What the world needs now is a live gameshow with factual journalism and a gaggle of laughs. Fortunately, one has come along in the form of Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, a collaboration between Stephen J Dubner and the New York Times (iTunes). Freakonomics Radio’s Dubner expertly hosts this new US podcast, bringing a shot of low-key observational humour. He describes it as “a new inside-out kinda gameshow” where contestants reveal their IDKs (things they think the panel won’t know).
It’s crammed with useless facts, in the best way possible. The guests on the panel are ridiculously smart and likeable: Debora Spar, president of the women-only Barnard College in New York and Tony Marx, head of New York Public Library, along with The Bugle’s Andy Zaltzman. Their credentials are laid out: Spar can talk backwards and Zaltzman delivered his own child.
The first episode, entitled Strange Danger, is the podcast for you if you have always want to know what happens before you freeze to death. (If you must know, freezing humans have been know to take their clothes off, known as “paradoxical undressing”. Oh, and they burrow into the ground in search of warmth.)
Conundrums are fired off by the finest brains in the studio audience, and – with a proliferation of doctors, an aerospace engineer and a history teacher from Princeton – the standard of brain-teaser is high. As is the comedy value, as the panel tries to guess the answer to their questions.
“When is the most dangerous time to vote for a US president on election day?” asks one, as the inevitable Trump-baiting quips hang in the air. (The first episode was recorded pre-election.) “We vote with pencils back home, so the earlier you are to the polling station, the sharper the pencil,” offers Zaltzman. The answer? At the end of the day, when something of a voting rush hour kicks off.
The question: “Why is it necessary for humans to spend a third of their life asleep?” elicits a long overdue discussion around Jon Bon Jovi’s theory of “I’ll live while I’m alive and I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. If the renowned sleep scientist of rock really did stick to that pattern, he wouldn’t live as long because research on mice has shown that sleep has a cleansing effect on the brain that helps to prevent dementia. All in all, a podcast that makes your conversation smarter – and brings the laughs.
If you like this, try: Freakonomics Radio
