Neuroscientists still have a great deal to learn about the human brain. One recent M.R.I. study sheds some light, finding that a certain kind of storytelling stimulates enormous activity across…
…here), wrote in with a comment: The intuition of the reader is slightly off. Although not directly a 50-50 charity drive, we have explored the efficacy of lotteries both theoretically…
…Updating Your Blog.” Big important newspaper, lots of readers, very complimentary piece, but it didn’t generate the huge spike in Web traffic that I expected to see. Contrast that with…
The state-by-state rollout of legalized weed has given economists a perfect natural experiment to measure its effects. Here’s what we know so far — and don’t know — about the…
…a lot of magazines out there! And now we’re competing with free and pirated material online. It’s a transitional period, and we’re certainly one company with the resources and product…
In a special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt talks to Cat Bohannon about her new book Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human…
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.
Dubner and Levitt are live onstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York to celebrate their new book “When to Rob a Bank” — and a decade of working…
…Chicago teachers were cheating on test scores. In the new book, number crunching is instead used to verify that a particular solution (such as hand-washing or ocean cooling) is likely…
The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg wrote his new book in an attempt to learn how to communicate better. Steve shares how the book helped him understand his own…
…facing unfunded maintenance backlogs, and fancy new projects seem like pipe dreams. Tolls are a very promising source of new revenue. But is this a bad thing? Our transportation system…
…McCain and Senators Obama or Clinton when it comes to the utilization of free-market principles. Just look at the rhetoric coming from the Democratic candidates about free trade, as an…
This week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio takes a look at Pope Francis’s critique of the free-market system in “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), his first apostolic exhortation….
…very competitive. But college basketball – under the current system – is hardly competitive. Consider the players Kentucky has been able to recruit in recent years. For example, four of…
The modern world overwhelms us with sounds we didn’t ask for, like car alarms and cell-phone “halfalogues.” What does all this noise cost us in terms of productivity, health, and…
…market exists. While you may need to search dozens of responsible organizations before you find an available Black Labrador puppy, a quick Google search is guaranteed to show an available…
…newspaper blogs plagiarize?” It began: I regularly read at least two big blogs run by newspapers — Freakonomics at the NY Times and Ideas Market at WSJ. They find a…
…should not give the police the right to search someone: (p. 116) … if anonymous calls did give police the right to search, some police officers would be quick to…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former C.E.O. of Yahoo!, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
Government and the private sector often feel far apart. One is filled with compliance-driven bureaucracy. The other, with market-fueled innovation. But something is changing in a multi-billion-dollar corner of the…
…job search outcomes than pessimists with similar skills. During the job search process, they spend less effort searching and are offered jobs more quickly. They are choosier and are more…
For soccer fans, it’s easy. For the rest of us? Not so much, especially since the U.S. team didn’t qualify. So here’s what to watch for even if you have…
It was supposed to boost prosperity and democracy at the same time. What really happened? According to the legal scholar Anthea Roberts, it depends which story you believe….
You know the saying: A winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
(iStockphoto) A new study by addiction and neuroscience researchers sheds new light on understanding how cocaine addicts make decisions, and how they value the drug against the immediate and delayed…
Also: how do you avoid screwing up your kids?
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…
Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them.
