9780061967290
Play Sample

SuperFreakonomics audiobook

(113371 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 23.99 USD

SuperFreakonomics Audiobook Summary

Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics–the long awaited follow-up to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies SuperFreakonomics promises to once again challenge our view of the way the world really works.

Other Top Audiobooks

SuperFreakonomics Audiobook Narrator

Stephen J. Dubner is the narrator of SuperFreakonomics audiobook that was written by Steven D. Levitt

About the Author(s) of SuperFreakonomics

Steven D. Levitt is the author of SuperFreakonomics

SuperFreakonomics Full Details

Narrator Stephen J. Dubner
Length 7 hours 28 minutes
Author Steven D. Levitt
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date October 20, 2009
ISBN 9780061967290

Subjects

The publisher of the SuperFreakonomics is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is General, Social Science, Sociology

Additional info

The publisher of the SuperFreakonomics is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780061967290.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

☘Misericordia☘

December 21, 2018

Incredible, fast, entertaining read. Thinkers like this one occasionall remind me just why I have chosen my profession.Short Synopsis says it all!(Q):Putting the Freak in Economics In which the global financial meltdown is entirely ignored in favor of more engaging topics.The perils of walking drunk…The unlikely savior of Indian women…Drowning in horse manure…What is “freakonomics,” anyway?…Toothless sharks and bloodthirsty elephants…Things you always thought you knew but didn’t.Chapter 1. How is a Street Prostitute Like a Department-Store Santa? In which we explore the various costs of being a woman.Meet LaSheena, a part-time prostitute…One million dead “witches”…The many ways in which females are punished for being born female…Even Radcliffe women pay the price…Title IX creates jobs for women; men take them…1 of every 50 women a prostitute…The booming sex trade in old-time Chicago…A survey like no other…The erosion of prostitute pay…Why did oral sex get so cheap?…Pimps versus Realtors…Why cops love prostitutes…Where did all the schoolteachers go?…What really accounts for the male-female wage gap?…Do men love money the way women love kids?…Can a sex change boost your salary?…Meet Allie, the happy prostitute; why aren’t there more women like her?Chapter 2. Why Should Suicide Bombers Buy Life Insurance? In which we discuss compelling aspects of birth and death, though primarily death.The worst month to have a baby…The natal roulette affects horses too…Why Albert Aab will outshine Albert Zyzmor…The birthdate bulge…Where does talent come from?…Some families produce baseball players; others produce terrorists…Why terrorism is so cheap and easy…The trickle-down effects of September 11…The man who fixes hospitals…Why the newest ERs are already obsolete…How can you tell a good doctor from a bad one?…“Bitten by a client at work”…Why you want your ER doc to be a woman…A variety of ways to postpone death…Why is chemotherapy so widely used when it so rarely works?…“We’re still getting our butts kicked by cancer”…War: not as dangerous as you think?…How to catch a terrorist.Chapter 3. Unbelievable Stories About Apathy and Altruism. In which people are revealed to be less good than previously thought, but also less bad.Why did 38 people watch Kitty Genovese be murdered?…With neighbors like these…What caused the 1960s crime explosion?…How the ACLU encourages crime…Leave It to Beaver: not as innocent as you think…The roots of altruism, pure and impure…Who visits retirement homes?…Natural disasters and slow news days…Economists make like Galileo and hit the lab…The brilliant simplicity of the Dictator game…People are so generous!…Thank goodness for “donorcycles”…The great Iranian kidney experiment…From driving a truck to the ivory tower…Why don’t real people behave like people in the lab?…The dirty rotten truth about altruism…Scarecrows work on people too…Kitty Genovese revisited.Chapter 4. The Fix is in—and It’s Cheap and Simple. In which big, seemingly intractable problems are solved in surprising ways.The dangers of childbirth…Ignatz Semmelweis to the rescue…How the Endangered Species Act endangered species…Creative ways to keep from paying for your trash…Forceps hoarding…The famine that wasn’t…Three hundred thousand dead whales…The mysteries of polio…What really prevented your heart attack?…The killer car…The strange story of Robert McNamara…Let’s drop some skulls down the stairwell!…Hurray for seat belts…What’s wrong with riding shotgun?…How much good do car seats do?…Crash-test dummies tell no lies…Why hurricanes kill, and what can be done about it.Chapter 5. What Do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo Have in Common? In which we take a cool, hard look at global warming.Let’s melt the ice cap!…What’s worse: car exhaust or cow farts?…If you love the earth, eat more kangaroo…It all comes down to negative externalities…The Club versus LoJack…Mount Pinatubo teaches a lesson…The obscenely smart, somewhat twisted gentlemen of Intellectual Ventures…Assassinating mosquitoes…“Sir, I am every kind of scientist!”…An inconvenient truthiness…What climate models miss…Is carbon dioxide the wrong villain?…“Big-ass volcanoes” and climate change…How to cool the earth…The “garden hose to the sky”…Reasons to hate geoengineering…Jumping the repugnance barrier…“Soggy mirrors” and the puffy-cloud solution…Why behavior change is so hard…Dirty hands and deadly doctors…Foreskins are falling. (c)

