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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 0:45Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Upfront payment, $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20GB hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work is a new way to work in ChatGPT. ChatGPT Work can pull info from across your apps and connect to your tools to help you create finished work. You can even automate work in ChatGPT with the Scheduled Tasks feature, and the whole

• 2:11Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:29Stephen J. Dubner?

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

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Why do I read? Why do I have conversations? Why do I travel?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Why do I have to go to school? Why do I pay attention?

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Why do I pay attention? Because I want to be amused.

• 3:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because I want to get outside my comfort zone.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  But mostly.

• 3:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mostly.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Mostly because.

• 3:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because I want to.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Find out stuff.

• 3:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Find out stuff.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Find out stuff.

• 3:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because I want you to.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Tell me something I don't know.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  Hi, this is Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I want to welcome you all to Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

• 3:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Alrighty. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  You probably do know that Chicago is home to many great rivalries, from our baseball teams, to our pizza places, to our politics.

• 3:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know all that. Tell us something we don't know.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  You might not know about the rivalry between two great Chicago Blues legends, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

• 3:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  I did not know that.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  When Howlin' Wolf first came to Chicago, Muddy Waters gave him a place to stay. But that friendship quickly turned into a rivalry. The two legends competed for the same shows, the same songs, and the same band members. Muddy Waters stole Wolf's guitarist, and Wolf stole Waters' sax player right back. And when they were playing the same club on the same night, Howlin' Wolf would extend his set to try to minimize Muddy Waters' time onstage. And by most accounts, the two had a love-hate relationship. And their rivalry sharpened their talents into changed music history in the process.

• 4:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. I'm Stephen Dubner. Thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel for the warm Chicago welcome and for helping us introduce the theme of tonight's show, rivalry.

• 4:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell Me Something I Don't Know is live journalism wrapped in a game show. To talk about rivalry tonight, we have got a gold star panel. Would you please welcome the University of Chicago economist Steve Levitt, Cook County Commissioner Bridgette Gaynor, and the lawyer and author Scott Turow.

• 5:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's begin with my Freakin' Comics friend and co-author Steve Levitt. Levitt, here's what we know about you so far. We know you are an award-winning economist who loves to play golf, bet on horses, and eat fast food. We know your father, a medical researcher who's studied intestinal gas, is known as the king of farts. And that your mom is a psychic novelist who channels stories from the heavens. So Steve Levitt, tell us something we don't know about you, please.

• 5:39Steve Levitt?

  Well, Dubner, it's great to be here. In the theme of rivalry, it reminded me of when I was 10 years old. I was on a baseball team that actually came from behind to win in the last inning, the city championship in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And all of my other teammates poured out onto the field to celebrate. And I sat on the bench and just watched them. And my dad was so humiliated by what had happened that he banned me from any kind of team sports for the foreseeable future. And luckily, he introduced me to golf, which is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

• 6:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Excellent, Levitt. Very, very happy to have you here tonight. Our next panelist, Bridgette Gaynor. What do we know about you? We know that as a Cook County Commissioner, you fought for sunshine laws, job training, and a better way to auction off vacant land and buildings in Chicago. We know you grew up on the South Side, but you started your career in New York as a community organizer. And then back in Chicago, you worked in City Hall and the Park District before becoming Commissioner. So Bridgette Gaynor, keeping in mind tonight's theme, rivalry, tell us something we don't know about you.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  I'm the oldest of six, and I have four sisters. And so we had an intense rivalry. My second sister was the much better clothes buyer. So we, my other sisters and I would come up with elaborate schemes. But the best was when I started about three and a half months before I went away to school, starting to ferret away her clothes to various friends because I knew she'd be checking my bags. And so like any kind of art of war, you need to be planning far, far in advance. So that has taught me all the things I know about politics today.

• 7:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good. Thank you, Bridget. And finally, Scott Turow. We know you as the prototype of the lawyer novelist whose books include "Presumed Innocent" and, most recently, "Testimony." We know you're also a Chicago native, that your mom inspired you to be a novelist, and that your dad was an OBGYN who delivered roughly half the other kids at your school. We know you still practice law, that you're a former president of the Authors Guild, and, congratulations are in order, you are a lifelong Cubs fan, I believe.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  Only took a lifetime.

• 7:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, Scott Turow, tell us something we don't know about you, please.

• 7:45Speaker 06

  Right after I graduated from law school, I came to work in the US Attorney's Office here in Chicago and was lucky enough to be assigned, as the junior prosecutor, to the prosecution of William J. Scott, who was the Attorney General of this state. And among Bill Scott's lawyers was Vince Bullosi. And Vince was really a great trial lawyer, but also an author. He had written a book called "Helter Skelter", and the book was about Charlie Manson. Years later, I, of course, published "Presumed Innocent." So, this trial represents, so far as I know, the only time that two lawyers, who both wrote, number one, New York Times bestsellers,

• 8:28Speaker 06

  had ever tried a case against each other.

• 8:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  I did not know that. That's pretty awesome. Scott Turow, Bridget Gainer, Steve Levitt, so happy all of you are here to play "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." Here's how it works. Guests from the audience will come onstage and try to impress you with their IDKs or I-don't-knows. You're free to tell them what you think, ask them anything you'd like. Once you've heard them all, you'll pick a winner based on three simple criteria. Number one, did they tell you something you truly did not know? Number two, was it worth knowing? And number three, was it demonstrably true? To help with that demonstrably true part, would you please welcome our real-time fact-checker, Tricia Bobeda.

• 9:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tricia is a journalist, senior editor of digital at the great public radio station WBEZ. Co-host of the Nerd at Podcast. Tricia, you ready to make sure our IDKs are indeed factual?

• 9:35Speaker 07

  Absolutely. On the Nerd at Podcast, we talk to people about their obsessions. And if there's one other thing that I can always count on nerds to love, it's facts and correcting people who are wrong.

• 9:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Tricia, very happy to have you here. It's time to play Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Tonight's theme, remember, rivalry. Would you please welcome our first contestant, Paula Carter? Paula, so nice to have you. Tell us a bit about yourself.

• 10:05Speaker 08

  I am a writer, an editor, and author of the forthcoming memoir, No Relation.

