Stitcher is a “smart radio” app that lets you listen to podcasts and live radio on demand. I only heard of it once Stitcher began advertising on Freakonomics Radio, but then I started using it and I have to say I do love it.
As of today, I love Stitcher even a little bit more because it has just launched a Stitcher List of top programs around the world, and guess which program resides at No. 1?
Thanks to Stitcher and thanks to all of you who gobble up our radio program via whatever distribution method you choose. It is most gratifying!
The N.B.A.’s superstars are suddenly sporting Urkel glasses — but is it more than a fashion statement?
We are quite fond of talking trash, literally: see our “Economics of Trash” podcast, and our “Weird Recycling” episode, and even the “Power of Poop.”
The journalist Edward Humes is also fascinated with trash. His new book Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash
Humes has agreed to field your trash questions, so ask away in the comments section and, as always, we’ll post his answers in short order.
How American food so got bad — and why it’s getting so much better.
When we began our Freakonomics Radio podcast back in early 2010, it was something between a lark and an experiment. But we have produced 75 episodes by now, so it seemed time to gather all the episodes in one place. Here’s our new Freakonomics Podcast Archive, color-coded for your convenience to denote our three types of content: original podcasts (usually between 20 and 30 minutes long); our regular Marketplace segments (5 or 6 minutes long); and our 1-hour specials that air on public-radio stations across the country. Among our most popular podcasts to date: “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” and “How Much Does the President of the U.S. Really Matter?”
You can of course subscribe via iTunes (where Freakonomics Radio occasionally hits the No. 1 ranking) or listen via our RSS feed.
Hope you enjoy; feedback welcome.
If you remember our podcast “Boo…Who?” (which was included in the hour-long special “Show and Yell“), you’ll know we love the topic of booing. David Herman, our sound engineer at Freakonomics Radio, experienced some first-hand booing last week. He wrote it up as a guest post:
How Does It Feel to Get Booed?
By David Herman
Last weekend, I visited the Bell House in Brooklyn to hear the Budos Band, an afrobeat-inspired 10-piece instrumental group from Staten Island. According to the venue’s online ticket page, the show was slated to start at 9:00 PM. But 9:00 came and went, and then 10:00… 10:30… Granted, I’ve come to accept that no band will ever go on less than 30 minutes late, but this seemed to be pushing the bounds of good taste.
At about 10:45, the band made its way onstage from the wings. The (sold-out) house was packed with around 300 people, each of whom had paid $15 plus drinks. So as soon as the group got into position, almost two hours late, what happened?
“BOOOOOO!”
A reader named Karim Kai Ani writes:
Guy walks into a bar and says, “We’ve got this math curriculum that everyone is saying is the bomb (a dangerous thing to say when you have my name, but go with me), and we’re Kickstarting a video series to offer teachers a new vision of what it means to teach math.”
And the waitress says, “You should see if the dudes from Freakonomics would tweet about it. Didn’t they mention Mathalicious on their blog once?”
Thanks to @PE_Mulroe via Twitter, here’s a story from the (Northwest Indiana) Post-Tribune that combines two of our favorite topics: elections and first names. It’s called “A Tale of Two Mike Browns in Lake County Politics”:
Did Mike Brown, the candidate for recorder, intentionally run on the name recognition earned by former recorder and Lake County Clerk Mike Brown?
The candidate says no. Incumbent Recorder Michelle Fajman and party boss Tom McDermott Jr. say yes. And the clerk with the same name? Well, as someone who backed Fajman in the election, he’s just sorry if anyone cast a ballot without knowing who was who.
An interesting e-mail from a reader:
Hello. My name is Thiago, and I am writing from Brazil. I always read freakonomics posts thru my rss reader and I saw a news today that inspired me to write to you.
Rio de Janeiro’s police started a new policy to incentivize cops to arrest the most wanted drug dealers. The prize: 15 days off and one weekend in a beautiful island at Angra dos Reis with all costs included.I wondered if this incentive will have a positive effect, whereas there are bad cops who are bribed by drug dealers. What if these bad officers began to been rewarded by drug dealer with tickets to Disney instead of arrest them?
We’ve written a few times about what we call reverse incentives: comedian and activist Dick Gregory‘s use of the N word; Planned Parenthood turning abortion protestors into a fund-raising scheme; and the “pledge-a-picket” drive.
