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Science needs rebranding.
I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Mike Mon.
And you're listening to no stupid questions.
Today on the show, how fixed is personality?
I take comfort in knowing that I am just like everyone else in deluding myself.
Angela, today we have a fascinating question about how fixed personality is.
Mike, you and I have been talking about personality so much lately.
I know mostly because I think I need a better one.
No, but you know what? I think a lot of us feel that way.
Okay, well, let me read you this question from Josh Reukertis.
Hi, Mike and Angela. I often wonder how fixed personality is.
I feel that while my personality has definite patterns, how pronounced those patterns are can vary given the environment that I'm in.
This seems to be true both in the short term, for example, I have different personality at work than at home, but also true in the longer term.
My personality is definitely different now that I'm in my late 30s compared to when I was in college.
This makes me wonder if personality tests should not be used to tell us about fixed traits that we have, but rather as tools for working to become closer to the people we would like to be.
Are there things we can do to intentionally change our personalities?
Thanks, Joshua Curtis.
Can I just thank Joshua because I feel like we live in a particular cultural moment where self improvement is a universal hobby.
And it is a timeless question.
I mean, you know, philosophers and theologians of various types have been pondering character and how malleable it is since forever.
So Joshua, great question.
Before we jump totally into Joshua's question, I think it would help to just define, I mean, what is personality?
Personality is something that psychologists would say, and this is very close to, I think, what most people would say who are not trained psychologists.
Personality is the pattern of acting, thinking, and feeling that you have that is pretty consistent and the emphasis is on pretty consistent, not perfectly consistent, pretty consistent across situations and across time.
You know, your tendency to be cheerful or grim, your tendency to be talkative or shy, your tendency to be gritty or somebody who gives up easily on things.
So when we talk about personality, the emphasis is on kind of the center of gravity of how we usually behave.
Got it. Here's where I'd love to get back to Joshua's question.
And almost segment into two parts.
One, how do our personalities change and then can we do things to intentionally change our personalities?
So I thought it may be interesting or maybe overly vulnerable.
I don't know. To talk about how I think my personality has changed over time.
I would love that. Well, this is so un-you, Mike.
Be vulnerable. Tell me.
This feels uncomfortable.
Good. And that's okay. Get you out of your comfort zone.
I think maybe before we go into this, do you want to just mention you've shared with me these big five personality traits just in their general sense?
Because I think that will help me talk through the changes in my personality.
Your little story of young Mike Maun before you became Mike Maun of today.
Yeah, for you and for Joshua and for anybody else who's curious about their own personality.
It would be helpful to say on behalf of psychologists everywhere that there is an agreed upon classification of personality traits.
And what I mean by agreed upon is that if you go to university of Washington or you like go to Stanford or Yale or anywhere, all the psychologists there who teach intro psych will teach students that there are five major personality traits.
They're really personality trait families because they they have a bunch of very specific traits within them.
But there are these five families of personality traits that have been identified across the lifespan.
So Josh being in, I guess he said his late 30s, like true for Joshua, but also true for me who I'm in my mid 50s and my mom who's 89 and even a 15 year old, etc.
So true across the lifespan and also true across culture.
So on every civilized continent, you can give people personality inventories.
And when you look at how they respond, you find these five clusters of personality traits.
So what are they? There's an acronym that I find useful ocean, OCEAN.
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When you phrased it that way, how can they not look forward?
Well, the term in science for the next decade, they literally called the old old, one old was not enough, there's the old and there's the old old.
Science needs rebranding, that's terrible.
I know, they need a whole marketing department for sure, but when you look forward to the future, Mike, do you think you're going to change in the future or do you think you've kind of reached to Mike Mawn is like what's your just untutored intuition about how stable your personality is now compared to the past.
I would hope to continue improving in increments, but I don't think there's going to be a massive shift at this point.
Okay, well, I think that's pretty consistent with what is sometimes called the end of history illusion.
Doesn't that sound kind of dire?
When you say illusion, I feel like I'm just tricking myself immediately.
But there's good news, I think, especially given what you said about your aspirations, which I think we all have.
We would all want to continue to grow and to learn and to become even better people than we are now, but a lot of us have a sense.
And I do, if you ask me, do you think you'll be a different person when you're 59 or 61?
I think the intuitive answer that I would give you is like, no, I'm pretty much me.
