Stephen Dubner

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Emmy -nominated Monster Mouse.

[3] Hi.

[4] Hi.

[5] How are you?

[6] I'm good.

[7] Are you good?

[8] I'm so grateful to be quarantined with you.

[9] It's fun.

[10] Yeah, we really lucked out.

[11] I feel so bad for the folks that are just straight up by themselves quarantining.

[12] Could have been me. Could have been you.

[13] But boy, oh boy, do I have a long list of gratitude for so many things.

[14] We had...

[15] One of the best conversationalists we've ever had on.

[16] This motherfucker, Stephen Dubner, he can talk about any topic you throw at him.

[17] He'll know a little bit about it.

[18] He will.

[19] And we did talk about every topic.

[20] We really go on a lot of tangents.

[21] And it's fun.

[22] Oh, I love talking to him.

[23] I can't wait to have him back.

[24] So Stephen Dubner, of course, is an award -winning author, journalist, and podcasts and radio hosts.

[25] He is the co -author of one of my favorite books of all -time Freakonomics.

[26] I'm sure many of you have read it as it reached.

[27] millions and millions of people globally.

[28] He also has the very fascinating podcast, Freakonomics Radio, which is a huge, huge hit.

[29] And we are just delighted to shoot the shit with him.

[30] We hope you'll enjoy and we're hoping you're staying safe and well fed and your ass is well wiped.

[31] Please enjoy Stephen Dubner.

[32] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair expert early and ad free right now.

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[34] Or you can listen for free.

[35] wherever you get your podcasts.

[36] I really like, I just like your attitude.

[37] Well, thank you so much.

[38] That's really flattering because, you know, I was a big, big Freakonomics proponent.

[39] I told everyone to read it.

[40] I loved it.

[41] You fall to me in the same category in ways that Malcolm Gladwell does.

[42] In that, I'm very attracted to people who disprove my intuition.

[43] That's like one of my favorite feelings in life is, you know, finding out something's opposite.

[44] of how I feel on a cellular level about something.

[45] Yeah.

[46] It's hard to do though because, well, as you both know, you know, most people just spend all their time in their lane in their silo.

[47] Yeah.

[48] But you obviously, you must too enjoy like going, oh, my God, it's that.

[49] That's the opposite of what I would have thought.

[50] Yeah.

[51] And also the nature of our show is we try to not do something unless it's going to upend conventional wisdom at least a little bit because otherwise, who cares?

[52] Yeah.

[53] There's just so much, you know.

[54] But is that a hard firm?

[55] earnest of fees.

[56] Yes, it is.

[57] Oh, my God.

[58] I can only imagine.

[59] That's the hardest part is coming up with ideas.

[60] I mean, for every one idea that makes it to a show, there are probably eight or ten that I thought about that I decided weren't good.

[61] Of every five that we put out, there's probably really only two or three that I feel like, oh, that was really, really, really.

[62] But when you commit to a weekly schedule.

[63] Yeah.

[64] That's right.

[65] But I think there's upsides to that, too.

[66] For sure, because other times I have to imagine that it goes the other way where you're like, I don't think this thing's really worthy of an episode.

[67] And then it turns out it's fantastic.

[68] Yeah.

[69] That is, I find common is the episodes that I think are going to be like a home run, no brain are great.

[70] They turn out like, eh.

[71] Yes.

[72] And some, like I listened this morning to a rough cut of what we're putting out on Wednesday night.

[73] And it's about socialism, which doesn't sound like a great topic.

[74] Wow.

[75] Sounds like a relevant topic.

[76] But it's like it was really good.

[77] At least the first half.

[78] The second half got a little bit dry.

[79] It's basically four economists talking about what socialism is and isn't.

[80] And then we talk about primarily Bernie.

[81] Sanders, Venezuela, and Norway.

[82] Okay.

[83] And it was so much, like, literally fun to listen to.

[84] And I say this, you know, obviously with a little bit of self -interest in it.

[85] But that one, I was expecting to be like, if I can get through this rough cut, I'll be happy.

[86] Yeah.

[87] So you don't know.

[88] My first question on that would be, is there consensus on what socialism is?

[89] Big fat now.

[90] Right, yeah, right?

[91] It's one of these very, like, obtuse ideas.

[92] As in life, though, generally, like, when you're talking about race or inconstance, or sexual attitudes, whatever, labels turn out to be mostly, I find not helpful.

[93] And then when you have the conversation about why it's not helpful, that's when you get to the good conversation.

[94] Well, yeah.

[95] So much of those debates are really bogged down in semantics and two people using different definitions.

[96] Because I just had a guess on them who I said, well, Bernie Sanders is a socialist.

[97] And she said, no, he's a Democratic socialist.

[98] And I'm like, what the fuck is a Democratic socialist?

[99] I don't really know.

[100] That's a hair splitting.

[101] is what that is.

[102] Yeah.

[103] The greatest irony is that Jeff Sacks, who's an economist, and really interesting guy, and you would love him, he's been doing what he's doing for 40 years or so, and he used to jet around and still does to these countries that are mostly failing on behalf of the U .N. or the U .S., whatever, and help them fix their economies.

[104] And he's done it in Latin America, going back in the 70s, when communism began to fall apart, he would go to places like Poland to try to help them convert from communism to a market economy.

[105] So Jeff Sachs, and now he works a lot for the UN, he defines socialism essentially as, you know, the state or someone like that owning most things.

[106] He's also been Bernie Sanders's foreign policy advisor last time around, and he's still very strongly an endorser.

[107] Okay.

[108] So even he says, no, no, no, no, Bernie's wrong.

[109] When he says he's a democratic socialist, he's just plain wrong because what he wants is not socialism.

[110] It is social democracy with the economy as opposed to socialist.

[111] So whatever.

[112] There's a lot of hair splitting.

[113] But once you split the hairs, you actually learn the stuff.

[114] And that's what I like.

[115] Yeah.

[116] Yeah, for sure.

[117] You also have to like know facts to debate the label.

[118] Because like if you think about it, education in this country is pretty much nationalized, right?

[119] In some ways.

[120] Or, you know, it's a federal system.

[121] States have their systems.

[122] Towns have their systems.

[123] But they get money from the federal government.

[124] And then the federal government's been very involved in college, although in often not so great ways.

[125] But if you look at like health care, you know, Medicare is socialism.

[126] It's from the government, right?

[127] Yeah.

[128] So that's what the debate is about.

[129] As Jeff Sachs, the economists would put it, most right -minded people would agree that the kind of culture and economy and society you want is a mixed economy with a strong social safety net, right?

[130] Yes.

[131] So in that regard, the question is, how much market do you have and how much government?

[132] And what most Democrats would now say is that there's not enough government and too much market.

[133] And what most Republicans would say, it's the opposite way around.

[134] There's too much.

[135] Once you kind of get it on those terms, then you can start to have a discussion about it.

[136] And in the case of, let's say, health care, one big problem that most people don't acknowledge is that the reason that we are different than everybody else in the world is because a weird accident of history where health insurance was attached to our employers, which no other rich country in the world does that.

[137] It was just because of a weird...

[138] A wage freeze?

[139] Exactly.

[140] It was.

[141] Yeah.

[142] Most of those entitlements, retirement, and all that came during World War II.

[143] Yeah, I know the automotive industry had to offer crazy retirement packages and stuff.

[144] Oh, is that right?

[145] Yeah, offset.

[146] You know this from your hockey town.

[147] Precisely.

[148] Yeah, yeah.

[149] If it pertains to the automotive industry, I probably got a handle on it, but all other ones I'm out to lunch on.

[150] Yeah.

[151] So basically, you couldn't increase people's wages after the Second World War, so the government let firms give people health insurance as an ad, on.

[152] But it was also tax advantageous to the companies.

[153] I liked it.

[154] Yeah.

[155] And then it trickled into unions and so on.

[156] So once you've like entangled health insurance with employment, as we're finding out now, it's really hard to disentangle.

[157] Yeah.

[158] Yeah.

[159] Now, okay, you're from New York.

[160] Before we started chatting, you were talking about having some history on a farm as a child where you procured maple syrup, right?

[161] Well, we procured sap and turned it into syrup.

[162] Okay.

[163] Big difference.

[164] Have you seen this?

[165] There's like a heist series on Netflix.

[166] And one of the heists they cover is the great maple syrup heist in Canada.

[167] Do you know about this?

[168] Really?

[169] Super fascinating.

[170] What I didn't know about maple syrup and maybe you already did was that all the suppliers decide they've entered into these rigid agreements where they're going to produce X amount.

[171] And what they end up having to do is stockpiling in good years so that the price remains stable.

[172] And do they ever dump it when the prices get too low?

[173] They don't.

[174] They don't.

[175] And so, you know, before long, some of these warehouses do have, I think the one in this episode had like $40 or $50 million worth of maple syrup sitting in barrels that they just are storing.

[176] And these knuckleheads stole it, which I thought was great.

[177] Yeah.

[178] Yeah.

[179] How do you steal that volume?

[180] Well, that's the great thing is they left the barrels in place.

[181] You'd bring a bunch of pancakes.

[182] Well, I think they chose like a large tanker option as opposed to the pancake option.

[183] Wait, this was successful?

[184] This was successful?

[185] Yeah.

[186] Yeah, they got it all out.

[187] And it wasn't for a while until someone tapped into one of those barrels and was like, oh, this isn't maple syrup in here.

[188] What decade is this?

[189] Oh, geez.

[190] You're really putting me to the test now.

[191] I watched it while working out a year and a half ago.

[192] But I got to say, it was in the 2000s for sure.

[193] Wow ,zer.

[194] Yeah.

[195] I should have stayed in the maple syrup business, mainly.

[196] You should have.

[197] Got out too early.

[198] Well, that neck of the woods, right?

[199] There's a historic relationship between Canada and U .S. and smuggling.

[200] There was a lot of cigarette smuggling.

[201] There was a lot of alcohol smuggling, right?

[202] Right.

[203] The seagrams.

[204] fortune, I think, was built on Prohibition era smuggling.

[205] Uh -huh.

[206] I believe the Bronfman family, although I've just slandered them.

[207] You'll let us know later.

[208] Well, no, you'll let us know when you get the letter from the lawyer.

[209] I don't want to jump ahead to that, but you have been sued.

[210] Is that not accurate?

[211] I don't know.

[212] Oh, maybe you weren't sued.

[213] My co -author, Steve Levitt, was sued.

[214] Yes, for defamation.

[215] Yeah, yeah.

[216] Well, you know, I guess I'd take it back.

[217] I guess I probably was sued.

[218] I love that you don't know.

[219] But I want to save that juicy tidbit.

[220] No, it's okay.

[221] I think I just squose the juice out of it.

[222] I don't know if I know any juice.

[223] Is that not a word?

[224] Look, language is evolving.

[225] It is.

[226] Well, constantly, if you play Scrabble, you find that out.

[227] Are you a Scrabbler?

[228] I love Scrabble.

[229] He's really good at it.

[230] Everyone hates me. You have all the two -letter crazy ones.

[231] We got in a big fight once because I was rooting for our other friend to win, and he really took it.

[232] Yeah.

[233] That is, I find that there are a lot of games that you can play where there's a lot of games that you can play like a letter of the law and a spirit of the law and you can violate one without the other and it's fine if you want to be that way no offense that's that's fine but they're you're going to exclude a certain cohort of the population from wanting to ever play with you well the big complaint is like oh you memorize all those two letter words it's like yeah motherfucker is that like i'm the only one allowed to memorize the two letter words you know they're they're for everyone but it's like you're saying that's like saying oh you only hit home runs what no well no no yeah to a baseball player like oh you're a bad well that also means that if that's what you do, you most likely juice then too.

[234] So you're just doing your form of juicing.

[235] Although it's like borderline legal.

[236] No, it's not about that.

[237] It's about what kind of Scrabble player you are telling the world you want to be.

[238] Yeah.

[239] And it's you saying I'm a competitive one and I want to win, which is totally fine.

[240] I'm just saying other people that play with you who are like, oh, Scrabble, letters, words, put them together.

[241] They don't want to get near you.

[242] Well, a lot of people are very intoxicated by the notion of making longer and longer words.

[243] But that's not how you win.

[244] Scrabble is a math game.

[245] It is not a word game.

[246] Are you a highly defensive player, I assume?

[247] I'm not, in fact.

[248] You know, that's another game we play regularly where I believe that all games are all about offense.

[249] Like if you even scrabble then.

[250] Yes, if you have a thrilling offense, you don't ever need to look over your shoulder.

[251] No, but, okay, you're talking about Catan.

[252] Catan, yeah.

[253] Do you ever play Catan?

[254] I know what it is, but I've never played now.

[255] So we play all the time.

[256] And you are in a roundabout way very defensive because, yeah, you're playing off.

[257] offensively, but if anyone else plays defensively, then you turn.

[258] I verbally attack them, yeah.

[259] And then you become insanely defensive.

[260] Reactive.

[261] Reactive, defensive.

[262] It's very...

[263] You sound insufferable.

[264] I would say I know.

[265] Because my impression from listening to you, interview people, is like, nice guys, so curious, so optimistic, turns out your total, uh...

[266] I think all things are true.

[267] So while I'm being a fucking tyrant playing this game, I am asking you a lot of questions.

[268] It's true.

[269] Truly interested in you.

[270] Fair enough.

[271] Okay.

[272] Okay, so up to New York.

[273] You grew up in kind of a farm region, I would guess?

[274] Upstate New York.

[275] A little farmy.

[276] It was actually a place that had just hit its economic peak.

[277] It had started to decline maybe two or three decades before we went there.

[278] Okay.

[279] It's now got some components that look a lot like Appalachia, like very, very depressed.

[280] I grew up in the just middle of nowhere outside of Schenectady, which had been General Electric headquarters for many years.

[281] So there were really good paying jobs that people would go to.

[282] And before that, it was the area and not far from where the Erie Canal had come in, like a century earlier.

[283] And that was economically this amazing engine.

[284] And then that started to fade when the railroad came.

[285] Then the industrial decline began.

[286] So by the time my family was there, it was just kind of very hard scrabble, everybody making their way.

[287] And I grew up in this big Catholic family, although I was Jewish.

[288] Very interesting.

[289] Jewish before, Jewish after.

[290] But then a big Catholic, very low -income family farming, subsistence farming.

[291] My dad always worked, but didn't make it.

[292] much money, so we grew a lot of our own food.

[293] Okay, so yeah, you're one of eight children.

[294] You're the youngest of eight, correct?

[295] And Monica, his dad converted from Judaism to Catholicism before he was born.

[296] Okay.

[297] Is that accurate?

[298] Both my parents.

[299] Yeah, so short story is, both my parents were kind of standard issue, Brooklyn Jews that you would read about in like a tree grows in Brooklyn era, the most common, you know, image that people have.

[300] You know, they were both born a long time ago now.

[301] Both of them before they met each other, during World War II, both converted from Judaism to Catholicism, which was very rare, very traumatic for their families.

[302] They did it for two totally different reasons, really.

[303] My mother's family was not very religious Jewish.

[304] They had emigrated.

[305] She was born here.

[306] She was a ballerina.

[307] My mom was pretty good, pretty serious.

[308] And her mentor, her ballet mistress, was herself a Russian convert from orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism.

[309] Wow.

[310] And my mother thought that that was just, like, amazing and dramatic.

[311] And so she came to be a...

[312] a true faith believer and converted.

[313] My father was during the Second World War.

[314] He was stationed overseas.

