Tell Me Something I Don't Know (Medical Divorce) Transcript
OVERLAPPING VOICES: Why do I read? Why do I have conversation? Why do I travel? Why do I have to go to school? Why do I pay attention? Why do I pay attention? Because I want to be amused. Because I want to get outside my comfort zone. But mostly mostly. Mostly. Mostly because Because I want to find out stuff. Find out stuff. Find out stuff. Because I want you to tell me something I don't know.
STEPHEN DUBNER: We already know that all families are unique, but some are more unique than others. Consider the Busch family, BUSCH. For five generations, they made Budweiser beer, and they began to instill family loyalty at birth.
JULIE MCINTOSH: That's right. The generations of Busch men who would be potential heirs of the company are given five little drops of Budweiser beer from a little let dropper into their mouths before they have anything else. So their first drink upon being born is beer, not milk.
DUBNER: Welcome to tell me something I don't know. I'm Stephen Dubner. That was Julie Mcintosh, helping us introduce the theme of tonight's show Family Matters. Tell me something I don't know is live journalism wrapped in a game show, and tonight, we're coming to you from the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University to talk about family matters.
DUBNER: We've put together a superb panel. Would you please welcome Tiger Mom, Amy Chua, New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly and comedian Gary Gulman. Alright, let's begin with Amy Chua. Amy. Here's what we know about you so far. You are a professor at Yale Law School and
author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. We know your parenting style prohibited the following. TV watching, play dates, and getting any grade lower than an A. We know this style produced some hellacious family fights, as well as a couple of remarkably accomplished daughters. We know that despite your Tiger mom reputation, you're known to be extremely huggy and supportive. You often win the best Professor award at Yale. So Amy Chua, that's what we know. Tell us something we don't yet know about you.
AMY CHUA: Despite my reputation, I'm actually now a TV addict. I just binge watch series for, like, 12, 15 hours in a row.
DUBNER: That is just like a parent. And you state to the kids, no, no, you can't do this, and the minute you ship them off, you do it.
Is there one show that you think that we should be watching that we aren't yet?
CHUA: I'm watching sons of anarchy and Vikings and Last Kingdom, so really the opposite of educational.
DUBNER: All right, Amy, very happy to have you here tonight.
DUBNER: Our next panelist, Liza Donnelly, what do we know about you? We know you've been a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1982. We know you've live drawn the Grammys and the Oscars and that you've published 16 books. Your work is often about family matters and relationships. We know your husband is also a cartoonist, and that you have a hard time drawing George Clooney, it says here. We know you're a member of cartooning for peace, that you've been a cultural envoy for the US State Department. We even know that you were high school friends with Bill Nye, the science guy. So, Liza Donnelly, keeping in mind tonight's theme, Family Matters, tell us something we don't know about you.
LIZA DONNELLY: Well, my father's grandfather and his father also, were mayors of Trenton, New Jersey, and my great grandfather was the one who coined the phrase Trenton Makes The World takes.
DUBNER: On the Bridge.
DUBNER: Well, we are honored to have Trenton Royalty on the stage of this tonight. Thanks for being here. And finally, Gary Gulman, here's what we know. You've been doing amazing comedy for years, and before that, you were an accountant, a teacher, a doorman, a barista, and that you played tight end at Boston College. We know you're from Peabody, Massachusetts. That's the way you say at Peabody?
GARY GULMAN: Yes. Got you. Yeah.
DUBNER: Alright, Gary Gulman, we know that you have never hunted or camped because your mom told you that Jews don't hunt or camp.
GULMAN: Yes. Yeah, there were all sorts of things that Jews didn't do. But a lot of the things we were not biblical. They were just to keep the house clean. Jews Jews don't finger paint. Jews don't play with Jews don't play with clay. A lot of things were just bad for the carpet.
DUBNER: Mm hm. Alright, Gary Gulman, tell something we don't yet know about you, please?
GULMAN: My mother never held Thanksgiving at her house. Ah. It was always a travel day.
DUBNER: 'cause that's something else Jews don't do.
Right.
GULMAN: Thanks. Thanksgiving was always an away game, yeah.
DUBNER: Alright, very good. Gary, Liz and Amy, very happy to have the three of you here to play Tell me something I don't know. Here's how it's going to work. Guests from the audience will come on stage, and they'll try to impress you with their IDKs, or I don't knows. After you've heard all the contestants, you will pick a winner based on three simple criteria.
Number one, did they tell you something you truly did not know?
Number two, was it worth knowing?
And number three, was it demonstrably true and help with that demonstrably true part, Would you please welcome our real time fact checker, the beloved AJ Jacobs. Thank you.
AJ JACOBS: Thank you, Stephen.
AJ writes New York Times Best Sellers. He contributes to NPR's weekend edition, and he makes a podcast called Twice Removed.
So, AJ, our topic tonight, Family Matters. How's that sit with you?
JACOBS: Well, like Liza, I actually come from a prestigious family myself. I was researching one of my ancestors recently, and I found a mention of him on the Internet. He was quoted in a 1903 newspaper advertisement for hemorrhoid cream. So what I think is nice is that I also sometimes have hemorrhoids.