• 10:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, Paula, I'm ready. So are our panelists, Steve Levitt, Bridgette Gainer, and Scott Turow. So what do you know that's worth knowing that you think we don't know?

• 10:18Speaker 08

  Okay. For what common product, besides alcohol, was there once moonshiners?

• 10:26Steve Levitt?

  Is it something you would eat or drink, or something completely different?

• 10:29Speaker 08

  Something you'd eat or drink, yep.

• 10:32Speaker 06

  And could people go to jail for making this?

• 10:35Speaker 08

  Some did.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  And is it popular in the places where moonshining was popular, still?

• 10:41Speaker 08

  Um, I'd say it's more broad than that.

• 10:43Steve Levitt?

  Was this an American phenomenon, or pre-American?

• 10:47Speaker 08

  It's all across the world, but this did happen here in the US.

• 10:50Steve Levitt?

  Is it legal today, or something that's?

• 10:52Speaker 08

  It is legal today, and it's common today.

• 10:55Speaker 06

  And like, moonshine, I thought got its name because, you know, you drink it and you're in a twilight world. Is this similarly, if not intoxicating, does it have some knockout effect?

• 11:13Speaker 08

  Depends on who you talk to.

• 11:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're not, you have no desire to give in, do you, Paula? All right, Paula, why don't you tell us a story? What's this product that, like alcohol, once had an equivalent of moonshine?

• 11:29Speaker 08

  It's actually margarine. So in the early 20th century, the government so highly regulated a new product called margarine that it prompted the rise of margarine moonshiners, who made it and sold it illegally on the sly. So margarine was first developed by a French chemist in 1869, and almost immediately, the dairy industry panicked. There were vicious battles in Congress over margarine. A Wisconsin senator called it "a monstrous product of greed and hypocrisy."

• 12:04Speaker 08

  Eventually, the dairy lobby successfully pushed through laws to restrict its sale. The substance was heavily taxed, and stores and restaurants had to be licensed to sell it, hence, the moonshiners. The government also made it illegal for margarine to be dyed yellow, thereby making it less appealing. Wisconsin, where milk is the official state beverage, was the last to cave and allow for the sale of pre-dyed-yellow margarine in 1967.

• 12:32Speaker 08

  However, margarine had some advantages that kept it in the fight. It was much cheaper than butter, and so during hard times like World War II, sales went up. Then, in the 1950s, health concerns over eating animal fats made margarine the healthy choice. Margarine manufacturers invested in major advertising campaigns to publicize that claim. And I think we actually have a clip of Eleanor Roosevelt in an ad for margarine.

• 13:00Speaker 09

  Years ago, most people never dreamed of eating margarine. But times have changed. Nowadays, you can get a margarine like the new Good Luck, which really tastes delicious.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  It was that commercial that led to the idea of continuing the president's pension for the benefit of his widow.

• 13:21Speaker 08

  So margarine was more popular than butter from 1960 to 2000. But now in the new millennium, the pendulum has swung back and butter is back in favor.

• 13:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Panelists, does this surprise you? Does it intrigue you?

• 13:35Steve Levitt?

  It surprises me, but I do believe it because my mother was growing up in World War II and only margarine was available. And to this day, she will not let anyone bring margarine into her house because she associates it with being poor and she thinks butter is the only classy way to go.

• 13:56Speaker 05

  I feel about margarine like I feel about Miracle Whip, which is, it's associated with my childhood. And then when I left and got a job and could do my own thing, I can never buy it again.

• 14:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was part of the appeal of margarine that it was less perishable? Or what, I assume it's less perishable. It's made of, what, sawdust and oil or something?

• 14:16Speaker 08

  So that was a big problem in the early 20th century. People didn't really know what it was made of. They thought it was made of like cats and arsenic. There's a cartoon of those things being thrown into a vat from the Chicago Tribune.

• 14:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  And was that kind of campaign done by Big Milk against, I mean?

• 14:35Speaker 08

  Right, exactly. So the dairy lobby was vicious. They even, for a while, made it mandatory in some states for margarine to be dyed pink and black, like really obscene colors.

• 14:47Speaker 06

  Bright orange.

• 14:48Speaker 08

  But the truth is margarine is actually 80% fat, 20% water, and it just uses different kinds of fats.

• 14:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Before we finish up, let's check in with our fact checker, Tricia Bobeda. How legit is this, Tricia, the rivalry between margarine and butter?

• 15:02Speaker 07

  Oh, this checks out. And it's worth noting that not only did the pink laws exist, but they were overturned by the Supreme Court.

• 15:10Speaker 07

  So Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota passed laws saying that margarine must be dyed pink, and they said you can't force people to change the color of food.

• 15:21Speaker 07

  And then, you know, you can go down a pretty good internet rabbit hole if you also want to try to figure out what the natural color of Cheese Whiz is.

• 15:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thank you, Tricia, and thank you, Paula Carter, for playing "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." Great job.

• 15:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would you please welcome our next contestant, Joe Cobbs.

• 15:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Joe. Who are you? What do you do?

• 15:50Speaker 10

  I am a sports business professor at Northern Kentucky University, just south of Cincinnati, where I teach classes on international rivalries in sports and Moneyball sports economics.

• 16:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Joe, what do you have for us tonight?

• 16:04Speaker 10

  So I also operate the sports data website called kno rivalry.com. That's K-N-O-W rivalry.com. And through the website, we've interviewed thousands of sports fans across college football and the four major professional leagues here in North America. And we ask those fans what their favorite team is. And then we give them 100 rivalry points, which they can allocate over any of that team's opponents. So if they were to choose the Cubs, they could allocate 60 to the Cardinals and 20 to the Reds and 20 to the White Sox, or however they want to allocate it. We then compute a difference score between two opponents

• 16:46Speaker 10

  to make a list of the most unbalanced rivalries in sports. So my question is, what is the most unbalanced rivalry in sports?

• 16:57Speaker 06

  So this means the fiercest antagonism?

• 17:00Speaker 10

  The most unbalanced, so we're subtracting the two opponent's scores.

• 17:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Meaning I hate your team and you don't care at all about my team?

• 17:08Speaker 10

  That's correct. So one team allocates a lot of their 100 points?

