Devra Davis Responds to Your Cancer Questions
…Can private companies ever be part of the solution? A: The conflicts of interest and compromise of healthcare involved in corporate sponsorship of medicine have been thoroughly parsed, documented, and…
What do the most creative people have in common? How open-minded are you, really? And what’s wrong with ordering eggs Benedict? Take the Big Five inventory: freakonomics.com/bigfive…
The U.S. is an outlier when it comes to policing, as evidenced by more than 1,000 fatal shootings by police each year. But we’re an outlier in other ways too:…
He’s the award-winning author of hugely popular books like Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; and Upheaval. But Jared actually started his varied career as an expert on gallbladders and birds….
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz combs through mountains of information to find advice for everyday life….
People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to…
…factor into the long, mysterious march towards a creative life. To learn more, we examine the early years of Ai Weiwei, Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello, Maira Kalman, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer…
Data scientist Nate Silver gained attention for his election predictions. But even the best prognosticators get it wrong sometimes. He talks to Steve about making good decisions with data, why…
…policing. But is that thinking too small? Could nudging be used to fight income inequality and achieve world peace? Recorded live in London, with commentary from Andy Zaltzman (The Bugle)….
Whether you’re building a business or a cathedral, execution is everything. We ask artists, scientists, and inventors how they turned ideas into reality. And we find out why it’s so…
…the hypothesis of his book Scarcity, explains why machines aren’t competition for human intelligence, and tells Steve why it’s important to appreciate other people’s good ideas before developing your own….
Also: which professions have the happiest people?…
What happens when a public health researcher deep in coal country argues that mountaintop mining endangers the entire community? Hint: it doesn’t go very well.
Economist Michael D. Smith says universities are scrambling to protect a status quo that deserves to die. He tells Steve why the current system is unsustainable, and what’s at stake…
…Can private companies ever be part of the solution? A: The conflicts of interest and compromise of healthcare involved in corporate sponsorship of medicine have been thoroughly parsed, documented, and…
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…
It happens to just about everyone, whether you’re going for Olympic gold or giving a wedding toast. We hear from psychologists, economists, and the golfer who some say committed the…
The science of what works — and doesn’t work — in fundraising
The science of what works — and doesn’t work — in fundraising.
Most travelers want the cheapest flight they can find. Airlines, meanwhile, need to manage volatile fuel costs, a pricey workforce, and complex logistics. So how do they make money —…
Overt discrimination in the labor markets may be on the wane, but women are still subtly penalized by all sorts of societal conventions. How can those penalties be removed without…
Thanks to legal settlements with drug makers and distributors, states have plenty of money to boost prevention and treatment. Will it work? (Part two of a two-part series.)…
Bestselling author James Nestor believes that we can improve our lives by changing the way we breathe. He’s persuasive enough to get Steve taping his mouth shut at night. He…
Labor exploitation! Corporate profiteering! Government corruption! The 21st century can look a lot like the 18th. In the final episode of a series, we turn to “the father of economics”…
He’s a professor of computation and behavioral science at the University of Chicago, MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, and author. Steve and Sendhil laugh their way through a conversation about the…
…alternative that best balances the achievement of your competing objectives. Q. Many important personal and business decisions seem to come down to the proverbial balancing of apples and oranges. It…
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…
In a conversation fresh from the Freakonomics Radio Network’s podcast laboratory, Michèle Flournoy (one of the highest-ranking women in Defense Department history) speaks with Cecil Haney (one of the U.S….
…advertis[ement] or promotion” that “misrepresents the nature, characteristics [or] qualities” of the Kindle. I think it would be fine for movies to take some artistic license with the qualities of…
Some of them are. With others, it’s more complicated (and more promising). We try to get past the Bored Apes and the ripoffs to see if we can find art…
