Economics Prof. Steven Levitt to discuss Freakonomics on Daily Show, April 28, 29 and May 2

Photo: Steven Levitt Press clips: “Unconventional Wisdom” TIME April 26, 2005 “Blink again” Newsday April 24, 2005 “You won't sleep through this economics book” Free Press April 15, 2005 “Trading Up - Where do baby names come from?” April 12, 2005 “A Roshanda by Any Other Name - How do babies with super-black names fare?” April 11, 2005 “'Freakonomics': Musings of a 'Rogue Economist'” April 9, 2005

Steven Levitt, the Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics, will appear on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Thursday, April 28, 2005 at 10:00 p.m. CST.

Levitt will discuss his current book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, co-written with journalist Stephen Dubner.

In his Wall Street Journal review of the book, economics professor Steven Landsburg comments on some of the questions Levitt analyzes. Landsburg writes:

“Mr. Levitt is hardly the first to attack these questions; there is no end of books on parenting strategy, for example. The difference is that Mr. Levitt knows what he is talking about. Where other parenting books rely on either puerile psychological theorizing or leaps of logic from haphazard numerical correlations, Mr. Levitt relies on his instinct for analyzing data. As a result, there is more valuable parenting advice in Mr. Levitt’s single chapter than in all the rest of Barnes & Noble.”

The Daily Show episode will be rebroadcast on Friday, April 29 at 6:00 p.m. CST, and Monday, May 2 at 10:30 p.m. CST.