As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t listen to music when I run. Instead, I listen to audtobooks and DVD commentaries. Lately, I’ve been listening to Freakonomics, and it’s so darn good that I’ve almost stopped running at times to listen more intently.
Freakonomics is co-written by an economist (Steven D. Levitt) and a journalist (Stephen J. Dubner, who narrates the version I’m listening to), and is an exploration of the essence of economics as applied to issues aside from money and the market. It’s marked a revolution in how I think about economics - more as an exercise in the statistics of mass human behavior than as the science of money - and it’s an engrossing read/listen in its own right. The report of Levitt’s research spans cheating (by both professional sumo wrestlers and Chicago-area teachers), the divergent interests of home owners and their realtors, the honesty of bagel purchases in offices over twenty years, and more- even showing how a drug-dealing gang’s hierarchy is pyramid scheme (such that the lowest level members have to keep living with their mothers despite the cash they pull in). It’s remarkable book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in how the world really works..
