“I only have one thing going for me as a standup economist,” Yoram Bauman said from the Boston University Central’s stage on Thursday night, “and that is low expectations.” Bauman, a comedian, economist and environmental enthusiast, came to BU as a part of his regular tour, which includes shows for tie-wearing professionals and college kids in sweatpants alike.
The show, hosted by Synapse (BU’s Undergraduate Science Magazine), combined information with humor. He cracked jokes about crises financial and environmental, and stated an intent to offend all political parties equally.
Though he has presented to professional groups around the country, Bauman’s presentation is part of a personal initiative to reform the way economics is seen by students. And he knows economics can be dry. He has his Ph.D. in economics, and when nor touring, he’s an economist at the University of Washington and teacher at Seattle’s Lakeside High School. After taking and teaching countless classes, he’s been on both sides of the vacant expression and glazed-over eyes that show up in econ seminars; so the purpose of his routine is to present information in the most humorous way possible.
“When thinking about economics, most people just see graphs; but that’s boring, and marginalizing,” he said in an interview with the Quad before Thursday’s show. So you show people that there’s a lot more to economics than that. There are personalities, and there are stories.”
The show included the part of the presentation that got him famous in the first place: a humorous simplification of Mankiw’s Ten Principles of Economics, which he wrote while still a grad student. The presentation has been uploaded on his youtube account, and currently has over 800,000 views.
Bauman is also currently promoting his new book, The Cartoon Introduction to Economics. It features gags by the economist, with illustrations by Grady Klein. The goal of the book is to make learning the fundamentals fun. “If introductory econ is painful for you, that pain is raw,” Bauman told the Quad. “You’re ready to laugh.” He hopes the book will be used in classrooms, to help students do just that.
The performance finished with a list of one-liners, all of which began with the phrase, “You know you’re an economist when…”
“You know you’re an economist when you refuse to sell your children,” he said from the podium, “because you know they’ll be worth much more later.”
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