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treat cure, or prevent any disease.

0:34

In case you don't remember nineteen

0:36

ninety eight or in case you weren't around yet,

0:38

that was the year President Bill Clinton

0:41

claimed he did not

0:43

have sexual relations with

0:45

that woman, miss Lewinsky.

0:48

It was the year Google officially

0:50

became a

0:50

company. In

0:51

nineteen ninety eight, the founders of Google set

0:54

up workspace in a garage in Monroe

0:56

Park, California and became incorporated. It

0:59

was the year of the Good Friday Agreement

1:01

which brought peace to Northern Ireland.

1:03

After a generation of bloodshed and

1:06

decades of division and criminal,

1:08

George Mitchell ushered in what the

1:10

whole island hopes will be a new era

1:12

of peace.

1:13

Also, in nineteen ninety eight,

1:16

If you were anywhere near a radio, you

1:18

would have heard this song. Song

1:34

is flagpole sita by Seattle

1:36

band called Harvey Danger. There

1:44

was a long period of my life where I had to sing that song

1:47

like four or five times a day. Sean

1:49

Nelson was the lead singer in Harvey Danger.

1:52

Their song was everywhere.

1:55

We went to see a Cubs

1:57

game when we were in Chicago at one point.

1:59

They played

2:01

the song during the Seventh inning stretch

2:04

and then said, ladies and gentlemen, the members

2:06

of the band are here like we stood up at Wrigley

2:08

Fields. I don't know that we got much of a

2:10

novation. It wasn't our idea,

2:12

but it was like that. Like a lot

2:14

of hit songs, this one endured.

2:17

It was played in the nineteen ninety nine movie

2:19

American Pie, which self was a huge

2:21

hit. It was used as the theme song

2:23

of the long running British TV comedy

2:26

Peep Show. In twenty fifteen,

2:28

A video surfaced on tabloid website,

2:31

TMZ, showing the American

2:33

whistleblower Edward Snowden at

2:35

home in Russia making dinner with

2:37

his girlfriend and guess what

2:39

song was playing in the background.

2:41

Yep.

2:46

I mean, the idea of such

2:49

a notorious big

2:51

year as Snowden listening

2:54

to that song a at

2:55

b while in exile and

2:58

also see like that was

3:00

twenty fifteen did you say? So that's

3:02

like seventeen

3:05

years after it was a hit. As it turned

3:07

out, flagpolesada was the band's

3:10

only hit. They made three

3:12

albums before they broke up. The hit

3:14

came from the first one. In a Rolling

3:16

Stone reader poll, flagpole Sitted

3:18

was ranked one of the top ten one

3:20

hit wonders of the nineteen nineties. Today,

3:23

on

3:23

Freakonomics Radio, what's it like to

3:25

be the one hit wonder? The

3:27

day before you have a hit, it doesn't sound

3:29

so bad. The day you have a hit,

3:32

you're like, well, I guess it'll just be that way. And the

3:34

day after you have a

3:34

hit, you're like, I don't want this to be my

3:36

whole life. We'll invest to get the

3:38

science of creativity. Creativity

3:41

is extremely difficult to predict. We'll

3:43

hear from researchers who have studied

3:46

one hit wonders Once

3:48

artists reach that first

3:49

hit, then the time for creativity

3:51

is over. And we'll hear from

3:53

some creators who have read that

3:56

research

3:56

Yeah. I hated that paper. I

3:59

mean, it would hit me where it hurts, you know.

4:02

Our culture tends to ridicule OneHit

4:05

wonders. Should we be celebrating

4:07

them instead? This

4:20

is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast

4:22

that explores the hidden side of

4:24

everything. With your host,

4:26

Steven Dubner. Did

4:35

you make a New Year's resolution this year?

4:38

Most people do. Did your

4:40

resolution have to do with being more

4:42

creative Maybe you are an artist

4:44

some

4:44

kind. Maybe you wanna be more creative

4:46

at work or in the kitchen

4:48

at home.

4:49

But here's the thing about creativity.

4:52

It's not well understood.

4:54

Marcus Bear is a professor of organizational

4:57

behavior at the Olin Business School at

4:59

Washington University. And what

5:01

is organizational behavior? It's

5:03

the study of the human condition in

5:05

organizations. Bayer grew

5:07

up in Germany and went to college there.

5:09

He didn't plan to wind up in

5:11

a business school. He was on a different

5:14

path, a more creative path, you

5:16

might say. I was initially interested in

5:18

clinical psychology and especially

5:19

parapsychology, but that didn't

5:22

work out at all. Okay.

5:23

And what is parapsychology?

5:25

I was actually studying for a while

5:28

an experiment which would test

5:30

whether or not people can transmit information

5:33

in an extra sensory manner.

5:35

Most of us know this phenomenon as

5:37

telepathy, and my colleague

5:39

didn't believe in the

5:40

effect. I have to say no offense. I'm kind of

5:42

with the colleague. Well,

5:45

the person who we're working with was a

5:47

Dutch physicist, and he believed

5:49

that if we do not believe in the effect, it

5:51

would not occur, so he fired my colleague.

5:54

And the entire department turned on me,

5:57

which I found very, very odd

5:59

just because I was affiliated with an

6:01

experiment that ended up not being

6:03

run, not because we did anything wrong, just

6:05

because we were skeptical of the

6:07

effect. So I have to say you're an esteemed

6:09

professor at a great

6:10

university, WashU. I know

6:13

you've consulted and taught at

6:15

big institutions and government

6:17

agencies in the US, NASA, at

6:20

the Office of Naval Intelligence, and so

6:22

on. I'm very impressed that you're willing

6:24

to share the fact that you were drummed out of

6:26

psychology because you were a believer in para

6:27

psychology. If these institutions

6:30

like NASA know this about you, do you think

6:32

that's a negative, a positive, neutral, I

6:34

think most of them don't know that about

6:36

me. Wow. They used to not

6:38

know. I'm interested in

6:40

interesting phenomena. So I was not

6:42

very strategic when I chose

6:43

this. I used to love the X

6:46

files. I'm not sure if you were a fan of

6:48

I wasn't, but I know enough to know that it was an

6:50

interesting show. It was an interesting show,

6:52

and so I thought this is a phenomenal opportunity

6:54

to explore a phenomenon about

6:57

which I don't really know very much. But

6:59

I spent a good year investigating

7:01

or preparing for the examination

7:03

of this phenomenon. And then being let

7:05

go is, of course, a huge setback.

