Why Is There So Much Ground Beef in the World? (Special Feature)

In this live episode of "Tell Me Something I Don't Know," you'll learn about carcass balancing, teen sleeping, and brand naming. Joining Stephen J. Dubner as co-host is Alex Wagner (CBS This Morning Saturday); author A. J. Jacobs (It's All Relative) is the live 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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• 0:33Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:04Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:54Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there, Stephen Dubner. This is a special episode of our live podcast, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. You'll learn about the hidden side of ground beef, why it's good to let teenagers sleep in, and how to name a brand. You can subscribe to Tell Me Something I Don't Know wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to come onstage to tell me something I don't know, please visit tmsidk.com and click Be on the Show. Hope you enjoy. Tell Me Something I Don't Know is sponsored by The Future According to Now. How often do you hear about some new technology and think, yeah, that's cool, but does it actually matter? If you're skeptical about innovation, check out The Future According to Now. It's a new podcast from Atlantic Rethink, the branded content studio at The Atlantic, and Fidelity Investments.

• 3:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Each episode explores a tech innovation that has real potential to change our lives in the foreseeable future. That's The Future According to Now, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Why do I read?

• 3:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why do I have conversations?

• 3:30Speaker 01

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

• 3:34Speaker 02

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

• 3:40Speaker 01

  But mostly?

• 3:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Mostly.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Mostly because?

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Because I want to find out stuff. Find out stuff.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Find out stuff.

• 3:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because I want you to tell me something I don't know. Good evening, I'm Stephen Dubner, and this is Tell Me Something I Don't Know, recorded live tonight at Joe's Pub in New York City.

• 4:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  We have got a crowd full of smart people and we will bring them onstage to tell us something interesting or puzzling, maybe even amazing. If it all goes as planned, we'll all be a bit smarter by the time we're through. Joining me tonight as co-host is the Atlantic contributing editor and CBS This Morning Saturday co-anchor Alex Wagner.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  It is a pleasure to be here. Aloha, Stephen.

• 4:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Aloha. Alex, let's see what we know about you so far. We know that you grew up in Washington DC in what I would call a professionally Democratic household. We know that besides co-hosting CBS This Morning Saturday, you co-host the Radio Atlantic podcast and you co-habit and co-parent a new baby with your husband Sam Cass, who's a former White House chef for President Obama. We also know, Alex, that you worked for George Clooney's anti-genocide organization and that Vogue magazine called you delightfully profane, so I'm looking forward to that. And Alex Wagner, why don't you-

• 5:03Speaker 03

  This is an explicit podcast, is it not?

• 5:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know-

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 5:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  We have to pay-

• 5:07Speaker 03

  I should have checked.

• 5:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know that little red E with a square?

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know how much that costs?

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot.

• 5:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  To put that on iTunes?

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Well, a [bleep] lot.

• 5:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 5:17Speaker 03

  You're welcome, Stephen.

• 5:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's just be passing the hat for the E-rating. Yep. So Alex Wagner, why don't we begin by you telling us something we don't know about you, please?

• 5:26Speaker 03

  In second grade, everyone, all the kids in the class, had drawn pictures of what they wanted to be when they grew up. My mom and dad, professional Democrats, as you call them, said, "Oh, and what does Alex want to be? Surely it's president of the United States or astronaut." And my second grade teacher looked and said, "Well, actually, your daughter said she'd like to be a makeup artist."

• 5:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ooh. What happened there? Why didn't you become that?

• 5:49Speaker 03

  You know, I learned that I hate makeup, as it turns out, which is why television is a weird profession for me.

• 5:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Alex Wagner, very happy to have you here tonight.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Happy to be here.

• 5:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's explain how it works. Guests will come onstage to tell us some interesting fact, or idea, or story about a topic of their choosing. Then Alex and I will hear them out, we'll ask some questions, and then our live audience will vote for a winner. The vote is based on three simple criteria. Number one, did they tell us something we truly did not know? Number two, was it worth knowing? And, number three, was it demonstrably true? Since truth is kinda, sorta, important, we've got onstage tonight a real, live, human fact-checker. Please welcome the much-beloved A.J. Jacobs. A.J. is the author of five wonderful books, including the forthcoming It's All Relative: Adventures

• 6:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Up and Down the World's Family Tree. A.J., can you give us a fun fact from the new book?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Well, Stephen, as you may know, most of us have Neanderthal ancestors.

• 6:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Speak for yourself.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Are you denying? Don't deny it, be proud. The Neanderthals and Homo sapiens mixed it up way back when. So your great-great-great-great, times 15,000 or so, grandma and grandpa were a Neanderthal. And my favorite fact about grandma and grandpa Neanderthal is, they're not as dumb as you think. Don't believe the stereotypes. In fact, according to scientists, Neanderthals, they likely had the gift of speech, and apparently had a high-pitched, raspy voice like Julia Child. That's literally the description, like Julia Child.

