What's the "Best" Exercise? - Freakonomics Radio

In this episode of Freakonomics, a listener asked what the best, most efficient form of exercise for her to be doing. Economics involves getting the most out of small investments, so this question relates to the subject well. For the answer, the host turns to a series of experts.

According to Gretchen Reynolds, writer of the Phys Ed column of the New York Times, 80 percent of Americans are not meeting the recommended amount of exercise. This means that for anyone who is trying to get the needed amount of physical activity are ahead of most people.

The next expert, nutrition expert Dr. Peter Attia believes that the wrong question is being asked. It's not about what the most efficient form of exercise is, it's about what the person's desired outcome of that exercise is. The rest of the show looks at exercise to increase longevity.

Reynolds believes the squat is the best exercise for longevity. This exercise uses muscles you need to get up out of a chair.

"One of the best indicators of whether you will be independent well into your twilight years is if you can get up out of a chair." --Gretchen Reynolds

 Another expert, David Meltzer of the University of Chicago says the intensity of exercise is measured by the number of calories burned. This is given a score called the metabolic equivalent score. For example, running is a 10, golfing is a 4.5 and resting is a 1.

The experts suggest three I's to the most efficient and cost effective exercising. The first is intensity. Reynolds suggests exercising very hard for a brief period, resting, then going hard again will yield the same results as moderate exercise for two hours. Attia mentions individualization, meaning that only certain exercises will work for certain people. They all agree on the third "I, I...like to do it. The exercise has to be something you will stick with.

Leakin Park - Serial

Listen to episode here

With every mystery, coincidences that are too unusual to be swept under the rug arise. This episode of Serial examines the most pressing, and whether or not there could have been another suspect.

This is episode 3 of Serial, a podcast recounting a true crime that happened in 1999. When Hae Lee Min, a high school student goes missing, her boyfriend Adnan becomes the main suspect. He is later tried and convicted of killing her, though he has always maintained his innocence. Episode 3 talks about the mysterious story of Mr. S, and his connection to the case.

Mr. S. was driving back to work from lunch when he decided to pull over on the side of the road to relieve himself. He walked 127 feet into the woods to do so, which is where he discovered Hae's body. He alerted authorities right away.

Why would he be considered a suspect? It was discussed in the episode why he would need to walk 127 feet into the woods in order to relieve himself. That's a far walk. Hae's body was also very well hidden under a log. When the detective reached the scene after the body's discovery, he could barely see it. How was it that he just happened to find that spot and notice a well hidden body?

A background check on Mr. S. found that he had some trouble in the past. He was taken in for indecent exposure many times. That also brings up another question: Why would someone with a history of indecent exposure feel the need to walk that far into the woods to urinate?

The first time the detectives question Mr. S., he fails his polygraph test when he told his story. He told them he was nervous about a real estate deal that day, so they did a do over. Mr. S. passed the next polygraph test and then faded from suspicion.

There are still unanswered questions about Mr. S. The odds of him happening to stumble upon her body are slim. He may not have killed her, but he might have had prior knowledge to her whereabouts. Or everything could have been a coincidence and his story checks out. What do you think about Mr. S.? Could he have been connected to the crime?

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The Three Hardest Words in the English Language - Freakonomics Radio

We're humans. We don't know everything. When is the last time you gave an answer to someone when really, you didn't know the answer? People do this all the time. This episode of Freakonomics Radio looks at the three hardest words to say: I don't know.

Stephen Dubner, the host of Freakonomics regularly gives speeches to various companies. He often sees that when a subordinate is asked a question by their boss, the employee will always give an answer, even if they have no idea what they're talking about. Why can't the person just admit they don't have the answer?

"MBA's are incredibly good at faking the answers when they don't know. But that's so counterproductive" - Steve Levitt, Prof. of Economics, University of Chicago

To find out, Dubner sought the expertise of Amanda Waterman, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Leeds. She conducted studies with children on the subject of the episode. She asked children questions that the only logical answer is "I don't know." Such questions included "Is red heavier than blue?" and "What do feet eat for breakfast?" Three-fourths of the children responded to the question, even though there was no answer.

There is an impulse for children to answer because of pressure in the academic setting. When a teacher poses a question, they want to seem smart so their peers and the teacher respect them more. This transfers into the workplace. Adults answer to their boss so they leave a better impression. In the same study, 25 percent of adults answered the questions when the right answer is "I don't know." The hosts say that we give firm answers to questions we don't know all the time.

