Swallowing the Whistle: A Guest Post by Tobias Moskowitz
…outside the strike zone. To give an extreme example, the strike zone on 3–0 counts is 188 square inches larger than it is on 0–2 counts in MLB. That’s an…
Even a brutal natural disaster doesn’t diminish our appetite for procreating. This surely means we’re heading toward massive overpopulation, right? Probably not.
Lina Khan, the youngest F.T.C. chair in history, reset U.S. antitrust policy by thwarting mega-mergers and other monopolistic behavior. This earned her enemies in some places, and big fans in…
Michael Roth of Wesleyan University doesn’t hang out with other university presidents. He also thinks some of them have failed a basic test of good sense and decency. It’s time…
She used to run a behavioral unit in the Obama administration, and now has a similar role at Google. Maya and Steve talk about the power (and limits) of behavioral…
Our co-host is Grit author Angela Duckworth, and we learn fascinating, Freakonomical facts from a parade of guests. For instance: what we all get wrong about Darwin; what an iPod…
…outside the strike zone. To give an extreme example, the strike zone on 3–0 counts is 188 square inches larger than it is on 0–2 counts in MLB. That’s an…
As beloved and familiar as they are, we rarely stop to consider life from the dog’s point of view. That stops now. In this latest installment of the Freakonomics Radio…
…vegetables, grains, little meat, and very little packaged food. That said, their produce doesn’t travel anywhere near as far as ours does to get to our table, so their produce…
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former longtime C.E.O. of General Electric, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
Harvard economist Raj Chetty uses tax data to study inequality, kid success, and social mobility. He explains why you should be careful when choosing your grade school teachers — and…
Also: Is short-sightedness part of human nature?…
Indra Nooyi became C.E.O. of PepsiCo just in time for a global financial meltdown. She also had a portfolio full of junk food just as the world decided that junk…
The creator of The Wire, The Deuce, and other shows is leading the Writers Guild on the picket lines. He and Steve break down the economics of TV writing, how…
A conversation with 2008 Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”…
Game theorist Barry Nalebuff explains how he used basic economics to build Honest Tea into a multimillion-dollar business, and shares his innovative approach to negotiation.
He was handed the keys to the global economy just as it started heading off a cliff. Fortunately, he’d seen this movie before.
After every mass shooting or terrorist attack, victims and survivors receive a huge outpouring of support — including a massive pool of compensation money. How should that money be allocated?…
Human beings love to predict the future, but we’re quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?
Human beings love to predict the future, but we’re quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?
…U.S. agricultural policy is to increase per capita calorie consumption by 1,952-4,771 calories per year, leading to a 0.56-1.36 pound annual increase in body weight. Without the policies, the typical…
(Photo: Håkan Dahlström) “Our findings suggest that increases in the real price of one calorie in food for home consumption and the real price of fast-food restaurant food lead to…
…Psychological Association shows that synthetic fat substitutes used in low-calorie potato chips can backfire and contribute to weight gain more so than their fatty counterparts. How do we know? Researchers…
Also: should we all have personal mission statements?
Starbucks, which may hope its new calorie listings will create demand amongst the calorie conscious, should love graphs like this one from HitWise: As you might expect, the chart shows…
…maximal conflict” puts far-right conservatives at one end and far-left liberals at the other. It does not put libertarians like Ron Paul at one end and anti-libertarians at the other….
From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around.
Who decided that we’re fully mature at 18? Should 16-year-olds have the right to vote? And why are young people bringing their parents to job interviews?…
We often look to other countries for smart policies on education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc. But can a smart policy be simply transplanted into a country as culturally unusual (and as…
In 2005, Raghuram Rajan said the financial system was at risk “of a catastrophic meltdown.” After stints at the I.M.F. and India’s central bank, he sees another potential crisis —…
Also: Where is the line between acronyms, initialisms and gibberish?
