Transcript of Stephen Dubner Returns Again

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Dubner, and I'm joined by Steven Padman. Hello. Returning guest, one of our favorite guests. This is number three for him.

We love him.

God, we love him. We don't need any game plan.

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

I love him. He's like a polymath. He's cute and playful. Steven Dubner.

I ran into him minutes after we left. At Cara? Yeah.

He was on his way there to meet somebody.

Yes, I ran into him, and he invited me to hang out with him. Oh, he did. But I had to pass up the opportunity. Why? Because I went there to work, and I had to complete it.

Did you see his guests? Yes.

He's a producer on Freakonomics.

Oh, okay. Steven Dupner is the host of Freakonomics Radio and co-author of the Freakonomics Books, which have won many awards and sold millions of copies around the world. 2025 is the 20th anniversary of the Freakonomics Book and the 15th anniversary of Freakonomics Radio. Check out Freakonomics, the new edition drops November 11th, and his new television show, Our Early 2026, which he is non-committal about the title, but currently it's titled Better in Person. So keep your eyes peel for both one of those Steven Dubner projects. Project. Please enjoy one of our faves, Steven Dubner. This episode of Armchair Expert is presented by Apple Pay. You know, holiday shopping can be a hassle, but Apple Pay makes it so much easier. Whether you're shopping online or in-store, look for the Apple Pay button or contactless symbol at checkout. No more digging for your wallet or filling out long online checkout forms. It works at millions of places, including stores, websites, and apps. This means you can spend less time at checkout and more time finding the perfect gifts. Pay the Apple way. Terms apply.

Nice to see you. We're so happy to have you back. I'm sorry I'm late.

How are you? I'm good. Do you want or not want You can have them, of course, but I just didn't want to get them.

That's one of his endorsement deals. He actually has to wear that.

It does feel warm with him on.

I'm good. That would be so unsteven dumb. Never would have he showed up and he had all this gadgetry and shit. Sorry, I just have to. I got to take off my uncle I have glasses. It's not as bright in here as I was fearing.

This is good. Really? Thank you. Wait, is this really Rob?

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

You're living there? In like five seconds. Part of the time?

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

You spent the summer in Nashville?

We spent the entire summer in Nashville. It's on the lake.

Oh, okay. So boating. You could have an antiperspirant endorsement then. It's hot. Because it is really hot. It's hot as the '80s. You grew up South Carolina or something? Sure, then Georgia. Georgia.

Hot, hot, hot. It was a great exercise in framing the whole summer. You know when you go to Hawaii or if you go to Hawaii, have you ever been? No. Okay, but have you been down to the Caribbean? Yes. Yes, of course. It's objectively hot. But you go, Yeah, the Caribbean is hot. I love it. You just love it because you decided you love it.

It's a good attitude.

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

It's a very good point. I love that idea. I tried to do that more. It's hard, though. It is.

It's hard with mosquitoes. That's impossible to do.

It depends on the intensity of the input, how much you can affect the output. I've been trying to do more and more what you're saying, not like just take a problem and turn it into an opportunity. There are a lot of business school sayings like that that are sometimes true, and I think sometimes inspiring for some people some of the But I think we all have the ability to control our frame of mind much more than we do. Simple as that.

Can I give you one more? We live about 40 minutes outside of Nashville. And so once or twice a week, we would drive into Nashville and go hit a great restaurant. And we'd all get in the car as a family, and we drive there, and we listen to music. And about midway there on our six-time deal, I said to Chris, and I said, You know what's insane? We would never drive 45 minutes to L. A. To get something to eat. If we had to, we'd be complaining the entire way. But I'm like, This is really fun family time.

It's like Confederate money. You're playing with... It's a different currency. 45 minutes is just what we're doing.

Also, vacation mindset.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Oh, yeah. By Confederate money, I didn't mean like...

Like the Mason Dixon.

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

Okay. That had been printed during the Civil War. Apparently.

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

And some people would take it. We could We did 25 minutes on the Civil War because that actually got us to a version of... We came off of the gold and silver standard in the north. Our modern way of printing money, backed by nothing, really started during the Civil War.

Is that right? I knew nothing about it. That's when it started. Teach me more.

No, that was that.

I'm embarrassed to say this. I've never really known all that much about the US Civil War, which I feel silly about as an American who likes history well enough and medium smart person. But lately, I've been reading about it in sideways ways, and it just felt like one of those things you have to know everything about it, and you learn it in school. Then Ken Burns said this, which was a lot to absorb, and I didn't absorb it all. I absorbed the emotional highlights, maybe. Now I'm starting to see it for, wow, what it was.

My route in was the Grant biography by Chernow is insanely good.

New, right? This is in the last few months, right? No, no.

His new one is Mark Twain.

When was the Grant? Before Hamilton?

You're conflating authors.

I have not. Oh, Chernow.

Ron Chernow.

I thought Ron Chernow was Hamilton.

No, I think Hamilton- Where is- is- Perplexity AI.

We need to know. Who's the other one you like? Didn't you also write a book on a bank? Mccala. David McCala.

Mccala did Adams.

Mccullo did the Brooklyn Bridge.

Yes, the Great Bridge. That was great.

I love that book.

The Path Between Two Sees.

What's that?

That's the Panama Canal. That's the Panama Canal. The most boring and interesting books of all time, McCullo. Yeah. Okay. All right. Now, this crossed my mind as I was walking downstairs and I knew you were coming. As I was coming down the stairs, I found myself saying over and over again, Stephen Dubna. Then I wanted to ask you, do you find that people inordinately want to say your name in an English accent because it rings of Gabna. We all like to say Gabna. And so do people go, Stephen Gabna? Am I way out too far in a loom? I am. Okay.

Except my initial My response is, you're totally bonkers and wrong. No. But now that I think about it, I have this one close friend with three kids who I used to see a lot when they were little, and now they're grown and they have kids of their own. But in that family, I am known as the governor.

That's right. And do they say it in that accent?

Just be aware of it. All the time. But the fact is that I never really registered it until you gave me that. So thank you.

I was asked to myself, why am I so inclined to say Stephen Dubna?

Yeah, I too was like, what are you doing? But it does make sense.

I had to chase it down. So just clock it. And then in our next interview in three years, just tell me. You know what? You were right. People do do that to me. Wow.

Okay. We love having you here.

I want to start. I love being here. I really do. I was really looking forward to seeing you guys. I appreciate it.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

I really do.

It's always a joy.

You and Angela. I just go, oh, great. They're coming. I have nothing to do. You interview people. There's a handful of people.

I know. You're right. I mean, I look forward to them all, but I'm also scared of everyone. What do you mean? For Freak Radio, I interview, it could be between zero and eight people a week tapings, and they could run from one to two hours. But it could be an academic who's been writing on a topic for 30 years, and I've read one paper, and I have researchers. We have producers on the show who are great. They work incredibly hard, and they create for me, for every single guest, I'll have a prep of 10 to 20 pages with all kinds of excerpts, citations, et cetera. So we all do a lot of work beforehand. But if it's someone that I don't know, I have reason to think that they may be anxious, nervous.

Video makes it very interesting.

I'm trying to so ignore it.

You can't cut around it.

You can only be on us for so long.

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

Called Better in Person.

Well, maybe. We'll talk about that. We're still in search of titles. But when you learn to do something in a given medium, so I started in music. Within music, I was very comfortable. It takes a long time to get there. Then I became a writer. Twitter, within journalism or bookwriting, it takes a while. Then you get there. Podcasting, now, I've done for 15 years. It took a long time. I'm very comfortable. But every time you think about doing a new thing, I don't know about for you guys, but I feel like what should feel cumulative I've got a lot of experience. I know a lot. It's not cumulative. It's like a scratch pen, you rip it off on its blank page again. This should be served with a moist towel.

It should. It should. Maybe even a full hand towel.

Or like a face bidet. Actually, face bidet is not a bad idea.

That's a sink, Steven. We've had those for a quart of minute here. You have to use your hands and just something you could- Oh, I see. You want to spray at.

And then dry.

You could bend down and use the bidet as a face bidet. I'm not going to do that.

I'm not doing that.

I'm with you. Angela Duckworth, actually, was on an episode we once made. It was a live show we did. We had a game show for a while. The episode was called Would you eat a piece of chocolate shaped like dog poop? It was about this notion that once you think that something... He's fine with using the bidet for his face. But once you think of something in a disgusting mode, it's really hard to flip it.

Well, that power of disgust is its own. There's so much work on disgust, right? It's even what causes genocides and stuff, right? It's the number one thing that's leveraged and weaponized.

Did we know that? I mean, that makes sense when you say it. Disgust, the thing that's weird about it is it's very necessary for hygiene for not He's eating the wrong stuff. But when it becomes disgust in other people, wow. We're seeing a not low level of global disgust in other people, I would say. I don't know if we know the real level, but it feels not low.

We talked yesterday on a fact check. I just edited it, so it's fresh, about poop. Of course, we talked about how all animals eat poop except us.

Is that true? Yeah, we're very unique in this.

That's what he said. All animals eat poop?

He said that.

Was it true? Most of them do because they need to pick up each other's biome.

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

It's very, very weird that we don't. Watch other primates. They eat directly out of- Is this not why? They eat it from the source sometimes.

I was with you until you got to it. It's very weird that we don't.

Yes, that's where this conversation went. I'm sorry.

I got to get off the Dax train.

Definition of weird is that it is super asymmetric. You got all these primates.

Once again, you're right. You were right with the governor. It's unique. So let me just- I don't want to be right.

Don't put that fast, Steven.

Can I just summarize? Dax Sheppard says, We should be eating our own poop. That's the headline. No.

Let's be very clear because you've already out of contexted me. I said it's very weird we don't, which is much different than we should.

Yeah, I feel your version would actually be more incendiary. It's very weird that we don't eat our poop. Mine sounds prima facia dumb. There's no way he would have said that.

Right.

Yours sounds logical. It's smart.

It's very smart.

But what I got curious about is how recently is this? If we're seeing all the other primates, don't. My quick theory was, I bet when we were hunting and gathering societies in a group of 100, and we didn't live with animals, we didn't have all these weird diseases, I bet it was fine. Then I bet once we started living in civilizations, people who did eat poop dropped like flies because there was so much bacteria in all these diseases. I bet it happened pretty quick.

I would love to know the answer to that question. Me, too. I would also love to know the median number.

That's a challenge to Dawkins.

Yes, please. The median number of days that it takes for different species for their poop to lose the smell. Because if you We've come across dried dog or goose poop, it has no odor. It's tolerable.

Yes, the mechanism is clearly olfactory.

They look like chocolate.

Sure. They look like Tootsie rolls instead. Well.

Especially the rabbits. Rabbits and deer.

Yeah, we mentioned the rabbit poop, too.

We went to the rate that animals create waste, and it's shocking. Some animals are shitting 60 times a day.

No, rabbits 200 to 300 times a day.

200 to 300 times a day. It does suggest some markets that are maybe under... Bunny bidet, first I've never seen that.

Bunny pooper scooper. That's right. Bunny diapers. But anyway.

This is not what you wanted me here to talk about.