Marketers and businessmen sometimes admit to not knowing when they should. For example, professor of economics and co-host Steve Levitt found that companies that need to conduct tests on their products or its advertising have trouble doing this. That is because the first step in conducting an experiment is admitting that they don't know the answer to something.

The hosts of the show urge us to start to create a culture where saying "I don't know" is okay to do. If we answer when we don't know the answer, we never learn. Admitting we have no idea about something is the first step into learning for ourselves, which makes things more productive for society overall.

The next time you are asked a question you don't know the answer to, what will you do?

The Alibi - Serial

Listen to this episode here

What were you doing six weeks ago last Friday around 2:00 pm? If you are unable to answer, you could be going to jail for a long time.

The podcast "Serial" follows one real murder case throughout 12 episodes. The story starts in 1999 in Baltimore after school gets out. Hae Min Lee, a high school student disappears, and was later found strangled to death. The suspect is her boyfriend and homecoming king Adnan Syed. Throughout the trial, he claims he's innocent.

After the lengthy trial, Adnan was found guilty. It was later discovered that the lawyer representing Adnan didn't follow through with a potential witness named Asia McClain. This witness could have proven his innocence. A letter written by Asia claims that Adnan was at the library at the time of the murder.

Woven throughout the first episode of this story are interviews from Asia, Adnan's friends, and Adnan himself from prison. He still maintains his innocence. The host of the show, along with Asia don't know what to believe.

Future episodes of the show will explore the story further, featuring background information on those involved and examinations on the evidence. Telling one story throughout many episodes is unique for a podcast, and audiences took notice. It quickly became one of the most popular podcasts ever, with 68 million downloads. Listeners get to keep track of characters, hear their stories, and piece together the puzzle to decide for themselves if Adnan was guilty. Because this is a real story, it makes it more interesting for the audience.

The opening of the episode was interesting, in that the host asked teenagers what they were doing last Friday in order to understand the difficulty Adnan had remembering what he was doing. Some could not answer, and some gave conflicting reports.

The Chocolate Curse - Planet Money

Listen to this episode of Planet Money here.

Have you noticed the quality of chocolate declining in the past few years? No? Many chocolate companies are switching to a lesser quality cocoa bean, and are hoping no one notices.

Cocoa beans  are difficult to grow. They only thrive in certain regions of the world, and are very prone to diseases. Ecuador has a reputation for growing some of the finest beans in the world. One Ecuadorian farmer noticed that all of his trees succumbed to Witch's Broom disease, making the cocoa unusable.

Witch's Broom disease

This farmer wanted to make a plant that would not easily get disease, and could be grown in more places. After cross breeding different species for 12 years, he stumbled upon the solution. He created a super cocoa tree. These trees are much shorter than usual, but grow cocoa pods the size of a human head. It grew 10 times the amount of cocoa, known as CCN. This made chocolate companies very interested.

However, CCN did not taste at all like the fine chocolate Ecuador was known for. One farmer described it as a "rusty nails" taste. This caused Ecuador's chocolate rating to be downgraded.

Years later, the flavor of these beans were improved through new processes. It didn't taste as good as the old Ecuadorian chocolate, though. It tasted bland. But this was good enough for chocolate companies, who soon started mixing this in with other chocolate. After taste tests, consumers could not tell the difference in taste, with many believing this to be fine chocolate. Odds are, we all have eaten chocolate with this bean in it.

I don't believe the majority of us have refined enough palettes to tell the difference between this and finer chocolate. When we're craving it, chocolate all tastes the same. I have not noticed a decline in flavor, though it is happening.

The Trust Engineers - RadioLab

Facebook and other online social media websites are changing the way we communicate with each other. While some use it to spread positive messages, just as many use it for gossip and to share their anger. On this episode of RadioLab, a group of social engineers from Facebook are looked at to see how they are changing this experience to make the world a better place.

These social engineers act as problem solvers for the users of Facebook. Their goal is to make the users of Facebook friendlier with one another. A major problem for this group arose in late 2011 when millions of Christmas photos were uploaded to the website. When there's that many photos being uploaded, there are complaints about the photos that go with it. The most common is that someone is featured in the photo, and they find it embarrassing. If a user asks Facebook to take a photo down, they must check a box saying why, and then a real person determines if the photo should be taken down or not.

The workers at Facebook didn't just want to take down a photo because one user thought it was embarrassing. They wanted to create a conversation between the person who posted, and the person who wants the photo removed. They created a message box containing a pre-written statement for when a complaint is filed. They have the option to send this message to the person asking them to have the picture taken down. The engineers found that users will opt to talk with the person 50% of the time when prompted. This was a good rate, but they wanted it higher.

