If Books Could Kill

I'm chagrined to admit that I read and liked Freakonomics back in the mid-2000s when it was in its heyday. I don't remember if I mentally argued with parts of it or not at the time; I do know that I've since read deconstructions of the authors' argument about the cause of the violent crime decline after the 1990s.

But other than that, I admit I didn't think a lot about how good its data or analysis were until it came up during Michael Hobbes's Twitter discussion of airport books from hell, which I mentioned a little while ago.

Well, it turns out Hobbes may have been looking for nominations to fill the list of books he planned to dissect in his latest podcast, which just launched. It's called "If Books Could Kill," and the first episode is about Freakonomics.

His cohost is an attorney named Peter Shamshiri and this episode made for a withering hour and 10 minutes of listening. (Freakonomics authors Dubner and Levitt get to laugh all the way to the bank, though, so I think they don't have to care a whole lot.)