How Can We Measure Innovation? A Freakonomics Quorum
…even more to the point, who is to say what is new, and what is merely old wine in a new bottle, or the same car with a new tail-fin?…
…even more to the point, who is to say what is new, and what is merely old wine in a new bottle, or the same car with a new tail-fin?…
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….
Artificial intelligence, we’ve been told, will destroy humankind. No, wait — it will usher in a new age of human flourishing! Guest host Adam Davidson (co-founder of Planet Money) sorts…
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…
Sure, we all want to make good personal decisions, but it doesn’t always work out. That’s where “temptation bundling” comes in.
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?…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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”?…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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?…
…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…
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/…
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…
Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them.
To most people, the rat is vile and villainous. But not to everyone! We hear from a scientist who befriended rats and another who worked with them in the lab…
