Freakonomics Radio - "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" on the topic of Rivalry

Episode Date: June 20, 2017

Steve Levitt, Scott Turow and Bridget Gainer are panelists. For the "Freakonomics" co-author, the attorney and novelist, and the Cook County commissioner it's "game on!" as they tackle competition of all kinds: athletic, sexual, geopolitical, and the little-known battle between butter and margarine that landed in the Supreme Court. WBEZ's Tricia Bobeda, co-host of the "Nerdette" podcast, is fact-checker.

Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner with a bonus episode of our other live podcast, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. And it features my Freakonomics friend and yours, Steve Levitt. We recorded this one live in Chicago along with Scott Turow and Bridget Gaynor. The theme is rivalry. Hope you enjoy. You can subscribe to Tell Me Something I Don't Know wherever you get Freakonomics radio. And if you want to tell me something I don't know now, it's as easy as getting on the phone with me to sign up. Just visit TMSIDK.com and click be on the show. Thanks for listening.

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. Because I want you to tell me something I don't know. Hi, this is Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I want to welcome you all to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Alrighty, thank you, Mr. Mayor. You probably do know that Chicago is home to many great rivalries, from our baseball teams to our pizza places to our politics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know all that. Tell us something we don't know.

You might not know about the rivalry between two great Chicago blues legends, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. I did not know that. When Howlin' Wolf first came to Chicago, Muddy Waters gave him a place to stay. But that friendship quickly turned into a rivalry. The two legends competed for the same shows, the same songs, and the same band members. Muddy Waters stole Wolf's guitarist,

and Wolf stole Waters' sax player right back. And when they were playing the same club on the same night, Howlin' Wolf would extend his set to try to minimize Muddy Waters' time on stage. And by most accounts, the two had a love-hate relationship, and their rivalry sharpened their talents into change music history in the process. Welcome to Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

I'm Stephen Dubner. Thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for the warm Chicago welcome and for helping us introduce the theme of tonight's show, Rivalry. Tell me something I don't know is live journalism wrapped in a game show. To talk about Rivalry tonight, we have got a gold star panel. Would you please welcome the University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt, Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gaynor, and the lawyer and author Scott Turow. Let's begin with my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt. Levitt, here's what we know about you so far.

We know you are an award-winning economist who loves to play golf, bet on horses, and eat fast food. We know your father, a medical researcher who studied intestinal gas, is known as the king of farts. And that your mom is a psychic novelist who channels stories from the heavens. So Steve Leavitt, tell us something we don't know about you, please. Well, Dubner, it's great to be here. In the theme of rivalry, it reminded me of when I was 10 years old. I was on a baseball team that actually came from behind to win in the last inning the city championship in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And all of my other teammates poured out onto the field to celebrate, and I sat on the bench and just watched them, and my dad was so

humiliated by what had happened that he banned me from any kind of team sports for the foreseeable future, and luckily he introduced me to golf, which was one of the best things that ever happened. Excellent. Levitt, very, very happy to have you here tonight. Our next panelist, Bridget Gaynor. What do we know about you? We know that as a Cook County Commissioner, you fought for sunshine laws, job training, and a better way to auction off vacant land and buildings in Chicago. We know you grew up on the South Side, but you started your career in New York as a community organizer. And then back in Chicago, you worked in City Hall and the Park District before becoming commissioner.

So Bridget Gaynor, keeping in mind tonight's theme, rivalry, tell us something we don't know about you. I'm the oldest of six, and I have four sisters. And so we had an intense rivalry. My second sister was the much better clothes buyer. So my other sisters and I would come up with elaborate schemes, but the best was when I started about three and a half months before I went away to school,

starting to ferret away her clothes to various friends because I knew she'd be checking my bags. And so like any kind of art of war, you need to be planning far, far in advance. So that has taught me all the things I know about politics today. Very good. Thank you, Bridget. And finally, Scott Turow, we know you as the prototype of the lawyer novelist whose books include Presumed Innocent and most recently Testimony.

We know you're also a Chicago native, that your mom inspired you to be a novelist, and that your dad was an OBGYN who delivered roughly half the other kids at your school. We know you still practice law, that you're a former president of the Authors Guild, and congratulations are in order. You are a lifelong Cubs fan, I believe. Only took a lifetime. So, Scott Turow, tell us something we don't know about you, please. Right after I graduated from law school,

I came to work in the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Chicago and was lucky enough to be assigned as the junior prosecutor to the prosecution of William J. Scott, who was the attorney general of this state. And among Bill Scott's lawyers was Vince Bugliosi. And Vince was really a great trial lawyer, but also an author. He had written a book called Helter Skelter, and the book was about Charlie Manson. Years later, I, of course, published Presumed Innocent. So this trial represents, so far as I know, the only time that two lawyers who both wrote number one New York Times bestsellers had ever tried a case against each other. I did not know that. That's pretty awesome. Scott Turow, Bridget Gaynor,

Steve Levitt, so happy all of you are here to play Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Here's how it works. Guests from the audience will come on stage and try to impress you with their IDKs or I don't knows. You're free to tell them what you think, ask them anything you'd like. Once you've heard them all, you'll pick a winner based on three simple criteria. Number one, did they tell you something you truly did not know? Number two, was it worth knowing? And number three, was it demonstrably true? To help with that demonstrably true part, would you please welcome our real-time fact checker, Trisha Bobita. Trisha is a journalist, senior editor of Digital at the great public radio station WBEZ. Co-host of the Nerdette podcast.

