Freakonomics Radio
By Stephen J. Dubner and WNYC Studios
To listen to an audio podcast, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to download and subscribe to podcasts.
Description
Have fun discovering the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the best-selling "Freakonomics” books. Each week, hear surprising conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature—from cheating and crime to parenting and sports. Dubner talks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, social scientists and entrepreneurs — and his “Freakonomics” co-author Steve Levitt. After just a few episodes, this podcast will have you too thinking like a Freak. Produced by WNYC Studios, home of other great podcasts such as “Radiolab," "Death, Sex & Money," and "On the Media."
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition (Rebroadcast) | A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.'s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent. | 12/23/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
2 |
Is Migration a Basic Human Right? | The argument for open borders is compelling -- and deeply problematic. | 12/16/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
3 |
The Cheeseburger Diet | One woman's quest to find the best burger in town can teach all of us to eat smarter. | 12/9/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
4 |
Ben Bernanke Gives Himself a Grade | He was handed the keys to the global economy just as it started heading off a cliff. Fortunately, he'd seen this movie before. | 12/2/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
5 |
Why Do People Keep Having Children? (Rebroadcast) | Even a brutal natural disaster doesn't diminish our appetite for procreating. This surely means we're heading toward massive overpopulation, right? Probably not. | 11/25/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
6 |
Does “Early Education” Come Way Too Late? | 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. | 11/18/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
7 |
ExplicitShould Everyone Be in a Rock Band? | Lessons from Tom Petty's rise and another rocker's fall. | 11/11/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
8 |
Food + Science = Victory! | A kitchen wizard and a nutrition detective talk about the perfect hamburger, getting the most out of garlic, and why you should use vodka in just about everything. | 11/4/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
9 |
Am I Boring You? | Researchers are trying to figure out who gets bored - and why - and what it means for ourselves and the economy. But maybe there's an upside to boredom? | 10/28/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
10 |
How to Save $1 Billion Without Even Trying (Rebroadcast) | Doctors, chefs, and other experts are much more likely than the rest of us to buy store-brand products. What do they know that we don't? | 10/21/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
11 |
How To Win A Nobel Prize | The process is famously secretive (and conducted in Swedish!) but we pry the lid off at least a little bit. | 10/14/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
12 |
Should Kids Pay Back Their Parents for Raising Them? | When one athlete turned pro, his mom asked him for $1 million. Our modern sensibilities tell us she doesn't have a case. But should she? | 10/7/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
13 |
Meet the Woman Who Said Women Can’t Have It All | Anne-Marie Slaughter was best known for her adamant views on Syria when she accidentally became a poster girl for modern feminism. As it turns out, she can be pretty adamant in that realm as well. | 9/30/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
14 |
How Did the Belt Win? | Suspenders may work better, but the dork factor is too high. How did an organ-squeezing belly tourniquet become part of our everyday wardrobe -- and what other suboptimal solutions do we routinely put up with? | 9/23/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
15 |
“I Don't Know What You've Done With My Husband, But He's a Changed Man.” | From domestic abusers to former child soldiers, there is increasing evidence that behavioral therapy can turn them around. | 9/16/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
16 |
Preventing Crime for Pennies on the Dollar | Conventional programs tend to be expensive, onerous, and ineffective. Could something as simple (and cheap) as cognitive behavioral therapy do the trick? | 9/9/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
17 |
The Harvard President Will See You Now | How a pain-in-the-neck girl from rural Virginia came to run the most powerful university in the world. | 9/2/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
18 |
Are You Ready for a Glorious Sunset? | We spend billions on end-of-life healthcare that doesn't do much good. So what if a patient could forego the standard treatment and get a cash rebate instead? | 8/26/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
19 |
How to Make a Smart TV Ad | Step 1: Hire a Harvard psych professor as the pitchman. Step 2: Have him help write the script ... | 8/19/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
20 |
The Dangers of Safety (Rebroadcast) | What do NASCAR drivers, Glenn Beck and the hit men of the NFL have in common? | 8/12/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
21 |
Why Do We Really Follow the News? | There are all kinds of civics-class answers to that question. But how true are they? Could it be that we like to read about war, politics, and miscellaneous heartbreak simply because it's (gasp) entertaining? | 8/5/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
22 |
How to Create Suspense | Why is soccer the best sport? How has Harlan Coben sold 70 million books? And why does "Apollo 13" keep you enthralled even when you know the ending? | 7/29/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
23 |
Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush | The comedian, actor -- and now, author -- answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions | 7/22/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
24 |
The Economics of Sleep, Part 2 | People who sleep better earn more money. Now all we have to do is teach everyone to sleep better. | 7/15/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
25 |
The Economics of Sleep, Part 1 | Could a lack of sleep help explain why some people get much sicker than others? | 7/8/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
