Freakonomics
Mentions in Episodes:
- Episode: 129. How to Fix Medical Research | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireThe main argument the article makes is that Freakonomics is a failure because it didn't change economics, but that premise is so absurd that I wasn't sure it deserved rebutting because Freakonomics is a book written for a popular audience.
- Episode: 129. How to Fix Medical Research | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireA lot of the content from the Hartley podcast was used in a rather snarky article that the magazine published titled, 'Why Freakonomics Failed to Transform Economics.'
- Episode: 120. Werner Herzog Thinks His Films Are a Distraction | People I (Mostly) Admire
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireMy own experience with movies is somewhat like what you're describing; they made a documentary about our book for economics, and it played in theaters.
- Episode: 100 People I (Mostly) Admire | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 101
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireSo anyway, this night of the World Series game, sleeping on the couch in your house and I was up pretty late for the game and then I couldn't sleep because I wasn't feeling well; I just stayed up all night and I wrote a version of what's the opening, the intro, the prelude of Freakonomics.
- Episode: Suzanne Gluck: “I’m a Person Who Can Convince Other People to Do Things” | Episode 10
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireSo then we talked, and I have to say it took all of your persuasive powers not even to make a book like Freakonomics happen, but even to get Dubner and me to talk on the phone because I would say that we left that New York Times piece not particularly cordial because again I was super anti-social at the time and didn't really want to be written about.
- Episode: John Donohue: “I’m Frequently Called a Treasonous Enemy of the Constitution.” | Episode 20
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireYears later, when you and I wrote about it in Freakonomics, where we had the time and space to really describe our hypothesis and approach, we didn't get any of the negative feedback we initially received.
- Episode: Tim Harford: “If You Can Make Sure You’re Not An Idiot, You’ve Done Well.” | Episode 15
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireActually, it's interesting because Freakonomics is a book that doesn't make that mistake. Freakonomics, right from the start, is a book that says, 'Hey, let me tell you something really interesting about the world using this data.'
- Episode: Dr. Bapu Jena on Why Freakonomics Is the Best Medicine | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 41
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireI've kept an eye on his progress since then and, wow, even I've been amazed at what he's done, more or less single-handedly bringing Freakonomics-style approaches into the mainstream of medicine.
- Episode: You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Experiment | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 70
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireAnd we should say that you wrote about this in the original Freakonomics book, correct? We did, so it started out just as academic research.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireNot for the cash, because honestly, even though the deal for Freakonomics was relatively large for book deals, my half wasn't that much larger than the contracts I was already getting for other books, so it wasn't really that.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireWhen Freakonomics happened, my biggest priority in life was having a family and raising a family and hopefully trying to live in New York City.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireSo I did think through all this, but when it worked with Freakonomics, it was just like, it wasn't so much joy like, 'Oh my God, this is great for me.'
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireAlright, so let me ask you this, had you not written Freakonomics, do you think you would have won a Nobel Prize by now for the body of academic research you've done?
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireWell, I don't know about that, but for me, the biggest thing that Freakonomics did is that it opened up options outside of academics, and honestly, much to my surprise, a lot of those activities were a lot more fun than academics.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireObviously, our two lives would look really different if we'd never written Freakonomics.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireHave you ever gone back and read just chunks of Freakonomics or Super Freakonomics?
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireLove it, and this conversation with Stephen Dubner, after this short break, they'll return to talk about what would have happened if they'd never written Freakonomics.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireI don't think I'm making this up; I think I remember that the publisher even initially insisted that your name had to be in a smaller typeface—you know, on the cover of Freakonomics.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireYou want to swallow a lot of pride to write Freakonomics!
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireAnd by that I mean Freakonomics was by Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and by putting us out of alphabetical order, it was like I was a star, and you were the hired hand.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireBecause we got offered a bunch of money to write the book that would become Freakonomics, right?
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireMy single favorite story about us is what happened when it came time to negotiate how we'd split the payments over Freakonomics because we had gotten this big advance to write a book together, but we'd never actually talked about who would get what share.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireSo anyway, this night of the World Series game, sleeping on the couch in your house, and I was up pretty late for the game, and then I couldn't sleep because I wasn't feeling well; I just stayed up all night, and I wrote a version of what's the opening, the intro, the prelude of Freakonomics.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireThis was like the beginning of our starting to write Freakonomics in your office.
- Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireI think you're selling yourself short on how much you participate, especially in the first book Freakonomics because we talked through a lot of that before I would write—sometimes in person, sometimes on the phone—and I always took a lot of notes.
- Episode: A Cross Between Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 89
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireLike Michael Lewis wrote about you a long time ago, Stephen Dubner profiled me in a New York Times piece, and it fundamentally changed my life. Publishers came asking me to write a popular book, which ended up being Freakonomics, which Dubner and I wrote together.
- Episode: Jared Diamond on the Downfall of Civilizations — and His Optimism for Ours | Episode 55
Podcast: People I (Mostly) AdmireAfter "Freakonomics" came out and we had some success in terms of publishing, there was a historian that I knew, and I was at a seminar he was at, and clearly within my earshot, he grumbled that he would never want a wide audience to read his scholarship, with clearly a reference to the fact that I had somehow degraded myself by writing for a popular audience with "Freakonomics."