EXTRA: People Aren’t Dumb. The World Is Hard....

Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. In this update of a 2025 episode, Stephen Dubner discovers where all this sludge comes from — and how much it’s costing us. SOURCES: Benjamin Handel, pro ...  Show more

New York is the latest state to legalize medical aid in dying. Stephen Dubner speaks with the governor who signed the law, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, a death doula — and an ethicist who thinks the very idea is wrong. SOURCES: Kathy Hochul, governor of New York. Suzanne O'Br ...  Show more

We make a countless number of decisions every day – but unfortunately, we often choose unwisely. Behavioral economist Richard Thaler has dedicated his life's work to understanding why that is. In 2017, Thaler received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for ...

Revisiting Steve’s 2021 conversation with the economist and MacArthur “genius” about how to make memories stickier, why change is undervalued, and how to find something new to say on the subject of scarcity.

Why do some nations flourish while others remain trapped in poverty? This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics goes to three economists whose groundbreaking work explores this question. Join us as we dive into the theories and insights of Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Ro ...  Show more

Stefanie Stantcheva’s approach seemed like career suicide. In fact, it won her the John Bates Clark Medal. She talks to fellow winner Steve Levitt about why she uses methods that most of the profession dismisses — and what she’s found that can’t be learned any other way.