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Does anyone really know what they’re doing? How do we reward the competent and not the confident? And what’s wrong with using TikTok for research?…
It takes fungi-sniffing dogs, back-room deals, and a guy named “The Kingpin” for the world’s most coveted morsel to end up on your plate. Zachary Crockett picks up the scent.
What’s more stressful, divorce or jail? Are you in the middle of a “lifequake”? And should we all be taking notes from Martha Stewart?
Many companies say they want to create more opportunities for Black Americans. One company is doing something concrete about it. We visit the South Side of Chicago to see how…
Success and failure are hard to measure in medicine. Bapu looks at how surgeons are judged after a bad outcome — and whether men and women are treated the same….
When are negative emotions enjoyable? Are we all a little masochistic? And do pigs like hot sauce?
A small number of patients with multiple, chronic conditions use a lot of resources. Dr. Jeffrey Brenner found a way to identify and treat them. Could it reduce health care…
When she’s not rescuing chickens from coyotes, Susan Athey uses economics to address real-world challenges — from online ad auctions to carbon capture technology….
When the world went into lockdown, experts predicted a rise in intimate-partner assaults. What actually happened was more complicated….
To the law, everything is either a “person,” with rights, or a “thing,” without. Where does that leave dogs? Alexandra Horowitz considers animate things, living property, and what happens when…
Are there downsides to “personality plagiarism”? Why did no one buy the Crayola Crayon Carver? And should Stephen feel bad for copying Angela’s email signature?…
Distractions are everywhere — including in the operating room. So, what happens if a surgeon loses focus? A tap dancer, a health researcher, and a surgeon help Bapu Jena find…
Gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna worries that humanity might not be ready for the technology she helped develop….
In this special episode of Freakonomics, M.D., host Bapu Jena looks at data from birthday parties, March Madness parties, and a Freakonomics Radio holiday party to help us all manage…
When you need a ride to the hospital, who should you call? Bapu talks with economist David Slusky about how ridesharing services are increasingly replacing ambulances. Plus, an unexpected reason…
The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic game-theory problem. Robert, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, has spent his career studying it — and the ways humans can cooperate,…
When Richard Thaler published Nudge in 2008 with co-author Cass Sunstein, the world was just starting to believe in his brand of behavioral economics. How did nudge theory hold up…
What’s it like to try and police millions of pieces of abusive content every day? Sudhir takes us inside Facebook, as he and his former colleagues recall how hard it…
He argues that personal finance is so simple all you need to know can fit on an index card. How will he deal with Steve’s suggestion that Harold’s nine rules…
There are enough management consultants these days to form a small nation. But what do they actually do? And does it work?
When it comes to exercising outrage, people tend to be very selective. Could it be that humans are our least favorite animal?
In many ways, the gender gap is closing. In others, not so much. And that’s not always a bad thing.
From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around.
You’ve seen them — everywhere! — and often clustered together, as if central planners across America decided that what every city really needs is a Mattress District. There are now…
Neuroscientists still have a great deal to learn about the human brain. One recent M.R.I. study sheds some light, finding that a certain kind of storytelling stimulates enormous activity across…
Experts and pundits are notoriously bad at forecasting, in part because they aren’t punished for bad predictions. Also, they tend to be deeply unscientific. The psychologist Philip Tetlock is finally…
What if the thing we call “talent” is grotesquely overrated? And what if deliberate practice is the secret to excellence? Those are the claims of the research psychologist Anders Ericsson,…
