Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?
Remember when keeping up with the Joneses meant buying a diamond-encrusted cigarette case? Such ostentatious displays of wealth during the Gilded Age prompted economist Thorstein Veblen to coin the term conspicuous consumption.
Conspicuous consumption has hardly gone away — what do you think bling is? — but now it’s got a right-minded cousin: conspicuous conservation. Whereas conspicuous consumption is meant to signal how much green you’ve got, conspicuous conservation signals how green you are. Like carrying that “I’m not a plastic bag” bag, or installing solar panels on the side of your house facing the street — even if that happens to be the shady side.
Conspicuous conservation is the theme of our latest podcast, called “Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the embedded media player, or read the transcript here.) It centers around a paper by Alison and Steve Sexton, a pair of Ph.D. economics candidates (who happen to be twins, and who happen to have economist parents), called “Conspicuous Conservation: The Prius Effect and Willingness to Pay for Environmental Bona Fides.” Why single out the Toyota Prius? Read More »
Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving? Full Transcript
Tim HARFORD: The British Prime Minister, David Cameron. When he was leader of the opposition — he was trying to get elected — he wanted to convince people that he was a soft, caring guy and he installed a little windmill on his house. Stephen J. DUBNER: Tim Harford is an economist and writer who Read More »
The Suicide Attempt That Ended With a Kiss
Having just completed an hour-long radio program on suicide, and having just visited mainland China for the first time, I was drawn to this incredibly moving story from Shenzhen, by Shi Yingying in China Daily:
Read More »Like a real life version of Snow White, Liu Wenxiu‘s kiss literally saved the life of a 16-year-old boy.
Liu just passing by a pedestrian bridge in downtown Shenzhen on June 11 when she spotted hundreds of onlookers watching a young man with a knife in his hand, threatening to jump.
“I saw him get more and more excited – everybody around was just looking, nobody was trying to step up and help,” said Liu, a 19-year-old hotel waitress.
“He had to be saved – because I’ve been there before and I knew exactly how it was,” continued Liu, who had attempted suicide several times. …
“He told me he didn’t have a home anymore, nobody cared about him and no one trusted him. I said nothing but showed him the scars on my right wrist. … With the boy crying even harder, Liu knew he had a sense of being understood.
Ridding the Streets of Dog Poop, One DNA Test at a Time
It’s been quite a while since we proposed a novel solution for ridding our cities of dog poop — DNA registration of pets, and subsequent DNA identification of wayward dung — but it seems to be slowly, slowly gaining acceptance. The Israeli city Petah Tikvah gave it a try, and now the New York Post reports (and Gothamist follows) about an apartment complex in Rockville Center, Long Island, that’s using the DNA method to punish owners who don’t pick up after their dogs. Good to see the power of poop still rolling on. 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 