You’re looking for your perfect partner, but dating sites keep matching you with duds. So what do you do? Conduct an elaborate linguistic experiment, of course!
At least, that was futurist Amy Webb’s response to the situation. But did it work?
On The Gist, Slate’s Justin Peters shares his observations from watching every Super Bowl in history over the course of two months. He’s the author of The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet. For the Spiel, another Lobstar of the Antentwig.
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LinkedIn plummets on weak first quarter guidance. Alphabet surpasses Apple in the race to a trillion dollar market cap. GoPro reports some not so sporty earnings. And Conoco Phillips cuts its dividend. Our analysts discuss those stories and share some stocks on their radar. Plus, ESPN analyst Andrew Brandt talks about the business of football.
Do e-cigarettes make quitting smoking more difficult?
Research last month claimed to show that e-cigarettes harm your chances of quitting smoking. The paper got coverage world-wide but it also came in for unusually fierce criticism from academics who spend their lives trying to help people quit. It's been described as 'grossly misleading' and 'not scientific'. We look at what is wrong with the paper and ask if it should have been published in the first place.
A campaign of dodgy statistics
Are American presidential hopefuls getting away with statistical murder? We speak to Angie Drobnic, Editor of the US fact-checking website Politifact, about the numbers politicians are using - which are not just misleading, but wrong.
Will missing a week of school affect your GCSE results?
Recently education minister Nick Gibb said that missing a week of school could affect a pupil's GCSE grades by a quarter. We examine the evidence and explore one of the first rules of More or Less ? 'correlation is not causation'. We interview Stephen Gorard, Professor of Education at Durham University.
What are the chances that a father and two of his children share the same birthday?
A loyal listener got in touch to find out how rare an occurrence this is. Professor David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge explains the probabilities involved.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Charlotte McDonald
On The Gist, Mike identifies the greatest depiction of a zebra in mass media. Here’s the video. The, Dan Pashman from The Sporkful podcast explains how sound influences taste. For the Spiel, if a candidate offered to pay you 2,800 for your vote, would you take it?
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Slate’s consummate daily news and opinion podcast is looking for an experienced and creative producer to join our team. Apply here.
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This quixotic ‘novel of ideas’ blends philosophical reflection with the haunting tale of Herman Mussert, a retired, outmoded ancient language teacher preoccupied with Classical antiquity. After falling asleep one evening in Amsterdam, he mysteriously wakes the next morning in a hotel room in Lisbon where he slept with another man’s wife twenty years earlier. From here Mussert embarks on an enigmatic journey of the mind, contemplating passion, death, wisdom and disillusionment. Presented by Harriet Gilbert.
