How to answer your biggest questions—with data (w/ Mona Chalabi)

How to Be a Better Human

4min Snip

00:00

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This is the last episode of season 2 of How to Be a Better Human. We will be back with a season 3 right at the beginning of 2023. Today's guest was the one, the only Mona Chalabi. You can hear her podcast, Am I Normal? Wherever you're listening to this. The facts in this episode have been checked, but you know what? Don't trust me. Dig into bad data for yourself.

Whenever we have a question – about ourselves or the world around us – it can be helpful to visualize our answer in order to really understand it. But how do you conceptualize something as big as inequality, as complex as grief, or as silly as your probability of correctly guessing today’s Wordle? For data journalist Mona Chalabi, the answer is through data – and drawing. You’ve probably seen Mona’s illustrations on the internet. She’s known for interpreting data in a way that makes you GET it. In today’s episode, she explains how anyone could use analysis to answer their most personal questions – from whether or not to have a breakup to how many friends you should have. For the text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts