Freakonomics Privacy Policy
…Business Transaction. If another company acquires our company, business, or our assets, that company may then possess the personal information collected and stored by us, however, such company will assume…
Sure, markets work well in general. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design…
Figuring out which patients to hospitalize and which to safely send home can be tricky. Is there a way to make this decision easier for doctors — and get better…
…Business Transaction. If another company acquires our company, business, or our assets, that company may then possess the personal information collected and stored by us, however, such company will assume…
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply.
The legendary venture capitalist believes the same intuition that led him to bet early on Google can help us reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But Steve wonders why his…
What surprises lurk in our sewage? How did racist city planners end up saving Black lives? Why does Arizona grow hay for cows in Saudi Arabia? Three strange stories about…
When she’s not rescuing chickens from coyotes, Susan Athey uses economics to address real-world challenges — from online ad auctions to carbon capture technology….
…neurological damage, and sex research, as well as with ideas from our own field of computational neuroscience, to reveal a new portrait of human desire. Q. Having learnt that you…
From baseball card conventions to Walmart, John List has always used field experiments to say revolutionary things about economics. He explains the value of an apology, why scaling shouldn’t be…
…albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. But, after controlling for the role of popularity, we found that downloads had…
…of the “perfect competition” that one sees with commodity products, highly differentiated products such as movies and music exhibit “monopolistic competition.” Each movie appeals to a different audience, and, in…
Can you ever really know how another person feels? What’s the best way to support a grieving person? And why doesn’t Hallmark sell empathy cards?
A while back, we passed along the news when Google launched its Book Search site. Now, in the interest of equal time, here is Microsoft’s beta version of its own…
…people who’ve visited the challenge” next to advertised claims on Bing’s superiority over Google in “blind comparison tests,” when the “challenge” and the “blind comparison tests” are in fact different…
Moon Duchin is a math professor at Cornell University whose theoretical work has practical applications for voting and democracy. Why is striving for fair elections so difficult?…
Pretty regularly, we hear from readers who tell us they’ve come across a free (i.e, pirated) downloadable version of Freakonomics, either in PDF or audio form. This guy wrote to…
Owen Flanagan’s newest book details his 20-year dependence on alcohol and pills — and outlines his research on what addiction can tell us about the nature of consciousness….
Are betting markets more accurate than polls? What kind of chaos would a second Trump term bring? And is U.S. democracy really in danger, or just “sputtering on”? (Part two…
Only 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Why? Research shows that female executives are more likely to be put in charge of firms that are already…
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?…
The director of the Hayden Planetarium is one of the best science communicators of our time. He and Steve talk about his role in reclassifying Pluto, bad teachers, and why…
How can you learn to love uncertainty? Is it better to cultivate acceptance or strive for change? And, after 223 episodes, what is the meaning of life?…
Caroline Paul is a thrill-seeker and writer who is on a quest to encourage women to get outside and embrace adventure as they age. She and Steve talk about fighting…
Columbia astrophysicist David Helfand is an academic who does things his own way — from turning down job security to helping found a radically unconventional university….
Is grade inflation on the rise? How much does your G.P.A. matter in the long run? And when did M.I.T., of all places, become “the cool university”?…
As the cost of college skyrocketed, it created a debt burden that’s putting a drag on the economy. One possible solution: shifting the risk of debt away from students and…
Computer scientist Fei-Fei Li had a wild idea: download one billion images from the internet and teach a computer to recognize them. She ended up advancing the state of artificial…
…of American students test results (particularly mathematics) compared to other countries, even developing countries? Does this mean the other countries are just teaching to the test better, or is the…
…medicine – which involves things like comparative effectiveness research, so newer (read: expensive) drugs are compared to older (read: cheaper) drugs more pay-for-performance targets for physicians, so our doctors have…
In a special episode of No Stupid Questions, Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan talk about unfinished tasks, recurring arguments, and Irish goodbyes….
