Hey there, Stephen Dubner.

Most episodes of Freakonomics Radio involve or even built around academic research.

Obviously, we think this research is interesting, even important, but the sad fact is that

a great deal of academic research, even the best stuff, often remains stuck in research

land.

Converting it into policy or behavior change is a whole other proposition.

I've been thinking about this dilemma lately as we are a few months into a new presidential

administration here in the US.

Some of the Biden administration's policy ideas plainly have a political component, but

there's also a lot of proposed policy that's drawn from, or at least tightly connected to,

academic research around things like poverty, healthcare, education, wages, energy, so on.

We will be exploring a lot of that research-based policy over the coming months on the show,

but first I wanted to play for you a very relevant episode we made last year, just before the

pandemic.

It is about how rare it is for good academic research to be turned into good policy.

This isn't all about blaming policymakers and politicians.

Some of the failure has to be attributed to the researchers themselves, as we tried to

make clear in the title of this episode, it's called policy making is not a science yet,

and it starts right now.

Usually, when children are born deaf, they call it nerve deafness, but it's really not

the actual nerve.

It's little tiny hair cells in the cochlea.

...