The U.S. spent the past few decades waiting for China to act like the global citizen it said it wanted to be. The waiting may be over.
Whaling was, in the words of one scholar, “early capitalism unleashed on the high seas.” How did the U.S. come to dominate the whale market? Why did whale hunting die…
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…
Time is precious. How can doctors and patients make the best use of it — especially when there isn’t much left?…
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller…
The National Institutes of Health is the backbone of health research in the U.S., and Collins has been in charge for more than a decade. Now that he’s stepping down,…
…unhealthy days per month. 17.8% reported being overweight or obese and having three or more chronic conditions. They reported an average of 3.51 unhealthy days per month. The data comes…
When researchers analyzed which day of the week most drug-safety alerts are released — and what it means for public health — they were stunned. So was Bapu Jena. He…
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 two of…
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings came to believe that corporate rules can kill creativity and innovation. In this latest edition of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, guest host Maria Konnikova talks…
A wide-open conversation with three women who guided Richard Feynman through some big adventures at the Esalen Institute. (Part of our Feynman series.)…
It has become fiendishly expensive to produce, and has more competition than ever. And yet the believers still believe. Why? And does the world really want a new musical about…
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive, and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller…
Hear diagnostician Gurpreet Dhaliwal try to solve the case of a patient who came to the emergency room with an unusual combination of symptoms. Plus, we discuss how difficult it…
Obi Felten used to launch projects for X, Google’s innovation lab, but she’s now tackling mental health. She explains why Steve’s dream job was soul-destroying for her, and how peer…
Also: how do phone cameras affect the way we experience live events?…
Thanks to decades of work by airlines and regulators, plane crashes are nearly a thing of the past. Can we do the same for cars? (Part 2 of “Freakonomics Radio…
Three days: … The amount of time auto-rickshaws are striking. … How long it took to crack the iPhone root password. … The length of the papal visit to New…
We’ve all heard the depressing numbers: when compared to kids from other rich countries, U.S. students aren’t doing very well, especially in math, even though we spend more money per…
…from a greater number of days between exams. Asian students benefit even more than White students from a greater number of days between exams. The reason behind these heterogeneous effects…
…to all learning . . . How bad were the first loaves of bread? . . . Don’t leave experimentation to the scientists . . . Does more expensive wine…
…the U.S. for this time period? Perhaps cigarettes or wine? Gold or silver coins? Cans of tuna? Baseball cards? Bottles of water? Any thoughts? And any ideas on a potential…
…might include a cow or buffalo, a chicken, bananas, incense and rice wine. “So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about…
…how the magazine was perceived in the olden days. (If enlightenment is what you’re after, check out Reaching for Paradise, a 1977 book about Playboy by Thomas Weyr. Many of…
We seem to have decided that ethnic food tastes better when it’s served by people of that ethnicity (or at least something close). Does this make sense — and is…
We learn how to be less impatient, how to tell fake news from real, and the simple trick that nurses used to make better predictions than doctors. Journalist Manoush Zomorodi…
Sixty percent of the jobs that Americans do today didn’t exist in 1940. What happens as our labor becomes more technical and less physical? And what kinds of jobs will…
…we discussed in a previous post, if I sell my house, and in five years it rises substantially in value (an anachronistic example these days, we recognize), I don’t get…
Dogs are, above all, creatures of the nose. What can they sniff out, and what can we learn about smelling by following them? Alexandra Horowitz talks to a detection-dog handler…
