🍋Freakonomics Radio

A journalist explores the hidden side of everyday things through interviews with economists and other researchers. Grew out of a best-selling book; on air since 2010.

A journalist asks economists about incentives: why people do what they do when nobody is making them. It grew out of a famous book that I read at university and have not reopened.

Occasional, and then dropped. I picked it up on Saturday 5 April, on the afternoon the desk came up three floors, because 📕 Thinking, Fast and Slow had reached the chapters on losses and I wanted somebody to read them to me. It did that job for about two months. By July I was not listening to anything, and in August I looked at the queue of seventeen unplayed episodes and unsubscribed without a pang.

What it is good at: one question, several researchers, a clear line through. What wore thin for me: the promise that the answer will be surprising. After a year of statistics I have become suspicious of surprising.

• Kept two episodes' worth of notes, below.
• Would go back for a particular guest. Would not go back for the feed.

Status: Occasional. Dropped in the summer.