26 |
A Better Way to Eat (Rebroadcast) | Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the sport of competitive eating. What can the rest of us learn from his breakthrough? | 7/1/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
27 |
Is It Okay for Restaurants to Racially Profile Their Employees? | We seem to have decided that ethnic food tastes better when it's served by people of that ethnicity (or at least something close). Does this make sense -- and is it legal? | 6/24/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
28 |
Make Me a Match | Sure, markets generally work well. But for some transactions -- like school admissions and organ transplants -- money alone can't solve the problem. That's when you need a market-design wizard like Al Roth. | 6/17/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
29 |
Making Sex Offenders Pay -- and Pay and Pay and Pay | Sure, sex crimes are horrific, and the perpetrators deserve to be punished harshly. But society keeps exacting costs -- out-of-pocket and otherwise -- long after the prison sentence has been served. | 6/10/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
30 |
Should We Really Behave Like Economists Say We Do? | One man's attempt to remake his life in the mold of homo economicus. | 6/3/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
31 |
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know (Rebroadcast) | The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson. | 5/27/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
32 |
Failure Is Your Friend (Rebroadcast) | In which we argue that failure should not only be tolerated but celebrated. | 5/20/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
33 |
Ten Years of Freakonomics | Dubner and Levitt are live onstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York to celebrate their new book "When to Rob a Bank" -- and a decade of working together. | 5/13/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
34 |
Could the Next Brooklyn Be ... Las Vegas?! | Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has a wild vision and the dollars to try to make it real. But it still might be the biggest gamble in town. | 5/6/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
35 |
Think Like a Child (Rebroadcast) | When it comes to generating ideas and asking questions it can be really fruitful to have the mentality of an eight year old. | 4/29/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
36 |
Nate Silver Says: “Everyone Is Kind of Weird” | America's favorite statistical guru answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions, and more. | 4/22/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
37 |
Diamonds Are a Marriage Counselor’s Best Friend | It may seem like winning a valuable diamond is an unalloyed victory. It's not. It's not even clear that a diamond is so valuable. | 4/15/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
38 |
How Many Doctors Does It Take to Start a Healthcare Revolution? | The practice of medicine has been subsumed by the business of medicine. This is great news for healthcare shareholders -- and bad news for pretty much everyone else. | 4/8/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
39 |
How Do We Know What Really Works in Healthcare? | A lot of the conventional wisdom in medicine is nothing more than hunch or wishful thinking. A new breed of data detectives is hoping to change that. | 4/1/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
40 |
The Perfect Crime (Rebroadcast) | If you are driving and kill a pedestrian, there's a good chance you'll barely be punished. Why? | 3/25/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
41 |
What You Don’t Know About Online Dating (Rebroadcast) | Thick markets, thin markets, and the triumph of attributes over compatibility. | 3/18/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
42 |
When Willpower Isn’t Enough | Sure, we all want to make good personal decisions, but it doesn't always work out. That's where "temptation bundling" comes in. | 3/11/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
43 |
This Idea Must Die | Every year, Edge.org asks its salon of big thinkers to answer one big question. This year's question borders on heresy: what scientific idea is ready for retirement? | 3/4/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
44 |
The Maddest Men of All | Advertisers have always been adept at manipulating our emotions. Now they're using behavioral economics to get even better. | 2/25/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
45 |
Hacking the World Bank | Jim Yong Kim has an unorthodox background for a World Bank president -- and his reign thus far is just as unorthodox. | 2/18/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
46 |
Is There a Better Way to Fight Terrorism? | The White House is hosting an anti-terror summit next week. Summits being what they are, we try to offer some useful advice. | 2/11/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
47 |
How Efficient Is Energy Efficiency? | It's a centerpiece of U.S. climate policy and a sacred cow among environmentalists. Does it work? | 2/4/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
48 |
How Safe Is Your Job? | Economists preach the gospel of "creative destruction," whereby new industries -- and jobs -- replace the old ones. But has creative destruction become too destructive? | 1/28/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
49 |
Someone Else’s Acid Trip | As Kevin Kelly tells it, the hippie revolution and the computer revolution are nearly one and the same. | 1/21/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
50 |
That’s a Great Question! | Verbal tic or strategic rejoinder? Whatever the case: it’s rare to come across an interview these days where at least one question isn’t a “great” one. | 1/14/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
51 |
Why Doesn’t Everyone Get the Flu Vaccine? | Influenza kills, but you’d never know it by how few of us get the vaccine. | 1/7/2015 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
52 |
What’s the “Best” Exercise? (Rebroadcast) | Most people blame lack of time for being out of shape. So maybe the solution is to exercise more efficiently. | 12/31/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
53 |
What’s More Dangerous: Marijuana or Alcohol? (Rebroadcast) | Imagine that both substances were undiscovered until today. How would we think about their relative risks? | 12/24/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
