tavis: good evening from los angeles. first up, a conversation with freakonomics co-author stephen dunn and his groundbreaking best seller. stephen governor tonight on freakonomics, the movie. also, oscar-nominated edward norton is here. he stores produced stars opposite robert deniro in the new movie "stone." >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference, you help us all live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide is proud to join tavis in improving financial literacy and removing

obstacles to economic empowerment. >> ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] tavis: stephen dunn is the co- author of the best-selling book freakonomics -- stephen godo honor. the first book has spawned a new film that is playing in theaters, superfreakonomics. >> the idea was for the university of chicago to see if students could increase their

test scores simply by giving them a financial incentive. >> awesome. that is so cool. >> are you serious? that is so awesome. oh, my god. this is awesome. oh, yes, yes. you are getting straight a's from me. >> they say money doesn't buy happiness, and i agree, but i disagree. they are saying material things cannot make us happy. wanta bet? [laughter] tavis: stephen dubner joins us. creatively, how do you take the book freakonomics and turn it into a movie?

>> well, i agree, and i disagree, as my friend would say. [laughter] let us not claim to much credit. basically this film which is called freakonomics, my co- author stephen leavitt and i, we did not have much to do with making it. we appear in interviews where we kind of set up the different segments. what is interesting about it is, the producer had the idea that this book is a book about nothing, just all these different stories that don't really have anything in common except the way that we look at the world. he followed that lead and hired a bunch of different film documentary directors, very good directors. morgan spur lot, seth gordon, rachel and heidi, who made a great film called "jesus camp."

we were involved a little bit as producers, but it mostly reflects the hard work of people who know how to do this. tavis: how does the book and a ostensibly a film out about nothing help us rethink our view of the world, challenge us to reexamine the assumptions we hold and expand our inventory of ideas? >> the cornerstones of what we did with the first boat and then get "superfreakonomics," be willing to challenge conventional wisdom. we know that conventional wisdom arises because somebody has a strong incentive to make it arise. that doesn't mean it is necessarily right. the other thing is understand how incentives work. incentives are not just money. there are moral incentives. this kid in schaub -- chicago heights, ill., wanted nothing more than to complete the course work and get his $50 and maybe when i arrive in a limousine.

the incentive of $50 was far enough out in the future that he could not really make it happen. you struggle really hard to experiment to find out what kind of incentives are going to work on people, whether it is students are in madison. even though people might seem to have a strong self-interest, it can be harder to accomplish than you think. those are the kind of riddles we try to look at. tavis: to your point about people. this book has been around long enough and has impacted people around the world. i suspect the film version would do the same thing. what can you share with me about the way we see the world connected to freakonomics that might be different in how others see the world? does that make sense? >> that makes a lot of sense. i just had a conversation a few minutes ago with the young guy, researcher, who was talking to me about the difference between what are called leadership qualities among asians and

americans. he was trying to look at the people who get promoted in american firms, from all different backgrounds. what are the characteristics that lead to their promotions? is it racial prejudice that happens? is it some kind of cultural difference? this was the case were literally the language and the leadership style of the asian americans in his sample was very different than the anglo american's in the sample. that was a big factor in deciding who is going to get to the leadership of the corporation. i think what we do is essentially universal, which is to try to figure out -- you look at a particular scenario. it might be parenting, it might be a sumo wrestling, it might be cheating in baseball, and try to figure out what is the incentive, and how can you use that wisdom to make the world a little bit better place? levitt and i have been at this for a few years now, and we are happy that we have been successful, but we feel it is time for us to take it up and

not and instead of just looking at the world in describing it, we want to try to contribute some of what we have learned to actually solving problems. that is really the next step for us. tavis: you spoke earlier and the constructed the notion of incentives. what does this film potentially say to us, what can we learn about the relation between cause and effect? >> cause and effect is actually the name of one of the pieces in the film which looks at the relationship between the legalization of abortion and the crime rate to follow a generation later. it's a fascinating topic. very often we confuse cause and effect. here is what happens. any social scientists will tell you, correlation does not equal causation. correlation, it is tempting to say that one thing necessarily cause is another.

