Why Is “I Don’t Know” So Hard to Say? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
This week’s podcast is a new installment of “FREAK-quently Asked Questions,” in which Levitt and I respond to queries you submitted on the blog. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player above, or read the transcript below; earlier FAQ podcasts can be found here and here.)
You had so many excellent questions! Sadly, we only had time to field a handful. Ty Spalding asked one of the most interesting: “Why do people feel compelled to answer questions that they do not know the answer to?” Levitt replies:
Read More »What I’ve found in business is that almost no one will ever admit to not knowing the answer to a question. So even if they absolutely have no idea what the answer is, if it’s within their realm of expertise, faking is just an important part. I really have come to believe teaching MBAs that one of the most important things you learn as an MBA is how to pretend you know the answer to any question even though you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. And I’ve found it’s really one of the most destructive factors in business — is that everyone masquerades like they know the answer and no one will ever admit they don’t know the answer, and it makes it almost impossible to learn.
Bring Your Freakonomics Questions for a Radio FAQ
Once in a while, we do an FAQ podcast (that’s FREAK-quently Asked Questions) whereby you send us questions via the comments section and we answer them in a radio program. We’re gearing up to do another FAQ, likely to be released on Jan. 4, so fire away. Given the release date, you might consider asking about New Year’s resolutions (and the commitment devices we sometimes employ); the dangers of drunk walking; maybe even the reproductive provenance of your holiday meal. Feel free to ask followup questions on radio stuff we’ve done in the past too, like the “Prius Effect” (conspicuous conservation), the decline of hitchhiking, and whether expensive wines actually taste better. Thanks in advance.
FREAK-Quently Asked Questions: Nate Silver
Nate Silver is the proprietor of FiveThirtyEight.com, where his statistical wizardry (and common sense) during the recent elections made him the biggest new political star after a certain family named Obama.
He didn’t do quite so well on the Oscars but, really, do we care? Read More »
FREAK-Quently Asked Questions: Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen loves travel, hates coffee, and believes in blogging like perhaps no other blogger alive. Those are just a few of the things you’ll learn in the following FREAK-Quently Asked Questions with Cowen, a professor of economics, author, and world-renowned econoblogger who’s also a sucker for ethnic food. Enjoy. Read More »
FREAK-Quently Asked Questions: Mario Batali
Mario Batali is one of the best-known chefs/entrepreneurs in the world. During college, at Rutgers, he double majored: Spanish theater (who knew?) and economics. He was good enough to submit to our FREAK-Quently Asked Questions (past entries here).
An FAQ with Mario Batali: Read More »
FREAK-Quently Asked Questions: David Levin
Here’s the first installment of a new feature we’re trying out. It’s a simple idea: we wrote up a Freakonomics questionnaire and will now force it on a variety of people.
The first victim is Dave Levin, co-founder of the national charter-school program, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP). Read More »
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More on Saying “I Don’t Know”
In our latest podcast, “Why Is ‘I Don’t Know’ So Hard to Say?,” Levitt talked about how it is practically forbidden in the business world to say that you don’t know the answer to a question, lest you be deemed incompetent or irrelevant.
That idea has generated some reader feedback that I thought was interesting enough to share. First, from Mike Wrubel, an office manager for a medical practice in Elkhart, Indiana:
Read More »