What I wanted to say as a preamble is, and I got half of it out, which is I just love when you're on. And honestly, anytime Every topic that comes up, I'm probably going to be super interested in your take on it. And so in that vein, instead of me doing my normal research, I just came up with some topics I want your opinion on. I like that. It's not going to be called Better in Person, but one of the descriptions made, which we both feel you on deeply, is your goal with Better in Person is instead of just interviewing an expert on a topic, this is far more a conversation where we hope to learn what human this person is, which is always what I want.

I'm just ripping you off.

No, you're not. You were eight years before us. You're a 15-year anniversary, and we're coming up on eight.

No, but I mean, my new thing is just ripping off this thing. That's fine.

That's flattering. Yeah, I'll take it. If you're imitating us, I think we've done something really special. I agree. Then as an experiment, they'll be last. Is I've never done this. It feels unethical. I asked AI for the first time ever, Hey, I'm interviewing Steven Dobnatt for the third time.

Did it tell you, Don't say his name like that. He doesn't like it.

He's never heard it. What are some topics that we could have fun conversing about? Can I just tell you?

I do that a lot. Oh, you do? I think AI is an amazing... I mean, I'm using this much of one fingerna of the gigantic herd of robots, but I think What you did is normal or will be normal.

I did it yesterday for a big gas.

Oh, you did? So you just had your first experience as well?

Yeah, but I thought they were all- Can I tell you what engine were you using with Chat?

I happened to use one called Perplexity because I like it. It's a really simple interface that pulls from a lot of models, which I think is probably valuable. What I like about it is you can push it subtly and it keeps coming. If I say, Tell me five interesting things about Dax Sheppard, it'll give me blah, blah, blah. I say, Well, those are fine, but I know those, and I want something more along the lines of X wires X, Y, or Z. But the X, Y, or Z could be animal mineral or vegetable. It could be, I want more emotional stuff. I want more moto racing. So I feel it's a great research tool. Now, it's not a substitute. It's like when computers started beating humans in chess and go So, which is very complicated years ago, people were, as they always are, worried with these new technologies. People will now stop playing chess. And in fact, that had the opposite effect because no one wants to watch two machines play each other. We like humans. I like you guys. You may like me.

And That was even a little bit of my ethical justification as I was like, well, A, I'm going to tell you I did this. And then B, these are just prompts for you and I and Monica, and then that'll be the real thing. Exactly. So it's like the actual meat and potatoes. But I got to say, so It gave me 10, and I liked seven of them. Wow, I'm in the first. Seven of them are very much ones I would want to hear your opinion. And then I have a good relationship with mine. It then said, Do you want me to come up with five or six speed round fun irreverent questions like I did yesterday?

That was an offer from out of nowhere?

Pulling from a previous search of mine.

It does like you. I said- I'm jealous now because mine doesn't do that stuff.

It kept offering more and more. Then it said, Do you want me to design an arc of how you could lay these out? It did not.

Oh, my God.

Do you think- I could show it to you. It's incredible.

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

No, I told him I am the host of Armchair Expert.

I know, but I'm saying maybe he's like, Oh, it's a celebrity. I got to impress him. He's nervous. He's nervous and he wants to do well. Yeah, this is That's fascinating. Do you think it's unethical? Okay, so have you heard the guy who tried to ask his AI to count to a million? No.

You must watch this video. It's incredible.

We'll send it to you. She refuses to do it, which is a little startling because it's like, she can. Why wouldn't she do it? Yikes. But then he's getting so mad at her and he's being verbally abusive.

He keeps going, Don't be difficult.

Maybe he calls her a bitch. Maybe he gets very mean. He's abusive. And is it ethical?

For him?

Yeah, to be mean to this robot.

I guess I could think on it more, but my first response would say, not only is it not unethical, because we know that the emotion that's being mistreated is not a human emotion. Correct. And we also know that the people who write that code and make that machine, they understand the way barriers are shiftable and so on. Additionally, I would say it's a really nice use of technology to absorb maybe someone's hostility that doesn't have to be then directed to a real person.

I did end up saying that.

You have to imagine he sitting in his living room with a remote control going, You fucking bitch.

But it's just weird because it is responding. She's talking. You're like, Bee, she's getting yelled at and She's nothing.

He's like, You're a fucking computer. It's not like you have anything.

I mean, it's definitely abusive. It's like abuse the lawn or abuse the AI, don't abuse people.

Save your patience for humans. Yeah.

I like the NFL a lot, and I often I think of it, especially at this late relatively advanced date in our civilization, as a proxy for war. Everything about it is very warlike, but also the pageantry around it now. But I think if these guys are willing to go do that, and they get compensated well, but it's still an unbelievably hard, difficult, and physical thing to do. If they're willing to go do that for their entertainment, for their making a living for their family, and we get to watch that and feel like it was warlike, and if then that diminishes our appetite for real war, I think that's a great thing. And so similarly, I would say this bozo. It's probably for the good.

I agree with you the whole way. So what I loved was Malcolm did Revenge of Tipping Point this year, and I read it and I loved it. So Freakonomics, this is the 20th anniversary. Yes. And on November 11th, we're going to have a new edition.

Yeah, but I just want to be super clear. It's the original book. Yeah, that's fine. I wrote a new forward, but I did one interview before you. I'm sorry. I meant to come here virginially. I failed. The person who was lovely, lovely said, I want you to tell me about all the new things in the book. I said, No, there's nothing new in it.

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

Right. Then she said, But we could talk about it as if there is a lot new. I said, No, that would really be wrong. I'm first and foremost a writer. That's what I started as. It's what I am. I take all that stuff seriously. But you're right, we are publishing a new edition which has a new forward, which did take me six months to write three pages because it- Jesus Christ, Dunner. You're a little rusty, huh? No, it's not rusty. It was a forced occasion to replay this 20-year movie, which has been amazing. But also it was tied to... I mean, this is not what you asked, so you may not want to know this, but I'll tell you until you shut me up. I'm having a problem in my home office of getting rid of all my archives. Because I have archives from when I was a musician. I have set lists from my band, like all of them, but I can't throw them away. I was staring down those boxes one day in my office, faced with paralyzed dread. And then I got a text from Steve Levet, my co-author in Freconomics, and he said, Happy 20th anniversary of publication.

It was the day. And I didn't even remember the day. I don't know how he remember because he's not a sentimental guy. This This is what I ended up writing the forward about. But honestly, what I'm feeling around this 20-year anniversary is what anybody feels as they get older. Even you, you're young. But as you get older, you have such a different reckoning and appreciation for your own past and the past of other people. Things more. Life is cumulative. It's not, I feel this way now instead of that. It's like, I feel this and all of those other things, too. In some ways, I think you get wiser. I've really enjoyed that. You get more experience. In some ways, there's inevitable sadness because death is this thing that I've always tried to just really ignore it. Even though my father died when I was a kid, I'm 62, and I'm the youngest of eight, and I've always been the protected baby boy, and they're starting to go. I'm the youngest. My oldest is 17 years That's big. He's very healthy. He's a former Air Force pilot. I think he could beat us all up.

Wow. Bring up Malcolm because what I thought was really cool about the revenge of the tipping point was he starts by acknowledging, so A, this was written in a different time, a different context, and I was a different person. And so let me look back on it now in a different context as a different person. What do I agree with or not? And it's a takedown piece of his own book, which I just thought was really cool and brave and interesting.

I probably could have or should have done that maybe.

I was just wondering. So one of his was the broken windows chapter. It's like, well, now we know that was bullshit. So is there anything that you look back at in the book and you're like, minimally, I wouldn't write that now?

So I will say that what Malcolm said is pretty close to a lot of the things that I feel about freeconomics in that you're a much younger person, but also, like he said, the time was different. So I did go back and read the book. I liked it. I was very pleasantly surprised.

That's great.

Our main incentive was to be truthful and be interesting. It was really simple as that and to have fun. Both Levet and I don't take ourselves too seriously. We reported and researched and fact-checked and dotted every eye. I wasn't concerned about that. We did have one thing shortly after publication that we found out had been wrong, which was a terrible thing. This guy that we wrote about as having heroically gone undercover in the Ku Klux Klan and exposed them. He did do a lot of that type of work, but he conflated his own identity with that of another guy who did the undercover stuff. He wrote books about it. We interviewed him. He'd been in all these histories of civil rights movement and Klan. It turned out that he had exaggerated. I'd never heard or read a word about any claims like this. But when we published our book for Economics 2005, someone wrote to us who had been a collaborator of that guy much later, working on a book together. And this guy had had access to a set of very robust and valuable archives that were essentially private archives. They weren't on the public record.

I went into those archives, looked at everything, found out that this guy who was saying that our main character had exaggerated was probably very accurate I went to our subject. This guy's name was Stetson Kennedy. He's gone now, but he was quite old then. I said, I need to talk to you about something important. He was in Florida. I flew down to Florida.

Really quick, does that confrontation give you anxiety or are you excited to have- No, anxiety.

No, anxiety. The sadness. The sadness. Because I am 99. 9% I'm right. So I envision what's he going to say? He's either going to deny or it's going to be like, Oh, shit. And none of those are good.

This is like the Brian Williams thing.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

I don't take any joy in finding out how to feel.

Or it's the Million Little Pieces guy.

That one really broke my heart because it was such a beautiful book and it didn't matter.

But Oprah felt very betrayed.

Although the one emotion I hadn't considered for myself was feeling betrayed by him, even though that probably wouldn't have been inappropriate. Right, exactly.

Anyway. Okay, so you fly there.

I do. I sit and I tell him the whole story. I tell him the guy who gave me all this information because he knows him. He worked with me. He just said, None of that makes any sense. I don't know what you're talking about. I was convinced that we were right, so I ended up writing in the New York Times, a column that explained this mistake we made. But that's what journalists do. That's what writers do. If you get had or if you make a mistake, you have to admit. Anyway, that was a long way of saying that I don't think there's anything in free economics that we would do really differently for the people we were But you would agree, right?

There's a great spectrum of conclusions. In some ways, you might look at the exact same data and maybe make a very similar point, but it might be a little bit over here to the left or the right.

I agree. I think a good example of that is probably the most famous claim from the book about the relationship between legalized abortion and crime. There are two tracks of that. The first track is that Steve Levet and this guy, John Donahieu, who's now at Stanford, I believe, a legal scholar, had done this paper before I met Levet. This is how Levet got on the map that showed a causal relief relationship between the legalization of abortion and the crime rate. It was not a complicated argument. It takes a long time to describe it only because there's a collage of evidence that goes into making it up. But the argument essentially is that abortion often serves as, I was going to say a form of birth control. That's not really right.

Preventing an unwanted child.

It's a decision that happens often when a would be mom feels like the time and place are not right. I would make the umbrella that large because there are a a lot of things that can go into that. Maybe you're very young. Maybe you've already got kids and the time is not right. Maybe you or your family are in bad financial situation.

Maybe you're starting to get divorced from the father. Maybe you were raped.

Maybe you live in a place with so much violence. There's so many.

So there's a lot. There is a body of social science research that argues unquestionably that when a child is born into a wanted situation, let's call it, whatever the family is, Yeah, planned. Well, not even planned necessarily. That's true. Because honestly, I'm the eighth of eight. I don't know how planned I was, but I was very loved. On my birthday, all my older sisters write about the day I came home from the hospital and how happy they were to have a new baby He got killed for an older sister. Yeah, I mean, I have four if you need one.

