Freakonomics Radio: Live From St. Paul!
Earlier this month, Freakonomics Radio traveled to St. Paul, Minn., for our first ever live event, at the legendary Fitzgerald Theater. Since Steve Levitt grew up in the Twin Cities, we went a little “this is your life” on him — including his time as a Quiz Bowl captain during high school at St. Paul Academy.
Our latest podcast is a live recording from that event. (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the embedded media player, or read the transcript here.) You’ll hear from Levitt, his sister Linda (also a Quiz Bowl captain in her day) and their father, Michael Levitt, a leading medical researcher in intestinal gas who’s known in some quarters as “the King of Farts.” Dr. Levitt was also responsible for drilling his kids in Quiz Bowl questions, day and night Read More »
The Substitution Effect: How Reality TV Killed the Soap Opera
The Wall Street Journal has a story about all the long-running soap operas that are going off the air. A cohort of die-hard fans is protesting the move, arguing that the shows are more popular than their ratings suggest, and even threatening to sue ABC’s parent company Disney for causing them “mental distress” by canceling the shows. But the fact remains that their viewership is down, and sponsors have been pulling out, making the shows unprofitable for the television stations even in non-prime-time slots. One might think it is because of rising female labor-force participation–but the increase has been quite slow for the past 20 years. The reason is competition for viewers with a new, cheaper product—“reality TV.”
Apparently soaps and reality shows attract similar viewers—they appear to be substitutes for the average consumer. As with any new product that is hot, its substitutes suffer when it enters the market. As the World Turns and Guiding Light have given way to such pathetic substitutes as The Apprentice and Let’s Make a Deal.
The Fed’s Wishful (And Wrong) Thinking About Unemployment
No one seems to have noticed that the Fed’s latest unemployment projections just don’t make sense. While most economists are concerned about a jobless recovery, the Fed is forecasting lots of jobs, but little recovery. Yes, today’s projections suggest only tepid output growth in the next few years. And given this, it’s hard to see how we will make much of a dent in the unemployment rate. Yet the Fed believes otherwise, cheerfully (wishfully?) forecasting declining unemployment. Read More »
A Kid Who Can Handle His Putter — and, More Important, Hyperbolic Discounting
It’s always good to see someone willing to pass up a certain short-term gain in favor of a potential long-term gain that’s much more significant. In this case it’s a teenage golfer — with a big assist from his father. From the Washington Post:
Read More »How much is your high school athletic career worth?
That is the question an Anne Arundel County teenager had to decide last month after winning $5,000 in a putting contest at a charity golf outing.
However, before 15-year-old Garrett Sauls, a freshman at South River High School, could think about a spending spree — perhaps a new putter, some wedges and new tennis shoes — his father realized that accepting the money might present a problem.
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 