183. “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know”

The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson.

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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• 1:29Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, podcast listeners. The new episode you're about to hear is called "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." It's a live recording of a new game show that we just invented. As you'll hear, it was a lot of fun in person. The hope, of course, is that you will have fun listening to it as a podcast. Whatever the case, do me a favor and let us know what you think. You can tweet us at Freakonomics, leave a comment on our Facebook page, or at Freakonomics.com, or even shoot us an email at [email protected]. I'd love to hear whatever feedback you have, pro, con, or tangential. Thanks.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  All right. All right, so quiet, everybody. All right, start in three, two...

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Live from the green space at WNYC in New York City, welcome to this Freakonomics Radio live event. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 3:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thank you so very much, and welcome to the green space. Tonight, we are going to try something very different, okay? So not only is it a live show, which we've never done before, but it's a brand-new show that we invented for this occasion. So I hope you'll understand if I'm a little bit nervous. I am, however, comforted by the fact that you all should actually be a lot more nervous than me, because you, the audience, are going to be the stars of this show, okay? By the time it's over, I run the risk of being slightly embarrassed. You, however, run the risk of being completely broken. Now, here at Freakonomics Radio, our mission has always been to tell you, A, things you always thought you knew but didn't, and B, things you never thought you wanted to know

• 4:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  but do. For instance, you probably did not know that nearly 100% of the turkeys eaten by Americans are the result of artificial insemination. Now, why would that be?

• 4:18Speaker 03

  The modern turkey has a quite large turkey breast, and it actually physically gets in the way when the male and the female try to create offspring.

• 4:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, I was expecting more sympathy than that gained, yeah. You probably do know that men are on many levels inferior to women, but did you know just how inferior they we are when it comes to getting out of the way of a thunderstorm?

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Typically, 80 to 85% of the lightning fatalities across the United States are men.

• 4:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  You laugh at the men being struck by lightning and the poor turkeys. Okay, and I bet you didn't know this, if you work at a company with, let's say, 100 people, 100 employees who have college degrees, even advanced degrees, at least one of them is probably lying. Here's former FBI agent Alan Ezel.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  Let me put it this way, the United States, all the colleges and universities in our country, award about 1.3 million degrees a year. Approximately 1% of that, we believe, is the amount of phony degrees that are sold in our country each year.

• 5:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so that's some of what we've told you over the years, but let me be honest with you, we're exhausted, okay? It takes a lot of effort to come up with all this stuff to tell you that you didn't know. We are totally out of ideas. So, we thought that we would do what any institution does when they're facing a crisis, which is think, how can we make our problem someone else's problem? And that's what this show is really about. We thought, why don't we have all of you come and tell us something we don't know, okay? And we decided we'll call this new show, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. So, how's this going to work? Well, the first thing we need are some judges. So, let's bring them out.

• 6:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  Please join me in welcoming Malcolm Gladwell, Anna Gasteyer, and David Paterson.

• 6:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Judges, welcome. Here are a few things that we know so far about you. Malcolm Gladwell. We know that you are a staff writer for The New Yorker. You've written five bestselling books, by which I mean best, the best-selling books ever. The first was The Tipping Point. The most recent is David and Goliath. We also know you were an excellent schoolboy middle-distance runner and that just recently you ran the Fifth Avenue Mile here in New York and placed fifth in your age group with a time of, this is fantastic, 4 minutes and 54 seconds for the mile. Malcolm Gladwell.

• 7:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  And this was nine seconds faster than your time last year in the mile? So, according to my calculations, if you keep improving at this rate, by the time you're 84, you'll be the first human to run a sub-zero mile. You see what I did there? It's math, yeah, yeah. All right, Malcolm, if you would, why don't you then tell us something that we don't know about you?

• 7:34Speaker 06

  When I was 18 years old, I interned for a summer with Justice Scalia, before he was justice, and he fired me.

• 7:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Black badge of courage, yeah. Why'd you get fired? Was it for cause?

• 7:50Speaker 06

  For cause, yeah, absolutely.

• 7:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you tell us a little, can you tell us a tiny bit of...

• 7:54Speaker 06

  I was just incompetent, I think that was the...

• 7:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  Has your competence grown?

• 8:00Speaker 06

  Not sure.

• 8:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  What was he like?

• 8:06Speaker 06

  Well, impatient with incompetence.

• 8:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Anna Gasteyer, hi.

• 8:13Speaker 07

  Hi.

• 8:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  We are so happy to have you here.

• 8:14Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 8:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  We know that you were a cast member on Saturday Night Live for six seasons. Not only did you give us sweaty balls, which, by the way, set public radio back for years, okay?

• 8:29Speaker 07

  I'm sorry. I apologize to the organization.

• 8:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Also, however, a Martha Stewart impression so wicked that you are still apologizing to Martha Stewart.

• 8:39Speaker 07

  Yes, I am. I sent her back for yours, too.

• 8:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  You have starred in films including Mean Girls on Broadway as Elphaba in Wicked, and on TV, including the ABC sitcom Suburgatory. We also know you are a fantastic singer. Your new record is called "I'm Hip," just out, and you describe it as moxie jazz. What the heck is moxie jazz?

• 8:59Speaker 07

  It's happy jazz. It's jazz you get drunk to, mostly.

• 9:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nice. All right, Anna, can you tell us now something we do not know about you?

• 9:08Speaker 07

  Well, some people know this, but I grew up in Washington, DC, and I was a childhood friend of Amy Carter, the president's daughter, and was invited to Camp David for the weekend as a fifth grader. But the most crazy thing is that I watched Star Wars with the Sadats.

• 9:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow, wow.

• 9:29Speaker 07

  Which was, you know, most of the big event for me, because, you know, it was Star Wars.

• 9:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm curious which side they took while watching.

• 9:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  Was that a bad thing to say? Governor Patterson, is that a bad idea? No, it was fine. It's all right. David Paterson, we know you were the 55th governor of this very great state of New York. That's good.

• 9:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  These days, you are the distinguished professor of healthcare and public policy at Turo College, and you're the chair of the New York State Democratic Party, which has gone how many days now without an indictment? It's been a while, yeah? About a week.

• 10:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Despite being legally blind, you are, you've been known to be a basketball player. One opponent, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is quoted as saying you've got, quote, "some kind of sonar for the basket." I couldn't tell. Was that a compliment?

• 10:31Speaker 08

  No, you don't get compliments from him.

• 10:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  How good a basketball player are or were you?

