Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. Where does all this sludge come from — and how much is it costing us? (Part one of a two-part series.)
- SOURCES:
- Benjamin Handel, professor of economics at UC Berkeley.
- Neale Mahoney, professor of economics at Stanford University.
- Richard Thaler, professor of economics at The University of Chicago.
- RESOURCES:
- “Selling Subscriptions,” by Liran Einav, Ben Klopack, and Neale Mahoney (Stanford University, 2023).
- “The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok,” by Cory Doctorow (WIRED, 2023).
- “Dominated Options in Health Insurance Plans,” by Chenyuan Liu and Justin Sydnor (American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2022).
- Nudge (The Final Edition), by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (2021).
- “Frictions or Mental Gaps: What’s Behind the Information We (Don’t) Use and When Do We Care?” by Benjamin Handel and Joshua Schwartzstein (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2018).
- “Adverse Selection and Switching Costs in Health Insurance Markets: When Nudging Hurts,” by Benjamin Handel (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011).
- EXTRAS:
- “People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard. (Update)” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- “All You Need is Nudge,” by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
- “How to Fix the Hot Mess of U.S. Healthcare,” by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
- “Should We Really Behave Like Economists Say We Do?” by Freakonomics Radio (2015).

Why the Left Had to Steal the Right’s Dark-Money Playbook
The sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent years studying crack dealers, sex workers, and the offspring of billionaires. Then he wandered into an even stranger world: social media. He spent the past five years at Facebook and…
437. Many Businesses Thought They Were Insured for a Pandemic. They Weren’t.
A fine reading of most policies for “business interruption” reveals that viral outbreaks aren’t covered. Some legislators are demanding that insurance firms pay up anyway. Is it time to rethink insurance entirely?
436. Forget Everything You Know About Your Dog
As beloved and familiar as they are, we rarely stop to consider life from the dog’s point of view. That stops now. In this latest installment of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, we discuss Inside…
435. Why Are Cities (Still) So Expensive?
It isn’t just supply and demand. We look at the complicated history and skewed incentives that make “affordable housing” more punch line than reality in cities from New York and San Francisco to Flint, Michigan…
434. Is New York City Over?
The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back to the bad old 1970s.…
“Don’t Neglect the Thing That Makes You Weird” | People I (Mostly) Admire: Ken Jennings
It was only in his late twenties that America’s favorite brainiac began to seriously embrace his love of trivia. Now he holds the “Greatest of All Time” title on Jeopardy! Steve Levitt digs into how…
433. How Are Psychedelics and Other Party Drugs Changing Psychiatry?
Three leading researchers from the Mount Sinai Health System discuss how ketamine, cannabis, and ecstasy are being used (or studied) to treat everything from severe depression to addiction to PTSD. We discuss the upsides, downsides,…
432. When Your Safety Becomes My Danger
The families of U.S. troops killed and wounded in Afghanistan are suing several companies that did reconstruction there. Why? These companies, they say, paid the Taliban protection money, which gave them the funding — and…
“One Does Not Know Where an Insight Will Come From” | People I (Mostly) Admire: Kerwin Charles
The dean of Yale’s School of Management grew up in a small village in Guyana. During his unlikely journey, he has researched video-gaming habits, communicable disease, and why so many African-Americans haven’t had the kind…
Does Anyone Really Know What Socialism Is? (Ep. 408 Rebroadcast)
Trump says it would destroy us. Biden needs the voters who support it (especially the Bernie voters). The majority of millennials would like it to replace capitalism. But what is “it”? We bring in the…