Background

Dubner was born on August 26, 1963, in Schenectady, New York, United States. His mother was the first cousin of Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg. His father worked as a copy editor at The Troy Record.

Dubner grew up in Duanesburg, New York, the youngest of eight children, and received a devout Roman Catholic upbringing.

Education

Stephen studied at Appalachian State University (broadcast journalism) and finished it in 1984. He also got his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in 1990.

Career

At Appalachian, Stephen formed a band, "The Right Profile," which was signed to Arista Records. In 1988, he stopped playing music to focus more on writing, going on to receive a Master of Fine Arts. Dubner was a story editor at The New York Times Magazine during 1994-99.

In 1996 he published an article in the New York Times Magazine in which he recounted the discovery of his family’s Jewish origins, his parents’ conversion to Roman Catholicism, and his own return to the Jewish faith. When the article garnered interest, both positive and negative, Dubner expanded it into the memoir Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to His Jewish Family. By using two narrative voices - telling his parents’ story in the third person and his own in the first person - Dubner was able to include the viewpoints of other relatives, such as grandparents and siblings, as well.

Turbulent Souls captured reviewers’ attention. John Moryl, writing in Library Journal, remarked that the memoir “reads like a novel,” and predicted that “most” readers would find the story “fascinating.” Likewise, a Publishers Weekly critic found the work to be “searching,” “poignant, and “captivating.”

Dubner met Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and took an interview with him. After the publication of Dubner’s 2003 Times Magazine article, Dubner and Levitt were asked to write a book, which cemented their partnership. In 2005, William Morrow published Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, a book about cheating teachers, bizarre baby names, self-dealing Realtors, and crack-selling mama's boys. Dubner and Levitt co-authored three other books: SuperFreakonomics (2009), Think Like a Freak (2014), and When to Rob a Bank (2015).

Achievements

• Stephen J. Dubner is best known as co-author (with economist Steven Levitt) of the pop-economics book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, its sequels, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like a Freak. He also is an owner of podcast, Freakonomics Radio, which now gets 15 million global monthly downloads. He is a host of Freakonomics Radio Live!, a game show version of the podcast.
  
  His articles have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Time, and have been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Crime Writing, and elsewhere.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Turbulent Souls

    (Turbulent Souls is a luminous memoir, crafted with the ey...)

    1998
  • Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper

    (Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper is a breathtaking, heartb...)

    2003
  • The Boy with Two Belly Buttons

    (Solomon never thinks it's strange that he has two belly b...)

    2007
  • Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything 2005
  • Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain 2014
  • SuperFreakonomics 2009
  • When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants 2015

Connections

Stephen married Ellen Binder, a photographer.

Father:

Paul Dubner

Mother:

Florence Veronica (Greenglass) Dubner

Spouse:

Ellen Binder

coworker:

Steven Levitt

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 184
  2000