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Joel Mokyr on How Progress Happens

Freakonomics Radio | 6 March 2026 | 0h 53m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Joel Mokyr about how cultural shifts, rather than just institutions, drive technological progress. Discusses that a tiny “upper tail” of the labor force fuels most growth; GDP ignores consumer surplus from innovations like anesthesia; AI’s potential in education, threats from climate change and nuclear weapons; and advocates for immigration and allowing failure to sustain prosperity. Draws from his books A Culture of Growth and Two Paths to Prosperity.

Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics Phenomenon

    Freakonomics Radio | 17 October 2025 | 1h 14m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
    Interview with Stephen Dubner reflecting on his book Freakonomics, co-authored with Steven Levitt, and the subsequent podcast and media it spawned. Discusses his early life and the backstory of writing Freakonomics.

    Rebecca Allensworth on The Licensing Racket

      Freakonomics Radio | 7 February 2025 | 0h 55m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
      Interview with Rebecca Allensworth about her book The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong. Backgrounds how licensing began with medicine and law but now extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce and argues that licensing boards are “a thicket of self-dealing and ineptitude”, keep bad workers in their jobs and good ones out, and fail to protect the public.

      The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution

        Freakonomics Radio | 5 January 2017 | 0h 35m | Listen Later  | Spotify
        Daniel Kahneman has died at 90 (NY Times obituary). This 2017 interview with Michael Lewis about his book The Undoing Project explains how his work with Amos Tversky redefined how the human mind works and explains how the behavioral economics that they started has had a profound effect on academia, governments, and society at large.

        See other episodes with Daniel Kahneman.

        The Vanishing Mr. Feynman

          Freakonomics Radio | 15 February 2024 | 1h 01m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
          Part 3 of a three-part series on the life and work of Richard Feynman. Uses interviews with family, friends and physicists, along with recordings of Feynman in his own words, to describe the curious, brilliant, and vanishing Mr Feynman.

          The Brilliant Mr. Feynman

            Freakonomics Radio | 8 February 2024 | 0h 52m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
            Part 2 of a three-part series on the life and work of Richard Feynman. Uses interviews with family, friends and physicists, along with recordings of Feynman in his own words, to describe the curious, brilliant, and vanishing Mr Feynman.

            The Curious Mr. Feynman

              Freakonomics Radio | 1 February 2024 | 1h 02m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
              Part 1 of a three-part series on the life and work of Richard Feynman. Uses interviews with family, friends and physicists, along with recordings of Feynman in his own words, to describe the curious, brilliant, and vanishing Mr Feynman.