Freakonomics Radio - 343. An Astronaut, a Catalan, and Two Linguists Walk Into a Bar…

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

In this live episode of “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” we learn why New York has skinny skyscrapers, how to weaponize water, and what astronauts talk about in space. Joining Stephen J. Dubner as co-host is the linguist John McWhorter; Bari Weiss (The New York Times) is the real-time fact-checker.

Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. The mission of Freakonomics Radio is to tell you things you always thought you knew but didn't, and things you never thought you wanted to know but do. To that end, we occasionally put on a live show. It's called Tell Me Something I Don't Know, where we invite smart people on stage to tell us stuff. The episode you're about to hear was taped in New York City at Joe's Pub, part of the amazing public theater complex.

We'll soon be taping four more shows there on October 19th and 20th. For tickets or to be on the show, visit Freakonomics.com slash TMSIDK, as in tell me something I don't know. Again, that's Freakonomics.com slash TMSIDK. Hope you enjoyed this episode and hope to see you there. Why do I read? Why do I have conversations? Why do I travel? Why do I have to go to school?

Why do I pay attention? Why do I pay attention? Because I want to be amused. Because I want to get outside my comfort zone. But mostly. Mostly. Mostly. Mostly because.

Because I want to find out stuff. Find out stuff. Find out stuff. Find out stuff. Because I want you to tell me something I don't know. Good evening, I'm Stephen Dubner and this is Tell Me Something I Don't Know, recorded live tonight at Joe's Pub in New York City. We have got a crowd full of smart people, and we'll bring them on stage to tell us something interesting or unusual,

maybe even fascinating. And if everything goes as planned, we will all be a little bit smarter by the time we're through. Joining me tonight as co-host, I am so pleased to welcome Columbia professor, author, and podcaster, John McWhorter. Hi, John. Let's see what we know about you so far.

You are a linguistics professor at Columbia University. I try. You've written several books on language, and you host the Lexicon Valley podcast. Which you should listen to. John, we know that you also produce and play piano for a group cabaret show called New Faces. We know that you wrote a CNN opinion piece that proposed a three-point test

to determine which American historical monuments should be considered racist enough to be demolished. And apparently the one thing that gets you a free pass is if you were ever involved in cabaret. Is that right, or was that my misreading of your piece? No, I think you're quite right. John McWhorter, that's what we know about you. Tell us something we don't yet know, then, please.

You know what you just don't know is that every morning I get up and I move to a special chair and I sit down and I read about dinosaurs. I want to know about what the latest dinosaurs are. When you say the latest dinosaurs, they're not coming back, are they? The latest discovered.

I've been a dinosaur fan since I was zero, and I still am. I had a dinosaur this morning. I'm going to have another one in less than 12 hours. What was the dinosaur you had this morning? It was called Castor cauda. It was this early mammal that kind of burrowed around in the water. It was like a beaver that floated in the water.

That got me through the day. Well, John, whatever got you through the day today, I'm glad it did because it brought you here tonight. And we're very happy to have you here, John McRoy. So, John, here's how the show works. Guests will come on stage to tell us some interesting fact or idea or

story on a topic of their choosing. Maybe they'll put their idea in the form of a question so that we can try to puzzle it out. John, you and I will then ask some questions, and at the end of our show, the live audience will vote for a winner. The vote is based on three simple criteria. Number one, did they tell us something we truly did not know? Number two, was it worth knowing? And number three, was it demonstrably true? And to help with that

demonstrably true part, would you please welcome our real-time fact checker, Barry Weiss. Barry is a writer and editor for the New York Times Opinion Section, having formerly worked at the Wall Street Journal, Tablet, and elsewhere. Barry, if you had not become a journalist, what do you think you'd be doing? The embarrassing answer to that is an esthetician, which is a fancy word for someone that likes to pop pimples. I've actually had to prevent myself from lunging at strangers in the subway because that's how much I enjoy that disgusting task. I know John's going to vomit. You're not kidding, are you? No. I mean,

the more sophisticated answer would probably be rabbi, but I've gotten to do the fun parts of that because I've officiated four weddings. I think I have a fifth coming my way. Nice. And the parallels between esthetician and rabbi are what? Relieving pressure. There's a transitionary aspect to both of them, right? Anyway, Barry, thank you so much.

We're delighted you are here. And it is time now to play Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Would you please welcome our first guest, Jordi Getman-Araso. Hey, Jordi. Great to see you here. Why don't you tell us all what you do? I'm a professor of history at Bronx Community College here in the City University of New York. And I'm a specialist in Spanish modern history.

Very good. I'm ready. So are John McWhorter and Barry Weiss. So, Jordy, what do you know that's worth knowing that you think we don't know? So, in Spain, nobody ever sings the national anthem. Do you know why? So in Spain, nobody ever sings the national anthem. Do you know why? Did a Catalonian write it? No. Good guess, though.

