…the Fourteenth Amendment, there is not a lot of legislative history to guide us. Particularly frustrating was the Framers’ use of the passive voice: “The validity of the public debt…
…used as a guide to official policy,” we should perhaps take this very good news with a grain of salt. But still: the Chinese government seems devoted, on many levels,…
Photos.com My younger son’s family visited the nearby Amish country and did a tour of several farms. The guide mentioned that the youngest son usually takes over the farm from…
…a ‘relatively omniscient’ guide. Several formulas, each having intrinsic skill parameters s for sensitivity and c for consistency, are argued theoretically and tested by regression on large sets of tournament…
…solar energy potential is only a weakly-significant predictor of solar density, even after controlling for housing stock characteristics, population and housing growth, and household income. Free-market economists embrace the power…
…very hard to implement in practice. In part this is because fair use is a standard, rather than as a set of rules. A standard is a general guide of…
…decades. And for these kinds of problems, there’s no reason to believe that common sense is much of a guide at all. Fortunately, in recent years the explosive growth of…
…quit (As noted in the Freakonomics Radio hour, “The Upside of Quitting”). I describe this as an anti-incentive because even though the Zappos offer on its face gives employees an…
…guide and translator Shayak (whom I will write much more about soon), tells me that every few months people from the railroad company come by and take the garbage away…
…write a book called Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill . It seems at first glance to be mainly a guide to what Churchill ate, drank, smoked, and…
…do their replies. Thanks to all for participating. And feel free to check out our podcast on the value of a college education, “Freakonomics Goes to College” (Part 1 here,…
(Photo: davidd) We did a kayak/hike/swim tour with Kayak Wailua in Kauai, Hawaii, mainly because our guidebook said it was as good as other tours and less expensive. I think…
…the comestible so as to guide them to the good places. Now imagine that you’re not actually very worried about or interested in chimichangas. Or even, as with myself, not…
…online course: “A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior.” Sign up here. Dan Pallotta argues that non-profits should be run like real companies. A new study of English literature finds that…
(Photo: al fernandez) The BPS Research Digest offers a quick guide to the psychology and science of human attraction. Their dating suggestions — based on real studies — are: Dress…
…it could be because seniors are more likely to complain in general. Even with these caveats, we hope the results might help guide follow-up research and potentially even Bureau investigations….
Our podcast “Government Employees Gone Wild” was about The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure, a guide published by the U.S. Department of Defense that details the true stories of big screw-ups…
(Photo: Gail) Our recent podcast, “What You Don’t Know About Online Dating,” offered an economist’s guide to dating online. Here’s one more perk: a report by CovergEx Group estimates that…
…more revealing angle. Think Like a Freak is not a book about how to understand magic tricks. That’s what Dubner and Levitt’s first two books—Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics—were about. It’s about…
By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people on…
Also: is a little knowledge truly a dangerous thing?…
Three leading researchers from the Mount Sinai Health System discuss how ketamine, cannabis and ecstasy are being used (or studied) to treat everything from severe depression to addiction to PTSD….
…sold more than 100 million books worldwide. Steve Levitt talks with Gluck — his own agent — about negotiating a deal, advising prospective authors, and convincing him to co-write Freakonomics….
Games are as old as civilization itself, and some people think they have huge social value regardless of whether you win or lose. Tom Whipple is not one of those…
Steve Levitt is obsessed with golf — and he’s pretty good at it too. As a thinly-veiled ploy to improve his own game, Steve talks to two titans of the…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the founder and longtime C.E.O. of Bridgewater Associates, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a…
How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to the market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of…
We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we…
He’s a cognitive neuroscientist and philosopher who has written five best-selling books. Sam Harris also hosts the Making Sense podcast and helps people discover meditation through his Waking Up app….