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Could Julia Child have actually been a Neanderthal?

• 7:35Speaker 04

  That's a good question.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  I'm just asking for a friend.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  We gotta get her DNA.

• 7:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, A.J., thanks for Neanderthal facts. Thanks for being here tonight. I'm excited to play our little game show together. Let's start. Would you please welcome our first guest? Her name is Sam Garwin.

• 7:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey Sam, what do you do?

• 7:59Speaker 05

  I am a butcher and the CEO of Fleischer's Craft Butchery here in New York City.

• 8:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Excellent.

• 8:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Alright Sam, so I'm ready, so are Alex Wagner and A.J. Jacobs. What do you know that's worth knowing that you think we don't know?

• 8:16Speaker 05

  Well, I have a hypothetical. You're looking to shop at a whole animal butcher shop. Maybe it's Fleischer's, maybe it's one of the other butcher shops we have in New York. You walk in to this whole animal butcher shop and you're in the mood for beef. Which cut do you think the butcher really, really wants you to stock up your refrigerator with?

• 8:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, which cut does... Should we assume it's something either very expensive or something from maybe a body part that not a lot of people want to put in their mouths?

• 8:44Speaker 05

  I can't confirm or deny your assumptions.

• 8:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  You can't... yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  No.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  And we're assuming this is a cow.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  This is, yeah, beef. We're talking beef right now.

• 8:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, let me ask you, is that a whole animal butcher shop? Is that what you called it?

• 8:59Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  So that's a thing? And what does that mean?

• 9:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you know, in the 50s, when farms were told to really get big or get out, there was a shift in the way butcher shops operated. So it used to be that a butcher shop would work with farmers and people would have rails where the whole animals came in and then they'd be broken down. And now there are very few number of butcher shops or even companies that operate that way. But a whole animal butcher shop would be considered an operation that really goes direct to the farm and purchases from the farmer in units of whole animals. And that's how the farmer sells.

• 9:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  And the bigger, the bigger distribution system then is I want 1,000 pounds of X and 0 pounds of Y.

• 9:40Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 9:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, okay, alright.

• 9:42Speaker 03

  Let me just, what's the shelf life for a cow carcass?

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Interestingly, the longer you leave something as a whole piece, the longer you can go without actually turning it into something else. So that's what dry aging is.

• 9:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, can you explain? I've always wondered about that, because if I hang up a chicken breast, the way that you hang up...

• 10:02Speaker 05

  Don't do that.

• 10:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, that's not...

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Don't do that.

• 10:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  And are there other meats, or I guess pork, right? You dry age pork, or you?

• 10:08Speaker 05

  There are some people in the culinary world who are playing around with aging pork and aging lamb. In my experience, in the butcher shops that I have worked in, it's not a good idea.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  They're crazy?

• 10:21Speaker 05

  It doesn't age the same way, and I honestly don't know the science behind it. But it gets kind of like tacky and slimy and smells weird. So ideally, when you're properly dry aging something, you put it in refrigeration that also has really, really great airflow. And if you're getting very fancy about it, you might have salt, or you might actually put a bacterial culture into the walk-in refrigerator, or you have that, just like you might do it with a cheese or something like that, kind of like a starter culture.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  And it can sit there forever?

• 10:53Speaker 05

  Not forever. The oldest piece of meat I have ever had the questionable pleasure of eating was 365 days old.

• 11:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so the question was, what kind of meat, or what cut, in a whole animal butcher shop, we think the butcher would most likely want us to buy, right?

• 11:13Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 11:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so why don't you tell us the answer, because we're not getting there?

• 11:15Speaker 05

  So the answer is ground beef, which is really not glamorous to most people. But when you are a whole animal butcher shop or a whole animal company, there's this concept of carcass balancing.

• 11:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Carcass balancing?

• 11:30Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm. That's a phrase that we use.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  That sounds like a Cirque du Soleil move.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 11:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, does this mean that they direct cows to gain more weight in certain spots than others before they kill them? Or this happens after the killing?

• 11:43Speaker 05

  This is an after the killing thing. I mean, there definitely are people who focus on genetics. But actually, the entire meat industry is trying to carcass balance. Because if you think about it, on a single cow, there's only so many steaks. So you're talking like 16 ribeyes, 10 New York strips, two whole tenderloins, two flanks, two skirts, basically two of every steak except for the hanger. There's only one hanger. And then the rest is braising cuts, roasts, and ground beef. So if you're sourcing an entire animal for your butcher shop, you actually have to move those parts kind of in equilibrium. You have to make sure that you're using up the ground beef at the same rate that you are moving steaks. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a big pile of ground beef, and that's when it's

• 12:28Speaker 05

  time to have a freezer sale or make chili.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Dare I ask? When we talk about ground beef, does that come from specific parts of the animal?