Trisha, you ready to make sure our IDKs are indeed factual? Absolutely. On the Nerdette podcast, we talk to people about their obsessions. And if there's one other thing that I can always count on nerds to love, it's facts and correcting people who are wrong. All right, Trisha, very happy to have you here. It's time to play. Tell me something I don't know. Tonight's theme, remember, rivalry. Would you please welcome our first contestant, Paula Carter. Paula, so nice to have you. Tell us a bit about yourself. I am a writer, an editor, and author of the forthcoming memoir, No Relation. Okay, Paula, I'm ready. So are our panelists, Steve Levitt, Bridget Gaynor, and Scott Turow. So what do you know that's worth knowing that you think we don't know? Okay. For what common product besides alcohol was there once moonshiners?

Is it something you would eat or drink or something completely different? Something you'd eat or drink. Yep. And could people go to jail for making this? Some did. And is it popular in the places where moonshining was popular still? I'd say it's more broad than that. Was this an American phenomenon or pre-American? It's all across the world, but this did happen here in the U.S. Is it legal today or something that's...

It is legal today, and it's common today. And like moonshine, I thought, got its name because, you know, you drink it and you're in a twilight world. Is this similarly, if not intoxicating, does it have some knockout effect? Depends on who you talk to. You're not, you have no desire to give in, do you, Paula? All right, Paula, why don't you tell

us the story? What's this product that, like alcohol, once had an equivalent of moonshine? It's actually margarine. So in the early 20th century, the government so highly regulated a new product called margarine that it prompted the rise of margarine moonshiners who made it and sold it illegally on the sly. So margarine was first developed by a French chemist in 1869, and almost immediately the dairy industry panicked. There were vicious battles in Congress over margarine.

A Wisconsin senator called it a monstrous product of greed and hypocrisy. Eventually, the dairy lobby successfully pushed through laws to restrict its sale. The substance was heavily taxed, and stores and restaurants had to be licensed to sell it, hence the moonshiners. The government also made it illegal for margarine to be dyed yellow, thereby making it less appealing. Wisconsin, where milk is the official state beverage, was the last to cave and allow for the sale of pre-dyed yellow margarine in 1967. However, margarine had some advantages that kept it in the fight. It was much cheaper than butter, and so during hard times like World War II, sales went up. Then in the 1950s, health concerns over eating animal fats made margarine the healthy choice. Margarine manufacturers

invested in major advertising campaigns to publicize that claim. And I think we actually have a clip of Eleanor Roosevelt in an ad for margarine. Years ago, most people never dreamed of eating margarine, but times have changed. Nowadays, you can get a margarine like the new good luck, which really tastes delicious. It was that commercial that led to the idea of continuing the president's pension for the benefit of his widow. So margarine was more popular than butter from 1960 to 2000,

but now in the new millennium, the pendulum has swung back, and butter is back in favor. Panelists, does this surprise you? Does it intrigue you? It surprises me, but I do believe it because my mother was growing up in World War II, and only margarine was available. And to this day, she will not let anyone bring margarine into her house because she associates it with being poor,

and she thinks butter is the only classy way to go. I feel about margarine like I feel about Miracle Whip, which is, it's associated with my childhood, and then when I left and got a job and could do my own thing, I could never buy it again. Was part of the appeal of margarine that it was less perishable? Or what, I assume it's less perishable? It's made of, what, sawdust and oil or something?

So that was a big problem in the early 20th century. People didn't really know what it was made of. They thought it was made of, like, cats and arsenic. There's a cartoon of those things being thrown into a vat from the Chicago Tribune. And was that kind of campaign done by Big Milk against, I mean? Right, exactly. So the dairy lobby was vicious.

They even, for a while, made it mandatory in some states for margarine to be dyed pink and black, like really obscene colors. Bright orange. But the truth is margarine is actually 80% fat, 20% water, and it just uses different kinds of fats. Before we finish up, let's check in with our fact checker, Tricia Bobita. How legit is this, Tricia, the rivalry between margarine and butter? Oh, this checks out.

And it's worth noting that not only did the pink laws exist, but they were overturned by the Supreme Court. So Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota passed laws saying that margarine must be dyed pink, and they said you can't force people to change the color of food. And then, you know, you can go down a pretty good internet rabbit hole if you also want to try to figure out what the natural color of Cheez Whiz is. Thank you, Tricia, and thank you, Paula Carter, for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great job. Would you please welcome our next contestant, Joe Cobbs.