54 |
Time to Take Back the Toilet | Public bathrooms are noisy, poorly designed, and often nonexistent. What to do? | 12/17/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
55 |
The Troubled Cremation of Stevie the Cat (Rebroadcast) | We spend billions on our pets, and one of the fastest-growing costs is pet "aftercare." But are those cremated remains you got back really from your pet? | 12/10/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
56 |
How to Fix a Broken High Schooler, in Four Easy Steps | Okay, maybe the steps aren’t so easy. But a program run out of a Toronto housing project has had great success in turning around kids who were headed for trouble. | 12/3/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
57 |
Is America’s Education Problem Really Just a Teacher Problem? | If U.S. schoolteachers are indeed “just a little bit below average,” it’s not really their fault. So what should be done about it? | 11/26/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
58 |
The Man Who Would Be Everything | Boris Johnson -- mayor of London, biographer of Churchill, cheese-box painter and tennis-racket collector -- answers our FREAK-quently Asked Questions. | 11/19/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
59 |
Why Do People Keep Having Children? | Even a brutal natural disaster doesn’t diminish our appetite for procreating. This surely means we’re heading toward massive overpopulation, right? Probably not. | 11/12/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
60 |
Should the U.S. Merge With Mexico? | Corporations around the world are consolidating like never before. If it’s good enough for companies, why not countries? Welcome to Amexico! | 11/5/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
61 |
What Can Vampires Teach Us About Economics? | A lot! “The Economics of the Undead” is a book about dating strategy, job creation, and whether there should be a legal market for blood. | 10/29/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
62 |
“Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” | The debut of a live game show from Freakonomics Radio, with judges Malcolm Gladwell, Ana Gasteyer, and David Paterson. | 10/23/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
63 |
How Can Tiny Norway Afford to Buy So Many Teslas? | The Norwegian government parleys massive oil wealth into huge subsidies for electric cars. Is that carbon laundering or just pragmatic environmentalism? | 10/15/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
64 |
How to Raise Money Without Killing a Kitten (Rebroadcast) | The science of what works -- and doesn't work -- in fund-raising | 10/8/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
65 |
Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition | A team of economists has been running the numbers on the U.N.'s development goals. They have a different view of how those billions of dollars should be spent. | 10/1/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
66 |
Fitness Apartheid | Markets are hardly perfect, but the results can be ugly when you try to subvert them. | 9/24/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
67 |
Outsiders by Design | What does it mean to pursue something that everyone else thinks is nuts? And what does it take to succeed? | 9/17/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
68 |
How to Save $1 Billion Without Even Trying | Doctors, chefs, and other experts are much more likely than the rest of us to buy store-brand products. What do they know that we don’t? | 9/10/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
69 |
Regulate This! | Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, EatWith, and other companies in the “sharing economy” are practically daring government regulators to shut them down. The regulators are happy to comply. | 9/3/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
70 |
Who Runs the Internet? (Rebroadcast) | The online universe doesn't have nearly as many rules, or rulemakers, as the real world. Discuss. | 8/27/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
71 |
Parking Is Hell (Rebroadcast) | There ain't no such thing as a free parking spot. Somebody has to pay for it -- and that somebody is everybody. | 8/20/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
72 |
What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common? (Rebroadcast) | A look at whether spite pays -- and if it even exists. | 8/13/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
73 |
Should Tipping be Banned? (Rebroadcast) | It's awkward, random, confusing -- and probably discriminatory too. | 8/6/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
74 |
How Much Does Your Name Matter? (Rebroadcast) | A kid's name can tell us something about his parents -- their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny? | 7/30/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
75 |
Does Religion Make You Happy? | It’s a hard question to answer, but we do our best. | 7/23/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
76 |
Why You Should Bribe Your Kids | Educational messaging looks good on paper but kids don’t respond to it -- and adults aren’t much better. | 7/16/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
77 |
What Do King Solomon and David Lee Roth Have in Common? | It isn’t easy to separate the guilty from the innocent, but a clever bit of game theory can help. | 7/9/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
78 |
A Better Way to Eat | Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the sport of competitive eating. What can the rest of us learn from his breakthrough? | 7/2/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
79 |
How to Screen Job Applicants, Act Your Age, and Get Your Brain Off Autopilot | Dubner and Levitt answer reader questions in this first installment of the “Think Like a Freak” Book Club. | 6/25/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
80 |
There’s No Such Thing as a Free Appetizer | Is it really in a restaurant’s best interest to give customers free bread or chips before they even order? | 6/18/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
81 |
Why America Doesn’t Love Soccer (Yet) | Every four years, the U.S. takes a look at the World Cup and develops a slight crush. What would it take to really fall in love? | 6/11/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
