with We Wouldn't Know So Much About the Civil War

If It Weren't for Ulysses S. Grant's Cancer. So both of those got a 10. So congratulations, Tom and Malhar. You will now join Seth in our final round. Coming up, our three finalists will each team up with one of our judges to go after the grand prize that's next on Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

It's a new game show from Freakonomics Radio and WNYC. I'm Stephen Dubner. We've had a great night so far. I think we would agree. Would we agree? Would we agree? Three of our audience contestants have made it through to this, the final round, where they'll now be teamed up with our three judges. So Governor David Patterson will play with Malhar.

Malcolm Gladwell will play with Tom. And Ana Gasteyer will play with Seth. Welcome aboard, guys. And now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, final round? What is this final round? Were you thinking that? Ish? May I present to you, please, the spinning wheel of maximum danger. That's right. It is a spinning wheel with 12 rather random topics that you, our studio audience, helped us come up with before the show began. You remember how that worked?

Now it's all coming clear. All right, so I'm going to read them to you. We've got our topics are insulin, ninja warriors, workout tapes, anime, Staten Island, indoor plumbing. Did someone write those next to each other on purpose? That seems low blow. Hogwarts, Eleanor Roosevelt, bread, neuroscience, Disney, and the Kama Sutra. So here's the way it's going to work. I'm going to spin the wheel to pick a topic for each team. Okay. And each team you'll then have about 60 seconds,

give or take to confer and to tell all of us something that we don't know about this rather randomly chosen topic. When that's all over you, the studio audience will give us a throat vote or maybe clapping, stomping. Anyway, you want to make your noise to pick out our grand prize winner. Okay.

All clear. Any questions, comments, complaints, criticism, Anna, is that just you? No, it's fear, blind fear. All right, let's spin the wheel first to pick a topic for Team Patterson. Here we go. Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh, right up the alley, yeah? Okay. Next, a topic for Team Gladwell. With Tom. And you do not get to do Eleanor Roosevelt also. We have a provision against this, and here it is.

Bread. Wow, how lucky is that? And Seth and Anna, you get to tell us all something we don't know about. What's that? Indoor plumbing. You got one vote already. All right. Take your time. All 60 seconds of it. And I want you to tell us something we don't know about Eleanor Roosevelt for Team Patterson, indoor plumbing for Team Gasteyer,

and bread for Team Gladwell. Thank you. Okay. Okay, time is up. We want to hear what you all came up with. Audience members, we're going to vote after you've heard all three presentations, okay? So first up, Governor David Patterson and Malhar, we want you to tell us something we don't know about Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt was a big friend of Amelia Earhart and the women's right advocate. She was such good friends with Amelia Earhart. They were inseparable. When Amelia Earhart went missing, she was a huge proponent of the plan when the U.S. sent hundreds of ships around the area where she was last sent the radio transmission. Very good. Okay. Thank you very much.

Malcolm Gladwell and Tom, what can you tell us about bread that we don't know? Everyone thinks of focaccia as being some valuable part of some ancient Italian cultural culinary heritage. Wrong. It was invented by a guy in Milan in 1975. Really? In Italy, though? Milan, is it Milan, Italy or Milan, New Jersey? Milan? In Italy, but that's about it. Wow. Okay. Focaccia, but that's about it. Wow. Okay. Focaccia, not old. Not old.

Beautiful. Thank you very much. Wow. And last but so not least, on a gas iron, Seth, what can you tell us about indoor plumbing? We decided to talk about Mario from Super Mario Brothers because he's a plumber. That's all we know about. So go ahead, Zach. Yeah, so Mario,

the only reason he was a plumber in the first place was a total accident based on the graphical limitations of the early video games. Shigeru Miyotami, the guy who created Mario, wanted a way to show form on his body

so he made overalls to show the arms and he wanted to show his face. So all this distinct hat, all this stuff that makes him a plumber, it was all just because the computers back then kind of sucked so he doesn't really know how to fix your your your drain wow wow fantastic fantastic that's just great just great so that that is uh wow wowser. Those were so good. Okay, so before we have you all vote for the grand prize winner, Jodi Avergan, do you have anything to tell us on the factual level here?