Right. You know, I could tell you how it was different when I was a cheerleader and I was in high school, but like now I am Angela.
And this is called the end of history illusion.
And you're right, the term illusion or bias is a pretty good tip off that what psychologists are pointing to is a mistake that we're making cognitively.
And here I should credit the coiners of the phrase.
So that's Jordy Kudbach and then Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson.
They published this article about a decade ago.
And what they did was they measured the personalities using a standard inventory of personality and also the values and preferences of more than 19,000 adults who ranged in age from 18 to 68.
And they very simply asked them to report how much they thought they had changed in the past decade.
So similar to my Mike Mon in Tarragation, but just in the last 10 years and or to predict how much they would change in the following decade.
And essentially what they found in this study was that young people, middle age people, older people, everybody believed that they had changed a lot in the past.
But then when you ask them the parallel question about the next decade, universally people do not forecast changing very much at all, like they are like, oh, now I'm me.
So if at every decade, you're like, oh, I'm done.
I have finally become who I am.
But then when you look at the data and there is change in every decade, then people are being pessimistic in their forecast.
We have the false sense that we're done changing.
But if we could like vault you into the future and show you yourself 10 years from now, you will have changed more than you think you will.
Well, I take comfort in knowing that I am just like everyone else in deluding myself.
Yeah, I wonder if that is comforting.
I guess it isn't a way. No, it's not that company.
It's more like, okay, I fell into the trap completely.
Let me read you this one thing and I'm curious to get your take on it in context of what we've just said.
So I listened to a talk by a Cambridge University psychologist named Brian Little.
He basically says that rank order doesn't change.
So he said, if you go back to your sixth grade reunion, the rank order of people on these different dimensions stays relatively the same and the kid who is the class clown, maybe he has a more sophisticated sense of humor than in sixth grade.
Now that he's 36, but he's probably still the one cracking the jokes.
And so his point was, yeah, we all change over time, but probably where you fit relative to maybe your peers or others stays at least relatively consistent.
Okay. Love Brian little super love Brian little.
Don't agree. I mean, I'd have to debate him on this and I could because he's awesome and he's fun to debate with.
But rank order does get to be quite stable in about your late middle age.
What's late middle age?
50s or so, but if you did this type of example, like think of your sixth grade class and then imagine doing this if you had the same 30 kids, like at the end of high school and imagine doing it then in your like 20s and 30s and 40s and 50s.
At what point would the shuffling with the rank ordering like be zero, like you know, it's like, everybody's just standing in the same places.
It's never that people don't shuffle.
There's always rank order change even in your 50s and 60s and beyond.
So that's where I would disagree with him.
But where he has a point is that there's less shuffling.
So, you know, if you go from sixth grade to twelfth grade and you're like, everybody stand in line from like most cheerful to least cheerful in this type of ethical example, there's going to be like a reasonable amount of shuffling.
And then there's like less shuffling and still less shuffling.
And that's why the end of history illusion is not like people are totally wrong.
Like you do change less as you grow older, but you never change not at all.
There's never point in a lifespan where you have no shuffling.
Right. And the tendency that's been observed across all the data that have been collected is very awesome.
It's good news because even though our hips and our knees give out, one thing that we can look forward to as we get older is it's usually called the maturity principle.
So just like you, we become more dependable as we get older.
We become more emotionally stable.
I will say that to 20 year olds because I'm like, dude, this roller coaster that you're on, I'm not because I'm in my 50s and you're in your 20s.
Yes, I will have ups and downs, but holy smokes.
They are not the ups and downs that I had in my 20s.
And thank goodness. Thank goodness.
I know. I don't even how we survive those all two as years.
So we get more conscientious, more agreeable, more compassionate and understanding of other people and their complicated lives.
And as I said, there's like a decrease in neuroticism where you could frame it as an increase in emotional stability.
It's the same thing. And then I think there's a little bit more debate about open-mindedness.
But in many studies, like open-mindedness or openness to experience also goes up over much of adulthood.
So in adulthood, at least, adolescents is a whole other can of worms, but just in adulthood from say you're 20s onward, there's increases in the mean levels of positive personality traits.
We are generally getting better.
I love that you call the adolescents a can of worms.
I think it's almost sometimes a pit of despair.
Nothing against us doing adolescents, but...
Well, you said you were very anxious in your, did I get that right?
You were like diligent, but in a way, like driven through fear or something.
