What Happens When You Turn 20

0:00:10 Hey there. It’s Stephen Dubner. I am recording this on November 11th, 2025, which is the very
0:00:16 day that the 20th anniversary edition of our book Freakonomics is being published. To celebrate,
0:00:21 we’ve put together this bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio. The episode has two parts. The first
0:00:26 one is very short. It’s just me reading the new forward for the 20th anniversary edition
0:00:32 of the book. After that, you will hear me again in conversation with Jeff Bennett at a recent live
0:00:38 event in Washington, D.C. Jeff is host of PBS NewsHour. I only met him recently, but I think
0:00:44 he’s pretty great. And I would be surprised if you didn’t agree. Big thanks to him. Also to Sixth and
0:00:51 I in D.C. for hosting the event, especially to Jackie Leventhal and Clara Wallace. Thanks also to everyone
0:00:56 who came out that night. And thanks to all of you who listen to Freakonomics Radio every week.
0:01:01 And thanks to everyone who’s ever read Freakonomics or will read it now in the 20th
0:01:07 anniversary edition. Plainly, I have a lot to be thankful for. The last 20 years have been
0:01:14 pretty wonderful and I can’t wait for the next 20. Okay, so here’s today’s bonus episode starting
0:01:18 with the new forward from the 20th anniversary edition of Freakonomics.
0:01:31 One recent day, I stood in my office and stared down a big, stupid mountain of plastic file boxes.
0:01:38 I’ve been staring them down for a few years now. They are full of notebooks and research files and
0:01:44 manuscripts, the byproducts of a writing career. No longer essential, but not quite disposable either.
0:01:51 That was my dilemma and it had me paralyzed. But on this day, I finally decided I was going to get rid
0:01:58 of it all. The past is past, I told myself. Life’s too short to be weighed down by nostalgia.
0:02:06 I started looking around for those extra large trash bags. And then my phone chimed. It was a text from
0:02:12 my friend Steve Levitt. Happy 20th anniversary. Not many people get to ride the same train for two
0:02:20 decades. Let’s hope we’ve got 20 more years ahead just as good. I was touched that Levitt had remembered
0:02:26 our publication date. A little surprised that I hadn’t. After all, I’m the pack rat. Nearly everything
0:02:33 in those file boxes came from my partnership with Steve Levitt. It began when I wrote a piece about him
0:02:40 for the New York Times Magazine and it flourished when we paired up to write Freakonomics. The book did not
0:02:46 enter the world with high expectations. It had no central thesis and even our publisher disliked the
0:02:53 title. With such low expectations, we were freed up to write exactly the book that we wanted to write.
0:02:59 Both of us were, in our own ways, bored by convention. So we tried something different.
0:03:05 We mashed up Levitt’s empirical research with a writing style that came from narrative nonfiction.
0:03:09 It took a while to make the voice sound like the both of us, but we got there eventually.
0:03:15 We wrote that, yes, the modern world can be extremely complicated, but you can figure things out
0:03:21 by using the right tools and asking the right questions. We wrote about conventional wisdoms that
0:03:28 are at best half true. We relied on data versus anecdote as often as we could, and we always tried
0:03:34 to show the data behind our conclusions. None of this struck either of us as a remotely radical way
0:03:42 to write a book, but in retrospect, it did go against the flow. And somehow it worked beyond our wildest
0:03:48 dreams. The reviews were almost embarrassingly good. The book showed up on bestseller lists and then,
0:03:55 weirdly, on TV shows like Modern Family and Jeopardy and Sherlock. It seemed to represent something
0:04:01 far beyond what either of us could have imagined. Although, even now, it’s hard to say exactly what
0:04:07 that is. Plainly, Freakonomics means many things to different people. I like to think of it as an exercise
0:04:15 in curiosity without the cynicism. Up to this point, Levitt as an academic and I as a writer had been
0:04:22 accustomed to fighting for people’s attention and for access to good material and data. Suddenly,
0:04:29 we had a platform. We have tried ever since to use that platform wisely. We published a few more books,
0:04:35 and we worked on all sorts of projects with all sorts of collaborators. These days, Levitt runs a
0:04:41 research center at the University of Chicago that’s trying to remake the U.S. education system. Typical
0:04:47 Levitt, trying to blow up the institution from inside the institution. And I have spent the past 15 years
0:04:54 making Freakonomics Radio, covering everything from kidney donations to academic fraud to the future of
0:05:02 me. Once again, an opportunity to exercise maximum curiosity, which has been a pure joy. The world has
0:05:08 changed a good bit over these past 20 years. The field of economics has been proven both incredibly
0:05:14 important and somewhat impotent. In the political realm, meanwhile, it appears that the center really
0:05:20 cannot hold. Levitt and I have always thought of ourselves as devout centrists, driven by common sense
0:05:27 and logic rather than ideology. That has become harder. Rereading this book recently had me marveling
0:05:34 at how carefree we seemed then, how full of adventure and spirit. I think all of us are hoping to feel that
0:05:40 way again someday. One consequence of getting older is that you know a lot more people who die,
0:05:48 including, if you are unlucky, your own siblings. This goes for both Steve Levitt and me. You find
0:05:53 yourself missing not just them, but the part of your life that included them. You’re constantly
0:06:01 trying to preserve whatever stray memories you can. My sea of plastic boxes are stuffed with stray
0:06:09 memories of Freakonomics. They represent the lifetime of this book. And I’ve decided I’m not ready to get
0:06:15 rid of them after all. And I think I’ll toss a printout of this forward into one of the boxes. It might be fun to
0:06:23 read in 20 years. I’m so glad that Steve Levitt texted me that day. Do we really have 20 more years ahead
0:06:30 just as good? I would love that, but let’s be honest. The two of us have already been blessed beyond reason
0:06:37 over these past 20 years. It has been the thrill of a lifetime to create a body of work that reverberates with
0:06:43 so many people. Not just fans, but the good faith critics, too. We have learned so much from so many
0:06:48 of you. Take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too.
0:07:06 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host,
0:07:13 Stephen Dubner. Today, in conversation with Jeff Bennett on November 2nd, 2025 at 6th and I in Washington, D.C.
0:07:25 Well, good evening, everybody. Congratulations on 20 years. Does it feel like 20 years?
0:07:33 Feels like 19 and a half, I’d say. Yeah, it’s been, I mean, all of us work hard and care about things.
0:07:40 And a lot of the things you work hard at and care about don’t work out the way you want. You need a
0:07:46 certain amount of luck or timing or whatever it is. And with this project, I had it. And it’s been paying
0:07:52 dividends for 20 years. So I’ve gotten to do the work that I want to do for 20 years because the book
0:07:58 worked. So I think about that every day. So like, does it seem like 20 years? Yes, in a way, it went
0:08:03 fast. But in a way, it’s like, I think about it so often, it could have been like 4,000 years. I’m so
0:08:08 invested in it, but I’m very grateful. Among the things that struck me in the book was that you wrote
0:08:15 that at the outset, you and Steve Levitt were bored by convention. What conventions, whether intellectual,
0:08:20 academic, journalistic, did you see yourselves rebelling against?
0:08:28 So I love journalism. I think journalism is quite important. I think good journalism is really hard
0:08:33 to do. You know, we were talking earlier, Jeff and I, about a former colleague of mine, friend Jeffrey
0:08:38 Goldberg, who runs The Atlantic. I used to work with Jeffrey when I was an editor and he was a writer.
