Podcast: People I (Mostly) Admire
Episode: The One Thing Stephen Dubner Hasn't Quit | People I (Mostly) Admire | Episode 95
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode, complete with an Amazon buy link and quotes from the episode.
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"I 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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"This was like the beginning of our starting to write Freakonomics in your office."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"My 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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"Because we got offered a bunch of money to write the book that would become Freakonomics, right?"
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"Love 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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"Have you ever gone back and read just chunks of Freakonomics or Super Freakonomics?"
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"Obviously, our two lives would look really different if we'd never written Freakonomics."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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?"
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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.'"
Freakonomics
Buy on Amazon"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."