TED Radio Hour

How customers use a piece of technology can change what the product is. And what the product is can change the business model for the company. It's a constant dance between the customers and the sellers. Today on the show, three short stories about this dance. For more: http://n.pr/1yR6BPh

There's an idea that dates back at least to biblical times. There should be a moment when debts are forgiven. Its called a jubilee. The jubilee has not gotten a lot of traction in the modern world. You may remember after the financial crisis, some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters were calling for a jubilee. But it basically ended there. Today on the show: the story about a country that is actually trying a jubilee. Iceland.

It's called "Iceland" for a reason. Polar bears sometimes wind up there floating by on chunks of ice. In the winter, there are only a few hours of daylight each day.  Reykjavik feels like you took a European city — coffee shops, fancy cars, orderly streets — and put it on the moon.  Which raises a question: How did a barren, icy island become a thriving, modern economy?  The short answer: Fish, energy and books...

We tend to get obsessed with things that get more expensive over time — college tuition, say, or health care. But lots of things have actually gotten cheaper in real terms. Things made by machines. Things like consumer electronics.  Some new gadget comes out with a $1,000 price tag. Two years later it costs $500. There's no law of nature that says this must be so. And yet it happens year after year.  Today on the show, we visit a company called Monoprice...

Today on the show, the story of the Dread Pirate Roberts of the internet age. A man who dreamed of setting up a utopian marketplace, a place where you could buy and sell almost anything in secret. The pirate created a market with no contracts, no regulations, and really no government interference. The Dread Pirate believed in total economic freedom, but in order to make his market work, he had to do some very bad things.

Note: Today's show is a rerun. It originally ran in July 2013. U.S. citizens who want to buy stuff from North Korea have to write a letter to the U.S. government asking for special permission. As regular listeners know, we're sort of obsessed with North Korea. So we decided to try to get those letters. We filed a Freedom of Information Act request. And we got a stack of heavily redacted letters...

Nike is a smart multi-billion dollar company, but some sneaker fans have figured out how they can get a better price for Nike sneakers than Nike can. Some pairs trade like stocks — selling for double, quadruple, 12 times their retail price after they leave the store. Even used sneakers.  Josh Luber, of sneakerhead data company, Campless, estimates that Nike let resellers walk away with 230 million dollars in profits last year — that's money that did not go to Nike...

On September 9th, BJ Holloway's life savings were stolen. His 6 cows were taken in the dead of the night from his land in Spencer, Oklahoma. BJ looked everywhere for his stolen cattle. He asked his neighbors. He filed a police report. But out in Oklahoma, when cows are stolen, it's hard to find the thief. The cows all look alike, and the evidence disappears when they're turned into steaks. Luckily for BJ, there's a cattle cop on his case, Jerry Flowers...

In west Africa right now, there are two kinds of countries: Those that have Ebola and those that do not. Liberia for instance, has reported more than 6,000 cases of Ebola and 2,697 people have died. Right next door, in the country of Ivory Coast, there have been zero cases. Zero. Ivory Coast would desperately like to stay in that zero category.  The solution that Ivory Coast has come up with to stay Ebola free is simple. Ivory Coast will shut down its border...

There's a term in economics, arbitrage, that basically means free money. It's finding a difference in price, a pricing mistake, you can exploit to make money. Arbitrage is a risk-free way to buy low and sell high. Everyday there are loads of people and sophisticated computer algorithms searching for an arbitrage opportunity, but true arbitrages are almost impossible to find...