• 12:37Speaker 05

  It depends. I mean, the most basic way to think about ground beef is just the lean to fat ratio, but it could come from any muscle on the animal. So, for example, the shank meat, your calf muscle, very, very tough. So, there's a trade-off always between how much a muscle has been used and how tough it's going to be. But the tougher it is, also, the more flavor it's going to have. So, that's the reason that, you know, a tenderloin's great. You can cook it in five minutes. You can cut it with a fork, but it's never going to have the same flavor as a pot roast, which you have to cook low and slow for six hours. There's also little bits and pieces that you can't turn into a steak.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Some of us are steak, some of us are ground beef, but we all belong in this world.

• 13:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  You call it a cow?

• 13:18Speaker 05

  Well, a cow technically is a female.

• 13:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 05

  It's there. We would call it a beef animal, maybe.

• 13:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  You call it a beef animal?

• 13:25Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't know. Well, yeah. Once it's dead, it's beef.

• 13:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's what I tell my kids.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  We would call it a beef. Like, honestly, you might say a beef or something like that.

• 13:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, you get 16 rib eyes, you said, right?

• 13:35Speaker 05

  Right. So, just like humans, you have ribs, and so that's where the rib eyes come from. So, if you cut them by hand in between each rib, you end up with eight of them per side. If you cut them on a bandsaw and you cut them to a specific thickness, you could get a few more, a few less.

• 13:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  So, here's my question. I can understand that ground beef is less expensive than steaks because there's apparently a lot of it, right? And also, people may prefer steaks. But if there are 16 at least rib eyes in a beef, and there are only like two flanks, two skirts, and one hanger, I know those have gotten more expensive lately. They've become more in demand lately. But for a long time, those were really cheap. Why would rib eyes be relatively more abundant than those and yet also relatively more expensive, at least in the past?

• 14:22Speaker 05

  Right. So, there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that these days, a lot of rib eyes are dry-aged. It's one of the few pieces of meat that you can do that with because you dry-age the whole rack of ribs. Then if you cut some off the edges, you're still left with a decent piece of meat, and it's aged. There's another piece of it, which is how many bone-in cuts there are. So yeah, there are tons of steaks, and these days you can get more and more cuts from the shoulder, which we love to do at our butcher shops. But there's not very many that have bones in them that you can then put on the grill.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  To that end, how many, like, pounds of ground beef do you get from the average cow?

• 14:59Speaker 05

  At least 200.

• 15:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Whoa! Wowzer, no wonder you're trying to shovel it out the door. That's a lot of burger. Now, is this why when you go to kind of farm-to-table-y restaurants, you see a lot of grass-fed burger and not a lot of grass-fed steak?

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So there really is no boxed meat supply chain right now for pasture-raised animals. There's pretty much, if you want a pasture-raised animal, you have to either get it directly from the farmer or seek out one of these small butcher shops. So if you're a restaurant, it's the same deal. Either you go directly to the farmer, and then you're on the hook for balancing the carcass, which nobody wants to do, with notable exception of Gramercy Tavern here in New York City. They actually buy whole animals and...

• 15:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Spread it to their different restaurants?

• 15:45Speaker 05

  No, they use it all in-house.

• 15:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Within the restaurant?

• 15:47Speaker 03

  They use it all at Gramercy.

• 15:48Speaker 05

  They special the steaks. So you will never see a steak listed on their menu, because each server has different steaks that they...

• 15:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  No way. Each server in the restaurant can offer a different part of the beef that night?

• 16:01Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 16:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is pretty... So, okay, so if you're eating there, what do you ask for? What's your favorite part of the beef?

• 16:07Speaker 05

  Well, you can ask for it. You don't get to choose. If you get the server who has the hanger steak, you can order that.

• 16:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, I see. No kidding. All right, well, let's say you know which server has which. I'm just asking you personally, as the butcher. Basically, that was a terrible way of asking you, what's your favorite kind of beef to eat, Sam?

• 16:23Speaker 05

  Well, as a butcher at a whole animal shop, my answer has to be that different cuts are good for different things. So I have no true favorite, but... I am a big fan of the flat iron steak, which is a cut from the shoulder. The point is that it is both tender and flavorful, and it's really thin, so it cooks super quickly, and I love it.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  You can dry age all of the cow, right? And to that end, why don't more people dry age other parts of the cow?

• 16:51Speaker 05

  So, a lot of small butcher shops will hang their carcasses for one to two weeks before doing anything to it. And that helps firm up the meat, because as it's hanging there, water will start to evaporate. And when the water evaporates, the flavor concentrates a little bit, and then it also improves the texture. And so, there's no reason you can't. But if you think about the big industrial beef operations, they're, you know, it's pennies that they're trying to get. So, they actually are motivated very much to keep their weights up. So, they want it to be as wet as possible. And so, they've kind of invented this term of wet aging, which is when you take, yeah, it doesn't sound as good. Where you take a cut of meat, and as soon as you can, you vacuum seal it.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  And that way, any, this is a really attractive word, but any purge that comes off of it is kept in the bag, and then the customer pays for that.