82 |
Failure Is Your Friend | In which we argue that failure should not only be tolerated but celebrated. | 6/4/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
83 |
The Upside of Quitting (Rebroadcast) | You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says ... Are you sure? | 5/28/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
84 |
Think Like a Child | When it comes to generating ideas and asking questions it can be really fruitful to have the mentality of an eight year old. | 5/21/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
85 |
The Three Hardest Words in the English Language | Why learning to say “I don’t know” is one of the best things you can do. | 5/14/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
86 |
How to Think Like a Freak -- and Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions | Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt talk about their new book and field questions about prestige, university life, and (yum yum) bacon. | 5/7/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
87 |
The Perfect Crime | If you are driving and kill a pedestrian, there's a good chance you'll barely be punished. Why? | 4/30/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
88 |
Which Came First, the Chicken or the Avocado? | When it comes to exercising outrage, people tend to be very selective. Could it be that humans are our least favorite animal? | 4/23/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
89 |
What’s More Dangerous: Marijuana or Alcohol? | Imagine that both substances were undiscovered until today. How would we think about their relative risks? | 4/16/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
90 |
“If Mayors Ruled the World” | Unlike certain elected officials in Washington, mayors all over the country actually get stuff done. So maybe we should ask them to do more? | 4/9/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
91 |
How to Make People Quit Smoking | The war on cigarettes has been fairly successful in some places. But 1 billion humans still smoke -- so what comes next? | 4/2/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
92 |
Why Everybody Who Doesn’t Hate Bitcoin Loves It | Thinking of Bitcoin as just a digital currency is like thinking about the Internet as just e-mail. Its potential is much more exciting than that. | 3/26/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
93 |
Women Are Not Men (Rebroadcast) | In many ways, the gender gap is closing. In others, not so much. And that's not always a bad thing. | 3/19/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
94 |
“It’s Fun to Smoke Marijuana” | A psychology professor argues that the brain's greatest attribute is knowing what other people are thinking. And that a Queen song, played backwards, can improve your mind-reading skills. | 3/12/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
95 |
Is Learning a Foreign Language Really Worth It? | Yes, it expands the mind but we usually don't retain much -- and then there's the opportunity cost. | 3/5/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
96 |
Why Are Japanese Homes Disposable? | In most countries, houses get more valuable over time. In Japan, a new buyer will often bulldoze the home. We'll tell you why. | 2/26/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
97 |
Why Marry? (Part 2) | The consequences of our low marriage rate -- and if the old model is less attractive, how about a new one? | 2/19/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
98 |
Why Marry? (Part 1) | The myths of modern marriage. | 2/12/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
99 |
What You Don’t Know About Online Dating | Thick markets, thin markets, and the triumph of attributes over compatibility. This episode is included in the Freakonomics #smartbinge podcast playlist at wnyc.org/smartbinge | 2/5/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
100 |
Reasons to Not Be Ugly | The "beauty premium" is real, for everyone from babies to NFL quarterbacks. | 1/30/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
101 |
Everybody Gossips (and That’s a Good Thing) | The benefits of rumor-mongering | 1/23/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
102 |
Fear Thy Nature (Rebroadcast) | What "Sleep No More" and the Stanford Prison Experiment tell us about who we really are. | 1/16/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
103 |
Are We Ready to Legalize Drugs? And Other FREAK-Quently Asked Questions | Dubner and Levitt talk about fixing the post office, putting cameras in the classroom, and wearing hats. | 1/9/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
104 |
What’s the “Best” Exercise? | Most people blame lack of time for being out of shape. So maybe the solution is to exercise more efficiently. | 1/2/2014 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
105 |
Save Me From Myself (Rebroadcast) | A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong? | 12/26/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
106 |
Pontiff-icating on the Free-Market System | The Pope just gave it to the global economy with both barrels. Was he right to do so? | 12/19/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
107 |
Are Gay Men Really Rich? | It’s easy to get that idea. But is the stereotype true? | 12/12/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
108 |
The Most Dangerous Machine | More than 1 million people die worldwide each year from traffic accidents. But there's never been a safer time to drive. | 12/5/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
109 |
Fighting Poverty With Actual Evidence | It's time to do away with feel-good stories, gut hunches, and magical thinking. | 11/27/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
110 |
What Do Skating Rinks, Ultimate Frisbee, and the World Have in Common? | Spontaneous order is everywhere if you know where to look for it. | 11/21/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
111 |
Who Runs the Internet? | The online universe doesn't have nearly as many rules, or rulemakers, as the real world. Discuss. | 11/14/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
112 |
Freakonomics Goes to College, Part 2 (Rebroadcast) | College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how? | 11/7/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
113 |
Freakonomics Goes to College, Part 1 (Rebroadcast) | What's a college degree really worth these days? | 10/31/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
