The COVID 19 pandemic caused perhaps the fastest ever shift in working patterns. One day, many of us were working in offices, the next we were working remotely – and would be for years. What effect did that have on our performance? We talk with Chicago Booth's Mike Gibbs, an expert on quantitative research, about the consequences of remote work.

Companies track our every move on the internet, and many people are concerned that their data is being used and misused without their permission. The European Union and 13 US states have passed data privacy laws. Are these rules really helping us and making us safer? In this episode, we hear from Chicago Booth's Jean-Pierre Dube, who argues that data privacy comes with a cost – it can further marginalize low-income consumers and hurt small businesses.

Are American companies any good at hiring CEOs? When a company is searching for its next CEO, what skills are they looking for? And are those the same skills that make CEOs successful in the job? We talk with Chicago Booth's Steve Kaplan, who's spent decades analyzing C-suite hiring practices and CEO performance. His research finds that candidates who get hired as CEOs are different from other C-suite executives, but also that hiring practices do not guarantee that the person who wows the hiring committee will succeed in the top job.

We tend to think of leaders in terms of personality types or set ways of behaving. But can you learn to be a better leader? And can you choose when to act like a leader? In this episode, we hear from Chicago Booth's Linda Ginzel, who presents two ideas: first, that we can become better leaders by being diligent about how we learn from our experiences; and second, that we should think of leadership and management as verbs, rather than nouns.

In some countries, fines change according to income, but so far US cities have been reluctant to try it out. Chicago Booth's Jean Pierre Dube thinks that's a mistake. He says uniform fines are regressive, don't act as a deterrent, and that personalized fines could bring in more revenue for cities. So why are US cities so reluctant to do it?

Private equity has a PR problem. If you heard that your company was being taken over by a private-equity firm, you might well start worrying that job cuts would be coming soon and the quality of work would be sacrificed in order to squeeze out more profit. But is that accurate? Chicago Booth's Steve Kaplan, an expert on private equity, says that private-equity firms frequently invest and grow companies more effectively than other owners. But does that justify their big fees? And could companies take the same actions without being taken over by private equity?

Is the customer always right? In a world in which all sales are final, some buyers are bound to get duped. But if the customer's always right, what can retailers do about unreasonable customers? In this episode we hear from Chicago Booth's John Paul Rollert looks for a balance between honoring customers and indulging them.

Would you accept a promotion without a pay increase? This episode is part of Business Practice series, where we asked people to script what they would say in a challenging workplace scenario. Chicago Booth's George Wu analyzes the results.

The US federal government is suing Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation, in part over what it says are excessive or junk fees. One feature of these fees is that they're hidden – you only find out at the end what the true price is. There's an irony in the case, says Chicago Booth's Jean Pierre Dube, since government itself is a keen user of hidden fees. In this episode, we talk to Dube about how retailers use hidden fees to obfuscate prices and avoid transparency. Why do hidden fees work? And what's the solution?

The US spends a lot more on healthcare than most other high-income countries. But the US doesn't have universal health coverage, and performs poorly on life expectancy, death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions, and maternal and infant mortality. Financial incentives shape the kind of healthcare that patients are offered, from the drugs they're prescribed to the procedures they receive. So what would it take to fix US healthcare? In this episode, we hear from Chicago Booth's Matt Notowidigdo, in the second of two podcasts about his new book, Better Health Economics: An Introduction for Everyone, co-written with Boston University's Tal Gross.