• 17:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Be a good name for a punk band, though, Beef Purge.

• 17:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's so fascinating for you to bring your beefy knowledge to us. AJ, now, you've heard a lot from Sam about carcass balancing. Is there anything that you need to flag, or anything more you'd like to tell us?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, just a couple of quick things. First, I looked it up. The gender-neutral noun is bovine. That covers cow or bull, so, or a cow who identifies as a bull. So, just, if you want to be safe. Hopefully, this imbalance will not be a problem in a few years, because several teams of scientists are working on something called clean meat, cultured meat. But you take a cell from a cow, and you create a hamburger or a steak, and it's actually coming quite soon, in the next few years. And the amazing thing about this, you don't have to be restricted to cows or pigs. You could have rhinos, giraffes, humans, ethical cannibalism. And, another business idea, celebrity meat.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Fantastic. Neanderthal burgers for everyone.

• 18:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sam Garwin, thank you so much for playing. Tell me something else.

• 18:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would you please welcome our next guest, Marco Hafner?

• 19:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Marco, where are you from? What do you do?

• 19:06Speaker 02

  I'm a senior economist at Rand Europe, which is the European affiliate of the Rand Corporation.

• 19:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Rand, right, which is kind of like the CIA.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Kind of.

• 19:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. And you live where?

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I live in London, but originally I'm from Switzerland.

• 19:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh. And why are you in New York?

• 19:25Speaker 02

  I'm just visiting, yes. Except for you, Stephen. It's the first time, actually, as for me, in New York.

• 19:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  So you're just another Swiss guy that works for a British branch of the CIA who comes to New York for his first and only time to be on a podcast.

• 19:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you have to tell us tonight, Marco?

• 19:49Speaker 02

  So my question today is, across the US, the majority of middle and high schools start at 8:00 AM or earlier. So what would be the impact on the economy if schools would start later?

• 19:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hmm. Impact on the economy if schools were to start later?

• 20:05Speaker 03

  I'm assuming we're talking about the parents of children who are going to school later? And sort of how they would affect the economy?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Not necessarily, no.

• 20:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Interesting. Now, we know, I've heard, and I have teenagers, so I hear it directly from them, that teenagers need more sleep because it's an intense physiological developmental stage. Not an intense emotional developmental stage, let me clarify, but intense physiological. So presumably, does it have something to do with that?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Yes, you go to the right direction, something to do with sleep.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  And I'm assuming that sleep patterns established in adolescence have a long-term effect on productivity in adult years?

• 20:49Speaker 02

  We're getting there.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Very Swiss answer.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's not how we do things here, Marco.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  We have yeses or no's.

• 21:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  We just come out and say whatever we're thinking, even if it's not based on fact.

• 21:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's not what I meant.

• 21:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Alex, let's start with this. Let's narrow it down.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you think it's positive or negative?

• 21:17Speaker 03

  I'm assuming it's positive if school started later, just because that's sort of where the trend is going in education, right?

• 21:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Here's what I'm thinking, though. Let's say you get the teenagers up really early, and you get them off to school early, get them home by 2:00. If you get them in bed by 8:00, then they can't be out doing mayhem and destroying the economy.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Or buying things, so that could have an adverse effect on the economy.

• 21:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Marco, I think Alex and I have reached an impasse here, and we'd love you to use your crafty Swiss knowledge to bring us out of it.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  So, you may have heard, or you've experienced yourself, that teenagers have a different sleep-wake cycles compared to adults or young children. So, based on that, and to accommodate the different sleep-wake cycles, major medical organizations recommend that middle and high schools don't start before 8:30 AM in the morning. And beyond the health benefits of that, actually, late school start time could have a very beneficial effect on the economy. So, our own research shows that if nationwide, schools would start at 8:30 AM, that would add about $9 billion a year to the US economy in terms of larger GDP. So, to put that into perspective, that's roughly about the annual revenue of Major League Baseball.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 22:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wait, it adds to GDP because teenagers sleep, they get more sleep, meaning they do better in school, and then that leads to increased productivity? That's the idea?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yes, they do better in school, so it has been found that one hour more of sleep increases the probability of graduation or attending college by somewhere between 8% to 13%. And plus, a lack of sleep is heavily associated with car crashes. And car crashes is one of the leading causes of death among American teenagers.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  And when you're dead, you can't contribute to the economy.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's difficult, yes.

• 23:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  That would also mean presumably teenagers, many of whom drive themselves to school, if they're going to school a little bit later, maybe that's also when congestion is generally less, and that might increase productivity for all those other people who are trying to get to work, or is that not part of your...

• 23:23Speaker 02

  We haven't looked at that, but definitely that could be one.

