Steve Levitt

And eventually, I did have something like a spiritual awakening.

And it came because she would say, well, what do you want to do in India?

And I would...

rack my brain, and I'd say, actually, there's not a single thing that I would like to do here.

I'm indifferent to everything.

And suddenly, everything was as good as anything else.

I'd be on a crowded bus, stinky and rattling around, stuck in traffic.

And I think, well...

There's nothing I want to do when I get there.

So it's not really different being on a bus than being someplace.

And suddenly I just opened up to a kind of friendliness with the universe and everything was good and I was peaceful.

And it lasted for months after I came back.

And every once in a while I can tap into it again.

And it really was, I think, very much a Buddhist thing, this idea that when you're always striving for something, it's the not ever being able to get there that gets you upset.

So if you're not striving for anything, then everything is hunky-dory.

As I have gotten older, I've gotten much, much more open-minded about the power of spirituality, spiritual things, that when we first met, I would have thought were bunk.

I don't have a very good memory.

So I don't know how you tricked me into doing it in the first place, because I know that I wouldn't have done it on my own volition.

I know that you had to be at the heart of tricking me.

I think what happened was you said, hey, why don't you try doing one guest host on Freakonomics Radio?