How Is a Colonoscopy Like a Boring Soccer Match?
A reader named Florian Kern writes from Germany: “I was listening the other day to your very interesting podcast on memory and pain. Yesterday, then, I watched the incredibly boring soccer game between Germany and Kazakhstan.” Read More »
Calling All Predictors to a New Forecasting Tournament
One of the hour-long Freakonomics Radio shows we’re currently producing is about prediction — the science behind it, the human need for it, the folly it often produces.
One person you’ll likely hear from in the program is Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at Penn and author of the deservedly well-regarded book Expert Political Judgment. It is a rigorous romp through the minefield of expert prediction, and essentially argues that the words “expert” and “prediction” should almost never occupy the same sentence. Read More »
Women Stage a Funeral Comeback
Slate reports that women are making a comeback in the funeral industry: “Today 57 percent of U.S. mortuary school graduates are women, up from 5 percent in 1970. Though this influx is stereotype bashing, it’s also something of a homecoming.” Read More »
How to Become a Superhero (Or…Why I Would Never Donate to a Major Charity)
A few years ago there was a story in the N.Y. Post about a boy who had been locked in a closet almost from the time he was born until he was about fifteen years old. I might not have the exact details right. His parents fed him food but never let him out of the closet. So he never grew properly and he was only about 80 pounds or maybe less. The authorities took him away and put him in some sort of home for abused kids. His parents were arrested and are presumably now in jail. Read More »
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 