114 |
Why Bad Environmentalism Is Such an Easy Sell | Being green is rarely a black-and-white issue -- but that doesn't stop marketers and politicians from pretending it is. | 10/24/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
115 |
The Troubled Cremation of Stevie the Cat | We spend billions on our pets, and one of the fastest-growing costs is pet "aftercare." But are those cremated remains you got back really from your pet? | 10/14/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
116 |
How to Raise Money Without Killing a Kitten | The science of what works -- and doesn't work -- in fund-raising | 10/10/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
117 |
How to Think About Money, Choose Your Hometown, and Buy an Electric Toothbrush | Dubner and Levitt field your queries in this latest installment of our FREAK-quently Asked Questions. | 10/3/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
118 |
Would a Big Bucket of Cash Really Change Your Life? | A 19th-century Georgia land lottery may have something to teach us about today's income inequality. | 9/26/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
119 |
The Economist’s Guide to Parenting (Rebroadcast) | Think you know how much parents matter? Think again. Economists crunch the numbers to learn the ROI on child-rearing. | 9/19/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
120 |
Whatever Happened to the Carpal Tunnel Epidemic? | Once upon a time, office workers across America lived in fear of a dreaded infirmity. Was the computer keyboard really the villain -- and did carpal tunnel syndrome really go away? | 9/12/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
121 |
The Suicide Paradox (Rebroadcast) | 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. | 9/5/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
122 |
Who Are the Most Successful Immigrants in the World? | It's impossible to say for sure, but the Lebanese do remarkably well. Why? | 8/29/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
123 |
The Folly of Prediction (Rebroadcast) | Human beings love to predict the future, but we're quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions? | 8/22/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
124 |
The Middle of Everywhere | Chicago has given the world more than sausage, crooked politics, and Da Bears. | 8/15/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
125 |
The Church of "Scionology" (Rebroadcast) | We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea? | 8/8/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
126 |
Do Baby Girls Cause Divorce? | Even American parents have a strong "son preference" -- which means that a newborn daughter can be bad news for a marriage. | 8/1/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
127 |
REBROADCAST: 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? | 7/22/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
128 |
Government Employees Gone Wild | The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures catalogs the fiscal, sexual, and mental lapses of federal workers -- all with an eye toward preventing the next big mistake. | 7/18/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
129 |
A Burger a Day | Is junk food an abomination or a modern miracle? | 7/11/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
130 |
Jane Austen, Game Theorist | What does "Pride and Prejudice" have to do with nuclear deterrence? | 7/3/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
131 |
REBROADCAST: Legacy of a Jerk | What happens to your reputation when you're no longer around to defend it? | 6/27/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
132 |
Do You Really Want to Know Your Future? | You might think that someone with a 50-50 chance of getting a fatal disease would want to know for sure -- but you would be wrong. What does this say about our supposed thirst for certainty? | 6/20/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
133 |
Why Family and Business Don’t Mix | Yet another reason to blame your parents for pretty much everything. | 6/12/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
134 |
Should Tipping be Banned? | It's awkward, random, confusing -- and probably discriminatory too. | 6/3/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
135 |
Baby, You Can Program My Car | A glimpse into our driverless future. | 5/29/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
136 |
Can You Be Too Smart for Your Own Good? And Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions | Dubner and Levitt talk about circadian rhythms, gay marriage, autism, and whether "pay what you want" is everything it's cracked up to be. | 5/23/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
137 |
REBROADCAST: The Hidden Cost of False Alarms | 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? | 5/15/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
138 |
What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common? | A look at whether spite pays -- and if it even exists. | 5/9/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
139 |
It’s Crowded at the Top | Why is unemployment still so high? It may be because of something that happened well before the Great Recession. | 5/1/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
140 |
Running to Do Evil | An interview with Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, whose younger brother turned him in -- and what it says about the Boston bombers. | 4/25/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
141 |
Help Wanted. No Smokers Need Apply | In many states, it is perfectly legal to not hire someone who smokes. Should employers also be able to weed out junk-food lovers or motorcyclists -- or anyone who wants to have a baby? | 4/17/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
142 |
How Much Does Your Name Matter? | A kid's name can tell us something about his parents -- their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny? | 4/8/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
143 |
The Tax Man Nudgeth | Real tax reform may or may not ever happen. In the meantime, how about making the current system work a bit better? | 4/3/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
144 |
100 Ways to Fight Obesity | Freakonomics asks a dozen smart people for their best ideas. Get ready for a fat tax, a sugar ban, and a calorie-chomping tapeworm. | 3/27/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