7:08

After that huge setback, Bayer

7:10

moved into a different branch of psychology

7:13

called industrial organization or

7:15

IO Psychology. When I

7:17

made this transition to IO

7:19

Psychology, the person I

7:21

talked to, his name is Michael Fraser. He

7:23

described the phenomenon that he

7:25

had observed is that firms often struggle

7:27

when they innovate, when they adopt

7:29

innovation, they don't get it right, they

7:31

backfire, and So

7:34

he was like, why is this happening? That was the

7:36

research question. And that focus

7:38

on innovation then led

7:40

me to examine

7:41

creativity, which is the beginning

7:44

of a journey that culminates in

7:46

an innovation typically. And

7:49

just like that, Marcus Bayer

7:52

left the paranormal behind. His

7:54

story is familiar in a

7:56

way. When you're trying to do something

7:59

novel, it's easy to get

8:01

knocked off the path. Whether it's in academia

8:03

or the business world to spread anywhere.

8:06

Mainstream society does not offer

8:08

much encouragement for novelty

8:11

or creativity. So bear

8:13

wound up studying creativity

8:16

in a business

8:16

school. And what has he learned?

8:19

Creativity is extremely difficult to

8:21

predict. Even if you look at

8:23

successful authors, successful scientists,

8:26

their careers are somewhat clumpy. And

8:28

no one really knows whether or not

8:30

you reach a peak and whether or not you reach another

8:32

peak, oftentimes you have only one

8:34

peak A few years ago, we did

8:36

a series on creativity, and we spoke with

8:38

all sorts of artists and innovators,

8:41

but also scholars of creativity.

8:43

OneHit of them being the Harvard

8:45

psychologist, Teresa Amobole, used

8:47

kind of a giant in the 530. She

8:50

defined creativity as

8:53

novelty that works.

8:55

And I'm just curious what

8:56

you think of that definition and

8:59

or how you might define create

9:00

activity. I agree with it. I think

9:03

there is one word perhaps missing it's

9:05

that it potentially works.

9:07

It's really hard to know what

9:09

works. Yeah. And I think one

9:11

easy way to kill things is by saying while

9:13

it doesn't work while it doesn't

9:15

work just yet. So doing

9:17

something novel and then demanding

9:19

that that thing works right away in a

9:21

way that others can comprehend is

9:23

really difficult. So we have to

9:25

be a little bit more generous in

9:27

the standards that we apply to

9:29

novel ideas. Okay.

9:32

So here is a novel research idea

9:35

that Marcus Bayer and a co author

9:37

worked on. My co author,

9:39

Doug Deichmann, is an Amsterdam

9:41

and he lived above a cookbook

9:43

store. And he said there was a warm

9:45

glow at night when he would come home

9:47

because people were gathering

9:50

around in the store, cooking, it's

9:52

rainy and Amsterdam. He's coming home on his

9:54

bike. He thought I wanna be part of

9:56

that world. And he pitched to me the idea

9:58

of studying the extent to

10:00

which people essentially can sustain their

10:02

creativity. In this case, meaning does

10:04

a first time cookbook author write a second

10:06

book? And what would help us understand

10:08

that. They wound up writing a paper that

10:10

was published in twenty twenty two in the

10:12

Journal of Applied Psychology. It's

10:15

called a recipe for

10:17

success, question mark, sustaining

10:19

creativity among first time

10:21

creative producers. This is the paper

10:23

I read that made me wanna make

10:25

this episode about OneHit wonders.

10:28

Bear and DISHMAN looked at first

10:30

time cookbook authors to see how many of

10:32

them published a second book within

10:34

five years. They found that only

10:36

half of the first time authors did

10:38

that. What made a first time

10:40

author more likely to publish

10:42

again? You might

10:44

expect it would be the authors whose first books

10:46

were successful. They would have

10:48

more encouragement and incentive

10:50

to publish a follow-up book, but

10:52

that's not what showed up in the data.

10:54

It was the successful authors

10:56

who were more likely to not publish

10:59

a second book. Now, why would

11:01

that be? Bayer and

11:03

DISHMAN identified two factors. How

11:05

a novel is your first book? And

11:07

do you win an award for it? Why

11:10

would novelty and awards matter

11:12

so

11:12

much? Here is Bear's

11:14

theory. When you do creative work,

11:17

you start to think of yourself as a

11:19

creative individual. When you win

11:21

an award for that work, that

11:23

identity becomes very powerful

11:25

and salient. So you think of yourself

11:27

differently and other people think of yourself

11:29

differently. And when you make a

11:31

decision whether or not to continue that

11:33

journey to produce creative work again,

11:36

start thinking what are the potential

11:38

consequences? And one of the consequences,

11:40

while this could erode, this

11:42

identity that I had just built and

11:44

I wanna protect it perhaps because the

11:46

risk might be too great. Can I really replicate

11:49

the success? And people may not have the

11:51

tools? And so what they do is they

11:52

stop. Can you let's talk a little bit more

11:55

about the your explanation is

11:57

that these cookbook authors win

11:59

an award and then

12:01

their self identity changes, and

12:03

maybe their outside identity changes

12:05

as well. But can you talk as a

12:07

psychologist, what's actually going on there

12:09

because I would think that

12:11

for some people at least, this

12:14

new identity, if the identity indeed

12:16

does change, is actually a positive

12:18

and you'd want to embrace

12:19

it. So why does that not

12:22

happen necessarily? It's a function media

12:24

of the novelty of the first work

12:26

and whether or not you want an award for

12:28

it. So you're absolutely right. Among

12:30

individuals whose work

12:32

is conventional. Let's say it's

12:34

a collection of recipes. That you

12:36

just have assembled for the first

12:38

time. Those authors who win

12:40

an award go on to publish a

12:42

second book almost hundred percent of the time.

12:45

It's when you did something more novel

12:47

where you see yourself as a creative

12:49

individual, you say that's rare. Not

12:51

everyone can do what I do. The

12:53

problem is many people don't know what they

12:55

did in order to get there. There's

12:57

a little bit of luck in there and maybe a

12:59

little bit of magic too. Right?