• 17:12Speaker 05

  I'm a stalker and I'm ignoring you. So, North American, has this happened... So this is a game that's played in both the US and Canada?

• 17:18Speaker 10

  It's played primarily in the US.

• 17:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  So your universe of sports fans are, you said, the four major leagues?

• 17:26Speaker 10

  And college football.

• 17:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Baseball, basketball, uh...

• 17:29Speaker 10

  Hockey.

• 17:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hockey, and of course, Major League Soccer, being the four.

• 17:32Speaker 10

  The NFL.

• 17:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  NFL, sorry, NFL. And then college football?

• 17:35Speaker 10

  College football.

• 17:36Speaker 06

  So does one of these teams have anything to do with a very large city in New York State? Because they don't really seem to care about anything that happens anywhere else.

• 17:48Speaker 10

  Good question, but no.

• 17:49Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 17:50Steve Levitt?

  I'm guessing it's college football.

• 17:52Speaker 10

  That's correct.

• 17:53Steve Levitt?

  Because college football, there are just teams who are really good for really long and they don't need to be bothered by other teams.

• 17:59Speaker 10

  That's fair.

• 18:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  So let it knock down the door. Now you guys just gotta walk through it, yeah? Scott and Bridgette, are you big college football fans?

• 18:07Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 18:10Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 18:10Steve Levitt?

  I'm guessing it must have to do with Notre Dame, because everybody hates Notre Dame, right?

• 18:15Speaker 10

  You're getting pretty warm now.

• 18:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, is Notre Dame half the equation you're looking for?

• 18:21Speaker 10

  Yes, it is.

• 18:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow.

• 18:22Speaker 05

  Is the other half of the equation on the West Coast?

• 18:25Speaker 10

  No. Okay. Is it also in the state of Indiana? No.

• 18:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  And we're assuming that Notre Dame is the hated, but not the hater?

• 18:33Speaker 10

  That's correct. That is a safe assumption, yes.

• 18:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Has the...

• 18:39Speaker 10

  Do you want me to give you another hint?

• 18:41Steve Levitt?

  Sure.

• 18:42Speaker 10

  So, it is an East Coast team, and there is a religious element to the rivalry.

• 18:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh, Jewish theological seminary.

• 18:50Speaker 10

  That's correct!

• 18:52Steve Levitt?

  So, it must be Boston College.

• 18:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:54Speaker 10

  There you go. Boston College. Very well known. Notre Dame and Boston College.

• 19:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was really impressive. Notre Dame, Boston College. Okay, Joe, tell us a bit more. This is such an interesting idea.

• 19:08Speaker 10

  Sure. So, Boston College fans will allocate, on average, 74 of their 100 rivalry points to Notre Dame. But Notre Dame reciprocates with a measly 2 points of their 100. Hence, you get a difference of 72 points, which is a pretty big spread when the maximum is 100. I'm surprised they even know Boston College exists. Well, one of the interesting things about this rivalry is it even has a name, the Holy War. Which apparently Notre Dame fans don't care about at all.

• 19:39Speaker 10

  Uh, and we've identified 11 primary factors that contribute to rivalries around the country in multiple different sports. And typically, when you have an unbalanced rivalry like this one is, um, the biggest contributing factor is relative dominance. Meaning that one team dominates the other team on the field. Uh, but in this case, uh, for this one, it's pretty close. So Notre Dame has won 13 of the 23, so Boston College has won 10. But yet, it's still important to understand these unbalanced rivalries because with all the money involved in sports... Today, you have TV networks and sponsors and leagues and conferences. And so they're trying to maximize fan engagement.

• 20:22Speaker 10

  And so that's where understanding the intensities of these rivalries becomes important. And then from a fan perspective, there is nothing worse than being hated, except for being ignored by your rival.

• 20:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tricia, unbalanced sports rivalries. What more can you tell us?

• 20:41Speaker 07

  I think it checks out. And I want to do a little survey here in the room. Who by applause considers themselves a Cubs fan?

• 20:52Speaker 07

  White Sox?

• 20:57Speaker 07

  Who considers themselves a fan of both? Yeah, see, you're doing it wrong. That's not how rivalries work, guys. You're not getting the points. You have to pick a side. And here's kind of a fun fact about Chicago sports rivalries is that when the Cubs won, former President Obama, who is a diehard White Sox fan, pleaded with his speechwriters to please, please, please not put any jabs at his beloved White Sox in his congratulatory speech to the Cubs.

• 21:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good stuff, Tricia. Joe, thank you so much for telling us something we did not know. Appreciate it.

• 21:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, let's welcome our next contestant, Steve Pruitt-Jones.

• 21:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, Steve, what do you do?

• 21:40Speaker 11

  I'm a biology professor at the University of Chicago.

• 21:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you have for us tonight, Steve?

• 21:45Speaker 11

  So some background. Across the animal kingdom, males exhibit an incredible variety of strategies to attract and obtain mates. One of these strategies can actually be acting like a female. So my question is, why would males behaving like females ever be a successful reproductive strategy?

• 22:06Speaker 05

  Were they like loading the dishwasher? Were they doing other things that are useful? What was the female activity that they would exhibit?

• 22:14Speaker 11

  Well, so female mimicry can be morphological, and males can actually look like females, but it's mostly behavioral. So displaying female-oriented display behavior.

• 22:25Steve Levitt?

  Did they use their femaleness to hurt other male rivals?

• 22:31Speaker 11

  They don't use their femaleness to hurt males.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  I'm sensing a little tension in that question.

• 22:40Speaker 11

  At the end of the interaction, the males are psychologically hurt, but not physically hurt.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  That is a human metaphor.

• 22:49Speaker 06

  I'm just wondering, is there a name for this effect? Like, is it the tootsie effect?

• 22:56Speaker 11

  There are names for the males that do this, and I'll mention that in a second.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Is the behavior successful? Do they tend to attract mates at an equal or greater rate?

• 23:07Speaker 11

  It is certainly successful. Whether or not it's more successful than being a normal male and acting like a normal male is something that people like me spend their lives trying to study and quantify.

• 23:19Speaker 06

  But do they get the mate they want?

