Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything. Why is it safer to fly in an airplane than drive a car? How do we decide whom to marry? Why is the media so full of bad news? Also: things you never knew you wanted to know about wolves, bananas, pollution, search engines, and the quirks of human behavior.
Listen here or follow Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We also provide transcripts, show notes, and links to research for each episode.
What do you do when smart people keep making stupid mistakes? And: are we a nation of financial illiterates? This is a “mashupdate” of “Is America Ready for a “No-Lose Lottery”?,” “The “No-Lose Lottery,” Part 2,” and “What Do Hand-Washing and Financial Illiteracy Have in Common?“
A new study says that yes, it is — but try telling that to the United Nations officials who are preaching sustainability practices.
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 “mashupdate” of “Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup, Part 1,” “Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup, Part 2,” and “Is Twitter a Two-Way Street?”
If any other product failed 94 percent of the time, you’d probably stop using it. So why do we put up with burglar alarms?
How much does the President of the United States really matter? And: where did all the hitchhikers go? A pair of “attribution errors.” This is a “mashupdate” of “How Much Does the President Really Matter?” and “Where Have All the Hitchhikers Gone?”
Women hold fewer than one in 10 patents. Why? And what are we missing out on?
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” of “Hey, Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?” and “Boo … Who?”
Isn’t it time to admit that the U.S. economy doesn’t have a commander in chief?
Do more expensive wines taste better? And: what does one little rodent in a salad say about a restaurant’s future? This is a “mashupdate” of “Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?” and “A Mouse in the Salad.”
Measuring workplace morale — and how to game the sick-day system.
The left and the right blame each other for pretty much everything, including slanted media coverage. Can they both be right?
A look at some non-obvious ways to lose weight.
A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong?
A football cheat sheet to help you sound like the smartest person at the party.
Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not.
We all know the answer is yes. But the data — and Rudy Giuliani — say no.
Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about certifying politicians, irrational fears, and the toughest three words in the English language.
We know it’s terribly dangerous to drive drunk. But heading home on foot isn’t the solution.
The thrill of customization, via Pandora and a radical new teaching method.
Tyler Cowen points fingers. There’s plenty of blame to go around.
There’s a nasty secret about hot-button topics like global warming: knowledge is not always power.
Our appetite for breast meat renders our holiday birds unable to reproduce.
An election cycle brings about more than voting around the world. There are many odd by-products, often inspired by how the incentives line up for those in power.
We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences.
High-stakes testing has produced some rotten apples. But they can be caught.
Did we needlessly scare ourselves into ditching a good thing? And, with millions of cars driving around with no passengers, should we be rooting for a renaissance?
The world is a more peaceful place today that at any time in history — by a long, long shot.
You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?
Human beings love to predict the future, but we’re quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of surprises
Think you know how much parents matter? Think again. Economists crunch the numbers to learn the ROI on child-rearing.
We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?
In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important.
Conspicuous conservation is about showing off your environmental bona fides. In other words, if you lean green, there’s extra value in being seen leaning green.
Freakonomics Radio hits the road, and plays some Quiz Bowl!
What did Levitt and Dubner learn as kids from their dads?
Who is likelier to get to the fugitive first? When a fugitive is on the run, it’s not only the police he has to worry about. A bounty hunter could be coming after him, too.
What’s it like to wake up one day and realize Dad is a multi-billionaire? That’s what happened to Warren Buffett’s son, Peter — who then started to think about whether or not to join the family.
Does Las Vegas increase your risk of suicide? A researcher embeds himself in the city where Americans are most likely to kill themselves.
In our second round of FREAK-quently Asked Questions, Steve Levitt answers some queries from listeners and readers.
It won’t work for everyone, but there’s a cheap, quick, and simple way to lift some students’ grades.
We talk to a U.S. Geological Survey physicist about the science — and folly — of predicting earthquakes. There are lots of known knowns; and, fortunately, not too many unknown unknowns. But it’s the known unknowns — the timing of the next Big One — that are the most dangerous.
Fire deaths in the U.S. have fallen 90 percent over the past 100 years, a great and greatly underappreciated gain. How did it happen — and could we ever get to zero?
For decades, G.D.P. has been the yardstick for measuring living standards around the world. Martha Nussbaum would rather use something that actually works.
To get a lot of followers on Twitter, do you need to follow a lot of other Tweeps? And if not, why not?
