168. Think Like a Child

When it comes to generating ideas and asking questions it can be really fruitful to have the mentality of an eight year old.

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

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. The best investments are the ones you make in yourself, and no one knows that better than Southern New Hampshire University. With more than 200 online degree programs, no set class times, and low online tuition, Southern New Hampshire University is built to fit your life today and set you up for success tomorrow. Education is an investment. Why not make it a smart one? Apply for free at SNHU.edu/freakonomics. 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

• 0:42Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:27Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:54Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  On today's program, we begin with a magic show. Because if there's ever a medium that's made for magic, it's radio, right?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Hey, guys, how you doing?

• 2:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  The magician's name is Alex Stone.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'm gonna start out with something really simple. Maybe some of you have seen it, maybe you haven't, and then we'll go from there and maybe get a little more sophisticated and more complicated.

• 2:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  And the audience is kids, a bunch of middle schoolers from IS318 in Brooklyn.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  I don't know if you've seen this or not, but I'm just gonna take a handkerchief here. Do you wanna, do you wanna check it out? Make sure it's normal. Nothing weird. I only blew my nose in it like just once. Ah, it's okay.

• 3:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  With the thumb of his right hand, Stone stuffs a handkerchief into his left hand, and then...

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Watch.

• 3:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, you've seen this before. It disappears. But then, he reaches behind one kid's ear and pulls out the handkerchief.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  If I reach out, there it is, I think I can get it, I can catch it, see?

• 3:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you feel that come out of your ear?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Um, no.

• 3:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Where did it come from?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 3:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, they try to figure out the trick. Does anybody have any guesses? His sleeve. His sleeve?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Sleeves are rolled up, okay?

• 3:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you got?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  He probably has like, on his hand, he has like a pocket that he pulls it out.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Guy's getting warmer now.

• 3:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  They get warmer?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  It's good thinking, that's...

• 4:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  And then they get hot.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  That involves your thumb?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  What's your name?

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Jennifer.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Jennifer, Jennifer, give everyone, Jennifer, a round of applause.

• 4:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Stone reaches into his right front pants pocket.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Check this out.

• 4:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  And pulls out.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  See that?

• 4:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  A fake thumb.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a fake thumb. It's called the thumb tip. It's one of the most valuable tools in magic. There's thousands of tricks you can do with it. And it's pretty darn obvious once you know it's there.

• 4:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Man, it's very obvious. Now it looks like a sore thumb.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  But magicians even just to prove how no one knows. Sometimes they'll do it with like a red one or a metal one. No one notices. You're not looking for a fake thumb, right? And that's how it works. And then it's gone. And then they're back just like that.

• 4:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, we had also invited some adults to see this magic show. How well did they figure out the trick?

• 4:48Speaker 05

  I was with the sleeve theory, but clearly that's wrong.

• 4:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  I was wondering if it could be related to the ring at all. Oh, the ring.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Totally way off.

• 4:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can we see the ring for a second?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  That's just, that's really the dumbest theory ever. That's so stupid. Go home.

• 5:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  So we asked the kids why they seem to do better than the adults.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  I think kids could think out of the box.

• 5:10Speaker 06

  Maybe adults are more serious than kids. When you went to the adults, they didn't have any clue.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  Because they're focusing on the handkerchief instead of the thumb.

• 5:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  None of this was surprising to Alex Stone. He's seen it all before. And he says other magicians have too. If you are a magician and your life depends on fooling an audience of adults versus an audience of kids, you would choose the adults every time.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  There's a sense that when a kid watches a trick, they're asking a question every second. They're really approaching it with this sort of constant sense of curiosity and constant sense of sort of trying to understand what's going on. And I feel like their brains are just always awake when they're watching it.

• 6:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, then. If kids tend to be more curious and more alert when it comes to magic, what about the rest of life? What about coming up with good ideas? Even solving problems? Is it possible that we'd all be better off? If we could think like a child?

• 6:27Speaker 07

  From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 6:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Steve Levitt is my Freakonomics friend and co-author. We have just published our third book together, Think Like a Freak.