Caroline

May 16, 2016

Reading this book was an enormous pleasure. It was like sitting down with a superb raconteur, and hearing story after story of amazing and extraordinary events. "Oh no" you exclaim, "surely that one can't be true!" But yes, it is! And so you leap on hungrily to the next peculiar story.This is a treasure chest of information for anyone interested in psychology, economics or just sheer human cussedness. The people behind the book work brilliantly together - economics lecturer Steven Levitt, and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner... Please can we have more academics and journalists working in tandem? The result here is so good.For me there was no real overarching theme - rather the book was a series of rollicking anecdotes about the unexpected and contrary. It makes a great follow-on to the authors' first book - just called Freakonomics. I reckon both book are amongst the most entertaining I have ever read, and I can't recommend them highly enough.I shall end with my usual medley of notes about some of the things that particularly caught my attention. Warning...these notes are a real hotch-potch. (view spoiler)[ TELEVISION, AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR WOMEN IN INDIAMany initiatives have been instigated to improve the lives of women in India, where they are often treated badly, both as children and adults. None of these projects have been very successful. Then American economists Emily Oster and Robert Jensen compared villages with cable television, to those without television. They examined data from a government survey of 2,700 households, most of them rural.In households with television...Wife beating was less tolerated.Parents were less likely to admit to having a preference for male children.Women were more likely to exercise personal autonomy.The families had a lower birthrate (associated with more autonomy and fewer health risks.)They were more likely to keep their daughters in school.MACROECONOMICS Economists' predictions are generally worthless. They have a hard enough time explaining the past, much less predicting the future. (They are still arguing over whether Franklin Roosevelt's policy moves quelled The Great Depression or exacerbated it.)It seems part of the human condition to believe in our own predictive abilities - and, just as well, to quickly forget how badly our predictions turned out to be.SPORTY WOMEN ARE SUCCESSFULBetsey Stevenson discovered that girls who play high-school sports are more likely to attend college and land a solid job, especially in some of the high-skill fields traditionally dominated by men.SELLING HOUSES BY YOURSELF ON THE INTERNET V SELLING VIA A REALTOR (ESTATE AGENT.)With the latter you pay a commission of about $20,000 on a $400,000 house, and research shows that there are very few benefits. If you do it yourself you must do it on the internet - on a website specialising in selling houses. Paying to do that costs just $150....but you have to do all the work yourself. Houses sold directly on the internet take an average of an extra 20 days to sell.A third way is flat-fee real estate agents, and they are even MORE expensive than realtors.BABY FORMULA MILKThe introduction of this allowed thousands of women to get right back into work.FEMALE TEACHERS100 years ago this was one of the few non-menial jobs available to women. At the time,6% of all working women were teachers, and by a large margin it was the choice of female college graduates. 