Freakonomics Radio

It’s hard to know whether the benefits of hiring a celebrity are worth the risk. We dig into one gruesome story of an endorsement gone wrong, and find a surprising result.   SOURCES: John Cawley , professor of economics at Cornell University. Elizabeth (Zab) Johnson , executive director and senior fellow with the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. Alvin Roth , profe...

Broadway operates on a winner-take-most business model. A runaway hit like Stereophonic — which just won five Tony Awards — will create a few big winners. But even the stars of the show will have to go elsewhere to make real money. (Part two of a two-part series .)   SOURCES: David Adjmi , author and playwright. Sonia Friedman , theater producer and founder of Sonia Friedman Productions. John John...

The Berlin dance mecca Berghain is known for its eight-hour line and inscrutable door policy. PJ Vogt, host of the podcast Search Engine , joins us to crack the code. It has to do with Cold War rivalries, German tax law, and one very talented bouncer.   SOURCES: Lutz Leichsenring , executive board member of Clubcommission Berlin and co-founder of VibeLab. PJ Vogt , reporter, writer, and host of th...

Hit by Covid, runaway costs, and a zillion streams of competition, serious theater is in serious trouble. A new hit play called Stereophonic — the most Tony-nominated play in history — has something to say about that. We speak with the people who make it happen every night. (Part one of a two-part series .)   SOURCES: David Adjmi , author and playwright. Sonia Friedman , theater producer and found...

Every December, a British man named Tom Whitwell publishes a list of 52 things he’s learned that year. These fascinating facts reveal the spectrum of human behavior, from fraud and hypocrisy to Whitwell’s steadfast belief in progress. Should we also believe?   SOURCES: Tom Whitwell , managing consultant at Magnetic.   RESOURCES: " Supercentenarian and Remarkable Age Records Exhibit Patterns Indica...

An update of our 2020 series, in which we spoke with physicians, researchers, and addicts about the root causes of the crisis — and the tension between abstinence and harm reduction.   SOURCES: Gail D’Onofrio , professor and chair of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and chief of emergency services at Yale-New Haven Health. Keith Humphreys , professor of psychiatry and behavioral s...

Thanks to legal settlements with drug makers and distributors, states have plenty of money to boost prevention and treatment. Will it work? (Part two of a two-part series .)   SOURCES: Keith Humphreys , professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. Stephen Loyd , chief medical officer of Cedar Recovery and chair of the Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council. Christine Minhee...

Most epidemics flare up, do their damage, and fade away. This one has been raging for almost 30 years. To find out why, it’s time to ask some uncomfortable questions. (Part one of a two-part series .)   SOURCES: David Cutler , professor of economics at Harvard University. Travis Donahoe , professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh. Keith Humphreys , professor of psyc...

Presenting two stories from The Economics of Everyday Things: Why does it seem like every car is black, white, or gray these days? And: How self-storage took over America.   SOURCES: Tom Crockett, classic car enthusiast. Zachary Dickens , executive vice president and chief investment officer of Extra Space Storage. Mark Gutjahr , global head of design at BASF. Kara Kolodziej, self-storage unit ten...

The economist and social critic Glenn Loury has led a remarkably turbulent life, both professionally and personally. In a new memoir, he has chosen to reveal just about everything. Why?   SOURCE: Glenn Loury , professor of economics at Brown University and host of The Glenn Show .   RESOURCES: Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative , by Glenn Loury (2024). " Amy Wax – The DEI Witch H...

The employee ownership movement is growing, and one of its biggest champions is also a private equity heavyweight. Is this meaningful change, or just window dressing?   SOURCES: Marjorie Kelly , distinguished senior fellow at The Democracy Collaborative. Corey Rosen , founder and senior staff member of the National Center for Employee Ownership. Pete Stavros , co-head of Global Private Equity at K...

From politics and economics to psychology and the arts, many of the modern ideas we take for granted emerged a century ago from a single European capital. In this episode of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, the historian Richard Cockett explores all those ideas — and how the arrival of fascism can ruin in a few years what took generations to build.   SOURCE: Richard Cockett , author and senior ed...