Hey, Joe, who are you? What do you do? I am a sports business professor at Northern Kentucky University, just south of Cincinnati, where I teach classes on international rivalries in sports and moneyball sports economics. All right, Joe, what do you have for us tonight? So I also operate the sports data website called norivalry.com. That's K-N-O-W, rivalry.com. And through the website, we've interviewed thousands of sports fans across college football

and the four major professional leagues here in North America. And we ask those fans what their favorite team is, and then we give them 100 rivalry points, which they can allocate over any of that team's opponents. So if they were to choose the Cubs, they could allocate 60 to the Cardinals and 20 to the Reds and 20 to the White Sox or however they want to allocate it. We then compute a difference score between two opponents to make a list of the most unbalanced rivalries in sports. So my question is, what is the most unbalanced rivalry in sports? So this means the fiercest antagonism? The most unbalanced. So we're subtracting the two opponent scores. Meaning I hate your team and you don't care at all about my team. That's correct. So one team allocates a lot of

their 100 points. I'm a stalker, and I'm ignoring you. So North American, has this happened? So this is a game that's played in both the U.S. and Canada? It's played primarily in the U.S. So your universe of sports fans are, you said, the four major leagues. And college football. Baseball, basketball. Hockey.

Hockey and, of course, major league soccer being the four. The NFL. NFL, sorry, NFL. And then college football. College football. So does one of these teams have anything to do with a very large city in New York State? Because they don't really seem to care about anything that happens anywhere else. Good question, but no. Oh, wow.

I'm guessing it's college football. That's correct. Because college football, there are just teams who are really good for really long, and they don't need to be bothered by other teams. That's fair. So let it knock down the door. Now you guys just got to walk through it. Scott and Bridget, are you big college football fans?

Yeah. I'm guessing it must have to do with Notre Dame, because everybody hates Notre Dame, right? You're getting pretty warm now. Oh, wow. So is Notre Dame half the equation you're looking for? Yes, it is. Is the other half of the equation on the West Coast?

No. Is it also in the state of Indiana? No. And we're assuming that Notre Dame is the hated but not the hater. That's correct. That is a safe assumption, yes. Do you want me to give you another hint? Sure.

So it is East Coast team, and there is a religious element to the rivalry. Jewish Theological Seminary. That's correct. So it must be Boston College. There you go. Boston College. Very well done. Notre Dame and Boston College.

That was really impressive. Notre Dame, Boston College. Okay, Joe, tell us a bit more. This is such an interesting idea. Sure, so Boston College fans will allocate, on average, 74 of their 100 rivalry points to Notre Dame. But Notre Dame reciprocates with a measly two points of their 100.

Hence, you get a difference of 72 points, which is a pretty big spread when the maximum is 100. I'm surprised they even know Boston College exists. Well, one of the interesting things about this rivalry is it even has a name, the Holy War. Which apparently Notre Dame fans don't care about at all. And we've identified 11 primary factors that contribute to rivalries around the country in multiple different sports. And typically when you have an unbalanced rivalry like this one is, the biggest contributing factor is relative dominance, meaning that one team dominates the other team on the field.

But in this case, for this one, it's pretty close. So Notre Dame has won 13 of the 23, so Boston College has won 10. But yet it's still important to understand these unbalanced rivalries because with all the money involved in sports today, you have TV networks and sponsors and leagues and conferences. And so they're trying to maximize fan engagement. And so that's where understanding the intensities of these rivalries becomes important. And then from a fan perspective, there is nothing worse than being hated except for being ignored by your rival. Trisha, unbalanced sports rivalries.

What more can you tell us? I think it checks out, and I want to do a little survey here in the room. Who, by applause, considers themselves a Cubs fan? White Sox? Who considers themselves a fan of both? Yeah, see, you're doing it wrong. That's not how rivalries work, guys.

You're not getting the points. You have to pick a side. And here's kind of a fun fact about Chicago sports rivalries, is that when the Cubs won, former President Obama, who is a diehard White Sox fan, pleaded with his speechwriters to please, please, please not put any jabs at his beloved White Sox in his congratulatory speech to the Cubs. Good stuff, Tricia.

Joe, thank you so much for telling us something we did not know. Appreciate it. All right, let's welcome our next contestant, Steve Pruitt-Jones. Hi, Steve. What do you do? I'm a biology professor at the University of Chicago. What do you have for us tonight, Steve? So some background. Across the animal kingdom, males exhibit an incredible variety of strategies to attract and obtain mates.

One of these strategies can actually be acting like a female. So my question is, why would males behaving like females ever be a successful reproductive strategy? Were they like loading the dishwasher? Were they doing other things that are useful? What was the female activity that they would exhibit? Well, so female mimic, female mimicry can be morphological and males can actually look like females, but it's mostly behavioral. So displaying female orientated display behavior. Did they, did they use their femaleness to hurt other male rivals? They don't use their femaleness to hurt males. I'm sensing a little tension in that question. At the end of the interaction, the males are psychologically hurt,

but not physically hurt. That is a human metaphor. I'm just wondering, is there a name for this effect? Like, is it the Tootsie effect? There are names for the males that do this, and I'll mention that in a second. Is the behavior successful? Do they tend to attract mates at an equal or greater rate? It is certainly successful. Whether or not it's more successful than being a normal male and acting like a normal male is something that people like me spend their lives trying to study and quantify. But do they get the mate they want? They get mates.

