Stephen Dubner

speaker

13,872 appearances 93 recordings 4 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard 11 Sep

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 — 60 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 12.

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Freakonomics Radio · 686. Why Is It So Hard to Find an NFL Quarterback? · 11 Sep 2026 podcast

For someone from the outside who might say, well, I don't understand. voice-verified

I mean, these people are doing essentially the same thing in two different environments that are fairly similar. voice-verified

What's your best explanation for that sort of philosophical voice-verified

five or 10 or however many things you need to have to have a chance to be really good as an NFL quarterback. voice-verified

there's one paper by Wolfson, Adana Schmicker from 2011 called The Quarterback Prediction Problem. voice-verified

This was published in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. voice-verified

These authors write, college and combined statistics have little value for predicting whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL. voice-verified

Let's start with that. voice-verified

Agree or disagree with that statement? voice-verified

write, the NFL teams aggregate pre-draft information, including qualitative observations, quite effectively, and their inability to consistently identify college quarterbacks who will excel in the professional ranks voice-verified

is a consequence of random variability in future performance due to factors which are unlikely to be observable. voice-verified

So talk to me about those unobservable factors, what they are and how you try to think about them. voice-verified

Well, don't you have to have three more to have a rush for? voice-verified

Talk to me for a bit about how cognitive abilities are measured. voice-verified

Football fans have heard for years about the Wunderlich, which I assume is either not used much or at all anymore. voice-verified

So just talk to me about that style of testing and voice-verified

Coming up after the break, the sports psychologist who is trying to build a better prediction engine. voice-verified

I'm Stephen Dubner. voice-verified

This is Freakonomics Radio. voice-verified

We will be right back. voice-verified

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