Freakonomics Radio

We know that summertime brings far too many fatal accidents. But you may be surprised if you dig into the numbers.

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What's a college degree really worth these days?

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Do host cities really get the benefits their boosters promise, or are they just engaging in some fiscal gymnastics?

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What happens to your reputation when you're no longer around to defend it?

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If we want our kids to thrive in school, maybe we should just pay them.

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Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about junk food, insurance, and how to make an economist happy.

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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?

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How using peer pressure -- and good, old-fashioned shame -- can push people to do the right thing.

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Paying workers as little as possible seems smart -- unless you can make more money by paying them more.

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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.

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The NBA’s superstars are suddenly sporting Urkel glasses -- but is it more than a fashion statement?

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How American food so got bad -- and why it's getting so much better.

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Sure, we all dream of leaving the office forever. But what if it's bad for your health?

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In a world where nearly everything is for sale, is it always okay to buy what isn’t yours?

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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?

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What do you do when smart people keep making stupid mistakes? And: are we a nation of financial illiterates?

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A new study says that yes, it is -- but try telling that to the United Nations officials who are preaching sustainability practices.

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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?

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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?

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How much does the President of the United States really matter? And: where did all the hitchhikers go? A pair of "attribution errors."

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Women hold fewer than one in 10 patents. Why? And what are we missing out on?

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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”?

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Isn’t it time to admit that the U.S. economy doesn’t have a commander in chief?

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Do more expensive wines taste better? And: what does one little rodent in a salad say about a restaurant’s future?

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Measuring workplace morale -- and how to game the sick-day system.

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The left and the right blame each other for pretty much everything, including slanted media coverage. Can they both be right?

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A look at some non-obvious ways to lose weight.

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A commitment device forces you to be the person you really want to be. What could possibly go wrong?

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A football cheat sheet to help you sound like the smartest person at the party.

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Education is the surest solution to a lot of problems. Except when it’s not.

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We all know the answer is yes. But the data -- and Rudy Giuliani -- say no.

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Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about certifying politicians, irrational fears, and the toughest three words in the English language.

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We know it's terribly dangerous to drive drunk. But heading home on foot isn't the solution.

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The thrill of customization, via Pandora and a radical new teaching method

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Tyler Cowen points fingers. There's plenty of blame to go around.

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Clever ways to not waste our waste.

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The science of charity, with economist John List.

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There’s a nasty secret about hot-button topics like global warming: knowledge is not always power.

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Our appetite for breast meat renders our holiday birds unable to reproduce.

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Is booing an act of verbal vandalism—or the last true expression of democracy?

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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.

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We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences.

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High-stakes testing has produced some rotten apples. But they can be caught.

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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?

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The world is a more peaceful place today that at any time in history -- by a long, long shot.

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You know the saying: a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. To which Freakonomics Radio says … Are you sure?

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Human beings love to predict the future, but we're quite terrible at it. So how about punishing all those bad predictions?

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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.

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Think you know how much parents matter? Think again. Economists crunch the numbers to learn the ROI on child-rearing.

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We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?

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