55% of all college-educated female workers in their early thirties were employed as teachers.Soon afterwards opportunities for smart women began to multiply, and they could enter law, medicine, business and finance....and there was a brain drain from teaching, and standards dropped.WOMEN EXECUTIVES Research has shown that gender discrimination plays only a minor role in holding women back. Women take far fewer finance courses - and all being equal, there is a strong correlation between a finance background and career earnings.Women also work fewer hours than men. A study of people completing their MBAs showed that women in the study worked 52 hours a week, whilst the men worked 58 hours a week. The big issues seems to be that women love children.Women with no children work 3% less hours than men.Women with children work 24% less hours than men.Women also take more career interruptions than men. After 10 years in the workforce...10% of men with MBAs went for 6 months or more without working.40% of women with MBAs went for 6 months or more without working.HIGH STATUS CONFERS LONGEVITYEven amongst those nominated for the Nobel Prize. Winners live longer than those who have just been nominated but don't win.People voted into The Baseball Hall of Fame outlive those were were narrowly omitted.----------------------------------CANCERChemotherapy helps with leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and testicular cancer....but in most cases it is pretty ineffective. There is a long list of cancers where chemotherapy has zero effect....multiple myeloma, soft tissue sarcoma, melanoma of the skin, and cancers of the pancreas, uterus, prostate, bladder, kidney, breast and lung. (Some oncologists argue that with these types of cancer chemotherapy helps one out of ten people.)So why is chemotherapy used so much?*Oncologists are amongst the highest-paid doctors.*They typically derive more than half their income from selling and administering chemotherapy drugs.*If they give a lung cancer patient an extra 2 months to live (when he only expected to live 4 months), on paper this will look an impressive feat. 'The doctor extended the patient;s remaining life by 50%.'There has been little difference in how many people die of cancer in the last 50 years. The age-adjusted mortality rate for cancer is essentially unchanged over the past half-century.BUT.....Over the same period age-adjusted mortality for cardiovascular disease has plummeted. From nearly 600 per 100,000 to beneath 300.THEREFORE...Many people who in previous generations died from heart disease are now living to die of cancer instead. So the statistics are better than they initially look.Cancer death rates are falling amongst younger people:People 20 or younger - mortality has fallen by over 50%People 20 - 40 - Mortality has fallen by 20%.This is an especially good result, as incidents of cancers in this age group have been rising. (Probably due to diet, behaviours and environmental factors.)-----------------------------HEART DISEASEDeaths from heart disease have fallen substantially over the past few decades. Expensive treatments like grafts, angioplasties and stents have only had a very small impact.The decline has come rather from the success of medications which treat high cholesterol and high blood pressure. This accounts for half the drop.Much of the remaining decline has come from ridiculously cheap treatments like asperin, heparin, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers.HORSE TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS IN NEW YORK IN 1900 VERSUS CAR TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS IN NEW YORK IN 20071900 - Horse accidents claimed the lives of 1 out of every 17,000 residents.2007 - Car accidents claimed the lives of 1 out of every 30,000 residents.= People were nearly twice as like to die in 1900 from a horse accident than from a car accident today.THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES IS OFTEN SEEN WHEN GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION IS PASSED.eg governments who have tried to reduce trash by charging people for extra bags of trash.1) Some people just stuff their existing bags more and more full (a tactic now known by trash officers around the world as "Seattle Stomp".2) Others just dump their trash in the woods.3) In Germany, trash tax-avoiders flused so much uneaten food down the toilets that the sewers became infested with rats.4) A new garbage tax in Ireland