Companies around the world spend more than half-a-trillion dollars each year on ads. The ad industry swears by its efficacy — but a massive new study tells a different story.

440. Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 1: TV)

Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner uncovers the hidden side of everything. Why is it safer to fly in an airplane than drive a car? How do we decide whom to marry? Why is the media so full of bad news? Also: things you never knew you wanted to know about wolves, bananas, pollution, search engines, and the quirks of human behavior.

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Documentary

So you want to help people? That’s great — but beware the law of unintended consequences. Three stories from the modern workplace.

584. How to Pave the Road to Hell

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman — a Nobel laureate and the author of “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — recently died at age 90. Along with his collaborator Amos Tversky, he changed how we all think about decision-making. The journalist Michael Lewis told the Kahneman-Tversky story in a 2016 book called "The Undoing Project." In this episode, Lewis explains why they had such a profound influence.

Extra: The Men Who Started a Thinking Revolution (Update)

People who are good at their jobs routinely get promoted into bigger jobs they’re bad at. We explain why firms keep producing incompetent managers — and why that’s unlikely to change.

Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses? (Update)

Fareed Zakaria says yes. But it’s not just political revolution — it’s economic, technological, even emotional. He doesn’t offer easy solutions but he does offer some hope.

583. Are We Living Through the Most Revolutionary Period in History?

The political debates over immigration can generate a lot of fuzzy facts. We wanted to test Americans’ knowledge — so, to wrap up our special series on immigration, we called some Freakonomics Radio listeners and quizzed them.

440. Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 1: TV)

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