• 10:37Speaker 08

  I had one moment when Governor Cuomo threw me a pass and I made a layup and as I was trying to make the layup, someone knocked me down. I flung the ball and it went in the basket. And these people from CBS came over right on the court and I'm lying on the floor and they said, "Well, you're blind. How did you make that shot?" And I said, "I guess I got over it." And I ran down the court. And I knew that would be on TV that night, so I called all my friends and my staff and people I owed money and tell them to watch TV that night. And it didn't come on. You know why?

• 11:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Know why?

• 11:16Speaker 08

  That's the night OJ Simpson went up the highway with a white Bronco. And I kept saying, "Kill him, kill him and put the news on."

• 11:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, Governor Patterson, it was your turn to tell us something we didn't know about you, but I feel you just got in the confessional and went on us. So, is there anything else?

• 11:44Speaker 08

  No, that's it.

• 11:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. All right then, we are ready to play Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Here's how it's going to work, okay? An audience contestant will come onstage and tell us their "I don't know," heretofore known as an IDK, after which you, each of the judges, will give each contestant a score. And each of you will rank each one from zero to 10 points, which means that a perfect score from all three judges would be a 30. Now, what are we actually hoping to hear tonight and to learn tonight? Well, most of us like to learn things purely out of self-interest. It's exciting to learn new information. But the pursuit of knowledge merely to possess that knowledge can be a bit narcissistic. You might sound smart at a cocktail party or on a podcast, but what's really exciting, what we're really

• 12:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  hoping to hear, is some knowledge that can be leveraged into something useful in the world. So, it can be fun, but if it's useful, all the better. So, we want to learn things that we don't know and that are... In some way, worth knowing. And one last thing, your IDK should be demonstrably true. To that end, we've got our one-man BS detector, Jody Avrigan, over in the corner. Jody is a producer at WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show, and he's the host of Ask Roulette, a podcast and live event series. And here's one more thing you may not know about Jody. He is a professional athlete. He's a veteran of Major League Ultimate, as in ultimate frisbee. Welcome, Jody, please, won't you?

• 13:12Speaker 09

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 13:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  And, Jody, do you want to just tell us how you'll actually be doing this super-secret atomic verification?

• 13:19Speaker 09

  Yeah, I've got my LexisNexis password, and I've renewed my subscriptions to all the scholarly journals, but mostly I've got a tab open on Google and a tab open on Wikipedia.

• 13:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, let's play. Every contestant, as a reward for playing, will receive a Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or mug. The winner of each round will move on to the final round and compete for a grand prize. And believe me, I do mean grand, okay? Contestants and judges, I want you to keep in mind the criteria. Number one, we didn't know it. Number two, it's worth knowing. And number three, it's demonstrably true, okay? Or at least true-ish. And so first, let's call up our first contestant, Seth, is it Porgus? Seth Porgus? Porgis. Porgis, as in gorgeous.

• 14:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, Seth, how you doing?

• 14:11Speaker 10

  I'm great.

• 14:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Who are you? What do you do?

• 14:14Speaker 10

  I'm a journalist and co-founder of an app called Cloth.

• 14:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what do you have to tell these guys, all of us, something that we don't know?

• 14:21Speaker 10

  Did you know that pinball machines were illegal in New York City for more than three decades, during which time the city engaged in a series of prohibition-style sweeps through the city, including with a dedicated NYPD pinball squad, over which course they would compensate and smash with sledgehammers thousands upon thousands of pinball machines?

• 14:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow, when was this?

• 14:47Speaker 10

  Pinball machines were illegal until 1976.

• 14:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh my goodness.

• 14:52Speaker 08

  Why were they illegal?

• 14:53Speaker 10

  They were thought to be a game of chance and not skill, and thus, according to the logic of the 30s and 40s, when the ban started gambling, they were also thought to be a mob racket. And unlike other gambling devices like slot machines, they were thought to be a game that appealed to children, and thus, especially evil and nefarious, sort of gateway gambling devices that would lure kids into their traps and never let them go.

• 15:14Speaker 08

  Were they a mob racket?

• 15:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  You said thought to be?

• 15:17Speaker 10

  Maybe. Some of them probably were.

• 15:20Speaker 07

  Do you believe that pinball is a chance game?

• 15:23Speaker 10

  Well, back in the day, flippers didn't exist. So the game entirely involved nudging the ball into holes, and it would actually knock into pins. So the games looked nothing like they do today. There's certainly a lot more skill in the game today than there was back then.

• 15:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Malcolm, Anna, Governor Patterson, anything more you want to prod Seth on?

• 15:41Speaker 08

  Who actually liberated us of this curse?

• 15:45Speaker 10

  Well, that's a really great story. So first, the most virulent anti-pinball force ever was Mayor LaGuardia, who it's really not an exaggeration to say the number one priority of his entire administration was getting rid of pinball machines from New York City. He tried for more than a decade to do this until just a couple of weeks after Pearl Harbor. He uses the fact that we're distracted with U-boats to push through what he always wanted for more than a decade, which was a citywide, total, universal ban on pinball machines. Within one day, they confiscated more than 2,300 pinball machines. And they remained this way until 76, when the pinball industry finally got what it wanted, which was a hearing in front of city council where they could prove that pinball was a game of skill and not chance, and thus, the whole logic behind the ban was null and void. So what they do is they bring in the best pinball player

• 16:30Speaker 10

  they can into City Hall with a pinball machine. And it was a 26-year-old editor of GQ magazine, Roger Sharp, who was known as a really good pinball player. So they bring him in with a pinball machine, and he plays pinball in City Hall, surrounded by city council cameras, microphones, and he basically calls his shots. He says, "I'm gonna pull the plunger back. I'm gonna hit the ball here." Nobody's really impressed. So he pulls the plunger back to start a new ball, and he says, "Based on my skill alone, the ball will land in the middle lane at the top of the playing field." So he pulls the plunger back. The ball bounces to the left, bounces to the right, goes right where he says it was. Almost on the spot, New York City Council votes to overturn the 34-year-old ban on pinball machines.

• 17:09Speaker 08

  Wow.

• 17:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  That is a beautiful thing, yeah. All right, Seth.

• 17:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Seth Porges, as in gorgeous, yes? Yes. Jody, what can you tell us? Does Seth's evils of pinball story seem to pan out from what you can tell?

• 17:24Speaker 09

  I have fact-checked this, and it is true, and I want to buy the rights to make this movie. This is amazing. I am looking at an amazing picture from 1949 of the New York City Police Commissioner, William O'Brien, smashing a pinball machine with a sledgehammer in some sort of, like, pinball speakeasy, or whatever they had. This is great. And one little tidbit that Seth did mention was that during World War II, the pinball industry, much like the rest of manufacturing in America, had to turn towards wartime efforts. And since copper wiring was so important in pinballs, they had to sort of shut down and send all their copper towards the war effort.