[315] One of the few Jewish guys where he was.

[316] Obviously, there was a lot going on with Jews during the Second World War in Europe.

[317] Oh, there was?

[318] Yeah, you know, block party.

[319] So I don't know how much my dad knew because there wasn't a lot of information.

[320] But both of his parents' families were still mostly in Poland.

[321] They were all wiped out.

[322] I don't know how much he knew, how much that affected him.

[323] My dad died when I was little.

[324] Yeah, you know, you were, you were 10?

[325] Yeah, yeah.

[326] So there were a lot of things that, you know, I could never know how much he knew about these things.

[327] But anyway, my mom was like this very, very strong spirit, capable of learning and doing just about anything very, very tough and so on.

[328] My dad was a very, very good guy, lovely guy who tended toward what we would now just call depression.

[329] Then they called it melancholy.

[330] So when he was overseas during the Second World War, you know, you can imagine how.

[331] traumatic that is for anyone, how scary, et cetera.

[332] And he was kind of searching for something spiritually.

[333] He came from an Orthodox family.

[334] His father still practiced Judaism as if he were back in Poland.

[335] So my father went through a lot.

[336] He was a little bit of an intellectual, did a lot of reading, a lot of conversing with army chaplains who not surprisingly were not Jewish chaplains during the Second World War in the middle of the South Pacific.

[337] And he ended up converting over the course of a few years to Catholicism as well.

[338] And then my parents met together.

[339] Oh, wow.

[340] Okay, so I would have absolutely assumed they did it together.

[341] Yeah, they were like two needles in a haystack bumping into each other.

[342] Yeah, they were made for one another.

[343] Yeah, it was remarkable.

[344] And it was great.

[345] And they fell deeply in love so much so that they could kind of face the future without their families, because their families pretty much cut them off when this happened.

[346] And then they started having kids and more kids, and they were Catholic.

[347] And so thank God for me, because I'm the eighth.

[348] So like, if my parents hadn't converted, you know, I'm not around to tell my story.

[349] I have to say I have many, many Jewish friends and acquaintances, and I don't know any of them that are from a family like that.

[350] Now that you're saying it, I don't even think I would have put that together, but yeah, you don't hear many Jewish families having eight children.

[351] Yeah, like none.

[352] So we were very Catholic growing up and I was an altar boy in the whole, the whole stick.

[353] My brother, you could say were loosely Christian, in theory, our grandparents were right.

[354] Is that the denomination, loosely Christian?

[355] Well, you know, one grandparents were Catholic, the other were Southern Baptist.

[356] We went to both churches as kids.

[357] My mom didn't really care if we went to church.

[358] We were largely secular household.

[359] With all that said, my brother and his wife, who's Catholic, converted to Judaism.

[360] No way.

[361] Why?

[362] Great questions.

[363] So my brother, inexplicably, always had an affinity for Judaism.

[364] My father dated a lot of Jewish women.

[365] It was around a lot.

[366] He always wore a star David from when he was younger.

[367] His name is David.

[368] Well, there's a...

[369] So you know.

[370] So you think it was just advertising.

[371] Yeah, maybe he was just fulfilling his name.

[372] The neighborhood they lived in was largely Jewish.

[373] The kids started going to JCC for preschool and stuff, and then they did it.

[374] No kidding.

[375] Yeah.

[376] Yeah, that's not a common story either.

[377] I agree.

[378] We're both sitting in this room.

[379] Wow, that's wild.

[380] That's wild.

[381] Yeah.

[382] I mean, I've always found any kind of spiritual kind of biography really interesting because, you know, the work that I do would seem to have nothing in common with it.

[383] But I find that there's a lot of parallels because what you're trying to do is understand behavior, essentially, right, whether it's having to do with economics or what people buy and sell.

[384] But, you know, the choices that people make, there are these internal stories that ultimately affect your behavior.

[385] And to try to understand cause and effect there, that's really hard.

[386] When I wrote this book about my family years and years ago was my first book, I wasn't wanting to write a memoir.

[387] I wasn't Jewish.

[388] At the time, I was just kind of a standard lapsed Catholic.

[389] My thing actually began with literally interviewing my mother for the purpose of making an oral history to give as a present to my brothers and sisters as a Christmas present this year because I had no money and you know you always try to give your siblings and that's how it began it wasn't about writing about me it wasn't me becoming Jewish it was trying to understand why they did what they did because my mom was still alive she could explain her story but my dad because he wasn't I had to go digging so it became like a 10 year thing and can I ask how much could you trust your mom's version of your dad's story very interesting question I mean to me that's like the crux of interpersonal relationships, right, is how much can you trust?

[390] And when I say trust, you know, even when you said trust, like, it's not about that people are necessarily intentionally deceptive at all.

[391] We've all got selective memories.

[392] And even when we - We all have confirmation by - Exactly.

[393] Probably these problems have the highest stakes is in, like, jury trials, right?

[394] Because it's been shown that, like, people's memories are pre -oficious.

[395] Every new bit of information coming out of the whole world of jurors, it gets more and more bleak.

[396] And then eyewitness accounts in memory, it gets more and more depressing.

[397] Well, the good news is technology is getting better, though.

[398] I mean, look, look at the parallel.

[399] Like, radiology is that reading imagery, right?

[400] Yeah.

[401] Like, we've been okay at it historically, like reading mammograms and reading other things.

[402] Humans have been okay at it, but a ton of false positives and too many false negatives.

[403] Computers are better already drastically.

[404] And so I think that actually, you know, every realm is different.

[405] But even in law and order, it's going to be where even now, you see, people are convicted much more on digital forensic evidence than they were before.

[406] I think that's a great thing.

[407] Yeah.

[408] But really quick, you have seven siblings.

[409] So what I would have to assume, my brother and I have these, I mean, we're talking traumatic events of childhood.

[410] And we have the location in different places.

[411] And when I see how dramatic the differences between he and I's memory of this thing that you would think would be the most memorable thing.

[412] Right.

[413] And then I go, well, fuck, I don't know whether believe him or me. And probably neither of us are absolutely correct.

[414] So the more it's exposed in your own life, you start really recognizing.

[415] recognizing the frailty of it all.

[416] Yeah.

[417] What you just said reminds me of, this is going to sound totally non -sequitur, non -sequitorial.

[418] You'll have to affect that.

[419] I don't think that.

[420] I don't think that's a way.

[421] We're going to use it anywhere.

[422] It's yours.

[423] It's yours.

[424] It reminds me a little bit of like why art is important because art, let's say a play, let's say a movie, let's say a painting, whatever.

[425] You're not trying to do journalism.

[426] You're trying to kind of capture the truest form of the emotion.

[427] And in that case, facts are important.

[428] but what the facts are is a little bit secondary to what the actual lived experience of a person is.

[429] And so to me, that's why any realm you get into where you're doing storytelling that is true to the essence of something is really important because, look, you could write your own story.

[430] You could write your own, each of us could write our own life story from birth till now and we'd get 30 % of the stuff wrong.

[431] Exactly.

[432] But you're going to get the emotions right.

[433] So with my family, my mother was not very interested even in discussing my dad's reasons for conversion because to her they were ancient history.

[434] Like he was, yeah, he'd been Jewish like I'd been Jewish.

[435] But then we fell in love with Christ and we became Catholics and we raised the family and set our path forward and set your kids' path forward.

[436] That's what matters.

[437] And so she wasn't nasty in any way.

[438] It wasn't like it was a taboo subject.

[439] She just had no interest.

[440] So then I began to seek out my father's family who I did not know.

[441] literally had not met my father's relatives because he had been cut off for having converted.

[442] So that was how it became a kind of reporting journey that took so long that by the time it was done, I was on my way to becoming kind of Jewish -ish.

[443] Okay, so is there a couple items that hold you there?

[444] Can I just say from the outside, I have friends of every kind of...

[445] But the Jews are the best, you're going to say.

[446] I am.

[447] I am.

[448] I agree.

[449] I think, like, as my brother converted and I was exposed to, like, baby -naming tradition and these different things.

[450] I'm like, oh, I'm an atheist, but boy, these traditions, I see the value of them.

[451] I can actually see what the intention is.

[452] And generally, I am really in favor of all the intentions of most of those traditions.

[453] Yeah.

[454] There are many things from food, smells music.

[455] So, you know, I used to play a lot of music.

[456] And like, I would hear these Jewish melodies for the first time.

[457] And I was like, whoa, whoa, I know that one.

[458] Like literally.

[459] So a lot of things like that.

[460] But then to me, the biggest best thing was the Jewish history of being willing and, in fact, it being required to come up with new ideas and new solutions.

[461] And that's not necessarily a characteristic of every people that's been in a minority or it's been persecuted, but it really helps.

[462] In other words, if you're a group of people and you're living in one place, then suddenly the czar, the king says, no, no, no, no, get out.

[463] You've got to go to this place.

[464] And the place where you were living, there was a river.

[465] And you could have a tan, industry, right?

[466] Do you need, or maybe there was a hemlock force, whatever you need to tan leather, right?

[467] And now you've got to move to this new place that's mountains and totally different.

[468] Now you've got to move to this city that's totally different.

[469] There's something about the ability to have ideas that was part of the Jewish tradition for many, many years.

[470] Well, there's the rabbinical approach.

[471] There is, there's a line in the, maybe the most famous line in the Talmud, turn it, turn it and turn it for everything is in it.

[472] In other words, if you look at a thing from a given.

[473] So like, okay, here's what some people would say encapsulates the way of Jewish thinking.

[474] You could say there are five Jews who kind of defined ways of thinking about the world, right?

[475] Moses said, the law is everything.

[476] Jesus, who yes, was Jewish, said love is everything.

[477] Marx said money is everything.

[478] Freud said sex is everything.

[479] And Einstein said, everything is relative.

[480] That's great.

[481] So, like, that's a useful way of being an unconventional thinker, partly because you have to and partly because it's a way of advancing the world.

[482] You know, to me, the most kind of valuable component of Jewish thinking is what's called Tikun Olam, which is to heal the world.

[483] But, I mean, we all have this.

[484] It has nothing new with being Jewish.

[485] It's like the idea that we should all try to leave our corner of the world in slightly better shape than when we came in.

[486] And so for all that we all complain all the time about our political stuff and our economics, stuff.

[487] The fact is, the world has been getting better all along.

[488] And the fact that we actually harp on the bad stuff, I actually find that is actually good, too, because it means we don't accept, you know, progress to date.

[489] Yeah, yeah.

[490] In the Stephen Pinker timeline of fulfilling the dreams of the Enlightenment, we've made great, great progress and continue to write on it.

[491] So do you think it's a mistake, though, to dwell, to accentuate the negative, as we seem to do now?

[492] So I feel like I've been forced to take the position just because most of my peers are in that this is the worst it's ever been thing.

[493] And so, in fact, I get resentful.

[494] Like, I'll give you an example.

[495] The election night happened.

[496] That's not who I voted for.

[497] I was about to kind of lament the experience.

[498] And then I noticed my wife was crying and Monica was very upset and another couple friends were crying.

[499] And I just was like, oh, well, there's no. room for me to cry here.

[500] I have to put a positive spin on this.

[501] Like, it's my job in this little group to go like, well, look, we got a lot of apparatus in the system that will prevent one person.

[502] You know, I just launched into the that.

[503] So you actually did this after the election.

[504] You were basically, you were caring for people in that way.

[505] I think, I was attempting to say it was delusional.

[506] Well, I was trying to find the positives that would lift up this.

[507] How'd that work out?

[508] You know, sometimes good and sometimes bad.

[509] Funny to say that, though, because I had an incident very similar to that in that, I think I was in California on Election Day.

[510] I remember that Trump went to the White House and sat down with Obama.

[511] And they talked for much longer than they were expected to.

[512] Yeah.

[513] And then I heard this fact.

[514] I was sure it was not true.

[515] They said it was the first time they'd ever met face to face.

[516] And I said, wait a minute.

[517] That's the problem.

[518] You can't have a sitting president feeling that this guy who's running on the other side, granted, is a total idiot.

[519] which he implied, though not said.

[520] And you can't have the guy running as a Republican saying that the sitting president is all the names that Trump had called Obama.

[521] The only way you can have that, I thought, is if people don't know each other.

[522] And then when you get in the same room and you sit, you say, oh, man, you know, you're a guy, I'm a guy, you're a human.

[523] We have kids.

[524] And then it went so long.

[525] And I was thinking, this is a great sign for humanity.

[526] And I was telling my family.

[527] Yes, yes, yes.

[528] Yeah, they didn't buy it.

[529] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[530] We've all been there.

[531] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[532] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[533] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[534] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[535] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[536] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[537] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[538] Prime members can listen early and and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[539] What's up, guys?

[540] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[541] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[542] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[543] And I don't mean just friends.

[544] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[545] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[546] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[547] There can be a downside and always trying to middle ground is circling back to what we were talking about originally, which is you felt the need to sort of not take a side to sort of middle ground to make everyone else feel comfortable, but that can backfire.

[548] It can.

[549] And so your original question, so I do think I provide the role in my social group where I'm pointing out the long -term graph of overall starvation.

[550] overall disease rate overall wealth overall you know all these things have been obviously as you pointed out trending straight up yeah and continue to and i think so so it's weird because i'll often be like guys it's sure there are problems to fix but it is arrogant to say this is the worst thing anyone's ever dealt with that part feels a little bit arrogant and self -important and but in doing that some people interpret that as me saying you shouldn't be fighting to protect the kids in cages which is not what i'm saying but i'm just saying you can be active and engaged and without catastrophizing the life.

[551] I agree 100%.

[552] I think the one component of this that does cause problems is when you inherently demonize everything on the other side.

[553] And I started to think about this because look, I've been roughly Democratic my whole life.

[554] I grew up in a family that were kind of classic blue -collar Catholic Democrats, although my mother ended up switching because she was a right -to -life activist.

[555] Sure, sure.

[556] So she kind of reluctantly became a Republican, But then, look, the duopoly that is American politics, they're basically Coke and Pepsi and they're fighting over customers.

[557] And so they basically have figured out how to each get roughly half the customers, and then they kind of fiddle around the margins a little bit.

[558] But what I find most distasteful, we're all forced to kind of choose a tribe.

[559] And if you choose a tribe, because there's one key platform that you agree with, then you have to accept everything else that goes along with it, that's just not sensible.

[560] That's like not the way the word.

[561] world works.

[562] So what I remember when I was the first time I voted, I think I voted, maybe I was maybe I didn't, I wasn't old enough to vote, but I was around it was Jimmy Carter against Reagan.

[563] I was in college and everybody I knew voted for Jimmy Carter because I was around a bunch of other people who were kind of like me. Yeah.

[564] Because I knew everybody I knew was voting for Jimmy Carter.

[565] I thought, well, that's locked up.

[566] And then Reagan when it's like, whoa, maybe I need to get out a little bit more.

[567] Right.

[568] And then I watched as Reagan was vilified mostly by most Democrats as all different kinds of things.

[569] And then, you know, we go through all the rest, we go through forward, whatever, we go through the progression of presence.

[570] And then I realize that if you hang around with a lot of Democratic people, every Republican is considered the devil.

[571] Now, if you hang around with a bunch of Republicans, which I also do, because I have a lot of people from different circles, they think that Obama was the devil.

[572] Yeah, sure.

[573] I think that is the biggest kind of obvious problem is when you demonize, A, the person, and B, every policy at attached to the person.

[574] What are the odds that really, if you're a hardcore conservative Republican, what are the odds that everything Obama thinks and says and does is a bad idea?