generated a spike in backyard trash burning. St James's Hospital in Dublin recorded a near tripling of patients who had set themselves on fire while burning trash.FORCEPSThese can save lives if a baby is stuck in the birth canal.They are thought to have been invented early in the 17th century by an obstetrician called Peter Chamerlen. They worked so well that Chamberlen kept them a secret, sharing them only with sons and grandsons who continued in the family business.It wasn't until the mid-18th century that they passed into general usage. The surgeon Atul Gawande says that millions of babies' lives were lost as a result of this hoarding.DIRTY TIESDoctors should be forbidden to wear ordinary ties, as these collect pathogens and are rarely laundered. Instead doctors should wear bow ties.NITRATE FERTILIZERSThese are astonishingly cheap and effective. They feed our world. If we lost them we would only have fruit and animal products on special occasions, or they would only be eaten by the rich.WHALE OIL AND OIL UNDERGROUNDIn the 19th century whales were the economic engine that helped turn the USA into a powerhouse. Every inch of whales could be used. Most valuable was whale oil, a lubricant for all sorts of machinery but also for lamps. In the 19th century there were 900 whaling ships, 735 of them were in the USA.1835 - 1872 An average of 7,700 whales a year were killed. It was the fifth largest industry in the US.Then the industry was exhausted through over-whaling, and it begun to fail. That is when a retired railway man called Edwin L Drake, using a steam engine to power a drill through 70 feel of shale and bedrock, struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania.The new oil industry provided work for unemployed whalers, and it saved whales from near-certain extinction.CHANGING PEOPLE'S BEHAVIOUR IS HARD WORK/SEAT BELTSFor instance the introduction of seat belts in cars. These were initially thought of by Robert McNamara, who worked for The Ford Motor Company.Congress began setting federal safety standards in the mid-1960s, but even 15 years later seat belt usage was laughably low - just 11%.Over time the numbers crept up, thanks to a variety of nudges.1) The threat of a traffic ticket2) Expensive public awareness campaigns.3) Annoying beeps and dashboard lights if the belt wasn't buckled.4) And eventually, a societal acceptance that wearing a seat belt wasn't an insult to anyone's driving ability.Seat belt usage in 1985 - 21%Seat belt usage in 1990 - 61%Seat belt usage in 2009 - Over 80%In fact seat belts reduce the risk of death in traffic accident by as much as 70%, and at about $25 each, are one of the most cost-effective life saving devices ever invented.COWS, SHEEP AND METHANERuminants - cud-chewing animals - are wicked polluters. They do this via exhalation, flatulence, belching and their manure.Methane is 25 times more potent as a green house gas than carbon dioxide released by cars (or humans.) The world's ruminants are responsible for about 50% more greenhouse gas than the entire transport sector.Possible solutions:* Shift away from eating red meat to eating chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable based diet. This does more to reduce greenhouse gases than eating locally-resourced food.* Eat kangaroo meat - they produce much less methane. In fact Australian scientists are trying to replicate the digestive bacteria in kangaroos' stomachs so it can be transplanted to cows.....GLOBAL WARMING HEROESAl Gore is usually held up as a marvellous campaigner for global warming issues, but the authors of this book think a lot of his ideas are wrong. Instead they promote Nathan Myhrvold, and his Budyko's Blanket (A plan to put sulfer dioxide into the stratosphere), which they believe could reverse global warming.http://greenmanblog.com/?p=251GLOBAL WARMING AT THE POLESGlobal warming is largely a polar phenomenon. High latitude areas are 4 times more sensitive to climate change than the equator. (hide spoiler)]