The latest instance comes from fashion designer Marc Jacobs. It began when the graffiti artist Kidult vandalized Jacobs’s SoHo shop by scrawling “ART” across the storefront. A Twitter war followed, but Jacobs wasn’t done. As The New York Observer reports:
In response to James McWilliams‘s still-reverberating post about why more environmentalists don’t promote veganism, a reader named Mary writes:
I have always wondered why environmentalists are so reluctant to promote veganism, but eager to promote alternative transportation. Many residents of the U.S. are currently locked in to their car-dependent lifestyle, with large mortgages in suburbs with no safe sidewalks or bike lanes and inefficient transit. Ditching their car is logistically much more difficult to do than buying beans instead of meat at the grocery store. Currently, the infrastructure for reducing car use is lacking in many communities, though vegan foods, like beans, grains, fruits, and vegetables, are much more easily obtained.
It’s an interesting point. A few related thoughts come to mind:
Sure, we all dream of leaving the office forever. But what if it’s bad for your health?
We recently solicited your questions for social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Below are his responses about confirmation bias in religion, the “score” of our morals, the power of branding, how his research has made him a centrist, and how the search for truth is hampered by our own biases. Big thanks to him and all our readers for another great Q&A.
From a reader named Becca Levin:
Hi, I just listened to your podcast with NPR on the impact of shipping flowers. May I suggest, if you should ever air it again, you consider the song “Plastic Roses“
by the Chenille Sisters. A sample line: “He sent me plastic roses, the kind that never fade … ” A touching love song about lasting memories.
We blogged a while back about how some retail firms succeed by hiring more, not fewer, floor employees, and by treating them particularly well. Among the examples: Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods; among the counterexamples: Michael’s.
This prompted an e-mail from Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. (If you don’t know of Hal you should, as he’s an impressive and fascinating guy — check out the Q&A he did here a few years back.) His e-mail reads:
Saw your piece about Trader Joe’s et al. Here’s one reason to pay people more than their market wage (from my textbook):
Gabor Varszegi has made millions by providing high-quality service in his photo developing shops in Budapest. (See Steven Greenhouse, “A New Formula in Hungary: Speed Service and Grow Rich,” New York Times, June 5, 1990, A1.)
Varszegi says that he got his start as a businessman in the mid-sixties by playing bass guitar and managing a rock group. “Back then,” he says, “the only private businessmen in Eastern Europe were rock musicians.” He introduced one-hour film developing to Hungary in 1985; the next best alternative to his one-hour developing shops was the state-run agency that took one month.
Michael Specter has written a good and interesting New Yorker article about the history and current state of geoengineering, called “The Climate Fixers: Is There a Technological Solution to Global Warming?”
Let me rephrase:
Michael Specter has written a good and interesting New Yorker article about the history and current state of geoengineering, called “The Climate Fixers: Is There a Technological Solution to Global Warming?,” which is essentially a New Yorkerized version of Chapter 5 of SuperFreakonomics
A reader named Olaf Winter writes in with a problem that perhaps you all can help solve?
Hello Dubner & Levitt,
During a Parent Teacher Association meeting in my son’s high school in Essen, Germany, I heard complaints about a growing problem with unbelievably dirty toilets, or to be more precise, with the problem of adolescent girls smirching, soiling, polluting, dripping and littering at the restrooms.
I’m talking about unrolled packs of toilet paper stuffed into the toilet; about smearings on the walls (with pens in the best case). I forgo the more unsavory details. You probably have an idea of what I mean. The school I am talking about is one of the best schools in town. It is a newly built complex with beautiful architecture, lots of space and light. The pupils have an upper-middle-class background. And still, when they are in the restroom at least some of them behave like savages.
“It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the rural areas of developing countries through the adoption of improved cooking stoves,” write Rema Hanna, Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone in their new working paper “Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves” (abstract; Washington Post coverage).
But, as the scholars discovered, what seems like an obvious technology fix doesn’t always work. Because, remember, human behavior can be a lot harder to change than we think.
Or, put another way: bummer.
In a world where nearly everything is for sale, is it always okay to buy what isn’t yours?