• 6:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Levitt, what's your favorite chapter in Think Like a Freak?

• 7:00Speaker 08

  So I'm going to give you a childish answer to that question, which is that my second favorite chapter in the book is to think like a child. Because most adults wouldn't answer any question by telling you what their second favorite thing is. But that's the kind of thing that a child might do all the time. And I think that the beauty of thinking like a child and the beauty of that chapter in our book is that sometimes doing things differently and simply and with a kind of joy and triviality leads you to a really special place that, as an adult, you don't get to go to very often.

• 7:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, Levitt, let's talk about some of what we label the characteristics of thinking like a child, like the good characteristics of thinking like a child that adults might want to smuggle into adulthood because they're productive. So thinking small. So when adults think about problem solving, most of us kind of shy away from the little ones because we figure they won't look important or whatnot, and the big ones really need our help. So talk about the power of thinking small.

• 8:05Speaker 08

  I think there's a temptation to try to be something special and to take on a big problem. But it's actually getting into the realm of thinking about a tiny little question that maybe you could come to the answer to. And maybe, once you learn the answer, would actually tell you about a lot of other things you might be interested, might be able to generalize. Actually, I'll tell you the best example I can think of of my own research of thinking small was the research we did on the bagel man.

• 8:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  The bagel man was a guy named Paul Feldman. He's a retired economist who started a business delivering bagels to different companies around Washington DC. He used an honor system payment setup, a wooden box with a slot where you'd put the money. In our first book, Free Economics, we analyzed the bagel man's payment data and wrote up the findings, what the payment rates told us about honesty as it relates to the size of a company, time of year, company morale, things like that.

• 9:08Speaker 08

  And I'll never forget a seminar I gave at the University of Chicago where one of my colleagues, a really smart colleague, his name is Luigi Zingales. He came to the seminar and I said, I'm going to talk to you today about this guy who sold bagels. And he blurted out, oh, this is ridiculous. What could I possibly learn from one guy and what he does selling bagels? And I said, maybe you'll be surprised. Bear with me. And I have to say, at the end of the seminar, Luigi raised his hand and he said, I didn't think it was possible, but I actually think I learned something general from what you just taught me about the bagel man. And that was actually, I would say of all, I would say that ranked as one of the top 10 moments I've ever had in academics because I really believed it was true that by thinking

• 9:50Speaker 08

  small, I had learned something from the bagel man and that others could too.

• 9:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Something else that kids do is they will state facts or describe something that's pretty obvious. Whereas adults, we tend to think that, well, if it's obvious, it indicates that we aren't thinking very hard. Talk about the power of acknowledging the obvious.

• 10:10Speaker 08

  The best examples I've seen about stating the obvious have all come in a business context. So I'll come in as an outside consultant and people in the company will think I'm the academic, I'm going to have these really complicated ideas and do complex econometrics. And really, the biggest values that I've ever added to firms comes usually in the first day I'm talking to them, when I know absolutely nothing and I ask a question or make a statement, which is so dumb and so obvious that no reasonable person could ever propose it. And a lot of times, it's because of is so obvious and people who have been doing it for so long can't they think about it a different way and it would be embarrassing it would be embarrassing to ask the questions I

• 10:53Speaker 08

  ask and a lot of times it is embarrassing because it is such an obvious or dumb question but every once in a while it turns out that that obvious question is the absolute breakthrough it's the thing that once you step back and look at it through the lens of a in this case a childlike ignorance it opens you up to seeing what the truth is.

• 11:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so Levitt, kids spend a lot of their time playing and otherwise having fun adults out of duty and out of necessity spend considerably less at least most adults what's the advantage of keeping your eye on fun or injecting fun in your work even for something as you know serious ish as public policy why is fun something that's underutilized or could be utilized better?

