Martin Lindstrom Answers Your Questions on Brandwashed
Last week we solicited your questions for Martin Lindstrom, a marketing consultant and author of the new book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.
Now, Lindstrom, returns with his answers to a few of them. As always thanks for every one who participated.
Q One more question occurred to me: Marketing is intended to persuade us to buy products, but it also serves another latent function which is to educate us about new products, about differences between products, or about the products themselves. Given this educational benefit, among other benefits, do you think marketing is a net good or a net bad for society on the whole? - NZ Read More »
How Many Baby Boys Did the Clean Air Act Save?
Our latest Freakonomics podcast, “Misadventures in Baby-Making,” includes a discussion of how sex-selective abortion has led to 160 million missing females in Asia. Closer to home, however, researchers Nicholas J. Sanders and Charles F. Stoecker are focusing on a different problem: missing baby boys. In an effort to evaluate the effects of environmental policy on fetal health outcomes, the authors examine the “gender ratio of live births.” Read More »
Charles Darwin: Fiscal Alchemist? Bring Your Questions for Cornell Economist Robert Frank
Back in 2007, we had a lively debate around a series of excerpts that Cornell economist Robert Frank contributed to the Freakonomics blog. We’re hoping an excerpt from his latest book, The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, will spawn a similar conversation.
In it, Frank makes a rather bold prediction: within the next century, Charles Darwin, the naturalist, will unseat Adam Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. Frank believes Darwin’s insights into the nature of competition describe our current economic reality far better than Smith’s invisible hand. Frank argues that we live in a world where competition doesn’t channel self-interest for the common good, but rather into unbridled “arms races” where relative position is pursued above all else: who has the biggest bank? The biggest house? These races rarely benefit group interests. In fact, Frank argues, they have done enormous harm to our economy and provided no lasting advantages or benefits, since gains tend to be relative and offsetting. Read More »
“Football Freakonomics”: When Good Stats Go Bad
In the third segment of “Football Freakonomics,” Dubner examines how impressive stats in the NFL are often indicative of bad results. For example, we all want a quarterback who throws for big yardage. But for all the times a quarterback threw for 400 yards or more last season, how many of those games did his team actually win? 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 