The Freakonomics Guide to Hitchhiking: A Contest

Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast “Where Have All the Hitchhikers Gone?” has a pretty obvious premise. You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed or read the transcript here.

What may not be super obvious to everyone out there is the meaning of the graphic above. So let’s play name that reference and throw in some swag for good measure!

We haven’t forgotten that your preferred method of giveaway is “random,” and we’ve had a contest before on this blog where the prize is contingent on your comment number. So here’s how it’s going to work this time: the 42nd comment will win if it bears the correct answer. If comment 42 has the wrong answer, the winning number doubles and the 84th comment will win — but again, only if the answer is correct. The winning number will triple, quadruple, etc. until we get a winner.

So tell us, what does 42 signify and where is it from? Hint: the title of this post.