No Stupid Questions Podcast: Q&A on Human Behavior
Last updated on June 24th, 2020
Have you ever been an unlucky participant in a work meeting where the meeting facilitator begins by stating, “…and there are no stupid questions!” Of course, that expression of intellectual openness lasts only a few precious minutes before the first question is asked.
With that caveat in mind, there is a new podcast from Freakonomics guru Stephen Dubner and Grit author Angela Duckworth called No Stupid Questions that debuted in mid-May.
The podcast bills itself as “an exploration into the weird and wonderful ways in which humans behave.” In the hands of less capable co-hosts, No Stupid Questions could swiftly devolve into listening in a family’s dinner conversation with occasional pearls of insight spliced between heated discussions of the toilet paper roll facing up or down.
Thankfully for the listeners, Dubner and Duckworth possess the intellectual cojones, verbal prowess and relational rapport to entice listeners into an existential chess match where no question is simple to answer, no answer is complete and ambiguity sloshes wild swaths of colors onto their audio canvass.
Meet the freak
Stephen Dubner is an award-winning author, journalist, and TV and radio personality. In 2005, William Morrow published Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, a book about cheating teachers, bizarre baby names, self-dealing Realtors, and crack-selling mama’s boys. Freakonomics would go on to be translated into 40 languages and sell five million copies worldwide.
In 2010, Dubner entered the podcast space with Freakonomics and over 400 episodes it has become one of the most consistently popular podcasts in the last decade. In July 2018, Freakonomics moved NPR’s WNYC to Stitcher Radio.
“The beauty of Freakonomics,” begins podcasting consultant Ken Grayson, “is that questions many of our assumptions and attacks confirmation bias. We need that in today’s world.”
True grit
Angela Duckworth is the founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance scientific insights that help children thrive. She is also a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and in 2013 was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Before her career in research, she was a math and science teacher at public schools in New York City, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Duckworth is most famous for her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, which remained on The New York Times bestseller list for 21 weeks.
“Grit had an enabling and motivational effect on many,” says Ken Grayson. “In Duckworth’s world of meritocracy, the brightest isn’t always the best. According to her and her research, the ability to persevere despite sometimes overwhelming odds may be a better barometer of life success than innate skill or talent.”
What you don’t know
No Stupid Questions isn’t the first time that Dubner and Duckworth have worked together.
In 2014, Dubner began a live game show format for a podcast called Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. In the show, selected audience members presented their ideas to host Dubner and a panel of three celebrity judges. In those episodes, Duckworth began to appear as one of those celebrity judges.
The live podcast, which is “live journalism wrapped in a game-show package” has a mission: to tell listeners and attendees the things they thought they knew but didn’t; and things they never thought they wanted to know, but do.
In many ways, Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is the precursor to No Stupid Questions.
Many questions, few answers
In today’s world, everyone seems to own their own set of facts and ambiguity is perceived as a weakness instead of the manifestation of an active, open mind. No Stupid Questions is an ideal podcast for those who can juggle conflicting concepts and fuzzy facts without curling up into a fetal ball of rhetorical miasma.
Consider the first episode “Did Covid-19 Kill The Handshake.” While Duckworth explains her general aversion to the handshake – even before the pandemic – because of sweaty palms and herky-jerky physical movements – Dubner details the awkwardness of the hug. For listeners, these episodes skew non-linear and refreshingly so. Instead of a mildly interesting fact-based dissertation on the history of the handshake that highlights “I didn’t know that” factoids, Dubner and Duckworth immerse themselves in a far more intriguing and meandering dialogue on the social convention of the handshake.
Is the handshake needed to enable people to ease into social interactions, Duckworth asks. Dubner takes that query to the next step, asking if the forced social contacts so many of us are compelled to engage in can also be expunged along with the handshake.
This first episode sets the tone for the rest of the season. Unlike a Stuff You Should Know podcast, No Stupid Questions doesn’t profess to be a FAQ podcast. It doesn’t trade in information as much as it takes listeners on a discursive and thought-provoking journey into a topic that will leave listeners with an offbeat epiphany that generates more questions.
No Stupid Questions takes the worldview of Albert Einstein who famously said, “the mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.”
Tis’ the season
After the inaugural episode about the handshake, the roster of episodes assume a similar convention and tickle the listener’s curiosity. The second episode “What is the optimal way to be angry” is especially applicable in our nation where everyone seems to be “get off my lawn”angry, perpetually furious about everything and indignant that others may disagree with them.
The June 14 episode, “What do Tom Sawyer and The Founder of Duolingo Have in Common,” offered listeners their first guest – Luis von Ahn, co-founder of Duolingo, the language-learning platform, and CAAPTCHA, which distinguishes human from machine input.
In true “fake left then go-right” Freakonomics form, this episode draws their guest into a discussion of how Tom Sawyer in the Twain novel, got his friends to paint the fence he was tasked with completing by Aunt Polly.
In retrospect, the podcast title, No Stupid Questions, is perfectly suitable for the Dubner-Duckworth joint project, because it encapsulates the concept that true intellectual discovery demands the cerebral freedom to ask a wide range of nomadic questions and accept answers dripping with ambiguity and rumination while eschewing – as much as possible – the shackles of confirmation bias.
So if you’re for searching facts to impress acquaintances at the next neighbor’s potluck dinner, do not listen to No Stupid Questions. Perhaps the one solid fact you could use is that historically the handshake was used to prove you didn’t have a weapon in your hand.
But if you wish to listen to an episode of No Stupid Questions of about 35 minutes and walk away with more questions than answers and a desire to think less reflexively and more reflectively about the world, check out this podcast.
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