13:01

Yes. There are skills people can

13:03

develop that are perhaps

13:05

universally usable or applicable

13:07

when it comes to being creative, but I don't think many

13:09

people have that much insight And

13:11

so they stumbled upon something to

13:13

some extent got

13:13

lucky. And then they really don't know how

13:16

to replicate it.

13:18

I think people understand that there is a risk

13:21

to screwing it up in very simple

13:23

terms. Plus, there's an attraction to

13:25

going out on top, I guess. Right? Why

13:27

you're hot? Exactly. You tell a joke,

13:29

everybody laughs, the best thing to do, just

13:31

leave the room. So

13:34

the bare diceman argument is that

13:36

among cookbook authors, one hit

13:38

wonders produce only one hit

13:40

because they are essentially

13:42

afraid to try again. That's

13:44

the theory at least. Let's bring

13:46

this theory to an actual cookbook

13:49

author whose first book was both

13:51

extremely novel and

13:53

massively successful.

13:54

Wrote a book called Salt Fat Asset Heat. That

13:57

took me a very long time to write.

13:59

That is Sumeen

14:00

Nossrat. I'm a writer and a

14:02

cook, and a

14:05

person. That

14:06

answered one of my questions. The person

14:09

part I knew, I was curious which

14:11

order you think of yourself in, writer,

14:12

cook, So is that the order? Is that just the way

14:15

you happen to describe it today?

14:16

No. I definitely think of myself as writer

14:19

first. There is a good chance you're

14:21

already familiar with Sami Nhasrat?

14:23

Salt fat, acid heat, published in

14:25

twenty seventeen, sold more than a

14:27

million copies in the US alone,

14:29

and it was turned into a popular Netflix

14:31

series starring, Nasrat.

14:33

The book was plainly

14:35

marketed as a cookbook, but she doesn't think

14:37

of it that

14:37

way.

14:38

But I had no choice. Because there's not, like, next

14:40

to the cookbooks, not a cookbook section. What

14:42

would

14:42

that section be called?

14:44

On cookbook.

14:47

Salt fat, acid heat is

14:49

about cooking, but it's also about

14:51

nocrat herself, and the

14:53

history of

14:53

cooking, and a lot more.

14:55

I

14:55

had the idea for that book sometime around

14:58

nineteen ninety nine or two thousand.

14:59

So just another seventeen or

15:02

eighteen year overnight success story. Yeah,

15:04

totally. And it's not to say I spent all of those

15:06

years writing it. The idea, the

15:08

germination of the idea to the publishing of

15:10

the

15:10

book. That's how long it took. The active writing,

15:13

I think, was about three and a half

15:15

years maybe. The project began when

15:17

she was a young kitchen intern at

15:19

Shea Peenice, the landmark restaurant

15:21

in

15:21

Berkeley, California founded by Alice

15:23

Waters. I'd been given this list

15:25

of thirty important books in

15:27

the history of Shape and Ease to

15:29

familiarize myself with and cook from

15:31

in my free time these

15:33

concepts were not ever explicitly

15:36

explained in those books, whereas every

15:38

single day in the kitchen, these were the

15:40

things that we were orienting

15:42

ourselves around.

15:44

Salt fat acid heat was

15:47

Nasrat's first book certainly

15:49

fit the definition of knob one

15:51

of two factors you will remember

15:53

that Marcus Bayer says,

15:55

may lead a first time cookbook

15:57

author to not publish again.

15:59

You remember the second factor? The

16:01

book had to win an award. That

16:04

certainly applied to salt fat,

16:06

acid heat, a James Beard

16:08

award, no less. But

16:10

Nasrat is working on a second

16:12

book. It's just taking a

16:14

while. So

16:17

On your website, it says, we all know.

16:19

I am a painfully slow writer. So

16:23

please do not write to

16:25

ask me when the book is coming. So

16:27

on behalf of all your readers and

16:29

fans, of which I am one, I loved your first

16:31

book. So on behalf everyone. I'll be

16:33

the obnoxious one. Uh-huh. When

16:35

is the book coming? I

16:36

actually I don't really know.

16:40

You know,

16:40

it was I think originally supposed to come

16:42

out this year, and then COVID

16:45

happened, and then just like a lot of stuff

16:46

has happened. How do you spend your

16:49

days at the moment? Well,

16:50

right now, I spend most of my days crying.

16:53

I

16:54

might need you to explain exactly what you're crying

16:56

about. I mean, Are

16:58

there a lot of reasons? There are

17:00

multiple reasons. Part of it is my

17:03

general creative malaise. And

17:05

part of it is I recently went

17:07

through a big family trauma. My father

17:09

passed away. And those things I think

17:11

in a lot of ways are relayed But

17:13

in theory, the way I should be

17:15

spending my time

17:18

is working on

17:20

a book. And since that book is a cookbook,

17:22

It's partly testing recipes

17:24

and thinking about food and how I

17:26

cook it and how people at home

17:28

might cook

17:29

it. And

17:31

then writing about

17:32

that. Coming up after

17:35

the break, Nasrat takes a look at the

17:37

paper by the creativity scholars

17:39

about first time cookbook

17:40

authors. I'm

17:41

just like, oh, you don't understand

17:44

creativity. I'm Steven Dubner. This

17:46

is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be

17:48

right back. Frickin'omics

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19:40

Okay. Let's rehearse what we know. creativity

19:43

scholar Marcus Bayer co authored a

19:45

paper which found that writing a

19:47

particularly novel cookbook and

19:49

getting recognized for it makes

19:52

authors less likely to produce

19:54

a second book within five

19:56

years. In a way, he is pointing to standing

19:58

phenomenon we're all familiar with, the

20:00

sophomore slump. That's based on the

20:02

idea that second year students get

20:05

lazy or complacent with their

20:07

academic work. Bear

20:09

argues that the sophomore slump

20:11

applies just as much if not more

20:13

when it comes to creative The

20:15

most significant point in his research

20:17

is that certain conditions will lead

20:19

first time creators to stop

20:21

producing work altogether. The

20:23

theory being that a second project could

20:25

pose a threat to their new creative

20:28

identity. Bear and his

20:30

coauthor reached this conclusion in part by

20:32

interviewing first time QuickBooks

20:34

authors, they ask these authors to choose

20:36

between developing a new idea for

20:38

a second book or continuing

20:40

to promote their first

20:41

book. We gave him choices

20:43

in an experimental setting and said, do

20:45

you wanna come up with a second idea? Or do

20:47

you rather wanna build on what you did? You

20:49

want to design a way of

20:52

exploiting your success.

