When Is a Negative a Positive? (Ep. 117)
…to learn what kind of feedback works best with cardiac patients: FINKELSTEIN: So these are patients who have just had their first heart attack and there’s a lot of question…
The human foot is an evolutionary masterpiece, far more functional than we give it credit for. So why do we encase it in “a coffin” (as one foot scholar calls…
Celiac disease is thought to affect roughly one percent of the population. The good news: it can be treated by quitting gluten. The bad news: many celiac patients haven’t been…
…to learn what kind of feedback works best with cardiac patients: FINKELSTEIN: So these are patients who have just had their first heart attack and there’s a lot of question…
Does the future of food lie in its past — or inside a tank of liquid nitrogen? Also: how anti-social can you be on a social network? This is a…
Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of?
…which allows songwriters and musicians to exercise their “termination rights” and take back from the record labels many thousands of songs they licensed 35 years ago. So, for example, Boston…
In his final years, Richard Feynman’s curiosity took him to some surprising places. We hear from his companions on the trips he took — and one he wasn’t able to….
…a true global exercise in open innovation. And in the end, it was a self-educated English watchmaker, John Harrison, who found a down-to-earth solution. His invention, a marine chronometer, ultimately…
She was the sixteenth employee at Google — a company once based in her garage — and now she’s the C.E.O. of its best-known subsidiary, YouTube. But despite being one…
Every language has its taboo words (which many people use all the time). But the list of forbidden words is always changing — and those changes tell us some surprising…
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…
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…
Step 1: Hire a Harvard psych professor as the pitchman. Step 2: Have him help write the script …
…obesity. True, billions of dollars have been made selling all sorts of diet and exercise and weight-loss products, but perhaps the best solution is the free one: eat a bit…
…of death during exercise. The findings were published this month in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. You can read the abstract here. What really caught my eye though was…
…an economic impact study say pretty much whatever you want, since it’s an exercise in speculation, and that the economists hired by bid committees make sure the numbers say yes….
Pharmaceutical firms donate an enormous amount of their products (and some cash too). But it doesn’t seem to be helping their reputation. We ask Pfizer’s generosity chief why the company…
An update of our 2020 series, in which we spoke with physicians, researchers, and addicts about the root causes of the crisis — and the tension between abstinence and harm…
…your birthday party? Can you fight loneliness by managing expectations? And where can you find company while enjoying the best garlic cheeseburger in the greater Salt Lake City metro area?…
A single company, EssilorLuxottica, owns so much of the eyewear industry that it’s hard to escape their gravitational pull — or their “obscene” markups. Should regulators do something? Can Warby…
…a signed copy of Freakonomics, a Freakonomics yo-yo, or a Freakonomics fact-a-day calendar to the winner. One thing I learned from this exercise is that I’m not so far behind….
For decades, there’s been a huge gender disparity both on-screen and behind the scenes. But it seems like cold, hard data — with an assist from the actor Geena Davis…
Every language has its taboo words (which many people use all the time). But the list of forbidden words is always changing — and those changes tell us some surprising…
Can exercising your body boost your brain’s stamina? Are some people just born lazy? And why did Angela stop reading “Us Weekly”?…
There is no sludgier place in America than Washington, D.C. But there are signs of a change. We’ll hear about this progress — and ask where Elon Musk and DOGE…
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.
…the defendant. To crudely sum up our various conclusions, we basically claim that the state should exercise substantial caution and indeed hostility to most attempts to distribute these benefits or…