Is Jordi by any chance a Catalonian name? Yes, it is George or Jorge in Catalan. I knew a Geordie once. I remember I used to say to him, Els bons amics. And that meant the good friends. Does it still mean that? It still does, yes.

It has not been updated in any fashion. So in Spain, nobody sings the national anthem. It's got to have something to do with Franco because everything's got something to do with Franco, because everything's got something to do with Franco, or no? There is an eventual connection, you could say. An eventual connection. But that's not the main connection. Does the main connection for the reason predate Franco? Yes, definitely. Oh.

Do you want to give us a century on that? 18th century. Does it have anything to do with that th sound in Castilian Spanish? And anything... It does? No. No. He was nodding vigorously.

I want to say yes. All right, Jordi, I don't think we're getting to the proper answers, so why don't you tell us why nobody ever sings the national anthem in Spain? Well, it's actually quite simple. There are no lyrics to the anthem. Oh. That would make it harder. There's no like me, Bella España, Bella España.

There's been efforts along the way to add lyrics to it by different regimes that have tried to influence the anthem. It started as a royal march. Basically, it was just a military march. And if you listen to it, it actually stillal-ish as well. Is that the idea? Yeah, I mean, definitely military. The king's out there marching with the troops, yeah. Yeah. But why no words? Well, we can get into the relationship of the different regions of Spain,

but it really is centered on the royal family's lack of interest in having politicians influence the royal march in that manner. Yeah. But let me ask you, is the national anthem played pretty regularly, though, at national sporting political events and so on? Yeah, it is, at all sporting events, and it leads to a lot of confusion. Sometimes you're watching the players at a sporting event just standing there. Other countries are mouthing the anthem

or trying to at least. That's not a problem with Spanish players. They don't have to learn any lyrics. They just stand and look up into the stands. It doesn't mean that they're, like I mentioned, it doesn't mean that there weren't lyrics added to it.

Oh, really? Basically, when I was born in Spain, in Barcelona, and when we were kids, at that time, the Franco dictatorship, there was a dictatorship in Spain, and it was a dictatorship that emerged from sort of fascist ideas initially. It was somewhat authoritarian. And so it's interesting that, you know, there are a lot of things that were made illegal, including, for example, my name, Jordi, or any kind of Catalan, the usage

of the Catalan language is made illegal. However, in school, we kids decided that you would sing along with the anthem and make fun of Franco, the dictator. You actually make fun of a very specific part of his body. Can we play it again and have you sing it? Sure. I'll sing it in Spanish and then I can translate. That'd be helpful. Franco, Franco, que tiene el culo blanco

y se va a París. Se le vuelve gris. Okay. There you go. Great. So that's the anthem as interpreted by the likes of Jordi Getman-Araso. Could we have that in English now as well? Franco, Franco, who has a white butt?

He goes to Paris, it turns gray. I love that you managed to insult Franco and Paris at the same time there. Now, again, Franco being Franco, I can't imagine that he didn't want some official lyrics that might have been perhaps about Franco. Was that not the case? There was a fascist anthem, but that was separate, and it was connected to the movement, so that it became very much about the political movement rather than the nation. Jordi, does this have anything to do with the fact that if you look at Iberia, it's really,

it's three vertical stripes. And so it's kind of like there's Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese, and it's this divided place. So there isn't any one language, and so it would discourage there being any words from one language. Is that what this is? That that discourages there being anything that everybody could embrace? To a certain extent, I would say yes. I mean, Spain is a country that is one of the oldest countries in the world. It dates back to the 1400s. But it was always united by a federative structure, traditionally. It's only when authoritarian regimes have come along that they attempt to erase that sort of diversity

and replace it with an authoritarian imposition of specific language or specific rules, laws. So you're a native-born Catalan, Barcelona, yes? Yes. You, I'm sure, are following the current independence movement. If Catalonia were to secede, become independent, etc., etc., etc., what would you think might be the way that the shape of its relationship with Spain would emerge in the near term, at least? Would they be amics, in other words? Amics means friends. The very quick answer is no.

Yeah. Unfortunately, I mean, we live in New York City and this is a very diverse place. And there's a sharing that we engage in here that sometimes if we move away from New York and we go to other parts of the world, we realize that there is a lot of built-up, sometimes historic, sometimes social, or especially political now, friction that is built up between people to make them feel like they don't belong to a group, they don't belong together, that there is no way to overcome the differences

that separate them. So I think that it would be very difficult. Barry Weiss, Jordi Getman-Araso is telling us about why the Spanish National Anthem has no lyrics. I can tell you that he has a very authoritative accent, so I believe him. But I've been thinking more about our own National Anthem, given the controversy over the Take a Knee protest. So everyone knows that Francis Scott Key wrote what would become our national anthem during the War of 1812. He wrote it when he watched Fort McHenry in Maryland being bombarded by the British. But then fast forward to the Civil War, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who was this

