Freakonomics Radio
By Stephen J. Dubner
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Podcast Description
In their books "Freakonomics" and "SuperFreakonomics," Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explore "the hidden side of everything," with stories about cheating schoolteachers, self-dealing real-estate agents, and crack-selling mama’s boys. The Freakonomics Radio podcast, hosted by Dubner, carries on that tradition with weekly episodes. Prepare to be enlightened, engaged, perhaps enraged, and definitely surprised.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
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1 |
Does This Recession Make Me Look Fat? | A look at some non-obvious ways to lose weight. | 2/8/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
Save Me From Myself | A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong? | 2/1/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
The Hidden Side of the Super Bowl | A football cheat sheet to help you sound like the smartest person at the party. | 1/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
What Do Hand-Washing and Financial Illiteracy Have in Common? | Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not. | 1/18/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Does Money Really Buy Elections? | We all know the answer is yes. But the data -- and Rudy Giuliani -- say no. | 1/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
Why Is “I Don’t Know” So Hard to Say? | Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about certifying politicians, irrational fears, and the toughest three words in the English language. | 1/3/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
The Perils of Drunk Walking | We know it's terribly dangerous to drive drunk. But heading home on foot isn't the solution. | 12/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
How Is a Bad Radio Station Like Our Public-School System? (Encore) | The thrill of customization, via Pandora and a radical new teaching method | 12/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
How American Food Got So Bad | Tyler Cowen points fingers. There's plenty of blame to go around. | 12/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
Weird Recycling | Clever ways to not waste our waste. | 12/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
What Makes a Donor Donate? | The science of charity, with economist John List. | 11/29/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It? | There’s a nasty secret about hot-button topics like global warming: knowledge is not always power. | 11/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
Unnatural Turkeys | Our appetite for breast meat renders our holiday birds unable to reproduce. | 11/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
Boo…Who? | Is booing an act of verbal vandalism—or the last true expression of democracy? | 11/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
Wildfires, Cops, and Keggers | On Election Day, most people focus on the obvious winners and losers -- that is, the candidates. But we went looking for some of the strange side effects that elections produce. | 11/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
Misadventures in Baby-Making | We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences. | 10/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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17 |
Those Cheating Teachers! | High-stakes testing has produced some rotten apples. But they can be caught. | 10/18/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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18 |
Where Have All the Hitchhikers Gone? | 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? | 10/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
The Decline and Fall of Violence | The world is a more peaceful place today that at any time in history -- by a long, long shot. | 10/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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20 |
The Upside of Quitting | You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure? | 9/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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21 |
The Folly of Prediction | Human beings love to predict the future, but we're quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions? | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
The Suicide Paradox | 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. | 8/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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23 |
The Economist’s Guide to Parenting | Think you know how much parents matter? Think again. Economists crunch the numbers to learn the ROI on child-rearing. | 8/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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24 |
The Church of "Scionology" | We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea? | 8/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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25 |
Mouse in the Salad | In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important. | 7/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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26 |
Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You're Driving? | "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. | 7/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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27 |
Live From St. Paul! | Freakonomics Radio hits the road, and plays some Quiz Bowl | 6/22/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
Things Our Fathers Gave Us | What did Levitt and Dubner learn as kids from their dads? | 6/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
To Catch a Fugitive | 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. | 5/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
Growing Up Buffett | 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 business. | 5/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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31 |
Gambling With Your Life | Does Las Vegas increase your risk of suicide? A researcher embeds himself in the city where Americans are most likely to kill themselves. | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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32 |
Does College Still Matter? And Other Freaky Questions Answered ... | In our second round of FREAK-quently Asked Questions, Steve Levitt answers some queries from listeners and readers. | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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33 |
Smarter Kids at 10 Bucks a Pop | It won’t work for everyone, but there’s a cheap, quick, and simple way to lift some students’ grades. | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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34 |
Why Can’t We Predict Earthquakes? | 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. | 3/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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35 |
Death by Fire? Probably Not | 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? | 3/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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36 |
The Health of Nations | For decades, GDP has been the yardstick for measuring living standards around the world. Martha Nussbaum would rather use something that actually works. | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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37 |
Is Twitter a Two-Way Street? | To get a lot of followers on Twitter, do you need to follow a lot of other Tweeps? And if not, why not? | 3/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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38 |
The Power of Poop | Since the beginning of civilization, we’ve thought that human waste was worthless and dangerous. What if we were wrong? | 3/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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39 |
Millionaires vs. Billionaires | Five things you don’t know about the NFL labor standoff | 2/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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40 |
Why Cities Rock | Could it be that cities are "our greatest invention" -- that, despite a reputation as black-soot-spewing engines of doom, they in fact make us richer, smarter, happier and (believe it!) greener? | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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41 |
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. | 2/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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42 |
Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup! (Part 2) | What do a computer hacker, an Indiana farm boy, and Napoleon Bonaparte have in common? The past, present, and future of food science. | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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43 |
Waiter, There’s a Physicist in My Soup! (Part 1) | 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's the opposite of the "slow food" movement. In this episode, you'll hear chieftains from the two camps square off: Alice Waters for the slow foodies and Nathan Myhrvold for the mad scientists. Bon appetit! | 1/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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44 |
Freakonomics FAQ, No. 1 | 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? | 1/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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45 |
Trashed | How economics -- and emotion -- have turned our garbage into such a mess | 1/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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46 |
Exit Interview: Schools Chancellor, NYC | 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? | 1/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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47 |
You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let's Do It! | What happens when the most disturbing ideas are also the best? | 12/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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48 |
Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better? | 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? | 12/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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49 |
The "No-Lose Lottery," Part 2 | 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? | 12/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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50 |
Is America Ready for a "No-Lose Lottery"? | 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? | 11/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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51 |
How Much Does the President of the U.S. Really Matter? | The U.S. president is often called the "leader of 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. | 11/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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52 |
The NFL's Best Real Estate Isn't For Sale. Yet. | The NFL 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. | 10/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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53 |
Reading, Rockets, and 'Rithmetic | 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. | 10/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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54 |
Who Stole All the Runs in Major League Baseball? | 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. | 10/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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55 |
Two Book Authors and a Microphone | 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. | 9/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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56 |
Why the World Cup Is an Economist's Dream | 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. | 6/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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57 |
How Is a Bad Radio Station Like Our Public-School System? | In this episode of Freakonomics Radio, we explore a way to make 1.1 million schoolkids feel like they have 1.1 million teachers. | 5/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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58 |
Faking It | Do you "fake it"? If so, you're hardly alone. In this episode, you'll hear how everyone from the President of the United States to a kosher-keeping bacon lover lives in a state of fallen grace. All the time. And gets by. | 4/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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59 |
What Would the World Look Like if Economists Were in Charge? | 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. | 3/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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60 |
Is America's Obesity Epidemic For Real? | 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. | 2/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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61 |
The Dangers of Safety | What do NASCAR drivers, Glenn Beck and the hit men of the NFL have in common? | 2/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 61 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Inovative
I took a gamble on you guys and let me share with you, I was silly to even think it was a gamble. With your podcast, it's a sure thing. Thanks for being innovative. -Miami, Host of top 10 itunes podcast 'My Facials with Emily Morse: The Seduction Show'
Great Production Values
Dubner and Levitt have created an unlikely media empire with the Freaknomics brand. Along with the fascinating book series, there is also the compelling NY Times blog, and now this podcast, which, as of episode one, looks like it will make my regular rotation (one of the few podcasts that can make me look forward to my bus commute). Further, Molly Webster is one of the best radio and podcast producers in the business. Her work on Science Friday and Science Line are the stuff of legend and the fact that she is involved with the Freakonomics podcast almost guarantees its greatness. Highly recommended.
Excellent!
I am a physician who thoroughly enjoyed the podcast on obesity.
I wish that patients, lay people and especially health policy makers and breakers better understood the subtle yet critical difference between cause and correlation.
Podcasts like these are good examples of showing us how science can eliminate the usually incorrect act of following a "gut feeling".
- Free
- Category: Society & Culture
- Language: English
- © (c) WNYC, APM and Dubner Productions
