The Return of the Freelance Economist
…to other interesting things for economists to do with their free time: Pro Bono Economics and Kaggle (both of which I need to check out more). Thanks Again, Freelance Economist…
He argues that personal finance is so simple all you need to know can fit on an index card. How will he deal with Steve’s suggestion that Harold’s nine rules…
…to other interesting things for economists to do with their free time: Pro Bono Economics and Kaggle (both of which I need to check out more). Thanks Again, Freelance Economist…
My good friend Andrew Leigh is the winner of the Young Economist Award, granted every two years to the best Australian-based economist under the age of forty. It’s really a…
Andrew Zimbalist Andrew Zimbalist is the Robert A. Woods professor of economics at Smith College and one of the most prominent sports economists in the land. (Yes, this is a…
Also: is it better to be right or “not wrong”?…
The science of what works — and doesn’t work — in fundraising
The science of what works — and doesn’t work — in fundraising.
Are fantasies helpful or harmful? How is daydreaming like a drug? And what did Angela fantasize about during ninth-grade English class?…
Jane McGonigal designed a game to help herself recover from a traumatic brain injury — and she thinks playing games can help us all lead our best lives….
He’s been an engineer, a surgeon, a management consultant, and even a boxer. Now he’s a physician focused on the science of longevity. Peter Attia talks with Steve Levitt about…
Khan Academy founder Sal Khan returns to share his vision for a new way to learn — and the conversation inspires Steve to make a big announcement.
Why do so many promising solutions — in education, medicine, criminal justice, etc. — fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation scientists” crack…
The thrill of customization, via Pandora, and a radical new teaching method.
Even American parents have a strong “son preference” — which means that a newborn daughter can be bad news for a marriage.
…are in, I simply ignore these numbers. There are many reasons why. To touch on one: they are really easy to manipulate. Just Google “Feed the Children” and see the…
…we have doubled them since 1960. That means we can feed more people (9.3 billion versus 6.7 billion) in 2050 from a much smaller acreage than we do today. That…
In this episode of No Stupid Questions — a Freakonomics Radio Network show launched earlier this year — Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth debate why we watch, read and eat…
Steve Levitt is obsessed with golf — and he’s pretty good at it too. As a thinly-veiled ploy to improve his own game, Steve talks to two titans of the…
Naturalist Sy Montgomery explains how she learned to be social from a pig, discovered octopuses have souls, and came to love a killer that will never love her back.
Steve loved Michael Lewis’s latest, The Premonition, but has one critique: Why aren’t there even more villains? Also, why the author of best-sellers Moneyball and The Big Short can barely…
Justin Trudeau, facing record-low approval numbers, is doubling down on his progressive agenda. But he is so upbeat (and Canada-polite) that it’s easy to miss just how radical his vision…
Conrad Wolfram wants to transform the way we teach math — by taking advantage of computers. The creator of Computer-Based Maths convinced the Estonian government to give his radical curriculum…
…deer) can be transformed from highway pulp into soil amendment. The leading authority on the subject, the Cornell Waste Management Institute, has published and distributed detailed guides intended to guide…
He graduated high school at 14, and by 23 had several graduate degrees and was a research assistant with Stephen Hawking. He became the first chief technology officer at Microsoft…
After Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Rajiv Shah headed the largest humanitarian effort in U.S. history. As chief economist of the Gates Foundation he tried to immunize almost a billion children. He…
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….
Tony Hsieh, the longtime C.E.O. of Zappos, was an iconoclast and a dreamer. Five years ago, we sat down with him around a desert campfire to talk about those dreams….
Zappos C.E.O. Tony Hsieh has a wild vision and the dollars to try to make it real. But it still might be the biggest gamble in town.