0:08:43 And he was one of the few people that had what I consider like the big three traits you need to be a
0:08:48 really good print journalist, which was a good reporter slash researcher. You had to know where
0:08:56 to find material. A good thinker. You had to take what you have and sort it out. And sort it out could
0:09:00 mean a hundred different things. And you had to be able to write well. Very few people can do all three
0:09:05 of those things. So, you know, what was the question? I have no idea what the question is.
0:09:10 When you say that you were bored by convention, what conventions were you rebelling against?
0:09:15 So as much as I love journalism, a lot of journalism, I think, is not very good. Just like a lot of
0:09:19 anything is not very good. And one of the things that I really wanted to do with Freakonomics
0:09:27 was show a style of writing that was just narrative, nonfiction, journalism based, all factual, all fact
0:09:32 checked and so on, where you tell good stories as with journalism, but you’ve got the data underneath
0:09:37 it. And in my case, I hooked up with this amazing data partner, Steve Levitt, who’d done all this
0:09:44 research that we could sort of harness or exploit for telling different stories. So I wanted to bring
0:09:51 to the kind of writing that I’ve always liked to do some other layers or dimensions that in this case
0:09:57 came from economics and the other social sciences. But I also love journalists who marry up storytelling
0:10:04 with physics and other sciences and so on. I think it’s a very natural blend. The more multidisciplinary
0:10:06 journalism can get, the better.
0:10:12 One more question about process that’s not specific to journalism, because I am really interested in how
0:10:18 the data guy and the storyteller find a shared voice. There are a million reasons why a collaboration like
0:10:21 that should not work, but yours did work. How?
0:10:29 Steve Levitt is one of the most unusual and creative minds I’ve ever encountered. So he was a great partner
0:10:36 for me. And he’s a great economist, even though a very atypical economist. Steve Levitt, the one
0:10:41 shortcoming I can think of for Levitt that I’m willing to say in public, is that he thinks that
0:10:47 I’m as good at writing as I think he is at economics. So he thought when he found me that he
0:10:53 was the lucky one. And I’m pretty sure that I was the lucky one. But we truly felt that way about each
0:10:58 other. And so that’s what made it work. There was a lot of trial and error in the beginning. It was
0:11:03 terrible. We tried for a while to literally like write together, like sit at the computer and him say
0:11:08 words and me think words and me type words. And they were barely words. They were terrible.
0:11:11 The publisher wasn’t convinced that this was going to work and also hated the name. Is that right?
0:11:15 Yeah, they had many regrets. Yes. But it worked out okay. Yeah.
0:11:22 You said at the time that the book had no central thesis. 20 years on, does that still hold?
0:11:27 I think it does. But if I were forced, I would say, like, since we’re sitting in the synagogue,
0:11:32 I would say, one of my favorite lines from all of Jewish teaching is a very, very simple one.
0:11:39 turn it and turn it for everything is in it, it being the Torah. So the idea is that any topic you
0:11:45 can take, and this is what we love about doing what we do. You know, you can take any curiosity you have
0:11:50 and talk to enough interesting people, and it becomes fascinating for you. So once again,
0:11:54 I’ve forgotten the original question. I’m not kidding. I have a very short-term memory.
0:11:56 I almost forgot the question, too.
0:12:00 Does anybody remember the question? It was a good question. It was good.
0:12:00 Oh, no central thesis.
0:12:02 No central thesis. Yeah.
0:12:02 Is there a thesis?
0:12:07 So if I wanted to say there’s a philosophical-ish thesis, I would say that, I wouldn’t say that
0:12:12 everything is interesting, but everything is worth examination, because you never know. But then if
0:12:16 I want to make it a little bit more concrete or pragmatic or a little bit more of a blueprint,
0:12:23 I would say, and I think we do write this in the book, which is that data are really useful
0:12:29 for a lot of things, but especially if you can use them to understand the incentives that people
0:12:35 respond to. That’s the thing. So if you think about, like, as a parent, or if you’re making public
0:12:41 policy, whatever it is, you try to come up with what you think is a good idea and the right thing,
0:12:45 and then you try to think about how people will respond to that. And that can be very difficult,
0:12:52 difficult. Because the kind of people who make rules often don’t have that much in common with
0:12:57 the people that they’re giving the rules to and wanting to be followed. So understanding how people
0:13:02 will respond to any program is tricky because the incentives are sort of hard to figure out. If you
0:13:09 can use the data to understand why people make the decisions that they do, then I think you can really
0:13:16 make progress in the world. And when economists talk about incentives, most of us just think of
0:13:21 financial incentives. And that’s plainly an important thing. But we have so many others. We care about
0:13:27 who we are. We care about our relationships with people and so on. And sometimes those are the incentives
0:13:32 that will rule, but they’re very hard to anticipate. You also said in the book, and I took notes on this,
0:13:38 that you thought Freakonomics, you saw it as an exercise in curiosity without cynicism. That’s a
0:13:43 beautiful phrase. Unpack what you mean by that. I think it’s very easy to tip into cynicism.
0:13:51 I think we’re living through an extraordinarily unusual time, an extraordinarily noisy time. When
0:13:55 I say noise, I mean not just noise, but also signal to noise ratio. There’s a lot of noise and not that
0:14:00 much signal. I find this in news. It’s why I like your show so much. Thank you. You all know his show,
0:14:07 I gather, NewsHour. It’s a great, great, great news show. And one reason I think it’s so good is
0:14:12 it’s very simple. You guys do a good job at giving a lot of information that I can then figure out what
0:14:17 I want to do with, as opposed to a little bit of information and being kind of harangued about how
0:14:21 I need to feel about that information. And so once again, I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten the actual
0:14:27 question. And exercising curiosity without cynicism. The other side of that is, do you ever worry that
0:14:32 people can apply the data cynically and use the data to justify whatever they want?
0:14:37 When I first started publishing as a journalist in New York City, you know, a bunch of years ago,
0:14:43 you become, this was pre-internet and you become acquainted with the letter to the editor ecosystem.
0:14:50 And it’s a very funny ecosystem because it was a really small subset of people who had the time
0:14:54 and the energy and the anger to write a letter to the editor. Okay. You would read them and they were
0:14:59 almost always based in some legitimate grievance, but they were usually, you know, quite overboard.
0:15:06 The way I learned to think about it was I’m the writer. I had my say. I did my best. I had an idea.
0:15:13 I executed as well as I could. We fact-checked. We did the whole thing. I had the platform and I turned
0:15:17 it over. And now whoever reads it, they should be able to say whatever they want about it.
0:15:25 What’s happened in, you know, recent years, called 20 years, is that everybody writes a letter to the
0:15:29 editor, but it’s not to the editor. It’s to you directly. And it’s to the world. And it’s very
0:15:33 voluminous and it’s very noisy and it’s not very considered. The people who used to write letters
0:15:38 to the editor would take an hour and a half to write a three-page letter with every stupid thing
0:15:43 you said. And now it’s just like, you’re a blank or you are in the pocket of blank, whatever.
0:15:48 And you as the writer, you know, none of that is true, or at least you hope none of that is true.
