Did Celebrating Earth Day Make You Pollute More?
Beware moral self-regulation. Doing good works, it turns out, may make people feel justified in doing ill. A new study from psychologists at Northwestern University suggests that “affirming a moral…
Beware moral self-regulation. Doing good works, it turns out, may make people feel justified in doing ill. A new study from psychologists at Northwestern University suggests that “affirming a moral…
Global demand for beef, chicken, and pork continues to rise. So do concerns about environmental and other costs. Will reconciling these two forces be possible — or, even better, Impossible™?
Photo: Paul Trafford When wearing my Freakonomics hat, I see my job as giving you the reader the pecan pie of transportation, while shielding you from having to eat your…
Oscar Hidalgo/The New York Times Norman Borlaug If you had to point to one person who helped the global population surge over the past several decades to nearly 7 billion…
Playing notes on her piano, she demonstrates for Steve why whole numbers sound pleasing, why octaves are mathematically imperfect, and how math underlies musical composition. Sarah, a professor at the…
Everyone agrees that massive deforestation is an environmental disaster. But most of the standard solutions — scolding the Brazilians, invoking universal morality — ignore the one solution that might actually…
Columbia astrophysicist David Helfand is an academic who does things his own way — from turning down job security to helping found a radically unconventional university….
Steve is on a mission to reform math education, and Sarah Hart is ready to join the cause. In her return visit to the show, Sarah explains how patterns are…
Everyone agrees that massive deforestation is an environmental disaster. But most of the standard solutions — scolding the Brazilians, invoking universal morality — ignore the one solution that might actually…
Yes, it expands the mind but we usually don’t retain much — and then there’s the opportunity cost.
As Kevin Kelly tells it, the hippie revolution and the computer revolution are nearly one and the same.
We talk to a U.S. Geological Survey physicist about the science — and folly — of predicting earthquakes. There are lots of known knowns; and, fortunately, not too many unknown…
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson….
Also: are the most memorable stories less likely to be true?
Amaryllis Fox is a former C.I.A. operative and host of the Netflix show The Business of Drugs. She explains why intelligence work requires empathy, and she soothes Steve’s fears about…
Our co-host is comedian Christian Finnegan, and we learn: the difference between danger and fear; the role of clouds in climate change; and why (and when) politicians are bad at…
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer and David Paterson….
He graduated high school at 14, and by 23 had several graduate degrees and was a research assistant with Stephen Hawking. He became the first chief technology officer at Microsoft…
…into the ground and probably into the community’s ground water.” “The site had trees down, roads and driveways missing, and big boulders of earth, or what looked like gray earth….
Also: is it better to be right or “not wrong”?…
Recorded live in San Francisco. Guests include the keeper of a 10,000-year clock, the co-founder of Lyft, a pioneer in male birth control, a specialist in water security, and a…
…you feel like wading into the conversation, you might wish to sample Dot Earth, Watts Up With That, and RealClimate, which presents “climate science from climate scientists.” The discussions at…
We are in the midst of a historic (and wholly unpredicted) rise in urbanization. But it’s hard to retrofit old cities for the 21st century. Enter Dan Doctoroff. The man…
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….
Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, has big ambitions but knows he must first master the small stuff. He’s also a polymath who relies heavily on data and new…
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 U.S. president is often called the “leader of the free world.” But if you ask an economist or a Constitutional scholar how much the occupant of the Oval Office…
He graduated high school at 14, and by 23 had several graduate degrees and was a research assistant with Stephen Hawking. He became the first chief technology officer at Microsoft…
The documentary filmmaker, known for The Civil War, Jazz, and Baseball, turns his attention to the Holocaust, and asks what we can learn from the evils of the past….
The endless pursuit of G.D.P., argues the economist Kate Raworth, shortchanges too many people and also trashes the planet. Economic theory, she says, “needs to be rewritten” — and Raworth…