Let’s begin with a little food for thought this Monday morning. What is more dangerous– a gun or a swimming pool? What impact did the legalization of abortion have on the crime rate? How much power does the President really have? What are the socioeconomic patterns of naming children?
University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner address these questions in their books, blogs and podcasts, spawned from their first book Freakonomics published in 2005. The book was widely successful, selling over 4 million copies worldwide by late 2009.
Levitt and Dubner apply economic theory to subjects that are not traditionally covered by economists, along the lines of the aforementioned questions. Their project Freakonomics is a wonderful source of inspiration for those looking for interesting, out-of-the-box ways to present topics. The project also inspires listeners and readers to look at ordinary subjects and commonplace situations from a different perspective.
In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath declared, “common sense is the enemy of sticky messages.” They argue that to make an idea sticky, it must violate preconceived schema and it must create a gap in our knowledge that induces curiosity. Freakonomics exemplifies this idea of ‘stickiness’– it presents topics in ways that automatically violate schema (“what does abortion have to do with crime?”) and it creates a gap in our knowledge from the outset (“I’ve never thought about how they would be related”). Levitt and Dubner present unusual and unexpected questions, which grab the audience’s curiosity from the very beginning and holds it until the strange question has been properly answered.
The strong curiosity and interest that Freakonomics garners in its topics is precisely the reaction we want to evoke from our presentations. We need to be unexpected, unusual and out-of-the-box. We need to present our topic so compellingly that our audience can’t help but to be fully engaged and immersed by it.
So take some time out on your Monday to check out the Freakonomics books, blog and podcasts for inspiration on how to present topics in unusual ways. Focus on how Levitt and Dubner look at things from a different perspective, and how they use data and statistics in an interesting, thought-provoking way. Channel their unexpectedness and unpredictability in your next presentation.