polymath, poet, he added this fifth stanza, which I recently came across. He wrote it in 1861, and the lyrics are, when our land is illuminated with liberty's smile, if a foe from within strike a blow at her glory, down, down with the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars and the page of her story. And it goes on. But the whole thing is about the sort of enemy from within. And I think it's interesting and wonder

if some people will be pushing to bring back that fifth stanza. Interesting. Jordi Getman-Iraso, thank you so much for playing. Great job. Would you please welcome our next guest, Carol Willis. Carol, what do you do? I'm an architectural historian, and I'm the founder, director, and curator

of the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan. Lovely. Okay, what do you have to tell us that you think we don't know? Well, I have a question. Sure. Skyscrapers come in many different sizes in cities everywhere, but what kind of tall building is unique to New York? That's hard.

What kind of tall building? It's because you didn't come to the Skyscraper Museum's exhibition. Smoked it out. Everybody has tall buildings around the world. There's some dimension on which New York's tall buildings are different, you're saying. There actually is a new form of skyscraper that has been invented in New York's tall buildings are different, you're saying? There actually is a new form of skyscraper

that has been invented in New York in the last decade and a half. Are they invisible? No. Are they of a category of building? The buildings that people worry are throwing Central Park into shade? Yes, they're that controversial type,

which is a specific type. Well, there's something beyond very, very, very tall. There's something beyond that. Yes, because there is a very important distinction between big and tall in skyscrapers, right? And how you measure skyscrapers. Like, I think a question that a lot of people think they know the answer to

is what's the tallest building in New York? And maybe your audience all know the answer to that one. Of course we do, right? The tallest building in New York is not the Freedom Tower. One World Trade Center, as it's called. It's not about how deep it goes into the ground. No. Oh, I know what the tallest building is.

What? It's new. And it looks like the cardboard box that the Chrysler building would have come in. No, it actually, it doesn't. It doesn't, because it is specifically different in form, and it would be absolutely impossible for the skyscraper building to fit inside 432 Park Avenue,

which is the building you're talking about. 432 Park Avenue is the new one. That's the tallest building. It's a recent distinction. Well, the answer is right if you want to use the definition of height that has to do with the highest occupied floor as opposed to the highest point of the architectural design because I think everybody, most people would answer

that One World Trade Center at 1,776 feet is the tallest building because that's the official measure. We still haven't answered your question though, have we? Your original question. Well, this is one of the type of this particular typology, new typology of skyscraper, which is different than all the tall buildings that have come before. Is there a single term for it that architects use? I have a lot of adjectives to describe it. So there's a one-word characteristic of them

that is uniform across what's already about two dozen buildings designed this way. Does anyone in our audience think they know what it is? Skinny! Skinny! Oh, okay. Do you know what it is? Skinny. Skinny.

Oh, okay. By what do we mean skinny? Skinny, okay. So the terminology for this new type of skyscraper. By the way, that's not a very technical term. Well, slender is the technical term. Also not technical. No, no. In fact, it is.

Engineers. I just would know that if you went to the skyscraper museum, Stephen. If you speak with structural engineers, a 1 to 7 ratio of the base to the height is officially a slender building, which requires additional engineering. So 432 Park Avenue that we're talking about is a 1 to 15 ratio. So if you think of a kid's ruler at one inch wide and 12 inches tall, add another three inches onto that, and that is the silhouette of the building. One World Trade Center is essentially the same height, a little bit shorter. But 432 Park Avenue would fit inside of the core, the elevator section. It's that different. It has less than a million square feet. One World Trade

Center has three and a half million square feet to it. So is this trend of skinny buildings a result of scarcity and expensive land, or is there something else beyond that? It's not scarcity of land, but it's the price of land, right? Because the reason it's unique to New York, because there are other tall, all-residential buildings. So the category is super slender, ultra luxury, in this case, condominium towers. So the price of land in New York is extraordinarily expensive per square foot. It also has this kind of unique condition of New York compared to other places, is we have air rights.

We have a zoning law that sets a limit on the number of square feet, not height, but square feet that can be built. So if you buy the undeveloped square feet of the buildings next to you and you pile it high up into the sky. Other cities don't have that, you're saying? No, there are cities that have very tall buildings, especially in China. They have a different formula. There are no residential buildings like that. But in most places where land value is extremely high, like London, there's a height limit. All of which we would have known had we been to the skyscraper museum.

You would, absolutely. But let me ask you this. Was it a fact that people, builders, developers, architects, et cetera, had been wanting to build these slender buildings for a long time because of the expense of land in New York, but only recently, engineering-wise, have been able to? It's not so much that the engineering enabled these buildings,

but it really was a price point of $3,000 to $4,000 a square foot for the sale price of an apartment that had to be hit before the very expensive construction materials and the special engineering and all of that that make the construction price so expensive. And once in about 2003, they hit that price, then it became possible to build these very tall buildings.

