In this edition of Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Roberta Fusaro speaks with Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School, about his new book, How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be (Harvard Business Review Press, May 2024), which examines the unique characteristics of fame and why some people, products, and ideas become more popular than others. An edited version of the conversation follows, and you can also watch the full video at the end of this page.
Why did you write this book, and why now?
This book has an unusual origin. I was working full time in the Biden administration during the first year-plus, and I left for a part-time position elsewhere. That allowed me to write more. I saw that there was a new journal called the Journal of Beatles Studies, and I thought, “I want to write for the Journal of Beatles Studies.” I thought that would be a good way to start my postgovernment reabsorption into academic life.
I wrote to the editor saying I wanted to do a comparison between a Bob Dylan song that’s an edgy knockoff of “Norwegian Wood” and the Beatles’ softer, sweeter version. I tried, and what I wrote was completely horrible. It was amateurish and ignorant, because I was not knowledgeable about music. I thought, “I want to write something that I could maybe be less amateurish on.” So I wrote something about Beatlemania that the editor liked, and I posted it on the Social Science Research Network.
The paper was about the serendipity of the Beatles’ rise and how it almost didn’t happen. To my astonishment, the New York Times wrote about my piece on the Social Science Research Network. That was a bit surreal. Scientific American covered my piece, which was also surreal. Other newspapers and online entities also thought it was appropriate to do something on my little piece about the Beatles. Once I saw that, I thought, “My gosh. What I described in the book is happening to my paper in a tiny form.” Then, sure enough, publishers came to me and said, “Do you want to do a book on this?” And anytime someone asks me that question, the answer is yes.
What else surprised you as you started working on the book?
There were a thousand-and-one surprises. One was Jane Austen, who is, of course, iconic, maybe the greatest novelist in the English language. In her time, she was thought to be good but not the best, and certainly not world historical. The fact that she became iconic was a result of things that happened after she died, things that would have astounded her. There is someone discussed in the book—who’s mostly lost to history—who was thought to be better than Jane Austen. Then there’s John Keats, who was extremely ambitious. Not only was he astonishingly good, but he was a would-be famous person. He was obsessed with fame, and he thought he had failed. He died young, and his gravestone read, “His life was written in water,” which he said with sourness about his own failure. He only became “John Keats” long after he died. My own favorite poet is William Blake. I love him dearly. I was amazed to learn that he was not an acclaimed poet in his time. Then, through others writing about him, he became known as an artist.
The biggest surprise is Connie Converse, someone you’ve never heard about. I discovered late in writing the book that she was a really good folk singer who, maybe in real time, is a little like Jane Austen or John Keats, in her making her way into the canon. Her story is beyond belief.
For the purposes of this book, how do you define fame?
[Fame] means a lot of people know your name. Taylor Swift is really famous in the sense that people know not only her name but also why they know her name. This is also true of Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and the Pope. The title of this book is a little bit of a cheat, because I’m interested in success as well as fame. I’m also referring to someone who is in business—a spectacular achiever who is known by insiders to be the go-to person, and who has made a lot of money for people—who created a lot of success for people and for themselves.
Can you say more about the nature of culture markets and the related research?
Culture markets—and this is true for many things, not just books, music, and podcasts—have a distribution where the people who do really well are crushing it. The people who do pretty well are way, way behind them. And the people who aren’t making it at all are selling a book a year, or two books a year. The distribution is astonishingly disparate so that if you have a bestseller, you will be so far ahead of others, even though the quality difference between the people who are at the top and the people who are way behind them is small or zero.
For people who desperately want to become famous, what factors matter most?
I remember a small dinner with President Barack Obama where he said, “CEOs think I hate them or don’t like them.” He said, “It’s not true at all. I don’t have any negative feelings at all about them. One thing I do think,” he said, “is that for any of us, if we get to the top, there are a million things that had to break right.” He said, “I hope I’m a good president. I think I am. But there are a number of things that had to happen for me to get here.” And he said, “Some CEOs know that. But some of them act as if it was all through them.”
