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Episode 26

Do Checklists Make People Stupid?

Also: What’s so great about New York City anyway?

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Episode 331

Why the Trump Tax Cuts Are Awesome/Terrible (Part 1)

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…

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Episode 34

Maya Shankar Is Changing People’s Behavior — and Her Own

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…

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EXTRA

Madeleine Albright’s Warning on Immigration

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…

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EXTRA

“This Didn’t End the Way It’s Supposed to End.”

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…

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Episode 42

The Upside of Quitting

You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…

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Episode 59

Do Dreams Actually Mean Anything?

Also: why is music so memorable?…

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Episode 42

The Upside of Quitting (Replay)

You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?…

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Episode 11

Are Ambitious People Inherently Selfish?

Also: why do we habituate to life’s greatest pleasures?

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Episode 127

Can You Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? And Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions

Dubner and Levitt talk about circadian rhythms, gay marriage, autism, and whether “pay what you want” is everything it’s cracked up to be.

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Episode 114

Is Perfectionism Ruining Your Life?

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…

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Episode 170

Why America Doesn’t Love Soccer (Yet)

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?

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EXTRA

Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu on Economics, Politics, and Power (REPLAY)

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….

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Episode 327

Extra: Carol Bartz Full Interview

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.”…

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Episode 263

In Praise of Maintenance (Update)

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?…

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Episode 40

Harold Pollack on Why Managing Your Money Is as Easy as Taking Out the Garbage

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…

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Episode 183

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson….

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Episode 347

Why You Shouldn’t Open a Restaurant (Update)

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…

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Episode 19

Marina Nitze: “If You Googled ‘Business Efficiency Consultant,’ I Was the Only Result.”

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…


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Episode 220

“I Don’t Know What You’ve Done With My Husband But He’s a Changed Man”

From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around.

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Episode 524

How Important Is Breastfeeding, Really?

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….



The Academic Origins of China's One Child Policy

…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…



Does Child Abuse Rise During a Recession?

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…



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Episode 268

Bad Medicine, Part 1: The Story of 98.6

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…

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Episode 469

The U.S. Is Just Different — So Let’s Stop Pretending We’re Not (Replay)

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…

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Episode 70

Eating and Tweeting

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…

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Episode 340

People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard.

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…