Category: Podcast

Freakonomics Podcast: This Idea Must Die

March 5, 2015

A really interesting podcast in which experts in various fields discuss ideas that seem to persist that really should go away. Sometimes these are ideas that exist among experts (the use of mice in clinical trials of cancer drugs) and sometimes these are ideas that exist among common people (the idea that people are either left or right brained)

“In our latest episode of Freakonomics Radio, we run that progression in reverse. Rather than asking if a new idea is a good one, we ask whether it’d be better if some of the ideas we cling to were killed off.”

http://freakonomics.com/2015/03/05/this-idea-must-die-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

What The IRS Could Learn From Mormons

March 4, 2015

How does a person’s notion of faith affect their charitable giving? How does it affect how honestly they donate their money? In an interesting Planet Money podcast and accompanying article, economists study how Mormons think about what they give to the church and what they don’t and principles the IRS could learn from them.

“I asked a Mormon bishop in Salt Lake City if a few more rules defining income might make tithing easier on Mormons or bring in more money for the church. He said all this soul-searching about what you owe God is kind of the point.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/02/147749784/what-the-irs-could-learn-from-mormons

Freakonomics Podcast: The Maddest Men of All. Episode about Behavioral Economics

February 27, 2015

Another interesting discussion on the field of behavioral economics (see a previous post on the topic). Some really interesting discussions on this podcast about the contrast between classical economics and behavioral economics. You get some insight into the different approaches to knowledge and assumptions between two related fields in the human sciences.

You also get some interesting insights about how we make decisions. To what degree are our decisions motivated by reason? And to what degree are they motivated by emotion? Is it ethical for someone to use their knowledge of our emotional decision making to push us to make a decision they want us to make (i.e. buy something we otherwise wouldn’t)?

“Let’s take an example where you go to an airline website and it … quotes you a price for your seat to Sacramento, whatever it may be, and it says only four seats left at that price. Now, that works on me. I’ve spent eight years studying this stuff, I know it’s an attempt to exploit my scarcity bias, but it still makes me click. That’s just the way I’m wired. Now implicit in that line is that subsequent seats will be more expensive. But actually the person in their weasel wording hasn’t exactly made that promise, have they? They’ve merely said at this price. At this price is not quite clear. It could be that the subsequent four seats are being sold actually at a lower price.”

http://freakonomics.com/2015/02/26/the-maddest-men-of-all-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

How can we measure the effectiveness in charitable giving?

February 22, 2015

Much of our charitable giving is governed by emotions. We are far more often to give to a cause if the story or cause grabs our attention by moving us emotionally. Sometimes the charities are effective at branding themselves or their cause and sometimes we personally identify with the cause.

There are some people who want to change the way we think about charitable giving by identifying the “return on investment” of each dollar donated rather than letting our emotions decide for us. What happens when we decide to figure out the most effective use of our charitable dollars? How can we measure the impact? What criteria do we look at? Do we focus on saving lives or improving quality of life? Is it possible to even quantify these things?

Much of the approach these people use try to apply mathematical approaches to identify effectiveness. How can we use math to help us determine truth? What are the assumptions built into these mathematical models? Does quantifying this stuff to determine effectiveness dehumanize charitable work?

What if it was “mathematically proven” that the the most effective approach to charity were to give money away with no conditions or strings attached to the recipients? Would your emotional or intuitive revulsion to such an idea keep you from donating? How do you decide what is right when different ways of knowing conflict with one another?

Sometimes people prefer to donate to causes that build tangible structures like schools in foreign countries though it turns out that building schools may not actually that effective based on the cost.

Below are some links to evaluate this topic and these questions.

