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The Team

Lyric Bowditch

Lyric is a production associate for the Freakonomics Radio Network. She was born in Baltimore, grew up in Cairo, and then moved to the Big Apple to attend Barnard College, where she studied comparative literature and computer science. She is passionate about loud music, long-form journalism, and late-night snacks. At any given time, there’s a good chance she’s harvesting greens from her garden, binging a new podcast series, sweating on strangers in a mosh pit — or telling a story with way more context than necessary.

Neal Carruth

Neal is the executive vice president and general manager of the Freakonomics Radio Network, where he focuses on growth strategy and network operations. Neal came to Freakonomics after more than two decades at NPR in a variety of roles including line producer of All Things Considered and Chief Business Editor. His journalism at NPR received a Peabody, two duPont Awards, and a Loeb, among other honors. Most recently, Neal led NPR’s news podcasting strategy, which is built around major podcasts like Planet MoneyUp First, and Inivisbilia. Neal studied psychology at the University of Michigan and enjoys running, reading, and spending time with his wife, two sons, and their dog, in the suburbs outside New York City.

Rebecca Lee Douglas

Rebecca is the senior producer of No Stupid Questions. She studied English literature at Barnard College and Oxford University, always with an underlying passion for social science. Rebecca has a master’s degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and before joining the Freakonomics team, she worked as a journalist and multimedia producer on stories about science, mental health, and technology. She enjoys hiking, horror films, and stand-up comedy.

Elsa Hernandez

Elsa is the executive assistant at the Freakonomics Radio Network. She grew up in Atlanta and graduated from the University of Georgia where she received a Bachelor’s Degree in English & Creative Writing. Her hobbies include perfecting the manual pour-over technique of coffee brewing, playing D&D, and training her rescue dog, Churro.

Jeremy Johnston

Jeremy is an audio engineer for the Freakonomics Radio Network. Before joining the Freakonomics Radio team he co-owned a recording studio in upstate New York where he spent a decade recording bands and singer-songwriters. After that he toured around the world working as a live sound engineer, mixing concerts in venues from Auckland to Zurich. He loves a good barbecue, hiking in the Adirondacks, and trying (…usually failing) to teach his dog new tricks.

Julie Kanfer

Julie is the senior producer of Freakonomics, M.D. Before this, she produced radio shows at SiriusXM’s Doctor Radio channel, and also made a podcast called Vital Signs. Before that, she worked for Imus in the Morning. She went to Boston University and then Columbia University. Her two young children think the word “Freakonomics” is hilarious.

Ryan Kelley

Ryan is an associate producer for Freakonomics Radio. He first joined the team as an intern in 2019 — after giving Dubner his “honest and hilarious” tour of Williams College, where he studied political economy. Following a brief stint building financial models and Powerpoint slides, Ryan has returned to the objectively cooler world of podcast production. He likes to plan overly ambitious backpacking trips and too often ends the day with a big bowl of ice cream.

Jasmin Klinger

Jasmin is an audio engineer for the Freakonomics Radio Network. Jasmin grew up outside Haifa, Israel. After attending Berklee College of Music she graduated from the Sonic Arts Center program at CUNY. Before joining the Freakonomics Radio team she worked as audio editor and composer for film and TV. When not playing her guitars you can find her trying to bake the perfect sourdough bread loaf.

Alina Kulman

Alina is a producer for Freakonomics Radio. She studied history at Brown University, environmental science at the Arava Institute, and cut her audio chops at Rhode Island Public Radio and at her college podcast group, Now Here This. She is very good at finding furniture on the streets of New York.

Zack Lapinski

After narrowly avoiding a career in finance, Zack joined Freakonomics Radio where he is now a senior producer. His economics degree from New York University has been put to surprisingly good use. He can be found on Manhattan’s Lower East Side where he has a decidedly uneconomical number of books.

Morgan Levey

Morgan is the senior producer of People I (Mostly) Admire, and she occasionally produces a Freakonomics Radio episode. She’s happy at the intersection of things, which is how she went from creating digital content for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to receiving a master’s degree in environmental journalism, to producing an economics podcast. It’s also how she balances working for a New York company, producing a Chicago host, and living in Montana. For stories, she’s wandered around an artist’s junkyard studio, interviewed firefighters at the edge of a wildfire, and chased tornadoes in NOAA’s hurricane-hunter aircraft.

Sarah Lilley

Sarah is the senior producer of The Economics of Everyday Things. She studied music composition at U.C. Berkeley, got an M.A. in Science Journalism from Columbia University, and was a longtime contributing producer to Studio 360 and WNYC. She has reported on everything from fragrance to dark matter to death metal. Sarah discovered she had synesthesia by listening to the radio. She loves randomness, artichokes, late ’60s jazz, and public transportation — but not always in that order.

Eleanor Osborne

Eleanor, aka Nellie, is a senior audio engineer for the Freakonomics Radio Network. Nellie is a Bostonian who studied Italian language and literature at UConn before doing a stint in Lisbon, Portugal. Prior to joining the Freakonomics Radio team full-time, she was nominated for an Emmy for mixing Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. She enjoys corgis, pretending she speaks lots of languages, and playing the saxophone.

Greg Rippin

Greg is the technical director of the Freakonomics Radio Network. Greg grew up outside Pittsburgh, PA, and Greensboro, NC. He studied Classical Piano at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and earned a Master’s Degree in Music Technology from New York University. When not busy making the world’s audio safe for consumption, Greg is an avid home brewer, and a student of all things beer, beer history, and beer culture.

Gabriel Roth

Gabriel is the editorial director of the Freakonomics Radio Network. Gabe previously worked at Slate, where he oversaw the podcast network. Before that, he was a newspaper reporter, got an M.F.A. in creative writing, and wrote a novel (The Unknowns). He tweets too much and was born in London. 


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The Books

Freakonomics SuperFreakonomics Think Like a Freak When to Rob a Bank