Yeah, I think it was a self-protective mechanism.
I mean, not everybody was Mike Maughan as a teenager, but I will just say that the things that we went through...
I don't know how we survive our teenagers either.
Like, wow, those were hard.
And in these personality studies, where you track, you know, change, like mean level change, rank order change, but you're looking at teenagers, there is...
Sometimes it's called the disruption hypothesis, basically, instead of everybody getting better and happier and more dependable and more conscientious, in adolescents in many studies, there's actually a dip.
So, like, you're in a way going backwards in maturity, so to speak, it's hard.
So, when I teach the maturity principle, I'm usually looking out at a sea of faces who are already in their 20s, and then I get to just emphasize the positive because they are...
You've survived. Yeah, they're getting to the good part.
Well, look, Angela and I would love to hear your thoughts on how fixed personalities are.
Do you feel like your personality has shifted over time?
And have you ever intentionally tried to change it?
So, record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone, and email it to nsqatfreakonomics.com, and maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show.
Also, if you want to learn more about your own personality, head to freakonomics.com slash Big Five.
And you can take the Big Five inventory and you'll get an immediate personality profile, and your results will be completely anonymous.
Still to come on, no stupid questions.
Is it possible to change your personality intentionally?
To increase agreeableness, she wanted to start sending out supportive texts, think more positively about people who frustrated her, and this is my favorite.
She says, quote, regrettably hugging.
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Ba da ba ba ba. Now back to Mike and Angela's conversation about personality change.
Angela, I want to go to this other thing that Josh talked about, which is not just how fixed personality is, but can you change it?
Right. I want to give you an example that I loved in a book I just read by Martin Short.
Martin Short, movie star comedic questions.
I love Martin Short. He hangs out with Steve Martin.
He's super funny. He's on comedians and cars.
He hangs out with Steve Martin.
I don't know. Martin Short is hilarious and yes, often with Steve Martin.
He wrote a book called, I must say, my life as a humble comedy legend.
He actually starts the book with a really interesting anecdote.
Thinking about he and his wife, Nancy, they were out to dinner and this is May 1970s early in his career still.
He's working at Second City in Toronto, which is a comedy group and he's developing a character named Ed.
This is the character at the time.
Did not have a last name, but the character that we now know famously is Ed Grimley.
And so he and his wife are out to eat.
They're having an argument, not a terrible argument, but there's some serious tension.
And his wife says to him, I don't want to talk to you anymore.
I want to talk to Ed. And then he said that she looked past him and she said, Ed, what's Marty's problem?
And Martin Short transforms himself into this alternate person and conversed with her as Ed.
And then he said, Ed, whose sweetness has a disarming effect on Nancy.
When trouble arises, she calls on Ed to moderate and when he appears, all things calm down.
Now, I'm not saying we should all play a totally separate character, but I wonder if in the state of trying to change our personality, there seems to be some real value in acting as if or quote unquote, playing a part in order to give yourself permission to change and adapt your personality.
So I think you're on to something and definitely that Martin Short is on to something.
I used to talk about this a little bit with Tim Beck, arguably the founder of modern psychotherapy, which is often called cognitive therapy or cognitive behavioral therapy.
And we talked about multiple personalities because I can be a completely different person with my students.
I really have the professor hat on.
I'm patient kind. I'm curious about what's going on with them.
Like that's professor Angela, or who I try to be.
But then when I'm with my husband, it's a different Angela.
So when I'm on a Zoom call with students and I get off the Zoom call, the tone of my voice even changes.
I'm like, okay, so that is due in a week.
All right, are we good? Okay, great question, Francisco.
And then click, leave call.
And it's like, hi, lovey.
The register changes. It's very different.
But here's what Tim Beck said.
And I really agree. He thought as a psychologist and as a therapist that all of us have multiple personalities in a healthy way because as he put it to me, he's like, if you don't have multiple personalities, if you're not able to be, you know, a professor with your students and a spouse with your husband and a mom with your kids and a neighbor with your neighbors, like
these are very different personality modes, he called them.
Like if you can't switch modes, then you're a real problem.
And so I think that part of personality change is like who we become in our 40s as opposed to our 30s and this kind of gradual change.
So personalities on the whole do change, but they tend not to be like the difference between Martin and Ed.
It's kind of like a slow change.
But it is true that in a millisecond, we can switch our personalities if we switch modes.
