Stephen Dubner
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Now, you say this as if people didn't leave and cry at the end of a New York Times magazine meeting when you were.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I did speak with five, six, seven former employees of yours, some of whom I overlapped with at the Times Magazine, some of whom I didn't. If we were making a word cloud, I think withholding was probably the big word.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
And what they all got was just a deep, deep satisfaction of accomplishment and a recognition that you don't get that satisfaction without having a lot of failure and bumps along the way. Not humiliation. And you didn't humiliate people ever, as far as I know. I don't know. I don't think so. I hope not. So when I left the Times Magazine working for you, I left because I just wanted to be a writer.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I loved being an editor. Editing was the best training for me to be a writer, in part because I saw how many big time writers, when they would turn in their manuscripts, they were terrible. And I thought, holy cow. If they can turn in stuff like that, I can do this. Yes, Pulitzer Prize winners. I was shocked. But it was also just amazing experience and fun. It's really fun to do the work.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
But then you gave me a six-month leave to go start working on my first book. And I remember coming back and saying, this is the life I want. I like alone. And then I remember, at least my recollection, is that I said, I'm really appreciative of The leave you gave me, and I love this place, I love this work, but that's what I want to do long term. And so I'd like to stay here for another year.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Many people who know Adam Moss were surprised that he wrote a book. He was one of the few magazine editors who didn't either start out as a writer or want to be a writer or think of themselves as a writer. He was a full-fledged editor. An editor is mostly backstage. There's a lot of power and a bit of risk. A writer, meanwhile, is out front, directly in the line of fire.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
That's the deal that I remember crafting. And then I remember our relationship changed because I was a lame duck. So what, did I just not...
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I think it was more like plow horse idea. Get as much out of you as I could. And it wasn't bad. The work was still really exciting. But another reason I left was that I recognized when you succeed in a place like that, I mean, this happens in many occupations, when you succeed in In some kind of maker role, you end up getting promoted into a manager role, a boss. And I did not want to be a boss.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So leaving the Times to write meant I would never have to be a boss of anyone other than myself. But then I wrote books and then the books turned into this thing that we're doing now. You're a boss. We have a company. Yeah. We have 20 people. And I think the boss that I became is very much like the boss that you were. Oh, really? Oh, my God.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
All learned. That's what I'm saying. That's why I would call you a mentor, even if an unintentional or accidental mentor. Oh, how interesting. God, that's scary. I'm a writer. You know, writers are writers, right? You have a way of seeing the world. You have a way of, and a lot of this is what I learned from you. You have a way of assessing, is this idea worth doing? Definitely.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
That's a big part of it. Execution is important, but I always think of it a little bit like pro athletes. Like you wouldn't be here if you didn't have the talent. And then you realize that what you're really after is development. developing your taste or your sense of what's interesting, what's important, what's fun, what's new. And those are all things I learned from you.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Maybe to some degree, but I think anybody who's learning, who takes their thing seriously, it's thrilling when you encounter someone who sets a standard high and But the problem is, when you go from being a writer to then being a boss, my first producing partners, the word that got attached to me was like, Dubner's too exacting. And I was pissed because I thought, like, what's wrong with that?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I think the thing that's most important or attractive about what you just said, but also very much animates your book, is that it's not just the thrill of accomplishing because something is good. It's doing something different.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
You work on a thing for months or years, and then it goes out into the world with your name on it. So if people hate it, they know where to find you. That's why it was so intriguing that Adam Moss would write a book. So we will talk about that today, but some other things, too. Especially his tenure at the New York Times Magazine, where he happened to be my boss. This was in the late 1990s.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
And what happened when Adam Moss's imagination started producing something new?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. In 2019, Adam Moss stepped down as editor-in-chief of New York Magazine. Here's what he said at the time. I've been going full throttle for 40 years. I want to see what my life is like with less ambition. I'm older than the staff. I'm older than the readers. I just want to do something new.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
That new thing, at least for a while, was painting.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Was kindness in a mentor slash teacher important to you? It's important to me.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
