In a special episode of The Economics of Everyday Things, host Zachary Crockett explains what millennials do to show they care, how corrugated cardboard keeps your food warm, and why…
…federal operating funds, David Gunn, five weeks fresh as Amtrak’s new president, flatly told a Senate committee what everybody already knew: “Amtrak will never be profitable.” The passenger rail service,…
When she’s not rescuing chickens from coyotes, Susan Athey uses economics to address real-world challenges — from online ad auctions to carbon capture technology….
Also: Do you spend more time thinking about the past, the present, or the future?
Anne-Marie Slaughter was best known for her adamant views on Syria when she accidentally became a poster girl for modern feminism. As it turns out, she can be pretty adamant…
…it out to new genres, all while maintaining the soft-core tone, an option? How do you keep sexuality “up to date” with modern trends, and how does the new, less…
…etc. So, around 2,000 new (by which I mean new categories entirely, plus existing records that are updated/bettered) are added to the database every year. Historically, we haven’t tracked the…
They’re heading to the Super Bowl for the second time in five years. But back in 2018, they were coming off a long losing streak — and that’s the year…
We revisit an episode from 2016 that asks: Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of?…
Sure, we all want to make good personal decisions, but it doesn’t always work out. That’s where “temptation bundling” comes in.
When Freakonomics co-authors Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner first met, one of them hated the other. Two decades later, Levitt grills Dubner about asking questions, growing the pie, and what…
…came out of their offices and talked. I enjoyed that day. Martin Baily, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adviser to the McKinsey Global Institute: Powerful new…
Covid-19 has shocked our food-supply system like nothing in modern history. We examine the winners, the losers, the unintended consequences — and just how much toilet paper one household really…
The U.S. president is often called the “leader of the free world.” But if you ask an economist or a Constitutional scholar how much the occupant of the Oval Office…
Photo: Medill DC The Fed’s second round of monetary stimulus, the $600 billion QE2, ended on June 30. Since then, financial markets have rallied on news of another Greek bailout,…
In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt speaks with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is…
We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as…
Richard Prum says there’s a lot that traditional evolutionary biology can’t explain. He thinks a neglected hypothesis from Charles Darwin — and insights from contemporary queer theory — hold the…
Should government jobs have mandatory retirement ages? Is it foolish to care about your legacy? And why did Jason always call Angela’s father “Dr. Lee”?…
Macy’s wants to recapture its glorious past. The author of the Wimpy Kid books wants to rebuild his dilapidated hometown. We just want to listen in. (Part two of a…
A hit like Hamilton can come from nowhere while a sure bet can lose $20 million in a flash. We speak with some of the biggest producers in the game…
Family environments and “diversifying experiences” (including the early death of a parent); intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations; schools that value assessments, but don’t assess the things we value. All these elements…
There are a lot of reasons, including heavy regulations, high taxes, and competition from illegal weed shops. Most operators are losing money and waiting for Washington to get out of…
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a bodybuilder, an actor, a governor, and, now, an author. He tells Steve how he’s managed to succeed in so many fields — and what to…
Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them.
…45 percent, with an exemption for the first $2 million. In 2009, however, the exemption jumped to $3.5 million – which meant that the heirs of a rich, dying parent…
…Shakespearean actors culminates with the Astor Place Riots in New York City on May 10th, 1849. Summer 1932: Movie theater audiences boo newsreels of troops dispatched by Gen. Douglas MacArthur…
Mark Zuckerberg’s dentist dad was an early adopter of digital x-rays. Jack Welch blew the roof off a factory. Carol Bartz was a Wisconsin farm girl who got into computers….
We now have more access to TV, movies, and streaming entertainment than anytime in history. So what do we actually know about what all that screen time does to us?…
Are we too busy watching Friends? Is porn driving us apart? And why did New Yorkers stop vacationing in the Catskills? Take the Seven Deadly Sins survey: freakonomics.com/nsq-sins/…