[575] Come on.

[576] Right.

[577] Yes.

[578] Trump, I would make the same argument.

[579] I think it's a little bit of a harder argument to make because of his style.

[580] Obama went out of his way to be courtly considered, et cetera.

[581] Right.

[582] Trump doesn't.

[583] It's not a criticism.

[584] But again, if you're a Trump fan, you're like, that's a really effective tool as has proven to be.

[585] So, you know, I agree with you.

[586] I think the thing that both sides have a problem with is the in -group, out -group, they're the devil.

[587] I mean, I get it.

[588] I get it.

[589] I mean, there's a spectrum of psychological and emotional experience everybody has and everybody you're observing has that spectrum, too.

[590] But I feel like we should be a little bit more astute.

[591] Like, we should be a little bit more psychologically and emotionally and sociologically astute when we talk about things like politics.

[592] Sometimes I just think the best way, or I shouldn't say the best way.

[593] The only way I can deal with it is to do what I do with Freakonomics, which is, you know, take a step back and say, we're not going to engage that core emotional political argument.

[594] Instead, we're going to go much more micro because the minute you get big, it gets vague.

[595] Everybody's waving their arms around, shouting, da -da.

[596] So I'd rather just try to focus on one small thing that you can actually get to the bottom of.

[597] And then if people are willing or interested in absorbing that, and then from their own perspective extrapolating out?

[598] Great.

[599] I mean, that's why education is important.

[600] It's not to accumulate facts.

[601] It's to learn how to assess what's important and why and what causes things.

[602] So, okay, so you leave this small town.

[603] You went to Appalachian.

[604] Appalachian State University in North Carolina.

[605] But then you ended up going and getting a master's from Columbia for writing.

[606] I did.

[607] And then you taught there.

[608] And then you eventually started writing for different publications, one of them being the New York Times Magazine, yes?

[609] Yeah, yeah.

[610] I actually worked there as an editor and wrote whatever I could, yeah.

[611] Okay, and then you were dispatched, is this correct, to interview Stephen Lovett?

[612] Yeah, sort of.

[613] Yep.

[614] And you didn't want to do it, is this correct?

[615] Because you were working out a book.

[616] I'd written a couple books, including this family memoir, and then I was working on this book about the psychology of money, like how money is a force, not a force quite, but money is one of those things like sex and religion that people do a lot of things about and for many of which are irrational right and look money was a great invention which we tend to overlook like before you had money you had like i'll give you a pile of wool if you will come gild my what do you gild i don't know some animals uh so um so yeah money was great so i was writing the book on money when my editor at the new york times magazine said there's this guy steve levitt economist university of chicago who was fairly well known maybe notorious for this paper linking legalized abortion in the U .S. to a fallen crime, a generation later.

[617] Right.

[618] So that had made a lot of headlines and so on.

[619] And so he asked me to write a piece about him, and I foolishly said, you know, I'm into this book already.

[620] I'm just going to keep my head down.

[621] And Leavitt, even though he's an economist, he doesn't really deal with money or the psychology of money.

[622] But I was going to be in Chicago anyway for different reporting.

[623] So I said, let me read a bunch of Leavitt's papers, and then I did, beyond the abortion, and there were papers on collusion among sumo wrestlers and real estate agents and whether they actually optimize for U .S. I think about that one all the time.

[624] Yeah.

[625] It's a fairly obvious conclusion, unfortunately.

[626] Yeah, and I've had to tell a few people selling their houses.

[627] Basically, I'm just quoting your book.

[628] Now, the assumption is, okay, your real estate agent is a profit participant in the sale, so they would want to naturally get the sale up as high as possible.

[629] But in fact, they're better off playing a quantity game, selling houses.

[630] very quickly and selling more houses.

[631] Is that, in a nutshell?

[632] Yeah, totally.

[633] Because, I mean, if you think about any commission thing, like, if you're getting 20 % of something and you can get it from $1 million to $2 million, wow, then it's worth your while, if you're getting like one and a half percent of something and you can get it from $1 million to $1 .2 million, you factor in all the time it would take you to get the incremental bonus and you say, oh, maybe not that that's a count.

[634] Look, I think there are many real estate agents who work really, really hard in their client's best interest, but the data show that if you're selling a house, then your agent is most likely going to encourage you to sell it something below what you could get because it's in their interest to do so.

[635] Isn't that fascinating?

[636] Yeah, that counterintuitive.

[637] And by the way, I just want to say if I can make one complaint, Monica hates this.

[638] I only criticize the left because I feel like that's my in -group.

[639] You know, what our side isn't great at doing is studying incentive.

[640] What do you mean by that?

[641] Give me a little more.

[642] I think generally the solutions we put forth, rely on the shoulders of some moral imperative.

[643] Do the right thing.

[644] Yes.

[645] And I don't think that's a great incentivizer for many of the problems we have.

[646] That's a good argument.

[647] I agree.

[648] But I'm not so sure it'd be so different from the right, would it?

[649] Well, no. I think in general, at least the right does believe that the market forces will have to be the solution.

[650] That you're not going to get this country to adopt some technology that is inconvenient, expensive, and blah, like they seem to be a little more realistic about that.

[651] Yeah.

[652] I guess that gets to things like you have a plan.

[653] plastic bag ban here in California, don't you?

[654] We had one another bag.

[655] Have you noticed at the grocery store?

[656] Yeah, for about five years, there was no plastic bags.

[657] And now I'm seeing them again.

[658] So I don't know what happened.

[659] New York City started one, like, within the last few days, actually.

[660] And it's an interesting issue because you have to ask, like, how useful is it?

[661] How effective is it?

[662] What are going to be the unintended consequences?

[663] But to me, the biggest one, and this has to do with all behavior and all incentives, does it create what people would call moral licensing?

[664] In other words, I feel really good about the fact that I'm not using plastic bags anymore.

[665] Therefore, I'm not going to sweat so much about anything else that may be happening.

[666] And that, to me, is the worst problem you get with a bad understanding of incentives is you have to figure out, like, what are the gains that you actually got?

[667] What are the costs that you're actually paying?

[668] And what are you trying to accomplish?

[669] Because there's a lot of hand -waving and lip service that makes people feel like, I just solve global warming by not using a straw today.

[670] Right.

[671] And they're generally not looking four and five steps beyond that first thing.

[672] So everybody should play chess as a child is the answer.

[673] Yes.

[674] It's like there's not nearly enough downriver thinking.

[675] But you don't think if you feel good after not getting the plastic bag that the next time you're about to go for something plastic, you're like, maybe I'll go for something out.

[676] Like that doesn't have a residual effect.

[677] So unfortunately, the evidence shows exactly the opposite.

[678] Really?

[679] That's what they mean by moral licensing.

[680] I've given myself a moral license to now, like, I've done some good, now I can do what I actually want to do.

[681] I feel like I punched the ticket there.

[682] And now I can do what I actually want to do, which is consume that thing without any guilt about it.

[683] There's also the fact that, like, plastic is actually a really interesting product that we don't think about that much.

[684] First of all, it is a byproduct of petroleum refinement.

[685] So it was like, it was kind of taking what would have otherwise often been just like, ditched and turning into something that's sometimes useful.

[686] It's often useful.

[687] But I remember reading a study years ago that really changed my thinking, which is that plastic wrapping on, let's say, fruits and vegetables, like let's say the saran wrap type, not a big hard clamshell, the saran wrap type, which is a very small amount of plastic, that actually keeps a ton of food out of landfills and from being wasted only because it preserves longer.

[688] So like, you know, you've heard the statistic probably that we throw away something like 40 % of all food that we buy in America.

[689] It's unbelievable.

[690] I mean, think about it.

[691] Half a century ago, the biggest concern was we wouldn't have enough food to feed the world.

[692] Now, can't throw it away fast enough.

[693] I mean, we're a rich country, but still, it's unbelievable.

[694] But you know what?

[695] Can I tell you that that doesn't bother me?

[696] That we throw away the food?

[697] No, I'll tell you why.

[698] Because ultimately, we do have to employ 300 million people.

[699] And if you want to talk about a product that is best to throw away, it would be food.

[700] If you go in order, things we want people throwing away.

[701] That's probably number one.

[702] Right, as opposed to...

[703] As opposed to plastic being one.

[704] That doesn't biodegrade in three years.

[705] How do you know about clothing?

[706] I think clothing is like the next kind of waste conversation to be bad.

[707] My wife's already having it.

[708] A lot of people are and like going minimal with your wardrobe.

[709] And rental, rental clothes.

[710] Exactly.

[711] I guess just some, again, on the left, would I hear some of these things proposed?

[712] I go, well, you know, we do have to keep 300 million.

[713] people busy.

[714] So we've got to start there.

[715] That has to be the ultimate imperative right there.

[716] It's like, we got to keep their inner mail.

[717] So what are we going to have them do?

[718] And what is the most damaging for the earth?

[719] And what, you know, it's the society that everyone washes each other's pants.

[720] We're getting there.

[721] And so what is the least destructive version of washing each other's pants?

[722] And I happen to think food waste is a pretty good one.

[723] Right.

[724] Unless you do the whole calculation, say, how much energy was put into growing all that food that we're not using?

[725] Well, right.

[726] There's also, I'm curious, like, If it's indeed true that, like, the big concern is how do we keep 300 million people busy?

[727] Because, I mean, that's the big, you know, did you follow the Andrew Yang campaign a little bit?

[728] Sure, sure.

[729] And we've had a couple of debates on basic.

[730] So that's a really interesting debate.

[731] And truth be told, it's hard to, nobody has an answer yet.

[732] Although there's a lot of interesting facts and interesting conversation on both sides of it.

[733] But, like, it's not demonstrably obvious to me that everybody will need to be employed 20, 50 years.

[734] I think about dogs.

[735] dogs, you go back centuries, millennia ago, dogs were work animals.

[736] The only dogs that were like pleasure animals or companions lived like with the king.

[737] Sure, sure.

[738] All other dogs were working dogs.

[739] And then there was this little dog called the turn spit dog that would be in like a hamster wheel running, running to turn to turn a spit to roast a big piece of beef in an open fire.

[740] That was the dog's job.

[741] And they bred that dog to do that.

[742] So it had like this trunk and these little legs and all it did was do this, right?

[743] And then we came up with like a machine to turn and then an oven, right?

[744] So dogs went from being these work animals.

[745] Then they were kind of in limbo for a while.

[746] And now we treat our dogs way better than we treat the lowest among us human -wise, way better.

[747] Oh, if an adult male treated my home the way our three dogs do, I'd beat the fuck out of them in the foyer.

[748] I mean, if the guy came in and shit in the middle of my carpet and I could no longer have carpet in my house.

[749] Yeah, there'd be problems.

[750] Okay, so maybe dog trainers.

[751] Can you have some baggage?

[752] We'll still need 20 years from now.

[753] A couple of these you couldn't train.

[754] They are mentally dead.

[755] What kind of dogs?

[756] Oh, my wife.

[757] Are these rescue dogs?

[758] Yes, the more broken, the more appealing.

[759] Yeah.

[760] God bless her.

[761] But like dogs, you could say we have, I think, more dogs now than ever.

[762] We spend more money taking care of her dogs than ever by a long, long shot.

[763] I'm not so sure that humans won't become like the robot's dogs.

[764] Like, we'll basically be really awesome.

[765] Pets will have a great time.

[766] I think that's...

[767] I think we would all agree that if you can set the entire system up and then pull the switch on the wall where we go from 100 % employment to zero, that's golden.

[768] It's the 35 % of employment transition that is nearly impossible, right?

[769] Yeah, but no system in history has changed that dramatically and drastically.

[770] I mean, communism exploding was really interesting.

[771] Like, a lot of people thought that is going to fundamentally change.

[772] I mean, it did fundamentally change a lot of things.

[773] but you would think about, well, everybody that's communist is now going to become capitalist.

[774] They're all going to be market economies.

[775] And that's going to really change all the market economies for better or worse.

[776] People didn't really know.

[777] But look, 30, 40 years down the road, China is kind of a weird mix, very capitalist but very communist.

[778] Russia kind of its own story still, even though it did embrace a lot of market reforms and a lot of market stuff, it's now gone back to what Americans at least consider some kind of oligopoly with.

[779] no kind of transparency and so on.

[780] So it's history like man plans God laughs.

[781] You know, we think we can predict how this employment Armageddon will or won't unfold and we can't.

[782] To me, can I just say my one?

[783] So I was into it.

[784] Like I read Homo Deus and I'm like, yeah, that's where we're heading.

[785] AI is going to, you know, render 80 % of the jobs useless.

[786] Yeah.

[787] And I was all on board.

[788] But then as I learned that we've made this same prediction 11 times throughout history, and we've always managed to find something for us to do.

[789] It just feels defeatist.

[790] It feels very defeatist to me that we don't think we'll be able to figure out what to do with our time that's productive or useful to each other.

[791] I agree.

[792] Yeah.

[793] So we solved that.

[794] Just don't worry about it.

[795] The other thing is that whatever system we have, whatever you want to call it, democratic capitalism, it's flexible, it's nimble, it's fast.

[796] And that's partly why people hate it.

[797] It's volatile, you know, an industry will come up, and all of a sudden, all the people people flow out, like the best and brightest are no longer going into medicine.

[798] They're going into finance and technology.

[799] That's in some ways a terrible thing because you want the best and brightest, let's say, to be in medicine, but it's also great at creating wealth, prosperity, blah, blah, blah, without sounding like a random.

[800] But even in the short term, in our last 10 -year window, the headline getter was like borders and Barnes & Noble's going out, right?

[801] These brick -and -mortar businesses that sold products were vanishing from all these plazas and whatnot.

[802] And as I look around the city, I drive around.

[803] And I'm like, well, they're all occupied, this is all service -related.

[804] Yeah.

[805] And no one cares.

[806] It's great.

[807] They're still occupied.

[808] That wasn't kind of foreseen.

[809] There's just all these services we never thought we would use that we do.

[810] Mostly massage parlor's egg.

[811] Thank God.

[812] Those aren't going anywhere.

[813] You can get a real affordable massage here in L .A. Okay.

[814] So when you interviewed Stephen.

[815] Levin.

[816] Yeah.

[817] When you interviewed him, you kind of fell in love with him and your two -hour interview turned into like a three -day party with him.

[818] Yeah.

[819] I mean, he says that it was meant to be two hours.

[820] Okay.

[821] And that I kept cheating and lying and extending it.

[822] But I was hoping it'd be longer.

[823] But yeah, he was just, he was so creative and smart and good at what he did in a way that I aspired to be smart and creative and good at what I did as a journalist.

[824] And so it was intoxicating just to talk to him really because he has a way of thinking.

[825] You know, a lot of economists, they see the world in a very particular way.

[826] They don't seem to share a lot of.

[827] common traits with the average human in that they don't have the emotional component correct yeah yeah yeah yeah i dig that exactly in measure yeah in moderation and in maybe in concert with other people who do yeah have you watched the bill gates four -part document on netflix it's really good please watch it right because again i look at that person and i go man there are a handful of problems and they're the big ones right where you need a mercenary yeah you need someone that has built something that understands the incentives, that understands the financials, that understands the scale of production, you need someone that almost has no heartstrings to tackle energy, to tackle sanitation, to tackle these things, because we get really bogged down in the emotion of it.

[828] We do.

[829] I've always liked economists and physicists and engineers, because I love the humanities.

[830] I mean, I'm a writing music person by nature.

[831] Yeah.