if i did not know better, i've got side today and is raining, and everybody has an umbrella. if i did not know better, i would say that the umbrellas are causing the rain. everybody would but the umbrellas away, the rain would stop. we also look briefly at polio. polio is a horrible disease, it was crippling, but also it was a mystery. it was unknown what caused it, how it happened. the other thing was, it spited during a particular time of year, which was summertime. you know what else spiked during summertime was the consumption of ice cream. for a time, it was thought that ice cream cause polio. they were correlated, but clearly not cause related. tavis: people are fascinated by the notion of branding. if you and let it had done anything, taking this notion of

freakonomics, and obviously with the movie and with other books and the illustrated version, and now freakonomics radio, talk to me about what we can learn from what you all have been able to do successfully around the notion of branding your work. >> i am probably the world's worst person asked this question, only because it took me about three years to get the word branding out of my mouth. the freakonomics brand, it felt too presumptuous to say that. most of the good things that happen to us happen by accident. we just mostly try to keep our heads down and do work that is interesting to us, and hope it is interesting to other people. there have been a lot of opportunities to exploit the grant, as they say. the vast majority of them, we passed on. a lot of people wanted to make a film, and we were not interested. the producer and these directors came along, and they were the

right people to do it. we have very simple criteria for the work we do. we have to enjoy it. it has to tickle our intellect in some way, and it has to provide some kind of value. that word value is kind of like an incentive. i might write a book because i am excited that my kids might be interested in the topic. we have a very, very low-tech way of approaching branding. it might seem like we are together and organize. we are launching this public radio show this month, which i am thrilled about. i love doing radio. but if i were to say there was a branding strategy here, i would be lying to you, tavis. tavis: we should all be so lucky to not have a strategy and to have our project blowup the weight freakonomics has. it has blown up now to the point of being a movie in select cities in the country.

stephen dubner, good to have you on. all the best to you. tavis: up next, her conversation with the actor edward norton. stay with us. pleased to welcome edward norton back to the program. he is about to debut a new film "stone."," whi >> now you have a clean slate? >> i am as clean as anybody. i am as clean as you. let me ask you something. why you got to sit there like asking me these questions? why do you get to walk around free and i don't? >> i was not the victim of a crime. >> you never did anything bad?

>> i never broke the law. >> you never got a speeding ticket? come on, man. come on. how long do you get to keep judging a person for one bad thing they done? tavis: i am trying to figure out where to start. i think i want to start here with the cornrows. what is up with the cornrows, man? >> i went up in this prison north of detroit in michigan. they were everywhere. black guys, white guys, latinos. you see ink on everybody. everybody is trying to look hard in one way or another. they were just all over. the director said to me, i don't know who this guy is, but i want him to be from detroit and i want him to feel like he is from the tougher parts of detroit. i spoke to 1 white guy who had

helped start the crips gang in detroit. there is this blending of culture and stuff in there. tavis: your story about having gone to prison in jackson, you invest yourself pretty heavily in researching for the roles that you play? >> it depends on what it is and where you go for your reference points can really just a pen. in this case, i cannot think of anything better than asking guys who have gone through the process of being reviewed for parole themselves what it was like, and understand the process better and what it did to them emotionally and psychologically, to know they were coming up to this moment of being judged. it's very intense, and i really cannot think of anybody to ask, other than people who were going through it. tavis: was there a threat that

you found consistent among the guys you talk to about how they process that moment? >> it definitely caused people anxiety, which was the thing i honed in on. this story is so much about a person who seems very stable, and a person who seems very unstable, slowly inverting by the end. i think that anxiety that this character feels as he approaches a decision by other people about whether he is going to be allowed to have a liberated life again is intense. it was very interesting to talk to people about the ways they try to psych themselves up for it. tavis: i am going to bring our off-camera conversation onto

camera now. i leaned over to edward while the clip was plain and said this is a serious thriller. he said i am not so sure it is a thriller as much as it is a very heavy film. by that you met -- >> there is a noir-ish element in that this prisoner since his beautiful wife or around this character. robert deniro plays the parole review officer, the psychological review officer. milla jovovich place my wife, and she is trying to manipulate him. at the same time, it is not a trick. it is not about a con. i made "the painted veil" with

john. he is about dissecting moral hypocrisy and the impact of denial. this film is a very deep critique of the idea of spiritual authenticity. tavis: i was about to ask something until you said those last two words, spiritual authenticity. what do you mean by that? >> it is about a person who is imprisoned and looking to liberate his life, while another person who is judging him, in away, lives in a different kind of prison. his own life is totally inauthentic. he is having a total crisis of faith. he has lost his faith in god. i think it is very about -- very much about -- it ask questions