0:15:56 But it’s very easy to think that that noise represents the norm. I don’t think it does. I still
0:16:03 think that the world is still mostly full of fantastically well-intentioned people, kind people,
0:16:10 people who want to be loved and want to love back. And I think that a great deal of the anger and hatred
0:16:15 comes from people who really feel unloved. I really think that’s at the root of it. I mean,
0:16:23 if you read any psychology, philosophy, theology, it seems pretty clear to me. And so I’ve never been
0:16:29 a cynic, but when I feel people being cynical and trying to use information in a way like that,
0:16:35 I don’t necessarily communicate directly with them, but I keep it in mind. So the next show I make,
0:16:41 I really just try to present an argument or an idea in a way that shows that this is not done to punish
0:16:47 anyone that a rising tide really does lift all boats. It’s happened so many times in history,
0:16:52 and I just want it to keep happening. And so, yeah, I think skepticism is good. You never want
0:16:56 to believe anything at face value without checking out. But cynicism, I think, is the first few steps
0:16:58 to a place that I don’t think we need to go.
0:17:02 Well, building on your point about the signal-to-noise ratio these days,
0:17:08 how do you define the hidden side of everything when everything is visible? Everything feels
0:17:14 tracked and monetized. How do you create space for yourself and for Freakonomics?
0:17:20 So I don’t have a job. This is all I do, right? So what that means is I have a lot of time. Like,
0:17:26 unlike you, you have to show up every day and have a story meeting in the morning and start making plans,
0:17:30 and then things change. And like, I would die. I couldn’t do it. I could do it for like one week.
0:17:37 I’m like a cheap version of a hothouse flower, whatever that is. I just need to be in my environment
0:17:43 doing my thing. I just spend a lot of time alone thinking, reading, and I do love to talk to people.
0:17:50 You know, that’s where ideas come from. I’m constantly amazed at how interesting the world
0:17:55 is, remains, even when you think you know a lot. So we’ve got a podcast on the economics of the horse
0:17:59 industry, the horse market. So I knew a little bit about racehorsing, but not much else.
0:18:03 And I went to an economics conference. I got to talking to this woman there,
0:18:08 and somehow comes up that she just bought a second horse. Like, I didn’t know you had a
0:18:13 first horse. Tell me more. She does equestrian. And I said, what do you pay for a horse like that?
0:18:20 Because I’m obnoxious. Okay. So I will say that cynicism, I’m not in favor of obnoxious is okay.
0:18:26 Or inquisitive, inquisitive. That’s the other problem is I grew up, I was the youngest in a big
0:18:33 family. I didn’t really get to talk that much for a long time. So now I’m just like, ah,
0:18:38 but so we, I said, what do you pay for a horse like that? And she said, well, I can’t tell you
0:18:44 that. And I said, well, that means it’s more than more than well. And then I just keep going. She
0:18:48 didn’t give me the number of her horse. She said a horse very much like mine bought by someone like
0:18:55 me in a market like this might pay about blank. And it was low ish six figures for a hobby horse.
0:19:02 Most people who buy these, it’s kind of an advanced hobby. And then she said, but if you think that’s a
0:19:09 lot, especially in the Florida market, there are billionaires who buy $2 million horses for their
0:19:16 kids just to train on, just to see if they’re any good at it. And moreover, almost none of these sales
0:19:21 are recorded anywhere, all private transactions. So that got me really interested because I had done
0:19:27 a series about the economics of the art markets, which are fascinating. The intersection with galleries,
0:19:33 artists, museums, there’s so much there. And even though it’s economics, I do like the economics of
0:19:39 these things. It’s about much more. And so with horses, it became really fun. And so if I can find
0:19:45 an idea like that, you know, six, eight times a year, and then there are things in the news that I do like
0:19:50 off of. We did a piece a couple of weeks ago about the doctor shortage. We could have done a 12-parter
0:19:56 on that. It’s such a big thing. So, you know, I do have journalist DNA from working at the Times and
0:20:03 elsewhere, but then kind of the, let’s put on a show DNA also from, you know, playing music and all those
0:20:03 other things.
0:20:08 Is that typically how stories and ideas find their way to you? Just conversations you’re having with
0:20:11 people or just, you know, watching the news and you get a spark of an idea?
0:20:17 Yeah. Not so much the news, no offense. No, no. No, I’m not kidding. Because like what I said about
0:20:25 your show, like I do learn a lot there. A lot of the media news broadcasts on TV irritates me because
0:20:32 there’s such little information and it’s all done theatrically. It’s more entertainment than news.
0:20:39 It’s unbelievably well done. I think we’re living in an age of gonzo broadcast art. I’m an NFL fan.
0:20:47 If I watch a three-hour NFL telecast, I think that is one of the most majestically produced live
0:20:53 three-hour theatrical broadcast events you could imagine. The photography, the commentary and so on,
0:20:59 it’s unbelievable how good we are at entertainment like that. The problem is too much of the news has
0:21:06 become entertainment like that for me. So I do like to seek out people who do interesting things. I love
0:21:12 smart people. I love humble people. I love decent people. So if I meet a smart, humble, decent person,
0:21:18 I just glom onto them and, you know, talk to them until they’re so sick of me. But it’s the way I like to learn.
0:21:24 Well, if Freakonomics is all about knowing what to measure and encouraging people to measure it well,
0:21:29 what are we measuring well in 2025? And what are we falling short on?
0:21:31 What a great question.
0:21:31 Thank you.
0:21:37 You know, what your question reminds me of, which is not a direct answer, though, it might become one,
0:21:40 although I’m going to forget the question at least twice on the way to it becoming one.
0:21:46 At that same conference where I met this woman about the horses, I saw Jay Powell, Jerome Powell,
0:21:50 the Fed chair, give a talk. And it was not a public economics conference. So he was speaking to other
0:21:56 economists, not like Jay Powell is off the chain when he’s talking to other economists. He’s still
0:21:57 pretty much the same guy.
0:21:58 He’s going rogue.
0:22:06 But he said something that I think to all economists and to him maybe was obvious, but to me, made me sit
0:22:14 up and pay attention, which was how good the US government has been at collecting, analyzing,
0:22:18 storing and distributing data. So if you think about it over the past hundred years,
0:22:22 just the amount of government data we’ve had to work on, whether it has to do with jobs,
0:22:28 housing, education, on and on, not all of that comes from the federal government, but a great,
0:22:36 great deal does. And so he was just making a kind of side comment that the quality of data coming out
0:22:42 of the US government that pertains to economics is really large. I would agree with him. I think it’s
0:22:48 been damaged since then. This was probably six or eight months ago. So what’s interesting is it’s
0:22:53 never binary. I think that’s one thing we try to do with Freakonomics or everything I try to do on the
0:23:00 radio show. Almost nothing is a binary. Sometimes it’s a yes or no, high or low, black or white, but
0:23:06 very seldom. I think the reality lives in the gap there. And that one of the jobs of a writer,
0:23:12 a journalist or an artist or parent, anyone is to kind of get in that gap and sort it out. And so
0:23:20 for instance, now that the typical government jobs data seem to be changed on dimensions that most people
0:23:26 think is probably not very good. It turns out that the private sector has started to aggregate a lot
0:23:31 of jobs data because it’s in their interest to have that too. So that may be a case where an incentive
0:23:37 was created by the change in government policy that may create a better stream of data for all
0:23:44 we know. We’ll have to see. What is lost when we lose quality data at the federal level or lose trust
0:23:51 and confidence in the data at the federal level? I would like to think we lose the main tool in the
0:23:57 policymaking toolkit. That’s what I would like to argue. But that would imply that data has been used
0:24:04 as the main tool in the policymaking toolkit. You got the right audience for an argument like that.
