Before we start, here's a way to turn Steve down, make me louder.

Just to prove that I've been in a band.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't need so much more in here.

That is like basically the only thing that people in bands ever say.

More of me please.

An atypical Freakin'omics Radio episode today.

It's a conversation with an old friend about music,

but mostly about success and how success can be gained by people of whom little is expected.

If someone had said to me, you know,

look at the four guys in the Delphiados or look at the 400 guys in all the bands you know,

who would be the least likely to end up with a PhD?

It would have been you.

It really would know offense, but it would have been you.

So does that trajectory seem as strange from the inside as the outside or no?

Does it not surprise you so much in retrospect?

It does surprise me when I try to make contact with myself as the young kid in the rock and roll band with the chip front tooth.

I don't see him getting to where I got.

So where did Warren Zane's get to?

He is the executive director of Stephen Van Zane's Rock and Roll Forever Foundation.

Before that, he was the vice president of education and public programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

And he writes books, including a new, very in-depth and very personal biography of Tom Petty.

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