Stefanie Stantcheva’s approach seemed like career suicide. In fact, it won her the John Bates Clark Medal. She talks to fellow winner Steve Levitt about why she uses methods that most of the profession dismisses — and what she’s found that can’t be learned any other way.

• SOURCES:
  • Stefanie Stantcheva, professor of political economy at Harvard University.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Understanding Economic Behavior Using Open-ended Survey Data," by Ingar Haaland, Christopher Roth, Stefanie Stantcheva, and Johannes Wohlfart (Working Paper, 2025).
  • "Fighting Climate Change: International Attitudes toward Climate Policies," by Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Adrien Fabre, Tobias Kruse, Bluebery Planterose, Ana Sanchez Chico, and Stefanie Stantcheva (American Economic Review, 2025).
  • "Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides," by Stefanie Stantcheva (NBER Working Paper, 2024).
  • "Why Do We Dislike Inflation?," by Stefanie Stantcheva (NBER Working Paper, 2024).
  • "How to Run Surveys: A Guide to Creating Your Own Identifying Variation and Revealing the Invisible," by Stefanie Stantcheva (Annual Review of Economics, 2022).
  • "Eliciting People's First-Order Concerns: Text Analysis of Open-Ended Survey Questions," by Beatrice Ferrario and Stefanie Stantcheva (NBER Working Paper, 2022).
  • "Understanding Tax Policy: How Do People Reason?," by Stefanie Stantcheva (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2021).
  • "Immigration and Redistribution," by Alberto Alesina, Armando Miano, and Stefanie Stantcheva (NBER Working Paper, 2018).

• EXTRAS:
  • VerbAI by Generation Lab.

From recording some of the first rap hits to revitalizing Johnny Cash's career, the legendary producer has had an extraordinary creative life. In this episode he talks about his new book and his art-making process — and helps Steve get in touch with his own artistic side.

• SOURCES:
  • Rick Rubin, music producer and record executive.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin (2023).
  • “How Google’s AlphaGo Beat a Go World Champion,” by Christopher Moyer (The Atlantic, 2016).
  • “DMC: The Real Story of Aerosmith + Run-D.M.C.’s ‘Walk This Way’,” by Loudwire (2016).
  • “Hurt,” by Johnny Cash, music video (2003).
  • “Walk This Way,” by Run-DMC, ft. Aerosmoth (1986).
  • “It’s Yours,” by T La Rock (1984).
  • “Walk This Way,” by Aerosmith (1975).
  • The Way of Code.

• EXTRAS:
  • “How To Be Creative,” series by Freakonomics Radio (2018).

More than two decades ago, Adam Riess’s Nobel Prize-winning work fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. His new work is reshaping cosmology for a second time.

• RESOURCES:
  • Adam Riess, astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University.

• SOURCES:
  • "The Nobel Prize Winner Who Thinks We Have the Universe All Wrong," by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic, 2025).
  • "The answer to life, the universe and everything might be 73. Or 67," by Hannah Devlin (The Guardian, 2018).
  • "Adam G. Riess Nobel Prize Lecture," (The Nobel Foundation, 2011).
  • "Breakthroughs 1998," by Floyd Bloom (Science, 1998).
  • "Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant," by Adam Riess, Alexei Filippenko, Peter Challis, Alejandro Clocchiatti, Alan Diercks, Peter Garnavich, Ron Gilliland, Craig Hogan, Saurabh Jha, Robert Kirshner, Bruno Leibundgut, Mark Phillips, David Reiss, Brian Schmidt, Robert Schommer, Chris Smith, Jason Spyromilio, Christopher Stubbs, Nicholas Suntzeff, and John Tonry (The Astronomical Journal, 1998).
  • "1912: Henrietta Leavitt Discovers the Distance Key," (Carnegie Institution for Science).