Beyond Freakonomics: Musings on the Economics of Everyday Life

For most of its history, economics has been an esoteric discipline concerned with abstract concepts and trends about which only highly-trained experts could (or wanted to) discuss. But then in 2003, Stephen Dubner, from the New York Times, published a profile of Steven Levitt, a rising star in economics who was using the analytic tools of economics to answer strange questions, many of them having nothing to do with economics per se.

The profile was something of a sensation, and it led to a collaboration between Dubner and Levitt. Together they wrote Freakonomics, and the rest, as they say, is history. In the following highly entertaining presentation, Levitt discusses some of his background, his work, and a series of hilarious anecdotes, including one regarding his professional and embarrassing relationship with a prostitute, which eventually inspired one of the chapters of SuperFreakonomics.