There was a time when this would have had a better name, you know, calling it skinny slender. I mean, if it was 1865, when there was a trend to name things Greekly or Latinly, so you call something aspirin or gasoline or dextrose or something like that,

then there would have been some pretty name. It would have been skinny atlas. Yes, there you go. I think we've all read that one reason Manhattan, I know we didn't originate the skyscraper, but one reason that we really... We did. Oh, we did? It wasn't Chicago.

Chicago's claim to fame for the skyscraper is steel skeleton construction, not height, right? If you want to compare height versus technological definitions, New York wins because in 187474 we had two buildings that were the the tallest in the world which were they the the tribune building and then western union building one thing that we know that we're trained to know is that manhattan new york or manhattan are particularly receptive because our bedrock is ganaisy right very nice my favorite urban myth okay that's what i want to know is that not true even though there is bedrock in Gnice-y, right? Very Gnice. My favorite urban myth to demolish.

Okay, that's what I want to know. Is that not true? Even though there is bedrock in lower Manhattan and in Midtown, and supposedly the bedrock dips down in the village and that's why there aren't any skyscrapers in between, which isn't true. But nevertheless, a point to illustrate

and refute that idea that you need bedrock is that the tallest building in the world at the turn of the 20th century was built on piles, on wood piles that were sunk down into the wet earth, even though there was bedrock another 40 feet below that. So it just wasn't economic to go down that far, and it wasn't necessary. So the whole Gneiss story is just a Gneiss story, but it's not real. Gneiss is important, and bedrock is a very good way to build very tall buildings, to anchor. Alright, so Barry,

Carol Willis, an architectural historian at Columbia and founder and curator of the Skyscraper Museum has been telling us that New York is a world leader in technically slender buildings. Anything to add or dispute? So everything that

Carol has said is totally accurate, and I would never dispute you. Thank you so much, Carol. Great job. It is time now for a quick break. When we return, more guests. We will make John McWhorter tell us

some things we don't know. If you would like to be a guest on a future show or attend one, please visit TMSIDK.com. We will be right back. Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our fact checker tonight is Barry Weiss, and my co-host is John McWhorter. Before we get back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our fact checker tonight is Barry Weiss, and my co-host is John McWhorter.

Before we get back to the game, we have some lightning round-ish questions written especially for John. You ready? I think I'm ready. Let's just do a quick this or that round with you, John, okay? English or French? Oh, s***. French doesn't like me because of something I wrote about four years ago where I

said that children in the United States should not be taught French because we think of it as a kind of a middle class class marker and that really, given that we're all surrounded by people who are bilingual in English and Spanish, wouldn't you rather learn a language that people actually speak? And I got all this hate mail. So, English or French? I'm sorry, but no, I can't say it. English is eating up all the world's languages, and so because I don't want to say English, although thank

God I speak it, French. Wow, alright. Well, as reluctant as that vote was, I can't wait to hear the answer to this one. French or Russian? Russian. Oh, God, I love Russian to death. Russian is God. I love Russian today. Russian is so hard, I don't believe anybody really speaks it.

It's beautiful, and I also enjoy the literature. Is Russian harder than Hungarian? Russian is infinitely harder than Hungarian. Hungarian's kind of hard. Russian is just bizarre. If it's infinitely harder, doesn't that mean that you can't learn it?

Yes. Here's a slightly different this or that. Bigly or Big League? Big League, because he never said Bigly. I would kind of like it if he was saying Bigly, because it would have popularized this new use of Bigly, and I like it when language changes. These are fun.

Is there another one? Yeah, I have one more for you, John. So this is a big one. To not split the infinitive or to split with no regrets the damn infinitive. Oh, that's just got to go. You can't split the infinitive.

So to boldly go Where no man has gone before How improperly phrased It should be to go boldly No, somebody just made that up And that person said You can't split the infinitive Because you can't split an infinitive in Latin Because in Latin the infinitive is one effing word

So you can't split it Because you can't split a word It's like trying to cut a cat in half. And so this person decided, well, you can't split an infinitive in English because English is supposed to be like Latin. He's dead and here we are. Just let it go. Split your

infinitives and enjoy it. Please. Please. Thank you for that. Let's get back now to our game. Would you please welcome our next guest, Rob Leonard. Hi there, Rob. What do you do? I'm a linguistics professor. I'm also the director of something called the Institute for Forensic Linguistics Threat Assessment and Strategic Analysis. And we have an exoneration

project based on the misunderstanding of linguistic evidence that was used to put people away. Interesting. So I'm guessing there are a lot of things you can tell us we don't know. Pick your favorite. Okay. As a forensic linguist, I often analyze recorded speech to understand how someone might have been wrongly accused of a crime. I've seen many cases where someone involved in the case listens to a recording that is part of the evidence, like a wire tapper, but makes a wrong judgment about the facts of what happened because one of the speakers was contaminated. What do you think contamination means?

