If you need some reading glasses in the United States, you don't have to break the bank to pick some up. That's important for older folks who need a little extra magnification. But in some parts of the world, people who need readers don't have that privilege. Today on the show, we'll find out why that is and learn the economic solution to the reading glasses shortage.
Related episodes: Two indicators: supply chain solutions (Apple / Spotify)
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Join Rob in celebrating Amy Winehouse, and missing her voice like the rest of us. Along the way, Rob discusses the biopic ‘Back to Black’ and ‘Amy’ before taking some time to cherish Amy Winehouse’s iconic song and album ‘Back to Black.’ Later, Rob is joined by writer Julianne Escobedo Shepherd to discuss her memories of interviewing Amy Winehouse and more.
Are childhood obesity rates going down?
Do 35 million birds die every year in the UK after hitting windows?
How much money could the Chancellor find by changing the debt rule?
And Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter contemplates the probability of his own conception.
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news, and in life.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Reporter: Charlotte MacDonald
Producers: Bethan Ashmead Latham, Natasha Fernandes and Nathan Gower
Series producer: Tom Colls
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Sound mix: Neil Churchill
Editor: Richard Vadon
America's financial system is inseparable from America's enormous growth, productivity, and prosperity. Many myths about financial markets persist. Norbert Michel and Jennifer Schulp detail the many critical benefits of robust financial markets in Financing Opportunity.
Is 2024 the year the music festival died? Festivals are getting canceled left and right, from Northern California to Florida to Virginia.
Big name festivals that used to sell out in minutes struggled to sell tickets this year, too, like Burning Man and Coachella.
And it's not just America. By one count, over 60 music festivals were canceled in the UK this year alone. In Australia, so many festivals were canceled that one newspaper there recently asked, are the nation's music festivals extinct?
Today on the show, the music festival recession. What's behind it and is it temporary or a permanent cultural shift?
The U.S. economy is breathing a little easier after the International Longshoremen's Association reached a tentative agreement last week with the United States Maritime Alliance. The short-lived dockworkers strike reignited a debate over whether the president ought to intervene, invoking an old law on the books called the Taft-Hartley Act. On today's show, we explain what the Taft-Hartley Act is, why it was created and why it's still scorned by unions.
F.A. Hayek's contributions to economics are hard to overstate. This week marks fifty years since Hayek became a Nobel Laureate for that work. Economists Peter Boettke and Bruce Caldwell detail some of Hayek's enduring contributions.
National Geographic magazine recently wrote that ?people in the United States eat more than 672 billion pounds of corn per year, which breaks down to more than 2,000 pounds per person annually?.
Is this really true?
Tim Harford investigates all the things that we don?t eat, that are counted in this number.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Bethan Ashmead Latham
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
Sound mix: Giles Aspen
Editor: Richard Vadon
It's Jobs Friday! It's that time of the month where we check in on the American worker.
In September, 254,000 jobs were added to the US economy and the unemployment rate ticked down very slightly to 4.1%. It's unexpectedly strong, and relieving news for workers after a pretty lackluster summer.
But ... given how the labor market cooled over summer, is the labor market still on thin ice? And if there were to be a plummet in jobs, could anything be done to speed up the recovery?
Today on the show: How it's easier to break the economy than to fix it, and whether we can escape from the patterns of the past.
Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz seems to have a poor understanding of what the First Amendment protects. Donald Trump pledges to use the Department of Justice to punish Google over the presentation of negative news stories about him. Cato's Brent Skorup and Nico Perrino of FIRE detail the candidates' troubling views.