• 23:21Speaker 11

  They get mates.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Is the mate they want a woman? Or is it the mate they want just another mate?

• 23:26Speaker 11

  No, they're trying to mate with a female.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  OK.

• 23:28Steve Levitt?

  Are the males who are pretending to be females males who would be unlikely to have mates if they went the usual road?

• 23:36Speaker 11

  That is correct. You're good.

• 23:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is there a physiological difference, however? So Levitt was asking if they needed to do this, essentially.

• 23:48Speaker 11

  They do need to do it because they also tend to be smaller and they look like females. They cannot obtain mates the normal way, so to speak.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Is it that the females have already gone the male route and then they're like, "Mmm, I'm gonna change my mind"?

• 24:07Speaker 11

  I think they're fooled just as much as the normal male is fooled.

• 24:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think we should stop now before it gets dangerous. So Steve, why don't you tell us, why do some male animals imitate females?

• 24:20Speaker 11

  So female mimicry is a specific type of what we call sexual mimicry. And sexual mimicry is most common in fishes. So, for example, in the common bluegill sunfish. In that species, large territorial males can aggressively exclude other males from the mating site, where females lay eggs. But small males have another strategy. They act like a female, and that allows them to follow the real females into the mating arena. While the large male is displaying, as soon as a female lays her eggs, the male swims in, fertilizes the eggs, and then leaves immediately before the large male knows what's happened.

• 24:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  So when you say "have sex,"

• 25:03Speaker 11

  Yes, we're talking about a fish in which fertilization is external, so...

• 25:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 11

  There are many same-sex partnerships in non-human species, but those usually don't lead to reproduction.

• 25:17Speaker 11

  But something very surprising, knowing how nerdy academics are, these small males that sneak in are actually known in scientific publications as sneaky fuckers.

• 25:39Speaker 11

  And if you fact-check that, please put "in fishes" after the word... oh, those two words.

• 25:46Speaker 07

  Gotta take off my SafeSearch.

• 25:49Speaker 11

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

• 26:23Speaker 11

  And then there are many species of marine fishes in which individuals actually change sex, going from male to female or a female to male.

• 26:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tricia, I don't know quite what to call... I'm gonna call it sex-swapping fish for now, just to be on the safe side. What do you say about that?

• 26:38Speaker 07

  I say you should all Google "sneaky fucker fish" as a phrase. And then you should know that this is not uncommon in nature. This checks out. And it's also, as was maybe alluded to, a tactic some human males use, but it may backfire and they may end up in what is scientifically known as the friend zone.

• 27:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good. Steve Pruitt-Jones, thanks so much for playing "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." Great job.

• 27:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is time now for a quick break. When we return, more contestants. We'll make our panelists tell us something we don't know. If you would like to be a contestant on a future show or attend one of our upcoming shows in New York City in June, please visit tmsidk.com. You can follow us on social media at tmsidk show. We will be right back.

• 27:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Granola. You know that moment when a meeting ends and someone says, let's circle back on this next week? And everyone nods, but no one writes it down? Then next week rolls around and it's radio silence? That's why Granola exists. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part? Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free.

• 28:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just head to granola.ai/freakonomics. That's granola.ai/freakonomics to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai/freakonomics.

• 28:37Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 29:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com/freak. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/freak.

• 29:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by PNC Bank. Boring, great word, bad rep. Yet, time and time again, here at Freakonomics, we find that when something culture-changing happens, boring things like calculations and careful planning are usually behind it. Which begs the question, why not apply it to other aspects of life? Like banking, for example. Well, PNC Bank did since its inception, proving time and again that the best banking strategy isn't the exciting type, but the steady, reliable, definitely-not-yolo type. PNC Bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, Member FDIC.

• 30:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our panelists tonight: Steve Levitt, Bridgette Gainer, Scott Turow, and our theme, you'll recall, is rivalry. To that end, earlier tonight, we asked our live audience here in Chicago a simple question. What's the most intense rivalry, sports, business, family, whatever, that you have ever experienced? So, panelists, I'd love each of you to read one of the replies. Levitt, you first. What do you have?

• 30:59Steve Levitt?

  Yeah, I have one I love here from Shannon K. "I was in the Navy for 10 years, and the biggest rivalry experience has been when two different US naval ships pull into the same port. There would be literal street fights and pub brawls. It's amazing."

• 31:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bridgette Gaynor, what do you have?

• 31:16Speaker 05

  So I have something from Shaun M., who says, I kind of want to sing this, but, "My father versus technology, and technology always wins. Always."

• 31:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very nice. Scott Tureau, what do you have there?

• 31:30Speaker 06

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

• 31:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, time to get back to the game. Would you please welcome our next contestant via Skype, Neil Agarwal.

• 32:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey Neil, where are you calling in from and what do you do there?

• 32:10Speaker 12

  I'm calling you from New York, and I'm a cultural psychiatrist and assistant professor at Columbia University, and author of several books about the war on terror.

• 32:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, terrorism sounds like a good fit for our rivalry theme tonight. What do you have for us, Neil?

• 32:23Speaker 12

  So the Islamic State and the Taliban are both Sunni militant groups jockeying for control over the Middle East. The Taliban formed in 1990s after the Soviet Union retreated from Afghanistan. The Islamic State formed in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq. When did the public rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State start?

• 32:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  When did the public rivalry between the Taliban and the Islamic State begin? Panelists?

• 32:51Speaker 06

  Did this relate to a single historic event?

• 32:55Speaker 12

  Yes.

• 32:56Speaker 05

  Did the first public airing of the rivalry happen mostly in the US or in the Middle East?

• 33:04Speaker 12

  In Afghanistan.

• 33:06Speaker 06

  And was it the US's fault?

• 33:08Speaker 12

  No, surprisingly.

• 33:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  And Neil, is this what you study? Is the rivalry between groups like this? Or is this a subset of what you're after?

• 33:17Speaker 12

  This belongs to other work that I've been doing on the Taliban and the Islamic State.

• 33:21Speaker 05

  Does this rivalry, how does it play itself out today?

• 33:25Speaker 12

  Oh, it's pretty intense because they fight over control for territory in Afghanistan, and militants keep switching sides.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  So were they agnostic towards each other before the public rivalry? Or was there an alliance?

