64. Are Women Required to Be Nicer Than Men?
No Stupid Questions
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I would like to violently agree with you. |
| 0:05.4 | Yay. |
| 0:06.0 | But before I violently agree, I would like to violently disagree. |
| 0:09.5 | Oh, no. |
| 0:11.1 | I'm Angela Duckworth. |
| 0:12.5 | I'm Stephen Dubner. |
| 0:13.5 | And you're listening to No Stupid Questions. |
| 0:16.7 | Today on the show, how important is it to be nice? |
| 0:20.9 | Oh my gosh, I'm so exciting. I think you won the swim meet. |
| 0:23.5 | Okay, tell me everything. |
| 0:25.3 | Also, is reading books somehow morally superior to consuming other forms of media? |
| 0:31.4 | Someone was bragging that they were on track to read over 30 books this year. |
| 0:35.9 | I joked that I was on track to watch 300 hours of YouTube. |
| 0:43.7 | So, Angela, we get a lot of interesting emails from our listeners, for which I'm grateful. |
| 0:49.1 | And occasionally there's a comment to the effect that they enjoy our dynamic so much because it's a little sweet and sour. They say that you, in addition to being so smart, are also so nice. While I, in addition to being less smart, am also mean or snarky or negative. |
| 1:12.2 | Asurbic, sarcastic, critical. |
| 1:14.8 | I'm just guessing. |
| 1:15.8 | Maybe you're the one writing all these emails. |
| 1:19.0 | So whether or not this is true, it did make me wonder, when you have a message to get across, how important is, quote, being nice? And I'm particularly |
| 1:29.0 | curious the degree to which this is gender-related. Are women required to be nice while men can get |
| 1:35.6 | away with being mean? Well, I do know this literature on gender differences, but I think for my own |
| 1:42.4 | self, when I say things, I do a lot of the time think, how is this coming across? |
... |
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