Before I was in the writing industry, I was in the music industry. While the economics of journalism have changed a lot over the past 20 years — witness the demise of Times Select and the potential demise of the Wall Street Journal‘s pay site — many other aspects of the writing industry haven’t changed much at all. If you . . .
Over the past several weeks, we’ve hosted discussions on obesity, street charity, real estate, and environmental conservation. Here now is a quorum that lets people relive the just-about-gone summer. The participants below were asked the following question: What’s your idea of a nightmare family vacation? Here are their responses. Feel free to give yours as well. Dan Gilbert, Harvard psychology . . .
Is obesity really the Black Plague the media makes it out to be? Is the “overweight epidemic” real? We’ve assembled a team of prominent economists, doctors, authors and experts to offer inside views on health, nutrition, and whether America is eating itself to death.
Barbara Corcoran, Robert Shiller, N.A.R. chief economist Lawrence Yun and others discuss whether housing bubbles exist (and, if so, whether we’re in one)
A roundtable discussion about panhandling featuring, among others, Arthur Brooks, Tyler Cowen, and Barbara Ehrenreich.
A reader named James Thompson recently sent in a request for help in solving a wildlife conservation problem. We decided to put the question to a set of diverse, smart people we know or tracked down, who might have particular insights to this particular problem. As such, we bring you the inaugural Freakonomics quorum, composed of the following group: the . . .