How to Screen Job Applicants, Act Your Age, and Get Your Brain Off Autopilot: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast

Gretta Cohn
06/26/2014 | 7:26 am

This week’s episode is the first installment of our Think Like a Freak Book Club (we plan to do three). It’s called “How to Screen Job Applicants, Act Your Age, and Get Your Brain Off Autopilot.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above. You can also read the transcript, which includes credits for the music you’ll hear in the episode.)

Here’s how the Think Like a Freak Book Club works: readers and listeners send in their questions about specific chapters of the book, and Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt answer them on the podcast. This episode covers chapters 1-3: “What Does It Mean to Think Like a Freak?”; “The Three Hardest Words in the English Language”; “What’s Your Problem?” You all sent in some really great questions. Among the ones that Dubner and Levitt take on in the podcast:

How can I get my brain off auto-pilot?
Why are most companies so resistant to change?
Has there ever been a society that succeeded in putting the collective above the individual?

And this one: “What kind of question should you ask job candidates to see if they’re too prone to b.s.-ing?” As you’ll hear in the podcast:

LEVITT: I would say what the interviewer’s going to have for lunch that day. Because it’s completely stupid.
DUBNER: That’s pretty good. And totally unanswerable.

Thanks to everyone for the questions. If yours was used in the podcast, we’ll send you your choice of an autographed copy of Think Like a Freak or a limited edition Think Like a Freak t-shirt.

And now it’s time to send in your questions for the next Book Club episode. You can either leave them in the comments section below or e-mail them to radio (at) freakonomics.com. The next episode will cover chapters 4-6: “Like a Bad Dye Job, the Truth Is in the Roots”; “Think Like a Child”; and “Like Giving Candy to a Baby.” Thanks in advance.

Audio Transcript

TAGS: brain, jobs, Think Like a Freak Book Club

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

COMMENTS: 12

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Garrett Moffitt says:

June 26, 2014 at 9:48 am
I was surprised to here both of you fall into the people are living a lot longer myth.
While you address that it’s gone up form birth, but the question wasn’t about birth it was about retirement.
The average life expectancy for people who make it to 65 is abut 16 years. in 1940 it was about 13 years. So just 3 years, give or take. Life expectancy at birth doubles, but post retirement age goes up a few years.

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- James says:
  
  June 26, 2014 at 1:41 pm
  I think your problem here is in taking an average, where it’s really (at least from my limited observation) a bimodal distribution. You have a fraction of the population who exercise, maintain a healthy weight, &c, and so tend to stay healthy to a greater age than previous generations. But counterbalancing this is another fraction who don’t exercise and are overweight, suffer all the consequences of that lifestyle, and so die much earlier.
  
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- Enter your name... says:
  
  June 26, 2014 at 11:34 pm
  The policy issue is not that 65 year olds live to be 83-ish instead of 78-ish; the issue is that a lot more of them are making it to 65 in the first place.
  
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  - James says:
    
    June 27, 2014 at 4:41 pm
    The real issue, as Levitt points out, is not simply that there are more people over 65 (or whatever age) who are not just alive, but healthy. They (I’m not quite to the point where it’s we yet) are perfectly capable of working, and in many cases enjoy their work and want to keep on doing it for years after society says they should retire.
    Yet in many cases these people are locked out of the employment market (at least as anything more challenging than a WalMart greeter) by forced retirement policies and cultural expectations. This is one reason (of many) why I run my software business remotely, never meeting most of my clients. I don’t have to look or act like a 20-something, I just have to produce good code.
    
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rhkennerly says:

June 26, 2014 at 10:26 am
Enjoyed the podcast, which brought to mind a scholarly article in the June 2014 The American Scholar magazine on the fallacies, dating back to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, about dependent generations.
Turns out –shades of your discussion about how hard it is to get good data– that the US Government and certain political groups have been using data based on Smith’s assumptions about worker to dependency ratio, not updated since 1901.
In fact, using modern demographic data that takes into account not only increases in lifespan but also advances in longer working lives, quality of life, healthcare, and independence of the elderly, that Social Security and Medicare will be stretched when the last baby boomer turns 65, but not bankrupt and not even broken, particularly if certain commonsense adjustments are made.
This article also has a very good discussion on the importance of interdependency on generations in developing strong societies, not to mention that such interdependence is baked into the preamble of the Constitution.
The June edition just went “free” on the internet:
American Scholar: The Fear Factor – http://ow.ly/ytIEC

