5. What Do Tom Sawyer and the Founder of Duolingo Have in Common?

No Stupid Questions

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Also: is there such a thing as too much science? Plus, our special guest, Luis von Ahn, an inventor of CAPTCHA and a pioneer of free online language learning. This episode originally aired on June 14, 2020.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm thankful that most academics are such terrible writers.
0:06.1	Great. It gives you a job.
0:08.0	I'm Angela Duckworth.
0:09.3	I'm Stephen Dubner.
0:10.3	And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.
0:13.6	Today on the show, how do you get people to work for free without their even knowing it?
0:18.8	It's like better than Tom Sawyer, really.
0:20.3	He just painted a freaking fence.
0:21.6	Yeah.
0:22.6	Also, there are millions of academic articles published each year.
0:27.6	But how much is this research actually benefiting us?
0:30.6	Not even other scientists are reading these articles.
0:33.6	And not even scientists' mothers.
0:35.6	Very likely not.
0:41.0	Angela? Stephen.
0:43.0	Nice to see you. It is great to see you.
0:45.9	Special occasion today. Very special, I think.
0:51.5	Our first ever guest on No Stupid Questions. And I think he may be a remarkable guest.
0:54.0	I think he's absolutely a remarkable guest. But we should probably lower the expectations. I think he'll be an okay guest. I think he's absolutely a remarkable guest.
0:55.6	But we should probably lower the expectations.
0:57.2	I think he'll be an okay guest.
0:57.7	He's fine.
	...

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