Hello subscribers to The Pudding, as well as our special supporters on Patreon.

We’ve got 4 new stories coming at you!

What if the danger was not talking to strangers? Kind of like how DARE made drugs seem cool.

You are going to die someday. Unless you’re Bryan Johnson?

How accurately are Asian Americans cast in Hollywood? 80 movies. 160 Asian actors. 236 characters.

[Video, 6 min] The Loneliness Epidemic It’s coming for us all, on every platform.

Let’s jump into it!

Strangers talking

Would you talk to a stranger for 30 minutes? What if that stranger was me (Kevin)?

Don’t answer that — in this story, Alvin delves into an experiment where 1,500 people agreed to converse with someone they didn’t know. The participants were a diverse group by any metric: age, race, education attainment, political ideology. Scary, right?

We’ve gotten quite good at being with people who are similar to us. But as this study demonstrates, what we’re good at isn’t always what is good for us.

Read the essay

If you like this story, check out these other gems by Alvin, such as Middle school sucks and Sitters and standers

The Birthday Effect

If there’s one thing worse than dying, it’s dying on your birthday. Unfortunately, according to statistics folklore (and multiple studies), your likelihood of death is, in fact, higher on your birthday — this phenomenon is known as “The Birthday Effect.”

Perhaps you think that sounds far-fetched. Well, you’re not alone. Our resident skeptic, Russell, crunched the numbers to answer the question asked at dinner parties around the world: Do more people die on their birthdays than expected?

Read the essay

If you like this story, take a gander at our other essays explaining statistics and math: The Birthday Paradox, The Infinite Monkey Theorem Experiment, and This Effect Is, Like, So Random

Asian Representation in Film

Spurred on by a maternal complaint about a popular Netflix show, Dorothy Lu and Anna Li embarked upon a historical account of Asian representation in popular films.

Their question: How common is it for Asian characters to be played by an actor of a different ethnicity?

Ready the essay

If you like this story, read our other essays about the movies: She Giggles, He Gallops and Chalamet Coughs, Dune Wins

The Loneliness Epidemic [Video]

It’s well-established that we (society) are in a loneliness epidemic. Yet we (you and me) rarely admit that we are lonely — it’s something that happens to other people, like watching 9-1-1: Lone Star or listening to Imagine Dragons.

This week, Matt added a personal touch to Alvin’s visual essay, showing us that every study and meta-analysis is informed not by mere data, but people like you and me.

Watch the video (6 min)

If you like this story, consider our other essays about societal trends: Teenagers and Who killed the world?

Quick asides

Have a cool essay idea that you want to make? Check out our pitch guidelines.

Want to hire our team to create data-driven, visual stories? Visit our sister studio, Polygraph.

#stuff-we-love at The Pudding

Here are some special links shared on our Friends of The Pudding Slack (get access via Patreon)!

• Pathfinder, Matthew Siu

• A Patchwork of Progress, Gates Foundation

• The Way of Code, Lao Tzu/Rick Rubin/Anthropic

Thanks for reading!
The Pudding team