Where have all the hitchhikers gone? That’s the question we ask in our latest podcast. Anyone who has been around long enough can observe that hitchhiking numbers have plummeted. So Freakonomics Radio set out to find the numbers on thumbers and found … well, not much. Apparently hitchhiking never qualified as an important-enough mode of the transportation sector to generate heavy-duty empirical research.
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Tagged with “freakonomics”
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Freakonomics » Where Have All the Hitchhikers Gone? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
Tagged with freakonomics hitchhiking economics
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Freakonomics » Freakonomics Radio, Hour-long Episode 4: “The Folly of Prediction”
Tagged with freakonomics-radio prediction-markets predictions
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Freakonomics » Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?
Conspicuous conservation is the theme of our latest podcast, called “Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?” It centers around a paper by Alison and Steve Sexton, a pair of Ph.D. economics candidates (who happen to be twins, and who happen to have economist parents), called “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Bona Fides.”
Includes an appearance by Tim Harford.
Tagged with cars consumption environment freakonomics-radio toyota tim harford
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Freakonomics Radio, Episode 3: The Suicide Paradox
There are more than twice as many suicides in the U.S. each year as there are murders. And yet the vast majority of them aren’t discussed at all. Unlike homicide, which is considered a fracturing of our social contract, suicide is considered a shameful problem whose victims — and solutions – are rarely the focus of wide debate.
Tagged with suicide economics freakonomics psychology culture
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The Power of Poop | Freakonomics Radio
From http://freakonomicsradio.com/the-power-of-poop.html
"Medical breakthroughs often follow a strange path. The search for a cure can be advanced when one curious researcher stumbles across mold-covered dishes in the sink, for instance. Thousands of deaths in maternity wards can be forestalled when a single doctor wonders if his colleagues should disinfect their hands before making a delivery. Some advances will inevitably be achieved by people who look in the dark corners where others have not.
One of those dark corners is the stuff that we prefer to flush down the toilet. Human feces, as it turns out, may represent a new frontier for science. New research is unlocking the relationship between our intestinal bacteria and the factors that make us sick — and well.
In this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Thomas Borody, whose research and clinical work at the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia shows that fecal matter may be helpful in treating disease, especially through (hold your nose) “fecal transplants.” And we’ll talk with Alex Khoruts at the University of Minnesota, who sees the potential therapies coming from poop as “the beginning of (a) new science … a wide-open new frontier.”"
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroenterology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy
Tagged with medicine science health freakonomics
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Stephen J. Dubner | SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner spent more than two years on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. The book offered surprising insights into hot-button issues like cheating, crime, parenting, and class consciousness, in a compelling and readable style. Now, with SuperFreakonomics, the "rogue economist” and the award-winning journalist delve into the hidden agendas of all kinds of individuals, and the incentives that drive them. Featuring: Stephen J. Dubner is an author and journalist, formerly a writer and editor for The New York Times Magazine. The author’s Freakonomics blog on the New York Times website receives more than 1 million unique hits each month.