• 23:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Check it out, would you, Marco, get back to us when you.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  I did read somewhere, because there is a movement to push for a later school start, that teenagers would just take advantage of that, like they take advantage of so many other things, and stay up even later. And so actually, they wouldn't accrue the sleep benefits, because they'd stay up till 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock in the morning, and then get up at 8 o'clock.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good point, but interestingly, research shows that if school start times are delayed, teenagers get more sleep. The mean's on average, they go to bed roughly at the same time, but they get up in the morning later. And actually, interestingly, they benefit from the better quality of sleep that tends to come their way in the early hours of the morning.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Hmm. And that means the school lets out a little bit later, right?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:14Speaker 03

  Does that have, do you lose the gains by having a later exit time?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Not necessarily.

• 24:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  And also, it would leave you less time between school and after-school activities to smoke dope. A.J. Jacobs, Marco Hafner has been telling us that starting school later would not only be kind of a more humane thing to do on some level, but would actually increase GDP. Does that sound remotely plausible?

• 24:40Speaker 04

  Well, I think the gist is true. I cannot vouch for the dollar amount unless I get a doctorate in statistics, so I'll get back to you in a few years. But it's definitely true that it would help. And I also think, my kids will kill me for saying this, but that summer vacation should be shorter. That would help our economy. And

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  By the way, since I am a fact checker, I did have to check, and the US funeral industry does account for about $20 billion in economic activity.

• 25:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, so we'd have to subtract year nine from that 20.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Oh, this is morbid. This is morbid.

• 25:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not such a big win anymore, is it, Marco? Marco Hafner, thank you so much for playing. Tell me something I don't know. Great job. It is time now for a quick break. When we return, more guests. We'll make Alex Wagner tell us some things we don't know. If you would like to be a guest on a future show or attend a future show, please visit tmsidk.com. You can follow us on social media at tmsidk-show. We will be right back.

• 25:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio, 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.

• 26:35Stephen 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. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Quince. You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself wearing on repeat? The sweater that goes with everything? The perfect pair of pants? Or the tea you somehow always reach for first? Those are the pieces that make getting dressed easy, and that's what Quince does best. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool.

• 27:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  The styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day. And it's not just clothing. Quince brings that same approach to everything they make, from hotel-quality bedding and bath to kitchen essentials and thoughtfully designed furniture. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. 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 dot com slash freak.

• 27:57Stephen 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.

• 28:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our fact-checker is A.J. Jacobs, and tonight's co-host is Alex Wagner. Before we get back to the game, we have some lightning round questions written especially for you, Alex Wagner. You ready?

• 29:01Speaker 03

  Fantastic. Very much so.

• 29:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, here we go. Your Twitter bio says you are, quote, "a person trying hard to finish a book." What's the problem?

• 29:12Speaker 03

  I had no idea that books were so damn long. I am writing a book. It is, actually, I will say, nearing completion. We are going into galleys, which is a terrifying concept, but I've been working on it for three and a half years, which is a really long time in television world.

• 29:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it a memoir, to some degree?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  It is, to some degree, a memoir. It's about immigration, identity, and there are Neanderthal percentages in it, actually, much like A.J.'s book.

• 29:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  There you go. Well, we all look forward to reading that. Alex, as noted earlier, you grew up in a very democratic household, with your mother Sway Thont and your late father Carl, who was a political consultant, who also co-chaired Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Pretend, however, for a second, that somehow, maybe as a teenager, you saw the light. And became a Republican. How would you have gone about telling your parents?

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I would write a note and pack all my belongings because I would never be allowed in the House again.

• 30:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  As we heard, your husband Sam Cass, former White House chef. Is he actually good at cooking? Or is that just a thing you can get away with at the White House?

• 30:19Speaker 03

  He is a very good chef and he is a very fast chef, which matters in the White House.

• 30:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Name something that you make better than him, however.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  I make better meatballs, spaghetti and meatballs.

• 30:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Good to know.

• 30:31Speaker 03

  Any day of the week, come on over, guys.

• 30:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  If you could host or co-host your own show about anything except politics, what would it be?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  The Joy of Painting 2. I'm playing Bob Ross.

• 30:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Alex, you were a trend forecaster for three years. So considering your training, which I'm sure was extensive in trend forecasting, list three trends that we can expect in the next year. Very specifically, please.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Okay, number one, drop waist MC Hammer harem pants. Get ready for them. Number two, crokeys. Do you guys remember them? The eyeglasses thing, still useful. Number three, bone up on how to launder money for Russian oligarchs because we're going to be talking about that a lot in 2018. You heard it here first.

• 31:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Alex Wagner. Well done.

• 31:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, let's get back to the game. Would you please welcome our next guest, Doug Howarth.

• 31:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Doug, why don't you tell us where you're from? What do you do?

• 31:41Speaker 06

  I'm from Los Angeles. I am the CEO of Multi-Dimensional Economic Evaluators. We figure out what things are worth and then we figure out if things are overpriced or underpriced for them.

• 31:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so you bring, you help firms derive the most value that they can from their business, essentially?

