Paul’s favorite podcasts

Season 1, Episode 3: There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of surprises.

For decades, GDP has been the yardstick for measuring living standards around the world. Martha Nussbaum would rather use something that actually works.

It’s not about how much something hurts — it’s how you remember the pain. This week, lessons on pain from the New York City subway, the professional hockey rink, and a landmark study of colonoscopy patients. So have a listen; we promise, it won’t hurt a bit.

For the most part, Americans don’t like the simple,boring act of putting money in a savings account. We do, however, love to play the lottery. So what if you combined the two, creating a new kind of savings account with a lottery payout?

They should! It’s a cardinal rule: more expensive items are supposed to be qualitatively better than their cheaper versions. But is that true for wine?

What happens when the most disturbing ideas are also the best?

We are constantly wowed by new technologies and policies meant to make childbirth better. But beware the unintended consequences.

Conspicuous conservation is about showing off your environmental bona fides. In other words, if you lean green, there’s extra value in being seen leaning green.

In restaurants and in life, bad things happen. But what happens next is just as important.

There’s a nasty secret about hot-button topics like global warming: knowledge is not always power.