What Are the Secrets of the German Economy — and Should We Steal Them?
Smart government policies, good industrial relations, and high-end products have helped German manufacturing beat back the threats of globalization.
We filled this episode of Tell Me Something I Don't Know with insights about the true value of ground beef, sleeping in, company names, and more. Alex Wagner (CBS This Morning Saturday, The Atlantic) is our special guest co-host, with AJ Jacobs (author of It's All Relative) as real-time fact-checker.
Smart government policies, good industrial relations, and high-end products have helped German manufacturing beat back the threats of globalization.
It should surprise no one, and delight everyone, that Richard Thaler has won this year’s Nobel in economics. Congratulations! Thaler is a big reason I personally got interested in economics. (I’ve known him quite a bit longer than I’ve known Steve Levitt.) He is everything to be admired in a scholar and thinker: original, judicious, […]
From the results of the high-school "maturity exam" in Poland (courtesy of reader Artur Janc), comes this histogram showing the distribution of scores for the required Polish language test, which is the only subject that all students are required to take, and pass.
Not quite a normal...
Mary Roach (author of Stiff, Spook, Bonk, Gulp, and Grunt) is our special guest co-host, with AJ Jacobs (author of It's All Relative) as real-time fact-checker. If the promise of tractor beams doesn't pull you in, our guests also explore robotic fish, counting to infinity, and more.
Public bathrooms are noisy, poorly designed, and often nonexistent. What to do?
Alex Guarnaschelli (Iron Chef America and Chopped) is our special guest co-host, with Sean Rameswaram (Radiolab Presents: More Perfect) as real-time fact-checker. Tell Me Something I Don't Know explores the origins of food words, children's menus, and seltzer.
He’s been U.S. Treasury Secretary, a chief economist for the Obama White House and the World Bank, and president of Harvard. He’s one of the most brilliant economists of his generation (and perhaps the most irascible). And he thinks the Trump Administration is wrong on just about everything.
A language invented in the 19th century, and meant to be universal, it never really caught on. So why does a group of Esperantists from around the world gather once a year to celebrate their bond?
Hari Kondabolu (comedian and host of Politically ReActive) is our special guest co-host, with Sean Rameswaram (Radiolab Presents: More Perfect) as real-time fact-checker. Tell Me Something I Don't Know reaches into our “grab bag” for fascinating facts on the downside of keeping secrets, the origin of fantasy sports, what pronunciations say about our politics, and more.
We explore votes for English, Indonesian, and … Esperanto! The search for a common language goes back millennia, but so much still gets lost in translation. Will technology finally solve that?
Alexandra Petri (Washington Post columnist) is our special guest co-host, with AJ Jacobs (author of It's All Relative) as real-time fact-checker. TMSIDK covers everything from birth to earth, including pregnancy tests, parenting, monogamy, aging better, and, finally, embalming.