• 32:00Speaker 06

  Yes, and we also help them figure out where new products should lie. So we find gaps in markets and it tells you where you might be able to place a new product where you wouldn't have any competition.

• 32:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, what do you have to tell us tonight, Doug?

• 32:11Speaker 06

  Why is underpriced beef bad?

• 32:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Why is underpriced beef bad?

• 32:17Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 32:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is your question.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  This is a podcast sponsored by the Beef Board, isn't it?

• 32:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  I feel like somehow Big Beef got to our guests tonight.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  We're all on the take for Big Beef tonight. Okay, so I'm assuming here, I mean, beef is an expensive product. It's an impactful product in terms of the environment and it's expensive to grow. Beef finds itself at the nexus of several other industries.

• 32:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  So if the pricing is off, it could have repercussions around other industries, right?

• 32:53Speaker 06

  It could, and it's got a repercussion in its own industry. That's where we're getting at. Yeah, the beef wholesale industry. What we've discovered here is that people buy ground beef based on the leanness and package size. And so we've actually derived an equation that predicts that.

• 33:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  That predicts what they want or what it should be priced at?

• 33:11Speaker 06

  Predicts the sustainable price. That's a very important concept in what we do. Sustainable price as a function of that leanness and package size. So people are paying for the convenience of the smaller packages and they're paying for the leanness of the ground beef. And at the wholesale level, in January 2012, we discovered one point that was 34 cents a pound under its predicted price. Now, it's 34 cents a pound times 290 million pounds. That's $100 million boo-boo that they created because they didn't understand their market.

• 33:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wholesale are underpricing beef, you're saying.

• 33:45Speaker 06

  In January 2012, yes, they had one product underpriced. It was a $100 million error because there's so many pounds being sold at that price.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  What industry is most far off base when it comes to pricing?

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Well, the ground beef was pretty far off, but the aerospace industry is very off-base on a lot of things. In Albuquerque, somebody built a business jet that was only priced at one-third of what it was worth, and they lost a billion dollars and they went bankrupt. Had they known what they were doing, they wouldn't have gone bankrupt.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  I looked up to see what is the most overpriced industry, and according to some semi-reputable websites, it is movie theater concessions.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  But isn't that where they make all their money?

• 34:26Speaker 04

  This says 900%. I don't know about that.

• 34:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  I think everybody thinks about this, what AJ just raised. And we kind of know, like Alex said, well, that's where they make the money. Have you ever done any work in the concession pricing?

• 34:40Speaker 06

  We're starting to look at beer right now. What's the value of a good beer in Mojave, California, which is a little small town versus downtown Manhattan? Sometimes you see some beers that are overpriced, and you wonder, would they make more money if they dropped the price? It's very important to figure out where that median point is so that you don't lose money. And that's what this is designed to do.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  And each market probably has a different story, right?

• 35:04Speaker 06

  Oh, yes, absolutely.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  Consumers in New York are more likely to pay for overpriced drinks.

• 35:10Speaker 06

  Yes. Well, that's kind of the whole point, yes.

• 35:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  But we get our beef cheap. So it all kind of works out in the end. AJ Jacobs, Doug, has been telling us about underpriced beef and a $100 million boo-boo, you said? Do you have anything to support or refute?

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Well, there isn't a huge amount of literature yet online about this. But I did run across the most expensive beef in the world, to continue with the beef theme. There's a butcher in France who serves a $3,200 rib steak. And he claims that every steak is 15 years old and kept in deep freeze. And the cows live in forests, and they are talked to every day to lower their stress level.

• 36:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  AJ, thank you. And Doug Howard, thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Nicely done.

• 36:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's time for one more quick break. When we return, our final guest. And then you, our live audience, will pick a winner. That's right after this.

• 36:24Stephen 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.

• 37:09Stephen 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.

• 37:28Stephen 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.

• 37:59Stephen 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.

• 38:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back.

• 38:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Would you please welcome our final guest of the evening, Jonathan Bell.

• 39:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jonathan Bell, nice to see you. What do you do?

• 39:02Speaker 07

  I run a brand naming agency. So, over the years, we've named some pretty cool stuff. We named Singular, we named SiriusXM, we named the recent Call of Duty game, Infinite Warfare, we named One World, the airline Alliance.

• 39:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, I do have two questions before you even proceed. Number one, you say you named SiriusXM.

• 39:24Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 39:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wasn't that a merger of Sirius and XM?

• 39:27Speaker 07

  Thank you, I should have clarified. It was, I named Sirius before it merged with XM. So, it was actually called CD Radio.

• 39:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 39:35Speaker 07

  And so, I was, came in and came up with the name Sirius.

• 39:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Because I was thinking, what were your choices? SiriusXM, XM Sirius, and that'll be four million dollars. The other thing I found curious is you introduced yourself and said that you run a brand naming consultancy.

• 39:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 39:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  But you didn't tell us its name.

• 39:56Speaker 07

  So, it took me a long time to figure this out, but my company's called Want, W-A-N-T.

