Transcript of 449. How to Fix the Incentives in Cancer Research
For all the progress made in fighting cancer, it still kills 10 million people a year, and some types remain especially hard to detect and treat. Pancreatic cancer, for instance, is nearly always fatal. A new clinical-trial platform could change that by aligning institutions that typically compete against one another.
- 44:15
- 2K views
- Published over 4 years ago
Transcript of 447. How Much Do We Really Care About Children?
They can’t vote or hire lobbyists. The policies we create to help them aren’t always so helpful. Consider the car seat: parents hate it, the safety data are unconvincing, and new evidence suggests an unintended consequence that is as anti-child as it gets.
- 50:58
- 1.9K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of 446. “We Get All Our Great Stuff from Europe — Including Witch Hunting.”
We’ve collected some of our favorite moments from People I (Mostly) Admire, the latest show from the Freakonomics Radio Network. Host Steve Levitt seeks advice from scientists and inventors, memory wizards and basketball champions — even his fellow economists. He also asks about quitting, witch trials, and whether we need a Manhattan Project for climate change.
- 42:00
- 2K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of Trust Me (Ep. 266 Rebroadcast)
Societies where people trust one another are healthier and wealthier. In the U.S. (and the U.K. and elsewhere), social trust has been falling for decades — in part because our populations are more diverse. What can we do to fix it?
- 31:45
- 1.8K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of 445. Why Do We Seek Comfort in the Familiar?
In this episode of No Stupid Questions — a Freakonomics Radio Network show launched earlier this year — Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth debate why we watch, read, and eat familiar things during a crisis, and if it might in fact be better to try new things instead. Also: is a little knowledge truly as dangerous as they say?
- 36:56
- 2K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of 444. How Do You Cure a Compassion Crisis?
Patients in the U.S. healthcare system often feel they’re treated with a lack of empathy. Doctors and nurses have tragically high levels of burnout. Could fixing the first problem solve the second? And does the rest of society need more compassion too?
- 48:50
- 1.7K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of PLAYBACK (2015): Could the Next Brooklyn Be ... Las Vegas?!
Tony Hsieh, the longtime C.E.O. of Zappos, was an iconoclast and a dreamer. Five years ago, we sat down with him around a desert campfire to talk about those dreams. Hsieh died recently from injuries sustained in a house fire; he was 46.
- 57:02
- 1.9K views
- Published almost 5 years ago
Transcript of “Don’t Neglect the Thing That Makes You Weird” | People I (Mostly) Admire: Ken Jennings
It was only in his late twenties that America’s favorite brainiac began to seriously embrace his love of trivia. Now he holds the “Greatest of All Time” title on Jeopardy! Steve Levitt digs into how he trained for the show, what it means to have a "geographic memory," and why we lie to our children.
- 50:37
- 2.4K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of 433. How Are Psychedelics and Other Party Drugs Changing Psychiatry?
Three leading researchers from the Mount Sinai Health System discuss how ketamine, cannabis, and ecstasy are being used (or studied) to treat everything from severe depression to addiction to PTSD. We discuss the upsides, downsides, and regulatory puzzles.
- 56:49
- 1.6K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of 432. When Your Safety Becomes My Danger
The families of U.S. troops killed and wounded in Afghanistan are suing several companies that did reconstruction there. Why? These companies, they say, paid the Taliban protection money, which gave them the funding — and opportunity — to attack U.S. soldiers instead. A look at the messy, complicated, and heart-breaking tradeoffs of conflict-zone economies.
- 50:25
- 2K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of Does Anyone Really Know What Socialism Is? (Ep. 408 Rebroadcast)
Trump says it would destroy us. Biden needs the voters who support it (especially the Bernie voters). The majority of millennials would like it to replace capitalism. But what is “it”? We bring in the economists to sort things out and tell us what the U.S. can learn from the good (and bad) experiences of other (supposedly) socialist countries.
- 46:52
- 1.6K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of "I Started Crying When I Realized How Beautiful the Universe Is” | People I (Mostly) Admire Ep. 2: Mayim Bialik
She’s best known for playing neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, but the award-winning actress has a rich life outside of her acting career, as a teacher, mother — and a real-life neuroscientist. Steve Levitt tries to learn more about this one-time academic and Hollywood non-conformist, who is both very similar to him and also quite his opposite. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.
- 49:19
- 2K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of America’s Hidden Duopoly (Ep. 356 Rebroadcast)
We all know our political system is “broken” — but what if that’s not true? Some say the Republicans and Democrats constitute a wildly successful industry that has colluded to kill off competition, stifle reform, and drive the country apart. So what are you going to do about it? See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.
- 56:09
- 1.6K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of Introducing “People I (Mostly) Admire"
A new interview show with host Steve Levitt. Today he speaks with the Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker. By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Levitt tries to understand why.
- 45:59
- 2.5K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of The Economics of Sports Gambling (Ep. 388 Rebroadcast)
What happens when tens of millions of fantasy-sports players are suddenly able to bet real money on real games? We’re about to find out. A recent Supreme Court decision has cleared the way to bring an estimated $300 billion in black-market sports betting into the light. We sort out the winners and losers.
- 57:58
- 2K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War (Ep. 386 Rebroadcast)
Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the U.S. government’s battle for agricultural abundance against the U.S.S.R. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish — and we are still living with the consequences.
- 48:34
- 2K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Transcript of 427. The Pros and Cons of Reparations
Most Americans agree that racial discrimination has been, and remains, a big problem. But that is where the agreement ends.
- 44:26
- 1.8K views
- Published about 5 years ago
Discover the hidden side of everything with Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything. Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers. The entire archive, going back to 2010, is available on the Stitcher podcast app and at freakonomics.com.