Does it have something to do with actual audio quality? No. Does it have to do maybe with how the person sitting in the courtroom somehow doesn't match the perception of what the person on the tape sounds like not really it has to do with the way we normally perceive conversations because conversations are mutually cooperative yeah so we know that eyewitness testimony is just garbage, right? We know that human recall tends to be very, very, very poor. So is there some version of that in the auditory?

It's all sort of involved, but yeah. So what is contamination? Okay, contamination, well, I'll give you an example. Senator Harrison Williams, this was during Abscam, he was being tried by the Senate. And on the floor of the Senate, they played a recording of him and an undercover FBI agent. Well, the FBI agent cursed nonstop. But the senator never did. But at the end of this tape, one of the other senators came over and said,

boy, I never knew you cursed so much. Oh, he's just, he's intermingling the two voices in his mind. We've seen this time and time again. We have the story of John DeLorean, who

with the car, Back to the Future car, he was really desperate to get investment. And at that point, the feds grabbed a guy who said he could get DeLorean for them. He said, yeah, DeLorean wants to deal, you know, massive amounts of drugs. So he kept going back to DeLorean, trying to entrap him on the tape, you see. But he never actually discussed the drugs. But when you just listen to the tape, there's so much drug talk that the federal prosecutors came away thinking that there was enough to indict and try him.

But when it just separated out, you see, it was very clear that DeLorean never agreed or instigated any of it. And we always assume that people who were in conversations are having a conversation, you see? About the same thing. Precisely.

Yes, perfectly put. So the moral of the story, really, is to never, ever talk to anyone who's ever done anything illegal. Barry Weiss, contamination in the context of forensic linguistics, so interesting. What more can you add?

Well, I know that it's hard to imagine the man before you doing anything other than forensic linguistics, but I've been Googling him, and it turns out that he is a founding member of the band Shanana. No. He played at Woodstock,

and we want to actually play a clip for you of his song Teen Angel right now. We open for Jimmy Hendrix. Casual. Teen angel, can you hear me?

Teen angel, can you see me? Are you somewhere up above? And am I still your own true love? Did all the other members of Shanana become linguistics professors? In the original Woodstock movie, we get one song at the hop, but the soloist in the original one is now the provost of Jewish Theological Seminary at Columbia University.

So we got a two-for-one here. We got the birth of Shanana and the birth of forensic linguistics. Rob Leonard, thank you so much for playing. It is time for one last break. When we return, a couple more guests, and then you, our live audience, will pick a winner. That's right after this.

Welcome back. Would you please welcome our next guest, Georgios Piriotakis. Georgios, nice to see you. What do you do? So by training, I'm a materials engineer, and I work as a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. We've heard of that, Harvard, yeah. So Georgios, tell us something interesting that you think we don't know. So in my line of work, I work with nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, which basically is how matter behaves in the nanoscale. And to give you an idea about nanoscale, it's about one billionth of a meter. So it's very, very tiny. So you're trying to understand how matter behaves at nanoscale? Yes, they get some very interesting properties, all materials, when you take them down to the nanoscale. Okay. Very naive question. Do scientists like you create things on a nanoscale, or you're looking for things that already exist at that scale? We create things that are in the nanoscale, yes.

Okay. All right. That sounds interesting and deeply challenging to me. So tell us something fascinating about that. So with our research, our research group found a material that we can encounter in everyday life all the time. But when you take it to the nanoscale, it's actually a material that can be used to fight bacteria. So an everyday material that when nano-ized, what's the, is there a verb for it? Nano-sized. Nano-sized. that when nano-ized, what's the, is there a verb for it? Nanosized. Nanosized?

An everyday material that when nanosized can fight bacteria. How do you make it small? Because once you make it small, then the issue is how do you make the molecule stick together? How does that work? So there are different processes to make it small. In our case, we use high voltage to make it small. So it's about electricity, ions, and that sort of thing. Yes, you're getting very close to the final product. That'll do for me. I'm amazed you even

know how to ask that question. That's what it is. An everyday material. Paper. No. It's liquid. I can help you. Milk? Is it going to be something like semen? It's a major ingredient in pretty much everything that you mentioned so far. Water? Yes. Water. Water. So you take water, nanosize

it, and it becomes antibacterial exactly wait wait wait what's small water you can't make the atoms smaller what do you mean you make small droplets of water small droplets of water

and that's different than what big water would be yes it's one part actually of the equation, the size, that you make it smaller. It's also the process that you use to make it smaller that has an effect on the water. So by applying the high voltage,

what you basically do, you added a lot of charges on these water droplets and you also create a lot of ions at the same time. Is the process itself dangerous? You have to be careful? It does involve high voltage. I've been shocked several times, but it's... The current...