145 |
How Money Is March Madness? | The NCAA basketball tournament grabs a lot of eyeballs, but turning them into dollars hasn't always been easy -- even when the "talent" is playing for free. | 3/21/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
146 |
Parking Is Hell | There ain't no such thing as a free parking spot. Somebody has to pay for it -- and that somebody is everybody. | 3/13/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
147 |
When Is a Negative a Positive? | Sure, we all like to hear compliments. But if you're truly looking to get better at something, it's the negative feedback that will get you there. | 3/6/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
148 |
Women Are Not Men | In many ways, the gender gap is closing. In others, not so much. And that's not always a bad thing. | 2/24/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
149 |
The Downside of More Miles Per Gallon | The gas tax doesn't work well, and it's only going to get worse. What's next? | 2/20/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
150 |
How to Think About Guns | No one wants mass shootings. Unfortunately, no one has a workable plan to stop them either. | 2/13/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
151 |
Sure, I Remember That | It is startlingly easy to create false memories, especially in politics. | 2/6/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
152 |
Would You Let a Coin Toss Decide Your Future? | Levitt and Dubner go deep on "Freakonomics Experiments," a new research project that lets you take a chance on life. | 1/30/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
153 |
Introducing “Freakonomics Experiments” | Steve Levitt has a novel idea for helping people make tough decisions | 1/23/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
154 |
Who Owns the Words That Come Out of Your Mouth? | The very long reach of Winston Churchill -- and how the British government is remaking copyright law. | 1/16/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
155 |
How to Live Longer | Why do Hall of Fame inductees, Oscar winners, and Nobel laureates outlive their peers? | 1/9/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
156 |
How Did “Freakonomics” Get Its Name? … and Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions | Levitt and Dubner answer your questions about driving, sneezing, and ladies’ nights. Plus a remembrance of Levitt’s sister Linda. | 1/2/2013 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
157 |
How Much Does a Good Boss Really Matter? | It's harder than you'd think to measure the value of a boss. But some enterprising economists have done just that -- and the news is good. | 12/26/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
158 |
The House of Dreams | Dubner's childhood home goes from sacred to profane -- and then back again. | 12/19/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
159 |
Have a Very Homo Economicus Christmas | Who better than an economist to help with your shopping list? | 12/12/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
160 |
The Things They Taught Me | College, at its best, is about learning to think. Stephen Dubner chats up three of his former professors who made the magic happen. | 12/5/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
161 |
Free-conomics | Economists are a notoriously self-interested bunch. But a British outfit called Pro Bono Economics is giving away its services to selected charities. | 11/28/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
162 |
I Consult, Therefore I Am | There are enough management consultants these days to form a small nation. But what do they actually do? And does it work? | 11/21/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
163 |
Mass Transit Hysteria | Adding more train and bus lines looks like an environmental slam dunk. Until you start to do the math. | 11/14/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
164 |
Our 100th Episode! | Turkey sex and chicken wings, selling souls and swapping organs, the power of the president and the price of wine: these are a few of our favorite things. | 11/5/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
165 |
How to Maximize Your Halloween Candy Haul | Is it as simple as going to the richest neighborhood you can find? Of course not ... | 10/31/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
166 |
We the Sheeple | Politicians tell voters exactly what they want to hear, even when it makes no sense. Which is pretty much all the time. | 10/24/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
167 |
Lying to Ourselves | We rely on polls and surveys to tell us how people will behave in the future. Too bad they're completely unreliable. | 10/17/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
168 |
The Cobra Effect | When you want to get rid of a nasty pest, one obvious solution comes to mind: just offer a cash reward. But be careful -- because nothing backfires quite like a bounty. | 10/10/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
169 |
Why America’s Economic Growth May Be (Shh!) Over | Sure, we love our computers and all the rest of our digital toys. But when it comes to real economic gains, can we ever match old-school innovations like the automobile and electricity? | 10/3/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
170 |
The Tale of the $15 Tomato | Trying to go rustic by baking, brewing, and knitting at home can be terribly inefficient. And that's a wonderful thing. | 9/23/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
171 |
Why Online Poker Should Be Legal | The data show that poker is indeed a game of skill, not chance, and a Federal judge agrees. So why are players still being treated like criminals? | 9/19/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
172 |
Fear Thy Nature | What "Sleep No More" and the Stanford Prison Experiment tell us about who we really are. | 9/12/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
173 |
Can Selling Beer Cut Down on Public Drunkenness? | Binge drinking is a big problem at college football games. Oliver Luck -- father of No. 1 NFL pick Andrew, and the athletic director at West Virginia University -- had an unusual idea to help solve it. | 9/5/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
174 |
How Deep Is the Shadow Economy? | What we know -- and don't know -- about the gazillions of dollars that never show up on anyone's books. | 8/29/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
