Ira Glass

Why would they only ask people named Nielsen which shows they liked?

I started thinking.

I knew that when they figured things like this out, they didn't ask everybody, they just asked a small percentage of people and then extrapolated.

I think I figured they'd done some research and found that the name Nielsen, because it was a common name maybe, and it seemed to cut across class and economic lines, actually came pretty close to a representative sample.

I knew this wasn't the way they measured public opinion now, but it seemed like the Nielsen surveys had been around for a while, and I figured they were just a holdover from a more primitive, less statistically rigorous time.

After that, I really didn't think about it again.

Or if I did, it was only with a mild curiosity.

I wonder why TV still does it that way.

Fast forward 20 years.

I was talking with a friend of mine who was telling me about her friend who'd been selected to be a Nielsen family.

And I said to her, isn't it weird that they're all named Nielsen?

My friend looked at me for what seemed like a long time.

Somewhere during her very long pause, because of the very long pause, in fact, I realized, of course they're not all named Nielsen.

That makes no sense at all.

At the time of this conversation, I was 34 years old, and I couldn't believe I'd gotten this far without ever stopping to think it through.

It made me wonder what else I'd missed, and if this has ever happened to anyone besides me.

Turns out, I'm not alone.

I've been talking to people about this for weeks, and there's a lot of us out there, like me and this woman, Jodi Mace, carting around our childhood beliefs well into adulthood.

Jodi thought there were lots of Zings, deer Zings, railroad Zings.

It makes sense.