0:24:12 And look, it hurts me to say this, but I am not a big fan of politics. And the reason is it frustrates
0:24:19 me too much because I know how important it is. But the way that I’ve kind of, I don’t know about,
0:24:23 I was going to say been trained. It’s not like I was trained as a PhD economist to look at things this
0:24:28 way. But I have hung out with Steve Levitt and other economists now long enough to kind of naturally
0:24:34 think this way. And if I know that you just want my data, this goes back to what you were saying about
0:24:39 cynicism. If I read a paper, and this happened to Steve Levitt, happened to every economist I know,
0:24:45 they’ll get a call from a staffer on the Hill who wants to use the paper to make an argument,
0:24:51 would you be willing to come on and consult with us or whatever? But then you might get a call the next
0:24:54 day from someone on the other side of the aisle about the same paper wanting you to do a different
0:25:00 piece of the argument. And you realize that when you’re the cherry being picked, it’s no fun.
0:25:07 I think that’s a big problem universally is that we make a lot, as individuals, we make too many
0:25:13 decisions based on emotion, thinking fast versus thinking slow. You may have heard that’s the title
0:25:19 of a wonderful book by Danny Kahneman. We make too many personal and family decisions on emotion and having a
0:25:25 lack of data. And I think we make too many policy decisions having access to a lot of data, but just
0:25:30 enough to know that you can exploit it to make an argument that is not really an empirical argument.
0:25:35 And that frustrates me. I don’t think you have to be a Republican, a Democrat, whatever, to just look
0:25:39 at the data on, for instance, the amount of money that the federal government distributes for
0:25:47 any one of a number of child-related causes. So in this country, we support families and children
0:25:53 much less than any other rich country. Some people on one side may tell you, well, there are different
0:25:58 tax incentives that make up for it. And that’s not untrue. But if you look at the data, it’s pretty
0:26:05 overwhelming. If you look at the way that we support families generally, and then when you look at what
0:26:12 we know about how a loved and supported child turns out on average versus one who receives neither a lot
0:26:18 of love and support, it’s a no-brainer. If you want to have a thriving, healthy society, support children
0:26:24 on every level, support families on every level. And the data are there to indicate that we’re not very
0:26:30 good at doing that federally. I know the arguments from both sides. They both have very legitimate points.
0:26:36 But when I get in the middle of that, I give up. Like, what’s a person like me to do? So sometimes I feel
0:26:41 not like I’m hiding. When I do a series on horses, I got an email the other day from someone that says,
0:26:43 you know, there’s all this chaos going on. Why are you doing horses?
0:26:50 And I mean, how am I going to… They’re right. They’re right. But you know what? I’m doing horses
0:26:55 because all this chaos is going on. And I think there’s still a lot of room in the world to,
0:27:00 you know, ask questions, be curious, spend time with good people. Government is important for sure,
0:27:06 but it’s the people that makes a place. It’s not the government that makes a place. I’m very pro-people.
0:27:08 I’m just not huge on politics.
0:27:16 Coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Jeff Bennett at 6th and I in Washington,
0:27:19 D.C. I’m Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio.
0:27:32 Well, let me ask you, what did you learn from Steve about applying economics to questions or
0:27:38 applying data to questions that seemed absurd on the surface, but then over time you thought,
0:27:40 wow, he’s really on to something?
0:27:44 I think the biggest thing I learned from Steve Levitt and from other economists
0:27:50 was reading their papers in their journals, which I encourage you to do, especially if you’ve ever had
0:27:58 any sleep issues. They’re written in a language that really isn’t English. It’s not the English
0:28:04 that we know. Economics papers are filled with words that are just beautifully bizarre.
0:28:08 Heteroscedasticity. Okay, let’s live with that one for 10 minutes.
0:28:09 Which means what?
0:28:13 I have no idea. Heteroscedasticity. I think it has to do with a certain
0:28:16 type or form of randomness. Okay.
0:28:24 But so the question was, yeah, yeah. So what they do in their econ papers that I think is
0:28:29 great for all of us, especially for journalists, and other social scientists don’t do this in their
0:28:34 papers. Like if you read psych papers or sociology, and I think econ is just better. They work with
0:28:39 bigger data sets. They say, this paper is going to argue that blank. Let’s say that blank is that
0:28:47 minimum wage laws don’t generally have the intended effect of lifting incomes for the people that we
0:28:53 really want to lift incomes for. And in fact, they may discourage job growth because there are firms
0:28:57 that will lay people off as the minimum wage rises, right? That’s an old argument. And as it turns out,
0:29:02 in the economics literature, there’s a lot of really good research arguing on either side. It’s a very
0:29:07 tricky issue and it’s very case specific. But what an economics paper will do when it’s laying out its
0:29:12 argument, it says, here’s our thesis. And we’re going to tell you how we reach the thesis. Here’s
0:29:18 the data. Here’s the methodology of analyzing the data. Here are the countervailing forces. Here’s the
0:29:23 things we couldn’t answer and so on. But one thing they also do is say, here are, let’s say,
0:29:32 five other possible explanations other than ours. And we’re going to interrogate those also. And we’ll
0:29:37 tell you why we think those are not the most legitimate. It’s like I said before, turn it and
0:29:42 turn it for everything is in it. Go in, study it deeply, come out, and then synthesize and write it
0:29:52 very simply. So with Levitt, he invited me into this sort of fraternity of amazingly brilliant people,
0:29:56 these economists who came from a variety of backgrounds. They’re all very good at math
0:30:00 because economics got very mathy for a period there. It wasn’t always, and hopefully it won’t
0:30:05 always be that way in the future. No, I mean, some math is good, but when the papers are all theory
0:30:11 that no one can read and understand, it’s not very useful, I think. But when you spend time with people
0:30:17 who, you know, rather than the knee-jerk response, like, oh, X policy is about to be invoked. Well,
0:30:21 I’ve been reading the Washington Post or I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal. I know how
0:30:26 that’s going to turn out. No, you don’t. Nobody knows how it’s going to turn out. The best you can
0:30:31 do to make an educated guess is to look at a lot of data, to look at history, to look at economic history,
0:30:36 to talk to people who really understand the mechanism that’s being invoked right now
0:30:43 and using real data to figure out how that might work. And that I find thrilling in the way that,
0:30:47 like, if you’re in grad school and you’re studying literature and you really sort of figure it out,
0:30:51 that can be thrilling. If you’re studying some religious tradition, you read these religious
0:30:58 texts and figure, oh, that’s what they’re getting at there, a philosophy. And so, to me, economics is a
0:31:05 sort of toolkit that I was invited to use not quite as a professional. Like, if they were safe-cracking
0:31:10 tools, like, I might be the guys that broke into the Louvre. It was a great idea, but I was kind of sloppy.
0:31:14 I wasn’t really a total pro, but, like, I know how to use the tools.
0:31:17 Would you back a ladder up to the building and then climb up into the window?
0:31:19 Okay. I thought that was a very good idea.
0:31:20 That was next level.
0:31:27 20 years on, what insights have aged well and which have not?
0:31:30 Wow. I don’t know if I’m the one to answer that.
0:31:38 I am a pack rat when it comes to my stuff, my work. I have cases, you know, many, too many files.
