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Episode 133

A Burger a Day

Is junk food an abomination or a modern miracle?

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Episode 158

Bigger Fish, or Bigger Pond?

Is it better to be the best player on the worst team or the worst player on the best team? How did Angela cope with her extremely impressive freshman dorm-mates?…

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Episode 593

You Can Make a Killing, but Not a Living

Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like Stereophonic — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars…

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Episode 213

What Is Evil?

What makes normal people do terrible things? Are there really bad apples — or just bad barrels? And how should you deal with a nefarious next-door neighbor?…

FeedBurn, Baby, FeedBurn

…of RSS subscribers, via our FeedBurner feed, had jumped from about 14,000 to 42,000. Surely, I thought, this was an error. But it wasn’t. According to the FeedBurner blog, the…



The Price of Eggs: A Leading Indicator?

…a year ago … Behind the higher prices: Feed. Rising corn and soybean prices have led to increased costs for feed. The increase is in large part because of rising…



Moving Day

…find that there is no longer a full feed, but rather a partial feed. There’s another change you may notice right away: the protocol for commenting. We have written before…





Animal Spirits: A Q&A With George Akerlof

…of confidence, usually associated with a financial collapse. They both feed into each other: the financial collapse feeds into the loss of confidence, and the loss of confidence feeds into…





How to Eat What You Kill

…family. But they don’t have to feed your family. You do. Once you care what others think, you’ve lost. Then you’ve just set up the same boundaries for yourself that…





What's the Best Way to Deliver Food Aid?

(Photo: Feed My Starving Children) The question of how best to deliver food aid is a controversial one. In recent years, economists like Dean Karlan and Ed Glaeser have suggested…



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Episode 225

Am I Boring You? (Replay)

Researchers are trying to figure out who gets bored — and why — and what it means for ourselves and the economy. But maybe there’s an upside to boredom?

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Episode 386

How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Replay)

Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the…

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Episode 412

What Happens When Everyone Stays Home to Eat?

Covid-19 has shocked our food-supply system like nothing in modern history. We examine the winners, the losers, the unintended consequences — and just how much toilet paper one household really…

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EXTRA

Domonique Foxworth Full Interview

Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former N.F.L. player, union official, and all-around sports thinker, recorded for our “Hidden Side of Sports” series….

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Episode 279

Chuck E. Cheese’s: Where a Kid Can Learn Price Theory

The pizza-and-gaming emporium prides itself on affordability, which means its arcade games are really cheap to play. Does that lead to kids hogging the best games — and parents starting…

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Episode 386

How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War

Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the…

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Episode 225

Am I Boring You?

Researchers are trying to figure out who gets bored — and why — and what it means for ourselves and the economy. But maybe there’s an upside to boredom?

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Episode 19

Waiter, There’s a Physicist In My Soup, Part I

The “molecular gastronomy” movement — which gets a bump in visibility next month with the publication of the mammoth cookbook “Modernist Cuisine” — is all about bringing more science into…

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Episode 20

Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup, Part 2

What do a computer hacker, an Indiana farm boy, and Napoleon Bonaparte have in common? The past, present, and future of food science.

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Episode 76

You Eat What You Are, Part 1

How American food so got bad — and why it’s getting so much better.

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Episode 149

Pontiff-icating on the Free-Market System

This week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio takes a look at Pope Francis’s critique of the free-market system in “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), his first apostolic exhortation….

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Episode 160

Why Everybody Who Doesn’t Hate Bitcoin Loves It

Thinking of Bitcoin as just a digital currency is like thinking about the Internet as just email. Its potential is much more exciting than that.

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Episode 96

The Cobra Effect

When you want to get rid of a nasty pest, one obvious solution comes to mind: just offer a cash reward. But be careful — because nothing backfires quite like…

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Episode 353

How to Optimize Your Apology

You said, “I’m sorry,” but somehow you haven’t been forgiven. Why? Because you’re doing it wrong! A report from the front lines of apology science.