Who Gets Better With Age?
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal asserts that, while various life skills seem to deteriorate as people get older, our skill at making personal-finance decisions doesn’t peak until the…
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal asserts that, while various life skills seem to deteriorate as people get older, our skill at making personal-finance decisions doesn’t peak until the…
His research on police brutality and school incentives won him acclaim, but also enemies. He was suspended for two years by Harvard, during which time he took a hard look…
A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.’s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent.
…China’s government debt is considerably higher than has been acknowledged by the Finance Ministry, which puts just the central government’s debt at 17% of GDP without taking into account local…
In this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire, Steve Levitt talks to the best-selling author of Sapiens and Homo Deus about finding the profound in the obvious….
Human beings love to predict the future, but we’re quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?
It began as a post-war dream for a more collaborative and egalitarian workplace. It has evolved into a nightmare of noise and discomfort. Can the open office be saved, or…
Human beings love to predict the future, but we’re quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?
Kevin Kelly believes A.I. will create more problems for humanity — and help us solve them. He talks to Steve about embracing complexity, staying enthusiastic, and taking the 10,000-year view….
Labor exploitation! Corporate profiteering! Government corruption! The 21st century can look a lot like the 18th. In the final episode of a series, we turn to “the father of economics”…
People who sleep better earn more money. Now all we have to do is teach everyone to sleep better.
The political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang argues that different forms of government create different styles of corruption. The U.S. and China have more in common than we’d like to admit…
Would you be more adventurous if you had more structure? Do you multitask while brushing your teeth? And what would Mike’s perfect brother Peter do?…
What’s the difference between willpower and eagerness? Is there a lifehack that can make you zestier? And could it help Stephen improve his golf game?…
How many bottles of wine are regifted? What’s wrong with giving cash? And should Angela give her husband a subscription to the Sausage of the Month Club?
…Charles, a?University of Chicago economist who has studied discrimination. Well into the 1970s, blacks faced “a vast array of personal indignities that led to unhappiness,” he noted. Today, those indignities…
…a currency here, I sat down and figured out a quick personal exchange rate. I took my current salary (since I supposedly would have to work to pay the time…
Also: are the most memorable stories less likely to be true?
Are things really as bad as they seem? Has Gen Z given up hope for the world? And why was the father of positive psychology a lifelong pessimist?…
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…
…a trademark tarnishment claim is really just a species of defamation. Defamation law protects personal reputations. Likewise, trademarks are repositories of corporate reputation – or, in economics argot, of a…
Amaryllis Fox is a former C.I.A. operative and host of the Netflix show The Business of Drugs. She explains why intelligence work requires empathy, and she soothes Steve’s fears about…
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector…
How does comparing yourself to others affect your well-being? What do you do when there’s no one left to blame? And should we all just move to Finland?…
How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigration? We start at the beginning, sort through the evidence, and explain why your grandfather was lying about Ellis Island. (Part…
Dubner and Levitt talk about circadian rhythms, gay marriage, autism, and whether “pay what you want” is everything it’s cracked up to be.
There are 7,000 languages spoken on Earth. What are the costs — and benefits — of our modern-day Tower of Babel? (Part 3 of the “Earth 2.0” series.)…
Sixty percent of the jobs that Americans do today didn’t exist in 1940. What happens as our labor becomes more technical and less physical? And what kinds of jobs will…
You know the saying: A winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