The current itself is not as high, so, you know, you feel a little bit of a weird thing going through your body, but nothing major. And would the antibacterial water be safe to ingest? Yes. You don't even feel it. And part of the reason is that these droplets are so small, the total amount that you actually use is in the picogram level.

Picogram is below nano. So it's one trillionth of a gram. Let me ask you, Georgios jos if you took this water spray and sprayed it on john's face would he feel it no you won't feel anything because it's very very small quantities of water all right so what are the applications that either it's being used on now or hopefully soon the applications are basically everywhere you have bacteria, from hospitals, public transportation, air. The one that we actually focus right now,

our research is on fresh fruits and vegetables because it was the low-hanging fruit. Yeah. It's very easy to... I don't know whether that's scientist humor or Greek humor, but I like that. It's a little bit of both. And in what ways or on what

dimensions is this better than the existing antibacterial treatment for those kind of things? So, to go back to nanotechnology, one of the benefits of nanotechnology is that you can do the same job with a lot less mass. Right? And the example I'd like to give is when you have a slice of bread and a stick of butter. If you want to cover that slice of bread with butter, you have to use several sticks.

But what you typically do, you take a little bit of knife and you spread it very thin on the bread, and then with one stick you can cover several slices of bread. Imagine now you spread it nano-thin. You can pretty much cover the entire bread that Manhattan has with one stick of butter, right? All right, Barry Weiss, I want you to find out if you could indeed cover Manhattan with one stick of butter. Not Manhattan, the bread in Manhattan.

Oh, all the bread in Manhattan. Yes. Okay, okay, okay. I love mini things. I love tiny houses and dogs and i follow i follow all these instagram accounts of like people that miniaturize things but i cannot for the life of me understand nanotechnology because it's too small and let me give you a sense of how small it is a single strand of human hair is 80,000 nanometers in width.

Your fingernails, your fingernail grows by approximately one nanometer every second. So God bless you for operating in this world. This Willy Wonka crazy thing, but I do not understand it at all. So, Georgios, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Great job. Well, it is time to welcome our final guest tonight. Would you please give a warm hand to Mike Massimino?

Give us your thumbnail bio. Tell us a little bit about what you've done. I am an astronaut. I got to fly twice on the space shuttle. And on both of my missions, I went to the Hubble Space Telescope and repaired it. And I was also the first person to tweet from space. There you go. I love that's what gets the applause.

You fixed the telescope. I know, yeah. Before we get to what you want to tell us about, I just have to ask, as we know, many kids dream of being an astronaut. Did you dream of being a normal person?

Well, if I did, I failed at that. I'm old enough to remember, unlike, I think, most of the audience, remember Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. You probably remember that. That made me want to be an astronaut. Mike,

I was four, saw that on TV, walking around up there, and I thought, I like it here, and I'm glad somebody went up there, but damned if I'm going to go. What made it attractive to you?

I think about that. I'm not really sure, but it grabbed my attention. And it stuck with me, and as an adult, I had to make that realization. I could either think about it and read about it in the paper or watch it on TV, or I could try to do something about it. That's what I did. It never lets go. That's what it is. That's what happened. When you start on it, is it about physical conditioning? Like you're going to go up there.

What, what do they do to you? Um, you know, the physical conditioning part, I think people, even I thought, you know, you have to be in, you have to be in good shape. You want to be in the best shape you can, but what they do is they really try to get you prepared to do your job. And so that means getting familiar with what it's like to work together as a team, what it's like to go on a spacewalk, how do you fly the spacecraft, and everyone has a role. And then there are certain skills and things you have to, maybe some things that might be difficult for certain people.

Like for me, I was not a thrill seeker, so I had to get comfortable around heights and going fast and stuff like that. But they really know how to do this, and they take it. Yeah, I'm afraid of heights. Seriously. I don't like heights at all. So tell us about, you did two spacewalks.

I did, yeah. At Hubble. And so tell us about how you train for that, because it's a condition that we obviously don't have here. Which is actually my question, which is how do you go about training for something like this? There's nothing to walk on when you step out of the shuttle or in the space station when you spacewalk.

How do you prepare yourself to do that? It's either going to be a waterbed or you're going to be in one of those baby bubble tents. Like those things where you bounce around in there. Bouncy castle. Bouncy castle. The bouncy thing. No, we don't do the bouncy

thing, but water's involved. Underwater. Underwater. But it's too heavy. When you're up there, it's not like Is it? That's right. You've actually explained it pretty well. So I think what you're saying is...

That's actually correct. When you're in water, you're fighting through the water. Right. And there's viscosity of the water and drag associated with it. So like you're trying to run in the water, it slows you down a bit. So that's the same thing. In space there's no forces working against you. You can move

very freely and quickly. When you're under the water, which is where we do train, you're a little more stable in the water than you will be in space. The water has gravity still present. If you throw a rock into the water, it's going to sink. It also gives you a little bit of buoyancy, some flotation.