• 40:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, I like that.

• 40:02Speaker 07

  So, the idea is that, you know, it's a call to action, want branding, but also the premise is that any brand, a brand is really a product that's wanted. It has a desirable component to it, so that's why I came up with it.

• 40:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  I like it, especially in print, but with your lovely British accent, it sounds a little like Won't, which is probably not what you were going for, but...

• 40:21Speaker 07

  Everything I say sounds so much better, Stephen.

• 40:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  It does, you know. You know, there was a study that showed that American assessments of British speakers, basically, we over-judge their IQ by about 15%.

• 40:33Speaker 07

  I think that's about right, yeah.

• 40:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so you came here to tell us something we don't know. What do you have for us?

• 40:37Speaker 07

  So, when we are creating brand names for products, services, and companies, what do you think the failure rate is on a naming project?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  What do you mean by failure rate?

• 40:48Speaker 07

  So, if we generate a list of 50 names, how many of those will fail?

• 40:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  What percentage? Based on the Sirius XM story, I'll say 50%. 50%, okay. Alex?

• 41:01Speaker 03

  75%.

• 41:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  But wait, I have to say, if he's the brand naming guy.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  I know.

• 41:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  It must be like 101%.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's been like 98%.

• 41:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Like, what have you named in your life? Did you name your kid?

• 41:15Speaker 03

  My son, and I still can't believe we named him. I'm like, God, we got to do that and we didn't have to apply for a license?

• 41:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's his name?

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Si. Don't say anything negative.

• 41:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Jonathan, do you have kids? I'm curious.

• 41:29Speaker 07

  I do.

• 41:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are their names?

• 41:30Speaker 07

  Lucas and Louisa.

• 41:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Did you pay someone for those names?

• 41:41Speaker 07

  I had nothing to do with it. I let my wife pick the decision.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  See?

• 41:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so we've been sniffing around at a number that we think is somewhere between, let's say, 0.99. We've narrowed it down there. What is the actual failure rate?

• 41:53Speaker 07

  So it's about 95%.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 41:55Speaker 07

  It's a very high percentage in terms of failure rate because you've got so many names out there. You've got trademark issues, you've got URLs. I think there's something like 170,000 words in an English dictionary, real words, and something like 300 million companies or company brands. So do the math, right?

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Are there trademark trolls? Like, there are patent trolls. In Silicon Valley, there are a lot of people just lock up patents. Are people locking up trademark names?

• 42:23Speaker 07

  You can't lock up a trademark because you have to demonstrate use. It's not like buying a URL. So there's a lot of complexities and nuances of trademark law, which is why trademark lawyers exist, to solve some of those issues and challenges.

• 42:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's harder to name? A company or a product?

• 42:41Speaker 07

  I would say a company, just because you've normally got more stakeholders, more people that need to put their fingerprints on it and have an opinion. Typically, companies have much longer durations. Products get named further down at the management ranks, whereas everyone can be aligned on a final name and you walk into the CEO's office and they might say, "Don't like it. What else you got?" And then you're back to square one. So it's very, very, very difficult.

• 43:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Which industry spends the most naming its products? I think of the pharmaceutical industry as one that must spend a lot.

• 43:12Speaker 07

  Yes, it does. Because pharmaceutical naming is very, very complex. Because not only do you have to... surpass and make pass the hurdle rates of trademarks. The FDA actually will needs to approve your final brand name. And the reason is because people can die if they're given the wrong prescription drug. Therefore, that there's a higher hurdle rate in terms of making sure the pharmaceutical brand is distinctive and unique versus everything else. That's why you see these really crazy weird.

• 43:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Zixfaltia.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. There was a situation back in the early 90s, I think, where there were two drugs on the market, Lossec, L-O-S-E-C, and Lasix, L-A-S-I-X. And someone died because they got the wrong prescription drug. So they were the FDA forced Lossec to change its name to Prilosec, right?

• 44:02Speaker 03

  What's the ideation process for the pharma naming?

• 44:07Speaker 07

  Very complicated. I mean, you've got to understand some of the science. You know, you've got to be very careful about not making false claims. You can't call something like Cure, Cure Perfect. You can't say the drug's going to work.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  In terms of the industry that you find gets your creative juices flowing the most, it sounds like obviously pharma is really difficult. But is there one where you're like, oh, we have a fashion client and this is going to be fun to do because the process is?

• 44:29Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, cars are pretty cool. We've just named seven cruise ships for Royal Caribbean and celebrity cruise lines.

• 44:35Speaker 03

  Really? But the cruise ships are always like Swedish princess and like Norwegian queen.

• 44:40Speaker 07

  No, so we worked for two years with Royal Caribbean and we named Quantum, Anthem, Ovation. And then we just named another ship Harmony. So that's the biggest thing I've ever named. I mean, these things are huge.