• 18:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  GTN, good to know. Okay, so judges. Sorry, that's a family. I know it's wrong. It's the way our family spells it, okay? Come from a family of bad spellers.

• 18:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Lay off. Judges, time for you to give it a score. Now, remember, you want to judge it on something you didn't know, something that's worth knowing, and something that's verifiably, demonstrably true, okay? Score maximum of 10. Malcolm, what do you say? I'm gonna give it 24.

• 18:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, you can only go up to 10, though.

• 18:31Speaker 09

  Oh, right, I don't...

• 18:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  It's okay. No, no, no.

• 18:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  You do the run-in, we'll do the counting. It's okay.

• 18:37Speaker 06

  I was telling you I had a 30 in my mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was speaking for the whole group. No, then I'm gonna say 8.

• 18:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  8, okay, lovely. Malcolm Gladwell gives it an 8. Anna Gasteyer?

• 18:48Speaker 07

  I'm gonna give it a 9.

• 18:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  9. They love you, Seth Porges gorgeous. Yep. Governor Patterson?

• 18:53Speaker 08

  I'd give it a 24.

• 18:57Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sorry.

• 18:57Speaker 08

  9.

• 18:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  A 9.

• 18:58Speaker 08

  I was tempted to go to 10.

• 19:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Go to 10.

• 19:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Seth Porges, 26 points out of possible 30. Well done.

• 19:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Fantastic. Okay, our next contestant is named Erin Thompson. You can clap.

• 19:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi Erin.

• 19:25Speaker 11

  Hello.

• 19:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  Love your glasses.

• 19:27Speaker 11

  Thank you.

• 19:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is good radio talk, you know.

• 19:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you do?

• 19:32Speaker 11

  I am a professor of art law and art crime at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

• 19:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, I didn't know they had that. That's neat. Okay, good. Tell us something we don't know.

• 19:41Speaker 11

  Well, everybody knows that museums have billions of dollars of art hanging on their walls, but did you know that the security at many museums is so lax that burglars can incredibly easily steal these masterpieces? In fact, in the most recent spectacular museum break-ins, the tools used have been as simple as a pair of pliers to jimmy open the back door of Rotterdam's Kunsthall Museum, or a ladder to climb up and break the unreinforced window glass next to Munch's The Scream, or even nothing at all, as was the case in one night in 2007 when a group of drunken revellers broke into Paris's Orsay Museum and punched a hole through a Monet. So why don't museums have the elaborate laser systems that we see in the movies?

• 20:26Speaker 11

  Well, for one, museums know that the more valuable and thus more recognizable a work of art, the more easily it will be recovered. But more importantly, there's the issue of ROI, return on investment. Museums have incredibly limited security budgets, and museums know that art thefts are rare, whereas a surprisingly high percentage of all museum visitors would touch, write, or even spin on works of art if permitted. So museums spend their limited security budgets on preventing the threat that faces them every day, the threat of petty vandalism, displaying economic rationality by leaving their masterpieces exposed to the very occasional threat of an impressionist snatching Thomas Crown.

• 21:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  So Erin, the message here is we should all steal more art. Right?

• 21:15Speaker 11

  I would have to catch you if you did, but...

• 21:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is there an example of a museum that has, that really does have fantastic state-of-the-art security?

• 21:23Speaker 11

  The Getty Museum has the best security, mainly because if you've ever been there, you have to go and take a little tram up the hill. So if something is missing, they shut down the tram and everybody is stuck on the hill until they search it.

• 21:38Speaker 08

  Is there a museum in the White House?

• 21:44Speaker 08

  I was just wondering why the guy went in there.

• 21:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jody, what do you know?

• 21:50Speaker 09

  This generally checks out. The 1994 theft of The Scream in Oslo, the thieves who, you know, basically waltzed in and took it, they left a note that read, quote, "Thanks for the poor security," end quote.

• 22:05Speaker 09

  And Aaron mentioned limited museum budget, so I actually wondered how much a museum guard makes. And it's not great at the Met. It's about 10 to 12 bucks an hour. But this led to a 2010 New York Times article about how many Met museum employees are actually aspiring artists themselves. And in 2010, the museum launched an art journal featuring the art of museum guards called Swipe. And this showcased their work.

• 22:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jody, you are a hell of a Googler.

• 22:33Speaker 09

  I'm a really good Googler.

• 22:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Judges, time to give Aaron's IDK a score here. Anna, tell us what you want to score it and why.

• 22:41Speaker 07

  I'm going to give you a six because it is really interesting. And I didn't know it, and I look forward to talking about it at a party.

• 22:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  If it were less interesting, it would have gotten a seven then, right? Six for really interesting?

• 22:53Speaker 07

  Yeah, well...

• 22:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, sorry. You weren't done. I interrupted you.

• 22:57Speaker 07

  Well, if you're going to get mad at me, I'll go up to a seven.

• 22:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  We should call it off. Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 23:00Speaker 07

  I'll go up to a seven. I mean, eight for the baby. Fine.

• 23:10Speaker 07

  To our listening audience at home, Aaron's with child.

• 23:14Speaker 07

  Okay, so, sorry, Jody, are you with child too? Can you Google that, Jody?

• 23:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Governor Patterson? Eight. You want to tell us why, or you want to keep that to yourself?

• 23:27Speaker 08

  No, actually, I thought the information was very good. I would like to have been a little more persuaded that I needed to know this.

• 23:34Speaker 07

  That's what I was trying to say, but not as well.

• 23:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  Malcolm?

• 23:38Speaker 06

  Well, I, you know, I figured this, I'm puzzled by why the two previous judges don't find this useful. This is really useful.

• 23:48Speaker 06

  Way more useful than pinball. I'm going nine. This is...

• 23:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Aaron Thompson, grand total of 25 points for Why Is Stealing Art So Easy? Lovely, lovely. Very well done. Next contestant, Will McLeod. Come on up.

• 24:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, Will.

• 24:13Speaker 12

  Hey there, Stephen.

• 24:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you do?

• 24:15Speaker 12

  So I'm an engineer. I work with tech startup companies and hardware. Keen Home, my startup right now, is making wireless learning HVAC vents.

• 24:23Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell us something we don't know here, would you?

• 24:24Speaker 12

  Cool. So I think a lot of people have spent time thinking about losing weight. But have you ever asked yourself, when you lose weight, where does that weight actually go?

• 24:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wait a minute. Have we all thought that?