So just like a scuba diver will have weights and flotation to try to get what we call neutrally buoyant in the water column, that's what we do as astronauts in the water. We have divers to help us do this. You have weight pulling you down, but you also add flotation. But you bring up a really good point, though, about the drag, which I think is subtle. Not everyone might think of that.

So when you get to space, the first thing you have at every first spacewalk, you have 15 minutes of what we call translation adaptation. And what you're doing is you're taking that movement that you learned underwater in your spacesuit and now going very slowly

and trying to adapt yourself to be able to do those the movements you want but if you would do the same force in space as you would on the water you'd go flying so you want to go really slowly when you first get so that's your first 15 minutes and the spacewalk lasts how long uh we plan for six and a half hours one of mine was the longest was over eight hours wow of space so you plan for six and a half and. One of mine was the longest. It was over eight hours of space. So you plan for six and a half, and then you see how it's going. And if you need to, you stay out longer.

So that's long enough to get hungry, thirsty, and maybe need to use the bathroom. What do you do about those things? Okay, so hungry, you eat a good breakfast. They experimented with food inside of a space suit. It didn't work very well because things are floating and you don't really have a way to grab something to eat it because you've got gloves. So picture

this. It's just your head in a bubble, right? So you can't. It doesn't work so good. But you have to drink, I assume? Water is very important because you're moving the whole time. It's almost like an athletic event when you're out there moving around. So we have a 32-ounce bag of water, similar to like a camelback, right,

in front of you, Velcro to the front of your spacesuit, with a bite valve that you can get to. And if you need to use it. Number one or two, let's say. Number two, that's a bad day. You want to take care of that in the morning. When I said, you know, like food floating around, so use your imagination.

Not good. So you don't want to do that. Number one, you probably don't want to do that either. But if you have to, and you don't generally have to do that because you're moving around so much, you sweat, you don't have the need to do that, as you might think. But we do wear a diaper. So you have a diaper.

When you put your spacesuit on, the first thing you put on is a diaper. That's cool. Nobody ever talks about that. Mike, wait, wait, wait. Is it a standard diaper you get in a grocery store, or is it a special kind? They are. We don't call it a diaper because we're NASA.

It's called a mag. Maximum absorbency garment. That's our mag. And the other thing they do with us, the people who prepare our stuff, they take a Sharpie and they mark on your diaper front. No kidding. And you're very grateful they do that

because the worst thing you'd want is to find out, hey, I must have put my diaper on backwards while I'm spacewalking. Other than that, I think it is something you might be is to find out, hey, I must have put my diaper on backwards while I'm spacewalking. Other than that, I think it is something you might be able to buy off the shelf. Mike, I have a question. Yeah. What do you say to each other? What do you say up there?

Because there's nothing to talk about except your diapers and your tending to the plants and whatever you're doing. What is the conversation? Let me see. What do we talk about? We talk about all kinds of things. We look out the window a lot and say, what is that? No, seriously.

You're looking at Jupiter or something. You might be looking at Jupiter, but Jupiter will show up not too much different than it does in our night sky. You're not that much closer to it in the north or north, but it's much clearer. So you'll see amazing stars, right? You'll see the same stars we can see on Earth,

but you can see much more of them because you're above the atmosphere. So the stars don't twinkle. They're perfect points of light. Oh, they wouldn't twinkle. They don't twinkle. So you're above that atmosphere. You can see the clouds, the Magellanic clouds, the dust of the Milky Way galaxy. You can see the constellations.

Looking at the planet, particularly from a spacewalk, it is the most magnificent thing I've ever seen. I think our Earth was truly meant to be seen from afar. And seeing that thin atmosphere and then turning that head and looking at that blackness of space and realizing that the only reason you're alive is that you're inside of a spaceship or you're inside of a space suit. Our atmosphere is what's keeping us alive. We're so lucky to be here.

There's no other option anywhere near. Again, turn ahead and look and it's blackness out there. It gives you the sense you really need to take care of this planet. It's really important. It's the only option we have. Barry Weiss, we've been hearing from astronaut Mike Massimino about training for the spacewalk,

doing the spacewalk, remarkable descriptions of what it really feels like. Anything you care to challenge from the astronaut? Okay, well, one thing that I found out about the mag. So the mag dates to 1988, and it actually replaced the DACT, which stands for Disposable Absorption Containment Trunk. Legitimate. And it was leaky. The DACT was leakier than the mag. So it was just a bad diaper.

I think diaper technology has really come a long way. I think so too. So some people like Mike, watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and want to go. I was always just really interested in space food because it's really cool and weird. And I found out that when John Glenn orbited the earth, do you know what he ate?

I don't know when John Glenn orbited the Earth, do you know what he ate? I don't know what John Glenn ate. He ate applesauce and beef puree in these toothpaste tubes. Yeah, you don't do that anymore. So things have gotten much more sophisticated. But there's one dish that's the most popular. Want me to guess? Yes. Shrimp cocktail.

