63 episodes
The Economics of Everyday Things Freakonomics Radio
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- Business
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4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
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Who decides which snacks are in your office’s vending machine? How much is a suburban elm tree worth, and to whom? How did Girl Scout Cookies become a billion-dollar business? In bite-sized episodes, journalist Zachary Crockett looks at quotidian things and finds amazing stories.
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56. Snake Venom
Why does treating a venomous snake bite cost as much as a house? Zachary Crockett slithers over to North Carolina to find out.
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55. Direct-to-Consumer Mattresses
Online companies promised to bring transparency to the mattress-buying experience. Did that work out? Zachary Crockett takes a look under the sheets.
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54. Ghostwriters
Channeling the voices of celebrities can be a lucrative career — one that requires empathy and discretion as well as literary chops. Zachary Crockett checks the acknowledgements.
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53. Food Trucks
How did mobile kitchens become popular with hipster gourmands? And just how much money can a popular truck make from a lunch shift? Zachary Crocket drops some napkins.
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52. Little League
Youth baseball — long a widely accessible American pastime — has become overrun by $10,000-per-year, for-profit travel leagues. Zachary Crockett peers inside the dugout.
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51. Wine Corks
Why do we use a specific kind of tree-bark tissue to seal up 70 percent of wine bottles? Zachary Crockett takes a sniff and gives the waiter a nod.
Customer Reviews
Love it
Love this show! Learned so much. Why not do an episode on insulin, or epi pens?
Brief, Informative, and Engaging
Got into this show because of Freakonomics Radio. Really glad I did! I appreciate that each episode is kept brief, under half an hour. So many podcasts’ episodes are so long now. I like that it’s a quick, interesting dive into a topic I might not have thought to look into.
Excellent!
Keep up the great work!
Loved the self check out episode. I personally love self check out and bag my own purchases.