0:31:40 You’re right about that, the plastic bins of paper.
0:31:45 The forward of this book, this is how bad I am. The forward of this book, the reason this book is
0:31:51 published in November and not in, like, September is because this three-page forward that I ended up
0:31:57 writing, that I really wanted to write, it took me six months because I really needed to kind of
0:32:01 figure out what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was related to the fact that, as you know,
0:32:06 I have these bins and bins and bins of mostly work product, drafts of articles, but, like, for every
0:32:11 two pages you write for a book, you have this much in printed out research material, and I can’t throw
0:32:15 it out. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what to do with it. So, I’m kind of hamstrung
0:32:17 with it. I’ve already forgotten the question. I know that I’ve forgotten the question.
0:32:18 Insights that aged well.
0:32:24 Yeah, I know I’m circling back to it. So, here’s the thing. I kind of dread thinking about the past.
0:32:30 I respect the past, but it makes me feel usually mournful, the past generally, other than I like
0:32:34 reading economic history because it’s not, like, my past. So, I don’t really think about that. I
0:32:39 really do think about, like, what’s coming into me today. And what I do know is every day we get a lot
0:32:46 of correspondence from people who have used something from Freakonomics, the books or the radio show, to do
0:32:52 awesome stuff. There is a bill being considered in Congress right now having to do with trying to
0:32:58 increase the amount of kidney donations because of some work related to some work that we had done
0:33:06 on kidney donations. I did a piece a year ago, maybe, about the astonishingly high false positive rate
0:33:12 on penicillin allergies, which it turns out, if you think that you’re allergic to the penicillin family
0:33:17 of drugs, I’ll bet you $100 that you’re not. And at the end of the night, I’ll win a lot more money
0:33:21 because nine out of 10 people think they are and they’re not. So, I’m going to walk away the winner
0:33:26 there. And I’m getting all these emails from people who have parents who now are in a hospital and need
0:33:32 a drug but couldn’t get it to their kids who are told that they’re allergic to something. So, I love
0:33:38 having a small effect in that way. I think from this book and the books that we wrote, I know there are a
0:33:44 lot of people who trampolined into something. I think the single biggest category is actually a terrible
0:33:51 one. A lot of people read and still read our books when they’re young, 14, 15, 16. And then they go to
0:33:56 college and they say, I’m going to study economics because I really like free economics. And then they
0:34:03 get in their first class like, this is terrible. It’s so boring. It’s unrelated to anything. So,
0:34:06 I think that might be the biggest negative effect we’ve had.
0:34:12 It’s generations of children misled by you and your book. That’s incredible. I want to talk about
0:34:17 the business of what you do in the medium because you had the book, then you launched a blog,
0:34:23 then the podcast. And the blog and the podcast existed long before blogs and podcasts were even
0:34:29 a thing. Did you see the podcast boom in particular coming? No, that was, again, really, really lucky.
0:34:35 So, Levitt and I just finished the manuscript for our second book, Super Free Economics. This was maybe
0:34:41 2009. And I was just a little lonely. So, I love Levitt. We have a great, great, great partnership. And we’re
0:34:45 very, very good friends. It’s been a remarkable partnership. But we’ve never lived in the same
0:34:51 place. Even though we collaborated on the books, I’m the writer. So, I would be the one alone in
0:34:54 the room. And then I would run everything by him. And sometimes he would participate a lot,
0:34:59 sometimes less. But I was still, it was lonely. And I really wanted to do something collaborative.
0:35:04 I missed that. I missed that a lot. And in my earlier years, before I became a journalist by
0:35:09 profession, I was a musician. That was my life. When you’re in a band, it’s kind of like being
0:35:17 married to a few people. It’s a very close relationship. And so, when I stopped that,
0:35:22 I missed it a lot. But it was also very stressful. So, I became a writer. I liked doing it alone.
0:35:27 Then my partnership with Levitt was kind of like being in a band again. It was really,
0:35:30 really, really, really fun. And I think that gave me the taste again for a little bit more
0:35:34 collaboration. So, when I started the podcast, part of the reason was I want to have a little
0:35:40 gang. I just did it for fun. I always liked audio. When I was a kid, I had a cassette record. I loved
0:35:46 to record voices. You know, I was playing music when I was little. I feel like when you listen to audio
0:35:53 and you don’t see the image, you bring so much of yourself to it. And so, I’d always loved audio.
0:35:58 And I always loved interviewing as a journalist. I’d write a piece about, you know, Steven Spielberg
0:36:03 for the New York Times Magazine. I would come home with dozens of hours of audio tape and transcribe
0:36:08 it myself back in the old days with a little transcriber with the pedal. And you really get
0:36:12 to know the material that way. And I loved, loved, loved that. It’s hard to be very productive.
0:36:18 I mean, technology has totally changed that. I get a transcript from Trent now five minutes
0:36:23 after the two-hour interview. So, it’s remarkable how the technology is helping with things like
0:36:27 that. Lost my thought? Anybody?
0:36:29 Did you see the podcast boom coming?
0:36:33 Yeah. So, what appealed to me about… You are so good, by the way.
0:36:35 That’s high praise coming from you.
0:36:39 No, I mean, you’re super… Like, your eyes listen in a way that makes it so intense I can
0:36:40 barely look at you. This is awesome.
0:36:46 So, you know why I learned that? I used to work for Scott Simon as his editor at NPR,
0:36:48 one of the best broadcasters ever. I learned that from Scott.
0:36:48 You’re kidding.
0:36:49 Yeah.
0:36:54 When you’re doing in-person audio, that’s really important because you don’t want to keep going,
0:36:58 uh-huh, uh-huh. So, I don’t do most in-person audio, which is a problem for me because I’m getting
0:37:05 ready to do this new project, which is in-person. I have to learn to shut up. No, seriously, I’m the
0:37:10 biggest interrupter. But the thing about podcasting that really appealed to me is two things that I
0:37:15 loved. Interviewing. And when I say interviewing, it’s really having a conversation. It’s bringing
0:37:22 yourself to the conversation and trying to learn about a person. But I also love what audio is.
0:37:26 So, if I were to write a piece about Steven Spielberg for the Times Magazine, those cover
0:37:32 stories are about 8,000 words, which sounds like a lot. If I were to measure the ratio of that 8,000,
0:37:39 that is actually him talking. It’s maybe 20%, 30%. Then you have other voices talking about him.
0:37:45 And then you have the writer explaining, right? And I like that. I have an ego just like every writer,
0:37:51 but it’s different because the person being portrayed, it’s really a piece of writing that’s
0:37:57 really about the writer as much as the person. And I get that. I like that form. I like the magazine
0:38:03 profile format. I’ve always loved that. But with audio in a podcast, the listener, which is the audience,
0:38:10 gets to experience the subject in a much more legitimate, unvarnished way. You’re hearing them.
0:38:14 You’re hearing their voice. You’re hearing their pauses. You’re hearing their laughter. You’re hearing
0:38:18 when they get a little exasperated with a question I might ask. And so, I really like the idea of
0:38:23 combining those two. And that’s why I did a podcast. And then when it became like a going business,
0:38:24 that was just a surprise to everybody.
0:38:30 Well, how do you know when a question is worthy of an entire episode or can sustain an episode or
0:38:30 series?