Factual level? I've been Googling quickly. And actually, before I got the fact about Eleanor Roosevelt, I had stumbled upon a very fascinating Wikipedia section for Eleanor Roosevelt called, quote, other relationships. And indeed, she had a deep friendship. That's at one end of the spectrum of how we could characterize the relationship. I think this is a different show we're getting into now. But she was deep friends with Amelia Earhart. They wrote letters to each other that included such endearments as, quote, I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth.

And I can't kiss you, so I kiss your picture. Good night and good morning. Sweet. Now I know why she disappeared. Oh, boy. Now we know why you were a one-term governor, bro. Okay, Jody, Focaccia and Super Mario, anything on there? I am so thrilled to say, Malcolm Gladwell, I think you just made that up. I don't think so.

In ancient Rome, Panius Focacius was a flatbread baked on a hearth. I gotta tell you, Jody, all night I've been thinking here, we wasted the money on Jody, because everything's right. You busted Malcolm. Malcolm, what do you have to say for yourself?

Experts differ. Experts differ. Wow. You busted Malcolm. Malcolm, what do you have to say for yourself? Experts differ. Experts differ. Wow. Wow. Wow. I can't believe this is all happening. All right, audience, we are now going to ask you to pick our grand prize winners. So keep in mind everything we've talked about tonight, something you didn't know, something

that's worth knowing, something that's true-ish. And those are the criteria. And we're going to ask you to vote by clapping, shouting, whistling, whatever you've got, okay? So first of all, let's hear the first vote for Team Patterson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart. What do you got? Thank you.

Substantial Very substantial Team Gladwell with his partner Tom Focaccia Not so old or maybe old It's true It is true It is true by the way I believe you I wasn't impressed, but I believe.

That's why I wasn't impressed. And finally, let's hear you vote for Team Gasteyer and her partner, Seth, who told us about Super Mario. Let's hear it. So I'd like to say congratulations to Governor Patterson and, of course, your teammate Malhar. Great job. Malhar, you are the very first winner of Tell Me Something I Don't Know. No matter what else happens in the rest of your life, no one can ever take away this victory from you. Now, here's a question. What grand prize could we possibly give that is commensurate with the level of knowledge that you've displayed tonight?

Well, Malhar, you remember at the very beginning of the show the former FBI agent we heard from earlier? Let me put it this way. remember at the very beginning of the show the former FBI agent we heard from earlier? Let me put it this way. The United States, all the colleges and universities in our country, award about 1.3 million degrees a year. Approximately 1% of that, we believe, is the amount of phony degrees that are sold in our country each year. That's right, Malhar. We are buying you your very own counterfeit degree. All right? Any degree you'd like, any university, the university of your choice. It'll take us four to six weeks to get it printed to you.

Maybe you want Harvard Law. You look like you aren't even out of middle school yet, but you could have Harvard Law by the end of next month. Maybe something in animal husbandry. Listen, congratulations to Malhar and all our other contestants. Thank you to our fantastic judges, Malcolm Gladwell, Anna Gasteyer, and David Patterson.

Thank you to Jody Abergan, everyone at WNYC in the green space, especially Susie Lechtenberg and tonight's executive producer, Joel Meyer. And most of all, thanks to you for coming here to tell me, say it with me, tell me something I don't know. Thank you so much. Good night.

Hey, podcast listeners. On the next Freakonomics Radio, imagine there's a zombie invasion coming to your town. What's the first thing you'd do? You'd probably fill up the gas tank and stock up on groceries. It's absolutely the case that if there were an invasion of zombies, there would be a great deal of economic activity generated. That's right. The economics of the undead. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Tell Me Something I Don't Know was produced by Joel Meyer with help from Jody Avergan, Bailey Constance, and Diana Miller. Special thanks to the crew at The Green Space, including Jennifer Sendro, Ricardo Fernandez, Chase Coulpan, David McLean, Bill Moss, and Gaines Laguerre. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalski, Greta Cohn, Caroline English, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon, with help from Joel Warner.

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