1. Is It Nuts to Give to the Poor Without Strings Attached?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/is-it-nuts-to-give-to-the-poor-without-strings-attached.html

2. Planet Money Podcast: The Charity That Just Gives People Money

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/16/212645252/episode-480-the-charity-that-just-gives-people-money

3.Measuring the Bang of Every Donated Buck

Scoring charitable work is evolving from an art into a science

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703787304575075340954767332

4. Give Well: Real Change for Your Dollar

Homepage for an organization that seeks to quantify the impact of various charities.

http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/criteria/cost-effectiveness

5. Smart Aid for the World’s Poor

How can rich countries best help poor ones? Matt Ridley identifies five priorities

http://www.wsj.com/articles/smart-aid-for-the-worlds-poor-1406326677

6. Freakonomics Podcast:Fixing the World, Bang-for-the-Buck Edition

http://freakonomics.com/2014/10/02/fixing-the-world-bang-for-the-buck-edition-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

7.Don’t Build Schools in Afghanistan

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/dont_build_schools_in_afghanistan.html

8.Poker Players Use Science To Effectively Give To Charities

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/24/372837159/poker-players-use-science-to-effectively-give-to-charities

This American Life Podcast: Cops See it Differently

February 21, 2015

A really amazing two part podcast about policing in the United States. Through the different parts of this podcast, we hear from police departments and officers around the country and how they’re dealing with the challenges they face. What’s fascinating about this is the role of perspective and how different experiences affect how people see different situations. Part 2 Act 2 discusses the implicit association test and what a police department is doing about how to deal with implicit bias while policing. Part 2 Prologue is an interesting and short bit about a reporter watching the Eric Garner video with a friend who is a police officer and how the two of them see completely different things and interpret the video in very different ways.

Below are links for the full episodes.

Part I

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/547/cops-see-it-differently-part-one

Part II

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/548/cops-see-it-differently-part-two

Freakonomics Podcast: “It’s Fun to Smoke Marijuana”

February 11, 2015

“A psychology professor argues that the brain’s greatest attribute is knowing what other people are thinking. And that a Queen song, played backwards, can improve your mind-reading skills.”

“‘Another One Bites the Dust‘ — when played backward — contains a secret message that, in the end, may help people communicate better.”

http://freakonomics.com/2014/03/13/its-fun-to-smoke-marijuana-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

On the same topic, here’s a compilation of songs along with lyrics played forward and then backwards with the alleged secret messages.

If you watch the video, try not to watch the words on the video when listening backwards and decide what you think the “secret” message is. It seems only to be “clear” when you see the words on the screen and are otherwise unintelligible.

Radiolab Podcasat: The Trust Engineers

February 11, 2015

“When we talk online, things can go south fast. But they don’t have to. Today, we meet a group of social engineers who are convinced that tiny changes in wording can make the online world a kinder, gentler place. So long as we agree to be their lab rats.

Ok, yeah, we’re talking about Facebook. Because Facebook, or something like it, is more and more the way we share and like, and gossip and gripe. And because it’s so big, Facebook has a created a laboratory of human behavior the likes of which we’ve never seen. We peek into the work of Arturo Bejar and a team of researchers who are tweaking our online experience, bit by bit, to try to make the world a better place. And along the way we can’t help but wonder whether that’s possible, or even a good idea.”

http://www.radiolab.org/story/trust-engineers/

This American Life Podcast: A Little Bit of Knowledge

February 4, 2015

“Bob Berenz had a good job as an electrician. But he wanted to do something bigger. He came up with an idea for an invention. But as he studied physics texts to see if his invention could work, he happened upon the biggest idea of his life: A revelation about physics that would disprove Einstein, and Newton. That is, if Bob’s right.”

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/293/a-little-bit-of-knowledge?act=3#play

Radiolab Podcast: Reasonable Doubt

January 28, 2015

“On July 29th, 1985, a 36-year-old woman named Penny Beerntsen went for a jog on the beach near her home. About a mile into her run, she passed a man in a leather jacket, said hello and kept running. On her way back, he re-appeared. What happened next would cause Penny to question everything she thought she knew about judging people — and, in the end, her ability to be certain of anything.”

http://www.radiolab.org/story/278180-reasonable-doubt/