Yes! Is that it? Exactly! And the reason apparently that people love it is that when you're in space, your palate changes because it's like you have a cold, essentially. Correct. You're a little slow. You have a fluid shift. So people like sriracha and wasabi in space, too. They like things with a really big kick.

And this shrimp cocktail apparently has a really good kick. It has a very spicy horseradish-y sauce. So it clears you up a little bit. Gravity works on our body. We've evolved over all this time so that everything works in one gravity, including the distribution of our fluid. All the fluid

in our body is held in place in part by gravity. So when you go to a zero gravity environment and we're in space, it doesn't have that force on it and it tends to pool. So the fluid pools in your upper body, and it gives you a stuffy, it feels like a head cold. Mike Massimino, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

Can we give one more hand to all our guests tonight? I thought it was pretty fantastic. It's time now for our live audience to pick a winner. Before you vote, John McWhorter, Barry Weiss, and I will each talk a little bit about our favorites. Remember, everyone, the three criteria. Did the guest tell you something you truly did not know? Was it worth

knowing? And was it demonstrably true? John, curious to know what you learned tonight. You know, it's hard to choose because all of these were magnificent general interest issues. You want to read the five foot shelf of books. I felt like we did that tonight. I mean, obviously, the bit about the buildings and the bit about space were interesting because they're about up high, but there are other things. Can you imagine there's a national anthem that doesn't

have any effing words? I find that very interesting. And then with Rob Leonard, frankly, we're in the same fraternity or sorority or whatever you want to call it. And so, of course, I'm going to like that. And molecules have always fascinated me, whatever size they were. And so it's difficult to choose.

I feel so informed. Barry, how do you feel? I just love the sort of obsessive quality of a lot of the people that were up here tonight. And especially Carol. I mean carol is dedicated to slender buildings and i'm definitely gonna go to that museum i mean i think that um with georgios the fact that he's working on a scale that my mind i can't even wrap my mind around it being in space seeing the earth from the window hard to grasp but like i can kind of get it

nanotechnology i can't so I'm really going to try. And certainly the mag. I mean, never going to forget the mag. Yeah, as someone who dressed up as an astronaut for Halloween for, I think, ages 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, I thought it was pretty cool to have a real one up here to tell us these stories. A real one up here to tell us these stories. A real one. I never would have thought at all that water could be weaponized to fight bacteria, so I found that pretty fascinating.

I'm glad I don't have to vote, but you people in the audience do. So now it's the time to do that. If you would take out your phones, follow the texting instructions on the screen, and you'll pick one. So who will it be? Jordi Getman-Iraso with the lyric-free Spanish national anthem, Carol Willis with New York's slender skyscrapers, Rob Leonard with contaminated speech and bonus points for Sha Na Na founding, Georgios Piriotakis for antibacterial water, or Mike Massimino with how to prepare for your first spacewalk. While our live audience is voting, let me ask you a favor. If you enjoy Tell Me Something I Don't Know, please spread the word, give it a nice rating

on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Okay, the audience vote is in. Once again, thanks so much to all our guest presenters. Our winner tonight, let me just say, it pays to be an astronaut. Mike Massimino, how to prepare for your spacewalk. So, Mike, congratulations. And to commemorate your victory,

I would like to present you with this certificate of impressive knowledge. It reads, I, Stephen Dubner, in collaboration with John McWhorter and Barry Weiss, do solemnly swear that astronaut Mike Massimino told us a whole lot of stuff we did not know, for which we are eternally grateful. Thank you so much. And that is our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you didn't know. Huge thanks to John and Barry, to our guests,

and thanks especially to you all for coming to play Tell Me Something. Thank you so much. Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio. The 9-11 fund was fascinating because Congress authorized unlimited funds. Whatever Feinberg thinks is appropriate, fine with us. We don't know how to value these lives. We speak with Kenneth Feinberg, the man America asks to decide how much money should go to the victims and survivors of tragedies. Would you want Ken Feinberg's job?

I will tell you this. Looking at it now, he had one hell of a hard job. See, that's not rocket science, the tough part. The debilitating part is the emotion. Who gets to say what a life is worth? That's next time on Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode is produced by Allison Craiglow, Emma Morgenstern, Brian Gutierrez, Harry Huggins, Dan DeZula, Rachel Jacobs, Nathan Rossborough, and David Herman, who also composed the Tell Me Something I Don't Know theme music.

Our staff also includes Greg Rosalski, Greg Rippin, Alvin Melleth, and Andy Meisenheimer. Freakonomics Radio can be found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our entire archive is available on the Stitcher app or at Freakonomics.com, where we also publish transcripts and show notes. You can get the whole archive ad-free at Stitcher Premium, where you'll also find lots of bonus episodes. Just go to StitcherPremium.com slash Freakonomics. Use the promo code Freakonomics. We can also be found on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or via email at radio at Freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening.