MIT Lecture Series Committee

Rated PG-13
86 minutes

view trailer

format: 35mm

Freakonomics (2010)

A FREE sneak preview!

Freakonomics will be preceded by a brief lecture from MIT professor Joshua Angrist, and followed by a Q&A with producer Chad Troutwine.

Inspired by authors' Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner wildly popular best-seller "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything," this documentary brings together such acclaimed filmmakers as Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), and Seth Gordon (The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) to look at human behavior from a perspective of incentives and statistics. Conventional wisdom gets caught in the crosshairs when Jesus Camp co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady explore how underachieving kids respond when they're rewarded for hard work with greenbacks; Gibney throws open the curtain on sumo wrestling; Spurlock examines how baby names can affect a child's development; and Why We Fight director Eugene Jarecki offers a troubling hypothesis on why the early-'90s saw some of the lowest crime rates of the latter 20th century. [allmovie.com]

Adds up to a revelatory trip into complex, innovative ideas and altered perspectives on how people think.
      -- John Anderson, Variety. Read this review.

This show is a FREE sneak preview! Admission is open to the public; however members of the MIT community may receive priority admission if demand is high. Doors open at 6:15.