Stephen Dubner, live on stage, mixes it up with outbound mayor London Breed, and asks economists whether A.I. can be “human-centered” and if Tang is a gateway drug.
- SOURCES:
- London Breed, former mayor of San Francisco.
- Erik Brynjolfsson, professor of economics at Stanford University
- Koleman Strumpf, professor of economics at Wake Forest University
- RESOURCES:
- “SF crime rate at lowest point in more than 20 years, mayor says,” by George Kelly (The San Francisco Standard, 2025)
- “How the Trump Whale and Prediction Markets Beat the Pollsters in 2024,” by Niall Ferguson and Manny Rincon-Cruz (Wall StreetJournal, 2024)
- “Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation,” by Aidan Toner-Rodgers (MIT Department of Economics, 2024)
- EXTRAS:
- “Why Are Cities (Still) So Expensive?” by Freakonomics Radio (2020)
606. How to Predict the Presidency
Are betting markets more accurate than polls? What kind of chaos would a second Trump term bring? And is U.S. democracy really in danger, or just “sputtering on”? (Part two of a two-part series.) …
Has the U.S. Presidency Become a Dictatorship? (Update)
Sure, we all pay lip service to the Madisonian system of checks and balances. But presidents have been steadily expanding the reach of the job. With an election around the corner, we updated our 2016…
605. What Do People Do All Day?
Sixty percent of the jobs that Americans do today didn’t exist in 1940. What happens as our labor becomes more technical and less physical? And what kinds of jobs will exist in the future? …
EXTRA: Roland Fryer Refuses to Lie to Black America (Update)
His research on police brutality and school incentives won him acclaim, but also enemies. He was suspended for two years by Harvard, during which time he took a hard look at corporate diversity programs. As…
604. Did the N.F.L. Solve Diversity Hiring? (Part 2)
What happened when the Rooney Rule made its way from pro football to corporate America? Some progress, some backsliding, and a lot of controversy. (Second in a two-part series.) SOURCES: Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, president and…
603. Did the N.F.L. Solve Diversity Hiring? (Part 1)
The biggest sports league in history had a problem: While most of its players were Black, almost none of its head coaches were. So the N.F.L. launched a hiring policy called the Rooney Rule. In…
EXTRA: In Praise of Maintenance (Update)
We revisit an episode from 2016 that asks: Has our culture’s obsession with innovation led us to neglect the fact that things also need to be taken care of? SOURCES: Martin Casado, general partner…
602. Is Screen Time as Poisonous as We Think?
Young people have been reporting a sharp rise in anxiety and depression. This maps neatly onto the global rise of the smartphone. Some researchers are convinced that one is causing the other. But how strong…
601. Multitasking Doesn’t Work. So Why Do We Keep Trying?
Only a tiny number of “supertaskers” are capable of doing two things at once. The rest of us are just making ourselves miserable, and less productive. How can we put the — hang on a…
What Is the Future of College — and Does It Have Room for Men? (Update)
Educators and economists tell us all the reasons college enrollment has been dropping, especially for men, and how to stop the bleeding. (Part 3 of our series from 2022, “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”)…