• 24:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay.

• 24:42Speaker 12

  It's a mystery, and I like to think things through. I think a lot of people, when they think about losing weight, when you Google that phrase, "Where does the weight actually go?", what you'll find is a lot of pages of articles saying, "Weight becomes energy." Well, did you know that when you lose weight, you actually lose it through your nose?

• 25:01Speaker 12

  I like to hear that. That's good. That means people didn't know. I got the novel point, right? All right, so I think what a lot of people think, when you Google the phrase, you'll see that "energy," "weight becomes energy," but that would be nuclear fusion. If you were turning mass into energy, we would all be walking nuclear reactors. We're not radioactive, so we're not doing that. So then the question becomes, where does it go? Well, I think a lot of people think maybe it goes in the toilet. And that's a good hypothesis.

• 25:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is that at least partially true?

• 25:30Speaker 12

  Yeah, you do a little bit, but when you're actually talking about digesting fat, there was one way you could run an experiment and see whether or not that's true. So if you go to bed at night, weigh yourself right before you do. Exactly. Weigh yourself in the morning before you go to the bathroom again. You'll find that you lose some weight. I lose about two pounds in the morning. You're actually lightest when you wake up. So the question is, where is it going? Since it's not going to the toilet, unless you need to change your sheets, it's going somewhere else.

• 25:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Edit. Sorry. No, no, that's fine. That's fine. It's public radio. You can really say anything.

• 26:03Speaker 12

  All right, so we know it's not going into fusion. It's not becoming energy. We know it's not going into the toilet. It turns out the place it's actually going is super interesting. It's going into the air. The air we breathe out is heavier than the air we breathe in. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are heavier than the oxygen and a little bit of carbon dioxide and water vapor that we breathe in. And we kind of know this from what we learned in high school, the Krebs cycle or citric acid cycle. But that's a really boring, abstract way to think about something that's so cool and interesting. So, think about it another way. You can think about a potted plant, an acorn, that you put into a pot on a scale. And you put a bowl of water next to it, and every day you water it from that bowl. So, as that acorn turns into a tree, it's gonna get heavier, right? But where's that weight coming from? It's not from the soil. The soil's already on the scale. It's not from the water.

• 26:48Speaker 12

  The water's already on the scale. It actually comes from the air itself. The air becomes the tree, and that's what carbon sequestration is. It's that process of turning these floating molecules of carbon dioxide into the tree. And people do the opposite. We're like these walking fires, turning solid fuel into gases, just like a car turns liquid fuel into exhaust or a fire makes smoke. But our smoke is cleaner. It's what we breathe out. And what I think is so cool about that is, once you know that, you start to ask yourself questions like, "Well, if I'm losing weight, does that mean that every time I breathe, I lose a little bit more? And does breathing faster make me lose more weight?" That, yeah, that's what exercise is.

• 27:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Will, awesome. Judges, you wanna know more?

• 27:33Speaker 07

  I'm super psyched I'm not Jody right now.

• 27:34Speaker 12

  I got noth-- I got nothing.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  Losing weight through nose. But wait, does this say-- this is a really, really dumb question. So if I simply sit here and go, "Hahahaha," am I-- is that a means of losing weight?

• 27:53Speaker 12

  You'll pass out, unfortunately.

• 27:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Which could also be fun.

• 27:58Speaker 12

  But it does. So, the way to make sure that you don't pass out is to work out. And that means that if you ask yourself which exercise is best for losing weight, it's the one that gets you breathing just like that, harder and faster.

• 28:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Jody, losing weight through the nose?

• 28:12Speaker 09

  Well, Will is right. When you Google the phrase, "Where does the weight actually go?" You get no good results. So, thanks for that red herring, Will. But I then made the mistake of Googling, "Do you lose weight by breathing?" And I got lots of tips on yoga techniques. But I also found an article about the latest weight loss program to sweep America, Oxy Size. In 15 minutes a day, just by breathing, over 750,000 followers claim it transforms body shape, sheds pounds within weeks, and improves muscle tone and boosts energy levels.

• 28:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  I believe every word of that.

• 28:48Speaker 09

  Oh, yeah. 750,000 breathing Americans can't be wrong. But he is right that carbon dioxide weighs more than oxygen.

• 28:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. Keep in mind the criteria here. Is it novel? Is it worth knowing? And is it true? And let's score this puppy. Governor Patterson, what do you want to give Will and why?

• 29:08Speaker 08

  So, well, everyone talks about weight, so obviously it's worth knowing. And is it true? Apparently, it's true. And it's great to know that the mass weighs less than the energy. I never knew that, and neither did Albert Einstein. But I'll give it a nine.

• 29:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  The hecklers are out. Nice. Malcolm?

• 29:30Speaker 06

  I'm going, I'm gonna go six. It didn't, as interesting as it was, I feel like I kind of knew that the way to lose weight was to do something that would cause me to breathe heavily, so.

• 29:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Fair enough. Six points for Malcolm Gladwell and Anna Gasteyer.

• 29:52Speaker 07

  Yes, I'm gonna do a seven similarly, because it was super intriguing. Also knew about the fast breathing. I thought you did a great job explaining it. But I would absolutely get stuck on the tree in the water story at a dinner party. Like, I would pull the party to a grinding halt, and everybody would be excited to know about the weight loss through the nose. And then I'd be like, "Well, should we make dessert?" And then we'd move on.

• 30:19Speaker 07

  So I have to give you a seven because I'm not, the walk away isn't clean enough for me, but it was good, it was interesting.

• 30:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Will McLeod, 22 points, but also Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or mug, thank you so very much. Thanks, guys. Great job, great job. We're gonna have one more contestant in this first round. Her name is Melissa Schneider. Melissa, will you come on up? Here we go. Hi, Melissa.

• 30:44Speaker 13

  Hello.

• 30:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  How's it going?

• 30:46Speaker 13

  Pretty good.

• 30:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  What do you do?

• 30:48Speaker 13

  I am a dating and relationship counselor. I'm wearing a heart shirt.

• 30:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  You are wearing a heart shirt, and you're sitting next to a fella.

• 30:53Speaker 13

  He's my husband. Success story.

• 30:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  So your work is done.

• 30:57Speaker 13

  That's right.

• 30:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, and now you do this for other people, presumably?

• 31:01Speaker 13

  That's right.

• 31:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  For a fee. What do you get?

• 31:04Speaker 13

  Um, $125 a session.

• 31:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  $125,000?

• 31:07Speaker 13

  Yes, that is correct, so I'm offering a package.

• 31:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  What can you tell us tonight that we don't know?

