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Freakonomics Radio

131. Do You Really Want to Know Your Future?

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.632K Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2013

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You might think that someone with a 50-50 chance of getting a fatal disease would want to know for sure -- but you would be wrong. What does this say about our supposed thirst for certainty?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I think for my mother and for her family, the whole family was very important.

0:17.0

You know, she was very kind to us and she was very loving and very warm.

0:20.7

I think a lot of my warmth I get from her.

0:23.5

That's Nancy Wexler.

0:24.8

She's a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University.

0:28.4

One morning in the late 1960s, something strange happened to her mother, Leonore Wexler.

0:34.9

She was 53 at the time.

0:37.3

Mom was on jury duty, crossing a great big street in Los Angeles.

0:42.3

You know, eight o'clock in the morning, very well dressed, very well kept.

0:47.1

And the policeman just screamed at her and said, you know, aren't you ashamed of yourself

0:51.4

being drunk so early in the morning?

0:54.2

And she realized that her unsatagate was one of the very first signs of.

0:59.2

She called my dad in a panic and said, I think this horrible thing is happening.

1:06.1

And she was diagnosed that afternoon with Huntington's disease is a horrible thing, a fatal

1:16.4

neurological disorder.

1:18.4

Huntington affects every aspect of mind thinking and body.

1:24.7

It causes all kinds of uncontrollable movements throughout your body, your face, wiggles,

1:32.8

your arms move.

1:34.2

And then also people very often have very severe depression, hallucinations, delusions,

1:42.7

paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and also cognitive problems.

1:48.1

So difficulty, thinking, remembering, executive functioning, you know, so every aspect really

1:58.2

of mind and body and thought.

...

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