Bradley

March 21, 2020

Microeconomics. Ever since I read the first Freakonomics book years ago, I became a super freak and LOVED the real-world expose on things we always seem to take for granted.Incentives work. Period. They work more to control our behavior than anything else. Prostitution was huge, years ago, because it paid very well compared to any other kind of work that a woman could do. Often ten times the going rate of anything. Cops turned a blind eye because they could partake of the services. Those other really moral people who tried to stop it found they couldn't because they didn't understand the full circumstances. So what reduced prostitution? Higher wages for women in general. Choice. It was never a matter of morality. It was a matter of going where the money is.If we compare a geophysical engineering event such as setting off a volcano to combat global warming, it would cost a lot LESS than Al Gore's whole PR campaign that tried to browbeat everyone into altruism. And it would be more effective.The threat of terrorism is often much more effective than actual terrorism. So put away your bomb and just do some more talking about it. Microeconomics uses real data, is only as effective as the questions being posed, but is still extremely interesting. And enlightening.Car seats for kids? No statistical difference in saving kids' lives versus seat belts. The seat belts are the real saviors. So instead of having this huge weird industry with mismatching standards for car seats, why don't we have cars with easily adjustable seatbelts?HELLO?The numbers don't lie. But human psychology is FULL of blind spots. Like doctors and washing hands. To find out that one hospital's doctors only washed their hands 9% of the time they OUGHT to have been washing their hands, proven by swabs and analysis of their hands, versus their self-reporting of 60% or so? Or the other many excuses such as time and effort? No incentive fixed that situation better than putting screensavers up on all the computers that showed a magnification of a single caught doctor's hand. What kind of truly effective incentives do we need to roll out now, with the Coronavirus? Will washing hands truly make the grade? Maybe we should all get a picture of the virus for our screensavers. But will that take care of all the people who don't WANT to take it seriously? Those people who will prolong the problem for everyone else by spreading it to their friends and neighbors and to their own family members... all of whom might be trying, very carefully, to quarantine themselves?Maybe we need a shame bell. The same shame bell that was so ... yeah ... in Game of Thrones.

Abyssdancer

February 09, 2022

This book is an enjoyable foray into using the scientific method through behavioral economics to approach fundamental yet quirky questions about the way the world works. They cover topics from hand washing (or the lack thereof) in medical settings to solutions regarding climate change. All of these topics are explained and described with a beautiful combination of warmth and humor - I found myself laughing out loud at some of their insights.Here is a longer list of topics they explore:What types of personality traits are present in potential terrorists? What are the “side effects” in society of the potential for terrorist acts?How can hospitals improve the work flow in the emergency room?What is the efficacy of chemotherapy?What are the long-lasting effects of the inaction taken to help Kitty Genovese during her fatal attack in the street?How has television influenced crime and violence?Is altruism a natural behavior in humans?What are the monetary incentives for women to enter the world of prostitution?How does germ theory affect the behavior of doctors and other medical personnel?Delineating these topics does not portray the humor used to approach these weighty subjects, or the brilliant insights from all these behavioral experiments. The authors describe these situations in a way that is not fear-mongering or accusatory. They transition between topics within each chapter with such grace and ease, it’s hard to believe you’re learning so much about the ways humans interact with each other and the world at large.I enjoyed reading this book - it made me carefully reflect on my own behavior in these situations, and critically think about the various solutions to these problems.

Feli

December 15, 2021

3,5/5 ⭐“Most of us want to fix or change the world in some fashion. But to change the world, you first have to understand it.”This was the second book I read on behavioral economics and I did not enjoy it as much as the first one - it is worth clarifying the first book I read on the topic was Freakonomics. Just to give you an overall idea of what the book is like, it has the same structure as Freakonomics. Each chapter goes over a situation and it is analysed using statistics with psychology and, as expected, economic assumptions. So if you didn't like the previous book, you will not like this one either.Concerning the facts given on this book, I believe in their veracity. Though if you want to use them to sound smart in a conversation I would double check beforehand. There is a particular chapter that I found myself unable to go through, though at the end I succeeded - the climate change chapter. The thread of the topic went beyond economics at moments and, for a person like me who doesn't know much about climate change, it could be a bit boring. Besides that one chapter, the book was entertaining.To conclude with, it is a fun read and reminded me of why I like economics.

Yousif

July 09, 2016

This book is even better than Freakonomics. The amount of insights and information (from different fields) you get exposed to is incredible. I am liking "economics" much more after reading their books (Levitt and Dubner).

