The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It?: Full Transcript
This is a full transcript for the Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Truth Is Out There… Isn’t It?”.
[CASH REGISTER]
Stephen GREENSPAN: Yes, life was pretty good until I got a phone call from my broker.
Stephen J. DUBNER: That’s Stephen Greenspan. He’s an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut.
GREENSPAN: Hi Katherine.
WELLS: Hey.
DUBNER: And this is Katherine Wells. She’s one of the producers on our show. Hi Katherine.
Katherine WELLS: Hi Stephen.
DUBNER: So you are here with a story for us, yes?
KWELLS: Right. A story about Stephen Greenspan. He has an interesting specialty: he’s an expert in what he calls “social incompetence.”
DUBNER: I have some of that.
WELLS: Which, you know, we all feel. What he means is he studies why people do dumb things.
DUBNER: Presumably that means … why smart people do dumb things?
WELLS: Right, that included.
DUBNER: And when he told you there that “life was pretty good,” what did he mean? What was so good exactly? Read More »
The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast
Our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast is called “The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t It?” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen live via the media player above, or read the transcript below.) In it, we try to answer a few fundamental questions: how do we know that what we believe is true? How do we decide which information to trust? And how do we quantify risk — from climate change to personal investments?
The program begins with Stephen Greenspan, a psychologist and an expert on “social incompetence” and gullibility. He knows from personal experience that even the smartest people can be duped into bad risk assessments, especially on the advice of people they trust. Read More »
At Least One Labor Measure Was Up During the Recession
Productivity, that is. One factor was the trimming of deadwood; the other seems to be old-fashioned harder work. From a new working paper by Casey Mulligan (emphasis added):
Read More »During the recession of 2008-9, labor hours fell sharply, while wages and output per hour rose. Some, but not all, of the productivity and wage increase can be attributed to changing quality of the workforce. The rest of the increase appears to be due to increases in production inputs other than labor hours. All of these findings, plus the drop in consumer expenditure, are consistent with the hypothesis that labor market “distortions” were increasing during the recession and have remained in place during the slow “recovery.” Producers appear to be trying to continue production with less labor, rather than cutting labor hours as a means of cutting output.
Artificial Insemination: What About the Other Animals?
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast, “Unnatural Turkeys,” reveals the surprising origins of the 40 million turkeys that Americans are going to eat this Thanksgiving. You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here.
So, 100 percent of commercially raised turkeys in the U.S. (save for heritage turkeys) are born from artificial insemination. But what about other animals? We talked to reproductive experts Dale Coleman at Auburn University, Wayne Singleton from Purdue, and Keith Bramwell at University of Arkansas. The graphic below shows what percentage of each animal is born from artificial insemination: 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 