• 31:14Speaker 13

  Okay, so if you're single, or dating, or married, you might find this interesting. I've got one person. So, people always want to know, like, what should I be looking for in an early dating relationship? Like, what predicts that it's gonna be successful or break up? There is great research done in 2010, looked at 37,000 dating couples in different countries, and they looked at 30 factors that have been studied at least four times to figure out, like, what actually matters? Like, what makes a difference in who stays together and who breaks up? And the number one factor was a big surprise to everyone conducting the study. It wasn't commitment, or love, or trust, or the things you would expect.

• 31:57Speaker 13

  It was something called the awesomeness factor. That's what I call it. It was actually called positive illusions.

• 32:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Positive illusions?

• 32:03Speaker 13

  Yes.

• 32:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Illusions with an I?

• 32:05Speaker 13

  Illusions, yes, that's a, you can ask me a question about that. But I like to call it the awesomeness factor because the criteria was basically that you think your partner is great, you think your relationship is like, kind of better than all of your friends' relationships, we wouldn't tell them that, and you feel like your partner is close to your, like, quirky sense of ideal for you. And it didn't just matter in dating, it actually also mattered in marriage. One study that looked at newlyweds and kind of evaluated this factor, found that three years later, satisfaction had dropped for everybody, except one group, guess who it was? The people who had a high awesomeness factor the day they walked down the aisle. And I just celebrated my third wedding anniversary, so I can give an anecdote.

• 32:47Speaker 06

  Now, are both of you awesome, or just one? Does it take two? Like, is he awesome and you're eh?

• 32:52Speaker 13

  That's a good question. It's actually like your perception of your partner. And they have found slight differences if your partner just thinks like you're lame, you know.

• 33:01Speaker 08

  Well, I'm really glad you cleared this up. I always thought that...

• 33:07Speaker 13

  Tell us.

• 33:07Speaker 08

  I always thought that the test was whether or not the passenger opens the driver's seat door like in a Bronx Tale.

• 33:18Speaker 06

  So you're saying, when you say positive illusions, you mean to say that those who have this are people who are misled about the virtues of their partner? In other words, they think their partner's better than the partner actually is?

• 33:32Speaker 13

  Yes, and no. So I think the early researchers maybe had like a hard time with dating. You know, like if you read their papers, they're like, "Oh, the rose-colored glasses. They don't know what they're looking at." But it actually turns out that if you think your partner is awesome, they actually become a bit awesomer, like over the course of your relationship. So there's kind of like the self-fulfilling...

• 33:52Speaker 07

  It's your perception of their awesomeness that counts. It's that they could be like super gross to somebody else, super unawesome, or foul, one might say. But you personally find that person to just have a super awesome quality.

• 34:06Speaker 13

  That's right. Perception is reality. So if you think that's true, it like impacts your whole experience of the relationship.

• 34:13Speaker 07

  So it is rose-colored glasses, but it manifested over a lifetime.

• 34:19Speaker 13

  And they seem to matter, yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 08

  But aren't people deceived that way by the same process?

• 34:24Speaker 13

  Now, you sound like the early researchers. So perhaps.

• 34:28Speaker 08

  Well, I knew them.

• 34:34Speaker 06

  Jody, is there such a thing as the awesomeness factor and does it work?

• 34:38Speaker 09

  Well, I did find this 2010 study, and it's called "Predicting Non-Marital Romantic Relationship Dissolution: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis." So I think awesomeness factor is a better name.

• 34:50Speaker 13

  Way better, right?

• 34:51Speaker 09

  And I'm with the judges. I mean, everything I Googled in the last 30 seconds about a positive illusion... Really does talk about it as a form of self-delusion and then projection. But, you know, you seem to say it has good effects. The one other thing that came up.

• 35:05Speaker 13

  Seems to be if you stay together.

• 35:06Speaker 09

  Yeah. The one other thing that came up was this idea of perceived superiority, which is how you view your relationship in relation to others. And that apparently makes a really big difference, not just your partner.

• 35:18Speaker 13

  Find friends with a bad relationship, you shoot right up.

• 35:22Speaker 09

  And one study I found, I like this. One study I found concluded that in men especially, satisfaction was particularly related to the perception that one's relationship was superior to others. Whereas in women's, satisfaction was related to the assumption that most others were just as happy, if not more happy than you.

• 35:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  And that's why we get struck by lightning.

• 35:43Speaker 09

  Exactly.

• 35:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Malcolm, what do you want to score this and why?

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Well, you know, I feel like I've already established with my votes on the other people, how high the bar is, particularly for novelty and also usefulness. I mean, knowing you can rip off a museum at a moment's notice is like so useful. This, high, but not as high. So I'm going to say seven.

• 36:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good. Malcolm, thank you. Anna?

• 36:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm completely subjectively scoring this. I'm going to give it a nine for the opposite reason. As a long-term married person who really enjoys being superior to others. I'm going to, I find it incredibly useful. And I'm going to talk about it my whole 18th wedding anniversary. Couple of weeks.

• 36:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Governor Patterson?

• 36:37Speaker 08

  So I'll give it a nine too, because obviously.

• 36:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nine point two or nine also. You can go decimal.

• 36:44Speaker 13

  Oh, that's a new twist.

• 36:46Speaker 08

  Yeah, we were holding it out for the second round, but you drove it out of me. But I thought that.

• 36:53Speaker 08

  That she delivered it in a very kind of relaxed way and didn't sort of say that it always has to work, but that it just seems to be a trend. And our whole lives are really in many ways about myth, and why shouldn't they be in our relationships?

• 37:09Speaker 07

  That's right. I like that she got Awesomeness Factor votes for her awesomeness factor.

• 37:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Exactly right. And the shirt, yeah. Melissa Schneider, 25 points. Thank you so much for playing Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great, great job. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our first round, and we have a winner with a total of 26 points is Seth Porges, who wowed us with the evils of pinball. Way to go, Seth. All right, Seth, congratulations. We will see you again in the final round. Now, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of Tell Me Something I Don't Know from Freakonomics Radio and WNYC.

• 38:18Stephen 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.

• 38:51Stephen 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.

• 39:38Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 40:15Speaker 02

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

• 40:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know from Freakonomics Radio. I'm Stephen Dubner. Our next round is called Judges' Choice. Before the show, we asked each of our three judges what they wanted to know more about. And now, our live audience is going to try to help them out, okay? Anna Gasteyer, former Saturday Night Live cast member, just out with a new record called I'm Hip. And I love your video. It's so great.

• 40:44Speaker 07

  Oh, thank you.