And I think what I want to say to Joshua or to anybody who's like, you know, when I think of all the people that I am, there are people that I like better.
Like there's an Angela Mike that I don't think you've ever seen and very few people have.
It's a really hot tempered, impatient, I mean, I have like thrown objects in my house, slam doors like the door was going to fall off the hinge, sworn like a sailor, but really a very mean sailor like there's an angry Angela that I never show you that I never show my students that unfortunately I have shown Jason and I've even shown my daughters.
I don't like that Angela.
So part of personality change is saying, you know, there are people in me, I like better.
Maybe Martin's wife and Martin himself would say like Ed's a great person.
And like the question then is, how do I let Ed or cheerful professor Angela or whatever it is come out to play more?
And I think a lot of that is the secret to personality changes to put yourself in situations or to bring out the mode that you like best.
Unfortunately, I also have a version of Mike that I don't like that I don't see very often that very few people thankfully have seen.
What do you not like about this Mike?
I never see. I think it's the same type you just described, right?
For me, I would say that is more when I am really stressed and have no time.
And so it's a time pressure and a stressful situation.
That's the Mike I like the least because normally I try in every way to bring people with me and whatever and occasionally that's the slam the door.
Everybody's screwing this up, get out of my way.
I'm going to make it happen and I'm going to do it right.
Well, that's different from my worst Angela because I have diagnosed myself as getting into these tornadoes of anger only when I feel it's not just stress.
I have to feel like people don't appreciate me.
So if I feel like I have heroically done the noble selfless thing and that I am overlooked and unappreciated, that's what activates super angry Angela.
So this little bit of insight by the way because I think we all have a part of ourselves a mode that we think is dangerous and bad for me like it took me years but I've tried to put myself in situations where that doesn't happen.
I mean, part of it is if I see that I'm starting to martyr myself and like starting to say, well, there you go.
I sacrifice this and that and the other and like, uh oh, I'm sitting myself up for angry Angela to come out and it would honestly be better for everyone if I were a little more selfish now.
So as to prevent Chernobyl later.
I also love the illiteration angry Angela.
Let me share this. I thought it was interesting.
This is not from a psychologist.
This is a journalist who's a staff writer at the Atlantic.
Her name is Olga Hazan and she is the author of Weird, the power of being an outsider and insider world.
But she wrote several articles about trying to change her own personality.
She just did an experiment with an end of one.
But she wrote this article.
I gave myself three months to change my personality.
The results were mixed, which I think what an honest and true statement for anyone trying to change their personality.
So to become more extroverted, she made goals to meet new people to decrease neuroticism.
She said, I'm going to meditate often and make gratitude lists to increase agreeableness.
She wanted to start sending out supportive texts, supportive cards, thing more positively about people who frustrated her.
And this is my favorite.
She says quote, regrettably hugging.
So she hugged people. I love this curmudgeon.
To increase extraversion, she took an improv class to help reduce social anxiety.
And then this is my favorite quote to cut down on how pissed off I'm in general.
And because I'm an overachiever, I also signed up for an anger management class.
So she does all these things to try to change her personality.
And then what happens? Again, in the end, she said the results were mixed.
She quotes a late psychologist, Carl Rogers, who just said, when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
And so she said, I'm going to try all these things.
I kind of am who I am, but I was able to change slightly when she took a personality test.
She had increased an extraversion going from 23rd percent out to 33rd.
Her neuroticism had gone from extremely high to very high, but directionally none of it changed that much.
It's not that little change, honestly.
If you go from 23rd percent to 33rd percent, I mean, just think about that.
If you were taking some standardized test, you're like, well, then I did some prep.
And I went from the 23rd percent out to 33rd percent out.
I think you would be like, that was pretty good.
That's like, let's see, in technical terms, huge.
What's interesting is that this end of one experiment has been done.
So there have been researchers who essentially help people make plans.
They're like, okay, I want to be more extroverted.
Okay, what do extroverted people do?
It is a little as if, actually, it's like, if I acted as if I were extroverted, what would it be?
And then you literally just make plans.
You're like, okay, if I'm in class, then I will raise my hand.
If I see a friend, then I will go over and hug them.
You make all these if-then plans.
And the research shows that it can lead to some short-term changes in personality.
Honestly, I think in the research studies, not as big as 23rd percentile to 33rd percentile on average.