Is the mate they want a woman or is the mate they want just another mate? No, they're trying to mate with a female. Are the males who are pretending to be females males who would be unlikely to have mates if they went the usual road? That is correct. You're good. Is there a physiological difference, however? So Levitt was asking if they needed to do this, essentially. They do need to do it because they also tend to be smaller and they look like females. They cannot obtain mates the normal way, so to speak.

Is it that the females have already gone the male route and then they're like, I'm going to change my mind? I think they're fooled just as much as the normal male is fooled. I think we should stop now before it gets dangerous. So Steve, why don't you tell us why do some male animals imitate females? So female mimicry is a specific type of what we call sexual mimicry, and sexual mimicry is most common in fishes. So for example, in the common bluegill sunfish, in that species, large territorial males can aggressively exclude other males from the mating site where females lay eggs. But small males have another strategy. They act

like a female, and that allows them to follow the real females into the mating arena while the large male is displaying. As soon as a female lays her eggs, the male swims in, fertilizes the eggs, and then leaves immediately before the large male knows what's happened. So when you say have sex... Yes, we're talking about a fish in which fertilization is external. So there are many same-sex partnerships in non-human species, but those usually don't lead to reproduction. But something very surprising, knowing how nerdy academics are, these small males that sneak in are actually known in scientific publications as sneaky fuckers. And if you fact-check that, please put in fishes after those two words.

I've got to take off my safe search. But again, this is just one type of what we call sexual mimicry. And so there are many cases in insects and birds and mammals in which males mimic females, females will mimic males. And it even can occur between plants and insects. For example, there are plants where the plant imitates the coloration of the female of its pollinator. And the male bee comes in thinking he's going to get sex, but he's only providing the opportunity for the plant to get sex.

So he leaves frustrated. And then there are many species of marine fishes in which individuals actually change sex, going from male to female or female to male. Tricia, I don't know quite what to call it. I'm going to call it sex-swapping fish for now, just to be on the safe side. What do you say about that?

I say you should all Google sneaky fucker fish as a phrase. And then you should know that this is not uncommon in nature. This checks out, and it's also, as was maybe alluded to, a tactic some human males use, but it may backfire and they may end up in what is scientifically known as the friend zone. Very good. Steve Pruitt-Jones, thanks so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great job. It is time now for a quick break. When we return, more contestants will make our

panelists tell us something we don't know. If you would like to be a contestant on a future show or attend one of our upcoming shows in New York City in June, please visit TMSIDK.com. You can follow us on social media at TMSIDK underscore show. We will be right back. Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our panelists tonight, Steve Levitt, Bridget Gaynor, Scott Turow, and our theme, you'll recall, is rivalry. To that end, earlier tonight, we asked our live audience here in Chicago a simple question. What's the most intense rivalry, sports, business, family, whatever, that you have ever experienced?

So panelists, I'd love each of you to read one of the replies. Levitt, you first. What do you have? I have one I love here from Shannon K. I was in the Navy for 10 years, and the biggest rivalry experience has been when two different U.S. naval ships pull into the same port. There will be literal street fights and pub brawls. It's amazing.

Bridget Gaynor, what do you have? So I have something from Sean M. who says, I kind of want to sing this, but my father versus technology, and technology always wins. Always. Very nice. Scott Turow, what do you have there? So this is from Jose O, and I relate to this one personally.

Jose says, the most intense rivalry is the one I have with my wife for my dog's affection. While she admittedly does everything for him, guess who gives him treats? Needless to say, if you for him, guess who gives him treats? Needless to say, if you ask him, I always win.

All right, time to get back to the game. Would you please welcome our next contestant via Skype, Neil Agarwal. Hey, Neil, where are you calling in from and what do you do there? I'm calling you from New York and I'm a cultural psychiatrist and assistant professor at Columbia University and author of several books about the war on terror. All right. Terrorism sounds like a good fit for our rivalry theme tonight. What do you have for us, Neil? So the Islamic State and the Taliban are both Sunni militant groups jockeying for control over the Middle East. The Taliban formed in the 1990s after the Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan. The Islamic State formed in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When did the public rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State start?

When did the public rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State begin? Panelists, did this relate to a single historic event? Yes. Did the first public airing of the rivalry happen mostly in the U.S. or in the Middle East? In Afghanistan. And was it the US's fault? No, surprisingly. And Neil, is this what you study? Is the rivalry between groups like this? Or is this a subset of what you're after? This belongs to other work that I've been doing on the Taliban in the Islamic State. Does this rivalry, how does it play itself out today? Oh, it's pretty intense because they fight over control for territory in Afghanistan

and militants keep switching sides. So were they agnostic towards each other before the public rivalry or was there an alliance? They were mutually suspicious of each other, but there was one particular event that blew out the public rivalry into the open. Was it economic? That's a great question. No, it wasn't. Did it have to do with sports? Was Notre Dame and Boston College playing in Afghanistan? It is called the Holy War, that rivalry.

