On Wednesday 12 February, I stopped into the offices of Times Higher Education to meet Karen Shook, the paper’s book editor, and to record a books podcast. Karen has a very disarming way about her, and soon had me holding forth on all sorts of things: the limits of social science and the menace of Freakanomics, most of all. The podcast, available here, accompanies a very generous review and placed I Spend Therefore I Am as book of the week. Thank you Karen and all at THE!