Stephen Dubner

I know what I feel is pretty much the real you, the inside you, the always you.

And I think you give yourself not enough credit for what's the inside always you.

I literally just want to be alone.

Let me ask you this.

Over the five years you were doing People I Mostly Admire interviews, who were your...

three, I want to say the most memorable, let's say for you, just name the three and why.

So my own daughters, Amanda and Lily.

That was a great episode.

Number 46 for anyone who hasn't heard it, if you want to look it up.

That was a beautiful episode.

I mean, beautiful makes it sound softer than it is somehow, but that was a really good episode.

I remember that in the interview, you said something to her like, I see you as being not constrained by the two things that almost everybody worries about, which is that the thing that you want to do might end up taking a lot of time and it may end up not making you any money.

And you said that to her.

She's like, oh, my God, nobody's ever recognized that except my therapist.

And that's when I realized that you had become just a very astute interviewer.

Not that you weren't always astute about the world, but there's a different component to bringing it out in someone like that.

I do remember that point he made about how...

When politicians get in trouble for saying something in private that could be considered offensive or whatever, antisocial, he was saying you have to let people have a private life, especially public people.

I mean, that's one thing that I remember from a conversation I heard four years ago, which I think is probably on average pretty good because I remember mostly zero from a week ago.

Yeah, and if you ask them a real question, they just start dissembling.