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Captain Steve Answers Your Airline Questions

A while back, we began soliciting reader questions for Captain Steve, a captain with a major U.S. airline. He answered his first batch of questions here, and now is back…



Captain Steve Answers Your Airline Questions

A while back, we began soliciting reader questions for Captain Steve, a captain with a major U.S. airline. He made his debut here, with his rather spirited take on the…








Episode 100

Chicago’s Renegade Sheriff Wants to Fix Law Enforcement

Tom Dart is transforming Cook County’s jail, reforming evictions, and, with Steve Levitt, trying a new approach to electronic monitoring….

Episode 107

Bringing Data to Life

Talithia Williams thinks you should rigorously track your body’s data. She and Steve Levitt trade birth stories and bemoan the state of STEM education….

Episode 12

Where Do All the Bad Ideas Go?

Ideas are currency. This couldn’t be more true in academia, where it’s the job of researchers to think of questions and, hopefully, find answers. Bapu talks with economists Steve Levitt…

Confessions of a Steve Jobs Fanboy

…rest. That’s how Steve Jobs did it. So, 10 Unusual Things You May Not Know About Steve Jobs. 1) Nature vs. Nurture. Jobs’ sister is the novelist Mona Simpson, but…



Episode 102

Adding Ten Healthy Years to Your Life

…but on maintaining good health into old age. He explains the possibilities and limits of current medicine and gives Steve his best advice on how to defeat the aging process….

Episode 84

Legacy of a Jerk

What happens to your reputation when you’re no longer around to defend it?

Episode 84

Legacy of a Jerk (Replay)

What happens to your reputation when you’re no longer around to defend it?

Episode 43

Arne Duncan Says All Kids Deserve a Chance — and Criminals Deserve a Second One

Steve’s neighbor. The two talk about teachers caught cheating in Chicago public schools and Steve shares a story he’s never told Arne, about a defining moment in the educator’s life….

Episode 35

Live From St. Paul!

Freakonomics Radio hits the road, and plays some Quiz Bowl!…

Episode 13

When Bapu Met Levitt

…of a conversation between Steve and Bapu from Steve’s podcast, People I (Mostly) Admire, where they cover everything from the ethics of human-challenge trials to why Bapu decided to start…

Episode 441

Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital)

Google and Facebook are worth a combined $2 trillion, with the vast majority of their revenue coming from advertising. In our previous episode, we learned that TV advertising is much…

Episode 287

Hoopers! Hoopers! Hoopers!

As C.E.O. of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer was famous for over-the-top enthusiasm. Now he’s brought that same passion to the N.B.A. — and to a pet project called USAFacts, which performs…

Episode 54

Andrew Yang Is Not Giving Up on Politics — or the U.S. — Yet

…third try be the charm? Andrew talks with Steve about what it’s like to lose an election and why a third political party might be the best chance for avoiding…

Episode 21

Pete Docter: “What If Monsters Really Do Exist?”

…and Monsters, Inc. Pete Docter and Steve talk about Pixar’s scrappy beginnings, why it costs $200 million to make an animated film, and the movie moment that changed Steve’s life….

Episode 290

He’s One of the Most Famous Political Operatives in America. America Just Doesn’t Know It Yet.

Steve Hilton was the man behind David Cameron’s push to remake British politics. Things didn’t work out so well there. Now he’s trying to launch a new political revolution —…

Episode 495

Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses? (Replay)

People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to…

Episode 495

Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses?

People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to…

Episode 31

Peter Leeson on Why Trial-by-Fire Wasn’t Barbaric and Why Pirates Were Democratic

He’s an economist who studies even weirder things than Steve. They discuss whether economics is the best of the social sciences, and why it’s a good idea to get a…

Episode 458

How to Manage Your Goal Hierarchy

In this special crossover episode, People I (Mostly) Admire host Steve Levitt admits to No Stupid Questions co-host Angela Duckworth that he knows almost nothing about psychology. But once Angela…

Episode 8

Peter Attia: “I Definitely Lost a Lot of IQ Points That Day”

He’s been an engineer, a surgeon, a management consultant, and even a boxer. Now he’s a physician focused on the science of longevity. Peter Attia talks with Steve Levitt about…

Episode 91

Jane Goodall Changed the Way We See Animals. She’s Not Done.

The ethologist and conservationist discusses the thrill of observing chimpanzees in the wild, the value of challenging orthodoxy, and why dying is her next great adventure.

Episode 488

Does Death Have to Be a Death Sentence?

In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt speaks with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is…