College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how?
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/0b265451-843e-41e1-95a5-ab0d001b77ea/audio.mp3] (Photo: Alan Cleaver) Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “A Cheap Employee Is … a Cheap Employee.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed,…
One man’s attempt to remake his life in the mold of homo economicus.
…comedy fan. During the pandemic, he found an audience. But should doctors be funny with their patients? Bapu Jena asks when laughter is — and isn’t — the best medicine….
Critics — including President Obama — say short-term, high-interest loans are predatory, trapping borrowers in a cycle of debt. But some economists see them as a useful financial instrument for…
A reader named Chuck Amos writes: My bleg is for a list of reliable, unbiased, and intelligent news sources that present general information in a readable and user-friendly way. This…
What’s the difference between people who preserve special things and people who devour them right away? Why do we love to binge-watch? And did Adam really eat an apple?…
Five years ago, we published an episode about the boom in home DNA testing kits, focusing on the high-flying firm 23andMe and its C.E.O. Anne Wojcicki. Their flight has been…
She might not be a household name, but Suzanne Gluck is one of the most powerful people in the book industry. Her slush pile is a key entry point to…
In three stories from our newest podcast, host Zachary Crockett digs into sports mascots, cashmere sweaters, and dinosaur skeletons….
As James Altucher reports on his daily blog watch on TheStreet.com, the sale of domain names remains a very big business. This year, Diamonds.com went for $7.5 million, Vodka.com for…
A few weeks ago, I posted here about James Altucher’s new website Stockpickr.com, a sort of stock-picking wiki. Jim Cramer, the mad genius behind Mad Money and TheStreet.com, where Altucher…
Mere hours after Apple’s announcement of a new GPS-enabled iPhone, I received this e-mail from Amazon.com: Is this in response to the new iPhone? Wouldn’t surprise me. Amazon.com never ceases…
…to come visit the site itself. There are bound to be complications to a move like ours, a move from pure independence to partnership with one of the biggest media…
There’s a Top 100 Amazon.com reviewer named Loyd Eskildson — that’s what he calls himself anyway — who is not only prolific but, um, hyper-current as well. What do I…
…you agree to this, here’s what’s going to happen.’ NBA.com: Many people understand that NBA players as a select group of specialized, highly skilled workers. Are there many many instances,…
What’s the best way to carry out random acts of kindness? What’s wrong with making an “Irish exit”? And why is Mike secretly buying lottery tickets?…
An all-star team of behavioral scientists discovers that humans are stubborn (and lazy, and sometimes dumber than dogs). We also hear about binge drinking, humblebragging, and regrets. Recorded live in…
…at the resources they commit to supporting app developers for example – from tools to training materials. Most organizations would be hard pressed to provide the types of resources to…
…National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The report was titled “Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding,” and it affirmed the lack of a sound basis for prohibition. The Commission recommended…
You might think that someone with a 50-50 chance of getting a fatal disease would want to know for sure — but you would be wrong. What does this say…
…chain QuikTrip, and a Spanish supermarket chain called Mercadona. These companies have much higher labor costs than their competitors. They pay their employees more; they have more full-time workers and…
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…
…belts; and finally, 3) a Freakonomics-commissioned crash test. The four-day training seminar described at the beginning of the column used a training manual assembled by the National Highway Traffic Safety…
From a Ugandan employed in security in Iraq: In Iraq you can get used to the violence, but in Gulu [northern Uganda], it can come at any time. I went…
…job skills, the President has called for expanded training opportunities. For example, the President has proposed the Community College to Career Fund, a major initiative to provide workers with the…
…their arrival date at the training or race locations in order to calculate when they have to stop taking them. For EPO, for example, we all know that, by injection,…
Success and failure are hard to measure in medicine. Bapu looks at how surgeons are judged after a bad outcome — and whether men and women are treated the same….
…like this get started? Do they help prepare our officers to better lead troops in combat? Why are these sorts of hazing rituals so common in the military and so…
