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Search Results for: David Berri

Torture Royalties

David Gray‘s “Babylon” at all hours of the day and night, to distress detainees and soften them up for interrogation. Since this arguably constitutes a public performance of Gray’s song…



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Episode 139

Why Do We Get Angry?

What’s the difference between anger and indignation? What’s Angela’s problem with turkey sandwiches? And why wasn’t a No Stupid Questions listener angry at the men who assaulted him? Take the…


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Episode 89

How Valuable Is Enthusiasm?

What’s the difference between willpower and eagerness? Is there a lifehack that can make you zestier? And could it help Stephen improve his golf game?…

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Episode 128

How Can You Give Better Gifts?

How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?



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Episode 189

How to Fix a Broken High-Schooler, in Four Easy Steps (Replay)

Our take: maybe the steps aren’t so easy, but a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for…


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Episode 469

The U.S. Is Just Different — So Let’s Stop Pretending We’re Not (Replay)

We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as…

Find My Phone

David Segal had a wonderful piece in The Times on Sunday pointing out a missing market in theft protection. “Tracking down cellphones is not rocket science.” Corporations like Amazon and…



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Episode 9

Why Is It So Hard to Be Alone With Our Thoughts?

Also: how do you avoid screwing up your kids?

Is Picking Kiwi Fruit the Answer?

…program, which John Gibson and David McKenzie evaluate in a new paper. The effects are substantial. “In addition to estimating per-capita income gains of 30-40%, we find that participating in…



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Episode 78

Porta-Potties

They’re not always the nicest places to go — but for their owners, portable toilets are a lucrative revenue stream. Zachary Crockett lifts the lid….

Who's the Biggest Loser in E-Books?

…Publisher’s Margin: $4.75 hardcover; $6.32 e-book. Publisher’s E-Gain = +33%   Hell’s Corner, by David Baldacci Author’s Standard Royalty: $4.20 hardcover; $2.63 e-book. Author’s E-Loss = -37% Publisher’s Margin: $5.80…



Our Daily Bleg: Let Me Trace Your Quotes

…you help? The Yale Book of Quotations has versions of this by Pascal, Henry David Thoreau, and Woodrow Wilson. The most “original” of these is the following by Blaise Pascal,…



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Episode 10

Why Are Stories Stickier Than Statistics?

Also: are the most memorable stories less likely to be true?

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Episode 343

An Astronaut, a Catalan, and Two Linguists Walk Into a Bar…

In this live episode of “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” we learn why New York has skinny skyscrapers, how to weaponize water, and what astronauts talk about in space….


Is "Statistically Significant" Really Significant?

A new paper by psychologists E.J. Masicampo and David Lalande finds that an uncanny number of psychology findings just barely qualify as statistically significant. From the abstract: We examined a…



What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? Part Six

…[an] outright stupid fool?” asked Shine, who loves to discredit former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. “He let [Rudy] Giuliani get control of the streets. See, most black men,…



Kids and Congress

…had no children, this was not a risk. Indeed, David McCullough says that Thomas Jefferson‘s supporters made a similar argument in the run up to the 1796 election against John…




Drunk Driving: Is the Glass Half-Empty?

…besides the intoxicated drivers. For example, we all pay for drunk driving through higher car insurance premiums. Ted R. Miller, Rebecca S. Spicer and David T. Levy estimated that each…



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Episode 301

What Would Be the Best Universal Language?

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…

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Episode 181

Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition

A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.


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Episode 85

What It Takes to Know Everything

Victoria Groce is one of the best trivia contestants on earth. She explains the structure of a good question, why she knits during competitions, and how to memorize 160,000 flashcards….

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Episode 80

Get Your Share of the Pie

Game theorist Barry Nalebuff explains how he used basic economics to build Honest Tea into a multimillion-dollar business, and shares his innovative approach to negotiation.