The Book Whisperer (aka Boof)

October 21, 2009

From monkey prostitution to raising a terrorist......I found this book interesting, frustrating, fascinating and infuriating (mostly at the same time). The duo that brought Freakonomics with answers to why drug dealers live with their mothers and how the name that your parents gave you can determine which job you end up getting have now given us Superfreakonomics. To rogue economists or mad scientists this books meanderings may be make perfect sense, but to the likes of me I had a job trying to fathom how we got from one subject to another and then back to the original one at times. It almost seemed like a couple of kids that get so excited about their school project that they just want to tell you everything all about it all at once. That said, some of the themes and questions posed I found fascinating: Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance? Why is May the worst month for a baby in Uganda and Michigan, USA to be born? How did 9/11 start the trickle down effect of the credit crunch? Why could eating kangaroo meat help save the planet? Why did 38 people watch Kitty Genovese be murdered and say nothing? When I read Freakonomics a few years ago I gave it 2 stars. It attempted to tell us that teachers cheat, estate agents lie and black kids are usually given different names to white kids. You don't say! After having read this second offering I have decided to accept it for what it is - fun and light entertainment. Some of the findings are really fascinating and some are pretty banal and even confusing (the global warming section had my eyes glazing over). However, to end on a positive note, the epilogue was genius! If you have ever wondered if monkey prostitution exists, wonder no more.....

Dhruv

August 23, 2019

Educating, entertaining & fascinating!Dubnar & Levitt did it again and much better this time. Its an amazing book and couldn't be better. This book (Series actually of freakonomics& super-freakonomics) helps the reader seeing the word from an economist (or homo economicus) point of view where everything is understood, explained and presented purely based on data. This is one hell of a thing to implement in one's life, and if you do, you always talk about stuff in numbers & by which you effortlessly convince people on your point of view, simply put it in terms of data and they will agree with you.Let me appreciate the author's effort and put further review in terms of quantified measurements:1. Out of 5 chapters 4 were amazing and 1 was above avg. so (20*4+10)=90% of book will keep you glued to it.2. The facts & data presented will educate you on various topics about which usually people have misperception, so 100% educating.3. Author will make you laugh on Avg. every 2 pages even though it is on serious issues so 100% marks on entertainment.4. The social pain areas topics like prostitution, global warming etc. gets your attention and makes the whole read 100% fascinating.Am a big fan now of authors now.Full marks, 5 out of 5.

Amirography

October 24, 2019

Much much better than the first book. It was more provocative, more analytical and had a much better set of cases.