That's a no, Neil? That's a no, then? No, that is a no. All right, Neil, why don't you tell us then when, and I guess more important, why and how the rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State began? So in 2015, the Taliban announced the death of its former leader, Mullah Omar, which prompted the Islamic State to go on social media with its claim to lead all Muslims worldwide. In the wake of this rivalry, both groups started to use messaging about unity to promote their causes in the Muslim world. The Islamic State's claim to unity is that its caliph descends from the Prophet Muhammad. Their recruitment and PR efforts are mostly through

periodicals and videos. The Taliban and Prince periodicals has countered that jihadists have always fought united behind them and that to divide Muslims now risks killing civilians. Americans should exploit this robbery for our own counter-messaging. In the past, counter-messaging hasn't achieved the right cultural understanding, rendering it ineffective. For example, our State Department once insinuated that it would kill recruits to the Islamic State, which many of its supporters mocked for promising them martyrdom. Going forward, American efforts should highlight Muslim scholars who dispute the Islamic State's claims of a caliph and the fact that the Taliban is killing Muslim civilians at record levels. And we should pay more attention to proper distribution channels so those messages are

being heard. What are proper distribution channels in that part of the world? Social media. So there's even fake news in the Middle East. It's everywhere. More than you can ever believe. Neil, do you consult with the U.S. government? I have not had the pleasure. I have written a book called The Taliban's Virtual Emirate that looks exactly at its writings in four different languages, in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English. And I can tell you that although we might consider fake news, that they have a pretty

crystallized worldview and perspective for how they conduct their messaging. Levitt, you've done a good bit of research in terrorism and detecting terrorists, very different question than Neil's looking at. But does anything come to mind to you for exploiting this rivalry from the perspective of, let's say, the States? Yeah, I mean, it seems like Neil has a lot of great ideas already. I did have the privilege of working a little bit with the U.S. government, and I was actually surprised, Neil, at how much of the military effort was not about guns, but about winning hearts and minds. Do you think we did a bad job of that in general, despite a big effort?

I think so. I can tell you that, for example, when I look at the Taliban's work, they are writing songs that are pretty catchy with great rhythms and alliteration. They've got some pretty famous local performers. And I wonder why we don't have people like Jay-Z and Beyonce helping to amp our message out as a way of counter-messaging. I'm curious if there are any, I guess, parallels in the States or elsewhere with, let's say, rival drug gangs, criminal gangs, and smart exploitation

of said rivalry? You know, one of the things that I think we all see as people who live in Chicago is that so much of the violence that we see in certain communities is being driven by social media far more than easy access to guns or even the drug trade. And it's the exact same things that we've just spoken about, which is the kind of public one-upping and the idea that someone whose whole kind of value proposition is around being the toughest and having power and control, now the social media just kind of disintermediates it across the entire city, and that drives it. So related to what Bridget has said, I've been working on this problem of violence in Chicago, and I made a proposal to some policymakers, which they have not yet accepted.

But I actually think one of the best approaches we could have to reducing violence in Chicago would be to have a massive media campaign, which the message is, real men fight. And I think we could put up boxing rings around Chicago and use social media. And so basically change the culture so that instead of shooting each other, we actually let these guys get into the ring and beat each other up. And so, so far I haven't had luck convincing the public policymakers that we should be encouraging men to fight. Let's go to our fact checker, Tricia Bobita. What more can you tell us? So this all checks out, and it seems that ISIS thinks the Taliban is thinking too small

and being a more nationalist movement instead of having global ambitions. And the Taliban's been fighting for so much longer that they're sort of miffed that they don't get credit where it's due in their eyes. And also, if you Google Taliban songs, the first artist who pops up is Toby Keith, who I don't think is going to help us out. Excellent. Neil Agarwal, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

Well done. Would you please welcome our final contestant, CeCe Du Bois. Hey, Cece, what do you do? So I am a doctoral candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University. Excellent. The floor is yours. Current statistics show a startling lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms. Soft affirmative action, which is a type of policy that's designed to change the composition of the candidate pool rather than the criteria used during the hiring process, is a potential policy response. What organization created and implemented a soft affirmative action policy that's being copied by the likes of

Facebook and the U.S. Congress. So when you say change the candidate pool, does that mean you change who gets referred into it? So in this case, the soft affirmative action policy was geared towards changing up race and ethnicity. But that could be gender. It could be whatever specific demographic is focused on. Does this organization have anything to do with the U.S. government? No. Does it have anything to do with any of the professions or vocations any of our panelists are involved in? Law, government, academia? It does not.

Does it have to do with sports? It does. Bridget Gaynor. So when you say changing the candidate pool, what you mean is you don't just necessarily get to pick who you want to interview, that diverse candidates are in front of every single person who's in a hiring decision. Yes. So there's a rule that requires, in this case, each entity that's doing hiring to make sure that their candidate pool is composed to meet certain standards. Oh, I think it's the NFL that established a rule that for head coaching vacancies, there has to be an interview of minority candidates. I think it's called the Rooney Rule. That is correct.

