What Should Apple Do?
Last week, Bruce Schneier kindly agreed to participate in a quorum we were putting together on the now-infamous incident in which an Apple employee apparently left a new prototype iPhone…
Stephen Dubner appears as a guest on Fail Better, a new podcast hosted by David Duchovny. The two of them trade stories about failure, and ponder the lessons that success…
Also: does multitasking actually increase productivity?…
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller…
Last week, Bruce Schneier kindly agreed to participate in a quorum we were putting together on the now-infamous incident in which an Apple employee apparently left a new prototype iPhone…
In the U.S. alone, we hold 55 million meetings a day. Most of them are woefully unproductive, and tyrannize our offices. The revolution begins now — with better agendas, smaller…
…specified the details in advance: the problem of global linguistic coordination, which was the subject of a recent Freakonomics quorum. If you picked two people at random off the face…
John Urschel was the only player in the N.F.L. simultaneously getting a math Ph.D. at M.I.T. But after a new study came out linking football to brain damage, he abruptly…
Thick markets, thin markets, and the triumph of attributes over compatibility.
When trust in doctors or the healthcare system is lost, it’s really hard to get back. Bapu Jena explores the ripple effects of a C.I.A. operation to catch Osama bin…
When it comes to end-of-life medical care, getting it right can be hard — even for doctors. Bapu Jena discusses surprising research on how we can live better — and…
How does the profitability of family firms stack up against the rest? Has nepotism become more taboo over time? And why are 90 percent of adoptees in Japan not children…
For lots of things, price is an indicator of quality. But what about in health care? Bapu Jena gets some clues from Steve Levitt’s wine tasting experiment, and looks at…
In pursuit of a more perfect economy, we discuss the future of work, the toxic remnants of colonization, and whether giving everyone a basic income would be genius — or…
Google and Facebook are worth a combined $2 trillion, with the vast majority of their revenue coming from advertising. In our previous episode, we learned that TV advertising is much…
The economist and social critic Glenn Loury has led a remarkably turbulent life, both professionally and personally. In a new memoir, he has chosen to reveal just about everything. Why?…
The economist and social critic Glenn Loury has led a remarkably turbulent life, both professionally and personally. In a new memoir, he has chosen to reveal just about everything. Why?…
Over 40 percent of U.S. births are to unmarried mothers, and the numbers are especially high among the less-educated. Why? One argument is that the decline in good manufacturing jobs…
Obi Felten used to launch projects for X, Google’s innovation lab, but she’s now tackling mental health. She explains why Steve’s dream job was soul-destroying for her, and how peer…
Moon Duchin is a math professor at Cornell University whose theoretical work has practical applications for voting and democracy. Why is striving for fair elections so difficult?…
He’s been U.S. Treasury Secretary, a chief economist for the Obama White House and the World Bank, and president of Harvard. He’s one of the most brilliant economists of his…
…economists and biologists aren’t converging on this topic? Why don’t biologists appreciate technological progress as much as economists do, and why don’t economists appreciate Malthus on this? –jack sparrow A….
…legal. (This is part of the Freakonomics Radio American Culture series). “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting: 10 Years Later” (Ep. 479): In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes (No. 39!), we asked a…
…Moorhead, Minnesota which is right across the state line): Former Realtor ordered to pay fine for attempted theft By Amy Dalrymple The Forum – 06/10/2005 A former real estate agent…
That is the topic of an article Levitt and I wrote for Play, a new sports magazine being birthed this Sunday by The New York Times. The issue will probably…
It’s Freakonomics that I’m referring to. In what way is it so weird? Well, leaving aside any discussions of its content, consider this strange fact: in the past 10 years…
Our upcoming “Freakonomics” column in The New York Times Magazine is about how people hate the I.R.S. for the wrong reasons. The article should be available online here by late…
The April “Freakonomics” column in The New York Times Magazine will address –you guessed it– taxes. It’s about how people hate the I.R.S. for the wrong reasons and will run…
For the record, I like Wikipedia just fine, as long as people understand what it is and what it isn’t. What it is: a useful and engaging enterprise in user-generated…
Despite speculation about Rudy Giuliani’s reluctance to run for President, and skepticism that he’s a viable candidate, it looks as though he’s about ready to officially declare himself a candidate….
Ian Ayres is an economist and lawyer at Yale and the author of Super Crunchers, which we excerpted here. He has agreed to write occasional guest posts on our blog,…