Clif

September 04, 2014

This is a book about decisions, incentives, unintended consequences and statistics showing how conventional wisdom isn’t always wise. The examples given are varied and totally unrelated to each other. The conclusions are not fully documented and the generalizations provided do not recognize exceptions or alternative points of view. If you can get past these issues the book is a lot of fun to read. Reading this book is much the same as listening in on a bull session discussion between two clever comedians who know just enough information to be dangerous. The writing is spiced with puns and humor to keep the reader entertained.I suppose every reader has their own axe to grind or issue to praise from this book. I have too many axes to grind to mention here. However, there is one issue for which I praise the authors, which happens to the issue for which most people are criticizing them. That is their discussion of global warming. I agree with their assertion that efforts to achieve international agreements to limit releases of carbon dioxide require an impossible degree of cooperation to be humanly or politically feasible. The book also indicates that if, by some miracle, such agreements were achieved it would be too late to make any meaning contribution toward preventing global warming. Based on the above premise, the book suggests that the most effective way to reduce global warming is to use geo-engineering methods to directly address the amount of sun energy reaching the earth. The authors then discuss several optional approaches to achieving this goal. Their suggestions may sound a bit crazy. But changing human nature—which would be needed to voluntarily reduce use of fossil fuels—is just as farfetched as their suggestions. The use of fossil fuels will probably decrease in the future because of high prices brought about by limited supply. Unfortunately, this won’t happen in time to prevent global warming. But as this book suggests, there are other options available which can provide time for the world’s economy to transition to renewable energy sources. This type of transition will be pushed by true economic reality, not cap-and-trade rules.The following are some multiple choice test questions that cover some of the issues contained in this book. They provide an indication of the scattered variety of subjects discussed by this book. The questions are copied from Amazon.com. You’ll need to go to the Amazon.com Page for this book to get the correct answers. Question 1: According to Superfreakonomics, what has been most helpful in improving the lives of women in rural India?A. The government ban on dowries and sex-selective abortionsB. The spread of cable and satellite televisionC. Projects that pay women to not abort female babiesD. Condoms made specially for the Indian market Question 2: Among Chicago street prostitutes, which night of the week is the most profitable? A. SaturdayB. MondayC. WednesdayD. Friday Question 3: You land in an emergency room with a serious condition and your fate lies in the hands of the doctor you draw. Which characteristic doesn’t seem to matter in terms of doctor skill? A. Attended a top-ranked medical school and served a residency at a prestigious hospitalB. Is femaleC. Gets high ratings from peersD. Spends more money on treatment Question 4: Which cancer is chemotherapy more likely to be effective for?A. Lung cancerB. MelanomaC. LeukemiaD. Pancreatic cancer Question 5: Half of the decline in deaths from heart disease is mainly attributable to:A. Inexpensive drugsB. AngioplastyC. GraftsD. Stents Question 6: True or False: Child car seats do a better job of protecting children over the age of 2 from auto fatalities than regular seat belts. Question 7: What’s the best thing a person can do personally to cut greenhouse gas emissions? A. Drive a hybrid carB. Eat one less hamburger a weekC. Buy all your food from local sources Question 8: Which is most effective at stopping the greenhouse effect?A. Public-awareness campaigns to discourage consumptionB. Cap-and-trade agreements on carbon emissionsC. Volcanic explosionsD. Planting lots of trees Question 9: In the 19th century, one of the gravest threats of childbearing was puerperal fever, which was often fatal to mother and child. Its cause was finally determined to be:A. Tight bindings of petticoats early in the pregnancyB. Foul air in the delivery wardsC. Doctors not taking sanitary precautionsD. The mother rising too soon in the delivery room Question 10: Which of the following were not aftereffects of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001:A. The decrease in airline traffic slowed the spread of influenza.B. Thanks to extra police in Washington, D.C., crime fell in that city.C. The psychological effects of the attacks caused people to cut back on their consumption of alcohol, which led to a decrease in traffic accidents.D. The increase in border security was a boon to some California farmers, who, as Mexican and Canadian imports declined, sold so much marijuana that it became one of the states most valuable crops.The following is a review from the 2007 PageADay Book Lover's Calendar of an earlier version of Freakonomics which I've also read:Surprise BestsellersThe little idea that could. Dubner is a journalist who in 2003 wrote a New York Times Magazine profile of Levitt, a University of Chicago economist with unorthodox interests. That article became this bestseller, which then became a column in the magazine. What’s so interesting about Freakonomics (besides the name)? Levitt creatively uses economic methods to explain different outcomes in such varied areas as cheating, crime, and parenting. Revolutionary reading. FREAKONOMICS: A ROGUE ECONOMIST EXPLORES THE HIDDEN SIDE OF EVERYTHING, by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt (William Morrow, 2005)