• 40:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're fantastic. Anna, I understand you are eager to know more about the Civil War. Why is that?

• 40:50Speaker 07

  Yes. Because I took a summer school class that covered it, and I was pretty out to lunch. So I got the big picture, but it's kind of an embarrassing thing not to know anything about.

• 40:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you remember who the teams were?

• 41:00Speaker 07

  Very vaguely. And my son's name is Ulysses, so the heat's on.

• 41:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  David Paterson, former governor of New York, now a professor of healthcare and public policy. "You would like to know more about astronomy," says you. Why is that?

• 41:15Speaker 08

  I went to the Hayden Planetarium on one of those class trips when I was seven or eight years old and kind of got caught up in trying to figure out the universe. Now I want to govern the universe.

• 41:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  And Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author and staff writer at The New Yorker. You told us that you wanted to know more about tax law.

• 41:43Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 41:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sexy. Why is that, Malcolm?

• 41:46Speaker 06

  When I came to this country 20 years ago or so from Canada and discovered something that amazes me to this day, which is that, what, 75% of American politics is just about taxes. So why wouldn't I want to know more about that?

• 42:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Lovely. That's the answer I was not expecting. Here's how judges' choice will work, folks. Members of the audience, we need you to line up at the microphone, right over there, if you can tell us something we don't know about the Civil War, astronomy, or tax law. Now, this is a lightning round, so make it fast. If you hear this bell, that means you should stop talking and return to your seat, okay? All you need to do is tell us your name and your IDK, your I-don't-know. Everyone who plays is going to get a Freakonomics Radio t-shirt or mug, and the winner of this round will qualify for the final round. Judges, at the end of the round, we'll ask each of you to pick your favorite IDK that

• 42:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  was directed at you and give it a score, again, anywhere from 0 to 10 points, based on the same criteria: something you didn't know, something that's worth knowing, and that's demonstrably true. Okay, let's go. First contestant, please step up. Tell us your name and something we don't know.

• 43:00Speaker 14

  My name is Michael Oldham. This fact is cited in a recent book by Randall Munro called "What If?" If a supernova occurred where the sun is, don't worry, the sun, it's not going to go into a supernova, but if it did, it'd be so bright, it'd be brighter than if a hydrogen bomb exploded at the surface of your eyeball. Not only would it be brighter, it'd be a billion times brighter. A supernova from the sun would be a billion times brighter than if a hydrogen bomb exploded right here.

• 43:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi there, come on up, tell us your name.

• 43:34Speaker 15

  Hey, my name is Daniel. This is for Mr. Gladwell. Did you know that in Ireland and Denmark, there's a flatulence tax on cows to reduce the emissions that are brought out by them? And this is important because this might end up happening in America as well. So the cows are ta— every cow that a farmer owns is taxed.

• 43:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautifully done. Thank you so much, Daniel. Step on up and tell us something we don't know.

• 44:02Speaker 16

  Hi, my name is Malhar. And did you know that on January— oh, this is astronomy. And did you know on January 2nd— you usually celebrate January 1st as the New Year, but in January 2nd, there's an astronomical event called the perihelion, which is when the Earth is closest to the Sun. Think about how close—if January 1st is really an arbitrary number. Imagine if January 2nd was the New Year. How cool would that be?

• 44:29Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, very good. Hi there.

• 44:31Speaker 17

  Hi, my name is Jackie. And for those who want to retire with a little bit more money, there's a tax loophole where you can contribute to your traditional 401(k) and then roll it over to a post-tax Roth 401(k) without any tax penalty, saving you upwards of 30%.

• 44:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautiful. Thank you so much. Hi there, tell us your name and something we don't know.

• 44:56Speaker 18

  Hi, my name is Alex. Malcolm, I'm a longtime fan of your hair. That's probably what you do know about me. So, this is an astronomy fact, continuing the supernova theme, but according to a recent projection, every second, there are 30 supernovae in the observable universe. That's for every baby born, there are seven stars that explode.

• 45:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautiful. Hi there, does anyone know anything about the Civil War?

• 45:26Speaker 07

  Nope. Put it this way, I don't know anything, so it's all gonna be good for me. It's a high score.

• 45:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, what's your name?

• 45:32Speaker 19

  My name's Aaron Weiner.

• 45:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hi, Aaron.

• 45:35Speaker 19

  And I have something about tax law in the Civil War.

• 45:46Speaker 08

  In which galaxy?

• 45:51Speaker 19

  So during the Civil War, the South levied taxes at a rate consistent with what its Confederate money was worth at the time, but then as its territory shrank, as it lost, there was effectively a large amount of inflation because they had the same amount of money concentrated in a smaller and smaller area where it was legal. So they ended up not levying enough taxes and it was a vicious cycle contributing to the inflation and the decline of the economy, which hurt their ability to wage war.

• 46:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very well done.

• 46:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tough to beat. Tough to beat. Hi there. How do you do? What's your name?

• 46:26Speaker 20

  So hi, I'm Idris. And so this is Tax Law and the Civil War.

• 46:33Speaker 20

  Again. So the Union needed to pay for the war because they were kind of, wars were expensive. So what they did was they established an income tax on the rich. And so the way how they enforced it was that they created like a registry so that you can look up any person and see how much they paid in taxes. And so anybody who thought that somebody was, you know, kind of living in a way that wasn't consistent with the income that they reported, so what they would do is that you could report them and say, oh, well, this person is living too large. So in fact, they, someone managed to report Abraham Lincoln.

• 47:12Speaker 20

  So on the tax reporters, like Ledger, what they did was that they had to go actually investigate this, which is kind of funny.

• 47:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  I agree. I agree. Thank you so much. Great job, Idris. Great job. Hi, tell us, tell us your name and something we don't know.

• 47:30Speaker 21

  Hi, my name is Mariana Yoich. And this is an astronomy fact. So did you know that the Illinois State Senate was so angry when Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, that on March 13, 2009, they voted to reinstate it as a planet and name that day Pluto Day in Illinois?

• 47:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautiful.

• 47:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, hi. Tell us your name and something we don't know.

• 47:57Speaker 22

  Hi, my name is Tom. We know more about the Civil War than we otherwise would have because of cancer. At the end of his life, President Ulysses Grant.

• 48:05Speaker 07

  Nicely played.

• 48:06Speaker 22

  Because of a cancer diagnosis, was pressured to write his memoirs and record a lot of information about the Civil War that we might otherwise not have known.

• 48:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Nicely done. And we've got time, I'm afraid, for just one more. So why don't you step up? Tell us your name and something we don't know.