• 11:40Speaker 08

  Video games are fun my son Nick who's 11 years old can play video games for eight hours straight could Nick work at a job say at McDonald's for eight hours no so it seems to me what you take away from that is if you could make a job as fun as a video game then you'd have all the 11 year old boys in the world and probably the 15 year old and 20 year old maybe even the 30 year old boys lining up at your door trying to take that job I think fun is so much more important than people realize and I've seen it in academics when I interview young professors and try and decide if we should hire them I've evolved over time to one basic rule if I think they love economics and it's fun for them then I'm in favor of hiring

• 12:25Speaker 08

  them and no matter how talented they seem otherwise if it seems like a job or effort or work then I don't want to hire them.

• 12:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well persuade me that they won't just be nice to have around because they love fun but that having fun at what you do actually makes you better or different in some way that's positive.

• 12:43Speaker 08

  Yeah, enjoying what you do loving what you do is such a completely unfair advantage for anyone you're competing with who does it as a job because people who love it they go to bed at night thinking about the solutions they wake up in the middle of the night and they jot down the ideas they work weekends it turns out that effort is a huge component of success in almost everything and we know that from practice and whatnot and people who love things work and work and work at it because it's not work. It's fun. And so my strongest advice to young people trying to figure out what they want to do is I always tell them, try to figure out what you love, okay? And especially something that you love that other people don't love. Sure, everyone wants to be a rock star, everyone wants to be in the movies, but that's terrible. You don't want to compete head on.

• 13:28Speaker 08

  Find something, if you love ants, go study ants because no one else loves ants. And you'll have a big advantage over the people who are just studying ants because they can't think of what else to do. The E.O. Wilson crush continues. Yeah, E.O. Wilson's a perfect, E.O. Wilson was one of my mentors in college. And indeed, that's what he did. He loved ants more than anything. And he became the world's greatest expert on ants. And he had a great career, and not just success, but joy. He got true joy. I mean, that was the thing that inspired me about E.O. Wilson. Even as he was in his 70s and his 80s, he loved what he did. He loved ants.

• 14:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up on Freakonomics Radio, if you're a scientist studying the way kids think, what do you learn?

• 14:26Speaker 09

  It's exactly the opposite of what we used to think is an easy way to describe it.

• 14:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what else can we learn from that magic show?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  With kids, you get this sense that at every step of the way, they're trying to understand it. And from the second they see it, they're always coming up with theories.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  You're listening to Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio.

• 15:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern New Hampshire University. The best investments are the ones you make in yourself. And no one knows that better than Southern New Hampshire University. With more than 200 online degree programs, no set class times, and low online tuition, Southern New Hampshire University is built to fit your life today and set you up for success tomorrow. Education is an investment. Why not make it a smart one? Apply for free at SNHU.edu/freakonomics.

• 15:35Stephen 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. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Amica. You know what they say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So go with Amica and get coverage from a mutual insurer that's built for their customers,

• 16:20Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 16:40Speaker 07

  From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 16:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  You will remember at the start of this show that we brought in a magician to do some tricks for kids and adults.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Well, my name is Alex Stone.

• 17:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's him.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And I'm a journalist, author of a book on magic and science called Fooling Houdini, and a lifelong magic enthusiast and performer.

• 17:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  So on the scale of 1 to 10 of magic expertise, with me being a zero, let's say zero to 10, you're where? How good are you?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Well, that's a sensitive question. A lot of magicians would get angry if I...

• 17:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  But I know that you're not that kind of magician.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  I'm probably somewhere in the 7.5 range, I think.

• 17:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good, but not an all time great, not a Hall of Famer.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I mean...

• 17:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  But good.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I know a lot about magic.

• 17:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  One thing that a magician does a lot, that you did a little bit today, is misdirection, right? So, talk about that and how vulnerable kids are versus adults.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, what I find is that kids are better at paying attention to more than one thing. Their attention is more diffuse. Adults are really good at focusing on one thing and ignoring peripheral distractions, whereas kids are really good at sort of shotgunning their attention all over the place, which is a good way to learn. It's good when you're first learning how things work, when you're first exploring the world. But in magic, you really want the person to focus on one thing. You want to direct their attention to one particular thing so that they won't see what's going on, you know, in the shadows.

