Freakonomics Radio
A Trump executive order is giving retail investors more access to private markets. Is that a golden opportunity — or fool’s gold?
- SOURCES:
- Elisabeth de Fontenay, professor of law at Duke University.
- Steven Kaplan, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago.
- RESOURCES:
- “Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors,” (The White House, 2025).
- “The (Heterogeneous) Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts,” by Steven J. Davis, John Haltiwanger, Kyle Handley, Ben Lipsius, Josh Lerner, and Javier Miranda (Management Science, 2025).
- “Risk-Adjusted Returns of Private Equity Funds: A New Approach,” by Arthur G. Korteweg and Stefan Nagel (The Review of Financial Studies, 2025).
- “The Effects of Management Buyouts on Operating Performance and Value,” by Steven Kaplan (Journal of Financial Economics, 1989).
- EXTRAS:
- “The Biden Policy That Trump Hasn’t Touched,” by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
- “Should Companies Be Owned by Their Workers?” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
- “Do You Know Who Owns Your Vet?” by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
- “Are Private Equity Firms Plundering the U.S. Economy?” by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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…
What if Your Company Had No Rules?
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings came to believe that corporate rules can kill creativity and innovation. In this latest edition of the Freakonomics Radio Book Club, guest host Maria Konnikova talks to Hastings about his new…
431. Why Can’t Schools Get What the N.F.L. Has?
Thanks to daily Covid testing and regimented protocols, the new football season is underway. Meanwhile, most teachers, students, and parents are essentially waiting for the storm to pass. And school isn’t even a contact sport…
