How vulnerable should you get with your coworkers? What’s the benefit of telling strangers about your relationship with your mother? And why did Mike’s childhood home burn down — twice?
The digital age is making pen and paper seem obsolete. But what are we giving up if we give up on handwriting?
For all the speculation about the future, A.I. tools can be useful right now. Adam Davidson discovers what they can help us do, how we can get the most from…
What is the evolutionary purpose of laughter? What’s the difference between Swedish depression and American depression? And why aren’t aliens interested in abducting Mike?…
Also: How do you recover from a bad day?…
…Solomon Zeitlin Preemptive Habitat Destruction Under the Endangered Species Act By Dean Lueck and Jeffrey Michael Is the Endangered Species Act Endangering Species? By John List, Michael Margolis, Daniel Osgood…
Do you get grittier as you age? What’s worse for mental health: video games or social media? And do baby boomers make the best D.J.s?…
…can get you fired. In the jargon of behavioral economics, coaches are “loss-averse”; this concept, pioneered by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, holds that we experience more pain with a…
How do you let go of resentment? Do apologies even work? And what grievances have Stephen and Angela been nursing for years?…
Also: how can we stop confusing correlation with causation?
How can you strive for excellence without overworking yourself? Why is perfectionism on the rise? And is Angela part of the problem?…
…you. I know this sounds fishy. Don’t drivers complain about traffic in poll over poll? Isn’t congestion a huge drain on our economy? Haven’t Daniel Kahneman (a Nobel laureate) and…
New research finds that bosses who went to business school pay their workers less. So what are M.B.A. programs teaching — and should they stop?…
Innovation experts have long overlooked where a lot of innovation actually happens. The personal computer, the mountain bike, the artificial pancreas — none of these came from some big R&D…
This year, Daniel Kahneman has me wondering about what is the best way to organize my vacation time. In this great TED talk – The Riddle of Experience versus Memory,…
…area — Caroline Hoxby, Daniel Hurley, Richard J. Murnane, and Andrew Rotherham — and asked them the following question: How can the U.S. black-white achievement gap be closed? Here are…
Why have fertility rates dropped so dramatically? Do fathers or mothers get more happiness from parenting? And how does birth order affect a child’s future?…
How does a fresh tuna get from Japan to Nebraska before it goes bad? And how does its journey show up in the price of your spicy tuna rolls? Zachary…
What’s the best way to carry out random acts of kindness? What’s wrong with making an “Irish exit”? And why is Mike secretly buying lottery tickets?…
What happens when tens of millions of fantasy-sports players are suddenly able to bet real money on real games? We’re about to find out. A recent Supreme Court decision has…
The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg wrote his new book in an attempt to learn how to communicate better. Steve shares how the book helped him understand his own…
How is “negative reinforcement” different from punishment? Could positive reinforcement encourage prosocial behavior on a national scale? And what’s the deal with Taiwan’s dog-poop lottery?…
Also: Does knowing your family history affect your identity?…
We’re working on a Freakonomics Radio episode about pain. One component is the very interesting research by Daniel Kahneman and Donald Redelmeier about how colonoscopy patients remember the pain of…
Daniel Solove is amazed by what people will divulge about themselves (and others) online — usually unaware of consequences which can range from stardom to job loss. But in his…
Jens Ludwig has an idea for how to fix America’s gun violence problem — and it starts by rejecting conventional wisdom from both sides of the political aisle.
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. The founder of behavioral economics…
By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what’s to be done? Our third and final episode in this…
We speak with a governor, a former C.D.C. director, a pandemic forecaster, a hard-charging pharmacist, and a pair of economists — who say it’s all about the incentives. (Pandemillions, anyone?)