• 33:40Speaker 12

  They were mutually suspicious of each other, but there was one particular event that blew out the Taliban rivalry into the open.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  Was it economic?

• 33:48Speaker 12

  That's a great question. No, it wasn't.

• 33:51Speaker 06

  Did it have to do with sports?

• 33:52Speaker 05

  Was Notre Dame and Boston College playing in Afghanistan?

• 33:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is called the holy war, that rivalry. That's a no, Neil? That's a no, then?

• 34:04Speaker 12

  No, that is a no.

• 34:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. All right, Neil, why don't you tell us then when, and I guess more important, why and how the rivalry between Taliban and Islamic State began?

• 34:13Speaker 12

  So in 2015, the Taliban announced the death of its former leader, Mullah Omar, which prompted the Islamic State to go on social media with its claim to lead all Muslims worldwide. In the wake of this rivalry, both groups started to use messaging about unity to promote their causes in the Muslim world. The Islamic State's claim to unity is that its caliph descends from the Prophet Muhammad. Their recruitment and PR efforts are mostly through periodicals and videos. The Taliban, in print periodicals, has countered that jihadists have always fought united behind them, and that to divide Muslims now risks killing civilians. Americans should exploit this rivalry for our own counter messaging.

• 34:54Speaker 12

  In the past, counter messaging hasn't achieved the right cultural understanding, rendering it ineffective. For example, our State Department once insinuated that it would kill recruits to the Islamic State, which many of its supporters mocked for promising them martyrdom. Going forward, American efforts should highlight Muslim scholars who dispute the Islamic State's claims of a caliph, and the fact that the Taliban is killing Muslim civilians at record levels. And we should pay more attention to proper distribution channels so those messages are being heard.

• 35:23Speaker 06

  What are proper distribution channels in that part of the world?

• 35:27Speaker 12

  Social media.

• 35:28Speaker 05

  So there's even fake news in the Middle East? It's everywhere.

• 35:32Speaker 12

  More than you can ever believe.

• 35:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Neil, do you consult with the US government?

• 35:38Speaker 12

  I have not had the pleasure. I have written a book called The Taliban's Virtual Emirates that looks exactly at its writings in four different languages: in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and English. And I can tell you that although we might consider fake news, that they have a pretty crystallized worldview and perspective for how they conduct their messaging.

• 35:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Levitt, you've done a good bit of research in terrorism and detecting terrorists. Very different question than Neil's looking at. But does anything come to mind to you for exploiting this rivalry from the perspective of, let's say, the States?

• 36:15Steve Levitt?

  Yeah, I mean, it seems like Neil has a lot of great ideas already. I did have the privilege of working a little bit with the US government. And I was actually surprised, Neil, at how much of the military effort was not about guns, but about winning hearts and minds. Do you think we did a bad job of that in general, despite a big effort?

• 36:36Speaker 12

  I think so. I can tell you that, for example, when I look at the Taliban's work, they are writing songs that are pretty catchy, with great rhythms and alliteration. They've got some pretty famous local performers. And I wonder why we don't have people like Jay-Z and Beyoncé helping to amp our message out as a way of counter-messaging.

• 36:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm curious if there are any, I guess, parallels in the States or elsewhere with, let's say, rival drug gangs, criminal gangs, and smart exploitation of said rivalry?

• 37:11Speaker 05

  You know, one of the things that I think we all see as people who live in Chicago is that so much of the violence that we see in certain communities is being driven by social media, far more than easy access to guns or even the drug trade. And it's the exact same things that we've just spoken about, which is... The kind of public one-upping and the idea that someone whose whole kind of value proposition is around being the toughest and having power and control. Now the social media just kind of disintermediates it across the entire city and that drives it.

• 37:44Steve Levitt?

  So, related to what Bridgette has said, I've been working on this problem of violence in Chicago and I made a proposal to some policymakers, which they have not yet accepted. But I actually think one of the best approaches we could have to reducing violence in Chicago would be to have a massive media campaign, which the message is, "Real men fight." And I think we could put up boxing rings around Chicago and use social media and so basically change the culture so that instead of shooting each other, we actually let these guys get into the ring and beat each other up. And so, so far I haven't had luck convincing the public policymakers that we should be encouraging men to fight.

• 38:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's go to our fact checker, Tricia Bobeda. What more can you tell us?

• 38:31Speaker 07

  So, this all checks out and it seems that ISIS thinks the Taliban is thinking too small and being a more nationalist movement instead of having global ambitions. And the Taliban's been fighting for so much longer that they're sort of miffed that they don't get credit where it's due in their eyes. And also, if you Google Taliban songs, the first artist who pops up is Toby Keith, who I don't think is going to help us out.

• 38:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Excellent. Neil Agarwal, thank you so much for playing "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." Well done. Would you please welcome our final contestant, Cece DeBois. Hey, Cece, what do you do?

• 39:14Speaker 13

  So, I am a doctoral candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University.

• 39:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Excellent. The floor is yours.

• 39:23Speaker 13

  Current statistics show a startling lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms. Soft affirmative action, which is a type of policy that's designed to change the composition of the candidate pool rather than the criteria used during the hiring process, is a potential policy response. What organization created and implemented a soft affirmative action policy that's being copied by the likes of Facebook and the US Congress?

• 39:50Speaker 05

  So when you say change the candidate pool, does that mean you change who gets referred into it?

• 39:56Speaker 13

  So in this case, the soft affirmative action policy was geared towards changing up race and ethnicity. But that could be gender, it could be whatever specific demographic is focused on.

• 40:08Speaker 06

  Does this organization have anything to do with the US government?

• 40:12Speaker 13

  No.

• 40:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Does it have anything to do with any of the professions or vocations any of our panelists are involved in? Law, government, academia?

• 40:22Speaker 13

  It does not.

• 40:23Speaker 05

  Does it have to do with sports?

• 40:25Speaker 13

  It does.

• 40:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bridget Gainer.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  So when you say change the candidate pool, what you mean is you don't just necessarily get to pick who you want to interview, that diverse candidates are in front of every single person who's in a hiring decision?

