605. What Do People Do All Day?

Not exactly. But their runaway success with games like Wordle says something bigger about the way we live now. (Part one of a series, “We Are All Gamers Now.”) SOURCES: Alex Hardiman, chief product officer at The New York Times. Jonathan Knight, S.V.P. and general manager for New ...  Show more

Great. Then depressed. Then great again. Stephen Dubner gets the full story from David Lang; we also hear from some fans, and the New York Philharmonic’s president. The math and the aftermath of wealth of nations. (Part two of a series.) SOURCES: David Lang, composer and professo ...  Show more

David Autor took his first economics class at 29 years old. Now he’s one of the central academics studying the labor market. The M.I.T. economist and Steve dissect the impact of technology on labor, spar on A.I., and discuss why economists can sometimes be oblivious.

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Abby, Patrick, and Dan welcome writer, critic, and scholar Moira Weigel, co-founder of Logic magazine and co-editor with Ben Tarnoff of Voices of the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do And How They Do It. Moira introduces listeners to the history an ...

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.

Why does the U.S. use Fahrenheit when Celsius is better? Would you quit your job if a coin flip told you to? And how do you get an entire country to drive on the other side of the road?