The answer is: they both have Cyril Wolf as a patron. Who? You may remember Wolf as the gentlemanly doctor in Houston who shared with me his research on how some drug-store chains charge 1000% more for generic prescriptions than Costco and Sam’s Club. (Yes, 1000% more.) The reason he was so distraught by this fact is that he has . . .
Yesterday, we posted a Q&A with economist and all-around smart guy Steve Landsburg, who addresses a lot of everyday riddles in his writing. Sometime in the next few days, we’ll be posting excerpts from the economist Robert Frank‘s new book The Economic Naturalist. So far, I am loving Frank’s book. It poses a series of questions about small, real-world riddles, . . .
It’s been a few years since I bought any “Thomas and Friends” toys for my son, so I don’t think any of the approximately 18,000 trains he owns are part of the recall that was just announced. It covers toys sold in the U.S. from Jan. 2005 through June 2007; they are thought to contain lead paint, and they were . . .
Google’s new Street View feature has caused a predictable sort of hubbub. Privacy advocates are upset; one woman freaked out when she could see her cat through the window of her house; one man was caught peeing by the side of the road. (We interviewed Google’s project manager on our site; his answers, hardly earth-shaking, were still interesting.) I understand . . .
Steven Landsburg is not known for having temperate opinions. An economics professor at the University of Rochester and a prolific writer, Landsburg regularly raises provocative theories in his Slate column: women choke under pressure, e.g., or miserliness is a form of generosity. He is the author of the books Armchair Economist and Fair Play, which are in some ways direct . . .
Anyone who cares about autism, and particularly the supposed spike in autism in recent years, would do well to read this very informative, cogent, and non-hysterical OpEd by Paul T. Shattuck and Maureen Durkin. It is written on the occasion of a case before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that’s investigating whether autism is linked to childhood vaccinations, as . . .
Have you all heard of Conservapedia? It bills itself as “a conservative encyclopedia you can trust,” and it is pretty fascinating. It has a strong pro-Christian, anti-liberal (and especially anti-N.Y. Times) bent, and is just one of several user-run encyclopedias that have taken root in response (or tribute) to Wikipedia. (Here are our previous posts on Wikipedia). These also include . . .
Over at the very, very compelling Strange Maps site (warning: do not click unless you have an hour to kill) is a map of the U.S. with each state renamed for a country with a similar GDP. In case you’re wondering where the really big countries are, here’s another map, in which Japan gobbles up our entire midsection and New . . .
We are still getting e-mails, like this one, concerning our New York Times column a while back about the leisure/work distinctions in “hobbies” like gardening, cooking, knitting, etc. But the following message, from economist Shoshana Grossbard, is easily among the best. She teaches at San Diego State and is the founding editor of the Review of Economics of the Household. . . .
What’s wrong with this picture? A contest sponsored by Time Out New York to pick the book that is “most essential to life — and cocktail conversation — in New York City” has reached the semifinals. Freakonomics is still in the running, pitted this week against Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice. Talk about apples and oranges. If we happen to . . .
As every writer knows, beginnings are hard. Endings are perhaps even harder. So how hard is it to satisfyingly end a series like The Sopranos? If you like the show, you already know what happened; if you don’t like it, you don’t care. But one measure of just how unsatisfying many viewers found the finale can be gained by conducting . . .
Itzhak Ben-David is a Ph.D. candidate in finance at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. (Levitt is one of his dissertation advisors.) While pursuing his original research idea — the degree to which housing prices efficiently incorporate anticipated tax increases — Ben-David stumbled upon a slightly juicier topic: a real-estate sleight of hand known as the “cashback transaction,” . . .
We ran Part 1 of our Q&A with Mark Cuban yesterday; here is Part 2. Thanks again to all of you for the good questions and to Mark for the great answers. Q: I loved your early bet on HD entertainment – it was spot-on. What industries do you see on the horizon that offer similarly explosive potential? A: If . . .
We’ve got a column appearing in the June 10 issue of the New York Times Magazine, which is a special issue on the U.S. wealth divide. Our piece deals with some interesting new research on real-estate sales (more on this later today). I know what you’re thinking: more Realtor bashing! Well, no. Even though we’ve written various things about the . . .
My guess is that Mark Cuban doesn’t sleep very much. In addition to his various entrepreneurial activities, including an attempt to start up a new pro football league, he also managed to respond to a great many of the questions you all posed on our superfreako user-generated Q&A. (The only thing missing is a question about who he wants to . . .
Richard Brodie, a poker player best known as the original author of Microsoft Word, had a string of obscenely good luck on some video poker machines at Caesars Palace — and then, Brodie writes, he was asked by Caesars parent company Harrah’s to never again darken the door of any Harrah’s property. Yikes. Brodie is obviously much more of a . . .
The introduction of new pay-by-weight trash charges in Ireland seems to have produced a strange and troubling effect: an increase in burn victims at St. James Hospital in Dublin. Huh? The theory is that people wanted to avoid having to pay for all their trash so instead they burned it in their backyards. Gary Finnegan, editor of Irish Medical News, . . .
On the InTrade prediction market site, John Edwards has fallen behind the undeclared Al Gore. Here is Edwards’s recent price chart: And here is Gore’s: Note how far Gore has fallen since the Oscar hubbub. Note, also, that Gore remains (fairly) adamant that he won’t run. On the GOP side, meanwhile, the not-quite-yet-declared Fred Thompson has just about caught up . . .
Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post has a funny take on the notion of outsourced journalism, taking off on a real story — about Indian journalists covering town meetings in Pasadena — that we blogged about here. You may recall that Weingarten is the same journalist who wrote the fantastic piece about world-class violinist Joshua Bell‘s undercover concert in a . . .
There’s an incredibly interesting Q&A in today’s Wall Street Journal with Arthur D. Levinson, the CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech, mostly concerning the topic of the company’s cancer drugs. (There is a lot of interesting cancer news in the papers these days, mainly because of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.) Levinson regularly deals . . .
I have a favorite thought exercise, especially when thinking about the sort of complex, dynamic systems that are interesting but difficult to write about: the health-care system, e.g., or education, politics, energy consumption, finance, cancer research, etc. One natural way to approach such systems is to take note of what inputs and outputs already exist and then, isolating them, try . . .
If you happen to live near Minneapolis, or are passing through in the vicinity of June 18, please stop in and hear me give a lunchtime Freakonomics lecture. I will be warming up for this fellow. Perhaps this time I will have a chance to ask him some of your questions. I am not sure why he gets such bigger . . .
Once upon a time, my friend and co-author Steve Levitt was known as the most outstanding American economist under 40. I have it on good authority that this is no longer true. On May 29, Levitt turned 40. His greatest birthday fear was that someone would throw him a party. He is fiercely anti-party, especially when the party is his. . . .
Now it’s been revealed that the reality show we blogged about the other day was a hoax designed to call attention to the shortage of donated organs. The contestants who needed kidneys really do need kidneys, but the “donor” was an actress. “We have only done this cry for help because we want to solve a problem that shouldn’t be . . .
In the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Miriam Shuchman writes about the movement in Congress to allow the FDA to block direct-to-consumer ads for new drugs. “There is popular support for a ban: in a telephone survey conducted in March 2007 by Consumer Reports, 59% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that the FDA should ban advertisements for drugs that had . . .
There was a nifty article in the New York Times Magazine a while back about “literary spam,” junk e-mail that includes passages from literary classics, in the hopes that legitimate text would fool spam filters. (Apparently, it doesn’t.) I just got a piece of spam that’s even niftier. Its subject line: “yipping econometrica psychophysiology flourish.” Considering the kind of messages . . .
A lot of you asked really good questions of Mark Cuban, which he will now pick through and answer. As it turns out, he’s in the news today for the very topic that several of you raised: his plans to start a new football league to compete with the NFL. Here are a couple of relevant passages: “It’s a pretty . . .
Rebecca Mead, whom I am proud to call a longtime friend, is a staff writer for the New Yorker. In addition to being a very good reporter, she’s also a very good stylist; this is a rare and blessed combination. She has just published her first book, One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding, which is full of . . .
Ever since this first post on organ transplants just over a year ago followed by our subsequent New York Times column on the subject, we have received many, many tips about interesting, strange, provocative, and even useful incentives to encourage more organ donation. But nothing comes close to the latest one, which was sent in by at least 8 or . . .
If you’ve ever looked at his blog, you know that Mark Cuban is perhaps the most accessible (and interesting) sports team owner/ media maven/ technology entrepreneur in history. So it was nice to see him stop by our blog to comment on a recent post about why N.B.A. sportswriters get to sit so near the court. Here was Cuban’s comment: . . .
You want to listen to Freakonomics Radio? That’s great! Most people use a podcast app on their smartphone. It’s free (with the purchase of a phone, of course). Looking for more guidance? We’ve got you covered.
Stay up-to-date on all our shows. We promise no spam.