DUBNER: So AJ, very, very happy to have you here tonight. It's time now to play. Tell me something I don't know. Tonight's theme. Remember Family Matters.
Would you please welcome our first contestant, David Slusky.
David, nice to have you tell us a bit about yourself, please.
DAVID SLUSKY: I'm an economics professor at the University of Kansas, and I research and teach on health economics and labor economics.
DUBNER: Well, that is right up our alley, and I am ready, David. So are our panelists, Amy Chua, Liza Donnelly, and Gary Gulman. So what do you know that's worth knowing that you think we don't know?
SLUSKY: So I study something called medical divorce. Why would a couple get divorced for medical reasons?
DUBNER: Hemorrhoids certainly comes to mind all of a sudden.
SLUSKY: Why else? Alright.
CHUA: They're allergic to each other?
SLUSKY: They should have found that out beforehand, though. Think about estate planning.
DONNELLY: Money, it has to do with money, obviously.
DUBNER: Dying. You want does it have to do with wanting your spouse to die too much?
SLUSKY: Not that, it, That's actually not so far off. Is it not directly.
CHUA: To save taxes?
SLUSKY: Close. Does have to do with the government, but not specifically about taxes.
DONNELLY: And it involves the government. That's what.
SLUSKY: Does involve the government.
DUBNER: And it does not involve hemorrhoids.
SLUSKY: Not necessarily.
DUBNER: Is it butt related?
SLUSKY: Again, not necessarily. Possibly, but not necessarily.
GULMAN: Is it something that a higher income couple would be more likely to do?
SLUSKY: Yes.
DUBNER: David Slusky, I think we could be here all night. Why don't you put us out of our misery?
SLUSKY: So medical divorce is when a couple gets divorced to qualify for government benefits. So many degenerative medical conditions are beyond the means of most families, and spending down all of their savings to take care of the sick spouse would leave the healthy spouse destitute in retirement. Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, historically has not only required individuals to be low income, but also have no more than a few thousand dollar of available assets. But what happens is that a medical divorce would split a couple's assets, and then the sick spouse can spend down his or her share and qualify for Medicaid. And the healthy spouse can keep his or her share and be sustained in retirement that may be decades off. This couple doesn't want to get divorced, but it might be the best of a set of bad options.
The Affordable Care Act has given us an incredible opportunity to study this because the Medicaid expansion removed the asset test from Medicaid, but only for states that expanded Medicaid. And so we were able to compare states that expanded Medicaid to states that didn't. And we found that divorce went down by about 5.6% in the states that expanded Medicaid. So it's not higher income people. It's not the highest income. It's people who are high enough income to have reasonable retirement savings that would keep them comfortable, but not high enough that spending this to take care of their spouse and for their spouses medical care could really leave them destitute. So the repeal of Obama Care would at least be very good for divorce lawyers, you're saying. Potentially. I mean, again, the current plan on the table does not necessarily put the asset test back in, but it does cut the amount of money going to states. So reinstituting the asset test would allow them as a way to meet their costs at that point.
CHUA: So what's your take on it? You think that medical divorce, the fact that they have to do this is a bad thing.
SLUSKY: These couples want to stay married. They want to take care of each other.
CHUA: But can they still act like they're married?
SLUSKY: You're a lawyer, not me.
It depends on the state.
I mean, every state is different, but if I were going through this, I'd be very careful to make sure I'm still compliant with the requirements.
DUBNER: So do you know when people do a medical divorce, do they usually split?
SLUSKY: People don't want to talk about this. You can find lots of estate planning attorneys who will say they'll offer this service. But it's very, very hard to find couples who will kind of openly say that they've done this.
CHUA: Yeah, I was just wondering if it's just a technical thing that people now, they just say they're divorced, but then they can still go on, then it wouldn't be that bad, right?
SLUSKY: I mean, It would be pretty psychologically challenging and hurtful to do such a thing.
DUBNER: Gary Gulman, if you and I were married and I got sick and there was an asset test, what would you rather do divorce me or die broke with me?
GULMAN: I would I would die broke with you. I also want to avoid all the paperwork, so. Yeah.
DUBNER: Thanks, Gary. Yeah. Before we finish up with David, let's check in with our fact checker, AJ Jacobs. AJ, how legit, is this the rise and fall and maybe future rise of medical divorce?
JACOBS: It's very legit. The studies check out. And by the way, I also found that you can be allergic to your spouse. There are five ways saliva. You can put their hair, skin, semen, and makeup or jewelry, something on them. I was looking into economics and divorce.
I stumbled across the biggest divorce business in history. It lasted until 1970. And at the time, Nevada had the least strict divorce laws in the United States. So thousands of couples would go. They'd move to Reno, and they would be granted a divorce. And it was a huge boon for hotels, for lawyers, for local government. And my favorite divorce entrepreneurs, the ring catchers. The custom was divorced couples would throw their wedding rings off a bridge. And so these locals would be waiting down below in the river with metal detectors. So good for them. Good for them.
DUBNER: Thank you, AJ. Thank you, David Slusky, for playing, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. Great job.