To do this, they fiddled with the wording of the message to see what will get the highest use rate. Using the word "please" made the rate go up, while the word "sorry" made it go down. The engineers conduct experiments on Facebook users because it contains the best representation of the public all in one place. An example of an experiment was the "I voted" button users could click if they voted in the last Presidential election. Users who saw that their friends voted were 2% more likely to vote themselves. This doesn't sound like much, but it brought in 340,000 more votes.

The episode talked about the Media uproar when they found out Facebook users were essentially lab rats for social experiments. Personally, I have no problem with what these experimenters are doing. They're figuring out ways for us to be more positive, more social, and to cast votes. It sounds like they're doing more good for society than anything else.

How Alien Hand Syndrome Works - Stuff You Should Know

This episode of Stuff You Should Know was first broadcast on March 5, 2009.

Link to Episode 

In many episodes of Stuff You Should Know, the hosts have discussed many medical and psychological conditions. This condition is by far the strangest, and the rarest. 

Alien Hand Syndrome was famously depicted in the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964), but who would have guessed this condition is real? Those who suffer from this condition will have control of one of their hands, but not the other. This "alien" hand will involuntarily start doing something at random times, even when you are sleeping. It might start changing the channel, unbutton your shirt, and in one unfortunate case, choke the person. 

Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Telltale signs of this condition include the limb feeling like it's foreign, the hand doesn't feel like it's attached to the body, and the limb has its own personality. Alien Hand Syndrome could be caused by a lesion on the corpus callosum, which in effect makes random messages fire to the alien arm. 

Being a rare disease, at 50 or less documented cases, it wasn't first recognized until 1909, and wasn't accepted by the medical establishment until 1972. There is no cure for this syndrome. 

It's interesting that a disease so rare could be depicted in so many films and shows. Though it was most famously depicted in Dr. Strangelove (so much so that doctors refer to this as Dr. Strangelove Syndrome), it can be found elsewhere. The condition was portrayed in an episode of House, South Park, and the Addams Family. This media attention adds to the mystery of the disorder. People may think this kind of condition can only happen in movies, but it is a real thing. Since it is so rare, finding a cure for it is unlikely to happen. 

Is Learning A Foreign Language Really Worth It? - Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio puts politics and personal views behind, and approaches subjects as economists. In this episode, the debate is not whether or not a student should learn a foreign language, but what is the return on investment (ROI) of learning a language.

How many of us have tried to learn a language? The average student spends 2-3 years studying a foreign language. I studied Spanish for two years in high school. I stopped after the second year because I forgot a lot of what I learned in between semesters. The topic of this episode was on the value of learning a new language, and if it is worth it for students to learn.

One consultant of the episode was Boaz Keyser, a professor at the University of Chicago. He conducted many studies on the subject. In one, a game was played with his grad students where each were given $20. There were 20 rounds of the game, each costing $1. Students could either pocket the dollar or bet the dollar by flipping a coin. If they won the coin toss, they were given $2.50. The study found that students were more likely to take risks when the game was played in a second language. Saiz says this could be due to various emotions attached to words in their own language. When they hear the same words in a different language, there is less emphasis on the meaning behind the words.

This study showed how thinking in a different language can affect us, and the study makes sense. If I were to see a sign marked "Danger" vs. "Peligro" I would be more afraid of the Danger sign because I am able to associate more danger related words to that quicker.

Albert Saiz, an economist at MIT conducted a study that showed those who learn a new language do earn more, but nothing significant. The average graduate who learned a new language earned 2 percent more than a peer who didn't. That means if the income is $30,000, they would earn just $600 more per year. The lowest return on investment is Spanish at 1.5% more earnings.

To discuss opportunity costs, Bryan Caplan of George Mason University was brought in. He says that under 1% of students learning a language in school claim to have learned it "very well." School instruction on language accounts for 1/6 the time a student is in high school.

"It makes me think that people are spending 3 years of their lives to acquire very few skills." - Bryan Caplan 

Though Caplan is in love with the German language and its culture, the economist in him wonders if learning a new language is worth it for students.

Is learning a new language worth it? It does stretch the mind and gets us to connect with other cultures. For many, learning about a new culture through their language is worth it right there. But from a monetary standpoint, it may not be. Since learning a new language doesn't account for a much higher income, students could be spending time in high school learning more valuable skills. In my failed attempt to learn Spanish, I could have used that time to take four other classes. Whether or not my time spent in a language class will hurt my future earnings, I will never know.