• 18:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  You want to seduce them so that you can trick them.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. I think it's also that they're approaching it with this curiosity, and it's just like this sponge-like desire, and that they're always making theories. That's the other thing. I feel like, I don't feel like adults are like that. I sort of feel like they watch it, and they're waiting for the punchline, and then they sort of see it, and then they maybe go back and think about it. With kids, you get this sense that at every step of the way, they're trying to understand it, and from the second they see it, they're always coming up with theories. "Oh, it was in his sleeve. Oh, he had a fake thing in his hand." And they come up with theories that, you know, adults just aren't doing that.

• 18:56Speaker 09

  You're much more likely to be able to manipulate adults' attention than you are to be able to manipulate children.

• 19:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's Alison Gopnik.

• 19:07Speaker 09

  I'm a professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.

• 19:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Gopnik does not study magic. What does she study?

• 19:16Speaker 09

  Young children's minds, particularly how it is that young children can manage to learn as much as they do about the world as quickly as they do.

• 19:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  She's also written books about her research. "The Philosophical Baby" was one, "The Scientist in the Crib" was another. Gopnik's work reinforces what the magician Alex Stone told us, that children tend to see things fundamentally differently than adults.

• 19:39Speaker 09

  They're not very good, as we all know, at just focusing on one thing. They get distracted incredibly easily. They notice anything that's interesting, or that changes, or that they might learn from in their environment, and that makes them worse subjects of magic.

• 19:57Speaker 09

  When I wrote my book, I had a beautiful letter from someone who was actually a store detective. And he said, one of the things that he'd do was he'd perch up on top of a balcony, up on the top of the store floor, and then he'd look at what people were doing below him. And he said, what would happen is you'd see people walking along this floor, and someone would be holding the hand of a three-year-old. And then the three-year-old would look up, and we'd see him on the balcony, and would wave and say hello. And the adults never did that. It never even occurred to the adults to look up on the balcony and see what was there.

• 20:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you summarize what we've learned, and a little bit about how we've learned it, about how children think, and especially establish things like causal understandings?

• 20:39Speaker 09

  Yeah. Well, it's sort of easy. It's exactly the opposite of what we used to think, is an easy way to describe it. So, people used to think that children were illogical. And what we've discovered is that even little babies are capable of making logical deductions. A really dramatic one is that people have thought that even adults are terribly bad at understanding probability. Well, it turns out that babies, and very young children, if you give them the problems in the right way, are actually amazingly good at doing probabilistic inference. Let me give you one more example. The conventional wisdom has been that children are egocentric, and they can't take the perspective of other people. And one of the really dramatic things we've discovered is that, again, even infants are

• 21:23Speaker 09

  capable of figuring out what's going on in someone else's mind, and figuring out how they think and feel about the world.

• 21:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so you've given us a number of traits that children exhibit in much larger measure than we might have thought before. What about the ways in which the old wisdom was right? What are the ways in which children really are kind of a dormant or latent version, at best, of what they will become?

• 21:51Speaker 09

  Yeah, it's interesting. So the kind of conventional wisdom was really that children were sort of defective grownups. So they were grownups but missing pieces with bits that hadn't developed yet. But if you think about that from a biological or an evolutionary point of view, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. An alternative way that you might think about them is think of the kids as being like the research and development division of the human species. And we're adults, we're production and marketing. So from the production and marketing perspective, it might look like the R and D guys are really not doing anything that looks very sensible or useful. They sit around all day in their beanbag chairs, playing pong and having blue sky ideas. And we, poor production and marketing

• 22:34Speaker 09

  people who are actually making the profits, have to subsidize these guys. But of course, one of the things that we know is that that kind of blue sky, just pure research, actually pays off in the long run.

• 22:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I can imagine that an adult listening to you say these things would say, sure, that makes sense. That resonates with me. I believe that children have these traits in maybe a different shape or dimension than the traits I have. But I think it's probably hard for most adults to think about the idea that there are traits that are valued in adults that children may actually be better at than adults. So tell me a little bit about that. Are there some that would fit that category?