Would you please welcome our next contestant, Sharon Leslie Morgan. Hey, Sharon, who are you? What do you do?
SHARON LESLIE MORGAN: I am a genealogist, and I'm the founder of our Black Ancestry, which is an online community that's devoted to African American genealogy.
DUBNER: Excellent.The floor is yours. What do you have for us tonight?
MORGAN: I am frequently confronted with something that is called a brick wall, obstructions that block your progress when you're doing research. So for African Americans, one of the greatest brick walls is the 1870 census. Why do you think that census is of particular importance for African American genealogists?
CHUA: 1870.
MORGAN: 1870.
CHUA: I would have thought that it would be difficult anyway because former families were deliberately broken up. But why 1870? I'm wondering why that year.
DONNELLY: There was in particular a lot of movement during that year.
MORGAN: That's true, but that's not the reason.
DUBNER: Presumably something to do with the end of the Civil War?
MORGAN: It has something to do with the end of the Civil War.
CHUA: Did slave owners destroy records?
MORGAN: This really didn't have to do with that, although many of them did.
DONNELLY: Is it had something to do with the census takers?
CHUA: No. And how would you define...
MORGAN: we'll give you a hint. 1870 was the first federal census after the Civil War. The Civil War emancipated people from slavery. What was on that census that was unique that had never happened before?
DONNELLY: Different names.
MORGAN: Not just different names. You ready for the answer?
DUBNER: We're ready for the answer. Yeah.
MORGAN: It is the first census, the first federal census that documented African American people, the formerly enslavedm with surnames. Prior to that, in every previous census, slaves might be listed as members of a household or existing with the family, but they were not recorded by name of any kind. There is exceptions with the 1850 and 1860 census, where there's a separate slave schedules, but they have no names either, you have a gender, a physical description and basically nothing else.
In order to trace prior to 1870, you have to break through the brick wall. 1870 gives you a surname to look for. But prior to 1870, there's nothing. You have to look for wills and deeds and things that document financial transactions, because prior to the 1870 census or the end of the Civil War. We weren't considered human beings. We were chattel. So it was the first census that recognized our humanity.
DUBNER: And when you get a name first and last name in an 1870 census, and some of the other documents that you can begin to look for previous to that, can you do it? Are you often successful?
MORGAN: You are often successful, but not all the time, because 1870-1880, a lot of people changed their names because in 1870, they got called by whoever owned them at that point. So then you have to look for them in 1880, and you may not find them under that same name. So your technique is that you look for them in family groups. So if you find a group of people that all have the same first names and have the same ages living in basically the same place, then that is likely the family that you're looking for. But it just 1870 since it opens a gateway, because it was also the beginning of actually having recorded documents that Black people could now vote. They could engage in contracts. They could testify in courts. So it is a huge brick wall. Once it tumbles down, it means an enormous amount to a genealogist.
DUBNER: AJ Jacobs, the brick wall in African American genealogy. What more can you tell us there?
JACOBS: Uh, Well, as Sharon, I'm sure, knows, one of the other big brick walls in genealogy is the 1890 Census.
MORGAN: Oh, god.
JACOBS: I love that. Almost all the records of the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire. It's suspected it was started by a cigarette smoking worker in the archive. So turns out smoking cigarettes when you're in an archive full of flammable paper, not the best idea.
DUBNER: Well said. Thank you, AJ. And thank you, Sharon so much. For playing Tell me something I don't know. Would you please welcome our next contestant Dalton Conley. Okay. Dalton, what's your story? What do you do?
DALTON CONLEY: I am a bio Sociologist. I teach at Princeton, but I taught here at NYU for 16 years. And my latest book is The Genome Factor.
DUBNER: And a biosciologist means what?
CONLEY: Basically, it means that I have a PhD in sociology and one in biology. And I study how genes and environment make us who we are.
DUBNER: Alright Dalton, what do you have for us tonight?
CONLEY: Well, Stephen, if you're like the typical American, you're pretty genetically related to your spouse.
How genetically related are the typical US spouses?
DONNELLY: What part of the country are you talking about?
DUBNER: Yeah. And when you say typical American spouses, yeah, can you define typical a little bit for?
CONLEY: Well, let's narrow it down a little bit to non Hispanic whites.
What is the average relatedness of couples?
CHUA: Fifth cousin.
DUBNER: What is a fifth cousin? And what's the difference between removed and first second?
DONNELLY: I want to know that.
DUBNER: Because one is up and one is across, right?
CONLEY: If you and I are first cousins, then your child is my first cousin once removed.
My child and your child are second cousins. Does that help?
DUBNER: Yeah, I need some paper and a pen to work it out, but yeah. Yeah. But first removed is generational, correct?
Right. Okay. Yeah. Exactly.
DUBNER: So fifth cousins would mean not very closely.
CONLEY: No.
Very close at all. Okay.
CHUA: I've been reading about just a surprising lack of mobility in America, given that we're supposed to be a land where people used to move across the country for opportunity, that it turns out people often just stay you
DUBNER: Might as well just stay here and marry my cousin.
CHUA: So if that's the case, then maybe it would lead to these results where people are very surprisingly close.
