The Music and Magic of John and Paul (with Ian Leslie)

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

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Summary

At the heart of the success of the Beatles was the creative chemistry and volatile friendship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Listen as author Ian Leslie discusses his book, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. It's a deep dive into music and friendship as well as a revisionist history about how John and Paul created musical magic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.2	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econTalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is March 11th, 2025.
0:39.0	And my guest is author Ian Leslie.
0:41.3	His substack is The Ruffian.
0:44.1	This is Ian's fourth appearance on Econ Talk.
0:46.1	He was last here in January of 2023, talking about being human in the age of AI.
0:52.1	His latest book and the subject of today's conversation is
0:55.2	John and Paul, a love story and songs. Ian, welcome back to Econ Talk. Hi, Russ. It is great to be
1:03.0	back. Now, this is an extraordinary book. I want listeners and you, Ian, to know a little bit about
1:10.5	my, what I bring to when I read this book, what I brought to the book.
1:14.7	I have to say I don't read books like this.
1:16.9	I'm not a fan of the Beatles of John London and Paul McCartney in the usual sense of the word.
1:22.5	A fan.
1:23.3	I've never read a book on the Beatles.
1:25.1	I never expected to.
1:26.9	And I invited you to Econ Talk because you wrote an extraordinary essay, which we will link to, 64 reasons to celebrate Paul McCartney. After all these years, he's still underrated. It's an incredible essay. It's 10,000 words. That's about 40 pages. I gobbled it up.
1:44.7	And because of that essay, you got a contract to write this book, John and Paul, M.B., because of that essay, I wanted to interview you about John and Paul.
1:52.9	So I started to read the book to prepare for our conversation, and I couldn't put it down.
	...

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