90. If America Is a Train Wreck, Why Am I Doing Fine?

No Stupid Questions

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2022

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Why do so many Americans say they’re satisfied with their own lives but upset about the way the country is going? Why don’t other countries experience the same gap? And what do horror movies have in common with Coca-Cola enemas?

Transcript

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0:00.0	I wouldn't intentionally go to a hospital and ask them to operate on me or give me a Coca-Cola
0:10.5	Enema.
0:11.5	I'm Angela Duckworth.
0:13.3	I'm Stephen Dubner.
0:14.3	And you're listening to no stupid questions.
0:17.8	Today on the show, if Americans are generally happy as individuals, why are we so frustrated
0:24.0	as a nation?
0:25.0	We're going to hell on a hand-basket as a country, but my own life is pretty good.
0:32.0	Angela, I recently came across a Gallup poll, which found that only 17% of Americans are
0:39.7	currently satisfied with the direction of the United States.
0:43.7	That's a little depressing.
0:45.1	We'll say depressing, but probably not so surprising.
0:48.1	And I will say that number has been falling over recent years in the US.
0:52.5	But here's the thing, the same poll found that 85% of Americans are satisfied with the
0:59.4	way things are going in their personal life.
1:02.0	Almost the exact opposite, right?
1:03.8	Yeah.
1:04.8	So we can discuss some of the other numbers in the poll later, because the breakdown
1:08.4	is interesting.
1:09.4	But how do you explain this astonishing gap between personal satisfaction and our satisfaction
1:15.6	with, quote, the way things are going in the US?
1:19.1	When I first heard of this statistic, it was a pretty widely publicized poll, I thought
	...

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