The sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh spent years studying crack dealers, sex workers, and the offspring of billionaires. Then he wandered into an even stranger world: social media. He spent the past five years at Facebook and Twitter. Now that he’s back in the real world, he’s here to tell us how the digital universe really works. In this pilot episode of a new podcast, Venkatesh interviews the progressive political operative Tara McGowan about her digital successes with the Obama campaign, her noisy failure with the Iowa caucus app, and why the best way for Democrats to win more elections was to copy the Republicans.
Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.
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Welcome to this special bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio. As you probably know, we’ve been expanding the Freakonomics Radio Network, adding new shows now and again. You’re about to hear the pilot episode of what we think might be another new show worth adding. We’d love to hear what you think, so when you’re done, drop us a line at radio@freakonomics.com.
The first thing you’ll hear is a brief segment in which I interview the host of this new show — a person you may recognize if you’ve read his amazing book Gang Leader for a Day or the chapter in Freakonomics called “Why Do Drug Dealers Live With Their Moms?” That was based on research done by the host of this new show, Sudhir Venkatesh, who during graduate school in Chicago spent several years embedded with a gang whose main business was selling crack cocaine. Hope you enjoy this special episode — and, again, we’d love to hear what you think.
Sudhir VENKATESH: I’m Sudhir Venkatesh and I’m a sociologist at Columbia University.
Stephen DUBNER: So, you’re a sociologist, but you also call yourself an ethnographer. What’s the difference?
VENKATESH: An ethnographer is that fancy academic term. And all it really is, is that I hung out with people for a long period of time.
DUBNER: So, in addition to the crack-selling gang in Chicago, name some other groups that you’ve hung out with over the years.
VENKATESH: I studied sex workers and I studied gun traffickers. And in New York City, when I came here to get a job at Columbia, I began studying the wealthy, the children who were inheriting lots of money — for me, a secret world.
DUBNER: And then around five years ago, if I have the timing right, you wound up embedding yourself in a very different kind of ecosystem, yes?
VENKATESH: I was very surprised to find out that Mark Zuckerberg put Gang Leader for a Day, the book that I wrote, on his monthly reading list in 2015. And that led to a conversation between me and Facebook. And eventually I went over and went into another world that was really pretty secretive for...
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