[832] But those are the fields, and there are many others, computer science, where people actually know how stuff works, and they can describe it in a very usually non -value judgment way.

[833] I would argue, and I'm sure that you already know, but that the magic recipe to Freakonomics to me was that.

[834] There was two very clear voices, one being a very humanitarian storytelling voice, and one being a very data -driven black and white view of the world, which is fun.

[835] It was useful.

[836] It was also just fun for us to do it because he rubbed off on me a lot.

[837] I rubbed off on him, maybe a little.

[838] I mean, that's kind of, even though we're two white guys named Stephen, that is to me kind of the argument for what we talk about when we talk about diversity.

[839] What is the idea of diversity?

[840] The idea is, if you're building a whatever, a family, a corporation, a government, you want to include people who when you say X, they're going to say, no, no, no, it's Y. Right.

[841] And then you have that conversation.

[842] And that's where I think we miss the diversity thing.

[843] again, this is like the handwading I was talking about.

[844] We've reduced diversity to like what they call the observables.

[845] This person looks different than that person.

[846] So that's all we got to do.

[847] Whereas what you really want is you want people who think differently and that's harder to observe.

[848] Yeah.

[849] I'm not saying that observable diversity shouldn't be real.

[850] Although, you know, I once interviewed Trevor Noah, who's super interesting, obviously, and smart and funny.

[851] And when we talked about something along these lines, you know, I said it's kind of a shame that we sort by the observables.

[852] And he said, yeah, except if the rest of the world sorts by the observables, and if you happen to be black, you can't escape that.

[853] Correct.

[854] Your entire life experience has been shaped by people sorting by the observables.

[855] Totally agree.

[856] I can acknowledge immediately that I can escape quite easily my white trash background.

[857] All I need is I went to UCLA and, you know what I'm saying.

[858] Right.

[859] But yeah, you cannot escape the visible distinct.

[860] distinguishing features for life.

[861] That's that.

[862] Yeah.

[863] He's so smart.

[864] Trevor Noah.

[865] Yeah.

[866] Oh, I thought you're talking about that.

[867] You'll never hear.

[868] Never.

[869] Maybe I hope when she's dying, she'll just go, I did think you were smart.

[870] That's your dying.

[871] I dying wishes that she dies and says you were smart.

[872] I thought you were smart.

[873] What would you have him do differently to be smarter, though?

[874] No, he's very smart.

[875] I'm occupying the role of her father now currently because she doesn't live with her father.

[876] And she did say the other day, she said, you know, because her dad was fucking blabbering on about Amy Klobyshire two and a half years ago.

[877] We were going, why is he so obsessed with Amy Klob?

[878] What is he talking about?

[879] No even knows.

[880] We were screaming at him.

[881] Why are you bringing this person up out of nowhere, trying to be a contrary and bringing up something random?

[882] And now she's dead right.

[883] And so she did in that moment say he's kind of like you, which I've been riding on that pink cloud, I think now for three weeks.

[884] it was quite an admission.

[885] No, you're very, you're smart.

[886] We think we're living in his matrix.

[887] The popular thought currently is, are you in your own simulation?

[888] Right.

[889] But it occurred to me about three months ago, I go, oh my God, we're in your fucking dad's simulation.

[890] No one ever considers that they are an avatar, but I think I might be an avatar.

[891] Can I ask you a quick personal question?

[892] Yes, were you born in Georgia?

[893] Yeah.

[894] Is Monica your given name?

[895] Yeah.

[896] So how unusual among, you said your dad, your parents both came from India?

[897] They did, yeah.

[898] How unusual among your fellow Indian American friends is having a totally Americanized first name?

[899] Because that strikes me as relatively rare.

[900] I think it's pretty rare.

[901] Also, my mom grew up in Georgia.

[902] They moved when she was six.

[903] Okay.

[904] So she's a hillbilly.

[905] So it's kind of like a halfway.

[906] But I think because she grew up in Savannah, Georgia, with a name of Nirmala, she was like, I'm not doing that.

[907] I hear you.

[908] But what's interesting is that even a lot of second generation and maybe beyond, Indian American kids get named with traditional Indian names, whereas a lot of second and third generation, other Asian American families, Chinese and so on, they anglicize immediately.

[909] And I actually had this conversation with Andrew Yang once, and I asked him why he thought that was, because, you know, I had a few theories.

[910] And he said, oh, that's easy because we're insecure.

[911] So what do you mean by that?

[912] He said, you know, the Indian Americans, they just, they know they're smart and good and accomplished so they can like hang on swagger yeah and they don't need to like show my name is michael i can be like sedesh so i don't know if i buy that another argument is that chinese americans especially during the 70s and 80s were so much more suspected of some kind of espionage or being anti -state well also the interment camp history yeah exactly but also the indian politicians have changed their names to something very Americanized.

[913] Here, Bobby Jindal.

[914] Exactly.

[915] And Nikki Haley.

[916] Yeah.

[917] She's, they've all changed their names.

[918] So I do think, I think they feel that if they need to be like globally appealing, they still have to do that.

[919] Although, look, there are a lot of Indian American CEOs of big American.

[920] For sure.

[921] Satya Nadella is maybe the most brilliant CEO going of Microsoft.

[922] Yeah.

[923] And they've all got their traditional.

[924] But again, you know, everybody's different.

[925] It's just an interesting thing.

[926] to me that you're a monica and not a you know yeah yeah yeah normal it is there's a lot of interesting things about monica and her history okay so i would just want to say would you say the biggest hot button topic of freakonomics was the abortion uh kind of i mean sort of because it's controversial by nature basically the theory was that when people were trying to understand why crime was falling across the u .s in the early started early mid 90s why and there were a lot theories, the economy was different, policing was different, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[927] And the theory that Steve Levitt and his co -author on this original paper named John Donahue, who's a law professor, came up with, was that the legalization of abortion, Roe v. Wade, in 1973, created an environment where fewer, quote, unwanted children were being born.

[928] Now, interestingly, women who were having abortions in that early period, including in later periods, they weren't necessarily having fewer children overall, but they were having them later at times where they had a home environment where they were ready.

[929] But wasn't that largely a dynamic of wealthier, more educated people electing for?

[930] No, you see it as far as, I don't have it at my fingertips, but as far as I know, pretty much across the board, basically it boils down to this.

[931] If a woman gets pregnant and thinks that she's not in a good time and place to have a child, then she kind of senses that.

[932] That's really what it boils down to.

[933] And then there's this huge body of research from social science over 100 years that shows one of the single worst things for the outcome of a human in terms of health, education, income and so on is being born into a place where you're literally not wanted because you're going to get fewer resources and so on.

[934] So that was the argument behind the peace and free economics.

[935] And it was controversial because it involves abortion and crime and class, et cetera.

[936] But, you know, we wrote a whole chapter about it.

[937] When you can devote a chapter to something, what we try to do is give every person an opportunity to understand the cause and effect and tell them that this is not about whether you think abortion is a worthwhile thing to have available legally or not.

[938] It's not asking you to rethink what crime is.

[939] It's trying to understand how the world actually works and that this was cause and effect that we've identified as legit.

[940] And then you can still think exactly the way you used to think about abortion and crime.

[941] but now you know I think I read a quote from you that said yes if you're pro -life you're obviously immediately recognizing well a million deaths a year should be factored into the crime rate and then that in itself makes it skewed if you were of that opinion yeah I didn't put it exactly that way but the way we put it was kind of the opposite which is even if you think that abortion is the greatest crime fighting tool ever invented which is not the argument we may but even if you thought that in terms of efficiency it's terrible because there is a lot of abortion and a lowering somewhat of the crime rate.

[942] If you're looking to that as a kind of choice to lower crime, it's not a very efficient way to say nothing of any moral or ethical implications.

[943] Right.

[944] So yeah, it was controversial, but we've taken much more hate and heat for other way sillier things.

[945] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[946] But I remember when we published Super For Economics, our second book, we'd written a about the perils of drunk walking.

[947] Okay.

[948] So we've done this analysis that showed that, you know, obviously there's a lot of concern about drunk driving.

[949] And let me say, for very, very good reasons.

[950] So the date on this are really clear that I think the odds of being involved in a fatal accident are something like 13 times greater if someone's been drinking.

[951] And that's not a victimless event, right?

[952] Generally, there's someone else.

[953] Right.

[954] But it turns out that if you have to make the choice between driving one mile drunk and walking one mile drunk, that you're actually much more.

[955] at risk of dying by walking.

[956] Oh, interesting.

[957] And also interesting is that if you look at like the data from, I believe it's from NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, they've noted, and this is starting to make the news, pedestrian deaths in America are at, I think, an all -time high.

[958] Oh, no, shit.

[959] Well, is that because people are staring at their phone?

[960] Well, they don't really know, but the data on impaired walking is not great for a lot of different reasons, but that certainly one reason.

[961] Can I ask you, so when people walk a mile drunk, what's the number one killer in that case?

[962] They fall and hit their head?

[963] I can't answer definitively, but I would gather that the more common thing is that you're walking into a road at dark.

[964] Or, I mean, you know, the extreme example would be, whoa, I'm drunk.

[965] I'm just going to lie down here and take a little nap and you happen to be in the middle of the road.

[966] Oh, God.

[967] Yeah, I tried to do that once.

[968] My girlfriend, Carrie, probably saved my life and errands.

[969] In the middle of the road?

[970] How drunk do you got to be?

[971] We were convinced no one would come.

[972] It was so comfortable.

[973] The asphalt was warm.

[974] We were very drunk.

[975] You know, you can see how it happens.

[976] Well.

[977] Okay, so that's a good one that you.

[978] So people were very upset about that.

[979] They wanted to say you had the agenda of saying choose driving drunk.

[980] Well, there was a little bit of that, even though we were tried to be very careful to say this is not to endorse, you know, that.

[981] I mean, the kind of thought experiment is, let's say you go to a friend's party.

[982] A friend lives one mile away.

[983] You drink more than you thought.

[984] And I happen to be a zero alcohol.

[985] I just have a policy, black, white line, bright line.

[986] If I have one drink, if I have any drink, I just don't drive.

[987] Right.

[988] So when I go out, because for me...

[989] You also live in New York where that's the easy thing to do.

[990] That's true.

[991] And Uber has made life a lot easier.

[992] But for me, it was always like a little bit fuzzy.

[993] Like, wait a minute, I can have like a drink and a half and that's okay.

[994] And I'm also a lightweight.

[995] Like, after like one drink, I don't feel like I can drive.

[996] But the data say that like one and a half is that...

[997] So anyway, the idea would be you go to a friend's house, a mile away.

[998] you drive there, you have a few drinks, you think, whoa, I'm definitely not fit to drive.

[999] So I'm going to do the smart thing.

[1000] I'm going to leave my car here, walk home, I'll come back and get my car.

[1001] That's the thought experiment whereby you would be much more likely to die.

[1002] So anyway, for what it's worth.

[1003] But, you know, here's, and this is one of the few examples where I can relate, sympathize, empathize with people that are living in a more rural part of the country where they feel like people don't understand what their life's like.

[1004] So where I grew up, I often had the thought, you either got to not have bars or you got to allow drunk driving because I live in a town with one cab.

[1005] So that's not an option.

[1006] Hiring a cab is not an option.

[1007] So who's driving the people home?

[1008] So either you don't have a bar or be a little more acceptable.

[1009] People have got to get there and come back.

[1010] And that just seemed like it's just a different proposition.

[1011] Agree.

[1012] The reality of that environment.

[1013] But then one workaround that people came up with as well, okay, what you really want to do is not drink alone and you want to drink with other people, and then you force one person to be the driver.

[1014] But that's no fun.

[1015] Then what you do is you tax everybody else and you say okay for every round you know let's say a round cost 20 bucks beers for four people whatever and then you take a percentage of that let's say you know 25 percent and the person who's going to drive gets to pocket that and all of a sudden you turn it into a little bit of a game a little bit of an enterprise and then you got people fighting to be the designated driver and that would be a good thing he's basically running a taxi service for his drunk friends again you got to find the incentive for people yeah that's what i think okay so how does it wear a on you to be the focus of academic and or public pushback.

[1016] You do for economics.

[1017] You have these different chapters and some of them have varying levels of blowback.

[1018] The times I've aired on Twitter, something about it being in writing and being in public is hard.

[1019] It's much harder than if you and I are having a conversation and you point out, no, that's the number's half that.

[1020] Oh, okay.

[1021] I thought it was something about writing it and being caught, which I've been caught on Twitter being wrong, a bunch of times.

[1022] I find it to be very painful.

[1023] Yeah.

[1024] And then the admission I was wrong is very painful.

[1025] Yeah.

[1026] And so I just wonder, you know, in your line of work, the weight of that.

[1027] Yeah.

[1028] It's a good question I think about, I mean, I think about this all the time.

[1029] The thing we try to do most is obviously to not be wrong.

[1030] Yeah.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] And also when you're doing something in writing versus like, you know, live TV or radio or if you're a politician, you're giving a talk and you say something, writing the whole point, or not the whole point, but one feature is that you can take your TV or.

[1033] time and be considered and do your research and so on.

[1034] There's a different expectation.

[1035] Exactly.

[1036] From yourself and the public.

[1037] So what I would say is I don't think we've been called out for being, quote, wrong on facts so much.

[1038] We've certainly made factual errors.

[1039] Everybody does.

[1040] And you just do what you should do, which is you try to, you know, look into it, correct it, apologize, et cetera.

[1041] I think what we do a lot more often is make an argument based on what we see is the true interpretation of the data and make a conclusion like the drunk walking thing and then often the blowback is very unexpected because people will object on a level or on a dimension that we hadn't even begun to think about so for instance in the drunk walking I think what some people objected to do it and again it's a relatively tiny number but they're noisy right that's the way the world works what they objected to was a perception that we were blaming the victim that there are pedestrians out there who aren't getting behind the wheel of a car.

[1042] And if they're getting hit, even if they've had something to drink, how dare you say that they're doing something, quote, wrong?

[1043] I understand the nature of that argument.

[1044] But I also understand that, you know, you have to try to approach things with a kind of nuance and surround the episode.

[1045] So what we actually thought we were saying is if you think you're being safe and useful by not getting in the car and by walking drunk instead, that's actually not a good move either.

[1046] Instead, it turned out that people thought we were attacking them for doing what they thought was a blameless thing.

[1047] Similarly, we once wrote, I don't even know, I think this was just a short radio piece about turkeys.

[1048] So it turns out that like 99 .2 % of all turkeys bred for human consumption in the U .S. are the result of artificial insemination.

[1049] Yeah.

[1050] And the reason is that Americans, when they eat turkey, they like breast meat, white meat, So they've bred the turkeys that have bigger and bigger breasts and the breasts have gotten so big that turkeys physically can't get close enough to procreate with each other.

[1051] They can't articulate the act.

[1052] Exactly right.

[1053] So we wrote about this as a kind of weird story of like incentives, the way the market works, because supply and demand, et cetera.

[1054] And the blowback we received from that, which again had not anticipated, but I understood it, was from animal rights advocates who said, how dare you talk about this in a kind of dismissive economic argument when, in fact, what you're talking about is an animal cruelty story.

[1055] I hadn't thought about it.

[1056] But it doesn't have to be in either or.

[1057] Why does it have to be an either or?

[1058] Yeah, but you know, here's the thing.

[1059] Since I've been writing long enough to remember letters to the editor, which was the only way that people used to be able to respond.