But I would say that there's some evidence that you can make plans to act as if you had a different personality in a way, bring out that personality mode.
But also, it's interesting that she quoted Karl Rodgers.
Because Karl Rodgers was one of the great humanist psychologists.
Karl Rodgers is no longer alive, but he preceded Tim Beck.
And he had this approach to therapy that was like a lot of other humanist psychologists based on the idea of unconditional, positive regard.
That what we need to do, all of us, those of us who are really struggling and then those of us who are actually in a pretty good place in life, that all of us need to have this rock solid foundation of unconditional, positive regard to feel like you're okay, that you're a good person, that you're worthwhile.
It's not often talked about these days, but I actually think Karl Rodgers was right.
And I don't even see this as a contradiction.
I think we can say, you know what?
I would like to be a little more cheerful.
You know what? I would like to not bring out angry Angela as much.
I would like to be a little more cheerful, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive,
positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, We're likely thinking of a moment from F-Scot Fitzgerald's
1936 essay, The Crack Up.
Fitzgerald wrote, quote, The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
That's it for the fact check.
Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts about last week's episode on nostalgia.
Hello, Angela and Mike.
This is Greg Ward in Austin, Texas.
I really enjoyed episode 190 on the point of nostalgia.
One of my favorite experiences is when nostalgia is sparked suddenly by a smell or environment.
For instance, the feeling of St.
Augustine grass on my bare feet or the smell of an automobile mechanic shop which instantly takes me back to my childhood visiting my grandpa.
He was the town mechanic in a small Texas town.
Even a sunny but crisp, cool day can for a moment take me back to recess in middle school.
These feelings are brief and spontaneous, but guaranteed to bring a smile on my face.
Hey, Mike and Angela. Thank you for recording my favorite episode of no stupid questions to date on nostalgia.
I'm someone who has followed nostalgia throughout my life.
Growing up, I was enthralled by the wonder of Disney movies and my family's trips to Disneyland.
And that led me to a career working for the Walt Disney company for 10 years.
During that time, I also got my degree in sociology, where I sought to understand the healthiest and most fulfilling way to apply nostalgia into my life.
Nostalgia has caused many of my peers too long for the past, but in my experience, nostalgia works best as a present moment experience, where you just kind of stop and internalize that lovely feeling right there and appreciate this amazing human ability we have to feel something so wonderful for a second time.
Then, you go back out there, you make wonderful new memories that years down the line will be your new Nostalgia moments.
A philosophy is notice, appreciate, smile, and move forward.
Eventually, I moved on from Disney to a new career in social research.
But I'm happy to say, I still get a blast to present moment nostalgia anytime I hear when you wish upon a star.
Hi, this is Steve from Seattle.
Nostalgia has affected my life very much because I hosted a Twitter chat about nostalgia for a decade.
The chat was originally focused on retro tech, things like floppy disks and temigatches and music players with physical media like the Sony Walkman and Discman.
It wasn't long until we were talking about holiday memories, road trips, and foods that brought us back to simpler days.
I ultimately ended the weekly chat after 11 years, not because nostalgia has become any less interesting, but because our platform, Twitter, now X, was imploding.
So now we're nostalgic about Twitter.
That was, respectively, Greg Ward, Alakaster, and Steve Case.
Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us.
And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on how fixed personality is.
How has your personality changed over time?
Have you ever tried to change it?
Send a voice memo to NSQ at Freakinomics.com, and you might hear your voice on the show.
Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, the first episode in Mike and Angela's series on the Big Five Personality Trades.
Should you be more open to stepping out of your comfort zone?
I have never regretted the X-Penetics.
Oh really? I have always regretted the X-Penetics.
That's next week on No Stupid Questions.
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakinomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakinomics Radio, people I mostly admire, and the economics of everyday things.
All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Boutich is our production associate.
This episode was mixed by Greg Riffin with help from Jasmine Klinger.
Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra.
You can find us on Twitter, at NSQ, underscore show, and on Facebook, at NSQ Show.
If you have a question for a future episode, please email it to NSQ at Freakinomics.com.
To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakinomics.com slash NSQ.
Thanks for listening. I have friends who color code their books.
Which looks very cool. It is, but I have one friend who his wife color coded all the books, and his thought was, it's really hard to find any of my books.
The Freakinomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.
Stitcher. Don't just ride the index, seek to outperform it.
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