For lots of things, price is an indicator of quality. But what about in health care? Bapu Jena gets some clues from Steve Levitt’s wine tasting experiment, and looks at…
The thrill of customization, via Pandora, and a radical new teaching method.
In this episode of Freakonomics Radio, we explore a way to make 1.1 million schoolkids feel like they have 1.1 million teachers….
How does the profitability of family firms stack up against the rest? Has nepotism become more taboo over time? And why are 90 percent of adoptees in Japan not children…
…the fact that a better solution might be to take something away. He and Steve talk about examples from Leidy’s book Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, and from their…
Does anyone really know what they’re doing? How do we reward the competent and not the confident? And what’s wrong with using TikTok for research?…
Are you the same person you were a decade ago? Do we get better as we age? And is your sixth-grade class clown still funny?…
We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with stories about…
Why are people so inconsistent? Is there such a thing as character? And did Stephen once have the world’s longest chain of gum wrappers?…
The quirky little grocery chain with California roots and German ownership has a lot to teach all of us about choice architecture, efficiency, frugality, collaboration, and team spirit.
From the Manhattan Project to the Challenger investigation, the physicist Richard Feynman loved to shoot down what he called “lousy ideas.” Today, the world is awash in lousy ideas —…
Do you get grittier as you age? What’s worse for mental health: video games or social media? And do baby boomers make the best D.J.s?…
…retreating in the face of a new challenger: digital downloading. Disney movies can already be downloaded via Apple iTunes, cable companies offer videos on demand, and consumers can record shows…
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/2deba8d8-c84e-4f22-950a-ab0d0019dcbe/audio.mp3] Out for a ride with Jarrod Snider of Carnegie-Mellon’s autonomous-driving lab: “The throttle, the brake, the steering wheel, the turn signals — everything is being controlled by a computer…
Would you steal Halloween candy? Should people be required to identify themselves online? And why did Angela go trick-or-treating in a trash bag?
Frisco used to be just another sleepy bedroom community outside of Dallas. Now it’s got corporate headquarters, billions of investment dollars, and a bunch of Democrats in a place that…
Internet pioneer Kevin Kelly tries to predict the future by identifying what’s truly inevitable. How worried should we be? Yes, robots will probably take your job — but the future…
When a doctor’s shift ends, or a physician retires, are patients left in the lurch? Bapu Jena looks at the challenge of managing medical transitions….
There are thousands of books on the subject, but what do we actually know about creativity? In this new series, we talk to the researchers who study it as well…
In Latin, the word “placebo” means “I shall please.” In the medical world, placebos mean something … well, a little different. Bapu Jena walks us through the thorny world of…
A recent Buffalo News article discusses how the airlines are lobbying to rescind a new provision requiring commercial pilots to obtain 1,500 hours of flight time before they are certified…
…the driver. Why don’t more professional drivers use traffic-enabled GPS? Here are a few guesses: Taking the same old route is a habit, and habits die hard. Maybe they think…
Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the…
Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the…
The Nobel laureate and pioneering behavioral economist spars with Steve over what makes a nudge a nudge, and admits that even economists have plenty of blind spots….
A small number of patients with multiple, chronic conditions use a lot of resources. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner found a way to identify and treat them. Could it reduce health-care spending…
A small number of patients with multiple, chronic conditions use a lot of resources. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner found a way to identify and treat them. Could it reduce health care…
My colleagues Jacob Hacker and Daniel Markovits have created a cool website called?www.GiveItBackForJobs.org that not only includes a useful tool to let you calculate the size of your tax cut,…
…a website for people who are interested in contributing their own poker hands to the database. It is http://www.pokernomics.com/. It gives you all the details. You are probably thinking to…
