Stephen Dubner Talks 'Freakonomics' -- and How He Became an Accidental Entrepreneur The former scribe has long admired small businesses and the people who run them. And now that he's got a company of his own, he's learning just how tricky it can be.

Behold the weird entrepreneurial trajectory of Stephen Dubner. He starts out as a working journalist and profiles a brilliant, quirky economist named Steven Levitt for The New York Times Magazine, then ends up co-writing the runaway bestseller Freakonomics with him, followed by sequels that together sell in the ballpark of eight million copies.

He hits the speaker circuit and launches a show called Freakonomics Radio that also blows up. This inspires him to start a podcast production company, Renbud Radio, to launch more fun, fascinating shows, such as Tell Me Something I Don't Know, a new one in which smart people tell him...well, you saw the title.