How to Screen Job Applicants, Act Your Age, and Get Your Brain Off Autopilot: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
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?
LEVITT: I would say what the interviewer’s going to have for lunch that day. Because it’s completely stupid.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.
DUBNER: That’s pretty good. And totally unanswerable.
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
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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Plenty of these parents have no trouble spanking thier children.
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.
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…”
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.