How to Learn from a Rom Com Movie
In the absence of better advice, we learn a lot about love and dating from rom com movies – but is the depiction of relationships in these films leading us…
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Dr. Brinkley’s Miracle Cure For Impotence (with Betwixt The Sheets)
Cautionary Conversation: In the 1920s, a conman convinced America that goat testicles were the secret to male virility. Tim Harford and Dr Kate Lister (Betwixt the Sheets: The History of…
The Future of Healthcare Technology with Eli Lilly and Company’s Diogo Rau
How is technology transforming the healthcare space? Malcolm sits down with Diogo Rau, the Chief Information and Digital Officer at Eli Lilly and Company, to discuss the ways his company…
How Bubbles Power Breakthroughs
There are moments in history when people make huge technological advances all of a sudden. Think of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo missions, or, more recently, generative AI. But what…
Air Travel, Alcohol, and How to Bet On a Coin Toss
Our intuitive risk assessments can be way off–we’re too scared of hijackings, and not scared enough of crossing the street. This week, Nate and Maria discuss the real risks of…
Dr. Laurie Santos on Group Psychology, the Teen Brain, and Happiness
Michael Lewis invites over Yale psychology professor Dr. Laurie Santos, host of The Happiness Lab at Pushkin, for a chat about what scientific research has to tell us about sports…
Nada Surf
Indie rock band Nada Surf first hit big on college radio in 1996 with their driving, guitar forward song, “Popular.” The band started playing together four years earlier while attending…
Date Like a Scientist
Do you go on endless dates hoping to find the perfect partner only to be endlessly disappointed? Or have you stopped meeting people because you’ve decided that you’re undateable? Maybe…
The Night of the Mugger
Winston Trew has just been arrested for mugging. It’s 1972 and the crime has recently made its way to Britain from the United States. Dangerous thugs, replicating their American counterparts,…
Teaching AI to Build Stuff in the Physical World
AI works well in the virtual world. That’s partly because the internet provides so much data to train AI models. But there’s no analogous data set for the physical world…
Should You Learn Poker from ChatGPT? And Other AI Questions
In the wake of DeepSeek’s explosive entrance into the AI chatbot world, Nate and Maria talk AI strategy. At the national level and the personal level, what benefits does this…
Natasha Schüll on the Antisocial Lure of Gambling
As an anthropologist, Natasha Schüll spent more than a decade doing field work in Vegas casinos, especially among the slot machine addicts. She tells Michael Lewis why many of those…