• 23:18Speaker 09

  Part of the reason why we adults are really good at learning things quickly is because we already know a lot about the world. So when you look at how adults learn, the way that we typically learn is we take all those things that we've already learned and we already know, and they weigh really, really heavily in our decision making and in the kinds of solutions that we're going to consider. And then maybe we have a little new evidence, but most of the time we sort of ignore it, or we might just tweak a little bit what we already think. But mostly, the way our brains are is they're not broke, so we don't want to fix them. They are working just fine. We'll just leave them the way they are.

• 23:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  And implicit in that is that we have this strong set of priors, right? Prior beliefs that we act on. And we also, I guess, implicit in what you're saying is that we have a lot of heuristics. We have a lot of shortcuts that we've learned work well enough, and so we do them always, right?

• 24:09Speaker 09

  Exactly. Let me give you an example. In the universities, for example, it's a good example. My world, we give lectures. And The origins of that are the days when there weren't printed books so that you had one manuscript and the professor was reading from the manuscript because the students didn't have books. That's literal, it is literally a medieval instructional technique. But we've been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's kind of what you do when you're a faculty member. And the fact that we have no evidence at all, and in fact, we have some evidence to the contrary for this being a good way to get anybody to learn anything, doesn't keep us from doing it. Mostly, we're doing it because we've always done it.

• 24:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. The students aren't dying of boredom at least.

• 24:53Speaker 09

  Exactly.

• 24:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  They may be bored, but they're not dying. And when you ask yourself the question of why do we do it, what does even a very smart person say? How does a very smart person answer that question for themselves?

• 25:03Speaker 09

  Yeah, I think what they say is, well, we've kind of always done it and it seems to work OK and we're good at doing it. And I think here's the most relevant thing. It would take so much work to try and think through all the alternatives and try them out and see which ones work and which ones don't. That would just be such an effort that even if maybe in the long run it would be a bit of an advantage in terms of my short-run utilities, and in particular, just for me, it's not going to make a difference. I think the general picture, you know, when you talk about risks as adults, when we're trying to decide on a course of action, we're always balancing the risks and utilities, whether that's a risk to my reputation or my ego or my future interactions with other people or just a risk to, you know, my profit margin.

• 25:48Speaker 09

  And kids aren't in that world of, or at least if they're being taken care of properly, they're not in that world of risk and utility calculations. That liberates them, that frees them to, as we say, play. And we just sort of take for granted, yeah, of course, kids play. But what play means, what do you mean when you say someone's playing? You mean they're doing something without really having a specific goal, without having to worry about whether it's going to be productive or not.

• 26:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  So where do all these wonderful and productive, potentially at least, childlike traits go? Do they magically evaporate? Is there a switch in our genes that clicks over at age 21 and we stop thinking this way? What happens?

• 26:33Speaker 09

  What we're trying to figure out now is exactly the answer to that question. So one thing that could happen is just that we all have the same brains, but as we accumulate more and more information, and we know that this happens, that some of the pathways get strengthened and become more efficient, and then other pathways just are what's called pruned. They just disappear. So it could be that it's just a matter of as we get to know more and become more efficient, we lose the capacity for flexibility. But it could also be that there's something about being a child, about having that particular childlike mind and brain, that is the thing that's letting you explore more and, in some sense, be more creative, and that there are things that we could do even as adults that

• 27:17Speaker 09

  put us back into that kind of state.

• 27:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  A state that's kind of magical, maybe? We went back to Alex Stone. What was your favorite moment of your magic show today?

• 27:33Speaker 01

  I loved how quickly they figured out the card trick, the double lift. I mean, that was just bam. And, God, adults never figure that out. I'm going to give the deck a shuffle. I don't know if you guys can hear. I'm shuffling here. I'm going to give the deck a cut.