I am one.

Have you written a lot of letters to Neil about the day he arrived? You want to get on that this year.

I held him when he was little and stuff like that. But older sisters are great.

Older sisters are great. Anyway, wantedness is good, unwantedness is bad. The odds are if a baby is born into a home or that baby is not wanted, there is a higher chance that that kid will have a bad outcome in life. When I say bad outcome, meaning lower education, higher crime, lower income, etc. This is inarguable. The argument from Steve Levin, John Donahieu, was that the legalization of abortion provided a way to reduce unwantedness. If, therefore, you reduce unwantedness, what is one of the many Any other effects you might have down the road, maybe fewer people committing crimes because they're growing up in a better circumstance.

The crime one is so juicy in so many ways because all of us have been watching this plummeting crime rate and everyone's got to take. This was broken windows. That was yet another stab at how it came down. The one I heard that was absolutely shocking was in Sweden. I'm pretty sure Sweden, somewhere in Scandinavia, they had a reduction in these small, petty crimes, and they really wanted to know what they were doing that had caused this. After studying it for a very, very long time, what they ended up finding out was people just stopped reporting them. People in Sweden came to accept it as just a part of life. You have things stolen from your car and you just accept it. It's like, oh, wow, who's going to think of that? The same amount are happening. They're just not being reported. It's such a dynamic situation.

It's not one size fits all either.

But we're so inclined to find out so we can triple down on it and eliminate it. I see the incentive.

Your example is so good because also we've all been herded into in almost, what's the cattle prod, electric shock? Our brains are just getting prodded every day to be more binary in our thinking. Hate, love, yes, no, black, white, etc. Whereas one of the great strengths of the human mind is that we're not binary thinkers. We are extremely variegated in time and dimensions. I am astonished still. I love talking to people. I love hearing how there are just these little synapses happening in your muscle just like mine, but they come to something totally different.

What you're What you're actually discovering when you talk to people is what the ratio is of these binary options. It's almost like we are all somewhere on this spectrum. If you reduce it to the pulls, it's binary. But really what we're discovering is like, no, I'm 39% liberal, right? Or I'm 46 6% in favor of the death penalty. That's what's interesting.

Do you also then discover in the course of a conversation, what is the Venn diagram between you and that person and the types of synapses that are firing?

That's where I start. When I'm researching someone, I'm just trying to earmark all the things that we have in common that can jump off from there, right? Oh, you were dyslexic. We know this experience. How did that downriver itself? That's smart.

I look for all the ways in which I'm inferior when I do that instead of having common.

Isn't that funny? I'm always looking for advice. I'm like, You know something I don't- Maybe my method is bad.

Yours is good and yours is good. Looking for things in common so that you can have an actual conversation makes perfect sense. I don't know why that.

Yours is good. But you just brought me to the actual thing I most want to tackle with you. That is potentially most dicey. Do you think that we have entered a moment where silence is the biggest protest imaginable?

I'll be honest with you. I don't participate very much in the online world. I use digital stuff all the time. But if we think of the online world as a second conversation that's happening for many people, that's not a conversation I really get involved with, I'll be honest with you. Therefore, I'm aware of it because I have people who are in that conversation, but I'm not really in it. And so this sounds bad, but one of the many things I don't like about living deep in that online world is that there are these compulsions that don't really seem to jive with actual human nature. There are expectations that if you don't think or say or feel a certain thing about it could be anything, then you're going to be either outgrouped or thought less of. And I think that that's just never the way that humans have thrived. When I look at human history, and I'm not a great historian, but I love history. I love reading it. I love talking to historians because I'm like a child. I just don't know that much. I didn't really like history when I was a student at all because I didn't get what older people say about history being instructive.

To me, you read history because you had to, and sometimes it happened to be interesting, and you would remember the interesting thing. Now I read history because it's the reason that people read philosophy. It's the reason people read old religious stuff. The human condition has changed a lot, but I don't think the human has changed that much. No. Therefore, it can be thrilling, intoxicating, scary, et cetera, et cetera, to see what history has brought for us that we can remember now.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. This message is brought to you by Apple Pay.

Dax, can you believe it's already fall? This year's flown by.

I know, right? But fall All is my jam. Remember that farmer's market we hit up last weekend?

Yes. All those vendors with their yummy apple ciders and the big pumpkin. I love big pumpkin.

Artisanal apple cider, don't forget. And the smell of fresh baked goods, heaven. But here's what blew my mind. So many vendors accepted Apple Pay.

It was so convenient. I love Apple Pay. Everywhere I saw the contactless symbol, I just double-click the side button on my phone to bring up my card, and then just a quick little face ID scan. Tap, boom. So easy.

Apple Pay has been my MVP this season to buy festive fall treats and drinks.

And you know I'm on a mission to find the best fall-themed latte in town. You know this.

I do know that. How's it going? That maple one you were telling me about sounded pretty insane.

It was so good. And get this, you can also use Apple Pay at lots of cafés. No fumbling for your wallet. Just double-click, tap, and sip.

It works at millions of places. Anywhere, you see the contactless symbol in stores or see the Apple Pay button online and in apps.

Exactly. Making it easier to enjoy all the fall goodness.

Speaking of which, I'm totally set for Halloween. Apple Pay made it a breeze to purchase the perfect decoration online. Right from my iPhone, I just tapped the Apple Pay button at checkout, double-click to authenticate, and boom, payment complete. No long checkout forms, no fuss.

Fall festivities have never been more fun or easy.

Pay the Apple way. Terms apply.

A Okay, I'll use a very specific example, and it's a dangerous one, but I'll use it.

You are going to dinner with people. You are having dinner parties. You are out and about. I think there is this absolute insistence that you declare Whether you are- Do you hate Israel or love Israel? Or pro-Hamas. I'm over here going, Guys, you've presented me with the two shittiest fucking options in the world. I understand. I don't want either of these options. They both fucking suck, and you should stand up and say they fucking suck, and we I did not get drug into this situation that's been ongoing, and now we all get sucked into it. But I do think the most dangerous thing is to go like, Absolutely not. I'm not saying that side's right or that side's right. The most I can tell you is both sides suck.

I'm glad you use this specific. I'll have a conversation with anybody anytime about anything. It's what I like to do, especially in the last 10, 15 years or maybe 20. I've met types of people that I never thought I would have met just because of the nature of what I've ended up doing professionally. And then I became a golfer and that introduced me into a world that I had these preconceptions about, and I was so wrong. But when someone comes at me with a binary, your for us or against us, what I try to do, what I probably do do mostly is I say, first of all, Let's define terms. That's a trick I think I learned from academia. Let's take it away from the fascism. If you're going to call someone in economic terms, a Communist or a Socialist, let's define terms. Are we talking about the Socialism of 2025, Denmark? We're talking about the Social Socialism of 1925, Vienna. It's a big difference now. What do you mean by that? So this goes back to, I wonder if you've ever come across this in talking with Angela or anyone else in that realm.

I'm probably going to get all these facts wrong, but in my memory, there's something called the Illusion of explanatory depth. Basically, if you go to a family gathering, let's say, people know you, you know them, you have some prior expectations, just go up to them and start asking them about hot button issues, whatever you think they are. People get heated pretty quickly. But then if you take one of those hot button issues, let's say it's gun control or immigration or something, and ask them in a non-abnoxious way, which is hard, but ask them to explain, what do you mean exactly by border control? It turns out that people just don't know what they're talking about most of the time, but we all pretend to. The reason I don't like that is we pretend to in order to have a position in order to be in a tribe that I want to get out of. I think this idea that we've all allowed ourselves to be herded into two political Even more offensive that people feel unique in expressing the opinion that 50% of the country all have.

I got another point. Yeah, I heard it from everybody on your fucking team. You all have the same fucking point. Come to me when you've had an original thought.

I also think I'm sorry, Monica, that's just hard to follow because you just have to give the room a minute.

I know. That was very well done.

Because he's so mad. No, that was very good. Because you don't have to pick aside. But if someone cares about something, that's also okay. Oh, of course.

Not, of course, to everyone. You're saying Dax is a not, of course.

This is a great example. We would have to agree on terms. Do I not want people to care about stuff? That's not at all what I want. What I don't want is for someone to be heralded as brave for repeating the already agreed upon tenets of their tribe in public. It's not a conversation. They didn't sit with someone and converse. They broadcasted the talking points of their tribe, and people were So brave. Not brave at all. Being brave is going against your tribe, saying the opposite thing that's been agreed upon. That's bravery. The other thing is grandstanding.

But there is a reality to the world in which you do need a big... It's like what we heard about protesting. It works because you see that there are so many people who do think like you think, who are willing to stand up against something else, and you get emboldened by that. So there's There's a reality that voices in numbers help.

So I agree with you, and that's the Emperor Wears New Clothes analogy that Steven Pinker just gave us, and that's totally true. What if they're already completely known? That we already know, we know, we know. So the person that's standing up and continuing to yell, it's already been acknowledged, We all know, we all know. Now this is a pointless endeavor. And additionally, the arrogance that you think you have converted somebody, you haven't converted anyone. Not one of the people yelling has converted someone from the other side. So it's pointless, it's not brave, it's grandstanding, and it's further cementing us in this tribe. It is the actual problem.

I'm glad you two came to me for help because it's obvious there's an irreconcilable difference here.

I think there might be.

I'd like to say, in all honesty, I think you're both right. I wouldn't even say these things are opposite. They plainly can coexist. What I hear you both saying is that one of the most painful things, I know for me, I think for everybody, is to be somewhere between being misunderstood and being accused of something you didn't do. That is a great human injustice, and it always has been. We've all been accused of things we did. We've all gotten off with things we did and didn't get caught. But when you're accused of something you didn't do, you feel this outrage. I feel like that's the temperature of the far end of the spectrum.

It does feel like it's threatening your existence in this bizarre way. I think it triggers It's your actual sense of- I thought I was living in a world that made sense, and now it doesn't.

I had one in ninth grade, maybe, in school. I was a good student. It came naturally. We had good brainpower in the family, and I was the youngest of eight. I knew the stuff before I got to the grade, which was handy. I knew the French just because being in a family was like being in school. I was decent at math. I liked math. On a math test, I had the teacher bring it back to me. She made me stay after class. This teacher, she I was convinced that I had cheated on the test. I got a 97 on the test. I didn't know what to say. I'd never cheated. I had people cheat off of me. But I was also very shy as a kid. If I weren't shy, I would have said, What are you talking about? Or I would have said to my mother when I got home, This is going on with Mrs. So and so. But I did none of that because I was very shy and obedient and willing to take a beating as a kid. I don't like that at all. Then she made me take the retest, and I got a 98, one better, which didn't surprise me because I had seen the test before.

You know what she did after? No. Nothing.

Because she was now embarrassed. Nothing.

Then I was so pissed because it felt like an injustice. So I feel like now the world is full of people who have some version of that feeling. Something is being done to them, taken from them, said about them, or done to taken from, said about people that they know and love. It's a strange mix of reactions.

Where are you at, personally, on this, we would all agree, the most divisive moment in my life of 50 years?

