Viva Las Vegas, Seriously
…everything else around them: “These bridges are so overbuilt, traffic’s like an ant on an elephant,” [said Jerry Del Tufo, who managed the bridges for the Port Authority]. In the…
From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode…
…and they receive nothing. Should that change? Also: why doesn’t contemporary art impact society the way music and film do? (Part 2 of “The Hidden Side of the Art Market.”)…
In a special episode of The Economics of Everyday Things, host Zachary Crockett explains what millennials do to show they care, how corrugated cardboard keeps your food warm, and why…
Also: How do you recover from a bad day?…
…everything else around them: “These bridges are so overbuilt, traffic’s like an ant on an elephant,” [said Jerry Del Tufo, who managed the bridges for the Port Authority]. In the…
…the Road to Victory in Professional Sports. A lot of sports fans are just like George Costanza, watching their favorite teams make the same mistakes over and over again, while…
…has been (and is) a co-owner of two minor-league baseball teams; has managed a very successful mutual fund; has been a professional gambler; has been an assistant professor of dramatic…
(Courtesy of Skeptic.com) Michael Shermer is perhaps the world’s only professional skeptic. As the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and executive director of the Skeptics Society, Shermer has turned his…
The simplicity of life back then is appealing today, as long as you don’t mind Church hegemony, the occasional plague, trial by gossip — and the lack of ibuprofen. (Part…
…professional coach than with a random person grabbed from the stands (or no one at all). But it doesn’t appear that the choice of professional coach matters much. Such an…
Do humans need touch to survive? Do any of us get enough touch throughout our lives? And why doesn’t Angela want to hug anyone for eight seconds?…
Is it better to explain a mistake or just accept responsibility? What’s the difference between an excuse and a justification? And why is it important to remember that you’re not…
Do highway warnings save lives or cost lives? How do you keep men from peeing on the floor? And what’s Angela’s plan to get more people washing their hands?…
…etc. But for the deeper thinkers among you, there is a great “betting” site called www.longbets.com. The wagers there are a little more exotic. Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil, for…
Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he’s a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons…
Artist Wendy MacNaughton knows the difficulty of sitting in silence and the power of having fun. She explains to Steve the lessons she’s gleaned from drawing hospice residents, working in…
By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what’s to be done? Our third and final episode in this…
…example is the following: what do you think happens when you enter www.american.com, as I did yesterday, while searching for a plane ticket. American Airlines? Nope — a new magazine…
Are we using technology to make ourselves numb? What’s the downside of air conditioning? And was Angela the most annoying person in her college classes?…
He’s an economist who studies even weirder things than Steve. They discuss whether economics is the best of the social sciences, and why it’s a good idea to get a…
What’s the difference between being popular and being cool? How has social media changed the trend cycle? And what do Taylor Swift and Walmart have in common?…
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics…
…especially hard to detect and treat. Pancreatic cancer, for instance, is nearly always fatal. A new clinical-trial platform could change that by aligning institutions that typically compete against one another….
They say they make companies more efficient through savvy management. Critics say they bend the rules to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and employees. Can they both be…
…better guide to human nature? A huge number of studies from around the world have looked at the effectiveness of alcohol control measures. Peter Anderson, Dan Chisholm, and Daniela C….
…begun a year earlier. That’s the case I made in my latest my latest Marketplace commentary, which you can listen to here. The point is more easily made with a…
What happens to your reputation when you’re no longer around to defend it?
One woman’s quest to find the best burger in town can teach all of us to eat smarter.
Tony Hsieh, the longtime C.E.O. of Zappos, was an iconoclast and a dreamer. Five years ago, we sat down with him around a desert campfire to talk about those dreams….
When Freakonomics co-authors Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner first met, one of them hated the other. Two decades later, Levitt grills Dubner about asking questions, growing the pie, and what…