CONLEY: There are some countries where first cousin marriage is the norm, in fact, in the United Arab Emirates or in Pakistan, 60% or upwards of marriages are between first cousins, but I don't think that's what's going on in the US.
DUBNER: Alright, so, Dalton, what is then the typical relatedness of American spouses?
CONLEY: Well, for white non Hispanic couples, they're as related as first cousins once removed.
Now, gasp.
If you factor out shared ancestry, like a tendency for Polish Americans to marry other Polish Americans and so forth, then you get down to second cousin effect of similarity. So there's some je ne sais quoi that drawing us to people who are genetically similar to each to us.And when we look at specific genetic signatures, like the genes for educational success or the genes for height, were even more similar to our spouses. So for education, we're like first cousins, and for height, we're like half siblings. Then we may need to consult the Icelanders because they're a much more inbred population, and they've developed an incest alarm app on your phone that's called Wait. Don't F Her She's your cousin.
DUBNER: Panelists. I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to let you go first. So what do you want to know from Dalton about this cousin marriage?
DONNELLY: We're doomed, right?
CONLEY: Well, there are some negative consequences to marrying people that are reproducing with them. But because most of mutations are deleterious, bad for you, and they're mostly recessive, meaning you need to have two copies of the bad mutation for it to have its bad effect. Reproducing with somebody that is similar to ups the chances that you're gonna get two copies of that deleterious mutation that's normally harmless. Darwin married his first cousin. There's the British royal family, for example, has a lot of intermarriage, and they have mandibular prognostication where they have Jay Leno like chins, and that's a result of inbreeding depression.
DUBNER: What's Jay Leno's excuse?
CONLEY: I don't know.
CHUA: I guess I'm wondering if you break it down, I mean, is it, you know, in large parts of the population, that people are actually more like fifth cousins, and in other parts, they're more like first cousins?
CONLEY: That's a great question. We don't have enough data to get that fine grained of where in the country or what ethnic groups it's happening. We know that, for example, Jewish Americans are much more genetically similar to each other than other groups because of a population bottleneck that happened about 1,000 years ago.
CHUA: I find the height thing so fascinating.
Were you saying that people tend to marry people of their same height?
CONLEY: Yes. People do marry people of more similar heights than random.
But what's really interesting about the height phenomenon is that for all the other phenotypes, outcomes we measure, like how much schooling do you have or your level of depression or risk for Alzheimer's or diabetes, the similarity between spouses and the actual outcome is higher than the genetic similarity for that outcome? The genetic predictors of that outcome. So in other words, You and your husband, Jed, also a Yale law professor, have the exact same education. But you're probably more disparate on your your genes.
DUBNER: Now, what does it say about your genes that you know that her husband is also a law professor? I'm just curious.
CONLEY: What does it say about her genes or my genes?
DUBNER: Yours. Is there like, if you have a lurkey gene? Is that a?
CONLEY: A stalking gene? Yeah. Okay. I'll skip that question. But the interesting thing about height is that actually, we're less correlated on our actual heights than we are on the genetics of height. So obviously, there's something else that's associated with height, like general health status or something that we're sorting on more than the actual height itself.
DUBNER: So interesting. AJ Jacobs, Dalton Conley is telling us about kissing cousins and then some. How's this check out?
JACOBS: Absolutely. And I'm actually fascinated by this topic. My next book is about family. And for one of the chapters, I interviewed the head of cousin couples. This is a group that's lobbying to make first cousin marriage legal in all 50 states, 'cause right now it's illegal in 24. And they see it as, like, marriage equality, gay marriage fight part 2.
CONLEY: What's interesting is it's legal in the North and the West, and it's illegal in the South. I'll just leave it there.
They have their own Lingo. There's the cousband is the term of the hour. And I got to say I was convinced I was swayed because, you know, I find it icky. But I don't think laws should be based on ickiness. If you banned them from marriage because of genetic defect, what do you do about two people who are not related at all, but who both have the Alzheimer's gene? How do you argue that that should be illegal?
CHUA: We had something at the law school talking about genetic engineering and debating the morals of I think there's a pretty famous couple. Both are deaf and I think wanted to have a child who's deaf for various reasons, and we had a huge big debate about that. They're very complicated. But I think just going back to your point, I think there can be some things that are bad for different reasons that are also icky. So it's not just that we're responding.
DONNELLY: What does your research say about cartoonists getting married?
JACOBS: That is illegal in 48 states.
Sorry. Okay.
DUBNER: Dalton Conley, thanks so much for playing Tell me something I don't know. Great job. It is time now for a quick break. When we return, more contestants and we make our panelists tell us something we don't know. If you'd like to be a contestant on a future show or attend one, please visit tmsidk.com. You can follow us on social media at TMSIDK Underscore Show. We will be right back.
DUBNER: Welcome back to tell me something I don't know. My name is Stephen Dubner. Our panelists tonight, Amy Chua, Liza Donnelly and Gary Gulman, our fact checkers AJ Jacobson tonight's theme, you'll recall is Family Matters. To that end, earlier tonight, we asked our live audience a simple question. What is the strangest rule or custom in your family?
