Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Freakonomics

I tend to take a podcast on my daily walk, and lately I have really been enjoying the Freakonomics podcast. This may seem odd because money and what I do with much of my life tend to be mutually exclusive, for the most part; but it turns out that the study of economics covers far more than money.

The main reason I'm writing about this podcast here is because of the excellent musical choices that the producers make for the introductions and transitions in the podcast episodes. I was particularly struck by the way they used the Andante movement of the Schubert E-flat Piano Trio as background (or perhaps as a contrapuntal voice) in a discussion about health care. Time after time, and podcast episode after podcast episode, I take extreme pleasure in knowing that something that matters so much to me also matters to the smart people who put this podcast together. I'm also learning a great deal about the world.

2 comments:

Lisa Hirsch said...

The Freakonomics guys got some analysis badly, badly wrong in Superfreakonmics and over the last several years have completely resisted either admitting it or correcting their analysis. Here is a U.Chicago climate scientist's discussion of what they got wrong: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/an-open-letter-to-steve-levitt/


Short version, I feel like i have to do a full analysis of anything they say. Brad DeLong also had a lot of what they got wrong.

Elaine Fine said...

I really have no way of evaluating their analysis, but they still make excellent musical choices.