This is planet money from NPR.
A few weeks ago, I found myself standing around the storied office water cooler chatting with my colleague Darian woods from our sister show, the indicator.
He was telling me about this kind.
Of fun new economics paper he'd just come across.
The researchers had used cell phone tracking data to map out socioeconomic diversity in America and they identified the place where the widest array of people from across the socioeconomic spectrum were most likely to actually rub shoulders in the same physical location.
And that place was pretty surprising.
It turns out that according to this cell phone data rich and poor and middle class people are most likely to mingle not in public parks or in the pews of a church but inside of moderately expensive chain restaurants places like Applebee's or Olive Garden or the australian themed outback steakhouse.
Now, I happen to know that Darian is part australian.
So when he then told me that never had he ever been to an outback steakhouse, that got my attention.
And when he reminded me that he was also a vegetarian I knew we didn't really have a choice.
I had to take Darian, the australian vegetarian, on an adventure.
Darian Woods.
Alexi Horowitz Ghazi.
Good to see you.
Fancy seeing you here outside the outback steakhouse.
A few days later, we found ourselves at an outback steakhouse in Bayside, Queens.
We were mostly there to cross an item off of my bucket list for Darien.
Right, reason enough.
But we also wanted to get some anecdote about whether or not it's true that people of all income levels are hanging out together at the outback stakehouse.
But first, of course, we had to eat.