[1060] What letters to the editor were, for me was you're the writer, you spend months or weeks on a piece, you write something, you try your hardest, you try to think of every interesting angle of inquiry and to represent it as truthfully as you can, and then you write it.

[1061] You do your best.

[1062] And then someone else, they have their chance.

[1063] Like, I had my chance.

[1064] No, they have there is to say, you are such an idiot.

[1065] You focused on this.

[1066] You should have focused on that.

[1067] The internet, the digital revolution allows for a lot more of that.

[1068] Oh, yeah.

[1069] Well, it used to weed out people that had some level of work ethic where you'd sit down with a piece of paper, you'd get the address of fucking the New York Times.

[1070] And there was a barrier to entry.

[1071] Good point.

[1072] And now there's zero barrier to entry.

[1073] That's true.

[1074] As you have the thought, you can be expressing it.

[1075] But you have to then sort out.

[1076] So every time we put out an episode, every week, put out an episode of Freakonomics Radio.

[1077] And one really useful function of Twitter for me is to see how is the world taking it.

[1078] Yeah.

[1079] And, you know, you get some people say, wow, really interesting piece on loneliness.

[1080] I learned things I didn't know.

[1081] And other people saying, wow, what is stupid.

[1082] Who cares about this?

[1083] The people who say who cares or that's stupid, those.

[1084] You read them for a millisecond.

[1085] You say, okay, that person is not interested, no problem.

[1086] But where the feedback is really useful is where they say, you know, you're trying to get at this idea and what you neglected to think about was this, or this angle was just way too narrow or way too wide, or these data are not complete.

[1087] And so, and that's where it can be useful.

[1088] So I personally find feedback mostly either benign or useful, but you do have to learn to ignore the kind of all -cap shouting stuff when it's based on something that you don't care about.

[1089] It can be hard.

[1090] So I love for economics.

[1091] I love Malcolm Gladwell.

[1092] I also can be critical of this incentive to boil it down to a thing, right?

[1093] So in the case of the abortion and crime thing, there is clearly some amazing correlation that can't be ignored.

[1094] But also, most certainly it's a synthesis of so many things, right?

[1095] So just by the virtue of putting most of the onus on one thing, obviously all these other people that know about these other elements that have attributed to it, they're going to raise their hand.

[1096] Yeah.

[1097] And it's almost just, is it maybe the genre of book?

[1098] Yeah.

[1099] No, you identify a really important problem.

[1100] A lot of these things become binary when almost nothing in life is binary.

[1101] And that's a little bit my frustration with growing polarization, the way the media thing is unfolding.

[1102] Like everything is, you know.

[1103] So when we wrote the chapter that included the abortion argument for economics, it was actually within a chapter called, Where Have All the Criminals Gone?

[1104] And we actually tried to understand why crime fell so much in certain places, in many, many American cities.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] And basically, even abortion was one of, I think, three or four causal factors that we said did play a role.

[1107] Then there were several other factors that a lot of people thought did play a role.

[1108] that we said the data show that they don't.

[1109] So actually, the abortion crime argument was one piece of a sort of big collage of evidence.

[1110] So we weren't making a super strict, narrow, binary argument.

[1111] We were saying this is one factor.

[1112] There are some other factors.

[1113] And most important, every factor comes with costs and benefits.

[1114] So for instance, in addition to abortion, seeming to have a pretty big influence on crime levels, another thing that was happening in the 70s and 80s that ultimately drove crime down a lot in the 90s was that we were putting lots and lots and lots of people in prison.

[1115] So it turns out that locking up a lot of people who've committed crimes, even if very minor, will ultimately lower the crime rate for pretty obvious reasons.

[1116] Yeah.

[1117] That's the benefit if what you're going for is less crime.

[1118] What are the costs?

[1119] So you have to assess those.

[1120] And that's what we try to do, which is for every decision that everybody makes, you say, what's the cost, what's the benefit?

[1121] Let's tell a story around that.

[1122] But you're right.

[1123] Most people will reduce it to a binary thing.

[1124] And partly that's because it's what they want to believe to be either true or not true.

[1125] Well, also it works for the economy of a story.

[1126] There are laws to story.

[1127] We respond to different things.

[1128] Like there is an inescapable back to what you brought to the table, which is there are some rules in this oral storytelling tradition that allowed us to pass on culture and knowledge.

[1129] So that's all baked in there as well and can't really.

[1130] be ignored.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] And then the other thing I wanted to say was, I was drive around the other day.

[1133] I was listening to the crime rate.

[1134] And someone pointed out, and again, I feel like I've read and consumed so much stuff on this.

[1135] And then I just, this was new info to me, like, as of four months ago, which was like, well, the, the homicide rate is very misleading because what you're really seeing is an incredible progress being made on gunshot wounds.

[1136] Emergency room care.

[1137] Absolutely.

[1138] Virtually the same amount of people are getting shot, just your odds of surviving a gunshot have have gone up substantially.

[1139] And interestingly, that's a kind of a fringe benefit of having been at war for the past 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq is so much of that medicine got better as a result of that.

[1140] So, you know, it's a strange kind of wartime dividend.

[1141] They're just, you know, I think people will acknowledge that humans are just in general the worst subjects possible for people to study, right?

[1142] Because, A, we don't tell the truth, intentionally and otherwise.

[1143] and there's so many variables in what produces a human behavior.

[1144] Yeah.

[1145] For medicine, it's hard.

[1146] The field of nutrition.

[1147] That's a black box.

[1148] I mean, virtually, though, it's like every six months, there's some new.

[1149] All these studies to me prove is the complexity by which we're trying to establish causality in human behavior is so difficult.

[1150] And also, when you're talking about nutrition, there's a big additional X -factor, which is individual variance among humans.

[1151] Right.

[1152] In metabolism and biology.

[1153] And the illusion of the average human and the illusion of the average human in medicine and in diet.

[1154] Oh, we did a series called Bad Medicine, a three -part, which I felt it was not a bad title, but I felt a little bad because I really respect and admire many, many people in many different parts of the medical field, obviously.

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] But we looked at basically the ways in which modern medicine is not doing so great.

[1157] And one of them was the way clinical trials or done generally, but one really interesting component of that is that women have been mostly excluded from all pharmaceutical clinical trials for a couple interesting reasons having to do with thalidomide, for instance.

[1158] But as a result of that, you know, women's and men's biology is really, really different.

[1159] And so you're making...

[1160] Most interestingly, with Ambien.

[1161] Exactly.

[1162] And that's what happened with Ambien.

[1163] Yeah.

[1164] And it wasn't just about dose.

[1165] It's about the chemical reaction.

[1166] Yeah.

[1167] That's different because of hormonal differences.

[1168] But minimally, it's two times as powerful in women as it is in men.

[1169] Right, but it's not all just about dose and weight.

[1170] It's at women's biology.

[1171] Their physiology, right, processes.

[1172] So to me, like, that's, you know, again, I don't mean to promote my way of thinking because I do it.

[1173] It's more like I do this kind of thinking because I believe in it, which is, like, I told you guys, I really like your show because there's a curiosity and a spirit of inquiry, but it's also positive.

[1174] It's like the idea is, like, you want to ask questions of people, even if they're about dark things or difficult things with the idea that everybody wants to find a way to improve for themselves or for their loved ones or even, God willing, in the best of all worlds, for their enemies.

[1175] Like, wouldn't that be the best?

[1176] Yeah.

[1177] If people are looking for solutions to help even people that they don't agree with, right?

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] So that's where we all get a little bit waylaid when we focus so much on the negative.

[1180] There's this idea called the negativity bias you've probably run across.

[1181] There's a book called The Power of Bad by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney.

[1182] It's about the fact that if every one bad thing you read or believe, it takes four good things to get it back to zero.

[1183] Well, and again, I misattributed this to Malcolm the other day, and maybe it was infrequent.

[1184] I can't remember what book I read.

[1185] Yeah, they got into the chemistry of that, right?

[1186] So as we evolved, you find a fruit tree in bloom and you get some dopamine for that.

[1187] Exactly.

[1188] And then you find one that has poison fruit.

[1189] You eat it.

[1190] You get cortisol and all these other things.

[1191] And the chemical is stronger.

[1192] Right.

[1193] So even that, though, like you could say, well, it's really good that we get so distraught about bad things because it means we want to improve the world.

[1194] The flip side is people don't give enough credit to the good stuff that's going on.

[1195] Like David Byrne, who we interviewed for this episode about the negativity bias that it'll be coming out relatively soon.

[1196] So like his show, American Utopia, which you maybe haven't seen because it's been on Broadway.

[1197] It's in New York.

[1198] Although there's a film coming out.

[1199] And I know you'll see it because you see every film on Earth.

[1200] That's right.

[1201] But basically, David Byrne, with talking.

[1202] heads went from being this kind of, as he puts it, an angsty, kind of negative younger person who grew into himself.

[1203] But he now started this website project called Reasons to be cheerful, which is from an old Ian Jewry song, which was meant to be sarcastic.

[1204] But like he too understood that if you go around looking through this little pinhole at all the terrible things on earth, you're most likely to not do a great job of helping yourself or others do better.

[1205] Now, first of all, I listen to Freakonomics Radio.

[1206] It's no wonder to me that that thing is a humongous hit because it's fantastic.

[1207] And you've been doing it for 10 years now, which is so impressive.

[1208] How annoyed are you at all of us?

[1209] Or do you love it?

[1210] I'm fairly annoyed now.

[1211] Are you the immigrant who came and you're like, okay, enough immigrants now.

[1212] We got it.

[1213] Who's this Dex Shepherd guy?

[1214] Mostly, I think it's great.

[1215] I mean, I will say this.

[1216] I don't know if I, like, Freakonomics radio does not sound to me prima facie like a fun thing to listen to.

[1217] It's like, we're doing episodes on socialism and loneliness.

[1218] Oh, I just agree.

[1219] No, you have an innate playfulness and fun.

[1220] In fact, the darker, the title, I'm like, oh, can't wait.

[1221] How are they going to pull this out?

[1222] It's like you're even more daring magic trick because I do think you're ultimately have this effervescent in this joy and all this stuff.

[1223] So I'm like, oh, great, you know, how's he going to take, you know, childhood seek a virus and make it positive.

[1224] So I think that works in your favor.

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] Well, thank you.

[1227] So I don't think podcasting is just like a market.

[1228] story like it's good for creative people like you to do a thing that's adjacent but different and you can have this huge success with it it is that but it's another thing too which is that i think it is whether you call it journalism or whatever right it's different and in some ways better and the example that i would offer is like if i'm writing in the old days a cover story for the new york times magazine let's say so i wrote about you know whatever some profile i profiled Steven Spielberg or Paul Simon, right?

[1229] And that's an 8 ,000 word piece that I would spend maybe two or three months working on.

[1230] And then you write it and you're the writer and you control it and then the publication controls it and manipulates it a little bit more.

[1231] They choose headline photos, da -da -da.

[1232] And then the reader consumes it.

[1233] And what are they getting?

[1234] They're getting an image, a portrait that may be great, but it is several degrees removed from the person that's portrayed in it.

[1235] For sure.

[1236] And so like if I read an 8 ,000 word piece about, let's say Spielberg, how many of his words are in the piece?

[1237] Maybe 1 ,500, let's just say.

[1238] If you do a podcast with Spielberg and it's the equivalent of 8 ,000 words, how many words are his?

[1239] Probably like 6 ,000.

[1240] And additionally, now it's three -dimensional because you're actually hearing him and you're hearing a lot of things in his voice.

[1241] You're hearing empathy.

[1242] You're hearing humor.

[1243] You're hearing hubris, whatever.

[1244] That's what podcasting is doing that's different than other writing that I think is magic.

[1245] And that's why I think it's working the way it is.

[1246] Well, I think in many ways it's the antidote to 140 characters.

[1247] Yeah.

[1248] It's the one thing that is, it's all context.

[1249] But they're also, right.

[1250] And the other thing is they're hearing your tone.

[1251] So they know if you're kidding.

[1252] They know if you're sincere.

[1253] They know if you're like tired and having a bad day.

[1254] That's true.

[1255] So the last thing I wanted to ask you was you are horny for facts.

[1256] I'm increasingly though suspicious of data as being apolitical, that numbers are apolitical or don't have a stance.

[1257] I'm a little suspicious of interpretation of what seems like data.

[1258] And I do think, again, to criticize my side of the aisle, I think quite often we get hung up way more on the accuracy of what the person's saying or the data that they're incorrect about and not the emotion that would have made it tantalizing for that to be appealing to them in the first place.

[1259] I do think we undermine a little bit the role and importance and relevance of emotional truths, which we've already touched on a little bit here.

[1260] and I just wonder how how you have maybe evolved or not evolved or what your stance on that is.

[1261] Yeah, I see that problem.

[1262] And I think it's good to be self -reflective or self -critical in that way and knowing like what can't carry the day in the quote argument.

[1263] Like, I mean, if you think about it like every story, you call it a story, it sounds kind of benign in entertainment.

[1264] But really, every story is an argument in favor of something or against something.

[1265] For sure.

[1266] So, I mean, you're totally right.

[1267] And I think I'm as guilty of this as anybody, which is that when you find an amazing finding, like, for instance, let's say that I discovered that people who, you know, go out of their way to never use a plastic bag are also much more likely to kill small animals and pets.

[1268] Let's just say I find that.

[1269] Sure, right.

[1270] So counterintuitive.

[1271] It would be very tempting to, you know, frame that in a way that just makes it look kind of shallow and juvenile and cruel.

[1272] and mocking.

[1273] So to me, like, the beauty of storytelling is it's got these different components in it.

[1274] It's got magnitude, it's got time, and it's got emotion.

[1275] And unless you have all of those, then the story doesn't feel very believable.

[1276] So what I mean by that is, you know, if I say someone is more likely to do X if they Y, well, how much more likely?

[1277] And you have to be really honest about that.

[1278] If it's 1 % more, you say, well, da -da -da -da, you know?

[1279] so magnitude is really important time is really important because a lot of human behavior changes for a short time and then wears off because the novelty effect is really strong so it's got to be like you know if you start treating people better does it make society better for a long time or do people start game the system and take advantage of it that's important and then emotion is important so the thing that i always tell myself about like what you were saying facts versus story I think about the Bible, not that I'm so religious, but I spent a fair amount of time thinking about it.

[1280] The Bible is the most read book in the history of the world, right?

[1281] And the Bible contains a set of laws slash rules, the Ten Commandments, that are the most famous set of rules in the history of the world.

[1282] And then you ask a population like all American citizens, many of whom have had exposure to the Bible, name the Ten Commandments.

[1283] And the average person could name like two and a half of them.

[1284] You're saying, wait a minute, wait a minute.

[1285] This These are the most important rules in the biggest book ever in the history of the world.

[1286] And you don't know them.

[1287] Yeah.

[1288] But then you say, well, let's say you know zero of the commandments.

[1289] Do you know anything about this book called the Bible?

[1290] And they'll say, well, I think there was like a guy named Moses and like a burning bush.

[1291] There's a guy no in the flood.

[1292] It's the stories that captivate people.

[1293] And that's the thing that if you're a storyteller, you want to exploit but not abuse.

[1294] You want to include the statistics, the facts.

[1295] the law, the theory, et cetera, but you need to surround it in a way that anybody, see, I think what a lot of people forget is that when you're telling the story, you have a kind of inherent leverage that you can exploit if you want.

[1296] I'm the person getting to tell it.

[1297] What I think you need to do is remember that you're a communicator and it's not about you.