20:54

And to the extent that people say it

20:56

feels threatening to me,

20:58

to think about doing this again

21:01

and not knowing exactly what the outcome will

21:02

be. Those people end up

21:05

not choosing that option developing

21:07

a second idea. Wouldn't it make sense that someone who

21:09

creates something novel and it's successful?

21:12

And then as the option

21:14

to either as you put it build

21:16

on what they've done, exploit that

21:19

success versus trying to come

21:21

up with another novel idea

21:23

to me it makes a lot of sense to want to

21:25

build on and exploit that success

21:28

because successes are

21:30

inherently anomalous. Right? Most

21:33

things fail. So if I've been lucky enough to come up with something

21:35

that succeeds, of course, Marcus, I don't want

21:37

to go back to the drawing board and try to come up with

21:39

another purely novel idea.

21:41

If I wrote chicken soup for the soul, and

21:44

it sells five million copies. Now I wanna

21:46

write chicken soup for the automobile, chicken soup

21:48

for the fountain

21:49

pen, chicken soup for the computer console,

21:51

doesn't that make a certain amount of sense

21:53

as opposed to the theory of

21:55

shirking from the newfound creative identity?

21:58

It does. And you're absolutely right. One

22:00

of the first papers written in a journal

22:02

called organization science was about this

22:05

tension between what is called

22:07

exploitation and exploration. So once we

22:09

explored or you have invested resources

22:11

into developing novel

22:13

ideas, you wanna exploit that. It's

22:15

rational. And many authors will make

22:17

such a

22:18

decision. And that's why we have so many

22:21

sequels.

22:21

Yeah. But they are clearly diminishing

22:24

returns to those efforts

22:26

eventually. And I

22:28

think our authors because there is

22:30

no real incentive for them oftentimes

22:32

to continue that journey because it's

22:34

a labor of love. Most

22:37

cookbooks don't sell very well. Very

22:39

few cookbook authors have advances

22:41

or then subsequently get

22:43

contracts. So you really can hone in on what the

22:45

individual would do almost in the absence of

22:47

any other factors. So if you

22:49

have a successful first one,

22:52

tend to write a second. Make sense

22:54

above and beyond that effect.

22:56

However, if your book was novel and you won

22:58

an award for it, you become much more

23:00

concerned about continuing. That

23:03

at least is what bears research

23:06

paper says. Yeah.

23:07

I hated that paper. I

23:10

found a really insulting. That

23:12

again is Sami Nossrat, the

23:15

author of salt, fat, acid

23:17

heat. I mean,

23:17

it's just like hit me where it hurts,

23:20

you know.

23:20

On the other hand, it's motivation to prove

23:23

them wrong.

23:23

Totally. Totally. I was like, whatever. No.

23:26

But it's not a new

23:28

phenomenon. You know, like, that's not something

23:30

I think anyone is

23:32

shocked by Meaning, this notion

23:34

of a sophomore slump kind of thing, you

23:36

spend all your life working toward an

23:38

idea, and then it works. Totally, and I

23:40

think many authors I know struggle

23:43

with that, and especially the people who

23:45

have the first big success. There

23:47

are some people in my life who are the cautionary tales,

23:50

who are still, like, eighteen

23:52

years later working on the

23:55

second book. And I'm

23:56

like, don't be like that. Like, I

23:58

totally know about that,

24:00

and I knew about that. You didn't

24:02

need this paper. I didn't need this paper. I

24:04

knew about that. Before sulfide as if he

24:06

came out. I knew that that was a

24:09

thing that could happen to me, especially because

24:11

I'm already a procrastinator and

24:13

a perfectionist. And so I

24:15

knew that that was something that I had to

24:17

be

24:17

very, very, very careful about.

24:19

And that's not to say that it's something

24:22

that has not plagued to

24:24

me? So to me,

24:26

what they're saying is that, oh, all of a

24:28

sudden that you've had a success you

24:30

are now perceived by others as

24:32

something that you may not have perceived yourself

24:34

as. And therefore, you're

24:36

worried that if the next thing you

24:38

do is not as well received

24:40

or perceived as a creative triumph,

24:42

then you're an imposter. And

24:44

so the only sensible thing to

24:46

do is quit. And just run away

24:49

and hide. My sense is

24:51

that was not the case with

24:52

you. Like, I get it. And that's

24:54

not to say that I don't have those, like, totally

24:57

neurotic worries. Of course, I

24:59

do. But the part of me that wakes up

25:01

and is like, oh, I gotta make

25:03

this thing. Oh, I gotta try that thing.

25:05

I'm a generator. You know, I'm a

25:07

generative person. I'm a creative person. I

25:09

wanna make stuff and share it with the world. And

25:11

I think Ultimately, the thing that I produce will

25:13

be more authentic and

25:15

more beautiful and

25:17

more truly me and what I need

25:19

to make creativity is

25:21

a complicated and

25:23

ineffable thing. And it's not like I've been

25:25

sitting around doing nothing. I've been making other

25:27

stuff. And all that stuff I think

25:29

will show up in this.

25:30

Here is some

25:33

of the other stuff Nasrat

25:35

has been making. A children's cooking

25:38

show hosted by Michelle Obama,

25:40

a podcast called home cooking.

25:43

And for a while, she wrote a monthly food

25:45

column for The New York Times magazine. That's

25:47

just time. Time time time time. One

25:49

way in which this paper, I

25:51

believe, could apply to you

25:53

in some ways, is that a

25:55

success like yours especially, which is really

25:58

large, does create this almost

26:00

impossibly elevated expectation

26:02

for what's next. So

26:05

not only was your first book very, very

26:07

successful, but you personally are

26:09

just beloved. People

26:11

love you. Mhmm. So if we know anything

26:13

from history, very few people

26:16

go their entire lives being

26:18

only beloved, unfortunately.

26:20

Totally. And with

26:22

a success like yours, matching

26:24

or exceeding or even getting in the neighborhood

26:26

is not necessarily

26:28

so easy. I don't mean to jinx or put a

26:31

negative component on this, but No.

26:33

Trust

26:33

me. You're not saying anything that has an urge

26:35

to trust me. But I

26:37

don't sense that your creative identity is

26:40

so fragile that you won't produce

26:42

another book. But I could

26:45

imagine that one can think oneself into

26:47

that sort of trouble. Yes. Absolutely.

26:49

That's entirely a thing

26:52

that happens. Something

26:54

I think about and sort of lament

26:56

privately to myself all the time is that

26:58

I'm the product and I think

27:00

that increasingly when

27:02

you're an author. And

27:04

certainly, a cookbook author, you

27:06

become the product in a way

27:08

that I think wasn't true

27:09

twenty, thirty, sixty, eighty, two

27:12

hundred years ago? Because

27:12

of the nature of how media and exposure

27:15

work. Yeah. And when you go to the

27:17

store right now, there's so many

27:19

cookbooks where the person's

27:21

face is on the

27:21

cover. Yours is not. I've

27:24

ensured that. You know how I ensured that

27:26

by having an illustrated

27:27

cookbook. I totally

27:30

understand that I am the subject of people's

27:32

parent social relationship. You're saying you

27:34

understand that because you felt that way about people

27:36

before. Because I that with other

27:38

people on TV and the Internet too, like who I adore

27:41

and love even though I've never met them. So I

27:43

totally understand what it is to feel that way

27:45

about somebody you've never met.

27:48

And I don't fault people or blame them

27:50

or anything. And also, it's

27:52

really hard to be that

27:55

person. It takes an emotional drain and it's just

27:57

another part of the

27:59

psychological challenge and

28:01

also probably isn't for my

28:03

friends who are

28:04

novelists. Or write science

28:06

books or something. Because they're not

28:08

the product. Exactly. Okay.

28:13

But let's be honest. You

28:15

could imagine after you have managed to

28:17

produce some kind of hit in a

28:19

creative field that you are

28:22

afraid. Afraid that the next

28:24

thing you make won't be as

28:26

beloved as the last

28:28

one, afraid that you will be

28:30

a one hit wonder. Afraid that

28:33

you'll be the answer to a trivia

28:35

question. One hit wonders for a

28:37

thousand, Alex. This

28:39

Seattle Pop Band had its and only

28:41

hit in nineteen ninety eight with

28:43

flag Bolcida.

28:44

Imagine if you told a

28:47

joke at a party when you

28:49

were twenty. And then

28:51

every party you ever went to for the rest

28:53

of your

28:53

life, the only thing anyone wanted to

28:56

hear you say and the only reason you were

28:58

invited is because they want you to tell that

29:00

joke again. It's not quite as

29:02

funny. It's not quite as surrealing,

29:04

but there are way worse things and

29:06

you feel like a total fool for

29:08

complaining. It's just a particular little

29:11

sting in the

29:13

tail. That again is Sean

29:15

Nelson from Harvey Danger.

29:17

The frustrating thing, of

29:18

course, is that still the

29:21

success of it is so outsized compared

29:23

to anything else I have

29:26

ever done or even really tried to

29:28

do. And Nelson has done a lot.

29:30

He's a journalist and an author,

29:33

screenwriter and an actor, and he's still

29:35

making music. An album of

29:37

Harry Nielsen songs for instance sung

29:39

by Nelson backed by a full

29:41

orchestra. But after

29:43

all that, he is still best known for singing a song

29:45

he co wrote when he was twenty

29:46

two. The feeling that the lyrics to flak

29:49

will set up were etched on my

29:51

tombstone the day it was

29:53

written. That's the thing that I have a

29:55

hard time escaping. If

29:57

I'm anything in anyone's mind, it's

29:59

always going to be as the singer of that song

30:01

and then, oh yeah, he did some other stuff

30:03

too. But in a way that may be better

30:05

than I've never heard of this

30:06

person, why should I care?

30:08

Alfred, Lord Tenison famously argued that it is

30:10

better to have loved and lost than

30:12

never to have loved at all. So

30:15

Is it better to be known as a one

30:17

hit wonder than to have never had a

30:19

hit at all? We may think

30:22

of the one hit wonder as a

30:24

failure, but it's the kind of failure creative

30:26

people would kill for because you

30:28

know who likes to ridicule one

30:30

hit wonders? People who have

30:32

had zero hits. The

30:35

odds are very long against

30:37

any creative work being a

30:39

hit such that if it is a hit

30:41

that should be celebrated as a giant

30:44

accomplishment. That is Justin Berg.

30:47

Like Marcus Bayer, he

30:49

studies innovation and teaches organizational

30:51

behavior at a business

30:52

school. In Berg's case, It's Stanford.

30:54

So

30:55

many of our favorite songs are what we think

30:57

of as one hit wonders. They're

30:59

great creative acts. I just think the

31:01

term one hit wonder should be a

31:04

positive because no hit wonder is

31:06

much worse and much, much, much more

31:08

common. Berg isn't just saying this,

31:10

he knows it empirically. He

31:12

recently published a paper called

31:14

OneHit wonders versus hit makers,

31:17

sustaining success in

31:19

creative industries. Because pop

31:21

music is a much bigger field

31:23

than cookbook writing, Berg had a

31:25

lot more data to work with. The

31:27

final data set is

31:29

pretty comprehensive. It

31:31

captures virtually the entire history of pop

31:33

music from nineteen fifty nine to twenty ten.

31:36

It includes data on over

31:38

three million songs by about seventy

31:40

thousand artists that took us about

31:42

three years total to build

31:45

a lot of data on music

31:48

exists, but for the

31:50

purpose of having a

31:52

comprehensive data set capturing the

31:54

entire songcat logs of,

31:56

like, we wanted every artist ever have a hit

31:58

and then every artist ever be signed by a

32:00

hit label. When you say a hit label, you just mean

32:02

a label that has had or

32:04

a hit exactly. So we ended

32:06

up cross referencing Spotify,

32:10

Apple Music, and then two crowdsourced

32:12

platforms called music brands and

32:14

discogs. And then, of course, we

32:16

integrated that with the entire history of the

32:18

Big Bear Dot one hundred. Okay.

32:20

So what did Justin Berg learn from this

32:22

broad and deep analysis of

32:24

top music hits? Here is

32:26

one amazing statistic. Of those

32:28

seventy thousand artists in his database, ninety

32:31

three percent never had

32:33

a single hit. And of the seven

32:35

percent who did have a hit,

32:38

nearly half had only one

32:40

hit. Maybe it's because he is a

32:42

professor of innovation at a top

32:44

business school, but Berg was more seven

32:46

percent of the hitmakers than

32:48

the ninety three percent of the failures.

