Episode · Freakonomics Radio · 2014-07-31
Books mentioned on How Much Does Your Name Matter? (Rebroadcast)
A kid's name can tell us something about his parents -- their race, social standing, even their politics. But is your name really your destiny?
Stephen Dubner discussed Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? by Marianne Bertrand and others and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?
Discussed“But there's other research which finds that a name may matter, at least on some dimensions. Boys with feminine names, it's been argued, act up more in school. A girl with a masculine name, meanwhile, is more likely to have a successful legal career. And another study by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Malinathan was called Are Emily and Greg More”
Where to get it
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Freakonomics
Freakonomics by Steven D.
Discussed“Let me ask you this. So when we wrote about names in Freakonomics, we made it pretty clear that naming is not destiny, right? That was really one of the single biggest takeaways. In fact, we told the story of these two brothers in New York whose parents had named them Loser and Winner.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (3) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Parentology
“Dalton Conley is a sociologist at NYU. He has a book coming out soon called Parentology. It's about, well, here, let's have him tell you. I think the subtitle says it all, which is a social scientist experiments on his kids so you don't have to.”
Passing Freakonomics
“So she assembled some data, which included the lists that we created for our first book, Freakonomics, of the whitest and blackest names among baby boys and girls.”
Plugged Think Like a Freak
“On Monday, August 4th, I will be doing a live Twitter chat with iBooks at 4 p.m. Eastern time, 1 p.m. Pacific time. I will answer your questions about our new book, Think Like a Freak, about Freakonomics Radio, any question you want to throw at me.”