[1298] You have to imagine that someone is hearing these words that you're saying and help them understand what's the thing that you want to be understood.

[1299] And that's just basic empathy.

[1300] And it's hard to do if you're super arrogant and super narcissistic.

[1301] And look, we're all arrogant and narcissistic to some degree.

[1302] So what I try to do is just turn those dials down a little bit every day and become a little bit more.

[1303] I try to work a lot of it through the marriage lens.

[1304] If my wife tells me, you never do dishes, well, that's factually inaccurate.

[1305] I do do dishes.

[1306] I could defeat her position on that.

[1307] I could point to many times throughout the last week that I did dishes, how many I did, blah, blah, blah.

[1308] And then we could end it there.

[1309] And then I would have missed that she feels like I'm not helping her.

[1310] Just because I can defeat someone with data, it doesn't mean that I've addressed what's going on.

[1311] It doesn't mean that I'm helping to solve anything.

[1312] I definitely think of this in terms of politics, which is, okay, we're married.

[1313] Like it or fucking not, no one's getting annexed from this union.

[1314] We are not splitting up the coast and dividing the country up.

[1315] We are in a fucking marriage.

[1316] And we are going to be in this marriage forever.

[1317] So the question is, do I want to attempt to understand?

[1318] understand what they're feeling and make the marriage better, or do I want to keep screaming that I'm right about the facts?

[1319] So you're suggesting, I like this idea, so you're suggesting you take, right, the acknowledgement of the marriage paradigm or maybe paradox, that being right is no guarantee of either winning an argument or advancing the ball in any way.

[1320] Yeah.

[1321] And then use that for all interpersonal relationships.

[1322] That's pretty interesting.

[1323] That's pretty good.

[1324] Well, they say Jewish men are the best husband, so I thought I could really.

[1325] appeal to your sense of you must be good at hearing the emotional truth uh you know i think i'm pretty bad uh but but i will say this i've been married 21 or one or so years and i really feel like in the last two years i've really started to get it oh no kidding but i got help so i have a friend angela duckworth who wrote a book called grit she's a psychology professor at the university of pennsylvania i've heard of this book it's a great book kind of like um value of a skin knee and exactly yeah oh i I love her, Wendy Mogul.

[1326] Yeah, yeah.

[1327] Yeah, yeah.

[1328] So, and Angela Duckworth is a good writer and a good thinker, and, you know, she knows all the psychological research.

[1329] So Angela, we're doing this new podcast that's called No Stupid Questions, the idea being that there are no stupid questions, but also your questions shouldn't be that stupid.

[1330] And we ask each other question every time.

[1331] And she taught me just like the most basic, research -based form of dealing with what you're describing, which is when someone expresses discontent.

[1332] whether it's directed at you or not, literally, it sounds so stupid.

[1333] She explains it better.

[1334] Literally, the first thing to do is, I hear what you're saying that I don't do any dishes.

[1335] I hear and acknowledge that.

[1336] And to me, that's just like kind of, come on.

[1337] Right.

[1338] It feels almost patronizing, right?

[1339] And obvious.

[1340] But what she's saying is that the underlying motivation in your wife saying that, what is the underlying motivation?

[1341] It's not to get you to wash more dishes.

[1342] it's to be heard about feeling like you're not carrying what you need to be caring.

[1343] Yeah.

[1344] To be heard.

[1345] And so if you can say to someone literally, I hear what you're saying about this.

[1346] And then, okay.

[1347] Explore it.

[1348] Explore it.

[1349] How about the simplest, the I message?

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] It's the most genius thing in the world.

[1352] It's like when you did X, no one's going to disagree with what X was, shut the door and left.

[1353] Right.

[1354] I felt blank.

[1355] Right.

[1356] Because you can't really argue how I feel.

[1357] Right.

[1358] But you can argue all day long what the intention was of shutting the door, which is just useless.

[1359] It's all useless.

[1360] And I hate to say it because I like men.

[1361] I like women more.

[1362] Whatever.

[1363] Much better.

[1364] I just think that on average, they're a little bit better.

[1365] Although men do a lot of things great, too.

[1366] Don't get me wrong.

[1367] Great of building bridges.

[1368] There you go.

[1369] Yeah, exactly right.

[1370] But I do think that this is where, like, if you happen to be a man in the modern world, it's really good to understand the many ways in which.

[1371] we communicate without thinking at all that are plainly suboptible.

[1372] Oh, yeah.

[1373] But it takes thinking about.

[1374] And this is where it gets tricky because, like, it's hard to blame someone for habits that have been societally reinforced for millennia.

[1375] But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't unpack them and try to do better.

[1376] Yeah, the buck's got to stop somewhere eventually.

[1377] And unfortunately, it's probably on us.

[1378] Monica, do you think men are getting on average a little bit better or not really?

[1379] I think we all are.

[1380] I don't want to just make it about men because I think it's a female problem too.

[1381] I think we're all a part of that issue.

[1382] And I like that we're talking about it a lot right now.

[1383] And the pendulum is definitely swung to maybe extreme.

[1384] But I like it.

[1385] We have to do that in order to come back a little bit closer to the middle.

[1386] So I'm happy, yeah.

[1387] I always tell my kids when they complain about.

[1388] like some terrible or weird thing happening that um that all corrections or over corrections like throughout history someone does something terrible and then society wants to say we're never going to let anyone even think about doing that terrible thing again and then it wipes out the options for a lot of people but you know i mean that's the way humans and society have worked we come back yeah again it's a lot of it's just managing expectations we think a lot of people think if everyone in the world thought like they did, it would all work, and recognizing at its very best it'll be a compromise that makes the most amount of people happy.

[1389] I agree, but I think a lot of people do think of life generally as zero -sum, even when I agree.

[1390] It's like I brought up earlier, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, so I think he had this, I don't know how specific this recognition was, but, you know, in the old days of Microsoft, for instance, Bill Gates and then Steve Balmer, they both basically treated every company that was a little bit like them or that did business in any realm closely at all related to theirs would consider everybody an enemy.

[1391] A threat to market.

[1392] And arrival, every single one.

[1393] So Google, Adobe, Linux, you name it, anyone.

[1394] And when Satina Della came in, again, I don't know how specifically this was part of the strategy for what Microsoft has done in the last four or five years.

[1395] but they've, A, they've become much, much, much, much more successful and valuable in last four or five years.

[1396] But one way they've done it is by saying instead of, you know what, Google's are sworn enemy and we're never going to do anything with them, wouldn't we rather have 10 % of what we might have in this co -relationship with Google?

[1397] And rather than be 100 % rivals, why don't we think about it as an opportunity for us?

[1398] And what to me this is about is humans generally, we still operate.

[1399] with a lot of paradigms, like the zero -sum versus the rising time, exactly, scarcity abundance that are baked into us from millennia ago, it's like we're the same hardware, pretty much, but our software is like badly outdated.

[1400] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1401] And we can transcend all of these Darwinian compulsions, but it just takes a lot of faith.

[1402] And again, I just want to point out that we've come full circle.

[1403] And then what Microsoft is clearly doing is just having a full.

[1404] offensive strategy in Japan and they're not playing defense anymore and they're rewarded for.

[1405] Wait, I have one quick question, non -secretorial question that I thought of earlier.

[1406] I bet you were good.

[1407] I bet you did well on your SATs because you used that in a sentence just like that.

[1408] Do you ever feel, because I think you're sort of unique type of material you put out in the world, do you ever feel this responsibility?

[1409] Like when you write about the drunk walking.

[1410] Do you ever feel like, okay, what if somebody hears this, reads this, and then drives drunk and then dies or kills someone?

[1411] Like, do you ever think about the fact that you have a really big power in that way?

[1412] I think you're, A, probably overestimating her power a little bit, but no, so the truth is, yes, you do try to think about it.

[1413] But then, because humans are, interesting and decision making is weird, you often totally fail to appreciate how someone might take it and then act on it.

[1414] So like to me, entertaining the counterfactual is really important and really hard.

[1415] What I try to do is when I'm writing the script, you know, we interview a bunch of people, we edit it down, we arrange a script, we write it, rewrite it, record it, listen to it, then re -edit a little bit, rewrite it a little bit.

[1416] What I try to do is just listen as anybody.

[1417] And so the minute you hear someone say a word or phrase, your brain responds and then you say, well, I want to know the next thing based on that.

[1418] And if the host, in this case, me, doesn't ask that, then I'm pissed at him.

[1419] Right.

[1420] So that's what you try to do is be the person really, really, really listening, the way a therapist would be really listening or the way your wife would be really listening when you talk about doing the dishes.

[1421] And it's not about this.

[1422] It's about that.

[1423] And that, by the way, is one thing that I think humans will always be way way way way.

[1424] Yes, I agree.

[1425] I don't think one has to account for all the dipshits in the world.

[1426] I don't think one has to sit on data because 10 knuckleheads are going to, you know what I'm saying?

[1427] I don't think the world could operate like that where we're planning all things for the very worst interpretation by the dumbest people in the country.

[1428] I just don't know how I don't think you should either, but I just wonder if you carry any of that as a human on earth.

[1429] Let me ask you this.

[1430] How do you guys feel about, are you meat eaters or not?

[1431] Oh, yes, we both are.

[1432] Do you worry at all about the strain on the whole system that meat puts on things or not really?

[1433] I'm just saying, is that a concern or not.

[1434] I think my meat consumption is one of several things I do that are morally indefensible.

[1435] So how do you feel about, let's say, what they call fake meat or vegetable -based meat?

[1436] Do you think that's a good idea generally?

[1437] Yes.

[1438] Even if you don't consume it?

[1439] No, I do consume.

[1440] And I think they're great.

[1441] And to me, that's where I go.

[1442] That's the Republican in me that's like, yeah, you had to make it fucking delicious.

[1443] Right.

[1444] You had to do that.

[1445] You can't just say.

[1446] Even the fact that we have to call it the Republican.

[1447] This should be like the logician in me. I agree.

[1448] And that's, you know, Pat Brown, the guy that invented impossible foods.

[1449] That's exactly.

[1450] And he's very liberal.

[1451] He thinks that the whole point is that meat production is terrible.

[1452] And he said, but you can't expect to win on the moral argument.

[1453] You have to make it delicious.

[1454] You cannot give people a car that.

[1455] doesn't function and doesn't meet all their needs and ask them to use that car.

[1456] I just don't think you can do that.

[1457] All right.

[1458] So how do you, here's the question I really want to ask is how do you feel about eating insects?

[1459] Let's say that protein is important and the insects are a great source of it.

[1460] I'm all for it.

[1461] Have you eaten many insects?

[1462] No, but I would do it in a second.

[1463] I understand there's some like beetle protein powder and there's some there's cricket powder.

[1464] But I ate at a restaurant in New York recently.

[1465] We taped.

[1466] We're doing this episode on disgust.

[1467] So it's about how disgust works And how there are things that people should be disgusted by and aren't And vice versa And so I went with this guy who's a psych professor at Penn Who's kind of the leading authority on disgust And we went to eat some different insects at this restaurant It's called the Black Ant It's a Mexican restaurant.

[1468] It was delicious I'd go there in a second So next time you're in New York If you want to go, the Black Ants in the East Village And it'll be everything from like a bowl full of little sauteed grasshoppers.

[1469] No. A bowl full and you see they look like grasshoppers.

[1470] Oh, yeah.

[1471] And then there's also like a bowl full of very small ants that have a very interesting flavor.

[1472] Not ant -like at all.

[1473] Like in a flavor that I've never encountered, but pleasant.

[1474] And then there's also insects that are kind of baked into things like little croquettes, grasshopper croquettes.

[1475] So then, but that conversation then, led us to in this case okay and this guy is kind of a vegetarian the psych professor so he has a weird rule like we all have weird rules like he won't ever order meat in a restaurant but if somebody's with orders meat and can't finish it he'll finish it this is approaching the jane goodall approach uh her kind of thing i as i understand it is like um meat serves this amazing function historically throughout you know the study of man so special occasion she will when offered by a host, she will.

[1476] She won't herself go procure it or order it or whatever.

[1477] But there are times when socially it's to be enjoyed.

[1478] All right, here's the big question.

[1479] Would you eat human?

[1480] Is it someone grew a butt cheek in a lab that is human meat?

[1481] So that seems a little bit too easy for a man of your ability to answer that question.

[1482] So what about, I think there are instances where people will consume a little bit of the flesh of their loved ones who die.

[1483] but I may be wrong on that, but I know that there are cases where people consume the ash.

[1484] Oh, yeah, I saw that on that episode of my strange addiction.

[1485] Okay, all right.

[1486] So let's just say that along those lines...

[1487] Oh, my wife ate her placenta in pill form.

[1488] Oh, yeah.

[1489] Oh, yeah, there you go.

[1490] That doesn't feel as weird for some reason.

[1491] Because it's from your own body.

[1492] Maybe because it's from your own...

[1493] And you always see animals eating their own shit.

[1494] I mean, not specifically the shit, but that too.

[1495] But, yeah, animals all eat after birth.

[1496] But can't you just see that...

[1497] like 20 years from now, someone will have decided that, like, eating humans is the single best form of protein and cognitive inspiration and it becomes a thing.

[1498] And do we start farming them?

[1499] These are the things that keep me up at night.

[1500] You know, in general, I came from a culturally relative discipline and it's hard to shake.

[1501] So I don't think I have...

[1502] Anthropology?

[1503] Yeah.

[1504] So I don't think I have a stance without more details, you know?

[1505] Right, right, right.

[1506] So if I offered you right now a slice of, let's say, triceps, and I say I can live without a little slice of that you want to try it a little tricep steak and there's no suffering on your own it'd be a little stuff played this yeah he's cutting a piece off but let's say but if he's a masochist and he was like erect while he was doing it let's say in the interest of science and talking about you know whatever decision making i say you know we're going to anesthetize me and we're going to just take off a little thin like a you know like a philly steak sandwich slice like yeah a little stephen carpaccio yeah yeah yeah or maybe monica maybe monica's is more appealing?

[1507] I don't know.

[1508] I'm a little older.

[1509] Does she make me more tender?

[1510] I'm definitely eating her first.

[1511] If that's the question, no question.

[1512] She'd never smoke.

[1513] But the benefit would have to be so extreme, right?

[1514] Or no?

[1515] For me, yes.

[1516] Look, I'm not, I'm not religious.

[1517] I don't think that we are different than any other animal on the planet.

[1518] Really?

[1519] I don't.

[1520] I don't think that we are a divine creation.

[1521] I think that we're just...

[1522] Well, but there's a big gap between divine creation and different from every other, any other species.

[1523] I mean, we're different in that.

[1524] all animals are different and measurable and have different IQs and have different physical prowess.

[1525] But we are an animal, period.

[1526] Yeah, but we have podcasts, man. Well, right.

[1527] We've done some real fun things.

[1528] But I'm just saying if you can make an argument to eat any animal, I don't think you can make an argument not to eat any animal.

[1529] Okay.

[1530] So that's a good argument right there.

[1531] Thank you.

[1532] That actually works.

[1533] Yes, that's kind of my point.

[1534] It's like, of course, you don't eat certain numbers that have no numbers to sustain the eating of them.

[1535] I don't think people should eat rhino.

[1536] I don't think people should eat predators.

[1537] There's a lot of things I don't think.

[1538] But if you're just comparing cows and humans, which there are billions of both of us, I can't say that if you're willing to eat one, you shouldn't be willing to eat the other.

[1539] You're either into eating animals or you're not.

[1540] Yeah.