I am in the give A Stranger, A Hug Mode. Any more of that type of emotion, argument, anger, frustration, all of which are legitimate? Contempt. I want to get rid of the contempt. Do you know Arthur Brooks? He's a scholar trained as an economist, and he's written a bunch of books. We did an episode with him on a book he wrote about Contempt a few years ago, and I was just relistening to it. I think I want to replay it for our show because you're always searching for what to say about the moment. In my show, Freak Radio, we're not a news show at all. We have a series coming this winter that I had an idea for two years ago. I'm slow. But I'm always looking for ways as a writer to respond to the world we're in, but not to the moment, because that's a whole different conversation.

When any time you're talking about something in the moment, you're almost certain to be reacting.

It's just not me. There are a lot of people who are great at it, who thrive at it, who love it. I hate it. I'm bad at it. So what am I going to do? But content.

This is a really valuable thing. The thing I think of is that wonderful man from what's it, the institute? And we had him, and he's so beautiful, and he repairs marriages.

Oh, I know who you're talking about. John Gottman?

Gottman.

Yes, the Gottman Institute.

This was in blank. The fact that he could watch a couple in couples therapy talk for six minutes and predict at a 90 plus % rate whether they would get divorced or not. The single component was contempt. Having learned that, when I think about the level of contempt right now, and ultimately, we're in a marriage and we're not breaking up, divorce isn't an option, unfortunately. So given that we're married for life, can we afford to have contempt for each other. I don't think we can.

There is conscious uncoupling. Let's not forget. Yeah, please. There's that option.

Walk me through how that works mechanically.

It worked for Gwyneth, didn't it? It worked for Gwyneth. It really worked. Everybody made fun of her. I don't know anything about- She's the queen. I know. I don't know anything about her Not really. But I do know that she said that about the relationship.

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

She could say that McDonald's French fries are good, and she get blasted. They are good.

It's awesome because she doesn't care. She really doesn't.

Thank God. That would be my first answer to your question going back is, you can't care. There's a quote I like by John Wooden, the late great UCLA basketball coach who coached these teams some absurd number of college championships in a row, but was also known to be a great, it sounds like such a cliché, but a leader, a teacher, a coach. He really, really affected the men that he coached, many of whom were very famous and many of whom became NBA players afterwards. But anyway, he said two things about character that I like because character is something I think about a lot.

Yeah, you like character versus reputation.

Oh, Exactly. So you did your homework. So this is from John Wood, and I could never make this up. He said two things about character. One of them is fairly famous, and I don't love it. He said, Character is what you do when no one is watching. That's fine, but it's got a little bit of a godly moralistic feeling to it. I grew up in a family where that was a feeling, and it's not my preferred mode of feeling. Anyway, the other thing he said, though, is that people should worry more about their character than your reputation, because reputation is simply what other people think of you. Yes. Whereas character is who you really are. That, to me, is the essence of it. Maybe that is the same as his other quote about characters, what you do when no one is watching.

But that chasm can be so shocking, right? As you get to know people.

The more you worry about the reputation side, the harder it is to stoke your character. That's the way I see it. One of the advantages of getting older is not just actual history, but personal history and understanding how people are, how people change, what you need to accept about other people and about yourself. I believe in all the clichés. Good character is really important. Being really truly loving and kind to other people is really, really, really important. All the other things that we do for reputation or money, they're necessary, they're understandable, they're fantastic in moderation. Ambition is great. The most dangerous part about the worst parts of our attention economy, I think, is that they incentivize people to be unkind. Simple as that. We know that the science is pretty proven, but we got to stop that.

Back to the marriage thing because I think it's relevant. I do want to say I, though, in case anyone's listening who's in a bad marriage.

By the way, the odds are very, very, very, very, very good. That's so funny. Because someone listening is in a very bad marriage. That's right.

I hate to guess that it might even be more than half.

Yeah, my guess.

And none of us should be saying that with a laugh in our voices. It's just a recognition of the- It's a sad truth.

How fucking hard it is. It's hard. It's so hard.

Life is hard.

Life is hard. But also, I think if you say we're married, I know what you mean because we're one country. We have to make it work. That's the reality. But also abuse from one another is not okay. And you would say in a marriage, if that's happening, to leave.

Where do you go in this case, though?

Exactly.

That's what I'm saying. You got a reverse engineer. It's not an option.

Abuse is happening. I think part of why it's getting so hot and escalated is because there's nowhere to go and there's abuse. It's getting so intolerable. I don't know what the answer is, but that's the reality of this marriage.

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

I'm not smart enough to know. I can say I don't know.

I have a solution. I don't know that it would work, but I have thought of what the solution is. It is a one-year moratorium. I'm talking about politics. You still vote, you still do everything you do. But for one year, you put down the political identity just for one year.

And that's a moratorium enacted by or carried out by whom on whom, though. Right.

We don't live in this country that could do that. But if I had a It's a magic wand and I got to ask a wish. I would ask everyone to try one year of not talking about politics. The country is not going to fall apart if you don't talk about it. You can still vote. But I would be very curious what the temperature would be if we stopped broadcasting our allegiance to a side. I just am curious what that would look like.

I think it's a good idea. I also think that knowing what I know about human behavior, when people recognize that they have a habit that they don't like, even if they want to get rid of it, and we could all name many, many bad habits that we've all had that we'd like to get rid of, but we know they're hard, and there are different stages or dimensions of addiction, let's say. It's really easy for someone outside of that mode to say, just stop it. That's the obvious answer from the 30,000-foot parental view. But everybody knows that if you're doing a thing, just stopping is hard because it's an activity. It makes you feel a certain way.

Well, there's stuff also happening.

If there was a vote at the end of every month, I would agree. You should stand up and try to get people to go and vote in the direction you want. But It's just given the reality that there's no outcome of the talking until the election happens.

There are things that happen from people talking. It just happened. Disney just felt a big hit from people, and so they made a decision. Action does have impact. I want to take Steven's advice and say, what is the definition of politics? If we're saying we shouldn't talk about it, what is the definition of that?

I wrote down how much I believe this is metastasesized. I think if you're an alien and you are looking at us and you said, okay, so your diet's politics. If you're a vegetarian, you're probably a liberal. If you're a carnivore, you're probably a Republican. Your automobile choice. If you're electric, you're probably a liberal. But within the electric, if you drive a Tesla, you're probably a Republican. If you drive a Chevy, you're probably a liberal.

Especially a Tesla truck.

If you shop at Lulu Lemon, you're a liberal. If you shop at American Eagle now, you are a Republican. If you drink Bud Light versus Coors, your health.

Is that true? Bud Light and Coors are Well, Bud Light had the trans person on top. That I know, but what's Coors?

Coors stayed out of politics and everyone said, Well, we're going to now drink Coors.

Because I remember when Coors was considered a right-wing beer.

That's what I'm saying. Coors would represent the Republicans, Bud Light represents the liberal.

Sorry, I thought you were saying the Bud Light posts the trans skin.

Handle. Yeah, I would say Bud Light is now- Can I just say, this is terrible, I hope they're not your sponsors, but I think anybody who's drinking either Bud Light or Cors can do better. But your health, if you believe in psychiatry, you're probably liberal. If you believe in vaccines, that's a It's a political decision. Patriotism, so if you have an American flag, that's political. School, do you believe in private homeschooling? That's probably Republican versus public. Tv shows, what shows you? So it's like, literally, every single thing now represents a commitment to your tribe.

I think it's terrible.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way.

When you ask what is political, and I'm saying literally everything now.

No, you're right. We've dragged that label into the rest of our lives.

It is metastasized in the sense that it has spread.

But that's my At your point, if you're saying all of that is political, then how can we not talk about politics if it's everything now, which I think it's crazy that people are doing that. But if you're saying that's true, then how will anyone talk?

Well, what will happen is if Everyone has to stop talking for a year about, I won't drive a Tesla because it's Republican. Well, the Tesla is going to slowly stop representing that. If only liberals want this. When we stop reinforcing these objects having political identities and everything in our life, and we're constantly broadcasting our political identity. If we stop that, I do think slowly we can de-politicize the world around us and then just go vote.

I think this goes back to what we were talking about a while ago about taking control of your own state of mind. Here's what I think, without evidence, I think that most people who make everything political for themselves or for other people, which we would agree has a bad effect, I would argue that most of them probably don't really think that much about why they do it, but they've been suggested into it. There's currency for it, there's incentives to do it, but there's a certain point at which you feel like it's not having a good effect on your mind and body. Here's an example. This is also hard to prove, but one argument for why the crack epidemic went way down, not away, but way down, was because the demand fell so much because the next generation of user saw their older siblings or aunts and uncles using it. They said, Oh, my God, I I don't want none of that.

Yeah, they saw the wreckage of clothes.

That's the way I feel about social media now.

My glimmer of hope is like all future generations, they will hate what the one before them did. I just pray that they're all watching this.

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

I think we're the bad generation. I hope so, too. Seriously.

Because we also have more leverage to make chaos.

We do because we are the CEOs of the company. We're at that age group. And so we decide whether we are We're not going to align ourselves.

I also think it's just a choice. I visited Scotland recently for golf. It was amazing. I went with members of this golf club of mine. So it was a group effort. And it's something that if you had told me 20 years ago, you're going to be wearing a bright red club jacket and go to these clubs. That's great. Why not?

I think it's cute.

They were founded in 1700 something. It's just really- If you had vacation in Martha's Vineyard your whole life and you were telling me this, that's where my judgment would come in.

But I like this for you.

I think of life as Anthropology. For me, coming to LA is like, Oh, my God, this is live Anthropology. I love... Everything is different. Every telephone wire is different here. Every building, the angle of the sun, it's being in a museum. Anyway, over there, what was really interesting is I met a lot of different people from all different kinds of realms. There is a plain spokenness in Scotland that just doesn't exist among the people that I usually hang out with here. Because here we're usually like you're just describing, well, if so and so does this, then they're aligned with that. And if they're aligned with that, that means that. And over there, a lot of conversations were much much more like, that's a rock, don't trip over it. This is what I think about when I'm making a show, I always think, I don't want to make an about episode. I want to make an of episode. I feel like way too many of us are spending way too much time doing about thinking. What do I think about this? As opposed to what am I? What am I doing? What am I accomplishing? And you can decide that as an individual.

The problem is once it gets up into the corporate realm where we are all as individuals, customers. Anybody who thinks that Twitter is friend because it provides an open platform to do this and that, yes, that's partly true. Most people by now understand that we are the product to a large degree. It's like the New York Times where I used to work, in which I still love as an institution. I think it's still one of the greatest papers that ever will be. I think a lot of the Times coverage in the last 15 or so years has been much more geared toward telling people how they should think about a particular news story as opposed to what the story is.

I completely agree with that.

They'll have what the story is piece, but then it'll be surrounded and followed for days and weeks sometimes by opinion pieces. I don't really need opinion pieces, but the problem is that it's very, very, very marketable. I'm glad the New York Times is thriving. A previous CEO or publisher, Mark Thompson, came in. As far as I can tell, he saw that news is important, but if we can sell recipes and games and we can pay for the news, then that's a reorientation. And that really worked. Did that make the news slightly less robust, serious? I think it probably did, or it's just the nature of how journalism has changed over time. But even the New York Times and our social media and our friends that we run into, we all are pushing each other into these ridiculously tiny little silos. I think it's up to every individual to just say the would be next generation crack you. So like, not for me. I would rather go surfing, go read a book, go play golf, go hang out with friends and do something and live a life that is of rather than be an observer and think this is what that is about.