It’s time again to record another FAQ podcast (that’s “FREAK-quently Asked Questions”), and we need your help!
Every once in a while, we solicit questions from Freakonomics readers and answer them on Freakonomics Radio. Levitt always has a great time doing this, as evidenced by his answers to why “I don’t know” is so hard to say or why we vote (or don’t).
So fire away in the comments section below, and keep up with the podcast at iTunes or via the RSS feed to see if your question gets answered.
From a new working paper by David Yermack, an economist at NYU/Stern, called “Tailspotting: How Disclosure, Stock Prices and Volatility Change When CEOs Fly to Their Vacation Homes” (abstract; older version in PDF):
This paper shows close connections between CEOs’ vacation schedules and corporate news disclosures. I identify vacations by merging corporate jet flight histories with real estate records of CEOs’ property owned near leisure destinations. Companies disclose favorable news just before CEOs leave for vacation and delay subsequent announcements until CEOs return, releasing news at an unusually high rate on the CEO’s first day back. When CEOs are away, companies announce less news than usual and stock prices exhibit sharply lower volatility. Volatility increases immediately when CEOs return to work.
“Morality, by its very nature, makes it hard to study morality,” writes the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. “It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes hearts and minds to opponents even as it makes cooperation and decency possible within groups.”
His new book is called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
I’m pleased to say that Haidt has agreed to take questions on his topic from Freakonomics readers, so ask away in the comments section and as always, we’ll post his answers in short order.
Fascinating article in today’s Times, by Anne Barnard:
Starting next year, New York will become the first state to require lawyers to perform unpaid work before being licensed to practice, the state’s chief judge announced on Tuesday, describing the rule as a way to help the growing number of people who cannot afford legal services.
The approximately 10,000 lawyers who apply to the New York State Bar each year will have to demonstrate that they have performed 50 hours of pro bono work to be admitted, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said. He said the move was intended to provide about a half-million hours of badly needed legal services to those with urgent problems, like foreclosure and domestic violence.
At a time when people worry about every mile their food must travel, why is it okay to import most of our cut flowers from thousands of miles away?
A reader writes:
You should do an article about how pop-ups drive people away from websites, even after the viewer opts out. You can start with me and how I won’t be returning to your site, or reading your next book, or promoting it by word-of-mouth, because of your annoying “recommended for you” pop-up.
Do not respond to this email.
Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Fascinating article in today’s Wall Street Journal, by Susan Carey and Angel Gonzelez: “Delta to Buy Refinery in Effort to Lower Jet-Fuel Costs.” Coupled with the news of Microsoft bankrolling B&N’s Nook business, the Delta deal shows how far and fast existing business models are shifting, and how vertical integration continues to not be dead.
May Day has already brought some rioting to San Francisco, and as Dashiell Bennett‘s Atlantic Wire piece points out, New York is bracing for the same:
Tensions are likely to be pretty high, especially in New York City, [where] some leading organizers were reportedly visited at home by New York police and FBI agents yesterday who interviewed them about their plans. (The high temperatures and 80% chance of rain won’t help either.)
Maybe my computer thinks I am in China (but I am not; I am in New York).
Maybe a Chinese hacker is just having a laugh (it has happened before).
Maybe the Chinese have bought all of our stock markets (although I seriously doubt it).
Or maybe, for whatever reason, Yahoo! Finance is simply some coding issues. Because when I checked the markets this morning, they seemed to have been renamed:
Season 2, Episode 5
Our latest podcast is called “Lottery Loopholes and Deadly Doctors.” (Download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.) This is the final episode of five one-hour Freakonomics Radio specials that have been airing on public radio stations across the country. (Check here to find your local station.)
These hour-long programs are “mashupdates” — that is, mashups of earlier podcasts which we’ve also updated with new interviews, etc.
In two weeks, we’ll start releasing a series of brand new podcasts. Among the topics to listen for: the selling of souls, the value of college, and the strategic use of jerkitude (that is, acting like a jerk).
What do you do when smart people keep making stupid mistakes? And: are we a nation of financial illiterates? This is a “mashupdate” of “Is America Ready for a “No-Lose Lottery”?,” “The “No-Lose Lottery,” Part 2,” and “What Do Hand-Washing and Financial Illiteracy Have in Common?“
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.
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