Freakonomics Radio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clever ways to not waste our waste.

The science of charity, with economist John List.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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