For a lot of people, including myself, one One thing that's hard to not do or that comes naturally, at least to me and many other people, but not all people, that I've tried to just diminish a lot is the impulse to judge. The impulse to judge is, I think, a very smart, healthy evolutionary trait because everything from life on the Savannah, is that one going to eat me? You have to make judgments. Danny Kahneman, I'm sure you guys have dug into that, thinking fast and thinking slower, two viable ways of assessing things But often when we make a consequential decision that should be thought through slowly, we make it fast. So that's really bad. I feel we do that all the time internally, but then externally, too. When your first response is to judge something as literally on a spectrum positive or negative versus, and this is what I try to do but don't always succeed, just observe and figure it out. Because I'm a writer and because I was very shy as a kid, I've always been very comfortable just being on the edge of the back wall and just watching and listening and taking it and trying to figure out who loves who, who hates who, who's mad at who, who's trying to impress who.

I feel like if you do that, at the very least, what you're going to do is you're going to start to empathize. By empathize, I don't mean sympathize. I mean, you can feel yourself in that person's position a little bit. And that, for me, at least changes the calculus.

I have a very overlapping thing, which is I encourage people to have drastically different opinions. When a different opinion than yours signals a character assessment about the owner of the opinion, we've got a big problem. Then it's a problem. You've decided that the way you think is proof of character. If you had character and you were a good person, you would think this way. So just to say, Oh, wow, yeah, they have a different opinion, but I grant them. They want this place to be the best. They're in pursuit of what they think would be best for everybody. I can grant them that. We totally disagree on the best route there. That is healthy. Having a difference of opinion and having debate and discourse, that is wonderful. When you are making character assessments of people, because because they don't agree with you, I think you're in trouble.

I agree.

Do you want to try an AI thought question?

Yeah, I do. Can I just say, though, I love this conversation. It's really exhausting. No, but I mean in a good way. You're just getting to the core of what it means to be a human at this place in time. We're all narcissistic and we all think no other humans have ever felt like that. It's totally baloney. You could argue the fact that we are so distressed about the things that are bad is a good sign because the human species always is trying to improve, and the only way you can improve is to take on the problems, right?

Yes. And it's optimistic.

But it's exhausting in a good way, but that I feel like all of us, the planet, I feel is exhausted. It's been a really wild, disorienting several years.

That's my other hope. My two glimmers of hope are the new generation who will just be lame that we did this. And then also, I do believe people fatigue. And I'm just praying that we're reproaching the fatigue, right? Where it's like we all throw our hands off and be like, Okay, I'm just too exhausted to do this anymore.

Exactly. I'm going to I'm going to take a nap. By the way, I think napping is also really undervalued nap every day. I love it. 28 minutes caffeine nap. You drink the coffee before, then you wake up refreshed.

Okay, this is an AI question.

Or is this a Dax question? No. They're saying it's an AI question.

You're hiding behind an AI question. Why do we keep rebooting the '90s? Is it comfort food or a cultural panic button?

I need some terms, Siri or chat or whoever you are.

This is the economics of retrobranding, why people buy the past, whether nostalgia can predict the future.

Those do sound much less like you and much more like the AI. Those are fine. We could talk about that. It would be like having two robots play chess. Aren't you happy that yours are so much better than theirs, though?

Well, I'm glad you think so.

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

It did curtail one exactly to you. It said, Do you think there will ever be a Freakonomics book co-written with an AI? And would we even tell readers?

Oh, wow. They're pushing. Well, what pitching themselves. Can we write with you, Steven?

To me, that shows integrity. It's not afraid to have you debate whether this thing should exist or not. This almost disproves this fear that they have a consciousness they'll try to protect.

My response to that question would be, Well, let's define terms. What's AI? What everybody's now calling AI as one version of artificial intelligence, but it's very close to many other versions we've already had and will have. When I first moved to New York, I'd quit playing music. I was going to graduate school for writing, and I didn't have any money. I earned money by doing word processing. It It was as big as a Buick. It was a massive machine. You had to put in these big floppy disks for each function. It was like the create a file floppy disk, save a file floppy disk, spell check. But spell check and saving documents, all these things were some version of what we think of now as AI. It's just basically using compute power to do stuff that we've already known how to do, but do it better and more efficiently. Is a dictionary not AI? It's not my intelligence. I'm looking up what somebody else figured out, and they get passed on from generation to generation, too. It's a cumulative thing, which is really wonderful. The reason that we don't have to learn calculus to build a microphone is because generations of people did it.

Now we buy it for $200. How nuts is that? What does that free us up to do? That's the same question we're asking now about, are you? Are you? Yeah, exactly.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

It's like there's the old argument, I thought I made it up. It turns out I didn't make it up at all. But I argued years ago in some episode that when the AIs come for all of our jobs, then if we can turn into essentially pets the way dogs have been turned into pets because dogs used to be work animals. All these dogs were bred for different kinds of really hard work. We didn't need that work anymore, and we kept a whole bunch of dogs around. Now we love our dogs more and we love our people.

Yeah. If there's a future in which I just pee wherever I'm fucking at. Sign me up, someone comes and cleans it up.

Exactly. There was a Seinfeld line from years ago. He's like, If a Martian came down, sees a species and the guy walking around picking up the poop from the dog, who's in charge here? He's in charge The first time that you were recommended a book on Amazon based on a previous book, you thought, Wait, what's that?

Or on Netflix, watch this, you like that.

Then the second time, you thought, Oh, that's either weird, creepy, wonderful. Then the third time, you're like, That's what it is. That's the way all technology terminologies are. This is something tangent, but when you get used to things quickly, what the psychologists call habituation, that can be a bad thing, too. Because you start to lack gratitude for things that are prima facia, awesome. I can go pretty much anywhere I want in this country turn on the faucet and drink it. That wasn't a hundred years ago. But once you're used to it...

My obsession is like, we'll watch these movies with my daughters, like little women, and they're in this big mansion and everyone's dressed so beautifully. And I say, you know they had to go out in the yard and shit? Just I remember that. However pretty that house is. I'd live in a mobile home with an indoor toilet before I'd live in a mansion without an indoor toilet.

You're a terrible father.

That was five minutes ago. The early 1900s, that was five seconds ago.

That's really cool. You had to go out in the yard in the middle of winter. Because now they're going to be thinking about, well, those dresses aren't very outhouse compatible.

Well, we know those dresses were Philly. They're full of staying.

I'm becoming very uncomfortable in this conversation.

I mean, also, literally, it's not available everywhere now. So forget that long ago. Even places in this world don't I don't have it.

The trend is good, but it's not everywhere. I feel like we always do this. We whip out the prosperity chart and say, you see, things are getting better, but there's still so much anger and suffering and frustration.

And again, what are the terms of this debate? And we want to do something about it. Are those the right metrics to evaluate how we're doing?

We need I can talk about something slightly better for five minutes. Okay.

Okay.

What show are you watching that you love? Getting sad.

I did just watch a show. I don't watch a lot of TV. I'm sorry to say I watched your wife's show with the rabbi. I love that.

Of course you did. As it turns out, everybody saw it. It was really good. Can I tell you one funny thing about that? If you want to have a funny thing? I do. I go into my GP because I have this disgusting dead toenail.

Is this unrelated to the carbuncle?

Well, who knows? Maybe I will tell me that they're related. But at this point, I just have a dead gross toenail. I I dremled it and it looked like maybe I had cancer on it. I'm finally going to go to get it looked at. He's about to look at my ugly toenail and he goes, Oh, yeah, what do we got here? You tell your wife. She's our shixa. I go, You got it. I will. He goes, You know what? I got a guy across the hall. I'm friends with him. I bet I could get you into him right now. He's a podiatrist. I want him to look at it. And I go, Sounds great. I have a referral, and right now I'm going in. He walks me in. I've never met this man. You're not going to believe this. I swear to fucking God, it's true. Pull off my sock. Now he starts looking and he goes, By the way, can you tell your wife she's our Shixa? And I'm like, Did you guys talk in the hallway earlier and say she's our Shixa? Both doctors, while looking at my disgusting toes, stopped to tell that my wife is their shixa.

All right, so I'll say two things about that. It's pretty weird. Number two, I love the fact that both these doctors are comfortable enough with you to rather than go straight to the toe tail to go to that.

It feels like a HIPAA violation somehow. I don't actually think it is, but it feels like it. It feels like it. It feels like some information shouldn't have been crossed that way.

I once had a doctor say to me, I love that episode you did about ba, ba, ba, ba, ba She said, I wish I could tell him about it. What are you talking about? She said, Well, I'd be uncomfortable telling him, I listen to it because you're a patient. Because he might ask me, Why do you listen to Freakonomics?

What do you got a crush on this?

Exactly.

Did you tell her to leave this marriage?

This is your husband. You can't tell your husband that you have a patient who makes a radio show.

That, unfortunately, is also good.

I really respected her. She takes patient- Integrity.

Confidentiality.

Where were we? I feel I dragged us onto another- No, I thought that was light-hearted and fun.

You wanted a light moment.

Yeah, podiatry and- That was light-hearted. Fungi toenails.

Steven?

Yeah.

I love when you come on. You love me being so uncomfortable. I want you to do it a hundred more times. I guess This is my last question. I want to end on this. Fifteen years into this for economics radio, do you have moments where you're like, I can't do it. I need to hear that you have those moments.

Okay, short answer, yes. But this is defining terms. I don't say I can't do it. It's It's hard. I think making anything that you care about, if you're making dinner for your family, if you're starting a company, if you make a thing like you're making here like I make, if you care about a thing, it's hard. It's just the way it is. That's number one. Number two is I love, love, love what I do, and I'm very grateful for that because I know there are a lot of people in the world that do the work they do because they need to earn a living to take care of their family. I respect that more than I respect, I get to do what I like. It's like play. I feel a little bit I'm guilty about that, but I've gotten over feeling guilty about it. The hard part is, even with all the tools, even with good AI, even with a great staff, even with more experience, etc, you have to be on your game all the time. The thing that would worry me is if I stop having ideas. You're only as good as your ideas, and this is all I do.

I don't have a job. I don't have that many commitments. I'm a good dad and father, but my family has really supported me when I have to go or do or think because when you're a writer, you're just in your head a lot. It's all I do, and so I keep having I like having ideas. I think ideas are one of the single best things about us humans and that the AIs will have facsimiles of it, but not the way we do. I don't know if I'll do it in another 15 years. I do get a little bit bored with certain kinds of episodes, so I'm constantly trying to change things up. I do more series now. I'm trying to do more series that are a little bit more like writing a book, doing a series right now on Handle's Messiah, that piece of music that I happen to love.

What it sounded like to me is that it's the ideas that keep reigniting you.

Yes. You also have a taste It's for novelty. Everybody does, right?

Me in particular, I'm a novelty junkie.

With that attitude, you would be a very good golfer. Because most golfers were pretty terrible. We try our best, we get better, but it's really hard. But then you hit that one shot.

And it buys you 20 more.