• 40:43Speaker 13

  Yes, so there's a rule that requires, in this case, each entity that's doing hiring to make sure that their candidate pool is composed to meet certain standards.

• 40:56Speaker 06

  Oh, I think it's the NFL that established a rule that for head coaching vacancies, there has to be an interview of minority candidates. I think it's called the Rooney Rule.

• 41:06Speaker 13

  That is correct.

• 41:07Speaker 06

  Very well done, yeah.

• 41:11Speaker 13

  So in 2003, the Rooney Rule was adopted by the National Football League. And what the Rooney Rule does is it requires every franchise that has a head coaching vacancy to interview at least one minority candidate. So all they have to do is prove to the league office that they've interviewed a minority candidate, but that you have the same hiring criteria for minority and non-minority candidates.

• 41:36Speaker 06

  But my question is, how is the Congress employing this?

• 41:41Speaker 13

  Number one, Congress isn't required to publish any of their diversity statistics. But organizations that have looked at this and sort of did some investigations recognize that a vast majority, almost all of congressional staff are non-minority candidates. And so when Senator Chuck Schumer recently came to this knowledge, he encouraged all Democrats to implement the Rooney Rule for their hiring. Just to go back to what the Rooney Rule was like in the NFL, I was interested in whether or not it actually had an impact on the probability that a minority filled a head coaching vacancy in the NFL. There's a noticeable jump, right after the Rooney Rule is passed,

• 42:23Speaker 13

  in the share of NFL franchises that employ a minority head coach. But we should be concerned that there might be something, whether that be social, cultural, or institutional, that incurred contemporaneous to the Rooney Rule that could be causing this impact to happen. I find that a minority is 20% more likely to fill a head coaching vacancy in the post-Rooni era than the pre-Rooni era, even taking into account the general positive hiring trends towards hiring minorities. One of the side effects is that the winning percentages of minority head coaches drop precipitously after the passage of the Rooney Rule. Beforehand, you needed to be a really high-achieving minority in order to even be considered,

• 43:08Speaker 13

  whereas in the post-Rooni era, the difference between minority and non-minority head coaching performance is not even significant.

• 43:16Steve Levitt?

  That's great research, Cece. I'd have to say you're an honorary economist, for sure.

• 43:21Speaker 13

  Thank you. Thank you very much.

• 43:22Stephen J. Dubner?

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

• 44:06Speaker 07

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

• 44:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nicely done. Trisha and Cece, thanks so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great job.

• 44:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can we please give one more hand to all our contestants tonight? That was fantastic.

• 44:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is time now for the panelists to pick a winner. Who told you something you truly did not know, something that's worth knowing and true? The panelists will use a ranked voting system. The contestant with the highest overall ranking will be tonight's winner and will join us back on stage later. All right, then, who will it be? Cece Dubois with "The Rooney Rule", Neil Agarwal with Taliban vs. Islamic State, Steve Pruitt-Jones with Sexy Time for Gender-Bending Fish,

• 45:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Joe Cobb's with lopsided sports rivalries, or Paula Carter with Butter vs. Margarine? While the votes are being cast, let me ask you a favor. If you enjoy Tell Me Something I Don't Know, please spread the word and give it a nice rating on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks. All right, the panelist votes are in. Once again, thanks so much to all our contestants. Sadly, only one of you can be a winner, but we do have for each of you this certificate of impressive knowledge, suitable for framing.

• 46:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  And tonight's winner, with his IDK called Sexy Time for Gender-Bending Fish, Steve Pruitt-Jones, congratulations.

• 46:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Steve, you'll come back on stage later to face one of our panelists in the final round of Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Which one? We'll find out right after this break.

• 46:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. There's no hiding how convenient Southern New Hampshire University makes college. They offer over 80 career-focused graduate programs online. Classes have no set meeting times, so you can balance life and learning, and online tuition rates are some of the lowest in the country, making it all a little more manageable. A school this willing to work with you is worth the investment. Visit snhu.edu/freakonomics to learn more.

• 46:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by PNC Bank. Boring. Great word, bad rep. Yet, time and time again, here at Freakonomics, we find that when something culture-changing happens, boring things like calculations and careful planning are usually behind it. Which begs the question, why not apply it to other aspects of life? Like banking, for example. Well, PNC Bank did, since its inception, proving time and again that the best banking strategy isn't the exciting type, but the steady, reliable, definitely-not-YOLO type. PNC Bank: brilliantly boring since 1865. Brilliantly boring since 1865 is a registered mark of the PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC Bank, National Association, Member FDIC.

• 47:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by hotels.com. Hotels.com helps you find and book the right stay for work faster. With business preferences, save your travel must haves, like gym access or breakfast, just once, then get tailored results whenever you search for work travel. Plus, with a free membership, you can save up to 20% on hotels and earn rewards on every stay for future travel. Book now at hotels.com. Visit hotels.com for details.

• 48:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back.

• 48:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is time for our panelists, Steve Levitt, Brigitte Gaynor, and Scott Tureau, to answer some lightning round questions, written especially for them. Steve Levitt, the economist behind Freakonomics, we'll start with you. Freakonomics is to economics as blank is to blank.

• 48:43Steve Levitt?

  I would say Freakonomics is to economics as sneaky fuckers are to bluegills.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 48:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Levitt, would you rather win the Nobel Prize for Economics or make the PGA Senior Tour?

• 49:02Steve Levitt?

  Make the PGA Senior Tour.

• 49:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Levitt, what are your three favorite restaurants or chains in the world?

• 49:09Steve Levitt?

  Well, Dairy Queen, for sure. Chipotle and Wendy's.

• 49:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh. What's the best idea you've ever had?

• 49:22Steve Levitt?

  Letting the New York Times let you interview me. Because so many fun things have happened since then, writing for economics and everything. That's the best thing that ever happened to me.

• 49:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's sweet. Worst idea you've ever had? And it cannot be the same answer as the best idea.

• 49:41Steve Levitt?

  So when I was in high school, I went with a friend named James Templeton. And we had BB guns. And we were near the Mississippi River. And we decided it'd be fun to shoot into the ice and see how many shots it would take to break the ice. And only after we broke the ice did I realize ice is actually standing over the Mississippi River. And fell into the frozen Mississippi River and was very lucky not to die.

