Thoroughbred auction prices keep setting records. But tracks are closing, gambling revenues are falling, and the sport is increasingly reliant on subsidies. Is ...

The world has changed a good bit since Freakonomics was first published. In this live anniversary episode, Stephen Dubner tells Geoff Bennett of PBS NewsHour ...

How does Kentucky keep itself atop the thoroughbred industry? Is a champion stallion really worth $200,000 per date? And how many hands can one jockey have? ...

For most of human history, horsepower made the world go. Then came the machines. So why are there still seven million horses in America? (Part one of a series, ...

Spotify, Oracle, and Comcast have each recently announced they’re going with co-C.E.O.s. In this 2023 episode, we dig into the research and hear firsthand ...

The U.S. has a physician shortage, created in part by a century-old reform that shut down bad medical schools. But why haven’t we filled the gap? Why are some ...

For the 20th anniversary of Freakonomics, Debbie Millman of Design Matters interviews Stephen Dubner about his upbringing, his writing career, and why ...

Arthur Brooks, an economist and former head of the American Enterprise Institute, believes that there is only one remedy for our political polarization: love. ...

Soccer leagues around the world use a promotion-and-relegation system to reward the best teams and punish the worst. We ask whether American sports fans would ...

The N.F.L. is a powerful cartel with imperial desires. College football is about to undergo a financial reckoning. So maybe they should team up? (Part one of a ...

In this episode we first published in 2021, the political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang argues that different forms of government create different styles of ...

In his new book “Breakneck,” Dan Wang argues that the U.S. has a lot to learn from China. He also says that “no two peoples are more alike.” We have questions. ...

A lot of jobs in the modern economy don’t pay a living wage, and some of those jobs may be wiped out by new technologies. So what’s to be done? We revisit an ...

What does it take to “play 3D chess at 250 miles an hour”? And how far will $12.5 billion of “Big, Beautiful” funding go toward modernizing the F.A.A.? (Part ...

Flying in the U.S. is still exceptionally safe, but the system relies on outdated tech and is under tremendous strain. Six experts tell us how it got this way ...

Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at Notre Dame, says yes. He was a Democrat for years, and has now come to be seen as an “ideological guru” of the Trump ...

Bjørn Andersen has killed hundreds of minke whales. He tells us how he does it, why he does it, and what he thinks would happen if whale-hunting ever stopped. ...

In the final episode of our whale series, we learn about fecal plumes, shipping noise, and why Moby-Dick is still worth reading. (Part 3 of “Everything ...

For years, whale oil was used as lighting fuel, industrial lubricant, and the main ingredient in (yum!) margarine. Whale meat was also on a few menus. But ...

Whaling was, in the words of one scholar, “early capitalism unleashed on the high seas.” How did the U.S. come to dominate the whale market? Why did whale ...