32:50

And here's what he really wanted to know.

32:53

What's the difference between a one hit wonder

32:55

and a repeat hitmaker?

32:58

He suspected the answer may

33:00

lie in what's called path dependence.

33:02

Path dependence is the idea that

33:04

what happens early in a process can limit

33:06

the range of options that you have by the end

33:08

of that process. And what

33:11

we see in that data has strong evidence

33:13

for path dependence in artist careers,

33:15

an artist's path to sustain success

33:18

depends on the creativity in their portfolio

33:20

of songs at the time of their first hit

33:22

song. The creativity in their

33:24

portfolio of songs at the

33:26

time of their first hit song.

33:28

How do you measure that? Berg

33:30

did it systematically. He

33:32

used a machine learning album rhythm that

33:34

examined every song on a variety of

33:37

sonic 530, tempo,

33:39

time signature, dance ability,

33:42

several others. And then he

33:44

indexed each song on two

33:46

dimensions, novelty and

33:48

variety. So novelty is how

33:50

unique artists songs were compared to what was

33:52

popular at the time. And

33:54

variety is how much diversity the artist had

33:56

within their own portfolio of

33:58

songs. And here's what he found.

34:00

Artists who reached their initial hits with more

34:02

creative, meaning more novel or more

34:04

varied portfolios were more likely to

34:06

keep generating hits. While

34:08

those who reach their initial hits with less graded portfolio. So more

34:11

typical, more homogenous, they are more likely to

34:13

become one hit wonders and not ever

34:15

have a hit again. So when I

34:17

hear that, I think, well, yeah, that

34:19

makes perfect sense. You're telling

34:21

me that more creative artists

34:24

are more creative for longer. Mhmm. So

34:26

what's surprising about that?

34:28

So first off, there's a trade

34:30

off here. New artists

34:32

who build

34:34

novel portfolios are less likely to ever have a

34:35

hit. They're more likely

34:36

to strike out and we never hear about

34:39

them. And then once artists

34:41

reach that first hit,

34:44

then the time for creativity is over. If their goal, of

34:46

course, is to sustain success. If their goal is creativity,

34:48

they should keep on being creative. But

34:51

what model and what the data suggests is

34:54

actually if you continue to try to

34:56

be creative after your first hit, you're

34:58

less likely to have commercial success.

35:00

Got it. So at that point, you

35:02

have two kind of dual

35:04

opposing goals if your goal

35:06

is to maximize the likelihood of

35:08

commercial sustained success. The

35:10

first is what we call

35:12

relatedness. And that is

35:14

the idea that you want your

35:16

new songs to sound like

35:19

your old songs.

35:20

So that's really about leveraging your existing portfolio.

35:22

And then the second somewhat

35:24

opposing goal is you need to

35:27

adapt to the market. The problem is is

35:29

your old songs are stuck in time. And what

35:31

we find is that artists

35:33

who reach their

35:36

Initial hits with more creative portfolios

35:38

are better able to pull off this balancing

35:40

act between these two opposing goals

35:44

over time. Okay. So name some artists to pull off

35:46

this balancing act and

35:48

become repeat

35:50

creative hitmakers. I mean,

35:52

so many of our favorite artists fit

35:54

the model really well. The

35:56

quintessential artist that fits the

35:59

model extremely well is Shania

36:04

Twain. Do

36:09

you like Cannae

36:12

Twain? So my wife grew up in Georgia,

36:14

and she's a child of the nineties. So

36:17

there's a lot of country pop played in our house. I

36:19

do like Shania Twain. I also just appreciate

36:21

her creative genius. I also

36:24

think that society has caught up to that recently, and

36:26

I think part of it was they had to get

36:28

over some gender

36:30

stereotypes that prevented people

36:32

from seeing what she did in the mid

36:34

nineties as creatively genius.

36:36

Okay. Name a couple other good

36:38

examples of creativity

36:40

in the pop music space. The Supreme's

36:43

Marvin Gaye, Elton

36:45

John, Beyonce, Janet

36:47

Jackson, The Carpenters, Taylor

36:50

Swift is not in the

36:52

study because you had to

36:54

have your first hit by two

36:56

thousand five to qualify for

36:58

the study. But I have run the

37:00

numbers and she fits the model quite well, which intuitively if you think of her early

37:02

portfolio makes sense. It was both novel

37:06

and varied. So the Supremes catch my ear because they

37:08

didn't write their music. Right? As far as I know, they

37:10

were part of the Motown Machine. So

37:12

does this apply equally whether one is

37:14

just a

37:16

a performer or a performer and a writer. So the results are

37:18

a bit stronger when you write your own

37:20

songs, but it actually still holds

37:23

when you don't write your own songs. One reason for

37:25

this is working with an

37:28

artist as a songwriter as a producer as an

37:30

executive means working with

37:32

their portfolio. Portfolios

37:34

or these enduring entities

37:36

that exist, especially when the portfolios

37:38

have had broad success already. People

37:40

are familiar with them. And so the

37:42

path dependence comes from

37:44

the portfolio having enduring effects

37:46

and that when you start working with

37:48

an artist, even if it's a new

37:51

collaboration, you end up listening to their songs that are already familiar

37:53

with them, and then you

37:55

work within that portfolio and

37:58

your assumptions work within that

38:00

portfolio. Now, this perhaps

38:02

just reflects my lack of appreciation for

38:04

the carpenters, but in my mind,

38:06

all their songs sound kind of the

38:08

same. Well, that's actually

38:10

what's optimal after their

38:12

initial

38:12

hit.

38:12

Early on, if you go back to their original stuff, you're gonna

38:15

hear more variety than what would be

38:17

best for any artist after their initial

38:19

hit, which is relatedness, making

38:22

sure that your new songs state true to your signature

38:24

sound or that what audiences have

38:26

appreciated about your sound in the past. That would

38:28

explain maybe Abba as

38:30

well? Exactly. Abba's

38:33

a great fit for the model, especially on the relatedness dimension. But

38:35

I have to say as

38:37

someone who likes to

38:40

think artistically or creatively, generally in my life,

38:42

that's a bummer, like the last

38:44

thing in the world I'd wanna do. But

38:46

look at me, I've I'm hosting

38:48

a weekly radio show for twelve years now. But this is a thing

38:51

I struggle with, which is how can I

38:53

constantly change enough things to not make

38:55

it feel like I'm

38:58

painting my numbers. So do you have any advice for that? You've been

39:00

successful. You've been doing this thing.

