We Are Not the Only Ones Who Think Child Car Seats Don’t Work Well
There is a very disturbing report in the new Consumer Reports about child car seats. Here’s an excerpt: You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car…
Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains the thinking behind the controversial new Republican tax package — and why its critics are wrong. (Next week, we’ll hear…
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…
She arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year-old refugee, then rose to become Secretary of State. Her views on immigration, nationalism, and borders, from this 2015 interview, are almost strangely…
The N.B.A. superstar Chris Bosh was still competing at the highest level when a blood clot abruptly ended his career. In his new book, Letters to a Young Athlete, Bosh…
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…
Also: why do we habituate to life’s greatest pleasures?
Dubner and Levitt talk about circadian rhythms, gay marriage, autism, and whether “pay what you want” is everything it’s cracked up to be.
Psychologist Thomas Curran argues that perfectionism isn’t about high standards — it’s about never being enough. He explains how the drive to be perfect is harming education, the economy, and…
Every four years, the U.S. takes a look at the World Cup and develops a slight crush. What would it take to really fall in love?
Daron Acemoglu was just awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics. Earlier this year, he and Steve talked about his groundbreaking research on what makes countries succeed or fail….
Stephen Dubner’s conversation with the former C.E.O. of Yahoo!, recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Secret Life of a C.E.O.”…
We revisit an episode from 2016 that asks: Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of?…
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…
The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson….
Kenji López-Alt became a rock star of the food world by bringing science into the kitchen in a way that everyday cooks can appreciate. Then he dared to start his…
At 27 — and without a college degree — she was named chief technology officer of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Today, Marina Nitze is trying to reform the foster…
There is a very disturbing report in the new Consumer Reports about child car seats. Here’s an excerpt: You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car…
From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around.
In this special episode of Freakonomics, M.D., host Bapu Jena looks at a clever new study that could help answer one of parenting’s most contentious questions….
…positive impact on indices of children’s cognitive and behavioral development; this despite the fact it had substantial impacts on the maternal care and non-licensed non-parental care children received in their…
…endnotes so that you can hear about how my crazy family lived—like the Isaac Bashevis Singer tale—with a house full of animals to prevent childhood allergies? Ok, maybe don’t answer…
…of the controversial One Child Policy in China. Here’s the story: in the early 1970s, Geert Jan Olsder co-authored the paper “Population Planning; a Distributed Time Optimal Control Problem.” He…
How do economic conditions affect the incidence of child abuse? While researchers have found that poverty and child abuse are linked, there’s been no evidence that downturns increase abuse. A…
We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we…
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…
Does the future of food lie in its past — or inside a tank of liquid nitrogen? Also: how anti-social can you be on a social network? This is a…
You wouldn’t think you could win a Nobel Prize for showing that humans tend to make irrational decisions. But that’s what Richard Thaler has done. The founder of behavioral economics…
