Stephen J. Dubner

Stephen J. Dubner grew up the youngest of eight children on a farm in upstate New York. His parents were Jewish converts to Catholicism. He played in a rock band at Appalachian State University, then took a master's degree in writing at Columbia, where he also taught. He became a journalist and an editor at The New York Times Magazine. His first book, Turbulent Souls (1998), tells how he returned to his family's Judaism.

In 2003 he wrote a magazine profile of the University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt. The two then wrote Freakonomics (2005) together. Dubner turned Levitt's research into stories. The book argues that incentives explain most behavior, and that data can show what people hide: teachers who cheat, real estate agents who sell their clients' homes too cheaply, and drug dealers who earn less than the minimum wage.

They followed it with SuperFreakonomics, Think Like a Freak and When to Rob a Bank. Since 2010 Dubner has hosted the podcast Freakonomics Radio.