Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March. In 2021 he talked with Steve Levitt — his friend and former business partner — about his book…
Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March. In 2021 he talked with Steve Levitt — his friend and former business partner — about his book…
…best way to change public perceptions about waste/excrement/(insert preferred euphemism), and why is it important that we do? A: It will sound simplistic, but what the deeply neglected world of…
…ever leaving Dongguan, these [factory] workers had figured out the global hierarchy of nations. American and European bosses treated workers best, followed by Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong, and then Taiwanese…
Are gifted and talented programs discriminatory? Why do so many adults still remember their SAT scores? And how did Angela transform from a party girl to an Ivy League psychologist?…
Matt Miller It isn’t hard to think of ideas that were once considered conventional wisdom — “Women shouldn’t vote,” “People should be segregated by race” — but were eventually laid…
How did love stories about vampires, cowboys, and wealthy dukes become the highest-grossing fiction genre in the world? Zachary Crockett gets swept away….
…would recommend both of them; but The White Tiger is an absolute must-read. The book is a best-seller and has won awards including the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Writing for…
The crew of the Maersk Alabama, having survived an attack by pirates in Somalia last week, has returned home for a much-deserved rest. But with tensions ratcheting up between the…
Also: Is short-sightedness part of human nature?…
In recent months, the U.S. government has taken on a challenging and controversial new role: private sector investor. This development has raised a host of questions about the government’s role…
…Thousand Emperors tweeted: “Best news I’ve heard all day.” Jay Kristoff, author of Stormdancer, called it “a visionary and dramatic step . . . a victory for consumers, and a…
…work at best around half the time; chemotherapies for cancer work at best 20% of the time. This is the hit and miss of modern pharmacology – there are no…
Arianne Cohen My friend Arianne Cohen is really tall — 6 feet, 3 inches tall, to be exact. I once joined her, and her two dogs, for a walk in…
Photo: Heidi Schumann David Shenk Practice makes genius? That’s the idea behind the research of people like Anders Ericsson. It’s also at the center of a new book, The Genius…
In 2005, Raghuram Rajan, a University of Chicago economist and then-chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), presented a paper at the Jackson Hole Conference, an annual gathering of…
Nate Silver first gained prominence for his rigorous analysis of baseball statistics. He became even more prominent for his rigorous analysis of elections, primarily via his FiveThirtyEight blog. (He has…
My University of Chicago colleague Raghu Rajan has started a blog. Raghu is a serious economist: very thoughtful and highly respected.? He is the former chief economist at the International…
…typesetting. In the old days, an author handed the publisher a hand- or typewritten manuscript. The publisher turned the manuscript into page proofs. The author corrected the proofs, and with…
Gary Shteyngart isn’t just a novelist, and a pretty good novelist, but a novelist who is willing to cast himself in a Borat-like short film to promote his latest book….
…has been listed for the past 15 years in Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for. You won’t find Walmart, Target, Home Depot or Lowe’s on that list—because employees…
Malaria has been infecting and killing humans for many millennia, yet it continues to elude man’s efforts to control it. Sonia Shah‘s fascinating new book, The Fever: How Malaria Has…
…educated, ambitious individuals, the best adaptations and innovations will be pretty good.”? For a longer preview, check out Kahn’s recent essay on Vox. Kahn has agreed to answer your questions…
We are quite fond of talking trash, literally: see our “Economics of Trash” podcast, and our “Weird Recycling” episode, and even the “Power of Poop.” The journalist Edward Humes is…
“Morality, by its very nature, makes it hard to study morality,” writes the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. “It binds people together into teams that seek victory, not truth. It closes…
One of the first times I met Danny Kahneman was over dinner, just after SuperFreakonomics was published. Shortly after we were introduced, Danny said, “I enjoyed your new book. It…
Mara Hvistendahl‘s research features prominently in our latest podcast, “Misadventures in Baby-Making.” Her book, Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, looks…
Though the exact percentage is debatable, the fact is that the vast majority of U.S. GDP is made up of personal consumption. The American consumer doesn’t just drive the U.S….
Photo credit: Rebecca Goldstein With Libya finishing off a bloody revolution, the war in Afghanistan nearly a decade old, and Mexico engulfed in a savage drug war — it might…