if you look through history at creators of all types and people of all types, people who have mentors, if you had to guess, would you say that on average, kindness is a benefit or an attribute at least? Because when I think of a lot of what people claim at least to be successful mentorships, there's often, I don't know about an absence of kindness, but a presence of something else.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I was what's called a story editor, which meant I came up with ideas, assigned them to writers, and then shepherded those pieces through the editorial and publishing processes. The Times Magazine was considered a great magazine during this era, and it was a thrill to be inside of that.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
If you were to generalize what a successful mentor is, would you use that as a template or do you think that's just for you?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I have never seen one of Adam Moss's paintings. That's quite on purpose, yes. He insists that he is just not a very good painter. I'm more mediocre than bad. I'm okay, but that's not good enough for me. When someone is exacting, which we have already established Adam Moss is, then mediocrity can feel worse than death.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So he needed to find something else to make, something that he would be good at. And that's how he came to write The Work of Art, a book about how other creative people make something from nothing. It's a book about the process of making.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Yeah, but also chapters differ because in some chapters they're through written by you with quotes. In other chapters, it's more oral history. And in that way, it's very much like a big, big, big magazine. Absolutely.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Also terrifying sometimes, but mostly a thrill and mostly because our boss was really good at his job and we all got to watch and learn. That said, I quit The Times after about five years. It used to be that when someone left that place voluntarily and was relatively young, I was in my 30s. that people would think you're crazy. I was doing well as an editor and an occasional writer.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Let me just point out, the difference between being an editor and being a writer might seem not that large. It's huge. It's like... marathon versus sprint. They're both running, but I wouldn't think it could have felt so similar to what you'd spent your life doing.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So for some of the creators in your book, the people who influenced them were often people that they never interacted with.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So Eggleston and David Lynch and all those make a lot of sense.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I guess the big distinguishing factor for me would be an influence can be distant and unaware of you, whereas a mentor, there's necessarily some kind of estuarial exchange. Yeah.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I think the book is a bit of a, not a smoke and mirror, but a bit of sleight of hand in that it's called The Work of Art, and it's plainly about the process of making creative things. And it's plainly about what it took for those creators to even get to the point where they were able to create something. I know you love process. That was a word that you said probably 30 times a day.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
And it's a word that I just have come to despise.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
The bosses told me I might be a boss before long. That was the last straw. I didn't want to be an editor or a boss. I just wanted to be a writer and I wanted to work on my own, not within a hierarchy. So I quit and I went off to write books, which is how I ended up here talking to you. When Adam Moss's book came out in early 2024, I read it right away.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I feel like as a magazine editor, some of your favorite stories, or at least my conception of some of your favorite stories, were when there was a process of something being described over time. And written text, not that documentary film can't do it, a lot of things can do it, but text is great at that. because it can move in and out of time and it can magnify and shrink.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So as much as you say that this book is about process and artifacts and so on, it was a thrill to read because I love your work and I loved working with you, but you never talked that much. You dropped hints about what made something great or not. We all learned the language of Adam Moss, but it was often fragments, rarely sentences, never paragraphs.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Horrible, definitely not. Definitely not. But maddening among nine other things. Yeah, okay. But what struck me the book was really about was something separate than the process of creation, really more about what it takes to become the kind of person who can create things from whole cloth. That's really hard to do. And I don't think people understand the bravery it takes to do that.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Your book nods at failure. I think it's a lot about failure. Okay, but ultimately... Everybody succeeds. Everybody succeeds. Yeah. And so as I'm reading it, I'm thinking, yeah, this failure is instructive and real and useful to hear about, but... It's an exercise in what some people call survivorship bias, right? We read about the winners. Sure, of course.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I've always had this theory that I think is wrong. But as a writer, or if you're a creative person of any type, an editor or an entrepreneur or whatever, I think it's natural to try to mimic success. Yeah. but I think that most successes are pretty singular. I completely agree with you. And so I felt that learning from failure was really the way to go.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
