Why people recommend it
Think Like a Freak by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner is a popular economics book that teaches readers to reframe problems, challenge conventional wisdom, and think differently about human incentives. On Freakonomics Radio, Stephen Dubner frequently referenced the broader Freakonomics publishing empire and its foundational theories. Actor David Duchovny appeared on the show to discuss reading the original book back in 2005, sharing how it completely blew him away with the insightful and unconventional questions the authors asked. Later in the episode run, a listener called in to express long-term fandom by dusting off an old copy of the text, while John Colley jokingly offered to serve as an official spokesperson for the entire book series. In other segments, Dubner utilized passages from the work to introduce complex topics, such as quoting a section on the primordial economic nature of cheating during an episode examining academic fraud. The hosts also revisited longstanding arguments from the text, including the controversial statistical links between legalized abortion and falling crime rates, the deterrent effects of the death penalty, and research co-authored with Roland Fryer regarding the powerful real-world influence that a person's first name can have on their lifelong trajectory.
Who recommended it
- Stephen Dubner Discussed
Stephen Dubner — 1 mention
“You know, it reminds me a little bit of the argument that we made in the first Freakonomics book about names. So there's a lot of literature, including some done by Steve Levitt and Roland Fryer, about how influential a person's first name is on their life.”
Mentioned on the show without a named speaker — 11
“If you've ever read Freakonomics, the namesake book of this show, you may recall this controversial link between legalized abortion and the fall of crime.”
“He's made that brand his life after co-writing Freakonomics back in 2005, which I read back in 2005, and it blew me away. I couldn't believe the kinds of questions that he was asking that made sense.”
“Oh my god, well, you know, I'd be happy to be the face of the Freakonomics podcast and the Freakonomics book empire. So keep me on speed dial!”
“I've been a big fan for a long time; I actually dusted off my old copy of Freakonomics last night.”
“I rarely do this, but today I'm going to start by reading a couple of sentences from Freakonomics, which Steve Levitt and I published in 2005: 'Cheating, we wrote, may or may not be human nature, but it's certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor. Cheating is a primordial economic act, getting more for less.'”
“But a lot of Republicans have come to believe the death penalty does not deter crime, which happens to be an argument we offered evidence for in Freakonomics.”
“I knew that this would be very electric to some individuals, abortion and crime revisited, an update of our 2019 episode and of the theory we wrote about in our first Freakonomics book way back in 2005. That's next week on the show.”
“In the first Freakonomics book, published in 2005, Steve Levitt and I wrote about one such consequence of the original Roe v.”
“If you've ever read Freakonomics, the namesake book of this show, you may recall this controversial link between legalized abortion and the fall of crime.”
“In the first Freakonomics book that Steve Levitt and I wrote, there was one chapter called "What Makes a Perfect Parent."”
“A few years after that first Freakonomics book, when I started this podcast, we did an episode called The Economist's Guide to Parenting.”
Also mentioned in the same episodes
- An A to Z of food and drink
- An A-Z of food and drink
- Can I Ask You a Question?
- Grit
- The Case against Education
- The End of History and the Last Man
Other mentions (5: passing, ad reads, own books)
“I was going to say I always say sometimes, I don't want to make a declarative that all things, but my immediate reaction went back to the book Freakonomics.”
“I think they were at a swimming pool and everybody's jumping around having fun, and she's sitting by the pool reading Freakonomics!”
“She writes, 'He inspired me to read all the Freakonomics books, and he was the reason I wanted to major in economics.'”
“She says, 'I have gotten him Freakonomics books for the last three years. Poor fellow, and vice versa.'”
“It reminds me of something that Steve Levitt and I wrote about in one of our Freakonomics books, Think Like a Freak, and it was about this charitable organization called Smile Train. Are you familiar with Smile Train?”