• 44:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you think when you see a car company like Audi names its models like A6 and A7? Does that just make you feel like a barber walking around in hate Ashbury, San Francisco and can't get your hands on them?

• 45:06Speaker 07

  Not really, because there's actually a lot of wisdom to that.

• 45:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, come on.

• 45:10Speaker 07

  No, it's true. You know, a car name with some acronyms afterwards puts all the emphasis back on Audi. When you're a Ford and you've got Explorer and you've got a dozen or two dozen different names, that sort of takes away from the Ford name and means you've got to build equity in those different car brands.

• 45:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  And Jonathan, quick question. How do you rate the name Tell Me Something I Don't Know?

• 45:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can along, hence the reason why it turns into an acronym. AJ, Jonathan Bell is telling us that naming things for business for commercial purposes is very difficult, high rate of rejection, et cetera, et cetera. Anything to dispute that?

• 45:46Speaker 04

  I think that's very true. And also, there's another problem he didn't mention, which is that how brand names translate in other languages. And there are many examples. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Chevrolet introduced their car Nova to South America. But in Spanish, Nova means no va, as in, it doesn't go, it doesn't work. So it's huge to that. But wait, actually, it sold just fine. Everyone says, oh, here's an example of the stupidity of corporate America. But actually, it sold fine, because I guess there are a lot of ironic car buyers in South America.

• 46:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  AJ, thank you so much. And Jonathan Bell, thanks so much for playing. Tell me something I don't know. Can we please give one more hand to all our guests tonight? Great stuff all around. It is time now for our live audience to pick a winner. But first, Alex Wagner, AJ Jacobs, and I will each weigh in with our favorites. Remember, the three criteria. Did our guest tell us something we really did not know? Was it worth knowing? And was it demonstrably true? So Alex, I'm curious to know what particularly intrigued you tonight.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  I mean, look, did I know that teens not being able to sleep in was costing the US economy $9 billion? No. I did not know that there was a $3,200 rib steak. I gotta go with Sam Garwin, though, because I did not know there were 200 pounds of ground beef on the average bovine carcass.

• 47:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  It kind of makes you feel that even after you eat a big burger, that you should eat a lot more.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  It's just the tip of the iceberg. It's literally just the tip of the iceberg.

• 47:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  A.J. Jacobs, what tickled you tonight?

• 47:38Speaker 04

  Well, I was delighted with many of them. Jonathan Bell, I thought, was interesting, partly because I have a son named Lucas, and he has a son named Lucas. So this is a huge relief, because if my son ever complains, I can tell him, this is the scientifically correct name for a boy.

• 47:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  I found Doug Howarth's presentation so compelling, because I love to know that there are people out there trying to determine, through means that I cannot begin to understand, where things should be priced, because I think that's a pretty important and interesting thing. But listen, our votes are non-binding. You are the people who have the real vote. So it is time now for you to take out your phones, follow the texting instructions on the screen, okay? So who will it be? Sam Garwin with Carcass Balancing, Marco Hafner with Why You Should Let Teenagers Sleep Even More Than They Do, Doug Howarth with The Law of Value and Demand, we'll call it, or Jonathan Bell with How to Name a Brand.

• 48:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  While our live audience is voting, let me ask you a favor. If you enjoy Tell Me Something I Don't Know, please spread the word, give it a nice rating on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to listen to the show without ads, sign up for Stitcher Premium at stitcherpremium.com/telem. Thank you. Okay, the audience vote is in. Once again, thanks to all our guest presenters. Our winner tonight, thank you so much for telling us about Carcass Balancing, Sam Garwin. Congratulations. Sam, to commemorate your victory, we'd like to present you with this certificate of impressive knowledge.

• 49:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  It reads, "I, Stephen Dubner, in collaboration with Alex Wagner and A.J. Jacobs, do solemnly swear that Sam Garwin told us something we did not know, for which we are eternally grateful." And that is our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you did not know. Huge thanks to Alex and A.J., to our guests, and thanks especially to you for coming to play Tell Me Something.

• 50:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  On the next Tell Me Something I Don't Know, John McWhorter joins me as co-host for a show about bugs, bugs of every variety you can imagine. I have often found slugs to be uniquely disgusting creatures. I see them coming out of the garden and it reminds me of what one advantage might be of dying.

• 50:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's next time on Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

• 50:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  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, Rachel Jacobs, Nathan Rossborough, and David Herman, who 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. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for listening.

• 51:14Stephen 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.

• 51:44Stephen 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.

• 52:22Speaker 08

  Having lots of choices sounds like it would be great. Who doesn't want more flavors of ice cream? It turns out, the answer is us. Too many choices can make us anxious, overwhelmed. I'm Shankar Vedantam, host of the Hidden Brain Podcast and YouTube channel. Each week, Hidden Brain brings you fascinating, science-backed insights about human behavior. So the next time you have to choose, choose Hidden Brain on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or hiddenbrain.org.

• 52:52Speaker 09

  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.