Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
It explains. Hardcover files this book as non-fiction. A fact, not a factor: it plays no part in our call.
Either. Don't overthink it
It comes out level, but not because nothing is happening: Stephen J. Dubner’s reading sits behind the book itself (in the bottom 22% of our shelf of books, on 533 ratings of the narration), and audio makes it easier than most books we hold (in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books for extra work in audio). Those two cancel out, leaving the audio case between the bottom 31% and the top 42% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page, the band where this figure settles nothing on its own. These are forces pulling against each other rather than a book that asks nothing of you. Pick whichever you will actually finish.
Length does not decide this
6h 45m to listen, at 1×5h 24m to listen, at 1.25×4h 30m to listen, at 1.5×3h 51m to listen, at 1.75×3h 23m to listen, at 2×about 9 hours to readabout 7 hours to readabout 5 hours to readabout 4 hours to readabout 3½ hours to read
The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 268 pages at 30 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 268 pages at 40 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 268 pages at 50 pages an hour, which is about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 268 pages at 65 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.The runtime is Audible’s own, shown at the speed beside it. The reading time is our estimate: 268 pages at 80 pages an hour, the pace you told us. Ours is 50, about 300 words a page, read at 250 a minute.
Slot → commute-safe
About as demanding in audio as Slaughterhouse-Five.
Easier to hear than 77% of the books we hold.
Easier to hear than 96% of the non-fiction we hold.
Easier to hear than 80% of the middling-length books we hold.
- Something about this row did not look right when we built it, and it has not been reviewed yet.
Reading load against listening load
Where that puts this one among the books we hold: in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books for effort on the page and in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books for effort in your ears. The middle of the scale is not the middle of the shelf (most books sit below the average on both), so a book at 0.00 is already in the top 43% for effort on the page. Each of the three is measured against the whole shelf separately, so the bottom figure is not the top two subtracted. It is this book’s own distance from the middle.
What the audio disadvantage is made of. Two things and no others: how fast readers say this one moves, and how demanding the reviews we read found it. There is no third: the structural one has no data source, so it contributes nothing rather than being guessed at. Both directions are declared priors we have never fitted against a real verdict, which is the weakest-evidenced part of the whole model.
How the call was made
Where a bar carries ticks, the grey one is the middle of our shelf and a coloured one is a line we publish, cool where we start backing the page, warm where we start backing the recording. The evidence squares at the foot are a different thing: how far each of our four sources went, hatched where there was nothing to measure at all.
- The audio case
- 0.39It sits between the bottom 31% and the top 42% of our shelf of books for how far the recording outruns the page. Inside the band where neither side has made its case on this number alone, so the call is settled by what else is on the page.
- Narration payoff
- −0.30Stephen J. Dubner’s reading is less well received than the book it came from: in the bottom 22% of our shelf of books, on 533 ratings of the narration. This is a difference, not a score: it sets the reading against its own book, so a much-loved book with a merely good reading sits low on this shelf even where nobody disliked either. Before we allowed for how many people rated it, the reading stood in the bottom 23% of our shelf of books. The gap between the two places is us declining to let a handful of ratings move a verdict. That is the second mark on the bar, and it is the one our line is applied to: a rule tested on the damped number would pass the same recording at 25 ratings and fail it at 5,000. Asked the other way (how the reading stands against what the book’s own readers made of it, which is a different crowd rating a different thing), it comes out 0.03. We report that one and never score it: two crowds that do not overlap are held together by nothing but the standardising, which is a cost the figure above does not pay.
- What is at stake
- −0.76It sits in the bottom 19% of our shelf of books for how well the print crowds think of a book: not a book the crowds are precious about, so there is less to protect and we can be relaxed about it. Blended across 911,518 Goodreads ratings and 1,367 on Hardcover, each scored inside its own population first, and never added together.
For the page
- The voice lets the book down
- The crowds’ regard did not reach the line where we protect a first read, this reason did not apply
For the recording
- An easy listen anyway
- 533 listeners behind it
Neither column won it: the two came out level, which is the answer above.
A bigger dot counted for more: the voice and the ear are sized by their share of the sum above, the other two by how much stands behind them. A hatched square is a reason that did not apply here, which is not the same as one that counted for little.
- Evidence
- 0.70How much of the picture we actually have, out of 1.00: four questions, each answered as far as the source could answer it, less anything taken off for reading fewer reviews than we aim to.The reading533 people have rated this reading: as good as it getsThe second sourceHardcover knows this book, with 1,367 readers there: as good as it getsThe matchHow sure we are that the recording we scored is this book: thinThe reviewsWe read 300 reviews to judge how demanding it is: as good as it gets
What each crowd complains about
In the reviews we read, how often readers brought it up and how often listeners did, each against what is usual for that same crowd across our whole shelf, which is the grey tick. The track stops at 4×. Listeners are only ever compared with listeners.
Neither crowd brings any of the three up more often than its own crowd usually does. Whatever this book asks of you, its listeners are not saying the format is what makes it hard.
What the two crowds said
Showing the stars as each shop prints them. The two crowds are not measured from the same place: on our shelf Audible’s listeners average 0.35 of a star above Goodreads’ readers, so a recording that is ordinary for Audible can still out-star a book that is genuinely well liked for Goodreads. Switch the toggle to take that difference off.Showing each figure as its distance from its own crowd’s middle on our shelf, in standard deviations, so 0 is a typical book for that crowd. Listeners start 0.35 of a star up, partly because anyone who finishes a twenty-five-hour recording chose it deliberately, and this takes that off. It is not a claim that audio is better, the story figure is still Audible’s own (people rating a story they heard), and none of it moves the verdict above.
overallAudible
overall, pooled by the shop, so we hold no ruler for it
896 ratings · performance and story, as the shop pools them
the performanceAudible
the performance, against Audible’s own crowd
How often this goes badly2.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars. About typical for the shelf. The middle of our shelf is 2.0%, and half of it falls between 1.0% and 3.1%.
14 of 533 listeners gave the performance one or two stars
The shape of the room
- United
- Warm, this one
- Split
- Lukewarm
A warm room: most listeners are happy with the performance, and a small group are not.
533 ratings
the story, as heardAudible
the story, as heard, against Audible’s own crowd
534 ratings
the book itselfGoodreads
the book itself, against Goodreads’ own crowd
911,518 ratings
The series
Freakonomics
Finished
4 books numbered on Goodreads’ list. The last one came out in 2015 and Goodreads lists nothing further. Five quiet years is where we start using that word.
From Goodreads’ own series index, checked on 11 September 2026.
Every reading we hold
One complete reading of this book, and it is the reading every audio figure above is measured on. If there is another, we have not found it. The shelf grows in reviewed batches, never because somebody searched for a book.
- Stephen J. Dubnerour pick6h 45m5h 24m4h 30m3h 51m3h 23m · One voice · Audible UK and US
Performance 4.45 · Story 4.34 · 533 rated the reading · 2.6% of the people who rated the performance gave it one or two stars
Hear it · Audible’s clip, its length read from them on load
The recording we mean
- Runtime
- 6h 45m at 1×
- Read by
- Stephen J. Dubner
- Kind
- One voice
- ASIN
- B004EWWWC4 · Audible UK
- Rated in
- Audible UK and US · 501 + 32 ratings of the performance
- Judged on
- 533 ratings of the narration
- Published
- Penguin · 2005
Audible sorts a search by newest, so ours may not be the first one you are offered. The runtime is the check: if the one in front of you says 6h 45m, that is the reading these numbers describe. “Judged on” is the crowd behind every judgement we make about this reading: the smaller of the performance and story counts, which is why it is a little under the two shop counts added. We do not link out to a shop, and we take nothing if you buy there.