And you go to bed at night and you just think about how it smelled, how it felt, looking at the ball in the light. And then you still were sucky that day. I would argue that's what life is, though. It's like a lot of what we all go through. It's not what we'd want to do, but you go through it because you need to and you're living your life supporting family, et cetera. But then you get hit with the highlight and you're like, Yeah.

You feel grateful for it. All right, Steven, this has been a blast. I hope you'll come back. If you've never read Freakonomics, you are a Philistine. So go get it on the 20th anniversary, November 11th. You get a new forward, a new jacket. Also, maybe the show is called Better in Person. Probably not. You got Freakonomics Radio. No stupid questions. You still did that with the- No.

We did three years. It was awesome. We rerun the archive, which is actually in podcast world now. You guys will have this experience one day. A dormant show can still be a great show. A show that's not being made is like reruns on TV, obviously. But also, podcast audiences cycle through pretty fast. We still have about 70 or 80% as many people listen to NSQ, No Super Questions, as when it was new. Wow. Because people are either they love it, they're coming back, or they discover it. Yeah, that's cool.

All right, wonderful. Well, we'll see you again because you're one of our favorites. I hope so.

Thank you. Thank you. Stay tuned for the Fact Check.

It's where the party's at. Hi. Hi.

How are you?

Good.

I have a list.

Okay, let's hear it.

These are just a couple of things that happened from Aaron and I's motorcycle trip.

Okay, let's hear it.

Okay. First of all, we had so much fun.

Good.

We rode a thousand miles in three days. I got a blister. My carb uncle's hurt.

I mean- Did you use the soap?

Yeah, I used it last night.

Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mersasope.

Yeah, I used it last night. Okay, good. We got... It was a pretty short trip, but we did get to two salad bars. Fun. Shonies.

Shonies. Do you remember Shonies? Yeah, Shonies. Holy shit. I haven't thought about Shonies.

Holy Shonies. I know a lot... Something suspicious with Shonies happened on this trip. Okay. One was we pulled over, we're just following the directions, and I I see a goddamn Shonies, and I'm like, I didn't even think they were still around. Same. And I was like, I think they have salad bars. Yeah, Shonies. God, it's a great restaurant. They had a full salad bar and a lunch bar.

What's a lunch? Oh, like hot food.

They had a big pan of hamburger patties and onions and a broth. That was delicious.

Wait, the patties were in a broth?

Yeah, it was like this big stainless steel bucket of hamburger petties and broth and onions. Strange. Okay. Maybe like hamburger fried steak or so. I don't know what the hell it was, but that salad bar was great. We really enjoyed that. And then, again, we got off in an exit on our way home, and we were heading to Waffle House. And I looked to my right and I was like, Ruby Tuesdays. Oh, yeah. Haven't been to Ruby Tuesdays in 40 years, I think.

For some reason, that one doesn't get me as excited as Shonies.

Yeah, that's fair. Okay. Well, I'm sure we've made a lot more memories at Shonies. But I just was like, oh, when I went 40 years ago at the 12 Oaks Mall in Novi, Michigan. I think they had a salad bar. So I pulled into Ruby Tuesdays, and Eric goes, Wow, Ruby Tuesdays. And I go, I think they might have a salad bar. He goes, Well, let's check. Sure enough, walk in. Gorgeous salad bar. Really? Yes. Wow. I fucking love a salad bar. I do love a salad bar.

Okay, now, did you deviate your salad from Shonies to Ruby Tuesdays?

Well, there were some more options at Ruby Tuesdays. The price point is a little different.

Okay.

So we did have my sunflower seeds. I love more seeds and stuff for me at Ruby Tuesdays, which was great.

Did you get this teeny tiny small pieces of ham?

No, but it's funny you'd say that. The bucket of ham was the largest bucket on the salad bar. It was bigger than the lettuce bowls. There was so much ham, and Aaron loves his ham.

I love ham on a salad. You do. I don't really mess with ham on the salad. But it's in these teeny tiny pieces. I know. These strips are so cute and chewy.

Yeah, you would have loved it. There was a bucket of ham.

Do you put cheese?

Yeah, cheese, just to remind you. It's mushrooms. It's chopped egg if they had it.

Neither place had that. Okay.

That's a checkmark.

Okay.

Garbonzo beans, whatever. Chickpeas. Chickpeas. Pees.

Okay.

Seeds, I would say, cheddar cheese, then blue cheese dressing, and the Catalina, and a little bit of honey mustard mix, all three. Oh my, okay. Yeah, and then several trips. It's just so...

We just have such different tastes in salad bar.

I know, I know, I know, I know. But that's great because we would never be competing. If you got up there and there was minimal blue cheese dressing left, I'd be panicked. You wouldn't care.

No. The only crossover we have is the Cheddar cheese and Catalina and lettuce. Although I go light on lettuce. No seeds? I don't go seeds. You should start doing some seeds. At a salad bar. These seeds are good for you. I do put... Yeah, that's the thing. My salad is not a good... A salad bar salad to me is not meant to be healthy. It's dessert. Yeah.

Yeah, me neither. Okay. Yeah. Okay, so that's just one update. We did hit two salad bars in four days, which that's a great average. Great. Maybe we'll be back for my coffee table book that I'm still working on the Great Salad Bars of America. Oh, right. Yeah. They deserve... Okay, well, here's the show, He's Ding, Ding, Ding. So then I go out with... Erin flew home, and I was there for one more night. So I picked Huey up in my Corvette. I was like, Let's have a night on the town in the Corvette.

Okay.

It was so fun. We went to Bricktops. We had a delicious meal. And then on the way back, we just were cruising all over Nashville and going through different neighborhoods, and he's showing me things. And then we see this huge palace. This house, it It was a palace. I was like, What is that? Like 20 some thousand square feet? He's like, Yeah, at least. And he goes, That's the old CEO of Shonies. And I'm like, What? That's the CEO of Shonies? That's so Sam. I thought they were out of business. Also, did he do a good job?

He did. He did. Obviously, he owns a palace.

But should the place be out of business and you own a palace and you're the CEO? Doesn't that feel a little- But it's not out of business, I guess.

You went to one.

Well, yes, I went to one. I found one. And when I posted a picture of it, every single person that comes is like, Oh, my God, there's still a Shonie's. That's not the biggest sign of success.

I think that I wonder if that's the... Can we look up how many Shonies are left in the United States?

That's a great search. This guy still has his palace despite whatever happened.

Okay, well, I don't know if he doesn't deserve... He gave people a lot of food for a long time.

Clearly, it was very profitable for some period because his house was outrageous. Wow. There's 58 of them across 15 states.

Are there any here?

They never were. No. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. So all the saps, really. They still haven't I'm in Georgia. I haven't seen. Now, will you look up what the maximum they had was at their peak? This is 44% of the total. That can't be right, man. I saw Shonies everywhere, and this Shonies just was like, there's a diamond in the rough. Anyway, I loved it. Was it crowded? I love Shonies. Was it crowded? It was exactly what you think. We're both 50, and we were the youngest by 30 years. Yeah. In 1998, there were 1,834 states. There we go. 1,800 down to, what did you say, 50 something? Yeah, 58. So that's not 44 %.

I'm so surprised there's even 50.

So he must have built that palace when they had 1,800 locations. Okay. Now, second thing that happened was, so the first two days we rode, we rode too much, really. Okay. Went on the Dragon's Tale. This is a very famous road. There's like a kabillion turns in 22 miles. Maybe the curviest road in America, Huey said. That was beautiful. So fun. We got there. Next day, a tactical blunder. As a surprise to Aaron, I looked up if there were any Cider Mills in the area. There was Granddaddy's Apples. So I said, First stop. I have a surprise. We went to the Cider Mill. Line was so long. Back to your Vista story. It It was a good two-hour wait. So I said- Two hours?

Yeah. Are you sure? Because we might have moved faster.

Maybe. I don't think so. Okay. So I said, Let's just go get Cider. You could go get Cider. What was all the donuts was the line. So I said, let's go grab some cider and let's go just sit at a picnic table and hope someone's had their fill and then buy the donuts off of them. That was my approach, and it worked. We sat down next to this couple and I bought I bought one donut for $20. I said, I'll give you $20 for a one donut. My God. And they were ethical, so they gave us two, which was nice. Wow. And so at first, the sticker shock of $20 for two donuts, right? I get it. That's glutness- Yeah, no one liked to- And shameful.

Yeah.

Unless you look at it this way. Get this one four-day trip of the year, two hours in that line. I said to Aaron, for anyone who makes more than $10 an hour. What we did was cheaper.

Yes, but work is shitty, especially if you're probably working at a place where you're getting paid $11 an hour. So to spend two of those hours that suck towards one to two donuts.

If you're trading the two hours in line for two hours at work, yes, you'd probably be in line. You'd rather be in line. You'd rather be in line. But I still stand by my math. That's a good way to look at it.

How come you still stand by even though I poked a good hole?

Well, you're saying that the hours aren't comparable. But for me, they're worse. It goes the other way. I'd rather do this show for two hours and stand on that line for two hours. And the people who bought the donuts are so happy because they were going to throw those away. And they basically were neutral. They didn't have to pay for their donuts. We got donuts without spending the two hours in line. So everything felt really clean.

Okay. This is very reminiscent of the Taylor Swift concert when I paid someone to buy my shoes.

I know, but mine's a little different because I actually didn't add to the line in any way whatsoever. Because those people had already gone in the line. They had bought their dozen donuts, and I didn't show up and say, Will you buy a second thing of donuts? Like, these were going in the trash So I didn't really impede anyone else's day.

You still found a workaround to get what you wanted. I did do that. With money.

With money.

So this is Taylor Swift sweatshirt.

That part of it's identical. Okay, great. I just He didn't have to step in front of anyone and get it dicey.

He didn't step in front of anyone. Oh, okay. She was already in line. Yeah.

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

I mean, that, but that's- Yeah, everything's great.

You did a great job. We got these donuts, everything.

Were they good?

Oh, so good. So we leave there, and I want to go to Looking Glass Falls. And so I put that in my NAV on my phone, and I have it on the handlebar. And then I add that as a way, as a stop along my route to go to Old Edwards Inn, which is much further away in a town called Highland. So we get to the falls, we take some pictures. Everything's great. Go to put my phone, resume my thing. Well, it turned it off. And now I have no cell service because we're in the middle of the mountains. So I just started continuing riding. All this to say, when I finally got cell service, I think that blunder added about 2 hours to our ride that day. And it was chilly that day.

Oh, no. No.

We get all the way to this town. That's a side note. You can't eat. I've been debating whether or not I want to complain about this or not. There's a weird thing going on culturally on this trip, which is we went into many, many restaurants that were near empty, and they told us the wait was one hour. I don't really understand what is going on. But it happened so many times that when we got to Highland, we walked in this restaurant, and I said, Hi, two. Mind you, it's like 3: 40 PM. No one's eating lunch at 3: 40 PM. She goes, It'll be an hour. I'm looking at the dining room, and I just couldn't resist. There were three tables taken out of 25 tables. And I said, What? It's going to be an hour to sit in the empty dining room? Uh-oh. And she goes, There are 10 parties ahead of you. And then I look around and we're the only people there. What? And I go, Where are you hiding the 10 parties? You did. You couldn't. I couldn't resist. There was not 10 parties. And the fucking dining room was empty.