39:02

People like it. You understand that relatedness

39:05

is important, even valuable. But also,

39:08

you're human. Your tastes and appetites

39:10

and curiosities are always changing.

39:12

So how do you balance that?

39:14

I totally understand the feeling that it's all a big 530. That

39:17

the time for creativity is early in your career

39:19

and then it's over after

39:21

you make it. But I think

39:23

that's not the best way to look at it. You

39:26

should look at the

39:28

challenge that you face after your first

39:30

hit as a

39:32

creative challenge. You wanna always throw a bow onto your

39:34

listeners who have been with you for a long

39:36

time, but then also bring them

39:38

along to new topics, new domains,

39:40

new ideas, And then you also

39:42

run some experiments on the side. Right? So

39:44

while you're continuing with that mainstream

39:46

of relatedness, you can experience

39:49

with some things to either help your creative outlet or potentially run

39:51

some side experiments that you can

39:53

work into that mainstream. Coming

39:56

off after the break, why couldn't

39:58

Harvey danger pull off a

40:01

second hit? And Will

40:04

Samine Nostrat be a

40:06

one hit wonder? I'm Steven

40:08

Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio.

40:10

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40:11

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course for you, that's UDEMY dot

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com. The

41:59

band Harvey danger started when the

42:02

four members were in college,

42:04

in Seattle. When we started

42:06

playing music together, none of us had ever been in

42:08

a band before, none of us had ever

42:10

really played the instruments we were playing

42:12

before. That again is Lead

42:14

singer, Sean Nelson. And

42:16

so every time we would

42:18

finish a song at all, it

42:20

felt sort of like an

42:22

extra accomplishment. Just for

42:24

having overcome our own

42:26

method. When they wrote flag

42:28

Poltsida, the song that became their

42:30

only hit, It just

42:32

seemed different. There was an element of,

42:34

like, not that we

42:36

wrote a thing, but that we found

42:38

a thing. A very energetic, punk ish

42:40

kind of feeling and

42:42

also a kind of classical

42:44

bubblegum pop

42:46

sensibility. And

42:48

it just sounded so

42:50

good. Right

42:51

away, it sort of announced itself

42:53

as a song you can't avoid, a

42:55

song you can't ignore. The budget

42:57

for their first album was just three thousand dollars. It was put out by

42:59

a small independent label.

43:02

Expectations were not

43:04

very

43:04

high. I handed a copy

43:06

of our record to a DJ in Seattle,

43:08

and he would sneak it into

43:10

regular rotation. And apparently every time he

43:12

did

43:12

that, there would be a lot of phone calls.

43:15

And it would be people saying what

43:16

was that? It took some time, but as

43:19

we heard earlier, flagginger turned into

43:21

a massive

43:23

hit. Radio, American Pie, Wrigley Field, Edward

43:26

Snowden. When it came time to make a second

43:27

record, we were

43:30

torn because

43:32

our impulse was to get as far away from the style of flagpole

43:34

said as we possibly could. And

43:36

so the first draft of the

43:39

second Harvey danger album was very

43:42

dour, almost mournful because

43:44

by that time the one hit wonder

43:47

track really did feel like something

43:49

we had been kind of relegated to

43:51

not necessarily

43:54

by fate but just by the people we were working with at the record

43:56

label. So here is

43:58

the creator's

43:59

dilemma. The band wants

44:01

to keep evolving But

44:04

according to the research by

44:06

Justin Berg from Stanford,

44:08

that comes with a cost. That their goal is

44:09

creativity. They should keep on being

44:12

creative, but If you continue to try to be creative after your first

44:14

hit, you're less likely to have commercial

44:16

success. There were some

44:18

other problems. Because

44:20

of a record label merger, the band didn't even

44:22

know who owned the recording contract, and it

44:24

was unclear if they'd even get to release

44:27

their second

44:28

album. So that took a while. And by then,

44:30

it seemed like the whole world had

44:32

changed on some sort

44:34

of generational turnover

44:37

had happened. Now it was like either

44:40

Britney Spears or

44:42

limp biscuit except then

44:44

occasionally a thing like the strokes.

44:46

And none of those things had

44:48

anything to do with what we

44:50

were

44:50

doing. We then found ourselves squarely in an area, but had absolutely

44:52

no place for us.

44:54

I think this

44:57

is a media problem

45:00

where it's a what have you done for me

45:02

lately a problem. Justin Berg

45:04

again from Stanford. The

45:06

media contributes to music

45:08

being a very high churn

45:10

industry. So we like

45:12

to celebrate novelty. We talk

45:15

about you know, the importance of novelty in

45:17

these creative industries, but really

45:20

what's successful on average

45:22

is typicality. So, you know, in the music industry that

45:24

would be songs that are similar to

45:27

what's been recently popular. Do

45:30

you happen to remember flag pulse set up

45:32

by Harvey Danger? No.

45:36

So Berg didn't know

45:39

the name of the song, to be fair,

45:41

a lot of people don't. But once

45:43

we started playing it for him, yep.

45:50

I remember it. Yeah. Does

45:52

that bring back any memories from your

45:55

youthful listening? Well, Yes.

45:58

Because I played Ultimate

46:00

Frisbee in high school and

46:02

we used to write

46:04

cheers for

46:06

teams that we played and we wrote a cheer

46:08

to that song. Get out of here, really?

46:10

Uh-huh.

46:11

Yep. So the

46:14

story

46:14

is We were a new Ultimate Team, and we witnessed

46:16

and played the perennial

46:18

champions at Amherst Regional

46:20

High School in the National Championships.

46:24

And not long before we played, y m

46:26

magazine had done a

46:28

feature on the Amherst Ultimate

46:31

Team. It was called something

46:33

like the ultimate guys. So we had to

46:34

work that into our

46:35

cheer, obviously. And I think it was we

46:38

had visions you

46:40

were in and we were looking

46:42

into a y

46:43

and So

46:47

that's the memory. It's

46:50

impressive that you have such a

46:52

concrete memory and affiliation with the song that you

46:54

didn't even know the name

46:56

of. Indeed. Now

46:58

we spoke with one of the guys in that band

47:00

and he said that their

47:02

hit song and it was truly

47:06

their only anything resembling a hit. But he said that their one hit

47:08

was very different from everything

47:10

else on the rest of the

47:12

album and that was their first album.

