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Daniel Kahneman Answers Your Questions

Two weeks ago, we solicited your questions for Princeton psychology professor and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, whose new book is called Thinking, Fast and Slow. You responded by asking 45…



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Episode 325

How to Train Your Dragon Child

Every 12 years, there’s a spike in births among certain communities across the globe, including the U.S. Why? Because the Year of the Dragon, according to Chinese folk belief, confers…

Go For the Bottle?

Photo: Daniel Hamermesh In American restaurants, I have always seen a glass of wine (perhaps 6 to 7.5 ounces) sold for at least 1/3 of the price of a bottle…



When Should You Go For the Extended Warranty?

Daniel Hamermesh You shouldn’t buy the extended warranties on electronics and other goods that places like Best Buy are pushing when you purchase their products (unless you think you have…



Towing Exchange

(Photo: Karen Apricot) Fellow blogger Daniel Hamermesh recently explained the virtues of exchange as a painter helped him break into his Berlin apartment. My exchange example is not as glamorous….




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Episode 173

How Important Is Your Choice of Words?

What happens when three psychologists walk into a magic show? What’s Angela’s problem with the word “talent”? And why does LeBron James refer to himself in the third person?…

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Episode 56

Why Is Academic Writing So Bad?

Also: what does your perfect day look like?…

Daniel Kahneman Calls for Change

Nobel laureate and frequent Freakonomics visitor Daniel Kahneman (author of Thinking, Fast and Slow ) has written an open letter to psychologists who work on social priming, calling for them…



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Episode 112

Would You Let a Coin Toss Decide Your Future?

Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “Would You Let a Coin Toss Decide Your Future?”…

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Episode 59

Who Gives the Worst Advice?

Steve usually asks his guests for advice, whether they’re magicians or Nobel laureates. After nearly 60 episodes, is any of it worth following — or should we just ask listeners…

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Episode 271

The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution

Starting in the late 1960s, the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman began to redefine how the human mind actually works. Michael Lewis’s new book The Undoing Project explains…



Daniel Dennett’s new book

…dinners I ever had was with Daniel Dennett and the late Robert Nozick. I got to listen to two of the modern ages most distinguished philosophers spar about how the…



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Episode 554

Can A.I. Take a Joke?

Artificial intelligence, we’ve been told, will destroy humankind. No, wait — it will usher in a new age of human flourishing! Guest host Adam Davidson (co-founder of Planet Money) sorts…

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EXTRA

Turning Work into Play (Update)

How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt’s divorce….

Confessions of a Racecar Driver

Last week we got an email from a reader named Daniel Herrington. He had just finished listening to our podcast, “The Upside of Quitting,” and wanted to tell us about…



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Episode 221

How Did the Belt Win?

Suspenders may work better, but the dork factor is too high. How did an organ-squeezing belly tourniquet become part of our everyday wardrobe — and what other suboptimal solutions do…

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Episode 78

Why Do We Put Things Off Until the Very Last Minute?

Also: what does your name say about who you are?…



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Episode 73

Turning Work into Play

How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt’s divorce….

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Episode 80

Is a “Success Hangover” Real?

Why are great accomplishments often followed by disappointment? Is it better to win and feel bummed out than to never have won at all? And where was ping-pong invented?…

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Episode 125

Should We Replace Umpires With Robots?

What do gamblers and referees have in common? When do machines make better decisions than people? And has Stephen been replaced by a computer?

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Episode 631

Will 3 Summers of Lincoln Make it to Broadway?

It’s been in development for five years and has at least a year to go. On the eve of its out-of-town debut, the actor playing Lincoln quit. And the producers…

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Economists’ Version

…Stiglitz-Atkinson–Leigh-Wolfers, or Stiglitz-Blinder–Reis-Wolfers. Steve Levitt is also a three: Stiglitz-Sachs–Poterba-Levitt, and so Steve endows both Stephen Dubner and Sudhir Venkatesh with a four. Dan Hamermesh has written so many papers…




Are Economists as Biased as Everyone Else?

(Hamermesh and Schmidt, 2003). The good news is that, where it really matters—in judging scholarly papers for publication—economists are remarkably fair (Blank, 1991; Abrevaya and Hamermesh, 2012), ignoring an author’s…