about what is the actual -- what are the different ways that people achieve spiritual peace, enlightenment. does it happen always through the conventional structures, or can it happen in unexpected ways? grayfull of questions and areas, which i like. tavis: that clip is a fascinating scene in the movie we showed a moment ago where you and the parole officer going back and forth about this notion of judging and being judged. tell me more about how you process, not so much that scene, but that notion. >> a definitely think that he questions it intensively why is that -- how long he is going to be assessed for this one act in his life, and what gives the system or this one person the right to judge him, and questioning whether those mistakes are part of who we all

are. i think deniro as the character has secrets in his past that make that an interesting program on him. i that definitely drew me into it was the idea, there is a certain tendency if you live in the united states, you have to face up to the fact that we as a culture, as a nation we judge other nations. we assess the authenticity of democratic values. the idea that perhaps there is a self-critique, that notion that the one who is doing the judging often may be in denial about the ways in which you have fallen away from a certain set of values or commitments of your own. that idea, the idea of decay, a

collapse of inner commitment, is really interesting to me. i think dinero gives an amazing portrait that he creates of this guy who quietly his life has been hollowed out from the inside and is collapsing. tavis: it occurs to me that you chose all, or perhaps your for, a calling, alive, a vocation that it is hard to think of something where people are just more -- judge to more than being a thespian. everything you do, you are subject to the judgment of people like me. >> we get a lot of free passes. i don't have to wear a tie. [laughter] they expect us to behave badly. it is good. i think getting comfortable with

the idea that not everybody is going to like everything that you do, and that that is ok, is an important perspective to develop if you are going to be an artist, and certainly if you are going to ever try to actually say anything. i started realizing at one. that david venture, who directed -- i started realizing that david fincher -- if you have not let someone behind, you probably did not take a stab at anything that was the nerve center for someone. i have realized that people relate to different kinds of art and expression.

in a 10-minute interval and a 10-month interval, and then a decade. your sense of what had an impact on you shives over time. things stay with you that in the moment, they might have left to unsettle or puzzled. because we are trained to be entertained, we are trained to have answers given to us, to have things neatly wrapped up. when things don't, if they ask you questions and leave some of the work in your lab, that initial experience might be unsettling, or you might mistake that for being unsatisfied, but over time, i have found, the movies that really left a dent in me were the ones that did not do all the work for me. as an artist, i think on some level you have to get comfortable with the idea that if you need people to enjoy it right away, that might mean you

are not going to probe very deep. tavis: that is the, but i will take it. you are continuing to do your humanitarian work. i saw the ceremony with you at the un. you are steadily focused on that. >> the un had this convention on bio diversity, which is a specific, multinational commitment. countries are signatories to acknowledge the loss of biodiversity and commit to certain actions. i thought that in itself was something were advocating for. they asked me to be the ambassador for the convention on biodiversity for the un. there are things i thought barry specifically i might be able to wave the flag a little on.

amazingly, there are only three countries that are not signatories to the convention on our diversity. one is a small european principality, the other is the vatican, and the third is the united states. in the last year, mali and iraq got their act together. president clinton signed it, but the senate has not ratified it. that seems to me to be a shame. the u.s. is in many ways a leader in science and conservation, but to not have the united states as a formal participant really puts the brakes on the momentum behind in the global effort, because we are 6% of the world's population, but we create 25% of the greenhouse gases. our relative impact is very

outsized. i think getting on a soapbox about that is a good thing. we are making a presentation to a congressional committee to push for the ratification of it. >> there is probably one guy holding it up. tavis: the last time you were here until now, you ran a marathon, and obviously you survive. what are you doing to do between now and the next time i see you? >> i hope the next time i see that i am doing less. [laughter] tavis: does that mean a half marathon? >> i just me not so many things at the same time. next time we talk i hope to be at kasay i am working on one single thing. tavis: i have got this on tape.

>> i feel like i am being pulled in four directions. tavis: if you need me to send it to you to remind you to slow will be happy to. >> i can juggle three balls. i would rather not juggle 6 miles. tavis: this film is going to be a good one, with a wonderful cast. that is our show for tonight. thanks for tuning in. until next time, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org tavis: join me next time for a conversation with the front man for system of a down. that is next time. we will see you then. >> all i know is his name is james, and he needs extra help with his reading. >> i am james. >> yes. >> to everyone making a difference, you help us all

live better. >> nationwide insurance supports tavis smiley. with every question and every answer, nationwide is proud to join tavis in improving financial literacy and removing obstacles to economic empowerment. >> ♪ nationwide is on your side ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning made possible by kcet public television] captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> we are pbs. >> we are pbs.