What’s going on with Tucker Carlson?

The conservative pundit, who was nice enough to blurb All the President’s Spin, is following up his appearance on “Dancing with the Stars” by hosting a game show:

Conservative pundit-turned-MSNBC anchor Tucker Carlson is launching yet another new career: gameshow host.

Carlson has been tapped to host “Do You Trust Me?,” the quizzer format Phil Gurin (“The Weakest Link”) is piloting for CBS (Daily Variety, March 14). Format revolves around strangers forced to put their trust in one another.

…While it may seem unusual for a political commentator to take a stab at a gameshow, the move is not unprecedented. Former Richard Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein segued from politics to showbiz, first as an actor and then as host of Comedy Central’s “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”

Carlson has slowly been inching away from his political roots. After CNN decided to end the Carlson co-hosted “Crossfire,” he jumped to MSNBC, where he’s been offering up a less politically focused broadcast.

And last year, Carlson landed a spot on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” He was eliminated in the first round.

The show actually has some political implications, however — it’s based on the classic prisoner’s dilemma game, which is widely used in political science and economics:

[Carlson’s show has] been described as a “prisoner’s dilemma” kind of game show — you know, like when two people are arrested for a crime, put in separate rooms, and detectives try to get each to rat on the other?

During test runs a few weeks back, the show involved two strangers who have to work together to try to win a big pot of money by turning over tiles with dollar amounts on them. Each also has the opportunity to steal the money from the other. But if both opt to steal in a round of play, they’re out of luck.

Meanwhile, in the studio audience, people who know the contestants reveal information about the players to other audience members, viewers at home — and the other player.

Social scientists do a lot of prisoner’s dilemma-type experiments in the lab, but the stakes are usually low. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when a lot of money is on the line. I’m sure Steve Levitt (who wrote a paper about discrimination on “The Weakest Link”) will be watching closely…