Freakonomics Radio Network’s 2022 Staff Picks
Freakonomics
by Freakonomics Radio Network Staff
1y ago
To celebrate a wonderful year of production on all of the shows in our network, we asked our staff to choose their favorite episode of the year. Lyric Bowditch, Production Associate “Why Do Doctors Have to Play Defense?” from Freakonomics, M.D. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, my feeds were flooded with content about it. This episode cut through the noise by offering a really important (and distinctly Freakonomical) perspective on the issue that I hadn’t considered or encountered anywhere else. It was also the first time I heard of “defensive medicine” — so interesting! Neal Car ..read more
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The Annual Freakonomics Kentucky Derby Predictions
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt
2y ago
  (Photo: Florian Christoph) Almost a decade of blogging had worn me down, but after some time off, I’m ready to jump back in the saddle. I can’t think of a better way than by embarrassing myself with the annual Kentucky Derby predictions! I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a Kentucky Derby. It’s not that there is some particular horse that I have an emotional attachment to it.  It is not that there is a particularly compelling story line going into this year’s race. Nope.  The reason is that I am a gambler, and unlike most years, the numbers coming out ..read more
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Read an Early Excerpt from When to Rob a Bank
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
 Pre-order your copy today! In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Freakonomics comes this curated collection from the most readable economics blog in the universe. When Freakonomics was first published, its authors, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, started a blog — and they’ve kept it up. The writing is more casual, more personal, even more outlandish than in their books. In When to Rob a Bank, they ask a host of typically off-center questions: Why don’t flight attendants get tipped? If you were a terrorist, how would you attack? And why does KFC ..read more
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Religiosity: Good for Society, Bad for Innovation?
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
In a new working paper, Roland Benabou, Davide Ticchi, and Andrea Vindigni  follow up their earlier paper which found “a robust negative association between religiosity and patents per capita.” Their new paper, “Religion and Innovation” (abstract; PDF), they look at religiosity on the individual level, “examining the relationship between religiosity and a broad set of pro- or anti-innovation attitudes.” What do they find? Across the fifty-two estimated specifications, greater religiosity is almost uniformly and very significantly associated to less favorable views of innovation. They ar ..read more
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Should I Work for an “Evil” Company?
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
A reader writes in with a question that is hard to answer. I thought it’d be best to put the question to you, our readers; hopefully you can help him find his way to a good decision. Hello: I am an academic plant geneticists, who has worked at [a renowned academic institution] for the last five years. I’ve pretty much decided I want to leave academia but remain in science. The obvious direction to then go into is biotech and I think I could be a good fit for it. There are many options for me in biotech and I’ve applied for many jobs. The company that has been the most responsive to me is Mons ..read more
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A Would-Be Freakonomist in Kyrgyzstan Needs Your Help
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
From a reader named John Keaney: I just finished your book Think Like a Freak, and I’m trying to use the lessons in the book while I’m in Kyrgyzstan. I’m an undergraduate at University of South Carolina, and I’ve decided to pursue my very first, independent research project while I’m living in Kyrgyzstan on the effects of Kyrgyz accession to the Eurasian Economic Union on the Kyrgyz informal economy and, ultimately, Kyrgyzstan’s political stability. I’m almost ready to go out to the bazaars and do my data collection, but I’ve been trying to pick the best possible questions to ask the people w ..read more
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What Happens When Poor Pregnant Women Are Given Medicaid Coverage?
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
We’ll be putting out a new Freakonomics Radio episode later this week on the use of RCTs (randomized controlled trials) in healthcare delivery. It features the work of the MIT economist Amy Finkelstein and her colleagues at J-PAL, and it includes their analysis of what happened when Oregon expanded its Medicaid coverage. If you want to get a head start on this topic, consider a new working paper (gated) called “Does Medicaid Coverage for Pregnant Women Affect Prenatal Health Behaviors?” The authors are Dhaval M. Dave, Robert Kaestner, and George L. Wehby. They didn’t use an RCT, but they did w ..read more
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New Miracle Sleep Aid Discovered!
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
From a podcast listener named Jessica Graham in Sydney, Australia: My name is Jess and for most of my adult life I have been afflicted by various forms of sleeplessness. Would I call it insomnia? I don’t know if it could be classified as clinical insomnia, but all I can say is up until a few months ago I did dread that point in the night where you turn off the light (where normal people drop off to sleep within a matter of minutes) and where, I, on the other hand, would spend many hours tossing and turning as my brain would come up with a thousand and one things to ruminate over instead of jo ..read more
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Great Companies Needed
Freakonomics
by Steven D. Levitt
2y ago
My good friend and colleague John List has very ambitious summer plans. We’ve both believed for a long time that the combination of creative economic thinking and randomized experiments has the potential to revolutionize business and the non-profit sector. John and I have worked to foment that revolution through both  academic partnerships with firms as well as a project of John’s called the Science of Philanthropy Initiative (SPI), whose mission is “evidence-based research on charitable giving.” This summer, John is committed to taking that mission to a whole new level with the first ann ..read more
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Lend Your Voice to Freakonomics Radio
Freakonomics
by Stephen J. Dubner
2y ago
We’re working on an episode about behavior change — essentially, how to get yourself to do the things you should be doing but often don’t. It revolves around the fascinating research of Katy Milkman at Penn. For example, she and her colleagues have noted a “Fresh Start Effect”: The popularity of New Year’s resolutions suggests that people are more likely to tackle their goals immediately following salient temporal landmarks. … We propose that these landmarks demarcate the passage of time, creating many new mental accounting periods each year, which relegate past imperfections to a previous pe ..read more
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