Panelists, I'd love each of you to read one. Amy, why don't you start?
CHUA: When a family member is traveling, we rub our noses in the shape of a cross on the traveling family member's head for good luck.
DUBNER: So it's replicating Ash Wednesday, but rather than Ashes just Snot.
Yeah. It's a lovely family custom. I have to say.
Liza Donnelly, what do you have there?
DONNELLY: No using paper towels. Paper towels are for decoration.
DUBNER: Alright, Gary Gulman.
GULMAN: We don't go to bed without singing a bedtime song to the dog. I love that.
DUBNER: I have to say all your families are nicer than mine. Yeah. It is time now to get back to our game. Would you please welcome our next contestant Adam Lowenstein. Hey, Adam, where are you from? What do you do?
ADAM LOWENSTEIN: I'm a professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, and I'm the author of a book called Shocking Representation, Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the modern horror film.
DUBNER: Okay. Trauma, horror film, and family matters, it goes together perfectly. What do you have for us tonight, Adam?
LOWENSTEIN: Since horror films are made to unnerve us, it shouldn't surprise us that they are obsessed with families. What is often very frightening in a horror film is how a family, which is supposed to be our point of familiarity, comfort, safety can turn on us and become something menacing. So We have all these movies that have all kinds of monstrous mothers, demonic dads, killer kids.
But along with those characters, there's often characters in a horror film that are there to help the protagonist rather than to hurt them. So my question is, who are the least helpful family members in a horror film. Mm hm.
DONNELLY: Horror movies are really frightening, and family is supposed to be really loving and caring. That's what causes the drama, right? So you would think that mothers are supposed to be really caring. And so following the same theory, they're the ones that are probably the ones that are the most negative in the films.
LOWENSTEIN: You're half right.
GULMAN: Grandmothers.
DONNELLY: Stepmothers.
CHUA: Stepfathers.
LOWENSTEIN: Well, let me start by talking about the most helpful family members. Because lots of horror films tend to be teen oriented. The people who tend to be most helpful in terms of family members tend to be the family members who are closest in age to the protagonist. So it's usually brothers and sisters who can sort of band together and share the conflict and vanquish the aggressor. Like, for example, there's a great 1977 horror classic called the Hills Have Eyes by Wes Craven, where there's an ostensibly evil cannibal family and an ostensibly mainstream good normal family. And in this film, the two teenage siblings wind up collaborating and using their ingenuity to vanquish the evil Cannibal foes. So grandparents can give advice, provide some help in a limited way, but they're usually too physically weak to make it through the whole ordeal. So in the Hills Have Eyes, for instance, the grandparents are the first to take control in the situation, but they're also the first to die. So that brings us to the least helpful family members. That is the parents.
DUBNER: Right. So Liza was Liza,
LOWENSTEIN: That's why I said half right. Yes. Yes. Yes.
It's the parents who are remarkably consistent in being too little too late or just absent entirely.
DUBNER: And in what way then would you say that horror film parents are different from actual parents?
LOWENSTEIN: Horror films actually do tell us truths about things that we experience in ways that we may not want to reckon with. Teen protagonists need to be able to prove themselves without their parents.
CHUA: Do the mothers get killed usually brutally?
LOWENSTEIN: I think if I had to tally it, I think there's more mothers doing the killing than getting killed.
DUBNER: Yeah. The least helpful family members in horror films, AJ. What more can you tell us about that?
JACOBS: Uh, seems to check out. I think he is the only person who knows that, but But Adam, actually, his story made me curious about perhaps the most famous family theme in horror movies, which is devil babies, like Rosemary's baby. And it turns out in medieval times, if you had a baby that cried too much, that was colicky, it was suspected that the devil or an evil fairy had replaced your baby with an impostor baby. And the solution was to treat the impostor baby so horribly that the devil would come and switch it back.
DUBNER: Mm. AJ. Thank you, and Adam Lowenstein. Thank you so much for playing Tell me something I don't know. Great job. And would you please welcome our final contestant. Actually, a pair of final contestants, Anne Heller and Alyssa Heavens. Alright. Good evening.
I just have to ask Heavens and Heller. Those are your real names?
ALYSSA HEAVENS: Yes.
ANNE HELLER: Those are our real names.
DUBNER: Alright, Anne Heller and Alyssa Heavens, what did the two of you do?
HELLER: I am the founder and CEO of Power of two. We're a child focused nonprofit in New York City.
HEAVENS: And I also work at Power of two.
DUBNER: Okay, Alyssa, Ann, the floor is yours.
HELLER: So poverty and stress have been shown to increase the chance that a child will start school behind his or her peers. But something that takes just 10 hours can give that same child a strong foundation for school, setting her up to start kindergarten ready to learn. What happens in those 10 hours?
DONNELLY: This is 10 hours over the course of the child's early life, not 10 hours a day, I suppose.
HELLER: Not 10 hours a day. Ten total hours.
CHUA: Okay. Mm hmm. Does it involve somehow building confidence in a way?
HEAVENS: I would say so. To a degree.
GULMAN: Is there a game or play involved?
HEAVENS: There's playing involved.
DUBNER: Are we to presume that what the two of you do is this?