47:14

The second album was also really

47:16

different. So is the fact that

47:18

they came to be known as a one hit wonder pretty

47:20

consistent, would you say, with

47:22

your findings? What the data suggests is that all the

47:24

songs in the portfolio at the time of

47:26

initial hit matter, but

47:28

that the hit matters

47:30

the most obviously for

47:32

shaping expectations in the market.

47:34

And so if that's not their

47:36

bread and butter, that's not gonna

47:39

set them up for success to do

47:41

this balancing act of balancing relatedness and adapting to

47:43

the market. But

47:46

again,

47:47

In a world where ninety three percent of

47:50

musicians with hit labels have

47:52

zero hits. Shouldn't have an

47:54

even one feel like a

47:56

major triumph

47:57

Sean Nelson again from Harvey

48:00

danger. I look back on it as like, yeah, that

48:02

was really good. We had a version

48:04

of an experience that one

48:06

ever gets. And then also, quite

48:08

apart from all the other stuff

48:10

we've been talking

48:11

about, we were vindicated in

48:14

a way. Our interest in being in a band instead

48:16

of trying to get some sort of career

48:18

track job in the real world

48:20

or whatever was validated

48:22

at least for a while. And remember

48:24

what we learned from Marcus Bayer and

48:27

his study of first time cookbook

48:29

authors,

48:29

that first hit can add a

48:31

lot of pressure. Some pressure. I've done a study on that as well.

48:33

Some pressure is good. Extreme pressure is not very

48:36

helpful. Most people don't do their

48:38

best work, their best creative work under

48:40

those conditions. should

48:42

creator approach that situation?

48:44

Don't take yourself too seriously. Take

48:46

the work seriously. Take the process

48:48

that guides your work seriously.

48:51

The key to me is to accept

48:53

the fact that a lot of things

48:55

that have to do with the outcome

48:57

of our work. Whether or not people buy it, whether or not

48:59

people read it, whether or not people

49:02

award it, is out of

49:04

our control. And then say I will

49:06

just continue on this creative

49:08

journey. There

49:11

is, of course, no guarantee that the creative journey

49:13

will be a pleasant journey.

49:16

Oh, making a book is

49:17

truly the worst thing

49:18

in the world. It's the hardest thing in

49:22

the world. again is Simeon Nasrat, author of

49:24

salt, fat, acid heat,

49:26

and hopefully author of a

49:28

second book at

49:30

some point. I

49:31

think there are probably other people

49:34

whose relationship to writing

49:36

is different than

49:36

mine. I know there are because I have a lot

49:38

of journalist friends who don't -- Agnys of every

49:41

single moment. It's

49:41

not agony for them in the same way that it is for me. It's

49:43

a job. And God bless them because if if

49:45

there weren't people like that, we wouldn't have

49:47

newspapers to read.

49:50

If you could remove

49:52

the suffering and anxiety

49:55

that you've been

49:57

describing and not be

49:59

a creative person. Would

50:02

you? No.

50:06

Can you explain that to someone who's not a creative person

50:08

that says, just go be an accountant. It would kill my

50:11

soul to be an accountant. can

50:16

try to learn to trust myself a little

50:18

bit. Let's be quiet for a little

50:20

while and sit with this and see what we

50:22

feel 530 what I feel deep

50:24

inside and what's useful for myself

50:26

to make and what will be useful for

50:28

people to have, then that's

50:30

actually the, like, true

50:32

inside part of me. Right? That's my

50:34

real self trying to figure out like how do

50:36

I make the thing that makes

50:38

everyone happy? When I know like

50:40

there's actually nothing that's gonna make everyone

50:42

happy. And so actually the only

50:44

thing I can do is make the thing that

50:46

I need to make from the inside of my

50:50

heart.

50:50

That was Simeon Nasrat and

50:52

Sean Nelson from the creator side

50:55

of the ledger and Justin Berg and

50:57

Marcus Bayer from the scholar

50:59

side. My thanks to all of them.

51:01

My full conversation with Samine in particular

51:03

was so interesting that we have decided to publish the whole thing

51:05

as a bonus episode in a few days. If

51:07

you know anyone who is a

51:10

fan of salt fat,

51:12

acid heat, please let them know.

51:14

Meanwhile, in our next regular

51:16

episode of Freakonomics Radio,

51:18

what happens when private equity firms

51:21

takeover healthcare institutions. We

51:23

would expect that prices would go up

51:25

and service quality would go

51:27

down. And what kind of health

51:29

care institutions are we talking about? Stay with your dog or your

51:32

cat. Oh, they're treating

51:33

it. Don't let them

51:34

tell you you have to sit in the waiting room.

51:38

Private equity has been investing in industry

51:40

after industry, including human healthcare. Now they're

51:43

coming for your pet That's

51:46

next week Freakonomics

51:48

Until then, take care of yourself.

51:50

And if you can, someone else too.

51:53

Frickenomics radio

51:57

is produced

52:00

by Stitcher and Renbud Radio, you can find our entire

52:02

archive on any podcast app

52:04

or at freakonomics dot com where we

52:06

also publish transcripts and

52:08

show notes. This

52:10

episode is produced by Morgan Levy, and mixed by Greg Ripon

52:13

with help from Jeremy Johnston. Our

52:15

staff also includes Zach

52:17

Lipinski, Ryan Kelly, Catherine Mancur,

52:20

Elena Coleman, Rebecca Lee Douglas,

52:22

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52:24

Osborn, Jasmine Klinger, Gary Kleenert, Immaterail, Learick

52:26

Boudic, and Elsa Hernandez. The

52:28

Freakonomics Radio Network's executive

52:30

team is Neil Carruth, Gabriel

52:34

Raw, and me, Steven Dubner. Our

52:36

theme song is mister Fortune by the

52:38

hitchhikers. At least until we replace it

52:40

with flag Bolsada, all the other music is

52:42

composed by Luis

52:43

Guerra. As always, thanks

52:45

for listening.

52:46

It's not, I

52:49

would say, a novel

52:51

Oh, wait, God. Did I just make a

52:53

pun by

52:53

accident? The

52:58

Freakonomics Radio Network the

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