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

I prefer they just said, I don't want to work. And I go, That's cool. I get it. I don't want to work a lot of times, too. I'll leave. I don't want you to have to work if you don't want to work. But don't lie and then lie again to back up the first lie.

Yeah, I don't like it. I was annoyed by this. Can we say, though, potentially maybe they just had one server working?

And again, I think one server could have handled the fourth table. There's something... This was pretty consistent. Really? Yeah. I left a bad taste of my mouth. Weird. Yeah, it was very weird. I don't know what was going on. I think what's going on is it's a really busy time of year in that part of the country. A lot of people are going to look at the leaves turned.

Yeah.

Even though they weren't turned at all. So I think they're overwhelmed. Okay. I don't know what's going on. Forget that. Anyways. Okay. Point is, by the time we got back to the hotel, we had ridden so long, and it was fucking cold. My hands were numb in the whole nine yards. So I woke up on the next morning, and I'm like, I got to tell Aaron, I don't want to ride today.

He's going to be bombed. How did you feel identity-wise?

It's challenging.

Yeah.

It's challenging. But I was like, Oh, this is an opportunity for growth. Because the old me is like, you're riding every day and you're riding hundreds of miles a day because that's what you came to do. But it was Sunday, there was football on, and I text Aaron and I said, I hate to say this, but I think I want to just lay around all day today. And he said, I'm so glad you just sent this text. I was panicked. You're going to want to ride more. We needed a break, right? So then I went online and I found a massage. And I wanted us to have... I just was lazy. I didn't want to try to book two different appointments. It felt like... Because everything was so busy, I just went to couples massage because that way I know we can get a massage at the same time. So I booked a couples massage for 07: 00 PM on Sunday night. Great. I want to say the name of the place. Romantic. Can I say the name of the place? Because it was so great. The name of the place in Asheville, if you're there, you must try it.

Blazing Lotus, Healing House.

Oh, nice.

Okay. Okay, so I also wrote in the comments, Hey, it's two dudes, so we don't need to be in a couples room. If that's easier or harder, whatever. So we arrive at the thing and I say, I don't know if you saw my thing. She goes, Yeah, so we have two different rooms. I go, Okay, let's do that. And she said, But we have a male and a female massage therapist. I I'll take the dude. I go with Philip, and he's incredible. If you're going to go get Philip, he's insanely good. I want that. It was one of the best massages ever. I was so lucky. But while I'm laying there getting massage, I was just thinking in my head about people getting couples massages. I was thinking, I can't imagine. I know I'm not, but I'm on the far edge of this spectrum I recognize. Then I got curious. You don't think when a man and a woman go get a couples massage, and the dude's laying there getting a massage from a woman, and then his wife's getting a massage by a man, I don't think that man is ever getting jealous or worried that there's a man stroking his wife right next to him.

I don't know.

I don't think so, or they wouldn't do it.

Right.

Then I just started thinking about that like, Oh, this is a very interesting thing that this happens, couples' massage. Isn't it? A man's watching or is next to his wife getting rubbed by another man, and they don't care at all. And then I was like, Okay, why don't they care? A, mostly because they're just focused on the fact that they're getting rubbed.

Well, they're there. I feel like they're like, nothing that happened. I'm right here.

Truly. Yes. But it's framing. So that's fine if a man rubs your wife and gives her lots of pleasure.

Sure.

If it's her coworker, you're going to have a lot of problems. If it's a friend. This is such a stretch. If it's a friend, you think it's a stretch? The activity is objectively the same.

I know, but the judgment isn't about the activity. It's about what it means. A massage is not, weirdly, even though it's so pleasurable, it's not intimate. If it crosses into intimacy, it's actually very uncomfortable, except for that one time. Unless, yeah.

Let's be honest here.

That one time. If it's a coworker- But let's say the coworker has not attracted to your wife. They're not going to put themselves in the position to do that unless they are.

Yeah. I'm not doing a good job making my point. The activity is objectively the same. Yeah, the motions. Rubbing muscles with lotion.

Sure.

If you have a problem with one version, again, you've got to say, Oh, he's attracted to her, where it becomes a problem, or they're not a professional, or, or, or, or, or. You recognize what I'm saying about the fragility of the mind. In this scenario, it's totally fine. I don't even think about it. But if it's anyone but this person, the activity itself is now objectionable.

Yeah. Because of the nuance of what it means. There's no safety. Yes, there's no professionalism. There's no safety. The person is not sitting. Even if it's not a couple's massage, even if it's just a woman goes and gets a massage from a man, the husband isn't there. They probably don't.

It's like a compartment we have in our head where we go, It's totally fine if a stranger rubs my wife's naked body in this context.

Yeah, because there's boundaries around that context. Whereas if it's a coworker- That's a great...

Don't you like the term coworker?

Because it's crazy. It is so crazy. Yeah, that's like, they're pushing a boundary. The massage therapist at Glen Lotus- Yeah, close. Is, they could get sued. There's boundaries.

Sure, they could get sued. But you got to make all things equal. The co-worker is not attracted to your wife.

You can't make it equal. This is the nuance. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The The physical motion is the same, but what's behind it is not the same.

Exactly. So let's go through it because you got to be specific. So what's the issue with the coworker and not the person at the massage?

Intimacy. Emotional intimacy.

But you're assuming that there's... Erica from our pod could give me a massage. There would be nothing going on at all. We would all agree.

Well, I don't know that we'd all I'll be honest. If all of a sudden it's like, Erica is going to give Dax a massage, I think we'd all be like, why?

But that... Right. In this scenario, you- If it's a physical therapist or something, friend.

If it's a physical therapist friend, that's different to me because that is medical.

I know, but it's funny because, again, it's just a very arbitrary bracket we assign. Because the person is a professional, which means what they went to massage school- And have a business. The act of touching my naked partner is fine because of X, Y, and Z, they're trained.

Well, not just because are trained because they have stuff to lose. There are parameters around that. They work for a business or own a business.

I guess what I'm saying is if you could establish the coworkers rubbing your wife because he's horny for her, I got it. You got a problem. You got a problem. If the coworker is dispassionately doing the exact same thing that the massage therapist says, it's funny that that's a big difference.

It just would never... That's never happened. That a coworker gives a non-passionate nothing.

I couldn't get you on board.

Unless the coworker is getting his massage therapy license, that's a situation where it's like, I have to practice. I have to get so many hours in. That's different. But this regular at office to coworkers, no.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. But again, I think what you believe you're objecting to is this coworker wants to rub my wife. But I'm asking for the scenario to be the same as the masseuse, which is the coworker doesn't want to rub your wife.

Then why is he?

Because your wife asked him and they have a massage table at work. I don't know why.

But, but, but, but, dad- You're just saying it couldn't happen without those other things at play.

But it could. How? Because I've rubbed lots of people's shoulders and stuff. All right. Well, I really thought I was going to have something here, but I don't. I think it's It's just really funny that it's fine to have a dude rub your naked wife in one context, and then it's completely objectionable in another, I think, is funny.

Yes, because it is... I hear what you're saying, but the difference is boundaries and no boundaries, and that is real.

Those are real human- Yeah, I just don't think people then get specific about what that means. What are the boundaries that are being crossed? Is it that no one can touch your wife? No, because in this scenario, they can. Is it they're attracted to my wife and want to rub her sexually? Yeah, that's a huge objection. But just your friend could give you a massage, and none of those things would be on the table because he's gay.

Well, he's not. Because he He's gay. Yeah. He has... There's no... But even... Okay. So, yes, he isn't attracted to me, so that feels fine. It also still doesn't. I think I would be feel a A little uncomfortable.

You want some anonymity when someone's seeing you nude.

Yeah.

It's nudity.

Is best done anonymously.

Is either for a partner, for the most part. I mean, this is not like... Or for, yeah, pleasure in an anonymous way. Yeah.

I just think if you were the alien in the spaceship and you saw this man watch his wife's getting rubbed by a stranger next to him, and he's completely at peace, and he's getting rubbed, everything's groovy. And then he walks in his house, and the neighbor's giving, and then he goes crazy, emmerged the guy. I think if you're the alien, you might just be like, Oh, this is really funny.

I guess. I mean, this is a ding, ding, ding Because I had friends in town from Georgia, which was really, really fun. And one of the- Hairplay. Yes. One of the people, Gina. Gina is my hairplay and massage's partner. So we've been doing hairplay and massages since we were 11. And if we're ever together, we make sure that happens. And it is like everyone always has this- Your friends don't like it. Yeah, or they like it, but they're like, I think they think it's kinky. It is always really funny because it is so not. It is so benign. It's nothing. I guess in some ways, this is what you're talking about. That's what I'm saying. Kind of. But it's different when it's a man and a woman, if they're heterosexual. Me and Gina are heterosexual, so there is something about it's fine.

But I just don't think everyone's attracted to each other because they're opposite sex. I mean, this thing is a very tiny- Well, you are.

You say that about everyone. You say, I'm attracted to everyone. It's definitely not a tiny. I think most men who see a woman naked, mostly, are going to be it like, attracted.

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

I agree. I agree.

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

Yeah, and I don't think it's reverse, really, where a wife is all that worried about their husband going to a massage therapist, woman.

Right, which is ironic because that That's who should be nervous. Why? No.

My example is because, as you just said, a guy will take a blowjob from a Billy goat.

A man shouldn't be that worried about his wife getting a massage because in general, the wife isn't just randomly attracted to every guy that would be driving her. Well, right. Yeah. This whole thing started with me being the man dealing with your wife naked getting rubbed by another man, and you don't care. You should probably not care too much, period, because I don't think most women are going to get horned up over a random dude giving a massage.

Yeah, but exactly. So a coworker is not a random dude.

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

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

It's the one she's not attracted to. I Like I said, it can't be about attraction. The massage can't be- But it says, again, there's no- Because then you have a real problem. Your wife is engaging with someone she's attracted to in an intimate activity. But my scenario is she's not attracted to the worker. He just doesn't have this title. So you make a big dark, and we're done with it. We're done with it.

Wow. I guess that was it. That was it. Oh, but hairplay and massages were a fan. We didn't get to massages because it was too late.

I understand the hairplay, but what are the parameters of the massage? Did you guys get bare naked?

No, not bare naked.

Normally- Is it full body massage?

No, just back.

Okay.

Back Like a massage.

Full body changes it a little bit, right?

Yeah.

You have your friends working on your butt cheek, working on your glute.

She is a physical therapist, so I would maybe let her do that. Yeah, you should. She should do it to me, too. It's been a minute since... I think shirts are off. Oh, wow. But you're laying down. Okay. So no one... It's not- Bras off? Yeah.

Oh, wow. This is a bit kinky. But no.

Because you're laying down as if you are in a massage. Yeah, of course. And then we normally sit on the butt.

Sit on the butt? Is there lotion involved?

No.

It's a dry rub.

Yeah, it's dry.

It's a Memphis dry rub. Are the shirts off?

Now Now I don't remember. They must be off. You can't... Oh.

Might be a shirt on massage. It might. God, you can't even remember. I'd be so hurt if I were her. Fuck. Should I tell? If you... Yeah, I would be hurt.

No, I think it's shirt off.

Yeah, it's got to be. It's shirt off. What's the point?

Let's get these shirts off. But hairplay is first, and hairplay is the main.

Best part.

Yeah, it's the best part.

So you guys did find time to play with each other's hair. How does that work? Is it a 10-minute chunk or 15? Is it honor poke?

It's honor.

No, you need a Timer.

I know. You wouldn't like that. Sometimes I do stress out about it a little bit. What if I don't reciprocate the way I'm supposed to because I am not paying attention? Normally, I go first First.

You receive first?

Yeah.

Okay, explain. Why is... How come that's the system?

I don't know. It's just like something... It's just the system. It's just what we've been doing. Muscle memory. Yeah. And so I am like, I wonder how long it's gone so I know what to do. Yeah. But I normally try to let that go.

Just look at the clock before it starts.

It's so fun. We have brushes. Oh, there's brushing.

Like, you'll do braids. Do you all's hair look crazy afterwards? Is it all super big? Not really. I just picture everyone's hair like this afterwards, like ratting it and twisting it and combing it.

It feels so good.

It feels so good. But even that, that's a distinction, right? I think people would be jealous. It can feel so good and not be sexual. Of course. Right. But I think people think anything feels good, they're triggered. Yeah.

I understand that. That's true. But again, a massage is like that. A regular I know. Regular massages like that at a place. It feels so good, but there's zero. I mean, again, there are some exceptions, but zero sexual feelings or intimacy. We're chit-chatting during hairplay and massages. Okay. So we're catching up. Time's flying. Yeah, time is flying.

Do you think you did the same amount she did to you or a little less?

I just think maybe I did a little bit.

You're worried. Yeah. This is your donuts. Yeah. Yeah, I just think our framing of things is just so funny and arbitrary.

It is interesting. I mean, it is a strange sim because I did have that thought, the same thought, which is like, it's so funny that they all think. They can't imagine a world in which our hair plan messages isn't kinky. They can't imagine that. Yes. They think it's weird.

Yeah, and great. So we bond on that. I'm regularly I just can't grasp the level of jealousy everyone else experiences. I just can't find purchase in it. And then I'm always just looking at these like what I think are mental hiccups or inconsistencies with the whole thing. It's just like, yeah, you'd be totally fine with this.

Yeah. It is context, though. Again, that's why I think I'm like, you just need more information to know whether jealousy should happen or not. When it's two heterosexual females who've been doing this since they were 11. I mean, her husband, Robbie, shout out, Robbie, he doesn't care.

Well, bet not. But he's sitting in the corner with this playing pool pocket, pocket pool. Don't say it. Pool pocket.

Pool pocket. No, he knows it's nothing.

Is it kinky if he plays pocket pool while this is happening?

Yes, that takes it up to a different level. Okay.

Would you let a coworker check your prostate? Well, you're my coworker, so I guess you're asking if I would let you check my prostate. Let's go. If you could accomplish what needed to be accomplished and I needed to know, yeah. You would not. I would. If I needed to know.

Okay. And he knew- When you let me. And that's a better comp because we're two heterosexual people. Yeah.

You know I would have to I would have to run that by my wife. Exactly.

And she would say, no.

Well, no. If I... Again, let- This is not a dis on her. No. What I'm saying is if I needed to find out if my prostate was big, because then next steps needed to be taken. And you, for whatever reason, you knew just as well as my doctor if it was enlarged. And we were stuck somewhere. And I called her and said, I got to find out if I got to go to the emergency The only way is Monica has to put her finger on my butt. But don't worry, she knows what size the prostate is.

See, again, there's so much context. There's a lot. There's a lot of context.

But what I do know about her is if I needed that to be done, she wouldn't care who did it as long as the thing I needed to get done got done.

I don't know about that, and it's not anything. It's nothing about her. It's just it's okay for her to have boundaries. It's okay for her to say, You know what? I'm actually not all that comfortable with that. I'd prefer you go to the emergency room.

Right, but that's not an option. That's why I painted it very specifically. No, it's everything. I'm not calling her to say, Hey, hon, can Monica put her finger in my butt for fun? That's a call I'm not making. Obviously. And she's not saying yes to.

I know, but now you've made a scenario that's not a real scenario.

No, it is a real scenario. The whole reason I just let a man put his finger up my butt right now is because I had to.

Yeah, but he's a doctor. Yes.

I had to have that done. And if nobody was around to do the thing I had to have done.

I know, but Dax, my point is that scenario you're saying right now, nobody's around to have something done that you need done, which is put a finger up your butt, is not real. No, it's not real. It's not real at all. Yeah, you'll never be in that situation where you can't get to a hospital and only a female coworker is with you.

My My point is, if something had to be done for my health that involved you or any female coworker was the only person that do it, Kristen would say, yes, as I would, too. If you have to have something done, I can get over my jealousy for you to be healthy and safe.

Sure. I mean, massage is a little different.

No, but we went to- Yeah, we moved it over. We went to prostate, which I just had to have done. But Not because I wanted to.

Right.

Yeah. And not because he wanted to put his finger in my butt.

Yeah. He's a professional, so there's boundaries there.

Yeah.

Anyway, let's do fast.

Yeah, okay.

Now, I'm not going to do what I did last time this happened, where I presented the facts, and everyone in the whole world listening, including you, was like, these These are really good. These are really intricate. You really did it this time.

A real deep dive. I don't know what got in to you, but it was a deep dive, and it turned out- It was Sophia.

Yeah.

God bless Sophia.

Sophia is back on the facts today.

Oh, wow. So this for both of us will be illuminating.

Yes. She's better than me at this, so they're going to be good. Okay, what is Confederate money and how much was it worth? Answer/correction. Confederate money or Confederate States dollar was paper currency issued by the Confederacy between 1861 and 1865 to fund the Civil War. It was backed only by the future payment after Southern victory. It started out roughly the same value as US dollar, but by 1863, it was worth 6 cents per US dollar, and by 1865, it was worthless. Uh-oh. Today, given rarity, it could be worth much more.

Oh, more than valueless. That seems like a low bar.

Right.

Yeah, or less than 6 cents on a dollar. Right.

It probably depends on where you are, where that would be worth something or not.

Yes.

Who's the guy we have on who collects the hair? The presidential hair. Cohen. Jared Cohen. Jared Cohen. Jared Cohen.

He might have some Confederate money.

Yeah. He's a collector of history.

It's... Boy, how do I say this? I do not want to offend the South. But it's adjacent to people who collect Nazi memorabilia. It's haunting. It's so powerful. My whole point is, if you When you're walking to someone's house and they have all these Confederate dollars, you go like, Oh, is this person? Or were they an anti-evolutionist?

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

I could own some Nazi plates, and it would not make me in any way a Nazi or someone who thought anything that Hitler was about was good.

God, this is so complicated. Yes, because, yes, you could definitely own that as like, whoa, this is like a piece of world history, how wild.

It's a piece of the most dramatic chapter in modern history.

Horrific. The most horrific. Yeah. But here's where things get tricky. It's like, if a Jewish friend comes over and you have these Nazi plates.

Displayed.

Yeah. And you're like, Oh, this is just because I'm a history buff. Right.

I also have Genghis Khan's belt over there. Right.

And they probably would be like, okay. They would probably be able to see that as truth, but they are not going to be able to look at that and not feel real pain.

Yep.

Yeah. And same with Confederate dollars. So because this goes back to the whole Confederate flag. Yes. And it's like, okay, I understand that to you, it doesn't mean that, but to so many people, and it did mean that.

I accept both realities. Yeah. And there's a third, which is there are a lot of people that love the Confederate flag because they are displaying their racism. Sure. That's definitely happening Yeah. When I drive- More and more now. Through certain areas. I'm like, I know what they're saying. And there are some people like the hunting, fishing south, pride of the south. I really believe them.

I believe them, too. But that's Exactly. That's my point. I have one of my best friends. I think struggled with this for a little bit. He's Southern, and he is. He's like Hunter, Fisher, also like a professor. He has a PhD. He's very introspective and smart. I think he was struggling with this for a while because he's like, No, it represents this. But he did come around.

But no. Again, he barely got there, and he's a professor. Some people don't.

Some people don't do that. I wish they would, I guess. I wish they would. But, yeah, it's... Anywho. Okay. Did printing money in the US start during the Civil War. First federally-issued paper currency, the greenbacks, was introduced during the Civil War in 1861 under the Legal Tender Act. Paper money dated as far back as 1690, but not on the national scale. So money was largely coinage or banknotes before 1861. The US dollar in coin form originated in 1792. But yes, nationwide legal tender notes began by the treasury during the Civil War. Okay, who wrote the Grant, Twain, Adams, Hamilton biographies, and when were they written? Grant, 2017 by Ron Chernow. We love them.

I love them.

Twain. I love them. 2005 by Ron Power.

No, that's not the one I'm listening to.

Well, we are listening to the new one now.

Yeah, which is Ron Chernow.

Yeah, but this is an old one.

Oh, okay.

Adams, 2001 by McCala. Hamilton, 2004 by Ron Churnow.

Okay, so Hamilton's Churnow and McCala's Adams.

Oh, wow. This is an important one. When did humans stop eating poop?

Mm.

Okay. Answer. Can't find reliable data.

Yeah, that was my hunch. Hard to know.

Really hard to know.

We'd need a cave painting of a man eating a pile of poop that had just fallen out of another human.

And then the next painting where he's not doing that.

There's a circle with a line through it. Don't do this. You sicko.

Okay. Do rabbits poop 200 to 300 times a day? What is the average number of time animal poops a day? I mean, I already did this on a previous fact, so it turns out I am pretty good at this.

Right. Because now we're just rehashing.

Now, re-hashing. But I'll go through them again. Rabbits, 200 to 300. Moose, 13 to 21. Birds, 12 to 40. Geese, every 12 minutes. Gross. Penguins, up to 140 times a day.

I wonder if the geese and birds have to poop that much evolutionarily to keep themselves light. As we know, their bones are hollow so they can fly. Yeah, bird bones. Maybe you can't carry around a pound of dung. That's true. Dung, dung.

Okay. Fun fact, blue whales supposedly excrete 200 liters of poop in one single bowel movement.

200 liters.

How much is that?

How many gallons that is? 52.

8 gallons. In one poop Oh, my God. Gross. That's disgusting. No wonder the ocean is polluted.

When you were gone and we did a couple of armchairs, Aaron and I, one of the guys was a submarine worker, Submariner. And yet they squirt their tanks out, their waste tanks.

Into the ocean?

They have to. They don't come up for six months.

Oh, right. Yeah.

And he said there is a feeding frenzy outside the- Eew. And I bet there is when these blue whales let loose, too.

Gross. Who coined the term illusion of fluency? Wu Qiang on 2022 guest.

Wu.

Wu Kyong Ahn. Keong. She was so playful and fun.

We loved her.

Yes. Cognitive psychologist and professor of psychology at Yale. She talks about a lure of fluency can trick us into thinking we can do something simply because it felt easy, which leads to the illusion of fluency. She was cool. Go back in the archive. Listen to her. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, that was a good episode. And that's it for Sophia's Facts on Steven Dubner. Oh, great.

Great, great, great. Good job, Sophia. Yeah, good job. Good job reporting them, Monica. Thank you. Rob, good job. Good job. All right. I love you. Love you. Follow Armchair Expert on the WNDRI app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wundri. Com/survey.