How Best to Realign Major League Baseball: A Freakonomics Quorum
…geeks everywhere weighed in on how best to realign MLB. There are a lot of ideas out there: shorten the season so each team gets one day off a week…
A kitchen wizard and a nutrition detective talk about the perfect hamburger, getting the most out of garlic, and why you should use vodka in just about everything.
How well do you know the people in your life, really? Are you stuck having surface-level conversations? And should we all be in couples therapy?…
In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt talks to the best-selling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus about finding the profound in the obvious….
Why does time fly when you’re having fun? How do you teach rats to play hide and seek? And what does all this have to do with Anne Boleyn?
Experts and pundits are notoriously bad at forecasting, in part because they aren’t punished for bad predictions. Also, they tend to be deeply unscientific. The psychologist Philip Tetlock is finally…
What does the Seven Deadly Sins survey tell us about the people who listen to this podcast? Are we more afflicted by sloth or by lust? And what does Angela…
Academic studies are nice, and so are Nobel Prizes. But to truly prove the value of a new idea, you have to unleash it to the masses. That’s what a…
Do you suffer from the sin of certainty? How did Angela react when a grad student challenged her research? And can a Heineken commercial strengthen our democracy?…
Our Self-Improvement Month concludes with a man whose entire life and career are one big pile of self-improvement. Nutrition? Check. Bizarre physical activities? Check. Working less and earning more? Check….
Some people argue that sugar should be regulated, like alcohol and tobacco, on the grounds that it’s addictive and toxic. How much sense does that make? We hear from a…
We explore votes for English, Indonesian and … Esperanto! The search for a common language goes back millennia, but so much still gets lost in translation. Will technology finally solve…
Are you a problem solver or an opportunity seeker? Why is it so hard to find a good leader these days? And could you be Angela’s next boss?…
How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt’s divorce….
He’s been an Arctic scientist, a sports journalist, and is now a best-selling author of science books. His latest, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, makes the argument…
In this busy time of year, we could all use some tips on how to get more done in less time. First, however, a warning: there’s a big difference between…
Congress just passed the biggest aid package in modern history. We ask six former White House economic advisors and one U.S. Senator: Will it actually work? What are its best…
Cat Bohannon’s new book puts female anatomy at the center of human evolution. She tells Steve why it takes us so long to give birth, what breast milk is really…
The Nobel laureate and pioneering behavioral economist spars with Steve over what makes a nudge a nudge, and admits that even economists have plenty of blind spots….
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…
…geeks everywhere weighed in on how best to realign MLB. There are a lot of ideas out there: shorten the season so each team gets one day off a week…
…comes from two sources. First, he gets the best clients to begin with. He gets the most because he shops the best. He’d probably tell you as much. But Boras…
The union that represents N.F.L. players conducted their first-ever survey of workplace conditions, and issued a report card to all 32 teams. What did the survey reveal? Clogged showers, rats…
…will be best actor;?Sandra Bullock will be best actress (as much as I disliked her performance in The Blind Side);?Christoph Waltz is a lock to win best supporting actor;?Mo’Nique will…
In a new book called The Voltage Effect, the economist John List — who has already revolutionized how his profession does research — is trying to start a scaling revolution….
As beloved and familiar as they are, we rarely stop to consider life from the dog’s point of view. That stops now. In this latest installment of the Freakonomics Radio…
…and with the same mannerisms every time. Even with easy, straightforward decisions, Chris still takes his time to make his move. He’s one of the best, if not the best…
One Yale economist certainly thinks so. But even if he’s right, are economists any better?…
…very best quarterbacks.? Simply put, the very best white quarterbacks are paid more than the very best black quarterbacks (even when performance is controlled for). When we turn to the…
…less exercise per week, nor did they choose smaller financial penalties for not fulfilling their longer contracts.” Preliminary findings from a follow-up study confirm the role of nudges in exercise….
She showed up late and confused to her first silent retreat, but Caverly Morgan eventually trained for eight years in silence at a Zen monastery. Now her mindfulness-education program Peace…
