Podcast Episodes

278. Chuck E. Cheese’s: Where a Kid Can Learn Price Theory

Episode 278

The pizza-and-gaming emporium prides itself on affordability, which means its arcade games are really cheap to play. Does that lead to kids hogging the best games — and parents starting those infamou…

Published on 8 years, 9 months ago

277. The Taboo Trifecta

Episode 277

The serial entrepreneur Miki Agrawal loves to talk about the bodily functions that make most people flinch. That's why she's building a business around the three P's: periods, pee, and poop.

Hosted b…

Published on 8 years, 9 months ago

276. No Hollywood Ending for the Visual-Effects Industry

Episode 276

In their chase for a global audience, American movie studios spend billions to make their films look amazing. But almost none of those dollars stay in America. What would it take to bring those jobs …

Published on 8 years, 10 months ago

275. Professor Hendryx vs. Big Coal

Episode 275

What happens when a public-health researcher deep in coal country argues that mountaintop mining endangers the entire community? Hint: it doesn't go very well.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compan…

Published on 8 years, 10 months ago

How to Get More Grit in Your Life

The psychologist Angela Duckworth argues that a person's level of stick-to-itiveness is directly related to their level of success. No big surprise there. But grit, she says, isn't something you're b…

Published on 8 years, 10 months ago

274. An Egghead’s Guide to the Super Bowl

Episode 274

We assembled a panel of smart dudes -- a two-time Super Bowl champ; a couple of NFL linemen, including one who's getting a math Ph.D. at MIT; and our resident economist -- to tell you what to watch f…

Published on 8 years, 10 months ago

273. Did China Eat America’s Jobs?

Episode 273

For years, economists promised that global free trade would be mostly win-win. Now they admit the pace of change has been "traumatic." This has already led to a political insurrection -- so what's ne…

Published on 8 years, 11 months ago

Is the American Dream Really Dead?

Just a few decades ago, more than 90 percent of 30-year-olds earned more than their parents had earned at the same age. Now it's only about 50 percent. What happened -- and what can be done about it?…

Published on 8 years, 11 months ago

272. Trevor Noah Has a Lot to Say

Episode 272

The Daily Show host grew up as a poor, mixed-race South African kid going to three churches every Sunday. So he has a sui generis view of America — especially on race, politics, and religion — and he…

Published on 8 years, 11 months ago

271. The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution

Episode 271

Starting in the late 1960s, the Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Danny Kahneman began to redefine how the human mind actually works. Michael Lewis's new book The Undoing Project explains how th…

Published on 8 years, 11 months ago