0:38:37 I try to operate fearlessly, by which I mean, you have to trust your instincts. If midway in,
0:38:42 you decide it’s not a good question, you just dump it. We go fairly far down the road on quite a few
0:38:48 things, then just throw them away. We’ve published things that I didn’t think were A plus pieces. But if
0:38:54 it gets below B plus, I pull the plug or run a repeat or something. The biggest challenge I have
0:38:59 is when I come up with a question that I like and that I think is a valuable question, but I can’t find
0:39:06 anything empirical, any good data on it. And then I’m likely to give it up because I need to find someone
0:39:11 who can quantify it for me. Because otherwise, then you’re just talking around it. And I don’t like that.
0:39:14 When I think of incredible storytellers, I think of you, I think of Scott Simon,
0:39:21 I think of Robert Krolwich. How do you translate intellectual rigor into accessible storytelling?
0:39:25 Is there a process? Is there a do this, then that, then this?
0:39:31 I mean, at the risk of sounding whatever the bad word is, arrogant, cocky, I think there’s a certain
0:39:37 amount of talent in it. But I think the talent is not what people think. I think in audio, it really
0:39:42 helps to have a good ear. One of the first questions that I ask anyone that I’m potentially going to work
0:39:50 with in audio is whether they ever played or sang music. And if the answer is no, it turns out they’re
0:39:57 usually not my kind of people. Because if you think about it, what is the human voice other than the most
0:40:01 amazing musical instrument ever invented? That’s what it is. Think about what you can do with your voice.
0:40:10 You can express dozens of emotions. So I think part of it is when you’re talking to someone
0:40:15 the first time, but then when you’re also, if you’re editing on paper, which you and I both do,
0:40:21 if that’s in your brain, if you can really hear that instrument go, that’s a big advantage. A lot of
0:40:26 people can’t do that. And then when you’re listening to rough cuts and music cuts and final cuts, you’re
0:40:33 always listening for, does this explain it well? If there’s emotion in it, is the emotion legitimate?
0:40:40 You don’t want to gin things up? Is my question trying to sound like a smart person? That’s something
0:40:45 I try to avoid. I take pride in doing my homework and being prepared, but I don’t like the interviews
0:40:53 where, here’s my theory. Do you agree with that? I’m not much for those. I try to act kind of like
0:40:58 a fairly intelligent 10th grader who gets the opportunity to sit down with someone who’s
0:41:02 really a master of some domain of knowledge and say, I really want to know, teach me that.
0:41:11 Coming up after the break, audience questions, always the best part. I’m Stephen Dovner. This
0:41:13 is Freakonomics Radio. We’ll be right back.
0:41:26 I want to start incorporating some of the audience questions. Some of you in the room and folks who
0:41:32 are watching online submitted some really terrific questions. This one from Jana. Do you regret anything
0:41:37 you put into the Freakonomics books, be it opinions you voiced or takes you defended that you wished you
0:41:38 hadn’t?
0:41:45 I mean, I think everyone loves confessions and loves mistakes aired publicly. I hate to say it. Like,
0:41:51 I know there’ve been things that we’ve written that certainly people didn’t like a lot. That’s kind of
0:41:57 the nature of it. But no, I don’t regret them. There is a mantra from someone, you know, it’s
0:42:01 probably something that someone says Churchill said, but he almost certainly didn’t. If it’s not
0:42:09 Churchill, it’s Mark Twain. If it’s not Mark Twain, it’s Confucius. But anyway, it was no indecision,
0:42:16 no regrets. When I first read that, I thought, oh, that’s cocky. No indecision, no regrets. But then
0:42:21 I realized it’s very valuable. Once you’re on a path, it’s not like I decided I’m not going to
0:42:24 murder this person and now I am and I should reconsider. I’m not talking about that kind of
0:42:30 indecision. That’s a good indecision. That’s a rare indecision. But I mean by no indecision would mean
0:42:35 that once I’m committed to thinking through an idea, let me do it even if it’s really hard.
0:42:41 And the no regrets is if I’ve really given it my all. And I, you know, I give it my all. Every
0:42:48 script, every, I even read the ads with great intention. I really do. I think there are some
0:42:54 things in this world that when you do them with intention or not, they look very similar, but
0:42:59 they’re different. Look, we’re in a synagogue. Prayer with intention is different than prayer
0:43:05 without intention. Sex without intention is basically like, I don’t want to say sex without
0:43:11 intention is pornography per se, but it’s heading in that territory. Writing or being a communicator
0:43:17 of ideas without intention and care, then you’re just asking people to pay attention to you. And so
0:43:23 I don’t do that. I sometimes make mistakes and I fail all the time. But when you know that you’ve done
0:43:29 it with a good heart and with intention, then even if people perceive it ungenerously, I’m okay with
0:43:36 that. Sam asks, have you ever chosen not to publish a true but combustible finding because the likely
0:43:41 misinterpretation outweighed public benefit? That is so Sam. I know that, Sam.
0:43:50 The only thing I can think like a sexy finding that we were going to maybe do a radio episode on,
0:43:58 I think it was the argument that the availability of online pornography was probably a driver in the
0:44:04 decrease in sexual assault crimes. This was someone who had purported to measure that quite carefully.
0:44:10 So if you’re an economist or someone trying to measure an effect like that, how can you do that?
0:44:15 And like when a new TV show or a new type of show is introduced and it would get rolled out in
0:44:21 different parts of the country over time, you could measure the effect of that versus crime or
0:44:26 education or whatever in that area. So you try to isolate what economists would call an instrumental
0:44:32 variable. And so these people had done some version of that, I think, with pornography and sexual
0:44:38 assault. I think someone had done something similar with the attendance of violent movies and violent
0:44:44 crime and found that it went down. And then there was maybe an argument that, well, it went down because
0:44:49 the people who would be doing the crime are actually in the movie theaters at the time. Or it could be a
0:44:54 different idea, which is that if you kind of get your yaya’s out by watching this brutal stuff, then
0:44:56 you’re less inclined to do it. I don’t know.
0:45:02 Laura asks, are there any tips for federal employees who now find ourselves unexpectedly out of work,
0:45:07 especially those over 60 who can’t or don’t want to retire just yet?
0:45:14 Yeah, that’s a tough one, a good one. I would say I’m worthless for this kind of advice. But what I
0:45:21 would say that’s adjacent to this problem is that I think a lot of us make decisions about what to do
0:45:30 in life generally, career or a project, and we base it on the likelihood of success or the payout, if you
0:45:34 get it. We all know a lot of people who pursued a career education. They went to law school or medical
0:45:41 school, whatever. Maybe most of them, it ended up working out great. But many of them, maybe not so
0:45:45 much for medical school. So I think most people who do that really do it for a very different set of
0:45:51 reasons. But a lot of people get a business degree or a law degree because it’s prestigious. They’ll
0:45:55 make money. They’ll feel good about themselves. They can have the life they want. And then they find
0:46:02 that they don’t like it. A lot of people don’t like their jobs, unfortunately. And so what Levitt
0:46:08 really persuaded me, the more work we did together, and we wrote about a number of things that kind of ran
0:46:15 into this idea, which is that it’s really hard to get good at something unless you really love it.
