Steve and producer Morgan Levey look back at the first 100 episodes of the podcast, including surprising answers, spectacular explanations, and listeners who heard the show and changed their lives….
…Space — the microphone is turned toward him. His Freakonomics friend and co-author Stephen Dubner checks in on the wisdom Levitt has extracted from his interviews, finds out why Levitt…
A tiny behavioral-sciences startup is trying to improve the way federal agencies do their work. Considering the size (and habits) of most federal agencies, this isn’t so simple. But after…
With abortion on the Nov. 5 ballot, we look back at Steve Levitt’s controversial research about an unintended consequence of Roe v. Wade….
Neuroscientists still have a great deal to learn about the human brain. One recent M.R.I. study sheds some light, finding that a certain kind of storytelling stimulates enormous activity across…
…Hershovitz (author of Nasty, Brutish, and Short) argues that philosophy still has a lot to say about work, justice, and parenthood. Our latest installment of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club….
It used to be at the center of our conversations about politics and society. Scott Hershovitz is the author of Nasty, Brutish, and Short, in which he argues that philosophy…
What’s the connection between conversations about money and financial literacy? Could the taboo against talking about your salary be fading? And why did Angie’s teenage daughter call Vanguard to learn…
…NAR hasn’t revealed exactly how big the revision to home sales will be, the agency’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said the decrease will be “meaningful.” … Yun said the database…
…4 of Freakonomics, pp. 130-133; a quorum on how to reduce gun deaths; and a Q&A with the photographer-author of Armed America. And we are starting to produce a podcast…
…The best answer that is left in the comments — as voted by a secret quorum of Freaks — will win you a signed copy of Think Like a Freak…
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…
…Q&A’s like this one and this one and this one, and Freakonomics Quorum discussions like this one about saving the African rhino. You will see a number of other new…
(Stockbyte) It’s funny — when we ran a quorum recently asking what should be done about insider trading, no one mentioned cracking down on Congress. Maybe they should have? A…
It’s shaping up to be a most interesting year on the tax front. A recent Freakonomics quorum focused on potential tax-policy mistakes that might be made this year, with so…
Planet Money interviews Nassim Taleb, who recently participated in a Freakonomics quorum on financial reform, for its Deep Read series. Taleb compares the developed world’s dependence on debt to drug…
…be good for society. He predicts what would happen if gas prices rise drastically, and explains why he thinks that could actually be good for society. (Related: see this quorum…
…own risks (as ill-perceived as they may be). So which is the least bad solution? Seed magazine asked a panel of experts and came up with this interesting quorum. [%comments]…
…states like California. We held a Freakonomics quorum late last year to debate the pros and cons of legalizing the drug, and many of you weighed in. With Frank’s legalization…
…best entry, as decided by a quorum of ourselves and a batch of capuchin monkeys we keep at the ready, receives her/his choice of Freakonomics schwag. Note: The winner of…
A couple of years ago, we wrote a column about crack cocaine, which ended with a discussion of the federal sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine: This disparity has…
…in a quorum we published here, such contaminations would probably cease. On the other hand — based on the Leipzig doctors’ observations of the lead-poisoning patients — body piercing would…
In Freakonomics, we wrote about Paul Feldman, an economist turned bagel delivery man who began charging his customers based on the honor system. From the experiment, he found that, all…
Of all the changes we’ve made to this blog in recent months, my favorites are the reader-generated Q&A’s (here’s a recent example) and our Freakonomics Quorums (the most recent of…
September 5 is the day in 1997 when Mother Teresa died at age 87. No word on what she’d have thought of our quorum on street charity….
How American food so got bad — and why it’s getting so much better.
A look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists.
A look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists.
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…