Very well done. Yeah. minority candidates. I think it's called the Rooney Rule. That is correct. Very well done, yeah. So in 2003, the Rooney Rule was adopted by the National Football League, and what the Rooney Rule does is it requires every franchise that has a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one minority candidate. So all they have to do is prove to the league office that they've interviewed a minority candidate, but they have the same hiring criteria for minority and non-minority candidates. But my question is, how is the Congress employing this? Number one, Congress isn't required to publish any of their diversity statistics, but organizations that have looked at this and sort

of did some investigations recognize that a vast majority, almost all of congressional staff, are non-minority candidates. And so when Senator Chuck Schumer recently came to this knowledge, he encouraged all Democrats to implement the Rooney Rule for their hiring. Just to go back to what the Rooney Rule was like in the NFL, I was interested in whether or not it actually had an impact on the probability that a minority filled a head coaching vacancy in the NFL. There's a noticeable jump right after the Rooney Rule is passed in the share of NFL franchises that employ a minority head coach. But we should be concerned that there might be something, whether that be social, cultural, or institutional, that incurred

contemporaneous to the Rooney rule that could be causing this impact to happen. I find that a minority is 20% more likely to fill a head coaching vacancy in the post-Rooney era than the pre-Rooney era, even taking into account the general positive hiring trends towards hiring minorities. One of the side effects is that the winning percentages of minority head coaches drop precipitously after the passage of the Rooney rule. Beforehand, you needed to be a really high-achieving minority in order to even be considered, whereas in the post-Rooney era, the difference between minority and non-minority head coaching performance is not even significant. That's great research, Cece. I'd have to say you're an honorary free economist for sure.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Should we note that the Rooney Rule comes from the organization, which happens to be the organization that I've supported my entire life, and which has won more Super Bowls than any other organization on earth, and therefore has no rivals, really. Trisha Bobita, so CeCe's been telling us about a really interesting series of events concerning a rivalry for, if you think about it, these very, very few rare and precious head coaching jobs in the NFL, right? Really high profile, high impact.

What more can you tell us, Trisha? So this checks out, and I think it's interesting also to compare some recent stats, because right now about 72% of NFL head coaches are white, but that's leading a league where about 70% of the players are not. Also, there's never been a female head coach in the NFL, probably, obviously, but for the first time in 2016, the Buffalo Bills hired the league's first full-time female coach. Her name is Catherine Smith. She coaches quality control special teams. And I have no idea what those words mean together.

Nicely done. Trisha and Cece, thanks so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great job. Can we please give one more hand to all our contestants tonight? That was fantastic. It is time now for the panelists to pick a winner. Who told you something you truly did not know, something that's worth knowing and true?

The panelists will use a ranked voting system. The contestant with the highest overall ranking will be tonight's winner, and will join us back on stage later. All right then, who will it be? CeCe Du Bois with the Rooney Rule, Neil Agarwal with Taliban versus Islamic State, Steve Pruitt-Jones with Sexy Time for Gender Bending Fish, Joe Cobbs with Lopsided Sports R rivalries, or Paula Carter with butter versus margarine. While the votes are being cast, let me ask you a favor. If you enjoy Tell Me Something I Don't Know,

please spread the word and give it a nice rating on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, and thanks. All right, the panelist votes are in. Once again, thanks so much to all our contestants. Sadly, only one of you can be a winner, but we do have for each of you this certificate of impressive knowledge suitable for framing.

And tonight's winner, with his IDK called Sexy Time for Gender-Bending Fish, Steve Pruitt-Jones. Congratulations. Steve, you'll come back on stage later called Sexy Time for Gender-Bending Fish. Steve Pruitt-Jones, congratulations. Steve, you'll come back on stage later to face one of our panelists in the final round of Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Which one? We'll find out right after this break.

Welcome back. It is time for our panelists, Steve Levitt, Bridget Gaynor, and Scott Turow, to answer some lightning round questions written especially for them. Steve Levitt, the economist behind Freakonomics, will start with you. Freakonomics is to economics as blank is to blank. I would say Freakonomics is to economics as sneaky fuckers are to bluegills. Oh, nice. Levitt, would you rather win the Nobel Prize for Economics or make the PGA Senior Tour?

Make the PGA Senior Tour. Levitt, what are your three favorite restaurants or chains in the world? Well, Dairy Queen, for sure. Chipotle and Wendy's. Uh-huh. What's the best idea you've ever had? Letting the New York Times let you interview me

because so many fun things have happened since then, writing free canopics and everything. That's the best thing that ever happened to me. That's sweet. Worst idea you've ever had? And it cannot be the same answer as the best idea. So when I was in high school, I went with a friend named James Templeton, and we had BB guns, and we were near the Mississippi River,

and we decided it would be fun to shoot into the ice and see how many shots it would take to break the ice. And only after we broke the ice did I realize I was actually standing over the Mississippi River and fell into the frozen Mississippi River and was very lucky not to die. Yeah. All right.

