605. What Do People Do All Day?

They say they make companies more efficient through savvy management. Critics say they bend the rules to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and employees. Can they both be right? (Probably not.) SOURCES:Brendan Ballou, C.E.O. of the Public Integrity Project.Dan Glickbe ... Show More

David Rubenstein, a product of the old bipartisan D.C., made his fortune in private equity. He’s been spending it on “patriotic philanthropy” and institutions like the Kennedy Center, where Trump fired him as chairman. Now he wonders if the center can hold. SOURCES:David Rubenste ... Show More

Podcasting started as a niche-nerd pursuit. Now it’s a $9 billion industry. Is that a lot? The strange economics of this thing we do. SOURCES:Jim Bankoff, chairman and C.E.O. of Vox Media.Ben Davis, head of digital at WME.Will Page, former chief economist at Spotify and author of ... Show More

<p>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.</p><p> </ ... Show More

<p>Have you ever had a job where you had to stop and ask yourself: what am I doing here? If I quit tomorrow, would anyone even notice? This week on <em>Hidden Brain</em>, we revisit our 2018 conversation with anthropologist David Graeber about the rise of what he calls &quot;bull ... Show More

The anthropologist, James Suzman, explores the shifting meaning of work, and argues that for 95% of our species' history, it held a radically different importance – it did not determine social status, mould our values or dictate how we spent most of our time. How did it become th ... Show More

In 2013 two Oxford academics published a paper entitled “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?”, estimating that 47% of U.S. jobs were at risk of automation. Since then, numerous studies have emerged, arriving at very different conclusions. So whe ... Show More

By 2030 we'll only work 15 hours a week, predicted the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes back in 1930. He thought advances in technology and wealth would let us earn enough money to live in a day or two - leaving the rest of the week for leisure and community service.  How ... Show More

<p>Is it really that important to make your bed? What’s the benefit of hiring a lazy person? And how many cups of spinach can Mike fit in a red Solo cup?  </p><p>Take the Big Five inventory: <a href="http://freakonomics.com/bigfive" target="_blank">freakonomics.com/bigfive</a></p ... Show More

Imagine a world where AI outsmarts you at work—scary, right? From the Philippines to the US, AI is changing the economic landscape, increasing the GDP of rich nations (5.4% in the US) while putting millions of jobs at risk in developing countries. Will machines leave you behind, ... Show More

Over six million prime-age men are neither working nor looking for work; America's low unemployment rate hides the fact that many men have dropped out of the workforce altogether. Our workforce participation rate is on par with that seen during the Great Depression. Why does this ... Show More