0:46:20 Because how do you get good at something? You practice, practice, practice, obsess, obsess,
0:46:28 obsess, gather feedback, gather feedback, analyze it. And you have to be really devoted to do all that
0:46:34 if it’s something you don’t like. Find something you really like and are good at. And if you want to
0:46:38 bring a little economics into it, find something at which you think you’ve got what they called
0:46:44 a comparative advantage. Something in which you, for whatever set of reasons, you’re a little bit
0:46:50 better than most people at it. And that you know that it’s the kind of thing that will light you up
0:46:56 every day and that will even keep you up at night. And that’s the thing that I find that if you do that,
0:47:02 there’s certainly no guarantee that it’s going to turn into a thing that rewards you monetarily and
0:47:09 reputation-wise and so on. But it’s a heck of a lot better of a gamble, I think, than the other way
0:47:15 around, which is let me try the tried and true path that there are many people on because it leads to
0:47:20 a lot of money and so on. Because then you’re entering into this sort of tournament model,
0:47:25 as economists would call it, where the competition is intense. So try to do what you think you can do
0:47:29 really, really well. And if you do it that well, it’s going to have value to someone.
0:47:34 That’s terrific advice. Claire asks, if you could rewrite Freakonomics in 2025, which would be a heavy
0:47:40 lift since it took six months to write three pages of the foreword, but if you could, what’s the biggest
0:47:45 change you would make and why? Has anything in the past two decades, new research, changes in the world
0:47:47 at large, made you question conclusions from the book?
0:47:53 Well, again, I’d say the conclusions we feel really good about. There’s certainly been new research in some
0:47:58 of the areas. We always look at that research. And in one case, maybe the most famous case from
0:48:04 Freakonomics, this was research that Levitt had done before I met him with John Donahue, a legal scholar,
0:48:10 about the relationship between abortion and crime. The argument being that the legalization of abortion
0:48:16 at the Supreme Court level with Roe v. Wade led to a decrease in crime across the United States because
0:48:23 it led to fewer unwanted children being born, which goes back to what we were talking about earlier about
0:48:29 wantedness and being loved and paid resources and attention being paid to you. So if you think about
0:48:34 that from a social science perspective, that’s not a very surprising argument, right? But there are other
0:48:39 perspectives to think about that from. And then, but the real issue is Levitt had made a coding error in the
0:48:44 original paper. And even I think by the time that we wrote about it, that paper had been floated and
0:48:50 Levitt had responded to that the way that academics do. But then years later, Levitt and John Donahue,
0:48:56 the original scholar, went back and re-examined the entire collage of evidence with new data and found
0:49:03 the finding to be actually even stronger. So yeah, we try to do a version of social science storytelling
0:49:08 that’s really based on fact and reporting and data and fact checking. So I feel good about that.
0:49:12 In terms of what I would do different, the tone of the book, I think would be totally different.
0:49:17 First of all, we were a lot younger. We just were. It’s 20 years ago. You’re a different person.
0:49:22 The world was different. I think we sound like if you read that, we didn’t change the book.
0:49:28 We thought about it and I thought, you know, it’s not a, I wanted it to be the same book with
0:49:34 a different cover. We found a couple of typos and there’s a new forward because it’s, you write a
0:49:39 book. The book is the book, but I did read it again. And parts of it were a little bit painful
0:49:45 just because we sound like immature and callow, but we were. Levitt and I are both like, we are a pair
0:49:48 of nine-year-olds when you get us together. Sometimes we just have…
0:49:49 That’s the best kind of partnership though.
0:49:53 Well, part of that is great because it’s like, hey, have you ever thought of this?
0:49:58 No. What would happen if we did? And then let’s go. It’s nice to have a partner like that.
0:50:04 So I think there is a certain juvenalia in there that I would probably do very differently,
0:50:07 but I’m not so sure it’d be better. I think it’s a good thing to be in touch with your,
0:50:10 not your inner child, but like your actual old child.
0:50:15 Well, on that point, what have you learned about yourself in studying everybody else’s incentive
0:50:16 systems?
0:50:22 Hanging out with economists did make me really think about making a lot more decisions
0:50:30 on a fully rational basis. Economists bring a cold, not a cold-blooded, but a cold-eyed rationality
0:50:37 to a lot of policy conversations that are very, very important. And I will never give up on that.
0:50:44 But if you start looking at everything that way, it makes you a cold person. And so I feel like for a
0:50:50 while I tried a form of being as a parent, as a husband, as a friend that was a little bit like,
0:50:56 that really doesn’t matter. The data show that doesn’t matter. And even though the data show that
0:51:03 it doesn’t matter, how people feel about it matters. We’re all a lot more than what the probabilities say.
0:51:08 Probability is very important and data is important, but I feel like the connection between people
0:51:16 is far more important. Decency is a virtue that has been appreciated throughout civilization. We see it.
0:51:23 We have the ancient writings. I think it’s appreciated differently now than it has been in the past,
0:51:28 but I think it will be appreciated more in the future. And I think that decency is a kind of
0:51:33 foundation upon which to build your life, whether personally, professionally, politically, and so on.
0:51:38 And so that’s a way that I’ve kind of changed, but that was really getting more back to how I was
0:51:42 raised as a kid. That’s who my parents were. We could certainly use more decency. What can the
0:51:47 Freakonomics mindset offer in this age of misinformation and disinformation?
0:51:53 You know, this sounds like the advice of an old man, which is what I’m getting to be. So
0:51:57 I can do it and I can even do it in that voice, right? Say it like that. It sounds more legitimate.
0:52:04 I think people need to really understand their relationships with their phones and with their
0:52:12 online world. I see a lot of very well-educated adults bemoaning what’s happening to their children.
0:52:20 And when I look at the adults, I’m like, oh my goodness, physician, heal thyself. It’s a real
0:52:24 issue. I don’t mean just addiction. I don’t mean just like not being able to go through dinner.
0:52:29 Like I have this thing. I haven’t identified what this moment is. It’s a moment in a conversation
0:52:34 in person with someone. It could be friends at dinner. It’s that moment when someone says something
0:52:40 that is just enough of an invitation to, oh, hang on, I’ll look it up for you. And then really what
0:52:45 they want to do is they want to look at the 19 other things. It’s driving them crazy that they’re
0:52:50 not up to date at the moment. There’s just so much evidence to me that our relationship with
0:52:57 information and misinformation is unhealthy. You need time to think. This is something Levitt always
0:53:01 preached, and I really came to be a big believer in it too. One thing that’s great about being a
0:53:07 university professor, which he was, or being a journalist writer, which I am, is part of your job
0:53:16 is to sit and think. And when you think, it’s a different process than just reacting. You read about
0:53:21 something, you try to say, well, do I have any level of experience to judge whether this is interesting,
0:53:26 whether it’s important and so on, all those things. And then you get to live with it for a couple of
0:53:32 days. It’s like a good wintertime stew. It gets a little bit better every day. You’re bringing in
0:53:39 more and more elements of your thinking to that idea. That’s what thinking is. And we not only don’t do
0:53:45 very much of it, but I feel like we don’t encourage very much of it too. So I think if the question was,
0:53:49 which I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, what’s something, what was the actual question?
0:53:51 Oh, gosh.
0:53:52 Finally.
0:53:54 You stumped me.
0:53:57 I think it might have been something about like Freakonomics.
0:54:00 Oh, yeah. What can the Freakonomics mindset offer in the age of this?
0:54:01 So I think it would be…
0:54:03 Thank you for this support. I appreciate it.