HEAVENS: What I do is this.
DUBNER: What you do is this.
CHUA: Is it something that definitely does not involve a parent?
HELLER: It does
HEAVENS: it does involve a parent.
DUBNER: It involves a parent. Okay. It involves the kid.
DONNELLY: Mm hmm. Hugging 10 hours.
CHUA: Hugging. It's somehow captured in Power of two, the term? Mm. Mm.
HELLER: You're getting close.
DUBNER: All right, Ann and Alyssa, why don't you tell us a whole story? What happens in those magical 10 hours?
HELLER: So, my organization, Power of two, sends coaches into the homes of infants and their families to implement a program called attachment and biobehavioral catchup or ABC. And in this program, the coach is supporting the parent and what she is doing right. And in that process, strengthening the parent child interaction.
HEAVENS: As a parent coach, I go to the home, and it's for 1 hour per week for ten weeks. And during this time, I support the parent in their ability to nurture their child when he or she is upset, follow their child's lead, decrease frightening behavior. I do this by providing frequent positive comments while the parent and the child play together. And so the families that we work with come to us in different ways. They live in underserved neighborhoods with high rates of poverty, or they're involved in the foster care system. And they might hear about us from word of mouth or from our partners, local agencies, shelters, et cetera.
HELLER: And what Alyssa and the other coaches at Power of two do has been shown in multiple rigorous, randomized clinical trials to have a profound effect on child development. One of the effects of the program is that the infants production of cortisol, a stress hormone is normalized. And this is seen just after the ten weeks of the program, and with nothing else is seen again three years later in contrast to a control group. And that normalized cortisol production affects brain development and leads to better executive functioning and executive functioning in turn has been shown to be critical for starting school and being ready to learn in kindergarten.
CHUA: That's amazing.
DONNELLY: I know. I just like the way Alyssa talks.
Her voice. Yeah. It's so soothing. You know?
DUBNER: Is that part of the Is that part of the regimen?
HEAVENS: Yes. That's how I get parents to do the program.
CHUA: How long have you been tracking these results?
HELLER: So Power of two is actually a brand new organization. But our goal is to really scale it throughout New York City. We figure if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere. But the developers of the program have been looking at it for 15 years and have done multiple randomized clinical trials and found these results.
DUBNER: So I'm curious to know what specifically you would observe parents doing and then what you do to change that behavior.
HEAVENS: Yeah, so, the goal is to take the skills that parents are already doing. They're being really nurturing, they're following their child's lead, and more that a coach tells them, Wow, the way that you just picked her right up when she fell and started crying, that's what she needed, that will actually make the parent do that more down the line.
HELLER: But when it really starts to make a difference is when for the first time, that parent who may be going through extreme stress, when for the first time they realize that that child is squealing with joy at something they did, And then you get that feedback loop that is so hard wired in all of us, but sometimes it just takes a little more to unleash it.
CHUA: How do you deal with when you see some behavior that you don't think is positive?
HEAVENS: We make some suggesting comments. We try to keep it mostly positive and strength based. We can hint at things. Oh, she's really crying. You know. And the parent usually gets the hint, like, Okay, I'll go pick her up. And that's when we immediately follow it up with a positive comment. Like, that was really great. That's just what she needed from you.
DUBNER: AJ Jacobs empirical evidence that coaching parents can lower kids stress and help them in school. Hoes that sound to you?
JACOBS: I was delighted to find there is pretty solid evidence to support this. The method was ranked number one by an evidence based parenting group. But while researching this, I actually, I did come across an amazing fact about the history of child protection. There was a famous case in 1874 of a 10-year-old girl being abused by her adoptive parents. But at the time, there were no laws protecting children from physical abuse. So, one activist contacted the society for the prevention of animals, which did exist, and argued the child was a member of the animal kingdom. And it worked. And the girl is rescued. And that same year, the first child protective agency was founded.
DUBNER: Wow. I did not know that. AJ, thank you and Alyssa and Anne, thank you so much for playing, tell me something I don't know.
Can we give one more hand to all our contestants, please? It is time now for our panelists to vote.
They will use a ranked voting system to pick their favorites. A contestant with the highest overall ranking will be tonight's winner, and we'll join us back onstage later. Alright, then, who will it be?
Anne Heller and Alyssa Havens, with how to coach a parent, Adam Lowenstein, with unhelpful parents in horror films. Dalton Conley with Don't kiss her, she's your cousin, Sharon Leslie Morgan with the brick wall of Black genealogy or David Slusky, with the decline of medical divorce.
While the votes are being cast, let me ask you a favor. If you enjoy telling me something I don't know, why don't you help us spread the word? Give it a nice rating on Apple Podcast or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast. And thank you very much. Okay, the panelists votes are in. Once again, thanks so much to all our contestants. Unfortunately, there can only be one winner, but we do have for each of you this certificate of impressive knowledge, which I'm sure you will frame and treasure. But there is one winner tonight. With her IDK, the brick wall of Black genealogy, Sharon Leslie Morgan. Congratulations. Sharon, you will come back on stage later to face one of our contestants in the final round, tell me something I don't know, which one we will find out right after this break.
