Would you like to hear your voice on a future Freakonomics Radio episode? Hope so! Here are the details:
We recently put out a two-part episode on education reform, the first on teacher skill and the second on a community-based project called Pathways to Education. The response from listeners was huge — and, often, very opinionated. It seems as though everyone had a concrete idea for the one thing that would really improve our education system.
So we’ve decided to make an episode about … what you think is the one thing that would really improve our education system. If all goes well, the episode will be made up primarily of listeners’ voices — that is, your voice.
We spend billions on our pets, and one of the fastest-growing costs is pet “aftercare.” But are those cremated remains you got back really from your pet?
Okay, maybe the steps aren’t so easy. But a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for trouble.
We’ve all heard the depressing numbers: when compared to kids from other rich countries, U.S. students aren’t doing very well, especially in math, even though we spend more money per student than most other countries. So is the problem here as simple as adding two plus two? Is the problem here that our students aren’t getting very bright simply because … our teachers aren’t very bright?
Boris Johnson — mayor of London, biographer of Churchill, cheese-box painter and tennis-racket collector — answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions.
Even a brutal natural disaster doesn’t diminish our appetite for procreating. This surely means we’re heading toward massive overpopulation, right? Probably not.
According to a new working paper by Stefano DellaVigna and Johannes Hermle, movie reviews aren’t biased by media ownership. The paper is called “Does Conflict of Interest Lead to Biased Coverage? Evidence from Movie Reviews.”
Corporations around the world are consolidating like never before. If it’s good enough for companies, why not countries? Welcome to Amexico!
A lot! “The Economics of the Undead” is a book about dating strategy, job creation, and whether there should be a legal market for blood.
Our latest podcast is called “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.” It’s the debut of a live game show with audience contestants and celebrity judges, including Malcolm Gladwell. In the final round, the judges team up with contestants to play for the grand prize. If you’ve already listened, you’ll know that Malcolm and his partner were asked to tell us all something we don’t know about bread, and Malcolm came up with an intriguing fact that, upon a quick fact-check, turned out to be wrong. Oops! But as it turns out, Malcolm wasn’t so much wrong as he was confused about the type of bread. Here, from Malcolm himself, is the explanation:
The Norwegian government parleys massive oil wealth into huge subsidies for electric cars. Is that carbon laundering or just pragmatic environmentalism?
The science of what works — and doesn’t work — in fundraising
A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.
Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them.
What does it mean to pursue something that everyone else thinks is nuts? And what does it take to succeed?
Our latest podcast episode — “How to Save $1 Billion Without Even Trying” — discusses research which finds that health-care experts generally buy generic medicines for their own use rather than the more expensive name brands. The episode discusses the various reasons that brand names might be more appealing despite the higher cost. A listener named Mike Dimore has written in . . .
Doctors, chefs, and other experts are much more likely than the rest of us to buy store-brand products. What do they know that we don’t?
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply
Considering its own company name, you wouldn’t think so. But here’s what I ran into during a recent spell-check:
The online universe doesn’t have nearly as many rules, or rulemakers, as the real world. Discuss.
There ain’t no such thing as a free parking spot. Somebody has to pay for it — and that somebody is everybody.
A look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists.
It’s awkward, random, confusing — and probably discriminatory too.
A kid’s name can tell us something about his parents — their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny?
Educational messaging looks good on paper but kids don’t respond to it — and adults aren’t much better.
From the (U.K.) Times:
It isn’t easy to separate the guilty from the innocent, but a clever bit of game theory can help.
Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the sport of competitive eating. What can the rest of us learn from his breakthrough?
We just released our first installment of the Think Like a Freak
The first installment (“How to Screen Job Applicants, Act Your Age, and Get Your Brain Off Autopilot“) covered Chapters 1-3 of Think. Now it’s time for you to send in questions for Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (see Table of Contents, below). If your question ends up in the podcast, we’ll send you a signed copy of Think Like a Freak or a limited edition Think Like a Freak t-shirt. So fire away!
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