To celebrate a wonderful year of production on all of the shows in our network, we asked our staff to choose their favorite episode of the year. Lyric Bowditch, Production Associate“Why Do Doctors Have to Play Defense?” from Freakonomics, M.D.After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, my feeds were flooded with content about it. This episode cut through the . . .
It should surprise no one, and delight everyone, that Richard Thaler has won this year’s Nobel in economics. Congratulations! Thaler is a big reason I personally got interested in economics. (I’ve known him quite a bit longer than I’ve known Steve Levitt.) He is everything to be admired in a scholar and thinker: original, judicious, crafty, and more than a . . .
It seems like just about everyone thinks Billy Beane is a genius, thanks to the Michael Lewis book Moneyball, which details the way in which his Oakland A’s use statistics in innovative ways to choose talent and win games. I’ve never been part of the Billy Beane cult. For instance, in a January 2004 Financial Times interview about my research . . .
Every parent thinks he has the most beautiful baby in the world. Evolution, it seems, has molded our brains so that if you stare at your own baby’s face day after day after day, it starts to look beautiful. When other people’s children have food clotted on their faces, it looks disgusting; with your own kid, it’s somehow endearing. Well, . . .