637. What It’s Like to Be Middle-Aged (i...

How a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads. Freakonomics Radio shares a story from our friends at Search Engine. (Part one of a two-part series.) SOURCES: Alex Davies, author of Driven: The Race To Create the Autonomous Car. Chris Urmson, co-founder a ... Show More

A ruthless (and ruthlessly efficient) industry is using digital tools to supercharge one of the world’s oldest behaviors. We look at how the industry works, and ask the scam-fighters what they’re doing about it. SOURCES: Kati Daffan, former assistant director at the Federal Trade ... Show More

Economists don’t usually talk about “culture.” But Joel Mokyr argues that it’s the engine of innovation — and the Nobel Prize committee agreed. Stephen Dubner sits down for a thousand-year conversation (including advice!) with the new Nobel laureate. SOURCES: Joel Mokyr, economic ... Show More

Send a textJoin Professors Jeffrey Sachs and an expert on religious conflict, Richard E. Rubenstein as they discuss Rubenstein’s book, Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages. Rubenstein skillfully guides ... Show More

<p>Medieval art memes! Human-faced animals! Drunk monks! And a preponderance of snails. Middle Ages manuscript expert, art history communicator, and Medieval Codicologist Evan Pridmore covers: what those golden illuminated Middle Ages manuscripts were made of, who drew them, why ... Show More

<p>Both Frederick II and King John were excommunicated from the all-powerful church, but why?</p><br><p>Dr. Eleanor Janega and Dr. Felicity Hill explore the complex phenomenon of excommunication in the medieval period, from the politics and propaganda behind this spiritual sancti ... Show More

With Toby Lichtig and Lucy Dallas – London has a brand-new theatre: the Bridge, the latest venture by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr, based in Southwark and dedicated to original writing. And it starts its life with a new play by Richard Bean and Clive Young: Young Marx features ... Show More

From Roman emperor Septimius Severus to Senegal's Signares to the ten days in Harlem that Fidel Castro used to link up with African leaders at the UN, through to the missed opportunity to enshrine racial equality in post war negotiations following World War I; Olivette Otele, Sim ... Show More

<p>In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a group of L.A. teens. Screen recordings of the kids’ social-media use reveal how these platforms have reshaped their experience of the world ... Show More

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.We hear about the Juliet Club in Verona, Italy. The club has been replying to mail addressed to Shakespeare’s tragic heroine, Juliet since the early 1990s.Professor Lisa Bitel tal ... Show More

August 24, 394. On the walls of a fading Egyptian temple, a priest carves what will become the last known hieroglyph in history. At the same moment, in Alexandria, a fiery archbishop named Theophilus is rising to power. He mocks the ancient Egyptian gods, desecrates their temples ... Show More