The Folly of Eminent Domain Takings of Failing Mortgage Loans
…great new set of insights to share on the U.S. mortgage mess. He’s also the co-author of the forthcoming book Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership…
Steve usually asks his guests for advice, whether they’re magicians or Nobel laureates. After nearly 60 episodes, is any of it worth following — or should we just ask listeners…
In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important.
Now and again, Freakonomics Radio puts hat in hand and asks listeners to donate to the public-radio station that produces the show. Why on earth should anyone pay good money…
How is “negative reinforcement” different from punishment? Could positive reinforcement encourage prosocial behavior on a national scale? And what’s the deal with Taiwan’s dog-poop lottery?…
…great new set of insights to share on the U.S. mortgage mess. He’s also the co-author of the forthcoming book Well Worth Saving: How the New Deal Safeguarded Home Ownership…
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…
…to date: 1. Forrest Nelson, George Neumann, and Phil Polgreen will be presenting results from the Iowa Influenza Prediction Market. This is one of the most important public policy prediction…
…prediction into their own assessments. At the moment, individual decision-makers tend to improve their prediction when given statistical aids; but they still tend to wave off the statistical prediction too…
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…
The gist: the Nobel selection process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off, at least a little bit.
The process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off at least a little bit.
…for bad predictions. Also, they tend to be deeply unscientific. The psychologist Philip Tetlock is finally turning prediction into a science — and now even you could become a superforecaster….
…praise, often hugging or even kissing me in gratitude for that paper. Inspired by these European dinner conversations, Thaler wrote his New York Times Economic Scene column this week about…
Do more expensive wines taste better? And: what does one little rodent in a salad say about a restaurant’s future? This is a “mashupdate” of “Do More Expensive Wines Taste…
Starting in the late 1960s, the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman began to redefine how the human mind actually works. Michael Lewis’s new book The Undoing Project explains…
…still work after Covid? In this installment of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, guest host Kurt Andersen interviews Thomas Dyja, author of New York, New York, New York: Four Decades…
One Yale economist certainly thinks so. But even if he’s right, are economists any better?…
After eight years and more than 300 episodes, it was time to either 1) quit, or 2) make the show bigger and better. We voted for number 2. Here’s a…
Must one always strive for excellence? Is perfectionism a good thing? And can Mike have two bad days in a row?
The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back…
(Stockbyte) Last spring, we posted on Phil Tetlock’s massive prediction tournament: Good Judgment. You might remember Tetlock from our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Folly of Prediction.” (You can download/subscribe…
Data scientist Nate Silver gained attention for his election predictions. But even the best prognosticators get it wrong sometimes. He talks to Steve about making good decisions with data, why…
…to make it easier for researchers to create them. While the statement argues the merits of prediction markets extremely cogently, and while I’m completely in favor of prediction markets and…
In a short piece in the latest Science journal, about the Promise of Prediction Markets, we provide a short review of the literature on prediction markets — how and why…
The winner of the New York Marathon last Sunday was Paul Tergat of Kenya. He ran a time of 2:09:30. The second place finisher, Hendrik Ramaala of South Africa finished…
Do highway warnings save lives or cost lives? How do you keep men from peeing on the floor? And what’s Angela’s plan to get more people washing their hands?…
…and patience? Why do people do crossword puzzles? And how is Angie like a combination of a quantum computer and a Sherman tank? Take the Seven Deadly Sins survey: freakonomics.com/nsq-sins/…
…faces all around for the political prognosticators: Judging by the pre-vote polls and prediction markets, the Democratic primary in New Hampshire created one of the most surprising upsets in U.S….
Palliative physician B.J. Miller asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?…
