Twenty Years of Freakonomics (with Stephen Dubner)

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 103 minutes

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Summary

Quantitative, contrarian, and nuanced: these are the hallmarks of the Freakonomics approach. Hear journalist and podcaster Stephen Dubner speak with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about the 20th anniversary of the popular-economics book Dubner co-authored with Steven Levitt. They discuss how the book came to be, how the journey changed Dubner's life, and how it changed his thinking about various economics issues. The conversation includes a lengthy discussion on the role of private equity in the American economy, and Roberts's claim that Dubner and co-author Steven Levitt's treatment of incentives overlooks the role of competition and markets.

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.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is September 29th, 2025, and my guest is author, podcaster, journalist Stephen Dubner.
0:43.2	He is the author with economist Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics.
0:47.0	A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything, which is now coming out with a 20th anniversary edition.
0:53.9	And he is the host of the podcast for economics radio.
0:57.1	Stephen, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:59.0	Thank you, Russ, very happy to be here.
1:01.2	20 years, 20th anniversary edition.
1:05.0	That's a very long time.
1:07.0	This book changed your life.
1:09.3	Talk about that experience and how it started.
1:11.6	Started with the magazine article.
1:14.6	Yeah, I mean, to jump to the end, it's been a remarkable experience.
1:19.6	I had worked at the New York Times for several years as an editor.
1:23.6	Now I was off on my own as a writer.
1:25.6	This was going to be my third book. And my editor at the time,
1:28.7	his name was Hugo Lindgren, asked me to write this profile, this guy, Steve Levitt, at Chicago.
	...

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