For many decades, the Pentagon has bought most of its equipment from five big defense contractors: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics. Is all that about to change? Chicago Booth's Marc Knez talks about how Anduril, a tech startup, is threatening to disrupt the defense industry. Could it ultimately lead to cheaper and more effective systems for the military?

Do accountants merely measure company activity, or do they actually make it better? Chicago Booth's Mike Minnis talks about his research on auditing and productivity. Do audits make companies perform better, or do effective managers choose to get audited?

Americans use buses and trains much less than their European counterparts. Yet while they sit in their cars, they are subsidizing buses that run mostly empty. Could the system be tweaked to make everyone better off? Chicago Booth's Milena Almagro talks about her research on public transit. Is it possible to make the system more sustainable both financially and environmentally?

Americans' self-reported rates of happiness plummeted during COVID and haven't recovered since. Will they ever? Chicago Booth's Sam Peltzman talks about his research on happiness. Before 2020, Peltzman says, the US was a "reasonably happy country" for nearly 50 years. But in the past six years, everything has changed. So are we in a permanent happiness slump?

Sometimes information is freely available and would be useful, but we choose to avoid it. Why do we do that, and does it make any sense? Chicago Booth's Jane Risen talks about her research on willful ignorance. As small children most of us are permanently curious and never stop asking why, but older children are more likely to avoid certain information. Why is that, and is our ignorance helping or harming us?

Vulnerability is typically perceived as a weakness in professional settings. Chicago Booth's Christine Carpenter wants us to think of it as a strength when it comes to leadership. So when is it appropriate to be vulnerable? And how can you show vulnerability without coming across as out of your depth or incompetent?

Software as a Service has boomed in recent decades, but now it faces an existential threat from AI. Chicago Booth's Marc Knez gives us his take on the SaaS Apocalypse. Which companies will survive? Are businesses really going to stop subscribing to software applications housed in the cloud to run their businesses, and what will they do instead?

The value of the US economy is increasingly accounted for by intangibles – things like intellectual property, brands and customer relationships. How is that changing finance and business? Chicago Booth's Amir Sufi talks to us about the rise of the intangible economy. Should advance economies abandon the idea of reviving manufacturing, and instead continue to chase intangible value?

Many US cities are highly racially segregated. Explicit segregation is illegal today, but some patterns of settlement haven't fundamentally changed. So why does housing segregation persist? Chicago Booth's Milena Almagro tells us about her research on racial housing covenants. What do the racist housing rules of the 1940s tell us about housing policy today?

Much of the world's economy is informal, with transactions taking place in street markets. How does business credit operate in that environment? Chicago Booth's Rimmy Tomy talks about her research on the huge Iewduh bazaar in Shillong, the largest and oldest market in northeast India. Tomy finds that vendors often prefer not to share business metrics with lenders. So how do they get credit?