• 27:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  This trick is called the ambitious card. Alex Stone asks one kid to pick a card-

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Three diamonds.

• 27:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  -and place it back in the deck. Then Stone shuffles the deck, but somehow, the kid's card makes it back to the top of the deck.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Turn over the top card. Yeah, OK. This trick kind of tells a story. And the story is that no matter how many times you try to bury this card, it's kind of like a Houdini escape told in miniature. No matter how many times you try to take this card and put it in the middle of the deck, it's ambitious. That's why it's called the ambitious card. It always wants to pop back up to the top, always. And you keep doing it, and then every time you do it, it gets more and more amazing.

• 28:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Again, it didn't take long for the kids to figure out the trick.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Where'd it come from? How'd it happen?

• 28:32Speaker 04

  He has a different card on top.

• 28:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  The ambitious card, like a lot of tricks, relies on a double lift. That's when the magician presents two cards as if they're one. The kids figured it out.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  She just busted your whole act. Get the heck out of here. All right, good job. How did I... You still don't know. I don't understand. They still can't figure it out. Even after they have explained it. The grownups need more help.

• 28:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I'm curious if your observation that kids are more perceptive when it comes to magic has led you to consciously try

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  to engage or magnify any kid-like traits in your life as an adult?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 29:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Like what? Name some.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Like, I love listening to the Bach Lutesweets.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  You know? Especially the John Williams on guitar. And when I'll listen to that, or I like any kind of classical music that's sort of multi-voiced, try listening to the Lutesweets and always focus on the bass.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Because the bass is always less... You're less conscious of the bass, right? Because the higher frequency notes are always the ones... They're the lead notes. It's like, you know, when you're listening to a song and there's a singer singing "Hi", you're drawn to that. That's the flash of light in the magic. So that's the hand that's waving the handkerchief. So when you force yourself to sort of focus on the bass, what I find at least, is that it kind of levels out everything else. It kind of turns down the sort of middle voice and the high voice. And you end up sort of, I find, hearing everything sort of simultaneously. And it allows you to kind of divide your attention so that you're experiencing the piece as a whole. You're hearing all the voices more clearly.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  And it's hard to do it at first, actually, because your attention keeps snapping back to the high voice. But if you kind of train yourself to do it, I think it brings out a richness in the music that's amazing, because then you really start to hear everything at once. And that's kind of the same idea as focusing on the hand that's not doing so much in the magic trick.

• 31:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, podcast listeners. On next week's show, we replay an episode that is one of your all-time favorites, the upside of quitting.

• 31:13Speaker 08

  Yeah, if I were to say one of the single most important explanations for how I managed to succeed against all odds in the field of economics, it was by being a quitter.

• 31:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, quitting can be hard, but it can also be really good for you. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

• 31:40Speaker 07

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalsky, Greta Cohn, Borey Lamb, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon, with engineering help from Jim Briggs. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more.

• 32:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by EverPure. Is the value of AI not living up to the promise? The problem is probably your data, not your AI models. When it's scattered across different systems, getting your data AI-ready is a challenge. You keep your AI waiting, and everything slows down. EverPure unifies your data so you can see it, understand it, and control it all from one simple place, and get it AI-ready fast. Unlock the true value of your AI at everpuredata.com.

• 32:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Ozempic. Innovation happens through rethinking what's possible, and when it comes to GLP-1s, Ozempic Pill does just that. Learn more about Ozempic semaglutide tablets, 4 and 9mg, by calling 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit Ozempic.com to view the medication guide and ask your doctor what's possible with FDA-approved Ozempic Pill.

• 33:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Southern Company. The world and its energy needs are always changing. Southern Company's commitment to meeting this demand stays the same. That's because Southern Company believes energy is more than a utility. It's what powers possibilities. So they are looking ahead and investing $80 billion in infrastructure upgrades and are committed to fueling growth in ways that benefit all customers so that reliable and affordable energy is accessible for generations to come. Go to southerncompany.com to learn more. Southern Company, building the future of energy.

• 34:02Speaker 10

  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.