Author bringing the message of Freakonomics to Birmingham
Jun 8 2010 By Alun Thorne
Birmingham Post Editor Alun Thorne speaks to author Stephen Dubner whose celebration of the stranger side of economics has provided a startling insight into the behaviour of human beings.
He may be a multi-million selling author but Stephen Dubner is not one for getting carried away with himself.
Indeed, the man who co-authored Freakonomics with economist Stephen Levitt – one of the literary success stories of the past decade – is quick to admit the difficulty in trying to pinpoint quite why this book and its subsequent follow up, Superfreakonomics, resonated with such a wide audience.
“I think it has a lot to do with luck,” says the New York-based journalist. “We can’t even take credit for the name as Levitt’s sister came up with that.
“I don’t think it was the economic turmoil either that sparked an interest in the book as the first book pre-dated that.
“I think one of the keys is that the books don’t take themselves too seriously. I think we had something worthwhile to say but we are not telling people how things should work, just how they are working, and I think that is a relief to people as they don’t like to be preached at.
“We all intrinsically know that so much of what we hear is false – even if it is just ten per cent false. There are not many people out there trying to explain how the world works without some kind of vested interest.
“Because neither of us has our house on any race, I think people were just tickled that somebody had taken the time to look at these issues. People enjoyed the way we were able to work through these issues and then back them up with numbers.”
Dubner was speaking ahead of a UK tour that will see him taking to the stage in Birmingham, Liverpool, Brighton and Cambridge and sharing some of the stories that have made the books such a success – be it the best way to catch a terrorist, explaining the link between legalised abortion and crime or analysing why the price of oral sex has fallen so rapidly in recent years.
The tour follows a successful series of shows last year by fellow New York writer Malcolm Gladwell whose books such as Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers have received similar acclaim to Freakonomics and Dubner is quick to praise the work of his peer.
“I like Malcolm as a person and Malcolm as a writer,” says Dubner. “I don’t think there is any doubt that if it wasn’t for Malcolm then we and others may not have enjoyed such recognition – Malcolm was very influential in training the modern reader to appreciate a certain kind of book. He is a great story teller and has excellent taste in material.”
When he stands up at Birmingham Town Hall on June 20, it will be the first time that Dubner will have presented Freakonomics in such a format and he just hopes that the content transfers to stage. I suppose I am a little nervous to call them shows as that would mean people are expecting some kind of a performance,” he says.
“What I will be doing is standing up for around an hour or so and telling some of the stories from the books which I hope will be engaging and fun.
“Hopefully, they will be the kind of stories that will tickle people. There is also an illustrated version of Superfreakonomics coming out later this year with images and graphs and tables and so on, so I will also be using some of that to help with the story telling.
“We have never done anything like these shows before.
