Meditating on Those Sunk Costs
…mayoral campaign. Here’s how Dubner explained it in our podcast on quitting: A “sunk cost” is just what it sounds like: time or money you’ve already spent. The sunk-cost fallacy…
…mayoral campaign. Here’s how Dubner explained it in our podcast on quitting: A “sunk cost” is just what it sounds like: time or money you’ve already spent. The sunk-cost fallacy…
…individuals through my Liberty PAC. As far as quitting or staying with the Republicans, everyone will have to make up his or her own mind. There can be value in…
…be verified other than Hurman’s self-admission. But even if the auction per se were to fail as a commitment device, I would think Hurman’s very public announcement of his quitting…
…looking for other things to do. I finally told them I was quitting and they threatened to sue me. “The one area where slavery is legal in America is when…
Photo: IAN RANSLEY DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION My old band was called The Right Profile. (I talked about quitting in this radio show.) It wasn’t a great name probably but we…
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Freakonomics asks a dozen smart people for their best ideas. Get ready for a fat tax, a sugar ban, and a calorie-chomping tapeworm.
In a special episode of No Stupid Questions, Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth discuss classroom design, open offices, and cognitive drift….
In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales from the front line, the lab, and the I.T. department. Part of the…
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….
They’re heading to the Super Bowl for the second time in five years. But back in 2018, they were coming off a long losing streak — and that’s the year…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
One of the most storied (and valuable) sports franchises in the world had fallen far. So they decided to do a full reboot — and it worked: this week, they…
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The road to success is paved with failure, so you might as well learn to do it right. (Ep. 5 of the “How to Be Creative” series.)…
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…
Corporations and rich people donate billions to their favorite think tanks and foundations. Should we be grateful for their generosity — or suspicious of their motives?
After eight years and more than 300 episodes, it was time to either 1) quit, or 2) make the show bigger and better. We voted for number 2. Here’s a…
Zappos C.E.O. Tony Hsieh has a wild vision and the dollars to try to make it real. But it still might be the biggest gamble in town.
Is sobbing a survival tactic? What happened when Angela wept in front of her boss? And what do sauerkraut and sadness have in common?…
Naturalist Sy Montgomery explains how she learned to be social from a pig, discovered octopuses have souls, and came to love a killer that will never love her back.
She used to run a behavioral unit in the Obama administration, and now has a similar role at Google. Maya and Steve talk about the power (and limits) of behavioral…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940’s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
Stephen Dubner’s conversations with members of the San Francisco 49ers offense, recorded for Freakonomics Radio episode No. 350, part of the “Hidden Side of Sports” series….
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…
The psychologist Angela Duckworth argues that a person’s level of stick-to-itiveness is directly related to their level of success. No big surprise there. But grit, she says, isn’t something you’re…
The San Francisco 49ers, one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world, also used to be one of the best. But they’ve been losing lately — a lot…