Five years ago, we published an episode about the boom in home DNA testing kits, focusing on the high-flying firm 23andMe and its C.E.O. Anne Wojcicki. Their flight has been extremely bumpy since then. This update includes an additional interview with the Wall Street Journal reporter who has been investigating the firm’s collapse.   SOURCES: Rolfe Winkler , reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Ann...

Justin Trudeau, facing record-low approval numbers, is doubling down on his progressive agenda. But he is so upbeat (and Canada-polite) that it’s easy to miss just how radical his vision is. Can he make it work?   SOURCE: Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada.   RESOURCES: 2024 Canadian Federal Budget . " Canada to Set First-Ever Cap on Temporary Residents ," by Nadine Yousif ( BBC News, 2023)...

So you want to help people? That’s great — but beware the law of unintended consequences. Three stories from the modern workplace.    SOURCES: Joshua Angrist , professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Zoe Cullen , professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Marina Gertsberg , senior lecturer in finance at the University of Melbourne.   RESOURCES: "...

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman — a Nobel laureate and the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow — recently died at age 90. Along with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he changed how we all think about decision-making. The journalist Michael Lewis told the Kahneman-Tversky story in a 2016 book called The Undoing Project. In this episode, Lewis explains why they had such a profound influence.   SOURCE:...

People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to change.   SOURCES: Nick Bloom , professor of economics at Stanford University. Katie Johnson , freelance data and analytics coach. Kelly Shue , professor of finance at the Yale University School of Management. Steve Tadelis...

Fareed Zakaria says yes. But it’s not just political revolution — it’s economic, technological, even emotional. He doesn’t offer easy solutions but he does offer some hope.   SOURCES: Fareed Zakaria , journalist and author.   RESOURCES: Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present , by Fareed Zakaria (2024). " The Ultimate Election Year: All the Elections Around the World in...

The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts. We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration , we called some Freakonomics Radio listeners and quizzed them.   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez , professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.   RESOURCES: The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Ne...

As the U.S. tries to fix its messy immigration system, our neighbor to the north is scooping up more talented newcomers every year. Are the Canadians stealing America’s bacon? (Part three of a three-part series .)   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez , professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. William Kerr , professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. David Leonh...

The U.S. immigration system is a massively complicated machine, with a lot of worn-out parts. How to fix it? Step one: Get hold of some actual facts and evidence. (We did this step for you.) (Part two of a three-part series .)   SOURCES: Zeke Hernandez , professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. David Leonhardt , senior writer at the New York Times . Sindhu Mahadevan , cre...

She arrived in the U.S. as an 11-year-old refugee, then rose to become Secretary of State. Her views on immigration, nationalism, and borders, from this 2015 interview, are almost strangely appropriate to the present moment.    SOURCE: Madeleine Albright , U.S. Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.   RESOURCES: " Madeleine Albright, First...

How did a nation of immigrants come to hate immigration? We start at the beginning, sort through the evidence, and explain why your grandfather was lying about Ellis Island. (Part one of a three-part series .)   SOURCES: Leah Boustan , professor of economics at Princeton University. Zeke Hernandez , professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Roger Nam , professor of Hebrew...

Economists have discovered an odd phenomenon: many people who use social media (even you, maybe?) wish it didn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean they can escape.   SOURCES: Leonardo Bursztyn , professor of economics at the University of Chicago. Benjamin Handel , professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.   RESOURCES: " When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of...

In ancient Rome, it was bread and circuses. Today, it’s a World Cup, an Olympics, and a new Saudi-backed golf league that’s challenging the PGA Tour. Can a sporting event really repair a country’s reputation — or will it trigger the dreaded Streisand Effect? Also: why the major U.S. sports leagues are warming up to the idea of foreign investment.   SOURCES: Jodi Balsam , professor of clinical law...