They’re heading to the Super Bowl for the second time in five years. But back in 2018, they were coming off a long losing streak — and that’s the year…
Whether you’re mapping the universe, hosting a late-night talk show, or running a meeting, there are a lot of ways to up your idea game. Plus: the truth about brainstorming….
Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with cancer at 22. She made her illness the subject of a New York Times column and a memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. She and Steve talk…
How can you be lonely when so many people showed up at your birthday party? Can you fight loneliness by managing expectations? And where can you find company while enjoying…
Is it more important to help society or to help yourself? Does the self-improvement movement do any good for the world? And which podcast episode does Stephen cling to as…
In this episode of No Stupid Questions — a Freakonomics Radio Network show launched earlier this year — Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth debate why we watch, read and eat…
Also: Why is it smart to ignore what your podcast hosts look like?…
Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like Stereophonic — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars…
The controversial Harvard economist, recently back from a suspension, “broke a lot of glass early in my career,” he says. His research on school incentives and police brutality won him…
What is the relationship between “catastrophizing” and anxiety? How did Angela react when her mother came close to drowning? And how can you gain perspective when the worst-case scenario is…
Also: Do we overestimate or underestimate our significance in other people’s lives?…
In one of the earliest Freakonomics Radio episodes (No. 39!), we asked a bunch of economists with young kids how they approached child-rearing. Now the kids are old enough to…
Is it O.K. to bother people for a good cause? Why do people donate to charity in the first place? And do those personalized address labels actually make people get…
In our collective zeal to reform schools and close the achievement gap, we may have lost sight of where most learning really happens — at home.
Every 12 years, there’s a spike in births among certain communities across the globe, including the U.S. Why? Because the Year of the Dragon, according to Chinese folk belief, confers…
The gist: in our collective zeal to reform schools and close the achievement gap, we may have lost sight of where most learning really happens — at home.
Tony Hsieh, the longtime C.E.O. of Zappos, was an iconoclast and a dreamer. Five years ago, we sat down with him around a desert campfire to talk about those dreams….
And with her book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, she succeeded. Now she’s not so sure how to feel about all the attention….
What is the purpose of negative emotions? Why do we engage with things we know will upset us? And how does Angie deal with rejection?
An expert on urban economics and co-author of the new book Survival of the City, Ed says cities have faced far worse than Covid. Steve talks with the Harvard professor…
Also: Where is the line between acronyms, initialisms and gibberish?
Will Angela finally break up with Philadelphia? Is New York really the unhappiest city in the U.S.? And are there trash tornadoes in the metaverse?…
She’s the C.E.O. of Zoox, an autonomous vehicle company. Steve asks Aicha about the big promises the A.V. industry hasn’t yet delivered — and the radical bet Zoox is making…
…with the palliative physician B.J. Miller about modern medicine’s goal of “protecting a pulse at all costs.” Is there a better, even beautiful way to think about death and dying?…
Also: is it better to be right or “not wrong”?…
Also: how do phone cameras affect the way we experience live events?…
What’s the difference between being introverted and being shy? What are extroverts so cheerful about? And does Angela’s social battery ever run out? Take the Big Five inventory: freakonomics.com/bigfive…