Since the beginning of civilization, we’ve thought that human waste was worthless at best, and often dangerous. What if we were wrong?
Five things you don’t know about the NFL labor standoff.
Could it be that cities are “our greatest invention” – that, despite their reputation as soot-spewing engines of doom, they in fact make us richer, smarter, happier and (gulp) greener?
Bring on the Pain! It’s not about how much something hurts — it’s how you remember the pain. This week, lessons on pain from the New York City subway, the professional hockey rink, and a landmark study of colonoscopy patients. So have a listen. We promise, it won’t hurt a bit.
What do a computer hacker, an Indiana farm boy, and Napoleon Bonaparte have in common? The past, present, and future of food science.
The “molecular gastronomy” movement — which gets a bump in visibility next month with the publication of the mammoth cookbook “Modernist Cuisine” — is all about bringing more science into the kitchen. In many ways,it is the opposite of the “slow food” movement. In this episode, you’ll hear the chieftains of the two camps square off: Alice Waters for the slow foodies and Nathan Myhrvold for the mad scientists. Bon appetit!
Levitt and Dubner field questions from the public and hold forth on everything from dating strategies and rock-and-roll accordion music to whether different nations have different economic identities. Oh, and also: is it worthwhile to vote?
Having already amassed an eventful resume — the Clinton White House, the Department of Justice, and Bertelsmann — Joel I. Klein spent the past eight years at chancellor of the biggest school system in the country. So what’d he learn?
What happens when the most disturbing ideas are also the best?
They should! It’s a cardinal rule: more expensive items are supposed to be qualitatively better than their cheaper versions. But is that true for wine?
It’s the banking tool that got millions of people around the world to stop wasting money on the lottery. So why won’t state and federal officials in the U.S. give it a chance?
For the most part, Americans don’t like the simple, boring act of putting money in a savings account. We do, however, love to play the lottery. So what if you combined the two, creating a new kind of savings account with a lottery payout?
The U.S. president is often called the “leader of the free world.” But if you ask an economist or a Constitutional scholar how much the occupant of the Oval Office matters, they won’t say much. We look at what the data have to say about measuring leadership, and its impact on the economy and the country.
The N.F.L. is very good at making money. So why on earth doesn’t it sell ad space on the one piece of real estate that football fans can’t help but see: the players themselves? The explanation is trickier than you might think. It has to do with Peyton Manning, with Eli Manning, and with…wait for it…Tevye.
Government and the private sector often feel far apart. One is filled with compliance-driven bureaucracy. The other, with market-fueled innovation. But something is changing in a multi-billion-dollar corner of the Department of Education. It’s an experiment, which takes cues from the likes of Google and millionaires who hope to go to the moon.
It was a pretty good baseball season — especially if you’re a fan of the Yankees, Rays, Twins, Rangers, Reds, Braves, Phillies, or Giants, all of whom made the playoffs. But the post-season just opened with a telling event, a no-hitter pitched by the Phillies’ Roy Halladay, which shows what’s been missing all season: runs.
The next chapter in the adventures of Dubner and Levitt has begun. Listen to a preview of what’s to come for the fall season of Freakonomics Radio.
Steve Levitt talks about why the center cannot hold in penalty kicks, why a running track hurts home-field advantage, and why the World Cup is an economist’s dream.
In this episode of Freakonomics Radio, we explore a way to make 1.1 million schoolkids feel like they have 1.1 million teachers.
In this episode, we speculate what would happen if economists got to run the world. Hear from a high-end call girl; an Estonian who ran his country according to the gospel of Milton Friedman; and a guy who wants to start building new nations in the middle of the ocean.
Americans keep putting on pounds. So is it time for a cheeseburger tax? Or would a chill pill be the best medicine? In this episode, we explore the underbelly of fat through the eyes of a 280-pound woman, a top White House doctor, and a couple of overweight academics.
In the first episode (subscribe at iTunes; or listen now in the player at right), we ask the question “What Do NASCAR Drivers, Glenn Beck, and the Hitmen of the N.F.L. Have in Common?”
You want to listen to Freakonomics Radio? That’s great! Most people use a podcast app on their smartphone. It’s free (with the purchase of a phone, of course). Looking for more guidance? We’ve got you covered.
Stay up-to-date on all our shows. We promise no spam.