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Chanel says:

June 26, 2014 at 4:10 pm
This is a question I have been dying to ask you guys ever since the Newsweek article came out.
So here goes..
I’m going to start off with a relatively radical thought —
If we had vaccines to prevent cancer, would everyone line up to get them? Or would it be met with major animosity ?
My guess is most people would get a vaccine to prevent cancer, (if there was one) because the fear of cancer seems greater than a vaccine. So my question is why would most parents jump to vaccinate against cancer BUT NOT polio, MMR and other vaccinations of diseases making a resurgence again today?
It seems blatantly irrational that people are more openminded to vaccinating to noncontagious things like cancer as opposed to contagious and potentially fatal others diseases we have vaccines for.
Yes not everyone dies from measles, mumps, tetanus, pertussis and polio etc. But not everyone dies from cancer either. But there was a time that they were feared like cancer is now because of the pain and death they caused.
Lastly, this is based on a true story, of the fine line between human rights and murder. You and your unvaccinated daughter travel to Switzerland and she catches the measles. When you arrive back in the USA you take her to the pediatrician. In the waiting room there are 3 infants (unvaccinated because they aren’t able to get MMR vaccinations until they are 12-15months old). Two of the infants end up in the ICU and one dies. Where does your human right to not vaccinate your kids become more important than the lives of other people’s infants? Could you live with a murder charge or the guilt? Is there a greater good? Or is the human rights aspect of being an American come with strings attached… That someone else’s rights may impede on your own right to life.

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- Enter your name... says:
  
  June 26, 2014 at 11:37 pm
  Is this a single vaccination for all cancers?
  I think that vaccination uptake will improve when babies stop crying when they get them. I suspect that the parents’ personal emotional experience matters more for typical vaccine-refusers than the actual health issues.
  
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  - Peg says:
    
    June 29, 2014 at 5:11 pm
    Actually, I think most parents who don’t vaccinate do not care about “baby pain” from a needle prick. I think they are increadibly suspicious that there is some sort of conspiracy (governmental or pharmacological) behind vaccines. And some of them are just “convinced” to the point that nothing will change their minds that the vaccination will harm their baby medically (like that vaccines cause autism, which has been totally debunked).
    Plenty of these parents have no trouble spanking thier children.
    
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John says:

June 26, 2014 at 6:32 pm
I have been working as a consultant for an utility company for the past three years. two months ago, a permanent position became available and I applied for it. During my interview, my supervisor asked me a technical question concerning a concept I work with everyday… I could not articulate a proper answer and end up rolling my eyes saying: “I don’t know.”
later on, he asked me another question to which the answer was in three parts. I gave the first two and got stuck for the last one… when my supervisor said:”and…” I replied: “if you tell me, I’ll be able to answer you.”
I got the job… I think he was able to put aside my obvious inability to answer to his question and instead focused on my ability to have the job done.

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Éva Szeli says:

June 27, 2014 at 2:47 pm
I love your podcast, but I was a bit surprised by Dr Levitt’s response to Andrea’s question, early in the broadcast.
My question is a simple one: would your answer (below) have been the same if it had been a male listener asking the question?
“…when you have quiet time when you’re doing laundry or you’re trying to rock a baby to sleep or something like that, then take those moments…”

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- C.L says:
  
  June 29, 2014 at 12:17 am
  I’m a man and I enjoy the time I spend doing laundry and thinking. Men also rock babies. Other examples of man quiet time include bath time, doing dishes and while cleaning the bathroom. Deep thinking and saws, guns, cars up on jacks, and lawn mowing don’t go together real well.
  
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  - James says:
    
    June 29, 2014 at 7:57 pm
    Good point: some of us men do our own laundry, and other household chores.
    I’m curious, though, as to why Levitt thinks doing laundry takes significant time. I mean, I pick up the dirty clothes, put them in the washer, add detergent, and press the buttons. Later I take the clothes out and hang them on the line to dry. Takes maybe 10 minutes per week, but I do need to pay attention during those minutes.
    
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