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Episode 60

Save Me From Myself

A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong?

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Episode 601

Multitasking Doesn’t Work. So Why Do We Keep Trying?

Only a tiny number of “supertaskers” are capable of doing two things at once. The rest of us are just making ourselves miserable, and less productive. How can we put…

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Episode 323

Here’s Why All Your Projects Are Always Late — and What to Do About It

Whether it’s a giant infrastructure plan or a humble kitchen renovation, it’ll inevitably take way too long and cost way too much. That’s because you suffer from “the planning fallacy.”…

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Episode 44

Edward Glaeser Explains Why Some Cities Thrive While Others Fade Away

An expert on urban economics and co-author of the new book Survival of the City, Ed says cities have faced far worse than Covid. Steve talks with the Harvard professor…

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Episode 617

Are You Really Allergic to Penicillin?

Like tens of millions of people, Stephen Dubner thought he had a penicillin allergy. Like the vast majority, he didn’t. This misdiagnosis costs billions of dollars and causes serious health…

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EXTRA

The Show That Never Happened

A brief meditation on loss, relativity, and the vagaries of show business….

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EXTRA

How Can You Give Better Gifts? (Replay)

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?…

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Episode 432

When Your Safety Becomes My Danger

The families of U.S. troops killed and wounded in Afghanistan are suing several companies that did reconstruction there. Why? These companies, they say, paid the Taliban protection money, which gave…

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Episode 323

Here’s Why All Your Projects Are Always Late — and What to Do About It (Replay)

Whether it’s a giant infrastructure plan or a humble kitchen renovation, it’ll inevitably take way too long and cost way too much. That’s because you suffer from “the planning fallacy.”…

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Episode 42

The Upside of Quitting (Replay)

You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…


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Episode 414

Will Covid-19 Spark a Cold War (or Worse) With China?

The U.S. spent the past few decades waiting for China to act like the global citizen it said it wanted to be. The waiting may be over.

More Navel-Gazing from Academic Economists

…in economics. We trace the deeper roots of this failure to the profession’s insistence on constructing models that, by design, disregard the key elements driving outcomes in real-world markets. The…



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Episode 209

Make Me a Match

Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design wizard…

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Episode 626

Ten Myths About the U.S. Tax System

Nearly everything that politicians say about taxes is at least half a lie. They are also dishonest when it comes to the national debt. Stephen Dubner finds one of the…

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Episode 6

Nathan Myhrvold: “I Am Interested in Lots of Things, and That’s Actually a Bad Strategy.” (Replay)

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…


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Episode 256

What Are You Waiting For? (Replay)

Standing in line represents a particularly sloppy — and frustrating — way for supply and demand to meet. Why haven’t we found a better way to get what we want?…

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Episode 102

Adding Ten Healthy Years to Your Life

Physician Peter Attia returns to the show to talk about the science of longevity — which focuses not only on extending life but on maintaining good health into old age….

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Episode 319

After the Glass Ceiling, a Glass Cliff

Only 5 percent of Fortune 500 companies are run by women. Why? Research shows that female executives are more likely to be put in charge of firms that are already…

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Episode 470

The Pros and Cons of America’s (Extreme) Individualism (Replay)

According to a decades-long research project, the U.S. is not only the most individualistic country on earth; we’re also high on indulgence, short-term thinking, and masculinity (but low on “uncertainty…

Hal Varian Answers Your Questions

failure, allowing high profits at low risk? More generally, is there a better way of estimating future prices than by looking at commodities trading? A: I think that commodity futures…



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Episode 209

Make Me a Match (Update)

Sure, markets work well in general. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design…


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Episode 49

Why Don’t We Have a Cure for Alzheimer’s?

Promising drugs keep failing in trials. Allegations of fraud have cast a shadow over the field. An expert explains why Alzheimer’s treatments have been so hard to find — and…

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Episode 8

Peter Attia: “I Definitely Lost a Lot of IQ Points That Day”

He’s been an engineer, a surgeon, a management consultant, and even a boxer. Now he’s a physician focused on the science of longevity. Peter Attia talks with Steve Levitt about…

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Episode 581

What Both Parties Get Wrong About Immigration

The U.S. immigration system is a massively complicated machine, with a lot of worn-out parts. How to fix it? Step one: Get hold of some actual facts and evidence. (We…

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Episode 461

How to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot Apocalypse

It’s true that robots (and other smart technologies) will kill many jobs. It may also be true that newer collaborative robots (“cobots”) will totally reinvigorate how work gets done. That,…


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Episode 479

The Economist’s Guide to Parenting: 10 Years Later

…talk — and they have a lot to say. We hear about nature vs. nurture, capitalism vs. Marxism, and why you sometimes don’t tell your friends that your father is…