Bring Your Questions for Skeptic-in-Chief Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer is perhaps the world’s only professional skeptic. As the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and executive director of the Skeptics Society, Shermer has turned his innate skepticism into a full-time job. In our recent podcast “The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It?” Stephen Dubner talks to Shermer about the evolutionary basis for our tendency toward “magical thinking” and why humans are conditioned to see threats often where none exist. Here’s an excerpt: Read More »
Weird Recycling: Full Transcript
This is the full transcript for “Weird Recycling: Clever Ways to Not Waste Your Waste.”
[MUSIC]
Stephen J. DUBNER: Hi there. Are you Carlos? Very nice to meet you.
Carlos AYALA: Great to meet you as well.
DUBNER: I recently had lunch in Chinatown – the Chinatown in New York City, where I live – with a very pleasant fellow named Carlos Ayala. We met up at a place called the Golden Unicorn, to eat something I’d never had before: chicken feet, also known as chicken paws. Carlos is the guy you want to eat chicken paws with. He works at Perdue Farms, the third-largest chicken producer in the U.S. He’s the Vice President of International…
Carlos AYALA: …which means I’m in charge of everything that Perdue does on the food side of the business, so the chicken and turkeys, that’s outside of the United States. So my main focus is on exporting products that are not so desired in the U.S. and sending them overseas.
DUBNER: And you are a fan of the paw. You like to eat the chicken paw. It’s like Hair Club for Men. You are not just a spokesman, right, you love the paw?
AYALA: That’s very true. It’s actually the best part of the chicken as far as I’m concerned. It’s my favorite thing to eat.
Weird Recycling: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “Weird Recycling: Clever Ways to Not Waste Your Waste.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
I grew up on a little farm in a big family without a lot of resources. We reused, recycled, or repurposed everything imaginable. A lot of my siblings worked at a diner and brought home one-gallon glass mayonnaise jars, which we used as milk jugs for our cow. All the junk mail got turned into scratch paper (and, if it was really high-quality, homework paper). We of course had a massive compost heap out back. Those cardboard tubes from wire coat hangers? We used them to make firestarters (and, sometimes, fireworks 
). Recycling wasn’t remotely a political thing; it was a way of life. Not just because it saved money, which it obviously did, but also because it was satisfyingly creative and worthwhile on a lot of levels.
So I’m always on the lookout for recycling stories, the weirder the better. Read More »
“Football Freakonomics”: Is the N.F.L. a Quarterback-Driven League?
We launched the Football Freakonomics series in the spring with an episode called “The Quarterback Quandary.” It examined the difficulty of drafting QB’s since they tend to be a) vital to a team’s success; and b) relatively expensive; but c) hard to assess coming out of college even if they have a substantial track record.
One thing we can all agree on, however: the NFL today is a quarterback’s league — isn’t it?
That’s the question we ask in our latest Football Freakonomics segment.
The numbers certainly line up in support of the quarterback’s dominance. As you can see in the accompanying graphic, there has been a sea change in the pass/run ratio over the past few decades. In the 1970’s, NFL offenses averaged roughly 26 passes and 35 runs per game. By the 2000’s, those numbers had essentially flip-flopped, with about 32 passes and 28 runs per game. Read More »
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