• 48:21Speaker 23

  Hi, my name is Steve Nazarian, and this is an income tax law fact. There are really two classes of income taxpayers in the United States. People who can itemize deductions and people who cannot. And typically, that's usually property owners and non-property owners. And of course, here in New York, we have a lot of renters. What most people don't know is that if they make some kind of large deduction or large contribution, like maybe donating a used car, that that donation can actually be held over for as long as five years. And when I was younger, I donated a car that I paid $100 for. I got a $2,550 write-off. I held it for four years. Then I bought a house, and I got a $900 credit off my taxes.

• 49:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow.

• 49:02Speaker 23

  So netted out $800.

• 49:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  You should have been governor.

• 49:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Great job. Great job. Thank you so much. Okay. Now, here's the thing, judges. It's time for each of you to pick your favorite of those and assign a number score to it, okay?

• 49:17Speaker 07

  So just to be clear, I can only vote on the things about the Civil War?

• 49:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 07

  Got it.

• 49:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Basically, we want each of you to pick a winner in your category.

• 49:26Speaker 07

  Got it.

• 49:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  And give them a score, okay? So Governor Patterson, we heard quite a bit here about astronomy. Your cherished topic.

• 49:31Speaker 08

  We did, and they were all very good. And I think, actually, when they took Pluto's planet status away, they actually called it decommissioning. Like, I never knew they had any commissions on Pluto. But bring on Mulhar.

• 49:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  So that was telling us about January 2nd versus January 1st New Year. Very good, very good. And Governor Patterson, can you put a number score on that one, please? Like a 10. 10?

• 50:04Speaker 24

  Nice.

• 50:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Not even like a 10, a 10. Fantastic. Malcolm Gladwell, you asked people to tell you about tax-

• 50:12Speaker 08

  They're only one day apart, and he sold it like it was like half a year apart.

• 50:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Malcolm Gladwell, you asked the people to tell you about tax law. They told you about tax law. What was your favorite?

• 50:25Speaker 06

  Oh, wow. They were all good. This is impossible. But I'm gonna go with Cal Flatulence.

• 50:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 06

  Did not see that coming.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  Gonna give him a 9.

• 50:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Anna?

• 50:39Speaker 07

  You know, it was a deadlock. I had the same thing. It's a nail-biter between Aaron Weiner and Tom. It was, they're both incredibly useful facts. One involved tax law, one didn't. One involved Ulysses. You know, I'm gonna say that I'm gonna choose the factoid about Grant having cancer because I think there's something really applicable in conversation about how we record history and memory.

• 51:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Beautiful. Okay, nicely done. Jody, we have a contested contest here. Can you tell us anything about any of the winners and whether they're as factual as we think they are?

• 51:17Speaker 09

  They are all generally factual. With regards to the window, it is actually sort of a window around the 2nd of January where the Earth and the Sun are closest. And I think in 2015, it's gonna be January 4th that the Earth and the Sun are closest to each other. But I guess, so I guess he was wrong.

• 51:37Stephen J. Dubner?

  How old are you, Malhar? You're 12. Jody? You're trying to tell a 12-year-old boy who just got up here and told us this that you're gonna dock him for being a coupled-

• 51:47Speaker 09

  Malhar, literally the first page of Google results. I'm just saying.

• 51:54Speaker 09

  I'm just saying, it's not that hard, buddy. All right. Now, in Denmark, you will get taxed $110 per cow, per farting cow. In Ireland, it's only $18. So, you know, you gotta put 'em on a ship and get 'em over there and take advantage of that discrepancy.

• 52:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. Arbitrage. So here's a question. Arbitrage, that is an arbitrage opportunity. So here's the question. Governor Patterson, having heard Jody tell us that Malhar is

• 52:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  a little bit off, do you want to dock him points? You want to take away his 10?

• 52:30Speaker 09

  No.

• 52:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  That was easy. Nicely done. Okay, and so what we've got here is we've got-

• 52:38Speaker 09

  What would Google know about time?

• 52:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, so we've got two winners. We've got a dead tie for the judges' choice round. We've got Malhar with January 2nd, and Tom with "We wouldn't know so much about the Civil War if it weren't for Ulysses S. Grant's cancer." So both of those got a 10. So congratulations, Tom and Malhar. You will now join Seth in our final round. Coming up, our three finalists will each team up with one of our judges to go after the grand prize. That's next on Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

• 53:32Stephen J. Dubner?

  Welcome back to Tell Me Something I Don't Know. It's a new game show from Freakonomics Radio and WNYC. I'm Stephen Dubner. We've had a great night so far, I think we would agree. Would we agree?

• 53:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Three of our audience contestants have made it through to this, the final round, where they'll now be teamed up with our three judges. So Governor David Paterson will play with Malhar. Malcolm Gladwell will play with Tom, and Anna Gasteyer will play with Seth. Welcome aboard, guys.

• 54:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Final round? What is this final round?" Were you thinking that? Yeah. May I present to you, please, the spinning wheel of maximum danger. That's right. It is a spinning wheel with 12 rather random topics that you, our studio audience, helped us come up with before the show began. You remember how that worked? Nah, it's all coming clear. All right, so I'm gonna read them to you. We've got, our topics are: insulin, ninja warriors, workout tapes, anime, Staten Island, indoor plumbing. Did someone write those next to each other on purpose? That seems low blow.

• 54:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hogwarts, Eleanor Roosevelt, bread, neuroscience, Disney, and the Kama Sutra. Okay? So here's the way it's gonna work, okay? I'm gonna spin the wheel to pick a topic for each team, okay? And each team, you'll then have about 60 seconds, give or take, to confer and to tell all of us something that we don't know about this rather randomly chosen topic. When that's all over, you, the studio audience, will give us a throat vote, or maybe clapping, stomping, any way you wanna make your noise, to pick out our grand prize winner. Okay? All clear? Any questions, comments, complaints, criticism? Anna, is that just...

• 55:33Speaker 07

  No, it's just fear. Blind fear.

• 55:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, let's spin the wheel first to pick a topic for Team Patterson. Here we go.

• 55:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh, right up the alley, yeah? Okay. Next, a topic for Team Gladwell.

• 55:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  With Tom. And you do not get to do Eleanor Roosevelt also. We have a provision against this, and here it is.

• 56:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Bread. Wow, how lucky is that? And Seth and Anna, you get to tell us all something we don't know about...

• 56:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  What's that? Indoor plumbing.

• 56:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  You got one vote already. All right, take your time, all 60 seconds of it, and I want you to tell us something we don't know about Eleanor Roosevelt for Team Patterson, indoor plumbing for Team Gasteyer, and bread for Team Gladwell.

