Ten Reasons Why I Would Never Donate to a Major Charity (How to Be a Superhero, Part 2)
…unclear at best. So best to avoid them. 8) High unemployment. With every dollar that I don’t save, I have two choices: donate it to a charity or spend it….
Only the finest restaurants have a chance to bask in their glow. Sometimes, it’s a bit too bright. Zachary Crockett squints at the menu….
Frisco used to be just another sleepy bedroom community outside of Dallas. Now it’s got corporate headquarters, billions of investment dollars, and a bunch of Democrats in a place that…
Behavioral economists say “regret lotteries” are powerful motivational tools. When Philadelphia tried one in 2021, the results were disappointing. Bapu looks at how incentives can backfire — and what we…
…unclear at best. So best to avoid them. 8) High unemployment. With every dollar that I don’t save, I have two choices: donate it to a charity or spend it….
…people do travel here, they are treated like criminals upon arrival at customs, or, at best, received with cold discourtesy. The result of all this is that travel to the…
Probably not — the incentives are too strong. Scholarly publishing is a $28 billion global industry, with misconduct at every level. But a few reformers are gaining ground. (Part two…
(Photo: Image Editor) Given the risk of dislocating an elbow while patting oneself on the back, we don’t usually print fan mail. But this one, from James J. Krefft (also…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940’s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
Nicholas Cullinan, the new director of the British Museum, seems to think so. “I’m not afraid of the past,” he says — which means talking about looted objects, the basement…
To her neighbors in the English countryside, the woman known as Mrs. Burton was a cake-baking mother of three. To the Soviet Union, she was an invaluable Cold War operative….
We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?
Enrollment is down for the first time in memory, and critics complain college is too expensive, too elitist, and too politicized. The economist Chris Paxson — who happens to be…
…2012-13 the Clippers have moved beyond being the best team in franchise history to being one of the very best teams in the NBA. After 35 games, the Clippers have…
She is one of the best basketball players ever. She’s won multiple championships, including four Olympic gold medals and four W.N.B.A. titles — the most recent in 2020, just before…
We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?
Can long-term relationships do more harm than good? Where is the line between intimacy and codependence? And should we all try to be more like Mike’s parents?…
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
…he is one of the very best players in the game. His stats, though, suggest he is no longer one of the very best players in baseball. Such a result…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former longtime C.E.O. of General Electric, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
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,…
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…
If you’re a C.E.O., there are a lot of ways to leave your job, from abrupt firing to carefully planned succession (which may still go spectacularly wrong). In this final…
…quickly. It did not. HD-DVD had its best chance when it came to market earlier than Blu-ray. HD-DVD did not win because it did not build enough early sales to…
The legendary venture capitalist believes the same intuition that led him to bet early on Google can help us reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But Steve wonders why his…
She is one of the best basketball players ever. She’s won multiple championships, including five Olympic gold medals and four W.N.B.A. titles. She also helped negotiate a landmark contract for…
In the delightfully sophomoric movie Clerks 2, Randal tells Dante, “Odds are there’s someone out there who’s a better match for you than the girl you are about to marry.”…
A new study out of England finds that, for heart-failure patients, being admitted to the general ward instead of the cardiology ward can mean death: “Half the patients were admitted…
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. In an interview from 2018,…
Photo Credit: huangjiahui via Compfight cc The end of semester crunch is in full swing here at Clemson, leaving me little time to write a new post at the moment….
A conversation with veteran N.B.A. point guard Jeremy Lin, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”…