175 |
There’s Cake in the Breakroom! | If you think working from home offers too many distractions, just think about what happens at the office. | 8/22/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
176 |
Freakonomics Goes to College, Part 2 | College tends to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier. But how? | 8/15/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
177 |
The Season of Death | We know that summertime brings far too many fatal accidents. But you may be surprised if you dig into the numbers. | 8/8/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
178 |
Freakonomics Goes to College, Part 1 | What's a college degree really worth these days? | 7/29/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
179 |
Olympian Economics | Do host cities really get the benefits their boosters promise, or are they just engaging in some fiscal gymnastics? | 7/25/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
180 |
Legacy of a Jerk | What happens to your reputation when you're no longer around to defend it? | 7/18/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
181 |
What's Wrong With Cash for Grades? | If we want our kids to thrive in school, maybe we should just pay them. | 7/10/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
182 |
Please Steal My Car | Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about junk food, insurance, and how to make an economist happy. | 7/4/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
183 |
Star-Spangled Banter? | Once a week, the British Prime Minister goes before the House of Commons for a lightning round of hard questions. Should the U.S. give it a try? | 6/26/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
184 |
Riding the Herd Mentality | How using peer pressure -- and good, old-fashioned shame -- can push people to do the right thing. | 6/20/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
185 |
A Cheap Employee Is … a Cheap Employee | Paying workers as little as possible seems smart -- unless you can make more money by paying them more. | 6/13/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
186 |
You Eat What You Are, Part 2 | To feed 7 billion people while protecting the environment, it would seem that going local is a no-brainer -- until you start looking at the numbers. | 6/6/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
187 |
Playing the Nerd Card | The NBA’s superstars are suddenly sporting Urkel glasses -- but is it more than a fashion statement? | 5/30/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
188 |
You Eat What You Are, Part 1 | How American food so got bad -- and why it's getting so much better. | 5/23/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
189 |
Retirement Kills | Sure, we all dream of leaving the office forever. But what if it's bad for your health? | 5/16/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
190 |
Soul Possession | In a world where nearly everything is for sale, is it always okay to buy what isn’t yours? | 5/7/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
191 |
A Rose By Any Other Distance | At a time when people worry about every mile their food must travel, why is it okay to import most of our cut flowers from thousands of miles away? | 5/2/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
192 |
Lottery Loopholes and Deadly Doctors | What do you do when smart people keep making stupid mistakes? And: are we a nation of financial illiterates? | 4/25/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
193 |
Is Good Corporate Citizenship Also Good for the Bottom Line? | A new study says that yes, it is -- but try telling that to the United Nations officials who are preaching sustainability practices. | 4/18/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
194 |
Eating and Tweeting | 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? | 4/11/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
195 |
The Hidden Cost of False Alarms | 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? | 4/3/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
196 |
The Power of the President -- and the Thumb | How much does the President of the United States really matter? And: where did all the hitchhikers go? A pair of "attribution errors." | 3/28/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
197 |
The Patent Gap | Women hold fewer than one in 10 patents. Why? And what are we missing out on? | 3/22/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
198 |
Show and Yell | 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”? | 3/14/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
199 |
It’s Not the President, Stupid | Isn’t it time to admit that the U.S. economy doesn’t have a commander in chief? | 3/7/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
200 |
The Days of Wine and Mouses | Do more expensive wines taste better? And: what does one little rodent in a salad say about a restaurant’s future? | 2/26/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
201 |
The Dilbert Index? | Measuring workplace morale -- and how to game the sick-day system. | 2/22/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
202 |
How Biased Is Your Media? | The left and the right blame each other for pretty much everything, including slanted media coverage. Can they both be right? | 2/15/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
203 |
Does This Recession Make Me Look Fat? | A look at some non-obvious ways to lose weight. | 2/8/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
204 |
Save Me From Myself | A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong? | 2/1/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
205 |
The Hidden Side of the Super Bowl | A football cheat sheet to help you sound like the smartest person at the party. | 1/25/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
206 |
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. | 1/18/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
207 |
Does Money Really Buy Elections? | We all know the answer is yes. But the data -- and Rudy Giuliani -- say no. | 1/11/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
208 |
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. | 1/3/2012 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
209 |
The Perils of Drunk Walking | We know it's terribly dangerous to drive drunk. But heading home on foot isn't the solution. | 12/27/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