If, Levitt, you had the power to unilaterally invoke one economic policy, what would it be? I think the flat tax. If we just had a flat tax with no loopholes or deductions, I would like to see that. Levitt, did your king of farts father ever use his kids as research subjects? So he didn't in his very narrow area of specialty, but I do remember once he asked me

if I would go and round up all my friends, and he would pay anyone who would let him draw blood from them $10. So all my friends lined up without any consent of any kind from any parents, and he just drew the blood one after another. What could go wrong? All right, and Levitt, finally, Chicago is the most blank city in the world.

Man, I don't think Chicago is the most anything in the world. It's the second most of lots of things, but I don't think it's the most of anything. Steve Levitt, nicely done, except for the last one, maybe. Great job. Steve, I thought you were a sure winner until that last dance. Look, I don't want to win. I do not want to have to compete against the other Steve up there head to head. No way. I like that Levitt's already strategizing, but this is super smart because he's either throwing the contest or pretending to throw it. Nicely done, Steve Levitt. Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gain, are you ready?

Yeah. All right. How many county commissioners are there and what are they? There are 17. Yeah. And there are four Republicans and 13 Democrats. Yeah. So it's two parts.

The first is kind of like a board of directors budget. And then the county oversees the public health system, hospital and criminal justice system and all the real estate functions. And so there's been a lot of work on criminal justice reform. Bridget, we're told that in elementary school, you ran for class president with the slogan, don't be a loser, vote for gainer. I did. How'd that work out? Well,

it's still going well, but it worked out well at the time too. You're a Dem. Who's your favorite Republican? Okay. I think I would say Ford. Really? Yeah. Because you know what? I think that we underestimate the enormous amount of pressure he was under and he kind of took the high road and I think really suffered for it. Whether it was a combination of kind of playing the long game and putting other people before yourself. And I think that we could use a little bit of that now. What a good answer. Interesting answer. Bridget Gaynor, when are you going to announce your mayoral campaign? Well, if I do, I'm going to come back on the show

and do the lightning round. Okay, very good. We've got some essential Chicago dilemmas that you'll have to navigate. So quickly, Cubs or Sox? Sox. Yeah. Deep Dish or Thin Crust?

Deep Dish. Al's or Johnny's? Al's. John Belushi or Bill Murray? Oof. Yeah, I'm going to stick with Belushi. Belushi. True or false, the four stars on Chicago's flag stand for sausage, buying votes, Ferris

Bueller, and sausage? No, no, no, no. All right. What do they stand for sausage, buying votes, Ferris Bueller, and sausage? No, no, no, no. All right, what do they stand for? The fourth year born. Good. Oh, Christ. Oh, the fire. Fire, nice, yeah.

Oh, the World's Fair, nice. Yeah, World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and similarly in 1933. Right, the other one. Yeah, the Century of Progress Exposition of 1893 and similarly in 1933. The, right, the other one. Yeah, the Century of Progress Exposition. Right, the other one. Finally, President Trump has had some unkind words for Chicago. If you could take him on a private tour, what would you show him?

Great question. I would start downtown and I would drive south and I would go through Chinatown and then I would go through Bridgeport and Canaryville and I would work my way all the way down and just when you have someone in a car, maybe you talk some sense into them. So maybe that's it. I'd take a long ride.

Bridget Gaynor, thank you so much. Great job. And on now to our final panelist. as Time Magazine once called him the bard of the litigious age, Scott Turow. All right, here we go, Scott. Why did the Cubs wait so long to win a World Series? Just to keep us all in suspense. We get the whole write what you know thing, but if you were going to write about a profession other than lawyers, what would it be? Professional wrestlers. Really? Come on. Same thing. I mean, is it real? How much is real? Do they get hurt faking it? You know. All right. What's the best TV show ever about lawyers? I would take Hill Street Blues. Scott, who's your biggest literary rival, or do you, like most writers, have nothing

but warm feelings for your fellow writers? I do have warm feelings for my fellow writers, but I am frequently confused with John Grisham, so much so that when I was recently somehow an answer to a question on Jeopardy!, the contestant, of course, guest John Grisham. Scott, I understand you read at least three newspapers every morning. Why bother? Well, it's actually a study of journalism to see how they contradict each other. You served as chairman of the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission, having been appointed by Governor George Ryan, who was later convicted of federal corruption charges. Tell us more about that, please. Actually, your extraordinary fact checkers have got this one wrong.

I was the first ethics pick of Rod Blagojevich. Oh, yeah. You're right. That totally changes the picture, yeah. And finally, Scott Turow, you've claimed you can take a call from a client in the middle of writing a sentence and then finish the sentence after the call. Do you bill the client for the second half of the sentence?

Only if they haven't been nice. All right. Nicely done, Scott Turow. It is time now for our live audience to pick one panelist based on their lightning round who will face our contestant winner in the final round of Tell Me Something I Don't Know. So who will it be?

