If You Like Hoaxes …
…stay late to look over the closing page proofs to make sure there were no errors that the story editors, copy editors, or production editors had missed. The most important…
…stay late to look over the closing page proofs to make sure there were no errors that the story editors, copy editors, or production editors had missed. The most important…
There’s a pretty fascinating Editors’ Note in today’s New York Times concerning Hugo Chavez and Noam Chomsky. (An Editors’ Note is the most serious of three types of corrections the…
…succinct (that’s the editors) and funnier (that’s the editors too). Ask anyone on the crew. When I’m trying to do a piece to the camera, I imagine that the camera…
Once considered noble and heroic, pigeons are now viewed as an urban nuisance — one that costs cities millions of dollars a year. Zachary Crockett tosses some crumbs….
…up for a round-trip flight from New York to France? What airline would I most likely fly on? How about from New York to Disney World? A At $8, a…
We speak with a governor, a former C.D.C. director, a pandemic forecaster, a hard-charging pharmacist, and a pair of economists — who say it’s all about the incentives. (Pandemillions, anyone?)
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer and David Paterson….
…co-director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) and a research associate professor at the University of Missouri, investigates the events of 2007 and 2008 in his new…
It has become fiendishly expensive to produce, and has more competition than ever. And yet the believers still believe. Why? And does the world really want a new musical about…
We all like to throw around terms that describe human behavior — “bystander apathy” and “steep learning curve” and “hard-wired.” Most of the time, they don’t actually mean what we…
Corporations and rich people donate billions to their favorite think tanks and foundations. Should we be grateful for their generosity — or suspicious of their motives?
Birthdays! Why do Americans prefer Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July to theirs? Why do they make Stephen think of molasses and chicken feed? And is “Happy Birthday” the worst…
Most Americans agree that racial discrimination has been, and remains, a big problem. But that is where the agreement ends.
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™?
Also: does multitasking actually increase productivity?…
A new proposal from the Biden administration calls for a nationwide cap on rent increases. Economists think that’s a terrible idea. We revisit a 2019 episode to hear why….
…a new podcast, Venkatesh interviews the progressive political operative Tara McGowan about her digital successes with the Obama campaign, her noisy failure with the Iowa caucus app, and why the…
What’s a college degree really worth these days?
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells caricature my recent book Fault Lines in an article in The New York Review of Books. The article, and their criticism, however, do have a…
(Photo: Reading Tom) A few days ago, the New York Yankees signed Masahiro Tanaka to a $155 million contract. As Bryan Hoch of MLB.com notes, this is the fifth-highest salary…
Covid-19 is the biggest job killer in a century. As the lockdown eases, what does re-employment look like? Who will be first and who last? Which sectors will surge and…
…think that’s a terrible idea. They say it helps a small (albeit noisy) group of renters, but keeps overall rents artificially high by disincentivizing new construction. So what happens next?…
Is it better to be the best player on the worst team or the worst player on the best team? How did Angela cope with her extremely impressive freshman dorm-mates?…
Our co-host is Grit author Angela Duckworth, and we learn fascinating, Freakonomical facts from a parade of guests. For instance: what we all get wrong about Darwin; what an iPod…
A lot of full-time jobs in the modern economy simply don’t pay a living wage. And even those jobs may be obliterated by new technologies. What’s to be done so…
We all like to throw around terms that describe human behavior — “bystander apathy” and “steep learning curve” and “hard-wired.” Most of the time, they don’t actually mean what we…
We all like to throw around terms that describe human behavior — “bystander apathy” and “steep learning curve” and “hard-wired.” Most of the time, they don’t actually mean what we…
Thanks to decades of work by airlines and regulators, plane crashes are nearly a thing of the past. Can we do the same for cars? (Part 2 of “Freakonomics Radio…
The legendary venture capitalist believes the same intuition that led him to bet early on Google can help us reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But Steve wonders why his…
