Neil Shubin hunts for fossils in the Arctic and experiments with D.N.A. in the lab, hoping to find out how fish evolved to walk on land. He explains why unlocking…
What do the most creative people have in common? How open-minded are you, really? And what’s wrong with ordering eggs Benedict? Take the Big Five inventory: freakonomics.com/bigfive…
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?…
The sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent years studying crack dealers, sex workers, and the offspring of billionaires. Then he wandered into an even stranger world: social media. He spent the past…
Palliative physician B.J. Miller asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?…
Sure, we all want to make good personal decisions, but it doesn’t always work out. That’s where “temptation bundling” comes in.
Imagine that both substances were undiscovered until today. How would we think about their relative risks?
Are modern parents too protective? Why do we worry so much about things that almost never happen? And how did Mike learn about bus stops?…
What’s the difference between narcissism and high self-esteem? Does social media fuel arrogance or self-consciousness? And do people get less toxic with age?
For decades, the U.S. let globalization run its course and hoped China would be an ally. Now the Biden administration is spending billions to bring high-tech manufacturing back home. Is…
How have Angie’s views on sleep changed since she wrote her Harvard application essay? Would starting high school later in the day be worth $8.6 billion? And what should you…
Research shows that having a distinctively black name doesn’t affect your economic future. But what is the day-to-day reality of living with such a name? Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck, a newly-minted…
Advertisers have always been adept at manipulating our emotions. Now they’re using behavioral economics to get even better.
Is it more important to help society or to help yourself? Does the self-improvement movement do any good for the world? And which podcast episode does Stephen cling to as…
Chemist Jack Szostak wants to understand how the first life forms came into being on Earth. He and Steve discuss the danger of “mirror bacteria,” the origin of biology in…
You’ve heard that the weather can make your joints hurt. Maybe you’ve even felt it yourself. But, is it true? Bapu Jena looks at why we think we know certain…
Can long-term relationships do more harm than good? Where is the line between intimacy and codependence? And should we all try to be more like Mike’s parents?…
…Everything becomes an attempt to protect territory. Evidence and logic becomes secondary, used when advantageous and discarded when expedient. What should be a rational debate becomes a personal and venal…
Pro footballer and star podcaster Jason Kelce is ubiquitous right now (almost as ubiquitous as his brother and co-host Travis, who’s been in the limelight for his relationship with Taylor…
…quality and personal well-being. In addition to showing that marital quality uniformly predicts better personal well-being (unsurprisingly, happier marriages make happier people), the analysis revealed that this effect has become…
…on the following page, a form asks for a complete array of personal information including – oops! – “Father Maiden Name.” (Warning: unless you really want to hand over your…
…investigate what personal characteristics affect people’s desire to work together. Second, given the influence of these personal characteristics, we analyze whether this attraction enhances or detracts from performance. Addressing these…
At the start of the 20th century, there weren’t many hospitals in the U.S. That changed in 1918, thanks to the Great Influenza pandemic. Its effects on health care are…
What happens when a public health researcher deep in coal country argues that mountaintop mining endangers the entire community? Hint: it doesn’t go very well.
John Ray is an emergency C.E.O., a bankruptcy expert who takes over companies that have succumbed to failure or fraud. He’s currently cleaning up the mess left by alleged crypto…
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
In the U.K., it’s been discovered that five percent of medical-school applicants cheat on their application forms by plagiarizing material in their personal essays. It is hardly news, of course,…
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz combs through mountains of information to find advice for everyday life….
…all federal revenue comes from the personal income tax. That means that about 55 percent — over half of all revenue — comes from other sources, like excise taxes, fees,…
