Italian Seismologists Charged with Manslaughter for Not Predicting Earthquake
…people make so many of them. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here.) But recent news out of Italy seems to take the…
…people make so many of them. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here.) But recent news out of Italy seems to take the…
Twenty years ago, before the Freakonomics book tour, Bill McGowan taught Steve Levitt to speak in public. In his new book he tries to teach everyone else….
…happy stomach. He had found on his earlier campaigns abroad that locals often refused to sell his army food, or that there was simply not enough to feed his troops…
It’s harder than you’d think to measure the value of a boss. But some enterprising economists have done just that — and the news is good.
David Eagleman upends myths and describes the vast possibilities of a brainscape that even neuroscientists are only beginning to understand. Steve Levitt interviews him in this special episode of People…
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…
In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt speaks with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is…
In this new addition to the Freakonomics Radio Network, co-hosts Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth discuss the relationship between age and happiness. Also, does all creativity come from pain? New…
The left and the right blame each other for pretty much everything, including slanted media coverage. Can they both be right?
Steve Levitt is obsessed with golf — and he’s pretty good at it too. As a thinly-veiled ploy to improve his own game, Steve talks to two titans of the…
…contributing factor, “given that some bee colonies have recovered once their bee boxes were irradiated.” It briefly mentions a range of other factors, including the impact of feed supplements made…
How much does the President of the United States really matter? And: where did all the hitchhikers go? A pair of “attribution errors.” This is a “mashupdate” of “How Much…
…are actually due to age, not sex. To construct a regression model, you feed in the variables that you think work in concert to affect your outcome — in this…
Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, has big ambitions but knows he must first master the small stuff. He’s also a polymath who relies heavily on data and new…
New York City’s mayor calls them “public enemy number one.” History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that claim. So is the rat…
Are we all either secure, avoidant, or anxious? How does your relationship with your parents shape your romantic partnerships? And what is Stephen’s attachment style?
…strangers for food. “Of the twenty days, we ate on eight and didn’t on twelve. Lots of people are good. They would help us and feed us. I didn’t want…
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/b2c2f370-c7fd-4052-ac68-ab0d001bf7da/audio.mp3] (Photo: Ol.v!er) Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “The Dilbert Index?” (Download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read…
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/296913fb-154c-40f3-8732-ab0d001a268e/audio.mp3] Photo Credit: Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “The Tax Man Nudgeth.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player…
…what would become the Cold War. Certainly Wilson’s refusals to commit American troops to the anti-Bolshevik resistance, and the eventual dispatch of Herbert Hoover‘s food to feed the famine-ravaged stretches…
Americans are so accustomed to the standard intersection that we rarely consider how dangerous it can be — as well as costly, time-wasting, and polluting. Is it time to embrace…
For years, whale oil was used as lighting fuel, industrial lubricant, and the main ingredient in (yum!) margarine. Whale meat was also on a few menus. But today, demand for…
…country and put them in hotels and drive them around and feed them? We aren’t complaining (last night was the first night in ages that one of my kids didn’t…
Performing at a strip club can be lucrative, but it requires financial and psychological savvy — and an eye for social trends. Zachary Crockett takes a look….
Just beneath the surface of the global economy, there is a hidden layer of dealmakers for whom war, chaos, and sanctions can be a great business opportunity. Javier Blas and…
…iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here. So, 100 percent of commercially raised turkeys in the U.S. (save for heritage turkeys) are born from artificial insemination. But…
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.
Whether it’s a giant infrastructure plan or a humble kitchen renovation, it’ll inevitably take way too long and cost way too much. That’s because you suffer from “the planning fallacy.”…
In 2016, David Cameron held a referendum on whether the U.K. should stay in the European Union. A longtime Euroskeptic, he nevertheless led the Remain campaign. So what did Cameron…
