Like tens of millions of people, Stephen Dubner thought he had a penicillin allergy. Like the vast majority, he didn’t. This misdiagnosis costs billions of dollars and causes serious health problems, so why hasn’t it been fixed? And how about all the other things we think we’re allergic to?
A watercolor of a harbor? A black-and-white photo of a pile of rocks? Some hotels are trying to do better. Zachary Crockett unpacks.
Sarah Stein Greenberg runs Stanford’s d.school, which teaches design as a mode of problem solving. She and Steve talk about what makes her field different from other academic disciplines, how to approach hard problems, and why brainstorms are so annoying.
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?
Sarah Hart investigates the mathematical structures underlying musical compositions and literature. Using examples from Monteverdi to Lewis Carroll, Sarah explains to Steve how math affects how we hear music and understand stories.
Incarcerated people grow crops, fight wildfires, and manufacture everything from prescription glasses to highway signs — often for pennies an hour. Zachary Crockett takes the next exit, in this special episode of The Economics of Everyday Things.
Before beef ends up at your favorite steakhouse, it passes through the hands of a trained specialist with an encyclopedic knowledge of bovine anatomy. Zachary Crockett chews the fat.
Probably not — the incentives are too strong. But a few reformers are trying. We check in on their progress, in an update to an episode originally published last year. (Part 2 of 2)
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