I should probably credit the Freakonomics team with partially leading me to studying economics. Of course, I could also blame them for the opportunity cost of having less money (paying for university fees) and less leisure time (because I was studying). But weirdly enough, I did gain utility throughout it all, including reading this collection of their blog posts. If you’ve read these online, you could be familiar with a few but I’m really bad at catching up with blog posts so the time and money investment was worth it.

The main difference with When to Rob a Bank (spoiler: it’s not when you would think) is that the topics and posts are shorter. This can be great if you’ve got five minutes to read, but occasionally disappointing if you want to know lots more. Fortunately, there is a collection of references at the back to look into your favourite topics. The shorter posts are also useful if you just want to know the simple answer (like why kiwifruit are really cheap in the US). The book is organised into chapters with a loose link between them all, but I thought the best chapter was the collection of posts that didn’t fit under any other titles. I read this midweek and I found the format worked in well with ad breaks, reading during boring news segments etc. Also, if you aren’t particularly interested in a subject, you can skip or skim it, without feeling that you’ve missed out. Some of the topics aren’t as well thought out as others, but as they are short, I don’t think they need to be. Sometimes they are more of a story than a lesson in economics and that’s OK too. Maybe one of them will spark off an idea for a great study on that topic.

If you want your Freakonomics to be in-depth, I’d recommend the earlier books. For shorter musings, this is your book. Either way, all are easy to read with interesting observations on the mundane to the odd.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com

This book is so bad. I didn’t make it very far before I put it down. I just couldn’t endure it. Random anecdotal stories from Levitt’s life that are unscientific and pointless, and ideas about improving democracy that seem ill-conceived and thought up by a 2nd grader (paying politicians more to make the job seem more legitimate? Really???!).

If these ideas had robust research to back them up, they would have swayed me, but unfortunately they didn’t. Also you can read all of these on their blog, something I didn’t know before I purchased, so kind of waste of money unless you really want to support the authors.

2.5 stars. This book started off good with some interesting tidbits then it got annoying and old. I realized this book was just published to make the authors money. They even state that in the beginning talking about selling bottled water. And their self proclaimed title "When to Rob a Bank" is a crock and just click bait. Or read bait. That particular synopsis didn't lead to any meaningful conclusions. In fact many of their stories were like that. Other people wrote great reviews venting their frustration that were fun to read. After reading Aftershock several years ago and then these Freakonomics guys stuff, I've concluded that economists are really full of themselves and love to toot their own horn. and they'll play their research/findings/books/any bit o' success like a broken record and kick that dead dog till it's....dead. That last blog thing they talked about was so egocentric. Quoting a person that mentioned the book [b:Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything|1202|Freakonomics A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Freakonomics, #1)|Steven D. Levitt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327909092s/1202.jpg|5397] was brilliant and it reminded that person of themselves. They just wanted to toot their own horns.

I think their idea of increasing politicians money to get better politicians was retarded. But I liked the idea that their pay should be based on how well they did and how well they improved the economy schools, etc. And on that same token they should be penalized if they are greedy or did crappy and they couldn't lobby to get themselves out of it.

whotohate.com. That's a brilliant idea. You pay 5 gold for the website to send an email to someone you hate and they get a message that says "someone hates you".

I like when other authors that I've read are mentioned in books. It makes me feel well-read or at least informed. So when they talked about [a:Michael Pollan|2121|Michael Pollan|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1366396171p2/2121.jpg], I got excited because I enjoyed his books. However, unsurprisingly, their example of buying locally grown food being worse for the environment than exported foods was is a terrible argument.

They said Anders Ericcson popularized the 10,000 hour rule. So who was it? Him or dumb Malcolm Gladwell? These guys and Malcolm seem to clash a bit in their books.

At least his ideas for gun control weren't too bad.

I liked how he ratted out that bad restaurant that had rotten chicken.

It was dumb when one of them said that there was no way to determine why famous actors in animated films are better than no name ones. He names all these hypotheses and says they're not right. And leaves it at that.

I didn't know that medication causes dry mouth which causes more tooth decay and bad dental hygiene. And that's the rise of it. At least that was a thought halfway carried out with a brain.

Pretty medicore blog posts , makes you pay for stuff that is free online

This book is a bit all over since it is a collection of blog posts but I enjoyed the content overall. Certainly not to the same quality as Freakonomics.

I possible enjoyed the book more than most since I often read in short bursts instead of long stretches.

Pretty fun book. Though, it’s not the one you can just brandish and read in public that easy, for fear of being thought of as an actual aspiring robber. 😂

I like the experiments, but I like it most when Levitt and Dubner got personal. Definitely, some life lessons can be picked up from there.

P.S. This was actually my second reading. I was midway through the first time when I lost my book. Bought a new copy months later in a book sale.

This is a collection of the short essays that have appeared over the years in the Freakonomics blog. If you, like me, eventually got too behind on the blog to keep reading, it's a great way to get over your guilt. The essays are short enough that they make for great commuting or standing in line reading.

Unfortunately, the essays aren't necessarily the best (in my opinion), and they're organized by topic. That may seem like a good thing, but it isn't. It leads to reading three or four essays in a row about poker. Then you read 10 or so essays about cheating. I wish it had been arranged chronologically - part of the fun of the blog is not knowing what will come up next. Here, almost every topic got old before they were done with it.