296. These Shoes Are Killing Me!

Freakonomics Radio

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4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2017

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

The human foot is an evolutionary masterpiece, far more functional than we give it credit for. So why do we encase it in "a coffin" (as one foot scholar calls it) that stymies so much of its ability — and may create more problems than it solves?

Transcript

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0:00.0	What are you wearing right now?
0:02.5	Shoes eyes.
0:03.9	I'm wearing a pair of VBA flats.
0:08.6	How many NBA players regularly get pedicures?
0:11.9	90% of them.
0:14.4	What kind of animals have you put in shoes?
0:16.2	We put sheep in shoes actually.
0:18.4	Have you ever had people come to you who want their foot surgically altered so that they
0:23.3	will fit the fashionable shoes they want to wear better?
0:26.7	Want a week?
0:28.5	There's a theory I've been kicking around.
0:31.8	I'm really a theory, more like an idea.
0:34.6	Eh, fairly an idea.
0:36.3	Let's call it an observation.
0:37.9	The observation is this.
0:40.1	Very often, when we see something that needs improvement, that needs correction, we respond
0:45.4	with an over correction.
0:46.9	You see this all the time with nutritional trends.
0:50.5	You see it in politics and government, in a lot of the rules and regulations we draw up.
0:55.5	You see it in human behaviors large and small.
0:58.7	Our sages have warned us against this, as one old saying goes, do not use a cannon to
1:04.7	kill a mosquito.
	...

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