These creative and funny podcasts always leave you feeling just that little bit brainier
Since it launched a year ago, Freakonomics Radio has established itself as one of the smartest, cleverest listens. Its podcasts, made by WNYC Radio and American Public Media, are creative and funny explorations of issues and niggling questions. The latest programme, presented by Stephen Dubner, tackles the idea of pain: why we experience it and how we remember it.
It's an elegant meander through the topic, Dubner beginning with why he wears headphones on the New York subway, "those ridiculous big ear-muff-type noise cancelling headphones". He does so to block out the noise of an alarm in the station, repeatedly set off when people go through the emergency exit rather than the turnstile. "Who are these people?" he wonders, following a few to ask why they inflict noise pollution on themselves and others. One man says it saves him 30 seconds. "That's one email," he adds.
He then interviewed Donald Redelmeier, a scientist with some quirky research areas ? how rainy weather affects medical school admissions interviews, for example ? and fascinating experiments on how we recall pain, and what can be done to alter this. He found that ending an invasive procedure such as a colonoscopy with a couple of pain-free minutes made patients more likely to come back for retesting. "A 22% gain for simply doing nothing," Dubner noted. "That's a pretty neat magic trick."
The programme also takes in the pain threshold of ice hockey players, and the best way for politicians to break painful news. The trick, apparently, is not to use the word pain ("that causes pain"), but to choose euphemisms such as "tough". It's all charismatically presented by Dubner, who has a light style and an engaging turn of phrase. Talking about noise in train stations, he says: "I kinda like that old clackety-clack of steel wheels on steel tracks." It's full of bright, evocative observations, and always leaves you feeling just that little bit brainier.
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