The point here is that fame and success inevitably depend on things that are outside of your control and that can either break your way or not. There are things you can do to increase the probability of success, of course. The iPhone is a really good product. Jane Austen is a fantastic novelist. By and large, the people who do well have to be good. Apart from that, to have a network of enthusiasts is extremely valuable. Jane Austen’s posthumous success came because she had family members who were determined to put her on the map, and they were relentless. The Beatles had Brian Epstein, who was their manager. Brian Epstein was like a one-person network. Without him, where would the Beatles have ended up? If you can have either one person who’s relentless in supporting you and pushing for you, or a team of people, that can be really great. Also, if you do a lot of things—like, have a lot of novels, a lot of songs—quantity is helpful. Maybe your first three won’t do very well. But maybe your sixth, seventh, and eighth will have a chance.
Fame and success inevitably depend on things that are outside of your control and that can either break your way or not.
How do we confer fame onto others?
When I was a kid, there was DC Comics, which was Superman and Batman, and then there was Marvel, which was the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Thor, and Daredevil. What Stan Lee did was to create a universe of people who were funny, vulnerable, irreverent, witty, and even a little pathetic in some cases compared to the square-jawed, up-up-and-away uprightness of the DC characters.
He also helped engineer an audience of rabid enthusiasts, which then became like a mass of agents—not recipients, but agents. Marvel Comics fans became self-identified as, “We’re this type. We’re not that type.” This was very 1960s—that is, “We are rebels.” To be a fan of Spider-Man doesn’t sound like the most rebellious thing you can do, but it is for a nine-year-old, saying, “I’m not a Superman type, I’m a Spider-Man type. I like someone who says he’s your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, not someone who just rescues people and then says, ‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’”
The agents, fans, purchasers, or participants in a consumption movement give form and specificity to the culture of the thing in question. I’ll give an example from my own field of law, which is the rise of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society has benefited from something a lot like Beatlemania, in which the participants in the Federalist Society are part of a self-created, self-defined culture. That’s also true of participants in Beatlemania. There’s Trump mania and Obama mania. There’s certainly Taylor Swift mania, and Jane Austen mania, and Stephen King mania.
Apple has certainly benefited from something like this, where the Apple brand has a certain identity. It was also true for a while, and maybe it’s still true, of Tesla purchasers, where the cultural signal given by the thing is spurred by the producer or creator, but it’s much more managed and enhanced by the people.
Is there a point where the mania breaks and fame can bite back?
Let me tell a little tale from my childhood. My friend Robert and I were in a Marvel Comics club of two. He said back in the 1960s, “There should be movies based on the Marvel Comics superheroes. There should be a Spider-Man movie. The Fantastic Four should have a movie. The Hulk should have a movie. Thor should have a movie.” I was not a person of great judgment, evidently, because I thought this was the most ridiculous idea imaginable. But it completely worked, and one reason why is there were people like my friend Robert, who were creative types, willing to participate in [making] the coming movies, and also people who were waiting for it, who were enthusiastic.
A lot of cultural success, including for business products, depends on a feeling of identity. If that signal of distinctiveness starts to atrophy—so it’s like, “Oh, I’m part of an endless group of moviegoers that doesn’t have any distinctiveness,” it just has a sheep-like quality—then the thing loses its charm.
In the early days of Marvel, there was something very charming, very specific, and kind of small about the Marvel universe—not that small, as they were making a lot of money. But now it’s not like that. To think of yourself as, “I’m a rebel. I like Spider-Man,” that’s a little bit hard. If you’re saturated by the relevant thing, and if it loses its distinctiveness, it’s just a moneymaking machine. Now I’m not saying that’s true—I love Marvel dearly—but if that became true, then Marvel’s unique identity would disappear.
A lot of cultural success, including for business products, depends on a feeling of identity. If it turns out that that signal of distinctiveness starts to atrophy, then the thing loses its charm.
What role does technology play in helping someone or something become or stay famous?
Well, Jane Austen became Jane Austen after her death, without the aid of technology. Then there’s Robert Johnson, who plays a big role in the book. He is, according to Dylan and [Eric] Clapton, an off-the-charts genius as a blues guitarist, without whom they couldn’t have done what they did; both Dylan and Clapton have said something like this. Robert Johnson recorded 20-odd songs and wasn’t at all known in his time. He sang on the streets. After his death, a recording of his songs was released and went viral.
