In 2009, an old man died in a California nursing home. His obituary included not just his given name, but a long list of the pseudonyms he’d been known to use. In this classic 2019 episode, we trace the life of Riley Shepard, a hillbilly musician, writer, small-time con man and, perhaps, a genius. Then, on Your Questions Answered, psychologist Leslie John returns to answer your questions about when to share a secret, and when to keep it to yourself.
You can find an online version of Riley Shepard's Encyclopedia of Folk Music here.
There's a powerful tool almost all of us overlook when we're trying to improve a work project or help our kids with their homework. Learn more in this video on our new YouTube channel! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
This is the abbreviated version of Checkup's call-in where we ask whether private menopause clinics are providing necessary treatments or promoting a two tier system? Private options are popping up across the country while many women face long wait-lists to find the right care.
As we mark Mother's Day this weekend, ICYMI digs back into the archives from a show that aired on Mother's Day back 1988. Many young women at the time were pushing back against the idea that they -- like their mothers -- would be at home with the kids and managing the household. Callers weighed in on the question: do all women eventually become their mothers?
Manitoba could become the first place in the world to ban AI chatbots for kids. While Australia has banned social media for youth under 16, Manitoba says regulation would include AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude. We hear from experts, parents and young people about what they think of the idea.
A new Ipsos survey found that 1 in 3 women will have to wait for more than 2 years to find effective treatment for menopause. To fill that need, private menopause clinics are popping up across the country. We hear from patients and practitioners about the rise of these private options in a country known for public healthcare.
With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us.
Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why?
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Pat Walters and Latif Nasser
Produced by - Pat Watlers
with help from - Carter Hodge.
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Great. Then depressed. Then great again. Stephen Dubner gets the full story from David Lang; we also hear from some fans, and the New York Philharmonic’s president. The math and the aftermath of wealth of nations. (Part two of a series.)
SOURCES:
David Lang, composer and professor at the Yale School of Music.
Matías Tarnopolsky, president and C.E.O. of the New York Philharmonic.
RESOURCES:
"Finally, an Opera About Economics," by Stacey Vanek Smith (Bloomberg, 2026).
"The Little Match Girl Passion," by David Lang (2023).
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776).
EXTRAS:
"David Lang’s the wealth of nations," series by Freakonomics Radio (2026).
"In Search of the Real Adam Smith," series by Freakonomics Radio (2022).
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