What's Derek Jeter Worth? A Freakonomics Quorum
Barton Silverman/The New York Times While the New York Yankees’ 2010 season came to a disappointing close, it would still appear inevitable that the team will want to re-sign Derek…
Steve Levitt has so far occupied the interviewer chair on his new show, but in a special live event — recorded over Zoom and presented by WNYC and the Greene…
Family environments and “diversifying experiences” (including the early death of a parent); intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations; schools that value assessments, but don’t assess the things we value. All these elements…
Author and YouTuber John Green thought his breakout bestseller wouldn’t be a commercial success, wrote 40,000 words for one sentence, and brought Steve to tears.
Sure, markets work well in general. But for some transactions — like school admissions and organ transplants — money alone can’t solve the problem. That’s when you need a market-design…
The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg wrote his new book in an attempt to learn how to communicate better. Steve shares how the book helped him understand his own…
Barton Silverman/The New York Times While the New York Yankees’ 2010 season came to a disappointing close, it would still appear inevitable that the team will want to re-sign Derek…
Why do we mirror other people’s accents? Does DJ Khaled get tired of winning? And also: life is good — so why aren’t you happy?…
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…
The author of Sapiens has a knack for finding the profound in the obvious. He tells Steve why money is fiction, traffic can be mind-blowing, and politicians have a right…
…event. This is to me one of the simplest but most powerful ways to take the pulse of a newspaper’s culture. If, for instance, two newspapers publish articles based on…
…conversation about the importance of play, the benefits of change, and why we remember so little about the books we’ve read — and how Sendhil’s new app solves this problem….
How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt’s divorce….
Also: Where is the line between acronyms, initialisms and gibberish?
Ecologist Suzanne Simard studies the relationships between trees in a forest: they talk to each other, punish each other, and depend on each other. What can we learn from them?
From recording some of the first rap hits to revitalizing Johnny Cash’s career, the legendary producer has had an extraordinary creative life. In this episode he talks about his new…
Stephen Dubner’s conversations with members of the San Francisco 49ers offense, recorded for Freakonomics Radio episode No. 350, part of the “Hidden Side of Sports” series….
Photo: Ed Yourdon Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Folly of Prediction,” is built around the premise that humans love to predict the future, but are generally terrible at it….
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply.
Author and YouTuber John Green thought his breakout bestseller wouldn’t be a commercial success, wrote 40,000 words for one sentence, and brought Steve to tears….
…national, and local news. The other major weakness is that ratings drive television. Sadly, the data show that stations are so consumed with ratings that accuracy in weather predictions takes…
…of you on our Freakonomics Prediction Center: On a scale of 1 to 10, with the recession of 2001 being a 4 and the Great Depression an 8, what will…
…know much about his talent, since I’ve rarely seen him on TV. My prediction is based on the fact that he is, by my reckoning, approximately 17 feet tall. He…
In which we argue that failure should not only be tolerated but celebrated.
In which we argue that failure should not only be tolerated but celebrated.
…DialIdol’s Cook prediction came in: The prediction markets have access to the public information and should tend to do at least as well as DialIdol. But there may still be…
…country’s soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don’t come true. Fines or prison if a prediction fails to…
…interim half-measure may tell us something interesting. Curious if you have any thoughts. The market is running here. What do you think, Freakonomics readers? Which market will yield better predictions?…
It isn’t just supply and demand. We look at the complicated history and skewed incentives that make “affordable housing” more punch line than reality in cities from New York and…
…business? Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have come down strongly on the side of therapy in their book Nudge. Thaler, one of the founders of behavioral economics, has spent much…
…plates, she asked again if we wanted complimentary dessert. No, we said, just coffee. As Trilby and I talked, I mentioned that I had not long ago interviewed Richard Thaler,…
