The Great Hot Dog Debate

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Exploring the contentious discussion on whether a hot dog qualifies as a sandwich, featuring insights from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Colbert, and Anthony Bourdain among others. Delving into the complex world of semantic disagreements and the challenge of understanding divergent perspectives on seemingly simple concepts.

Is a hotdog a sandwich?

Well, that depends on your definition of a sandwich (and a hotdog), and according to the most recent research in cognitive science, the odds that your concept of a sandwich is the same as another person's concept are shockingly low.

In this episode we explore how understanding why that question became a world-spanning argument in the mid 2010s helps us understand some of the world-spanning arguments vexing us today.

Our guest is psychologist Celeste Kidd who studies how we acquire and conceptualize information, form beliefs around those concepts, and, in general, make sense of the torrent of information blasting our brains each and every second. Her most recent paper examines how conceptual misalignment can lead to semantic disagreements, which can lead us to talk past each other (and get into arguments about things like whether hotdogs are sandwiches).

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Why can’t we settle the “is a hot dog a sandwich?” debate?

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