Steve Levitt

I think because he just so expected me to start by it.

Could you tell me by it?

And then only towards the end of the interview do we get into it.

And he tells his story in such a heartfelt way with so much more emotion and detail than he does in his typical public setting.

For me, that really worked.

We talked a lot about death.

I think the episodes where we talk about death are often the ones that stick with me the most because there's so little discussion, real discussion of death.

And BJ talks about death in a way that I've never heard anyone talk about it.

My favorites almost always involve death.

episodes that have a human connection.

Because as we've been hinting at, I have very few human connections outside of this podcast.

This has really been my primary way of making real connections.

One of the most unexpected episodes that was really powerful for me was Wendy McNaughton.

She's an artist.

I realized as I prepared to talk to her that I hadn't talked to an artist maybe more than once in the last 20 years.

And she hadn't talked to an economist, I think, in her whole life.

And the meeting of the minds, I'm not exaggerating, that I came out of that and I said, this is my soulmate.

Which sometimes happens when you interview people, you get this deluded feeling that you're really close to them, even though they walk out and never think of you again.

But then when I reached out to Wendy later, she said the same thing back.

Somehow we really connected in a deep way.