Steve Levitt, Bridget Gaynor, or Scott Turow? Audience, would you please take out your phones and follow the texting instructions on the screen? Okay, the audience votes have been tallied, and our panelist winner tonight, Steve Levitt. Nicely done. Well, we have the battle of the University of Chicago, the battle of the Steves. Please welcome back to the stage now to compete against Levitt, Steve Pruitt-Jones. Our final round, ladies and gentlemen, is very simple. In a moment, we will reveal a topic

related somehow to tonight's theme, rivalry. Steve and Steve, you'll then each have a minute to tell us something we don't know about that topic. No Googling, no audience help, just your own big University of Chicago brains to rely on. In case you're tempted to make something up, remember Trisha Bobita, our fact checker, is standing by. All right, what then is our final topic?

Well, some of the greatest rivalries, of course, are between nations. And one of the greatest of the greatest is the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia. And before that, the Soviet Union. That's our final topic tonight. Tell us something we don't know about Russia or the Soviet Union. Use your imagination, and good luck. We'll give you a minute. Now, while our finalists are thinking, let me remind you to visit TMSIDK.com to get tickets to upcoming shows, or even better, sign up to be a contestant also at tmsidk.com.

Okay, Steve Levitt, Steve Pruitt-Jones, it's time you will tell us something we don't know about Russia or the Soviet Union. Levitt, you first. What do you got? So this is really embarrassing because the fact I'm about to give you, I taught it to my undergraduates two days ago, and as I taught it to them, I was almost certain it was false. The first communist revolution took place in Russia

with the Bolsheviks taking over in 1913, and according to the academic paper that I was teaching to my students, factory production, crop production, many other things, fell between 1913 and 1921 by between 60 and 90 percent in just those eight years of the initial amazing social experiment with communism. And I used that with my students as a celebration of how great capitalism and the markets are. Interesting. All right, Steve Leavitt, nicely done. Steve Pruitt-Jones, what do you have for us? Well, during the Cold War, there was, of course, intense rivalries between the USA and the USSR,

and one of the offices at the USSR had a specific task of coming up with embarrassing names for politicians in the United States. I can't remember all of the names of the various politicians, but the best one was for Ronald Reagan, and his nickname was Banana Cowboy. All right. Before we put this to an audience vote,

Tricia, I know you haven't had much time, but is there anything you can tell us about the collapse in the Russian economy post-revolution or the tale of Banana Cowboy and other manufactured politicians' names? As a journalist, it pains me to say that my first source currently is still Wikipedia on this, but the Russian famine, it is said, of 1921 and 1922 had economic disturbance as a cause, so that generally checks out. And when you Google Ronald Reagan, Banana Cowboy,

it looks like this may be true or may have been something from actually another public radio game show. It's the first search result. And my favorite fun fact about Russia, if I may, is that beer was not considered alcohol, but classified if it was under 10% as just food until like 2011. Oh, thank you so much, Tricia. It's time now for our live audience to pick a winner. This time, we'll go by simple throat vote, and we'll measure it with our applause-o-meter right here. Remember the criteria?

Was it something you didn't know? Was it something that's worth knowing? And was it demonstrably true? Okay, first, make some noise, please, for Steve Levitt. And now, Professor Steve Pruitt-Jones. Weighing in at 97 decibels, our champion tonight, Steve Pruitt-Jones. Congratulations. Now, so Steve Pruitt-Jones, what can we possibly give you as a prize to reward you for this astonishing performance tonight? Well, we've got something special. This is a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. First, before we tell you what the prize is,

we need you to tell us about the greatest rival or rivalry you've ever had, a person that you've really tangled with. I've never really had any sort of negative rivalries, but I have lots of positive professional rivalries with all of my past students. Do some of them ever get a little bit too accomplished for their own good, though? They do, as a matter of fact. Is there one, maybe, that comes to mind that's particularly...

There are a couple of them whose positions I wish I had. Do you want to give us the initials, let's say, of the one with the position that you most wish you had? Just the initials. Her first name is Doctor. All right. Well, here's your prize. Our panelist, Steve Levitt, has agreed to personally call this person and tell her that you won Tell Me Something I Don't Know tonight and rub it in. Well, that is our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you did not know about rivalry.

Thanks to our panelists Steve Levitt, Bridget Gaynor, and Scott Turow. To our fact checker, Tricia Bobita. To our awesome contestants, and thanks especially to you for coming to play Tell Me Something. I don't know. On our next episode, we're back in Washington, D.C.

with our take on It's Number One industry. We're calling that episode Politickling. And our panelists are the CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook, and Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petrie. Wait, so when I call 911, I should be like, send me the most jovial firefighter you have. That's next time on Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

Tell Me Something I Don't Know is produced by Dubner Productions in association with Stitcher. Our staff includes Allison Hockenberry, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins, Brian Gutierrez, Dan DeZula, and Rachel Jacobs. David Herman is our technical director. He also composed our theme music. David Herman is our technical director. He also composed our theme music. Thanks also to our good friends at Qualtrics,

whose online survey software has been so helpful in putting on this show. You can subscribe to Tell Me Something I Don't Know on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or on TMSIDK.com. You can also listen without ads by signing up for Stitcher Premium at stitcherpremium.com slash tellme. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for listening.