Episode · Freakonomics Radio · 2024-08-12

Books mentioned on EXTRA: Here’s Why You’re Not an Elite Athlete (Update)

1 book · Listen · Watch on YouTube

There are a lot of factors that go into greatness, many of which are not obvious. As the Olympics come to a close, we revisit a 2018 episode in which top athletes from a variety of sports tell us how they made it, and what they sacrificed.

Books mentioned, in the order they came up

  1. SuperFreakonomics LP

    Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · at 7:55

    SuperFreakonomics by Steven D.

    Discussed
    “In Super Freakonomics, one of the books I wrote with economist Steve Levitt, we performed a rough calculation showing that if a Major League Baseball player has a son, that boy is about 800 times more likely than a random boy to also make the majors.”
    Where to get it