Steve Levitt

So he violates your first rule of storytelling.

How can this book be

sell millions of copies when it doesn't have anything that people like.

And so very early on in the interview, I took a risk and I said, hey, I loved your book, but actually I don't know why anyone else likes it because it's missing the key feature that everybody likes.

And he had very self-consciously left out any characters.

It wasn't like he didn't know he did it.

But I don't think any interviewer had ever brought that up.

And so when I did that, I felt a complete change in his attitude.

And we ended up having a really amazing open conversation.

I think that's the most downloaded episode that we've ever had was that one.

He surprised me because honestly, before I interviewed him, I wondered whether he wasn't

Fraud's too strong a word, but like a faker.

There are these public intellectuals who have written a book.

It contains everything they know.

Yeah, or you get exactly the same thing over and over.

He really surprised me because every time I asked him a question and I had read everything he had written and I had watched every interview, he would give a novel answer that was just really, really smart, like the examples you just gave, that I would stop in my tracks and say, wow, that's really right.

Now, I don't ever like to say bad things about people, but should I make one exception just for contrast?

Because I had interviewed Jared Diamond before I had talked to

And Jared Diamond, I think, fell more into that other camp where I felt like if you had read his books, then when you talk to him, he would tap into chapter seven, page 38, and he would just da-da-da-da-da-da.

And it was really interesting to me the difference in the way those two, who ostensibly are the same person in a public sense.