210 |
How Is a Bad Radio Station Like Our Public-School System? (Encore) | The thrill of customization, via Pandora and a radical new teaching method | 12/20/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
211 |
How American Food Got So Bad | Tyler Cowen points fingers. There's plenty of blame to go around. | 12/13/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
212 |
Weird Recycling | Clever ways to not waste our waste. | 12/2/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
213 |
What Makes a Donor Donate? | The science of charity, with economist John List. | 11/29/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
214 |
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. | 11/22/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
215 |
Unnatural Turkeys | Our appetite for breast meat renders our holiday birds unable to reproduce. | 11/16/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
216 |
Boo…Who? | Is booing an act of verbal vandalism—or the last true expression of democracy? | 11/8/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
217 |
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. | 11/1/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
218 |
Misadventures in Baby-Making | We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences. | 10/25/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
219 |
Those Cheating Teachers! | High-stakes testing has produced some rotten apples. But they can be caught. | 10/18/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
220 |
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? | 10/9/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
221 |
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. | 10/4/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
222 |
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? | 9/27/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
223 |
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? | 9/14/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
224 |
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. | 8/31/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
225 |
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. | 8/16/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
226 |
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? | 8/3/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
227 |
Mouse in the Salad | In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important. | 7/20/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
228 |
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. | 7/6/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
229 |
Live From St. Paul! | Freakonomics Radio hits the road, and plays some Quiz Bowl | 6/22/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
230 |
Things Our Fathers Gave Us | What did Levitt and Dubner learn as kids from their dads? | 6/8/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
231 |
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. | 5/25/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
232 |
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. | 5/11/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
233 |
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. | 4/27/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
234 |
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. | 4/13/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
235 |
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. | 4/6/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
236 |
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 -- t | 3/30/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
237 |
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? | 3/23/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
238 |
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. | 3/16/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
239 |
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? | 3/9/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
240 |
The Power of Poop | Since the beginning of civilization, we’ve thought that human waste was worthless and dangerous. What if we were wrong? | 3/2/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
241 |
Millionaires vs. Billionaires | Five things you don’t know about the NFL labor standoff | 2/23/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
242 |
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? | 2/16/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
243 |
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 | 2/9/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
244 |
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. | 2/2/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
245 |
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" | 1/26/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
246 |
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? | 1/19/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
247 |
Trashed | How economics -- and emotion -- have turned our garbage into such a mess | 1/12/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
248 |
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? | 1/5/2011 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
249 |
You Say Repugnant, I Say … Let's Do It! | What happens when the most disturbing ideas are also the best? | 12/29/2010 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
250 |
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? | 12/15/2010 | Free | View In iTunes |
| 250 Items |
Customer Reviews
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.
Cherry picked "Science"
I just listened to episode two about the obesity epidemic. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that obesity is unhealthy but this podcast chose to "teach the controversy" as if there is one. The "science" falls in the same category as the anthropogenic global warming deniers and the 9-11 truthers. The conclusion is that obesity is not as bad as they say, so go on and have another cheeseburger. That attitude about such a serious subject makes every subsequent podcast suspect. What's next, the amazing efficacy of homeopathy?
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".


Discover and share
new apps.
Follow us on @AppStore.
Discover and share new music, movies, TV, books, and more.
Follow us @iTunes and discover
new iTunes Radio Stations
and the music we love.