• 57:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, time is up. We want to hear what you all came up with. Audience members, we're going to vote after you've heard all three presentations, okay? So first up, Governor David Paterson and Malhar, we want you to tell us something we don't know about Eleanor Roosevelt.

• 57:52Speaker 16

  Eleanor Roosevelt was a big friend of Amelia Earhart, and a women's rights advocate. She was such good friends with Amelia Earhart. They were inseparable. When Amelia Earhart went missing, she was a huge proponent of the plan when the US sent hundreds of ships around the area where she was last sent the radio, last radio transmission.

• 58:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very good. Okay, thank you very much.

• 58:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  Malcolm Gladwell and Tom, what can you tell us about bread that we don't know?

• 58:30Speaker 06

  Everyone thinks of focaccia as being some valuable part of some ancient Italian cultural culinary heritage. Wrong. It was invented by a guy in Milan in 1975.

• 58:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really? In Italy, though. Milan, is it Milan? Italy or Milan, New Jersey? Milan?

• 58:48Speaker 06

  In Italy, but that's about it.

• 58:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow. Okay, focaccia, not old. Not old. Beautiful. Thank you very much.

• 59:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  And last, but so not least, Anna Gasteyer and Seth, what can you tell us about indoor plumbing?

• 59:07Speaker 07

  We decided to talk about Mario from Super Mario Brothers because he's a plumber. That's all we know about, so go ahead, Seth.

• 59:14Speaker 10

  So Mario, the only reason he was a plumber in the first place was a total accent based on the graphical limitations of the early video games. Shigeru Miyotomi, the guy who created Mario, wanted a way to show form on his body, so he made overalls to show the arms, and he wanted to show his face. So all this distinct hat, all this stuff that makes him a plumber, it was all just because the computers back then kind of sucked.

• 59:35Speaker 07

  So he doesn't really know how to fix your drain.

• 59:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow. Wow. Fantastic. Fantastic. That's just great. Just great.

• 59:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  So that is a wowzer. Those were so good. Okay, so before we have you all vote for the grand prize winner, Jodi Avrigan, do you have anything to tell us on the factual level here?

• 1:00:00Speaker 09

  Factual level? I've been Googling quickly. And actually, before I got the fact about Eleanor Roosevelt, I had stumbled upon a very fascinating Wikipedia section for Eleanor Roosevelt called, quote, "other relationships." And indeed, she had a deep friendship. That's at one end of the spectrum of how we could characterize their relationship. She was deep friends with Amelia Earhart. They wrote letters to each other that included such endearments as, quote, "I want to put my arms around you and kiss you at the corner of your mouth. And I can't kiss you, so I kiss your picture. Good night and good morning."

• 1:00:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Sweet.

• 1:00:37Speaker 09

  Now I know why she disappeared.

• 1:00:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:00:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now we know why you were a one-term governor, bro.

• 1:00:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, Jody, Focaccia and Super Mario, anything on there? We're clear.

• 1:00:59Speaker 09

  I am so thrilled to say, Malcolm Gladwell, I think you just made that up.

• 1:01:08Speaker 09

  In ancient Rome, Poneus Focaccius was a flatbread baked on a harp.

• 1:01:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  I gotta tell you, Jody, all night I've been thinking here, we wasted the money on Jody, because everything's right. You busted Malcolm. Malcolm, what do you have to say for yourself? Experts differ. Experts differ. Wow, wow, wow, I can't believe this is all happening.

• 1:01:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, audience, we're now gonna ask you to pick our grand prize winner. So keep in mind everything we've talked about tonight, something you didn't know, something that's worth knowing, something that's true-ish. And those are the criteria, and we're gonna ask you to vote by clapping, shouting, whistling, whatever you've got, okay? So first of all, let's hear the first vote for Team Patterson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart. What do you got?

• 1:02:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Substantial.

• 1:02:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Very substantial.

• 1:02:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Team Gladwell with his partner, Tom Focaccia. Not so old, or maybe old.

• 1:02:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is true. It is true, by the way. I believe you. I wasn't impressed, but I believe. That's why I wasn't impressed. And finally, let's hear you vote for Team Gasteyer and her partner Seth, who told us about Super Mario. Let's hear it.

• 1:02:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I'd like to say congratulations to Governor Patterson and of course, your teammate Malhar. Great job. Malhar, you are the very first winner of "Tell Me Something I Don't Know." No matter what else happens in the rest of your life, no one can ever take away this victory from you. Now, here's a question. What grand prize could we possibly give that is commensurate with the level of knowledge that you've displayed tonight? Well, Malhar, you remember at the very beginning of the show, the former FBI agent we heard from earlier?

• 1:03:31Speaker 05

  Let me put it this way. The United States, all the colleges and universities in our country, award about 1.3 million degrees a year. Approximately 1% of that, we believe, is the amount of phony degrees that are sold in our country each year.

• 1:03:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right, Malhar. We are buying you your very own counterfeit degree. All right? Any, any degree you'd like, any university, the university of your choice, it'll take us four to six weeks to get it printed to you. Maybe you want Harvard Law. You look like you aren't even out of middle school yet, but you could have Harvard Law by the end of next month, maybe something in animal husbandry. Listen, congratulations to Malhar and all our other contestants. Thank you to our fantastic judges, Malcolm Gladwell, Anna Gasteyer, and David Paterson. Thank you to Jody Avrigan, everyone at WNYC in the green space, especially Susie Lechtenberg

• 1:04:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  and tonight's executive producer, Joel Meyer. And most of all, thanks to you for coming here to tell me, say it with me, "Tell me something I don't know." Thank you so much. Good night.

• 1:05:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, podcast listeners. On the next Freakonomics Radio, imagine there's a zombie invasion coming to your town. What's the first thing you'd do? Well, you'd probably fill up the gas tank and stock up on groceries.

• 1:05:13Speaker 25

  It's absolutely the case that if there were an invasion of zombies, there would be a great deal of economic activity generated.

• 1:05:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's right. The economics of the undead. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Tell Me Something I Don't Know was produced by Joel Meyer with help from Jody Avrigan, Bailey Constance, and Diana Miller. Special thanks to the crew at The Green Space, including Jennifer Sendro, Ricardo Fernandez, Chase Kupon, David McLean, Bill Moss, and Gaines Legere. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalsky, Greta Cohn, Caroline English, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon, with help from Joel Warner. 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.

• 1:06:35Stephen 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.

• 1:07:08Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:07:52Stephen J. Dubner?

  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.

• 1:08:16Speaker 26

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