Welcome back. It's time now for our panelists, Amy Chua, Liza Donnelly, and Gary Gulman, to answer some lightning round questions written especially for each of them. Amy Chua, Tiger Mom, Yale Law Professor All Around High Achiever, we'll start with you. Would you please answer the following questions. We'll start with an easy one. Your daughter's names are Sophia and Lulu. And if they had each one word to describe your parenting style now in retrospect, what would it be?
CHUA: I think strict is fair.
DUBNER: Name one thing that you did to one of your daughters while they were young that you now regret.
CHUA: I think I didn't realize how much children just imitate. So, you know, you could be yelling and screaming or trying to get them to do this, but I think they pattern their behavior. So now I notice that they're a lot like me for better or worse.
DUBNER: Now, can you tell just from looking at someone whether or not they've had a tiger parent?
CHUA: No, I can't, but sometimes with about 10 seconds talking to my students, I can guess.
DUBNER: And the characteristics are what? The giveaways.
CHUA: Actually, you'd be surprised. I think it's one thing in China, like, you know these strict parents, and you get these kind of terrified, very disciplined, but not very imaginative. But I think in America, it's actually surprising. You often have kids responding against their tiger parents. So I guess the best of both worlds is when you internalize some of the positive things like high expectations or work ethic, but applied to their own passions and almost with a rebellious streak, I found that to be actually a very good combination.
DUBNER: Interesting. True or false. You are pretty handy with a chainsaw.
CHUA: My dad taught me how to use a chainsaw. Yeah. Yeah, I do know how to use chainsaw.
DUBNER Nicely done Amy Chua. Great job. Next up, New Yorker Cartoonist Liza Donnelly, Liza you ready?
DONNELLY: I'm scared.
DUBNER: Alright. First of all, what did you and Bill Nye talk about back in high school?
DONNELLY: Chemistry. My locker was outside of the chemistry room. So he would come out and try to tell me facts.
DUBNER: Convert you to Chemistry.
DONNELLY: Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's it.
DUBNER: Also, why is George Clooney so hard to draw?
DONNELLY: Well, first of all, everybody knows his face so well. And he's so handsome. Like, I can't draw Denzel Washington either, cause I find them very attractive. Yeah.
DUBNER: If you had not been a cartoonist, you would have been what?
DONNELLY: A park ranger or a zoo keeper, something like that? Mm hmm.
DUBNER: Yeah. I understand that you became a cartoonist because of James Thurber. What was it about Thurber that turned on?
DONNELLY: His drawings are so simple, easy to trace as a kid.
DUBNER: I'm told your father had wanted a son, and so he took you fishing, golfing, birding, et cetera. And that sounds a little sad, maybe, but was it?
DONNELLY: No, I think, well, I think he really was an early feminist, you know, He was saying, you can do and be anything you want, you know, because back then, taking your daughter fishing maybe wasn't as common as it might be now. But I think he was just You know, saying you don't have to be your gender, you be who you want to be.
DUBNER: For every cartoon of yours that the New Yorker publishes, how many get rejected?
DONNELLY: Loads. I don't know the numbers, but the more you draw, the better you get, so...
DUBNER: Can you can actually tell beforehand whether a given cartoon will be accepted?
DONNELLY: No.
DUBNER: Give us an example when you were surprised, either an acceptance or a rejection.
DONNELLY: Well, the first one they bought was a surprise. 'cause it was really esoteric. And it wasn't funny.
DUBNER: Wow. So the keys to acceptance for the New Yorker you're saying are esoteric and unfunny.
People at home.
DONNELLY: At least the first one.
DUBNER: Huh. Now, I've read, and I want to know if this is true that you can take any New Yorker cartoon and successfully swap out its caption to Christ, what an asshole. Is that true?
DONNELLY: Uh, no.
DUBNER: When you and your cartoonist husband are just sitting at home quietly, do you ever picture him with a thought bubble over his head? And if so, what would it say?
DONNELLY: Christ, what an asshole.
DUBNER: Thank you very much, Liza Donnelly. Now to our final panelist, the former tight end, the comedy giant, Gary Gulman. Alright, here we go Gary. Gary, you're funny, and you're also really tall. If you could be only one, would it be?
GULMAN: I would rather be funny than tall.
DUBNER: Well, you are, so good. When you were starting out in comedy and still teaching, I understand you tried out jokes on your high school students. What kind of audience were they?
GULMAN: It depended on how they were doing in school. The better students were better audience members. They were sharper. Not that my jokes were very esoteric or anything like that, but it took some of the AP classes to really enjoy them.
DUBNER: Gary Gulman, I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on two letter state Postal abbreviations.
GULMAN: The two Letter state postal abbreviations, around 1973 is when the post office said, every state has to have a two capital letter abbreviation. Before that, it was chaos. And So they assembled a crack squad of abbreviators, and and reduced every state to a two capital letter abbreviation, and it sounds like it would have been over in 6 minutes, but it took hours. Yeah.
DUBNER: And And when you say assembled the crack squad of abbreviators, What were those abbreviators doing beforehand? Where did they find them? Well, were they ab? Were they freelance abbreviating? Were they out of work abbreviators?