For me and many others who worked for him, it was a bit like discovering his journal. Everything that made him tick as an editor, as a boss, was right there on the page. At the time, I was trying to make a podcast series about mentorship.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
David Simon was a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun before he started writing books and making TV shows. One of those shows was The Wire, which many people consider one of the best TV shows ever made. If you would like to hear an interview with him, check out the People I Mostly Admire podcast, another show in the Freakonomics Radio Network. It's episode 109 called David Simon is on Strike.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Again, January 3rd and February 13th, San Francisco and LA. Meanwhile, today on the show, A conversation with someone I know quite well, or at least used to. Someone who is smart, shrewd, very good at his work, and someone who taught me a lot, even if not always on purpose. Why don't you just say your name and what you do?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Here's why. We'll hear more from Adam Moss in a minute. I am Stephen Dubner, and this is Freakonomics Radio.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
The idea was that mentorship is this standard and successful practice in many realms, in education, in sports, the military, in the medical and legal professions. And yet in other realms, there's no standard mentorship at all. I wanted to know why not and whether something should be done about that. But the mentorship series just never came together.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
It's interesting as you're describing you coming to accept what these people were telling you about their perpetual dissatisfaction because you make it sound so foreign. But that's exactly the way that I and everybody else who ever worked with you would describe you. When you were happy with the work that I or anyone else did, everyone described it as this like great thrill. It was like a high.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Getting your approval or praise was incredibly powerful. Then there's the corollary, getting your dissatisfaction could be demoralizing for many people. You had to kind of fight through that. But the steady state was more like, yeah, it was a really good issue this week. That was it. And that implies many other things. Like, it wasn't a great issue. And more important, there's next week also.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
To the degree that it's hard to know oneself, let's call it the internal versus the external, on a scale of zero to five, how bad or good do you think you are?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
We couldn't find a center of gravity and eventually we gave up, which is fine. That happens all the time in this kind of work. But there was one interview we did for the series that I was not willing to ditch. This one, the one with Adam Moss. Was he in fact a mentor to me or maybe more like the master who teaches an apprentice? Or was he just an old fashioned boss trying to extract labor?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
That was Adam Moss, the most influential boss I ever had by a mile, who did me the great favor of showing me that I didn't want to be boss, that I just wanted to make things, but who also taught me how to be better at making things. So thanks, Adam. His book is called The Work of Art, although it might just as easily have been called The Art of Work.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
And the other book he just mentioned, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, is also well worth reading. And you can hear its author, Samin Nasrat, on a couple of Freakonomics Radio episodes from 2023. One is called What's Wrong With Being a One-Hit Wonder? And the other is Samin Nasrat Always Wanted to Be Famous. Coming up next time on the show, we ask, why is there so much fraud in academia?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
She was at the center of everything, being a prestigious faculty member at Harvard and all of her public speaking and her books. That's next time. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app, also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
This episode was produced by Morgan Levy and Zach Lipinski. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Kullman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Aboaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Jasmine Klinger, Jason Gambrell, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarz, Lyric Bowditch, Neil Carruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Sarah Lilly, and Tao Jacobs.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Our theme song is Mr. Fortune by the Hitchhikers. Our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening. I'm going to shut up. Can you just say that again? Gigantic. No, say it the way you did. Gigantic.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
That's what today's conversation is about. It's the latest in our series of one-on-one conversations to end the year. Even if you are not a big fan of magazines, even if you have never held a paper magazine in your hands, I suspect that you will benefit from hearing Adam Moss's perspective because all of us at some point try to make something from nothing.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So you might as well learn from a good teacher like I did.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner. Whoa!
