Think Like a Freak: Our New Book Out on May 13
…Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia? . . . Maybe it’s the parents’ fault! . . . The amazing true story of Takeru Kobayashi, hot-dog-eating champion…
…Why do American kids know less than kids from Estonia? . . . Maybe it’s the parents’ fault! . . . The amazing true story of Takeru Kobayashi, hot-dog-eating champion…
Tax deadlines can stress us out. But do they also influence our conscious — and subconscious — behavior? Bapu Jena looks at why, with our health, timing is often everything….
…of those seven syllables is given millions to make a movie.?? This YouTube clip spoofs what would happen if pitching came to the family dinner table: My teenage kids love…
Photo: tomeppy The answer to that question is almost certainly “no,” but a new study that is getting lots of media attention does claim that there is a correlation between…
American high school students today take significantly fewer health risks than did their counterparts in the early 1990s, although they do slightly worse in terms of obesity, asthma, exercise, and…
Victoria Groce is one of the best trivia contestants on earth. She explains the structure of a good question, why she knits during competitions, and how to memorize 160,000 flashcards….
Celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli joins us to co-host an evening of delicious fact-finding: where a trillion oysters went, whether a soda tax can work, and how beer helped build an…
A new NBER working paper (PDF; abstract) by economists Scott E. Carrell and Bruce Sacerdote finds that educational incentives, even those that are offered to students late in their senior…
A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by Eric V. Edmonds and Maheshwor Shrestha analyzes whether schooling incentives (in the form of conditional cash transfers) effectively reduce child labor, which is…
Here’s an interesting paper from the British Medical Journal which argues that children’s anti-social behavior can be significantly altered by training their parents to be better parents. (And here is…
Gary Becker and Richard Posner debate a timeless question: Will the next generation be better off than their parents’ generation? Becker’s take: “America has always been optimistic about its future….
What does social media do to our self-esteem? How is envy affecting our politics? And should you go to your high school reunion? Take the Seven Deadly Sins survey: freakonomics.com/nsq-sins/…
How can you summon courage when you’re terrified? Is hiking more dangerous than skiing? And what is the stupidest thing that Mike has ever done?…
It’s hard enough to save for a house, tuition or retirement. So why are we willing to pay big fees for subpar investment returns? Enter the low-cost index fund. The…
What happens to your reputation when you’re no longer around to defend it?
For our latest podcast, “The Economist’s Guide to Parenting” (you can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player, or read a transcript here), we…
What happens to your reputation when you’re no longer around to defend it?
(Photo: Smabs Sputzer A new paper in JAMA Pediatrics finds that a small number of children are showing up in Colorado emergency rooms having unintentionally ingested marijuana. It seems they…
The answer is at least one. This morning I saw Barack Obama dropping off his child at nursery school. Obama is the junior senator from Illinois who exploded onto the…
…at kids. With food increasingly becoming a global issue (the topic has made several appearances on this blog), Menzel and D’Aluisio hope it will help kids (and adults) better understand…
…model a life of delayed gratification and persistence if they want their kids to embrace those values themselves. Show your kids how hard you work, how often you experience disappointments…
Also: is it better to be right or “not wrong”?…
In this special episode of Freakonomics, M.D., host Bapu Jena looks at data from birthday parties, March Madness parties, and a Freakonomics Radio holiday party to help us all manage…
Data scientist Nate Silver gained attention for his election predictions. But even the best prognosticators get it wrong sometimes. He talks to Steve about making good decisions with data, why…
Whether you’re building a business or a cathedral, execution is everything. We ask artists, scientists, and inventors how they turned ideas into reality. And we find out why it’s so…
…which in a small high school of around 500 kids is incredibly painful. External authority doesn’t really get invoked. You could certainly think about this as part of the way…
Academic studies are nice, and so are Nobel Prizes. But to truly prove the value of a new idea, you have to unleash it to the masses. That’s what a…
(iStockphoto) A new study (PDF here) by University of Notre Dame economist Kasey Buckles and graduate student Elizabeth Munnich finds that siblings spaced more than two years apart have higher…
Andrew Cherlin has a new book coming out today called The Marriage-Go-Round. He’s a first-rate sociologist, and so I’m looking forward to reading it. But for now, he’s teasing us…
Today’s parents are spending?dramatically more time on childcare than their parents did.? What’s more, this rise has disproportionately occurred among those with the most education.? At least, that’s the conclusion…