In response to the technology question: that record was the technology that made Robert Johnson knowable by many and, it turns out, by people who really mattered. Nowadays, Spotify, YouTube, or Instagram can make it possible for there to be 100,000 Robert Johnsons. There’s a technology available by which someone who has written a poem, who has a song, or who has a product, can get it out there, and it can go viral. People have self-published on Amazon, and some of them have done incredibly well, becoming very famous and successful.
Technology increases the crowd of candidates, which is not a good thing for any one candidate in particular, but it multiplies the point of access to an extremely large number of people. If you have a poem, you can create a little book. Maybe someone is going to say you’re amazing. Maybe that person will be your Brian Epstein.
There are plenty of people who died early who didn’t get famous. But it can be a bonus. Would James Dean have become James Dean if he had lived a long time? Unclear.
What’s the research behind the ‘death bonus’ concept in relation to fame?
The research shows that a number of people end up selling a lot better shortly after they die. Some of them, predictably, will sell a lot better for a run of time. An early death can be a bonus. Anecdotally, we know that’s true. We have to be careful about making generalizations from that, however, not only because we don’t wish on anyone an early death, but because there are plenty of people who died early who didn’t get famous. But it can be a bonus. Would James Dean have become James Dean if he had lived a long time? Unclear. Elvis died relatively young. I think he would’ve been Elvis no matter when he died. But for writers, there’s a boost. We can figure out why that is; if someone dies in their 30s, and they’re a pretty good writer, it’s both surprising that they died and tragic, and there will be stories about that person. People will say, “Who was this person?” Then whatever they did will get attention that it wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.
How did your personal experience with fame and success inspire or inform your work on the book?
Such good luck as I’ve had is definitely a case study in what the book is about, and I’m acutely aware of that. I was able to go to Harvard. I was a good student, but there were lots of counterfactual worlds in which yours truly never got to go to Harvard. A big part of the story is that I happened to run into a friend named Roger. I was 11, and I asked him, “How are you?” He said, “I’m good. I’m applying to private school.” I thought, “What is that? What is a private school?” I went home and I said, “My friend Roger is applying to private school.” My father almost had a heart attack because it was really expensive, and my mother had a huge smile on her face and thought, “Let’s look at private schools.”
I went to a school called Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, which is an amazing and small school. I really flourished there. I had been in a public school system that was excellent, but I really don’t think I would’ve gone to a top college. I shouldn’t have gotten into Middlesex School. I didn’t get into the other private schools I applied to. It’s hard to get into private school, and I was just a kid. But I interviewed well; I happened to connect with the interviewer.
That completely changed everything. I got to go to Harvard Law School, and after Harvard Law School, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall. That, too, was mostly a matter of luck. Justice Marshall decided he wanted to take someone who had clerked for another court judge who he had worked with and liked. And that year, he just decided, “Why don’t I take someone from that guy? I’ll take Cass Sunstein, maybe he’s OK.” That changed everything.
After all is said and done, how much of fame is just being in the right place at the right time?
A lot of fame is being in the right place at the right time. But you can put yourself in multiple places. That is, being in the right place at the right time is a black box for lots of things, including: Are you really good at what you do? Did you do it a lot? Do people like you? Do you have champions? Are members of your social network willing to go to bat for you? Are they willing to make phone calls or pressure someone or some institution in your interest? So “right place, right time” is like a meal that has a bunch of courses.
Could someone use this book to predict the next big thing?
Absolutely. The idea that there are undiscovered geniuses, whether it’s another Einstein, Taylor Swift, the Beatles, or Steve Jobs, is inspiring. Because some of these people may be just around the corner, in our own neighborhoods. By recognizing their potential, we increase the likelihood that they will be discovered and not overlooked.
What did you learn about the Beatles’ journey to fame?
The Beatles almost failed. They couldn’t get a recording contract. In the UK, people told their manager, “The boys won’t go.” At one point, John and Paul came close to giving up. The fact that they made it was, in significant part, a result of serendipity. Two people at one studio were urged by Brian Epstein to keep trying. And they did. George Martin—their great producer, who is famously “the fifth Beatle”—didn’t like them very much. He thought they were doomed. But he said, “OK, we’ll release a record.” That was the luck they needed to get launched.
Amazing. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Watch the full interview