Michael

March 19, 2010

About half way through the book, I felt this to be a less interesting sequel to the authors’ previous effort. The stories/studies seemed diffused by too many digressions into perhaps-parallel realms that didn’t always seem to support the main thesis of the chapters. I felt like there was something like incongruous name dropping (not Brad Pitt nor your local, not-yet-indicted Governor mind you, but a situation where acknowledgement or tribute needed to be paid to innumerable “rouge” colleagues). Then I got to the Iranian organ harvesting part! Finally someone agrees with me that not being able to sell organs happens to be an absolute absurdity in this country - everything else is for sale! (Yes, including sex. The fact that the privatized realm of prostitution is illegal, porn – mass distributed evidence of people getting paid for sex – clearly negates such stupid illegalities. Levitt and partner also include prostitution as an essay topic but not necessarily on this basis). The most common indignant response I get to my “barbaric” transplant position is, “but that will create an unlevel playing field – only the rich will procure organs.” For that I have five words: Mickey Mantle and David Crosby. I’m not going to claim that I actually knew a teetotaler who was on the Texas list years before Mantle and died waiting shortly after the Hall of Famer got his two month extension (I did) but I’ll simply say that a transplant ain’t free people! If the, no doubt, somewhat correct information on Wikipedia.com is any indication, any given organ transplant in the US costs between $100,000 and a cool million. Some people and some institutions are making a fortune off this so the altruism and morality spiels just don’t hold water in my opinion. But I digress…The other chapter of much interest (the first recorded case of monkey prostitution notwithstanding) is where Levitt spends time with the apparently brilliant scientists of the IV group in Seattle. The discussions about Global Warming are most interesting with, of course, a certain scientific disregard for most of what floats the simplistic Gorisms that we’re constantly barraged with; those that elicit the inevitable flashbacks of the boiling frog, submerged Florida, and the only extant polar bear making cameos on Lost. If I read these scientists correctly we’re likely to have at least some uncooked frogs and ill-equipped voters into the distant future. I’ve read the infamous (or completely unknown, depending on everyone I ask) 1976 National Geographic article on Global Cooling and they have a believable answer to why that was the obvious global peril of such a distant past. The inevitability of earthly cooling was the result of – get this – atmospheric pollutants! (coincidentally, if you reference THE bona-fide 1644 page engineering systems tome known colloquially as MEEB – edited by one Ben Stein, yet amazingly unfunny – you can find official charts showing circa 1960 as the high point of human-resultant emissions, with a dramatic decline in every category since then). The brains in Seattle actually propose pumping pollutants into the stratosphere to counteract the recent warming trends. This is probably a despicable idea, but I found the dialogue to be a good retort to the canned dialogue based on questionable matrices. Their day-to-day operations – a technological invention enterprise – has a strong Bill Gates link, so perhaps that influences their outlook? At any rate, beyond a sluggish start, Levitt and Dubner come through again – subverting some of the various “truisms” we’re always subjected to within the Information Age.

S.Baqer

June 12, 2016

This book, as its title assures the readers, is SUPER. Freakonomics was a big success that made me an addict to the Superfreakonomics right away. This has never happened before in my reading experience.Superfreakomoics, similar to its predecessor, simply outlines the relationship between incentives and human behavior. This time however, the authors discuss even more interesting topics.The book is so well written because it uses the question-and-answer method, and not any question, and amazingly the anwsers are mostly freaky. I just wish that this series would cover literally EVERYTHING there is in this world.Super interesting. Super entertaining. Not difficult to understand at all. Will make you think like a freak, or will it, yet? Can't wait for the next book in line.

Aditi

April 11, 2020

The book was written about a decade ago but it has not lost the relevance with current time. I have realised that sometime we don't know why do we do what we do. Why do we chose one thing over other and how it is going to impact the world in long run. The last point is difficult to analyse because what we have is a collective and cumulative impact. Superfreakonomics gives examples and tries to explain that sometimes we aren't even aware of how things are connected, how things resemble eachother, how one solution can be applied to another distantly related problem, howmuch the difficulty in changing our behaviour is costing our economy. Five chapters include detailed analysis of different tests/experiments which have taken years to conduct and give conclusion based on them. The best thing is that the writers have given their opinion based on the data rather than their personal opinion. But again having a bit understanding of statistics I understand there are various ways to represent the data to support your conclusion. So, here I have tried to understand their point of view but what I think is yet to be answered. Impact of macroeconomics on our life is easier to observe but microeconomics is difficult. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand how microeconomics works.// It has given me a different perspective to observe and analyse economy, environment and people during the time of corona pandemic//

Leah

August 30, 2022

Interesting book but kinda dated, especially with the last chapter on climate change.Freakonomics and Freakonomics really remind me of Malcolm Gladwell type of books. There's research and findings and studies that might change your thinking towards a certain topic. I was surprised about the car seats safety chapter, I mean yea car seats are safer but only really for minor injuries. And why don't we just adjust the seatbelt itself for children? Why is a whole new seat the solution?

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves