Date: Monday 9 November 2009
Time: 6.30-8pm
Venue: Peacock Theatre, Portugal Street
Speakers: Stephen J Dubner, Professor Steven D Levitt
Chair: Professor Steve Pischke

Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling 4 million copies in 35 languages. Now, four years in the making, arrives the follow up: SuperFreakonomics. Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner return with a book that is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Freakonomics made the world safe to discuss the economics of crack cocaine and the impact of baby names. SuperFreakonomics retains that off-kilter sensibility (comparing, for instance, the relative dangers of driving while drunk versus walking while drunk) but also tackles a host of issues at the very centre of modern society: terrorism, global warming, altruism, and more.

Stephen J. Dubner is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in New York City. In addition to Freakonomics, he is the author of Turbulent Souls (Choosing My Religion), Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper, and a children's book, The Boy With Two Belly Buttons. His journalism has appeared primarily in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting, The Best American Crime Writing, and elsewhere. He has taught English at Columbia University (while receiving an M.F.A. there), played in a rock band (which was signed to Arista Records), and, as a writer, was first published at the age of 11, in Highlights for Children.

Steven D. Levitt is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of The Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. In 2004, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which recognizes the most influential economist in America under the age of 40. More recently, he was named one of Time magazine's "100 People Who Shape Our World." Levitt received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1989, his Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1994, and has taught at Chicago since 1997.

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