Freakonomics Welcomes New Editorial Director And Incubates New Shows

 You have to hand it to Freakonomics. While other podcast networks desperately dive into the bidding process for any and all podcast shows to throw on their networks, Freakonomics does it the old-fashioned way. Crafting podcasts carefully and building shows that complement their brand.

In 2021, the Freakonomics Radio Network set a listenership record with over 160 million downloads across its four podcasts: Freakonomics Radio, No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and the new Freakonomics M.D. Now the podcast network is expanding on their current growth with the hiring of a new editorial director, Gabriel Roth, alongside consultant Jared Hohlt. 

 

Before joining the Freakonomics Radio team, Roth worked at Slate for seven years, where he oversaw podcasts and helped launch the groundbreaking series Slow Burn, along with many other shows. Before coming to Slate, he was city editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian and is the author of a novel, The Unknowns (Little, Brown, 2013). Roth joins the Freakonomics Radio leadership team of host and founder Stephen J. Dubner and longtime Executive Producer Alison Craiglow. "I've been a fan of the Freakonomics Radio team's work for more than a decade, and I'm thrilled to get the chance to work on their terrific podcasts and help grow the network,” he says.

His former colleague Hohlt, Slate’s editor-in-chief for three years, has also begun helping Freakonomics Radio as a part-time consultant. Roth will oversee all existing and future shows in the network, with a special concentration on the flagship show, and Hohlt is focusing especially on two new podcasts, one in the early stages and the other in piloting mode, while helping with the existing shows as well.

Entering its twelfth year as one of the biggest podcasts on the planet, Freakonomics Radio is now growing faster than it ever has before. In addition to the flagship show and podcast network both setting listenership records in 2021, the Freakonomics Radio staff has tripled in size in the past two years alone.

The flagship show Freakonomics Radio will celebrate its 500th episode at the end of March and has been joined in the past few years by the podcasts No Stupid Questions, a show exploring the weird and wonderful ways in which humans behave, with hosts Dubner and research psychologist Angela Duckworth; People I (Mostly) Admire, a show where Dubner’s Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt interviews other unorthodox high achievers; and Freakonomics M.D., a show exploring the intersection of economics and healthcare with Harvard physician and economist Dr. Bapu Jena.



The team also has several new shows in development to launch on the Freakonomics Radio Network this spring.