0:54:11 It’s the least I could do. I think it would be literally an invitation to think of yourself as
0:54:16 a thinker. Make some time. Could be 15 minutes. It could be 15 minutes on the treadmill without a
0:54:22 podcast. It could be 15 minutes walking the dog without a podcast. It could be talking with someone
0:54:26 without phones, without screens, and really listening to them in a way you haven’t before.
0:54:31 It could be watching TV. It could be watching a film. It could be thinking about that film.
0:54:36 You know, my wife is a visual person. She was a photographer. And she looks at art and visual
0:54:41 things in a way that I’m learning to after all these years. And I love it. But it took me a long
0:54:46 time. And she likes to say, there are picture people like her, and there are word people like me.
0:54:51 And never the twain shall meet. We process things in very, very different ways. People have a lot
0:54:58 of different styles of processing and using information. And so I will sometimes now, I’ll
0:55:03 see a picture. It could be a painting, or it could be a scene from a film that I just remember and start
0:55:09 to think about that in a way that I never used to do. And so I think if you let yourself be a thinker
0:55:17 in that way, it will not only make you more pleasant in yourself, more pleasant to be around
0:55:22 other people, but I really think it leads to better insights. Because insights don’t come from that
0:55:28 kind of, no, you’re wrong, I’m right, let me shout at you for 30 seconds. That does not lead to any
0:55:34 insights at all. It’s a very kind of cheap form of entertainment. And the reason I say it’s cheap is
0:55:38 because it’s cruel. It’s taking advantage of people who want to learn about these issues of the day and
0:55:42 treating them like they’re entertainment. I think that’s the opposite of the way to be.
0:55:47 Is there any counterintuitive research that’s catching your eye?
0:55:55 I’m trying to think through my 1,800 files on my desktop of story ideas. Yeah, there is a lot.
0:56:04 The biggest, potentially somewhat counterintuitive idea at the moment is what is AI and machine learning
0:56:08 or automation? I think AI has become, I think, too short a shorthand for a lot of different things.
0:56:16 I think that the way that many of us have been thinking about what AI is and does will turn out
0:56:21 to look very primitive. Will it destroy jobs? Yes, every technology always has. Will it also create
0:56:26 some other jobs within that industry? Yes, every other industry always has. But will it also do other
0:56:32 things that we can’t really anticipate yet that might provide a lot of real benefit? A lot of people say
0:56:37 the answer to that is no. A lot of people say, if I could live in a world with AI or without, right now,
0:56:43 I would choose without. I don’t feel that way. I look at medical diagnosing, for instance. There are
0:56:49 people who argue, people who know a great deal more than me about how this really works, that it’s possible
0:56:55 that the cost of medical diagnostics goes to close to zero within 10 years. I mean, it makes sense if you
0:57:00 think about it. What physicians try to do to diagnose is very, very, very difficult, and it’s a lot of
0:57:05 science and a lot of art, a lot of experience and a lot of luck and so on. But if you look at the
0:57:11 success rate of reading mammograms now of a human radiologist versus a computer, if that sort of idea
0:57:16 can be applied to medical diagnosis, but also to clinical treatments, to cancer treatment and so on,
0:57:23 which is now being applied, the gains from that are mind-boggling. And so I think one potentially
0:57:30 counterintuitive finding I’m thinking about right now is what are the results from this new digital
0:57:36 age, including AI, that we may look back on in 20 or 50 years and say, oh my goodness, how did we live
0:57:41 without that? Isn’t it wonderful? As our conversation comes to a close, there’s one wildcard question in
0:57:46 here from TK. And he asks, do you think the stock market’s going to crash now or in 2026?
0:57:53 And if so, what tips can you give? Nice work, TK. I appreciate that.
0:57:57 Is TK like they didn’t want to… So in journalism, TK is what you fill in when you don’t know the fact,
0:58:01 to come. Yeah, but do you think that’s actually… Is that you? Is that what you’re saying?
0:58:06 Is this… This whole thing was just a scam to get me into stock advice.
0:58:09 Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. A little insider trading on a Sunday night.
0:58:14 So it’s interesting you say. So I’ve been having this conversation a lot with a lot of people because…
0:58:16 Why was I having this conversation? Somebody… Oh, I know.
0:58:18 It wasn’t the lady with the horse, was it?
0:58:24 You’re paying attention. There was a piece somewhere the other day, Wall Street Journal,
0:58:31 maybe, about… Yeah, Jason Zweig, I think, about how the old advice for retirees was, no,
0:58:36 you don’t want to go like 60% stock and 40% bond to preserve. You just want to say 100% stock to the end.
0:58:42 Because if you look at the return on average, of course, there’s more risk in a more volatile
0:58:46 market like equities are. But on average, there’s more returns. So what are you doing?
0:58:52 So that made me think about… There have been many, many, many conventional wisdoms about investing,
0:59:00 for sure. One of my favorite findings in all of science, and this really comes from a lot of
0:59:08 economists at Chicago and elsewhere, is that a low-cost, market-diversified mutual fund, or ETF,
0:59:14 beats almost anything on average, right? And we know that now. There’s a lot of science on that.
0:59:20 But if you look at the size of the industry around actively managed funds, and now what we’re going to
0:59:26 get… So we’re doing an episode on this right now on… Private equity is an amazingly interesting
0:59:31 topic and something that I’ve done a medium amount on and continue to do. Something like 20% of the
0:59:36 economy is essentially controlled by private equity investment firms, which is a lot, up from whatever
0:59:41 it was, four or five, maybe 20 years ago. So that has produced a lot of changes in and of itself. But now
0:59:48 there’s an executive order that will allow anyone with a 401k or other retirement, or maybe just with
0:59:54 a brokerage account, to invest in a version of private equity ETFs or funds. But they won’t really be
0:59:57 like ETFs. They can’t be traded the same way because they’re not liquid, although there will be some
1:00:03 kind of conversion. So that leads to a whole other thing about, well, these will be actively managed. And
1:00:10 moreover, you know that those fund managers are going to use AI because it’s a great tool. So now you’re going
1:00:18 to have a generation of people investing in AI-aided, actively managed private equity funds, which have a
1:00:26 massive amount of non-transparency, illiquidity, and it’s kind of a guess. So I think that the
1:00:32 conventional wisdoms of investing are constantly needing to be re-examined. And that’s one that,
1:00:34 am I answering any version of the question that you asked?
1:00:40 Yeah, and then some. That’s terrific. Well, I’ll tell you what, your work reminds us that curiosity
1:00:45 is a civic virtue. And this book, the podcast, really everything that you have contributed
1:00:49 exists as a public service. So thank you. And thank you for your time tonight.
1:00:54 It’s a delight to be in conversation with you. Congratulations on 20 years, Stephen Dubny.
1:01:05 Okay. Once again, that was Jeff Bennett from PBS NewsHour in conversation with me, a very
1:01:09 chatty me, now that I’ve listened back to it. If I sound like I was having a really good time,
1:01:15 that’s all thanks to Jeff, the audience, and to the folks at Sixth and I in Washington, D.C., which was
1:01:23 built in the early 1900s as synagogue, later became an African Methodist Episcopal church. And today is an
1:01:29 occasional synagogue, but mostly an art center with all kinds of good speakers. If you ever find yourself in D.C.,
1:01:31 Sixth and I is a good place to go.
1:01:39 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on
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1:01:49 This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger with help from Jeremy
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