Freakonomics

“and this actually comes from Stephen Stephen Levitt you know Freakonomics oh yeah and whatnot yeah uh go go see his TED Talks read Freakonomics he's wonderful”

“this is from Freakonomics highly recommend uh Freakonomics just if you want to learn interesting things about the world”

“Well, I would say that my favorite book of the last 20 years is Freakonomics.”

“Plainly free economics means many things to different people.”

“My sea of plastic boxes are stuffed with stray memories of freconomics.”

“And one of the things that I really wanted to do with free economics was show a style of writing that was just narrative non-fiction journalism based all factual all fact checked and so on where you tell good stories as with journalism”

“And what I do know is every day we get a lot of correspondents from people who have used something from free economics, the books or the radio show to do awesome stuff.”

“A lot of people read and still read our books when they're young, 14, 15, 16, and then they go to college and they say, "I'm gonna study economics because I really like economics."”

“in the first fre economics book that Steve levit and I wrote there was one chapter called what makes a perfect parent”

“so we wrote a bit in or first and second Freakonomics books about different kinds of cheating you mentioned School teachers who looked the other way we wrote about school teachers who actually did the cheating to make their students test scores higher”

“they were the contracts for all the foreign editions of Freakonomics that we signed when free economics first came out like the Bulgaria contract exactly we had contracts from I don't know 60 80 countries”

“you know why I watched it is because Freakonomics was on it it was in the first season wait Freakonomics was mentioned you had a cameo who was the super smart daughter”

“when Leva and I wrote about that argument in Freakonomics we were very careful to write it in a way that tried to make clear”

“we wrote about this in Freakonomics in the context of all the other factors that either did or did not decrease crime”

“And 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.”

“You want to swallow a lot of pride to write Freakonomics!”

“Not 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.”

“Obviously, our two lives would look really different if we'd never written Freakonomics.”

“So 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.'”

“When Freakonomics happened, my biggest priority in life was having a family and raising a family and hopefully trying to live in New York City.”

“and that's what led to our writing the Freakonomics books together and I mean we called the book Freakonomics”

“A 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.'”

“the main argument the article makes is that free economics is a failure because it didn't change economics but that premise is so absurd I wasn't sure it deserved rebutting because free economics is a book written for a popular audience it's my academic papers turned into interesting stories working with Steven Dubner”

“The 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.”

“My 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.”

“yeah it makes total sense to me because Freakonomics was a fluke bestseller I had never even wanted to be an author”

“Freakonomics had come out two years earlier and had been a big success”

“So 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”

“Jasper didn't interview me Jen Stewart read for economics and super Freakonomics and internalized them and had a conversation with me off air that made me think he was one of the smartest people I had ever met”

“And we should say that you wrote about this in the original Freakonomics book, correct? We did, so it started out just as academic research.”

“especially in first book for economics because we talked through a lot of that before”

“I 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.”

“Have you ever gone back and read just chunks of Freakonomics or Super Freakonomics?”

“Well, 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.”

“Alright, 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?”

“Like, our book was some kind of a miracle, right, that we sold so many copies.”

“Among the things that struck me in the book was that you wrote that at the outset you and Steve Levit were bored by convention.”

“You said at the time that the book had no central thesis.”

“You also said in the book, and I took notes on this, that you thought freconomics, you saw it as an exercise in curiosity without cynicism.”

“Do you regret anything you put into the freconomics books, be it opinions you voiced or takes you defended that you wished you hadn't?”

“Claire asks, "If you could rewrite freconomics in 2025, which would be a heavy lift since it took six months to write three pages of the forward, but if you could, what's the biggest change you would make and why?”

“Well, I'll tell you what, your work reminds us that curiosity is a civic virtue [music] and this book, the podcast, really everything that you have contributed exists as a public service.”

“and indeed to thank gladwell for what he did to help us i mean his blurb on the front of our book um i'm sure had a huge impact on our success as well”

“so the book got kind of popular and and uh and it made so much sense to teach a course like a free economics course to the undergrads it would have had a huge enrollment”

“um and i think a lot of uh you know another set of people have said look i don't really like freakonomics but the fact is um a lot of people a lot of kids read the book and it led some of them to be economics majors”

“no i've never taught a course on freakonomics”

“i tell you that the two things that are just plain wrong in the book and it's really interesting is there are two things that are not based on data or analysis”

“well i have a complaint because for about five years uh when i tell somebody i was an economist they'd say have you read freakonomics what do you think of it”

“before we leave for economics i want to talk about your new ventures next but before we leave for economics i want to take an example from the book that that's always uh bothered me”

“there are a lot of interesting and and dramatic and and provocative and hidden phenomena that you illuminate in uh in free economics a number of years have passed”

“Freakonomics has actually been a book that I really enjoyed because it is saturated.”

“Freakonomics has actually been a book that I really enjoyed because it is saturated and because of your co-authors' ability to sort of collect all of these incredible data sets,”

“and oh yeah so Freakonomics I think did uh something about this too those guys”

“have you ever read fre economics no okay I mean it's a great book fre economics makes a uh you know”

“and actually it's interesting because Freakonomics is a book that doesn't make that mistake so Freakonomics right from the start is a book that says hey let me tell you something really interesting about the world using this data”

“Actually, 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.'”

“so a lot of the younger readers to Mr may not even be aware of like for economics being released in 2005 and there's just this onslaught of like popular economics books”

“but things like the right Queen selfish Gene right in many different Freakonomics and everyone had to read all those books to be intellectually illiterate”

“And there's even I think there was a book Freakonomics, and there's a few of these things where you just shows again and again where people behave in ways that are against their best interest.”

“he's made that brand his life after co-writing free economics back in 200 5 which I read back in 2005 and it blew me away”

“freconomics, a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything was published in April of 2005.”

“number two for economics for the next year and a half it was number two was Freakonomics I was really jealous”

“Years 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.”

“I was not ready for that as I suspect you probably weren't ready to be the author of Freakonomics yeah which is nothing like I think my experience is probably nothing like yours”

“It was in the book Freakonomics as well. So, it's a very mainstream economist who did it named Steven Levitt.”

“He throws your book down freconomics. So I read it and I've been in ever since.”

“you want to buy a copy of nudge the final Edition or your 15th copy of Freakonomics on Amazon”

“so Freakonomics I love all your books yeah to be fair just about anything you write at this point is going to get a good advance and pretty good sales”

“I've always thought like I think there was um a book Freakonomics wrote a book where they like look at drug dealers and like how much work they do, and they like turns out they only make like $14 an hour for how much work.”

“and it makes me think a bit of advice that I got from Steven Dubner author of Freakonomics or co-author at least he collaborates with Steven levit”

“So 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.”

“a lot of people paid money to read Freakonomics now I get that that's not a company but does the University benefit from having a professor publish a popular book”

“then Alex Dunphy is the name of the nerdy middle child on Modern Family who chose to read Freakonomics during her family's pool party this scene is part of the premiere episode of season three not as Steven said season one”

“co-worker asked me to read a book called freakonomics the book goes on”