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
The title of Adam Moss's book, The Work of Art, is, of course, a double entendre. He is the kind of person for whom entendres rarely come singly. There is a layer and then another layer and usually a few more. This book is ostensibly a set of interviews with a variety of makers. Stephen Sondheim, Twyla Tharp, David Simon, Samin Nasrat, Will Shortz.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
And their stories unfold on pages that are packed with sketches and graphics, sidebars, footnotes. It is very much a magazine in book form, which makes sense considering that Adam spent nearly 40 years making magazines, and this is his first book. Some people end up in magazines by accident, like me. I just wanted to write, and that's where the writing jobs were. Adam was different.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and I would like to remind you about two live shows that we are putting on soon. The first one is on January 3rd in San Francisco. The second is in Los Angeles on February 13th. We have got some excellent guests for both shows, so please come hang out with us. Tickets are at Freakonomics.com slash live shows, one word.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
He was in love with the magazine form. So I asked what first drew him in.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So this was the medium that you loved and then you sought it out. Yes.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Give an example of you as a young editor, as a mentee, let's call it. What do you think Lee Eisenberg got from you?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
for a long time adam moss was widely considered the best magazine editor around he was the founding editor of seven days magazine a clever and slightly transgressive arts and culture weekly from there he went to the new york times magazine and after many years there he took over new york magazine which he radically remade for the digital era He won all the awards an editor can win.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So you were the editor of a few different magazines for a long time. Can you explain the role, just briefly, of what it means to be the editor-in-chief of the magazine? I think a lot of people who aren't writers or editors don't really understand that.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
So you as a magazine editor are renowned, right? In the field of magazine making, Adam Moss is considered a great editor, and I certainly agree. And one of the many things that I and a lot of people think you did well was that you were very—the word that people like to use is exacting. There's a standard that is extremely high, but also a little bit elusive and ethereal.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
You don't quite know what it is, but you know you want to get there. Let's say you agree that you're exacting.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
But let's agree that you're exacting. My question would be, when you are an exacting person—and I'm sure many people listening to this conversation either are or want to be that— But you also can't control every single thing. In fact, the process is set up so that you're not controlled. You're not writing the articles. You're not editing the articles heavily. So how do you live with that paradox?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
I was very happy that you landed on the parenting analogy because as you were speaking, that's what it sounded like for sure. So parent-ish, I think, applies. What about mentor? Do you think of yourself as a mentor or is that not a word that fits?
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
He directly shaped the careers of hundreds of writers and editors. Indirectly, he did the same for millions of readers. He left New York Magazine in 2019, still on top, but feeling a bit too old for the game, a bit burned out and ready for something new. The something new eventually took the form of a book called The Work of Art, How Something Comes from Nothing.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
How do you choose, though, as a teacher, how do you choose who to spend time with? Because you were supervising a lot of people at a place like the Times Magazine. I don't know how many story editors there were, maybe 8, 10, 12. You had very different relationships with each one. How does that work for you? Is it a choice? I don't think it's a choice exactly.
Freakonomics Radio
616. How to Make Something from Nothing
Do you have advice for people who are not naturally, you know, I do believe there's an astonishing amount of human capital in the world that is untapped because the possessor of it doesn't know how to export it. and others don't know how to import it.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
More of Steve Levitt's conversation with David Eagleman in this special episode of People I Mostly Admire. Okay, back now to this special episode of People I Mostly Admire. This is my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt in conversation with the neuroscientist David Eagleman.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
You are listening to a special bonus episode of People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt and the neuroscientist David Eagleman. After the break, what are large language models missing? It has no theory of mind. It has no physical model of the world the way that we do. That's coming up after the break. So
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
entrepreneur and author of several books, including Live Wired, The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain. It is a fascinating conversation. You are going to love it. To hear more conversations like this, follow people I mostly admire in your podcast app. Okay, that's it for me. Here is Steve Levitt.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner again. I hope you enjoyed this special episode of People I Mostly Admire. I loved it. And I would suggest you go right now to your podcast app and follow the show, People I Mostly Admire. We will be back very soon with more Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
Freakonomics Radio and People I Mostly Admire are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy with help from Lyric Bowditch and Daniel Moritz-Rabson. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
Our staff also includes Alina Kullman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abawaji, Eleanor Osborne, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Jason Gambrell, Jeremy Johnston, John Schnarz, Neil Carruth, Rebecca Lee Douglas, Sarah Lilly, Tao Jacobs, and Zach Lipinski. Our composer is Luis Guerra. As always, thank you for listening.
Freakonomics Radio
Your Brain Doesn’t Work the Way You Think
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Today, a holiday treat, a bonus episode from people I mostly admire, one of the other shows we make here at the Freakonomics Radio Network. It is an interview show hosted by Steve Levitt, my Freakonomics friend and co-author, who is an economics professor emeritus now at the University of Chicago. On this episode, Levitt interviews David Eagleman, a neuroscientist,