• 50:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. All right, if, Levitt, you had the power to unilaterally invoke one economic policy, what would it be?

• 50:13Steve Levitt?

  I think the flat tax. If we just had a flat tax with no loopholes or deductions, I would like to see that.

• 50:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Levitt, did your king of farts father ever use his kids as research subjects?

• 50:27Steve Levitt?

  So he didn't in his very narrow area of specialty. But I do remember once he asked me if I would go and round up all my friends. And he would pay anyone who would let him draw blood from them $10. So all my friends lined up without any consent of any kind from any parents. And he just drew the blood one after another.

• 50:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, and Levitt, finally, Chicago is the most blank city in the world?

• 50:54Steve Levitt?

  I don't think Chicago is the most anything in the world. It's the second most of lots of things. But I don't think it's the most of anything.

• 51:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Steve Levitt, nicely done, except for the last one, maybe. Great job.

• 51:07Speaker 06

  Steve, I thought you were a sure winner until that last dance.

• 51:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Look, I don't want to win. I do not want to have to compete against the other Steve up there, head to head. No way. I like that Levitt's already strategizing. But this is super smart, because he's either throwing the contest, or pretending to throw it. Nicely done, Steve Levitt. Cook County Commissioner Bridgette Gaynor, you ready?

• 51:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. How many county commissioners are there, and what are they?

• 51:34Speaker 05

  There are 17.

• 51:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  And there are four Republicans and 13 Democrats.

• 51:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 05

  So it's two parts. The first is the, kind of like a board of directors, budget, and then, you know, the county oversees the public health system, hospital, and the and public criminal justice system, and all the real estate functions. And so, you know, there's been a lot of work on criminal justice reform.

• 51:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bridgette, we're told that in elementary school, you ran for class president with the slogan, "Don't be a loser, vote for Gaynor."

• 52:03Speaker 05

  I did.

• 52:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  How'd that work out?

• 52:04Speaker 05

  Well, it's still going well, but it worked out well at the time, too.

• 52:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're a Dem. Who's your favorite Republican?

• 52:12Speaker 05

  Um, okay. I think I would say Ford.

• 52:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 52:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. Because you know what? I think that we underestimate the enormous amount of pressure he was under. And he kind of took the high road, and I think really suffered for it. Whether it was a combination of kind of playing the long game, and putting other people before yourself. And I think that we could use a little bit of that now.

• 52:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  What a good answer. Interesting answer.

• 52:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bridgette Gaynor, when are you going to announce your mayoral campaign?

• 52:50Speaker 05

  Well, if I do, I'm gonna come back on the show and do the lightning round.

• 52:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, very good. We've got some essential Chicago dilemmas that you'll have to navigate. So quickly, Cubs or Sox?

• 52:59Speaker 05

  Sox.

• 53:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Deep dish or thin crust?

• 53:02Speaker 05

  Deep dish.

• 53:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Owls or Johnnies?

• 53:04Speaker 05

  Owls.

• 53:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  John Belushi or Bill Murray?

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Oof. Yeah, I'm gonna stick with Belushi.

• 53:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Belushi. True or false, the four stars on Chicago's flag stand for sausage, buying votes, Ferris Bueller, and sausage?

• 53:22Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no.

• 53:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, what do they stand for?

• 53:24Speaker 05

  The Fort Dearborn.

• 53:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  Oh, Christ. Oh, the fire.

• 53:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Fire, nice, yeah.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  Oh, the World's Fair, nice.

• 53:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, World's Colombian Exposition of 1893, and similarly, in 1933.

• 53:41Speaker 05

  The, right.

• 53:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  The, yeah. The Century of Progress Exposition.

• 53:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. The other one. Finally, President Trump has had some unkind words for Chicago. If you could take him on a private tour, what would you show him?

• 53:55Speaker 05

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

• 54:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bridget Gainer, thank you so much, great job.

• 54:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  And on now to our final panelist, as Time Magazine once called him "The Bard of the Latigious Age," Scott Turow. All right, here we go, Scott. Why did the Cubs wait so long to win a World Series?

• 54:30Speaker 06

  Just to keep us all in suspense.

• 54:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  We get the whole "write what you know" thing, but if you were going to write about a profession other than lawyers, what would it be?

• 54:40Speaker 06

  Professional wrestlers.

• 54:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really? Come on.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Same thing.

• 54:43Speaker 06

  I mean, is it real? How much is real? Do they get hurt faking it? You know.

• 54:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, what's the best TV show ever about lawyers?

• 54:53Speaker 06

  I would take Hill Street Blues.

• 54:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mm-hmm. Scott, who's your biggest literary rival, or do you, like most writers, have nothing but warm feelings for your, for your fellow writers?

• 55:04Speaker 06

  I do have warm feelings for my fellow writers, but I am frequently confused with John Grisham, so much so that when I was recently somehow a answer to a question on Jeopardy, the contestant, of course, guessed John Grisham.

• 55:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Scott, I understand you read at least three newspapers every morning. Why bother?

• 55:29Speaker 06

  Well, it's actually a study of journalism to see how they contradict each other.

• 55:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  You served as chairman of the Illinois Executive Ethics Commission, having been appointed by Governor George Ryan, who was later convicted of federal corruption charges. Tell us more about that, please.

• 55:48Speaker 06

  Actually, your extraordinary fact-checkers have got this one wrong. I was the first ethics pick of Rod Blagojevich.

• 55:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, yeah, much.

• 56:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're right, that totally changes the picture, yeah.

• 56:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  And finally, Scott Turow, you've claimed you can take a call from a client in the middle of writing a sentence and then finish the sentence after the call. Do you bill the client for the second half of the sentence?

• 56:20Speaker 06

  Only if they haven't been nice.

• 56:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Nicely done, Scott Turow.

• 56:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is time now for our live audience to pick one panelist, based on their lightning round, who will face our contestant winner in the final round of Tell Me Something I Don't Know. So who will it be? Steve Levitt, Bridget Gainer, or Scott Turow? Audience, would you please take out your phones and follow the texting instructions on the screen?

