…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…
A single company, EssilorLuxottica, owns so much of the eyewear industry that it’s hard to escape their gravitational pull — or their “obscene” markups. Should regulators do something? Can Warby…
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…
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…
Macy’s wants to recapture its glorious past. The author of the Wimpy Kid books wants to rebuild his dilapidated hometown. We just want to listen in. (Part two of a…
Is booing an act of verbal vandalism or the last true expression of democracy? And: when you drive a Prius, are you guilty of “conspicuous conservation”? This is a “mashupdate”…
A year ago, nobody was taking Andrew Yang very seriously. Now he is America’s favorite entrepre-nerd, with a candidacy that keeps gaining momentum. This episode includes our Jan. 2019 conversation…
…platforms for like-minded people, a publicly owned social network, self-policing by user groups, or activist campaigns to pressure Twitter and Facebook to improve, Sudhir explores what’s next for social media…
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…
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.”…
If two parents can run a family, why shouldn’t two executives run a company? We dig into the research and hear firsthand stories of both triumph and disaster. Also: lessons…
Also: how can we stop confusing correlation with causation?
She’s a botanist, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and the author of the bestselling Braiding Sweetgrass. In her new book she criticizes the market economy — but she…
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…
Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of?
…barely half of all Americans have a lot of confidence in the police. So what if we start to think about policing as … philanthropy? (This is part of the…
Like tens of millions of people, Stephen Dubner thought he had a penicillin allergy. Like the vast majority, he didn’t. This misdiagnosis costs billions of dollars and causes serious health…
Richard Prum says there’s a lot that traditional evolutionary biology can’t explain. He thinks a neglected hypothesis from Charles Darwin — and insights from contemporary queer theory — hold the…
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…
…potentially life-saving healthcare device? Americans aren’t used to rationing in medicine, but it’s time to think about it. We consult a lung specialist, a bioethicist, and (of course) an economist….
