New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast
In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake o...
Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.?
As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s profess...
Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)
China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. High-speed trains that connect every town. Gle...
Seven allegedly fake Chanel bags vs The RealReal
Once upon a time, if you wanted to buy a luxury brand item secondhand (say, a Chanel handbag) you had to have an in. There was no easy way to find one...
Our mission: Find the world’s best economic ideas (Summer School World Tour)
Come along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home! From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway, there's mo...
How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory)
Lionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer in...
Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?
Will limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices? The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan to bring do...
We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?
In the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even pl...
Before Kalshi and Polymarket there was the Iowa Electronic Markets
Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away. There was an entire political era when part...
The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough
Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious...