Stephen Dubner

speaker

14,500 appearances 96 recordings 4 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard 2d ago

Stephen Dubner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 63 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 12.

Appearances

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Freakonomics Radio · Amazon Was Supposed to Kill the Bookstore. James Daunt Had Other Plans | Better in Person · 9 Sep 2026 podcast

It can turn an obscure title into a bestseller and it can resurface books that have been forgotten. voice-verified

How do you feel about book talk generally? voice-verified

Yeah. voice-verified

Would you care to voice-verified

So do you think it means anything significant that an old-fashioned business like yours, hand selling books on paper, says anything about our general cultural digital trends which seem to be moving fast in the opposite direction? voice-verified

There's a real voice-verified

on a second. voice-verified

Do you have proof for that, sir? voice-verified

now you're starting to make me think that you're not just some very lovely bookseller, but that you have an agenda to actually improve society somehow. voice-verified

Barnes ⁇ Noble is on track to open dozens of new stores this year. voice-verified

There are now more than 700 across the US. voice-verified

An editor, a senior editor who'd also been with Amazon, she'd been around the book industry, and she said that the biggest change for BNN from her perspective is that BNN can make a hit again. voice-verified

You said something about how the bookstore can or should be a sort of a third place. voice-verified

Like a public space, like a library, but different plainly. voice-verified

Just talk for a minute about that philosophically. voice-verified

What do you mean by that? voice-verified

Right now AI is taking a lot of the oxygen out of every room. voice-verified

But I feel like anytime there's a disruptor, whether it's a firm that does things differently or a new technology, the assumption is often that it will replace the old thing entirely and the old thing will die. voice-verified

And what's so interesting to me about your story of turning around Watterston's in Barnes and Noble is that the Amazon will beat out everybody. voice-verified

Story did not happen. voice-verified

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