• 56:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, the audience votes have been tallied, and our panelist winner tonight, Steve Levitt. Nicely done.

• 57:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, we have the Battle of the University of Chicago, the Battle of the Steves. Please welcome back to the stage now to compete against Levitt, Steve Pruitt-Jones.

• 57:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Our final round, ladies and gentlemen, is very simple. In a moment, we will reveal a topic related somehow to tonight's theme, rivalry. Steve and Steve, you'll then each have a minute to tell us something we don't know about that topic. No Googling, no audience help, just your own big University of Chicago brains to rely on. In case you're tempted to make something up, remember Tricia Bobeda, our fact-checker, is standing by.

• 57:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, what then is our final topic? Well, some of the greatest rivalries, of course, are between nations. And one of the greatest of the greatest is the rivalry between the US and Russia, and before that, the Soviet Union. That's our final topic tonight. Tell us something we don't know about Russia or the Soviet Union. Use your imagination, and good luck. We'll give you a minute. Now, while our finalists are thinking, let me remind you to visit tmsidk.com to get tickets to upcoming shows, or even better, sign up to be a contestant also at tmsidk.com. Okay? Steve Levitt, Steve Pruitt-Jones, it's time you will tell us something we don't know

• 58:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  about Russia or the Soviet Union. Levitt, you first, what do you got?

• 58:32Steve Levitt?

  So this is really embarrassing, because the fact I'm about to give you, I taught it to my undergraduates two days ago, and as I taught it to them, I was almost certain it was false. The first communist revolution took place in Russia with the Bolsheviks taking over in 1913. And according to the academic paper that I was teaching to my students, factory production, crop production, many other things fell between 1913 and 1921 by between 60 and 90% in just those eight years of the initial amazing social experiment with communism. And I used that with my students as a celebration of how great capitalism and the markets are.

• 59:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Interesting. All right, Steve Levitt, nicely done. Steve Pruitt-Jones, what do you have for us?

• 59:19Speaker 11

  Well, during the Cold War, there was, of course, intense rivalries between the USA and USSR. And one of the offices at the USSR had a specific task of coming up with embarrassing names for politicians in the United States. I can't remember all of the names of the various politicians, but the best one was for Ronald Reagan, and his nickname was Banana Cowboy.

• 59:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Before we put this to an audience vote, Tricia, I know you haven't had much time, but is there anything you can tell us about the collapse in the Russian economy post-revolution, or the tale of Banana Cowboy and other manufactured politicians' names?

• 1:00:04Speaker 07

  As a journalist, it pains me to say that my first source currently is still Wikipedia on this, but the Russian famine, it is said of 1921 and 22, had economic disturbance as a cause, so that generally checks out. And when you Google Ronald Reagan, Banana Cowboy, it looks like this may be true, or may have been something from actually another public radio game show. It's the first search result. And my favorite fun fact about Russia, if I may, is that beer was not considered alcohol, but classified, if it was under 10%, as just food, until like 2011.

• 1:00:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, thank you so much, Tricia. It's time now for our live audience to pick a winner. This time, we'll go by a simple throat vote, and we'll measure it with our Applause-O-Meter right here. Remember the criteria: was it something you didn't know? Was it something that's worth knowing? And was it demonstrably true? Okay, first, make some noise, please, for Steve Levitt.

• 1:01:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And now, Professor Steve Pruitt-Jones.

• 1:01:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Weighing in at 97 decibels, our champion tonight, Steve Pruitt-Jones. Congratulations.

• 1:01:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, so, Steve Pruitt-Jones, what can we possibly give you as a prize to reward you for this astonishing performance tonight? Well, we've got something special. This is a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. First, before we tell you what the prize is, we need you to tell us about the greatest rival or rivalry you've ever had, a person that you've really tangled with.

• 1:01:53Speaker 11

  I've never really had any sort of negative rivalries, but I have lots of positive professional rivalries with all of my past students.

• 1:02:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ah, do some of them ever get a little bit too accomplished for their own good, though?

• 1:02:08Speaker 11

  They do, as a matter of fact.

• 1:02:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is there one, maybe, that comes to mind that's particularly?

• 1:02:14Speaker 11

  There are a couple of them whose positions I wish I had.

• 1:02:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you want to give us the initials, let's say, of the one with the position that you most wish you had?

• 1:02:25Speaker 11

  Their first name is Doctor.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  I see that.

• 1:02:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Well, here's your prize. Our panelist, Steve Levitt, has agreed to personally call this person and tell her that you won Tell Me Something I Don't Know tonight, and rub it in.

• 1:02:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, that is our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you did not know about rivalry. Thanks to our panelists, Steve Levitt, Bridget Gainer, and Scott Tureau, to our fact checker, Tricia Bobeda, to our awesome contestants, and thanks especially to you for coming to play Tell Me Something.

• 1:03:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  On our next episode, we're back in Washington, D.C. with our take on its number-one industry. We're calling that episode Politicling. And our panelists are the CBS News Chief White House Correspondent, Major Garrett, former Hillary Clinton campaign manager, Robbie Mook, and Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petrow.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Wait, so when I call 911, I should be like, "Send me the most jovial firefighter you have." Exactly.

• 1:03:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's next time on Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Tell Me Something I Don't Know is produced by Dubner Productions in association with Stitcher. Our staff includes Alison Hockenberry, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins, Brian Gutierrez, Dan DeZula, and Rachel Jacobs. David Herman is our technical director. He also composed our theme music. Thanks also to our good friends at Qualtrics, whose online survey software has been so helpful in putting on this show. You can subscribe to Tell Me Something I Don't Know on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or on tmsidk.com. You can also listen without ads by signing up for Stitcher Premium at stitcherpremium.com/tellme. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for listening.

• 1:04:33Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:05:04Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:05:41Speaker 14

  This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Is there a right time to sell a stock? Are you taking the right risks with your portfolio? Financial decisions can be tricky, and often, your own cognitive and emotional biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Join host Mark Reapy as he offers practical solutions to help overcome the cognitive and emotional biases that may affect your investing decisions. Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Hey, what does "all-in-one" mean?

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  So Clorox Toilet Wand is all I need to clean a toilet?

• 1:06:39Speaker 05

  Use as directed.