[1541] I think we're the same as cows.

[1542] Muscle composition -wise, yes.

[1543] No, not just muscle composition.

[1544] We as beings are the same as cows.

[1545] In the eyes of the planet, yeah.

[1546] But what one person could bring to the table is different than what one cow is not going to potentially change the course.

[1547] In the thought experience, I'm not killing someone or causing suffering in someone or taking someone out of the population that could be productive.

[1548] This is what I'm saying.

[1549] You're growing human bodies in a test tube without a brain.

[1550] It's just meat.

[1551] If you're into meat, you're kind of into meat.

[1552] And then at that point, it's just a mental hurdle you're not willing to step over.

[1553] And again, I'm saying morally I'm wrong.

[1554] I'm saying that factory farming is a disaster.

[1555] I'm thinking it's for the environment.

[1556] Clearly, we should all be minimally eating half or less than meat.

[1557] We're eating.

[1558] Question then would become, why do you do what you do if you feel, it sounds like a little bit not guilty about it.

[1559] Because I have the expectation of myself that I am going to not be moral on some things.

[1560] I don't think I'm striving to be morally perfect.

[1561] And I think the person that could point out, the vegetarian that could point out, I'm morally in the wrong, might also not pull over and help people put spare tires on on the side of the road.

[1562] That's something I do.

[1563] But I don't go around the world going, well, if you don't pull over and help people put spare tires on, you're morally repugnant.

[1564] I just go, well, that's not a strong aspect in your moral suite of behaviors.

[1565] I have some that are better than yours.

[1566] You have some that are better than mine.

[1567] I don't think anyone's crushing it across the...

[1568] So do you think that's a case of moral licensing in your case?

[1569] that you do some things that you feel really good about, like in the positive moral column.

[1570] And then there are others that you think, even though like the meat eating, I don't feel great about morally, it's okay because I'm compensating in another dimension.

[1571] I don't think that.

[1572] I don't think that I'm like net positive morally.

[1573] I'm not equating it that way.

[1574] I think I use fossil fuels in irresponsible manner.

[1575] I love motorsports.

[1576] And I think I'm eating meat.

[1577] And I think I'm doing some things that are bad.

[1578] But you make up for it by making podcasts.

[1579] Let us hope.

[1580] Well, Stephen, And what a fucking pleasure talking to you.

[1581] I hope at some point I will have, I'm not an expert in anything.

[1582] But, you know, if I can ever be at your disposal for Freakonomics, please call on me. It would be a flattering experience.

[1583] I appreciate it.

[1584] And by the way, I'm not an expert in anything either except talking to smart people and figuring stuff out.

[1585] Yeah, you're the mouthpiece for experts.

[1586] There you go.

[1587] That's, you're an expert.

[1588] A word that I don't love, but I'm going to accept it.

[1589] All right.

[1590] I appreciate it.

[1591] Well, such a pleasure talking to you.

[1592] and I hope we get to do it again.

[1593] Thanks, Max, Monica.

[1594] Bye.

[1595] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1596] This is so fun.

[1597] Well, yeah, I also feel that it's a little, maybe insensitive to say it's fun.

[1598] It's different.

[1599] Why is it insensitive?

[1600] Because some people really aren't having fun.

[1601] They don't have jobs.

[1602] They don't know their next paycheck is coming from.

[1603] They're homeschooling their children all day.

[1604] It's miserable for a lot of people.

[1605] And you think they would want me to be upset too?

[1606] Well, I think they might be like, oh, good for you.

[1607] You're having fun.

[1608] Look, when I'm starving and I found out someone just had a big rectangle sandwich with extra mayonnaise, I'm pretty happy for them.

[1609] Okay.

[1610] Anyways, we've been doing these meetings on Zoom, AA meetings, and Aaron and I, you know, there's like, on average, there's generally nine of us or something.

[1611] And, yeah, I feel guilty because Aaron and I are having, like, the time of our lives because we haven't been able to just be with each other in a long time.

[1612] I'm loving it.

[1613] Are you hating it?

[1614] No, I don't hate it, but I recognize the weight of it for so many people who I think are really, really, really struggling.

[1615] Oh, yeah.

[1616] I think a lot of people economically are getting very fucked.

[1617] And just mentally.

[1618] I mean, people are in their house for two weeks.

[1619] But when you see those videos of the Italians playing violin on their balconies and everyone's happy, are you upset that they're happy?

[1620] No, I think they're making the most of a very, very bad situation there.

[1621] Yeah, and I feel like that's what I'm doing.

[1622] Good.

[1623] Also, I would feel this honest not vocalizing my gratitude.

[1624] So we've been having these fun meals together as a family, which is also rare, and cooking, I have like extra gratitude for food that I don't normally have.

[1625] Like when I made air fried chicken yesterday, I was like, oh, yes, we still have chicken.

[1626] This is amazing.

[1627] Yeah, it definitely elicits gratitude for sure.

[1628] It should.

[1629] I mean, it puts a magnifying glass on everything, like on everything you touch, on everything you interact with, on the things you can't interact with.

[1630] Every time I grab a Clorox wipe, I'm grateful we have them.

[1631] Today, I opened up one of our wipes and it's like almost empty and I got a little pan.

[1632] Oh, sure, sure.

[1633] Because we can't get more.

[1634] They are sold out.

[1635] They are.

[1636] But I hope everyone is doing okay, you know, our arm cherries.

[1637] I hope everyone's...

[1638] doing okay and reminding themselves that it's temporary and while you're in it to try to focus on the positive things.

[1639] Oh, Bill Gates sent, I think it was like a private email.

[1640] Okay.

[1641] But Kristen got a hold of it and it is just put so perfectly.

[1642] The end, he basically said, I choose to look at this as not the great disaster, but the great correct.

[1643] It's in the fact that, like, yeah, like, this is making people focus on their families, turn inward, you know, go from this mentality of excess to minimalization.

[1644] Like, all of it is just correcting our mentality that's now been ingrained for so long.

[1645] Yeah, it's a great perspective shifter.

[1646] It really is.

[1647] So we had Stephen Dubner on who was so smart and interesting.

[1648] And it was funny.

[1649] I didn't notice this when we were recording it, but the conversation just takes so many left and rights.

[1650] He's a perfect talking partner.

[1651] Yeah.

[1652] Because he's happy to just laterally move all over the landscape.

[1653] And he knows, I don't even want to say a little bit.

[1654] He knows a good amount about most things.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] So he can just duck and weave.

[1657] Duck and weave.

[1658] Yeah.

[1659] The conversation takes a lot of twisties, which I started laughing at some point because I just realized, like, we couldn't keep one topic going.

[1660] But it was great.

[1661] I liked him.

[1662] I mean, I shouldn't be surprised that I enjoyed him so much because I loved Freakonomics the book.

[1663] There was, like, how people name their kids, but like this explosion of people naming their children, Lexus and Mercedes.

[1664] Oh, really?

[1665] Yes.

[1666] That stuff's fascinating.

[1667] And then just reams and reams of data on how people were naming their kids and how it was, like, kind of motivated by social mobility.

[1668] and the book is phenomenal.

[1669] And I've listened to tons of that podcast before we even had them.

[1670] But the baby names, is that like hopeful that they will, when you name your baby, something like that's high status, that they'll like acquire that kind of status?

[1671] Well, I think it's an attempt to bestow status on to you with the name because that name itself has status.

[1672] Interesting.

[1673] Lexus, Mercedes, cash money.

[1674] I don't know that I've ever met anyone named Lexus.

[1675] Oh, Alexis.

[1676] Sure, sure, sure.

[1677] There was a huge amount of babies named Lexus.

[1678] Really?

[1679] I think the late 90s.

[1680] Again, it's been 14 years since I read for economics.

[1681] Right.

[1682] I'm hanging on by a thread about how much I remember.

[1683] But it's a fascinating rate.

[1684] Like, I like all that money ball stuff.

[1685] Remember money ball?

[1686] I love money ball.

[1687] Yeah, I just love when like smarts overpower.

[1688] Me too.

[1689] Me too.

[1690] Yeah, that's a goody.

[1691] And I do think we should take a little detour right now for Tiger King.

[1692] We're into it just like, I think everyone else in the country world is right now.

[1693] But if you're not, if you're not, check it out.

[1694] It's the first documentary since Wild Wild Country that have been this lustful over.

[1695] We have one episode left.

[1696] It's seven episodes.

[1697] Pretty unbelievable.

[1698] A little panicky about only being one left.

[1699] What's really funny is it's almost the same story as Wild Wild World Country in that it's just an exploration of escalation of reaction.

[1700] action.

[1701] It's a feud.

[1702] The movie is a feud.

[1703] Yeah.

[1704] And both people are willing to keep going.

[1705] There's so many layers to this documentary, though.

[1706] It takes about a thousand turns.

[1707] You have no idea where it's going.

[1708] Oh, my God.

[1709] So many things happen.

[1710] How often do we pause it and go, hold on a second.

[1711] I'm watching a gubernatorial race all of a sudden now?

[1712] It's crazy.

[1713] I feel like documentarians are the bill gates of yes that's exactly what i was going to say they're like bill gates like it's magical the way these things the good ones come together you have to be such a risk taker to be a documentarian because you're like i guess i'm going to devote the next six years to this person or this concept or this thing and you kind of hope i assume something evolves something will happen but you don't know you don't know although if you look at just Joe Exotic, yes, that's your lead character's name.

[1714] If you look at Joe Exotics, like last 18 months.

[1715] Yeah.

[1716] He just go, hey, Joe, what were you up to the last 18 months?

[1717] And you heard what he was up to?

[1718] You would be certain that a ton more was coming in the next 18 months.

[1719] Yeah.

[1720] I mean, this guy hasn't had a month of his life that didn't involve some incredible theatrics.

[1721] It's true.

[1722] But you just never know you're taking a risk.

[1723] And even like the ones like the staircase that have like big twists.

[1724] Some of them have huge.

[1725] twists.

[1726] Yeah, yeah.

[1727] And you cannot predict that you, but I guess that's the hope with all these documentaries that at some point some twist will emerge.

[1728] Yeah.

[1729] So just bravo to the documentarians out there.

[1730] Round of applause.

[1731] There's so many people to be grateful for right now.

[1732] I know.

[1733] So many nurses, so many doctors, so many truck drivers, people in logistics.

[1734] People work at grocery store workers and pharmacists.

[1735] Seven -11 employees.

[1736] I'm really grateful to all those folks.

[1737] I am too.

[1738] I So if it wasn't clear, I acknowledge that I'm so privileged right now.

[1739] We've been giving people way more than they're supposed to get paid.

[1740] And Bob the pool guy texts me that he thought there was a clerical error.

[1741] Yeah, you told me, yeah.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] I'm not bragging.

[1744] I want people to know, yes, I have extra money.

[1745] And we're also paying everybody that no longer is working for us.

[1746] I know.

[1747] Because that could be encouraging to other people who own businesses as an example.

[1748] Yeah.

[1749] I feel like, bragging.

[1750] I do.

[1751] I mean, we towed this line all the time, Kristen and I, all the time we're trying to figure out.

[1752] Like, what do we say so that it feels like lead by example, but also enough.

[1753] We get it.

[1754] You're giving away money.

[1755] Like, there's a fine line that gets, so I think everyone just has to, like, evaluate within themselves, what can I do, if anything?

[1756] Yeah.

[1757] And I should do that.

[1758] And that can be small.

[1759] That can be $10 if you have $10 to spare.

[1760] or it can be, I feel very scared that I won't have enough money to get through this.

[1761] I cannot give anything away.

[1762] That's fine.

[1763] Oh, yeah.

[1764] Yeah, I would never be on here being judgmental of people.

[1765] Oh, I know.

[1766] Yeah.

[1767] And also, one of my favorite aspects of the 2008 downturn was there's this long history in Judaism where when times are hardest, that's when they're called on to give the most.

[1768] I forget the verbiage of it, but I saw it circulating, and a lot of my Jewish friends were telling me about it.

[1769] And it's like, there's a big push in those times to go against all your fears and be extra generous.

[1770] Yeah.

[1771] And I just think that's beautiful.

[1772] I do too.

[1773] You know, the test in my mind is I don't feel any ego bump by saying it.

[1774] I'm not proud of myself when I say we're paying people.

[1775] Well, probably because I've never been someone who got their approval through being generous to strain.

[1776] But you have gotten approval from having money.

[1777] Wow.

[1778] I mean, you've gotten self -esteem from that.

[1779] Oh, for me personally.

[1780] For you personally.

[1781] Oh, big time.

[1782] From having excess money.

[1783] And this is a way of saying that you do.

[1784] Well, I do.

[1785] That's a fact.

[1786] I don't think anyone doesn't realize that.

[1787] But it can give an ego boost in that way of like, I gave this.

[1788] And then in a roundabout way you're saying, I was able to give this.

[1789] You know what I mean?

[1790] Yes.

[1791] But I think we can draw a huge decision.

[1792] distinction between people taking pictures of themselves getting on a private jet like what do you think of that to me that's just going hey look i'm rich and can throw money away for sure and so if i was doing that i i would feel like i trust my spidey sense i would feel gross about that yeah yeah and i don't feel gross at all saying if you're in a position keep paying people maybe overpay them you know whatever i don't yeah it just doesn't feel like bragging there are many things i say on here that are straight bragging about my driving skills all these i there's a ton of things i brag about but for me i can i don't feel in my soul at all that i'm like bragging i think if i'm honest at all times i will come out ahead ethically for myself so like if i got on here and acted like i was having a terrible time in the quarantine i would just be lying i would be being untrue to be sympathetic to people who are suffering.

[1793] And I don't, I don't think that's right.

[1794] I don't think me lying.

[1795] No one's at, but, but that's extremes.

[1796] You don't have to lie.

[1797] It's the presentation, I think.

[1798] You can say, I personally am having a lot of gratitude.

[1799] I, you know, we're all living together and that's a nice change.

[1800] And I, I'm appreciating all these things.

[1801] But to like say, I'm having so much fun.

[1802] Those two sound different to me. Well, like, someone hates.

[1803] you because you got a house and I basically didn't feel bad about that I was like fuck you like someone wrote like I feel so gross that we're supposed to be excited that Monica bought a house because we listen and I was like well you didn't fucking pay for her house the show's for free and fuck you like I don't if you can't be excited that Monica got a house because you didn't get a house that's your shit right I don't see the correlation well if someone's home going, I fucking hate Dax because he's having fun.

[1804] I don't think anyone should say, I hate Dax because he's having fun, but I think they might think like, oh, good for you.

[1805] You're having fun.

[1806] I can't pay my rent.

[1807] I can't do, you know, it just, I think it can stir up, like.

[1808] I totally agree with you, but my question is, is that my problem or that person's problem?

[1809] But it's a little, but tone death to the world is a real thing.

[1810] Well, but I'm, yeah, but I'm recognizing that it's terrible for a lot of people.

[1811] Isn't that the problem?

[1812] I'm just trying to, Isolate, what is the actual objectionable thing?

[1813] Because I might agree.

[1814] But I just want to hang in on exactly what it is.

[1815] It's just, to me, it just feels insensitive.

[1816] It's insensitive to what other people might be going through to be like, I got you.

[1817] Like, you see a funeral procession.

[1818] And then Aaron and I are on motorcycles and we're having like the time of our life.

[1819] And then we ride a wheelie by the funeral procession.

[1820] And you're like, you just don't.

[1821] Maybe just don't do that.

[1822] During the funeral process.

