This is really fun, yeah, go.

I'm Antelda Dukworth.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

And you're listening to no stupid questions.

Today on the show, when is family a Strangement healthy?

This isn't working out. Do you want this clock radio?

Because if you don't, I'm taking it.

Also, what does it mean to have a good personality?

You, by the way, would be called an ambivirt, Stephen.

Sounds a lot like a pervert, which I'm not crazy about.

Stephen, I have a question I've been thinking about lately.

It's about family.

And it's about whether getting kind of divorced from your family is Strangement.

Is that ever the right thing to do, the healthy thing to do?

So I find this question very interesting because I've thought about a Strangement a lot.

In fact, I've been trying for five years to do a good Freakonomic radio episode on a Strangement.

Why have you been trying and why have you been able to?

Well, I've been trying because I think it is one of many under examined elements of life

that has all kinds of implications, financial, familial, obviously, emotional.

And I wondered about it because I turned out that I had quite a few friends

who had deep estrangements within their families, either they were estranged from a parent

or from a sibling or one of their parents was estranged from another family member.

...