Step 1: Hire a Harvard psych professor as the pitchman. Step 2: Have him help write the script …
Chicago has given the world more than sausage, crooked politics and Da Bears.
The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures catalogs the fiscal, sexual, and mental lapses of federal workers — all with an eye toward preventing the next big mistake….
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?…
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”…
Steve is on a mission to reform math education, and Sarah Hart is ready to join the cause. In her return visit to the show, Sarah explains how patterns are…
Are betting markets more accurate than polls? What kind of chaos would a second Trump term bring? And is U.S. democracy really in danger, or just “sputtering on”? (Part two…
Flying in the U.S. is still exceptionally safe, but the system relies on outdated tech and is under tremendous strain. Six experts tell us how it got this way and…
…NAR hasn’t revealed exactly how big the revision to home sales will be, the agency’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said the decrease will be “meaningful.” … Yun said the database…
…4 of Freakonomics, pp. 130-133; a quorum on how to reduce gun deaths; and a Q&A with the photographer-author of Armed America. And we are starting to produce a podcast…
…The best answer that is left in the comments — as voted by a secret quorum of Freaks — will win you a signed copy of Think Like a Freak…
Frisco used to be just another sleepy bedroom community outside of Dallas. Now it’s got corporate headquarters, billions of investment dollars, and a bunch of Democrats in a place that…
…manner, according to these Times guidelines, and that all comments will be moderated. Transgression of these guidelines is punishable by death, or by having your comment discarded, whichever comes first….
(Stockbyte) It’s funny — when we ran a quorum recently asking what should be done about insider trading, no one mentioned cracking down on Congress. Maybe they should have? A…
It’s shaping up to be a most interesting year on the tax front. A recent Freakonomics quorum focused on potential tax-policy mistakes that might be made this year, with so…
Planet Money interviews Nassim Taleb, who recently participated in a Freakonomics quorum on financial reform, for its Deep Read series. Taleb compares the developed world’s dependence on debt to drug…
…be good for society. He predicts what would happen if gas prices rise drastically, and explains why he thinks that could actually be good for society. (Related: see this quorum…
…own risks (as ill-perceived as they may be). So which is the least bad solution? Seed magazine asked a panel of experts and came up with this interesting quorum. [%comments]…
…states like California. We held a Freakonomics quorum late last year to debate the pros and cons of legalizing the drug, and many of you weighed in. With Frank’s legalization…
…best entry, as decided by a quorum of ourselves and a batch of capuchin monkeys we keep at the ready, receives her/his choice of Freakonomics schwag. Note: The winner of…
A couple of years ago, we wrote a column about crack cocaine, which ended with a discussion of the federal sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine: This disparity has…
…in a quorum we published here, such contaminations would probably cease. On the other hand — based on the Leipzig doctors’ observations of the lead-poisoning patients — body piercing would…
In Freakonomics, we wrote about Paul Feldman, an economist turned bagel delivery man who began charging his customers based on the honor system. From the experiment, he found that, all…
Of all the changes we’ve made to this blog in recent months, my favorites are the reader-generated Q&A’s (here’s a recent example) and our Freakonomics Quorums (the most recent of…
September 5 is the day in 1997 when Mother Teresa died at age 87. No word on what she’d have thought of our quorum on street charity….
How American food so got bad — and why it’s getting so much better.
A look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists.
A look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists.
Nearly everything that politicians say about taxes is at least half a lie. They are also dishonest when it comes to the national debt. Stephen Dubner finds one of the…
