The Best Trader in the World Worked for Bernie Madoff
…I wanted to write an article about him and how I thought he was the best trader I ever knew. I’ve met and worked with over a thousand traders. I…
College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how?
How do friendships change as we get older? Should you join a bowling league? And also: how does a cook become a chef?…
How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?
A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.
Humans have a built-in “negativity bias,” which means we give bad news much more power than good. Would the Covid-19 crisis be an opportune time to reverse this tendency?
John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly…
He’s an M.I.T. cosmologist, physicist, and machine-learning expert, and once upon a time, almost an economist. Max and Steve continue their conversation about the existential threats facing humanity, and what…
The art market is so opaque and illiquid that it barely functions like a market at all. A handful of big names get all the headlines (and most of the…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the Virgin Group founder, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
…I wanted to write an article about him and how I thought he was the best trader I ever knew. I’ve met and worked with over a thousand traders. I…
Good intentions are nice, but with so many resources poured into social programs, wouldn’t it be even nicer to know what actually works?
In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes (No. 39!), we asked a bunch of economists with young kids how they approached child-rearing. Now the kids are old enough to…
Under his helm, the TED Conference went from a small industry gathering to a global phenomenon. Chris and Steve talk about how to build lasting institutions, how to make generosity…
This new Jeopardy! host is best known for playing neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, but she has a rich life outside of her acting career too,…
…what he liked best about them. He gave an answer that I never would have guessed, and that would likely only come from a Ph.D. type. He said that he…
We tend to look down on artists who can’t match their breakthrough success. Should we be celebrating them instead?…
Sal Khan returns to discuss his innovative online high school’s first year — and Steve grills a member of the school’s class of 2026 about what it’s really like….
Former professional poker player Annie Duke wrote a book about Steve’s favorite subject: quitting. They talk about why quitting is so hard, how to do it sooner, and why we…
John Green returns to the show to talk about tuberculosis — a disease that kills more than a million people a year. Steve has an idea for a new way…
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…
Cory Booker on the politics of fear, the politics of hope, and how to split the difference….
Why do so many promising solutions — in education, medicine, criminal justice, etc. — fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation scientists” crack…
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….
Does anyone have any real agency? What do McDonald’s and Oxford University have in common? And why did Angela give up on philosophy?
Learning requires practice — and if you visit a teaching hospital in July, there’s a good chance your doctor hasn’t had much of it. So, will your care suffer? The…
We asked you to nominate the worst sins of the modern age. Which one do Stephen and Angela think belongs on the list? And which does Angie struggle with the…
College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how?
Former professional poker player Annie Duke has a new book on Steve’s favorite subject: quitting. They talk about why quitting is so hard, how to do it sooner, and why…
In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes, we asked a bunch of economists with young kids how they approached child-rearing. Now the kids are old enough to talk —…
There are enough management consultants these days to form a small nation. But what do they actually do? And does it work?