GULMAN: The hero of the story is one man who is a freelance contractor. Not contractor, contractor. Ah, yeah.
DUBNER: Gary, what else was on your mom's list of things that Jews don't do?
GULMAN: Um, there was finger painting. There was the paper mache. There was no paper mache, any kind of plaster of Paris, any kind of Elmer's gluing, anything that couldn't be undone and put away within a half hour. So at the end of at the end of the day, certain sized lego blocks were were not Kosher.
DUBNER: Gary Gulman. Thank you so much.
Nicely done, all of you. It's time now for our live audience to pick one panelist to go on to face our contestant winner. So, who will it be Amy Chua, Liza Donnelly, or Gary Gulman audience, would you please take out your phones and follow the texting instructions on the screen?
The audience votes have been tallied and our panelist winner tonight. Mr. Gary Gulman. Congratulations. Thank you. Well, Gary, what that means is that you get to play another round with our audience contestant winner. So, Sharon Leslie Morgan, would you please join us back on stage, please to face off against Gary Gulman in the final round. Tell me something I don't know. Alright, our final round is very, very simple. In a moment, we will spin our wheel of maximum danger. Yeah. Which is loaded up with 12 topics that are related to tonight's theme, family matters. Whichever topic our spinning wheel lands on, well, Gary and Sharon. You'll each have a minute to tell us something we don't know about that topic. No googling, no audience help, just your own brains to draw on. If you're thinking about making something up, remember, fact checker AJ Jacobs, standing by. Alright, AJ, would you please give the wheel a spin for Gary and Sharon. Are we ready? Here we go. Dynasties. Dynasty. Dynasties. Sharon and Gary.
We're gonna give you a minute to think of something from the depths of your fertile brains and tell us something we don't know about dynasties. Alright. Good luck. We'll give you a minute. While our finalists are thinking, let me remind you to visit tmsidk.com to get tickets to upcoming shows or to be a contestant. If you'd like to suggest a theme for a future episode or recommend a panelist, give us a shout on Facebook or Twitter. We go by TMS IDK Underscore Show.
Alright, Sharon and Gary. You've been asked to tell us something we don't know about dynasties, Gary Gulman, comedian. Why don't you tell us something we don't know about dynasties?
GULMAN: The Boston Celtics won nine out of 11 NBA championships during the late 50s and early 60s and up until 1969. And they're the winningest franchise in NBA history. And that's what I know about their dynasty.
DUBNER: And you do know that we here in New York love your Boston sports team. So thanks for bringing that here. Sharon, I'm eager to know what you can tell us about dynasties.
MORGAN: As much as I know about history, the most relevant thing I can think of is the first television show that I actually became addicted to. Oh. And it was called Dynasty. And my family, we would religiously watch that program, especially when Diane Carol came on, and she was duking it out with Crystal Carrington. And that was, like, a really big deal. So that's my contribution for Dynasty.
DUBNER: Alright, it is time for our live audience to pick a winner. Remember the criteria. Did they tell you something you did not know? Was it worth knowing, and was it demonstrably true, okay? Would you first make some noise for the Boston Celtics Dynasty and Gary Gulman? I would describe that as a moderately enthusiastic applause with one very fervent boo. Yeah. And would you please make some noise for Sharon Leslie Morgan and the TV show, Dynasty? Yeah. Well, that sounds a little bit like a winner. Sharon, congratulations, now. What prize could we possibly give you that measures up to your performance tonight?
Well, do you remember back at the top of the show when we heard what the Busch family did with its newborn babies?
MORGAN: The generations of Busch men are given five little drops of Budweiser beer into their mouth?
DUBNER: Sharon, we wanted to get you a drunk baby, but they are surprisingly hard to find online.
So instead, we got you a premium gold edition home brewing kit from Mr. Beer. Baby Friendly eye drop Dispenser Not included. Sorry, but congratulations.
And that is our show for tonight. I hope we told you something you did not know about family matters. Thanks to our panelists, Amy Chua, Liza Donnelly, and Gary Gulman, to our fact checker, AJ Jacobs, to our brilliant contestants, and thanks, especially to all of you for coming to play.
Tell me something I Don't Know. Great nights.
And next week, we're in Chicago for an episode called Getting there. Our panelists, hip hop artist, and political organizer Che Rhyme Fest Smith, Department of Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans and the comedian Mary Katherine Curran.
EVANS: Maybe Boston's a little more hilly. I personally don't remember what Boston is like because I've never been there. Next time on tell me something I don't know.
DUBNER: Tell me something I don't know is produced by Dubner Productions in Association with Stitcher. Our staff includes Allison Hockenberry, Emma Morgenstern, Harry Huggins, Brian Huirez, Dan Dezula, and Rachel Jacobs. David Herman is our technical director. He also composed our theme music.
Thanks also to our good friends at Qualtrix, whose online survey software has been so helpful in putting on this show. You can subscribe to tell me something I don't know. On Apple Podcast Stitcher or on tmsidk.com. You can also listen without ads by signing up for Stitcher Premium at stitcherpremium.com slash Tell me.
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