[1823] Yeah.

[1824] That's pretty good.

[1825] I can get behind that.

[1826] And we were screaming, it feels so good to be alive.

[1827] Yeah.

[1828] I just, I know part of me is like, I don't think it's.

[1829] I want everyone that's feeling good to be able to feel good.

[1830] There's so many pressures to not feel good.

[1831] Yeah, I agree.

[1832] And no, I know, I'm asking you to feel bad.

[1833] There's a difference.

[1834] Well, actually, I do feel bad for the people who are fucked right now.

[1835] No, no. I'm saying no one's asking you.

[1836] you personally to have a bad time.

[1837] Right.

[1838] But maybe don't just, like, run around talking about how great of a time you're having.

[1839] We're all going through the exact same situation right now.

[1840] And it's affecting people in vastly different ways.

[1841] Yeah.

[1842] So it just, it, like, shines a light on how different...

[1843] Income inequality.

[1844] All the things.

[1845] Yeah.

[1846] And so, yeah, maybe just be a little sensitive.

[1847] Okay, we got to start.

[1848] There's so many.

[1849] So maple syrup heist, you said in the 2000s, that's right, over the course of several months between 2011 and 2012, nearly 122 ,000 barrels were stolen in a suspected insider job from an FPAQ facility in Quebec.

[1850] The syrup was stored in unmarked white metal barrels inspected only once a year.

[1851] Thieves used trucks to transport barrels to a remote sugar shack where they siphoned off the maple syrup, refilled the barrels with water, then returned them to the facility.

[1852] As the operation progressed, the thieves started siphoning syrup directly off barrels in the reserve without refilling them.

[1853] The stolen syrup was trucked to the south, Vermont, and east New Brunswick, where it was trafficked in many small batches to reduce suspicion.

[1854] It was typically sold to legitimate syrup distributors who were unaware of its origin.

[1855] That's crazy.

[1856] It is, right?

[1857] Yeah.

[1858] A heist.

[1859] It's pretty cool.

[1860] I like heist.

[1861] Obviously, I love Oceans 11.

[1862] Yes, I love Heist, too.

[1863] Was the Seagram's fortune built on prohibition era smuggling?

[1864] Oh, yeah, he and I are the worst for you.

[1865] So we're both just popping off shit we heard a decade ago.

[1866] I know.

[1867] I'm going to read.

[1868] So the versatile Bronfman and his brothers went into the mail order business shipping whiskey by rail.

[1869] When the government banned the mail order business but said it was legal to sell alcohol as medicine, the Bronfman's just slapped on new labels such as rockabai cough cure and liver and kidney cure.

[1870] With the passage of the Volstead Act in 1919, making and drinking liquor became illegal in the United States, opening up a lucrative new market for the Bronfmans.

[1871] Rather than reduce alcohol consumption, prohibitions seem to stimulate it as more and more Americans succumb to the temptation of this newly forbidden fruit.

[1872] The liquor kept flowing, now controlled by gangsters.

[1873] The gangsters were constantly looking for more alcohol and the Bronfmans had it.

[1874] Although the sale of liquor for use within Canada was prohibited, Canadian authorities did not ban its export to the United States.

[1875] States.

[1876] In fact, the government almost encouraged it because of the tremendous tax revenue it generated.

[1877] Okay, is non -sequitorial a word?

[1878] No. Oh, bummer.

[1879] Yeah.

[1880] A lot of people say, like, I use non -plussed in a way that offends people.

[1881] You do?

[1882] Yeah, because the original definition means basically the opposite of how I use it, but so many people in America use it the way I use it.

[1883] It is a definition in Webster.

[1884] Yeah, so a lot of people will complain when I use it, and then I...

[1885] How do you use it?

[1886] is non -plus, like I was not bothered by it.

[1887] But it actually originally means very bothered.

[1888] But it also means not bothered.

[1889] And so I always screenshot the definition from Webster and I respond with the screenshot.

[1890] Interesting.

[1891] So in that way, I bet we could, if we just use it enough eventually, they'll, they'll make it a word.

[1892] Oh, yeah.

[1893] Yeah.

[1894] He said, he said gelled.

[1895] I don't actually remember why he said it.

[1896] He said gelled and then he said, I don't know, whatever you gild.

[1897] I don't know, because I don't remember.

[1898] but gelding means castrating a male animal.

[1899] Oh.

[1900] Yeah.

[1901] I should get gelded.

[1902] Okay, let me tell a really funny joke that Martin Moll told me. Martin Moll is a phenomenal actor.

[1903] He was on the ranch.

[1904] And then he is in an episode of Bless This Mass. He's also a painter.

[1905] He's also the most amazing painting.

[1906] Yeah.

[1907] He does these photorealistic paintings that are impossible that they're not photos.

[1908] Yeah.

[1909] Anyways, he told me this joke, there's a man at a used car a lot.

[1910] He's looking at a car up and down.

[1911] He's kicking the tires.

[1912] And then the salesman comes out and he says, you're thinking about buying a car?

[1913] And the man says, no, I'm thinking about women.

[1914] But yeah, I need to buy a car.

[1915] So I'm here to get one.

[1916] And I think it's so sums up men in general.

[1917] Yeah.

[1918] We're thinking about women like 90 % of the day.

[1919] And so many times I have thought with my friends, we've talked about like just the amount of brain power that would be opened up if you did get castrated.

[1920] Oh.

[1921] I mean, it could be a cures for all kinds of things.

[1922] Do you think it would fix the?

[1923] mentality?

[1924] I have no idea.

[1925] I don't really know how...

[1926] Well, here's what I do know about castration.

[1927] When you castrate a pit bull, it's far less likely to bite a child's face off.

[1928] And bulls.

[1929] You can't have bulls around.

[1930] Right.

[1931] Somehow their testosterone goes way down without the balls.

[1932] Because that's where it's being made.

[1933] Well, it's being made...

[1934] It is...

[1935] I think it is being made in the gonads.

[1936] Yeah.

[1937] Yeah.

[1938] Yeah, so that's probably why.

[1939] Yeah.

[1940] You can't be around a bowl with balls.

[1941] Any of them, they'll kill you.

[1942] But then as soon as you cast for them, they're like, they're not pleasant, but they're not lethal.

[1943] In the dock, in Tiger King, you know, there's a lot of humans interacting with big cats.

[1944] 500 -pound tigers.

[1945] Insane animals.

[1946] And for one, I mean, they're just so gorgeous, these animals.

[1947] They're impossible looking.

[1948] They look like a kid drew a picture of just a random.

[1949] a beast and it came to life.

[1950] Mythical beast.

[1951] Also, there's so many people in this documentary around these tigers and lions and ligers.

[1952] And I was wondering how many people would be comfortable being within five feet, social distance, six feet of a tiger.

[1953] I would not.

[1954] No, me either.

[1955] Me neither.

[1956] I am terrified of those things.

[1957] But I guess a lot of people would.

[1958] They're selling these services as...

[1959] Tourism.

[1960] Yeah, and like all these people show up.

[1961] They want pictures with tigers.

[1962] Exactly.

[1963] And they want to hold the cubs.

[1964] And I mean, they are really cute.

[1965] The cubs are, yeah, yeah, they are.

[1966] Again, and I don't want to embarrass anyone who's gotten their picture taking with a tiger.

[1967] Because, again, you don't really know everything behind it when you do that.

[1968] That's true.

[1969] But also, it's really bad.

[1970] Now that you know, it's pretty embarrassing.

[1971] everyone wants their picture with the tiger.

[1972] I guess, I don't know.

[1973] I have pictures of me on safari, pretty close to animals.

[1974] I guess I liked that.

[1975] No, but they're out in their, they're in their element.

[1976] That's the difference is, I mean, I do think a lot of people are just like, oh, cute.

[1977] Like, these little baby tigers are so cute.

[1978] How fun, let's do it.

[1979] They're just oblivious.

[1980] It's not really embarrassing.

[1981] They're just not thinking it through as, okay, so how did these tigers get here?

[1982] Shouldn't they be out in the wild?

[1983] Are they being mistreated?

[1984] You know what just occurred to me?

[1985] This isn't a hypothetical question for me because the animal wrangler we hired for hit and run to bring a pit bull.

[1986] He shows up with the pit bull.

[1987] There's a very standard practice on a movie.

[1988] And then on nowhere he goes, hey, I got a baby tiger in my back of my car.

[1989] Would you like to hold it?

[1990] And I didn't want to hold it.

[1991] In fact, I didn't hold it.

[1992] But I felt inclined, like the guy was so excited that my codependency was like, oh, I'll go look at this.

[1993] thing this is really important the guy and he handed it to bradley and then he took a picture and then he sold that picture to a tabloid no and then after the movie wrapped i got a call from a federal investigator wanting to meet with me to talk about it and i'm like look man i don't know anything about that guy i didn't hire that guy so in the movie hired him i have no knowledge other than i met him in a parking lot and he had a tiger and he wanted us to hold it but i had no desire to hold that tiger whatsoever.

[1994] Oh, boy.

[1995] And I don't think Cooper had one either.

[1996] It just got shoved in his hands.

[1997] And they snapped a picker.

[1998] Oh, no. Oh, it was the worst outcome imaginable.

[1999] Was it Joe Exotic?

[2000] I wish.

[2001] It wasn't.

[2002] I would have held it probably if it was serious.

[2003] Well, he's so charismatic.

[2004] He would have convinced me that I'd be more like him if I held him.

[2005] Okay.

[2006] So is there a plastic bag ban in California?

[2007] You said it got.

[2008] I feel like it got lifted because I see them.

[2009] In fact, yesterday, I got chicken from the grocery store and they put it in a plastic bag.

[2010] The rest of the stuff was in paper bags, but they put chicken in them.

[2011] Well, yeah.

[2012] So in August 2014, California became the first date to enact legislation imposing a statewide ban on single -use plastic bags at large retail stores.

[2013] Then in 2018, was it 18?

[2014] No, 16.

[2015] In 2016, that vote was back up on the ballot.

[2016] and it did get upheld.

[2017] So California voters upheld a state law prohibiting single -use plastic grocery bags.

[2018] Environmentalist declared victory.

[2019] Business groups cried government overreach.

[2020] But still, shopping bags made from plastic film remain commonplace in checkout lines across the state.

[2021] That's because the law contains an exception pushed by lobbyists for grocers and some plastic companies that allow stores to sell thicker plastic bags for 10 cents.

[2022] The new bags, while classified as reusable, closely resemble their single -use predecessors and are often thrown away after one transaction.

[2023] Still, they satisfy the law because technically they can be used 125 times without falling apart.

[2024] That makes sense because this one was, it was nice and thick.

[2025] Yeah, so they're just thicker.

[2026] Loophole.

[2027] You touched on Ambien, men versus women.

[2028] You said it's two times powerful in women as it is men.

[2029] Yes, that is true.

[2030] Twice times powerful?

[2031] Yeah.

[2032] So you were right about that, but let me tell you something.

[2033] were really wrong about.

[2034] So I really do, this is a big time fact check.

[2035] Okay.

[2036] Jane Goodall is a vegetarian.

[2037] She's not a sometimes I might eat meat if it's on a, I won't order it at restaurants or something.

[2038] She wrote an article about this.

[2039] I stopped eating meat some 50 years ago when I looked at the pork chop on my plate and thought, this represents fear, pain, death.

[2040] That did it and I became an instant vegetarian.

[2041] And she looks like a whole, it's a whole article about why you should become a vegetarian.

[2042] Okay.

[2043] For all these reasons and more, I chose to become a vegetarian all those years ago.

[2044] I continue to ask people to consider what this choice really means on a moral and practical level for animals in the environment.

[2045] It's the choice to change our individual lives, which will in turn have enormous benefits for all of humanity and all of the other living creatures we share our home with.

[2046] She even has this whole, like, pledge.

[2047] What's the pledge?

[2048] She's encouraging people to eat meat less, so it's an I eat meat less pledge.

[2049] Okay, so maybe that's her, that's where I got the.

[2050] Because Kenny said I'm doing this purging Goodall.

[2051] Oh.

[2052] Maybe part of the pledge is do it when it's ceremonial.

[2053] I think the pledge is like, do what you can to reduce as much as possible to get as close to vegetarian as you can.

[2054] Right, right.

[2055] But she herself is a vegetarian.

[2056] He doesn't fuck around even on Thanksgiving.

[2057] Okay.

[2058] Okay.

[2059] Speaking of Thanksgiving, great transition.

[2060] He said 99 .2 % of turkeys are bred for human consumption in the U .S. are artificially inseminated, yes.

[2061] Everything I read is like all.

[2062] Everyone's saying all.

[2063] Okay.

[2064] So he gave the reasoning as we like specific parts of the turkey, like breasts and stuff like that.

[2065] So they have to get really big time circles.

[2066] Yeah.

[2067] But a lot of what people are also saying is natural mating puts the female at risk of injury in commercial meat markets.

[2068] The male turkeys aren't gentle.

[2069] Yeah, they're a little aggressive.

[2070] Because it says artificial insemination is widely used to overcome low fertility and commercial turkeys, which results from unsuccessful mating as a consequence of large, heavily muscled birds being unable to physically complete the mating process.

[2071] Oh, okay.

[2072] That makes sense.

[2073] Oh, wow.

[2074] Yeah.

[2075] All right.

[2076] Okay.

[2077] Is there a culture where people eat a little bit of dead loved ones?

[2078] the four or four A, F -O -R -E people.

[2079] Can I guess where they're from?

[2080] Sure.

[2081] Papua New Guinea?

[2082] Yes.

[2083] Oh, yay.

[2084] How'd you know that?

[2085] Well, because they're the famous, they have some cannibalism historically.

[2086] A once isolated tribe in eastern Papua New Guinea had a long -standing tradition of mortuary feasts, eating the debt from their own community at funerals.

[2087] Men consume the flesh of their deceased relatives while women and children ate the brain.

[2088] Oh, wow.

[2089] It was an expression of respect for the lost loved ones, but the practice weakened havoc on the communities they left behind.

[2090] That's because a deadly molecule that lives in brains was spreading to the women who ate them, causing a horrible degenerative illness called Kuru that at one point killed 2 % of the population each year.

[2091] Oh, my gosh.

[2092] I guess they weren't cooking it, or maybe the molecule is resistant to heat.

[2093] I think they're cooking it.

[2094] I think they're just eating.

[2095] Well, actually, I have no idea how they were preparing it.

[2096] I should not say that.

[2097] I'm culturally relative, so I can't use any pejoratives to describe what they were doing.

[2098] Sure, sure, sure.

[2099] Our pedestrian deaths at an all -time high.

[2100] Despite the decrease in overall deaths, pedestrian and bicyclists' fatalities continue to rise.

[2101] More pedestrians and cyclists were killed in 2018 than in any year since 1990.

[2102] Deaths of pedestrians have jumped by 42 % in the last decade, even as the combined number of all other traffic deaths has fallen by 8%.

[2103] Oh, wow.

[2104] Gotta be cell phones.

[2105] I think it has to be, yeah.

[2106] Let's let me be a verdict.

[2107] Yeah, it's so fun.

[2108] It's self -offs.

[2109] Well, that's all the facts.

[2110] That was good.

[2111] That was a big juicy.

[2112] Yeah, yeah.

[2113] You guys are throwing out a lot of facts.

[2114] I probably skipped some.

[2115] Sorry.

[2116] That's all right.

[2117] Then you got a lot of them.

[2118] I got most.

[2119] I love you.

[2120] I love you.

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