Chapter 1: What prompted Steve Levitt to end his podcast?
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. For the past five years, my Freakonomics friend and co-author Steve Levitt has been hosting his own podcast, which is called People I Mostly Admire. The bad news is Levitt has decided to stop making new episodes of that show. The good news is that Levitt will be hosting the occasional Freakonomics radio episode.
The other good news is that starting now, we are going to republish the entire People I Mostly Admire archive from the beginning. So if you never heard it, Or if you missed some episodes, now is the time to get on board. Just go follow People I Mostly Admire in your podcast app.
Chapter 2: How will Steve Levitt's role change in Freakonomics Radio?
You will not regret it. In the meantime, I thought that today you might like to hear, as a bonus episode, the final installment of People I Mostly Admire, or PEMA as we call it. It's a sort of exit interview with Levitt conducted by me. And it starts now. This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.
Hey, Dubner. How are you doing?
I'm good. How are you doing?
I'm good.
So this is the final new episode of People I Mostly Admire, at least for now. Does that mean you've run out of people you admire?
No, there are endless people I admire. I always thought it would get easier and easier to get people to come to the podcast because it's my own rule when I'm asked to come on a podcast. is I look at who's been on it before and if they're way more interesting and important than I am, then I'm going, I better do it because those people know better than me. I believe in markets.
So I thought as we got this list, it got more and more impressive. Everyone would just come, but they don't. Other than Taylor Swift, who's on the top of your wishlist? I've always wanted Joel Osteen, the radio TV evangelist. I just find the way he speaks to be so remarkable.
So even before I started the podcast, one day, shortly before my birthday, my wife Suzanne said, I have a surprise for your birthday. We're going to go on a trip. And my reaction was, oh no, there's nowhere I want to go. There's nothing I want to do. And I was so afraid it was going to be a party or something. Thank God it wasn't a party. How about a silent retreat? Would that have been better?
That would have been better than the party, but it still would have been pretty bad. But she took me to Houston to go watch Joel Osteen in person. Those few hours in the Compact Center, which is where he does the preaching, it was truly magical.
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Chapter 3: What insights does Steve Levitt share about his favorite guests?
I would recommend it to anyone, atheist, whatever. It was a community of people coming together in a way that was so powerful. And I always wanted to talk to him about that. And I tried pretty hard to get him to talk to me, but it never made any headway. What would you have wanted to ask him? I wanted to express to him how powerful I found his message, even though I don't even believe in God.
So when I listen to his sermons, I just substitute the word universe for Jesus and for God and treat it more like some kind of new agey thing. But he seems to really feel what he's saying. And he preaches this gospel of empowerment. And at the same time, it's so counter to what many people associate with religion. He lives in a really fancy house, and I'm sure he has tons and tons of money.
I was just curious to see if I could get him at all to talk like a regular person, which I'm sure I couldn't. But that was my goal. I was wondering what it was like to talk to Joel when he wasn't on stage.
It'd be interesting to know what would happen if you could substitute the word universe for every time he said Jesus Christ your God. Like, I would like to see the results of an experiment where a whole bunch of people watch or read a sermon where you do that. What do you think would be the effect?
I think a regular person, if you substitute the word universe, they'll be like, what are you talking about? It doesn't make any sense. But I kind of believe, or at least I have at times in my life believed that somehow the universe seemed to be taking care of me.
I think I don't really believe that anymore, but certainly it's a much easier concept for me to grasp the idea that the universe is taking care of me than that Jesus or some kind of Christian God is looking over me. You have to have been around New Agey people for a long time. My mom was New Agey. My wife, Suzanne, is New Agey.
Which is kind of odd considering maybe not so odd that you married someone who had that in common with your mom, just because that's what some psychologists say is common. But I've never known anyone to be more disdainful of everything new agey than you.
No, that's not true. So clearly I'm a rationalist through and through, and I believe more than anything in the power of science. But I think as a kid, I was willing to listen to my mom's very odd takes on the world. And I didn't really believe it. But as I got older and older, I've seen enough evidence. No, the power of placebo.
I think some of the nicest and best and most interesting people I know just have a faith in the universe and believe in stuff that's a little bit out there. When Suzanne and I, we went to India for a month. I talked about it on the Sam Harris episode of this podcast, but I went so grudgingly. I really only went because she doesn't have a lot of common sense.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did Steve face while interviewing notable guests?
I guess that when you're first dating people, you do things that you wouldn't do later. But the first two weeks of that trip, I was miserable and I was angry and I was frustrated. 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.
So you did People I Mostly Admire for five years, which surprised me when I looked it up. It went fast, at least for me. I don't know. Maybe the five felt like 20 years to you. But can you just describe the arc of it from your perspective?
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? And I did. I did two of them. And those were amazing experiences because...
One was on the rainforest and the other was on math and education. And the impact that especially the math and education went at, it was just really surprising how much people cared. So then I think you were going to interview Rahm Emanuel. That's right. And you said, well, why don't you just do it? And God, I don't know why.
I think I was still on the high of having done those other two ones that everyone cared about. So I did the Rahm Emanuel interview. And all I remember from that is it was incredibly stressful because And Rahm is a tough guy and he was in the worst mood that day.
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Chapter 5: How did Steve Levitt's perspective on education evolve?
And I just remember feeling bad. I was bad at what I was doing. I was nervous. Anyway, that was hard, but it couldn't have been that bad because it was... It couldn't have been that bad for you to say yes. Yeah. I guess I figured if I could interview Rahm Emanuel on a bad day, I could probably interview other people. And what's been great about the podcast is...
is it facilitated a really important change in my own life. For so many years as an academic, I was laser focused on the creation of knowledge and trying to come up with ideas. And I was tired of that. And by the end, I didn't have any good ideas. And it was so useful for me to pivot into a role of being someone who was a consumer of ideas.
If I tallied up the number of books I read over a 20-year period before I started this podcast, maybe I read 30 books in 20 years. And honestly, they were almost all young adult fiction because mostly I just read the books that my kids were reading, like Harry Potter and the Twilight series. I hadn't read anything that was... about science or about psychology since I was in grad school, maybe.
And it's been great for me to just spend time reading what smart people are thinking and then having to pull that all together with the discipline of deadlines. The other thing that's been great for me about Pima is I have almost no deadlines in my life. And really my entire adult life, I haven't had deadlines because as an academic, you almost never have to do anything online.
on time, but it's the tension that comes with actually having deadlines and feeling pressure and knowing you have to deliver. That's been a good source of discipline for me, a good reminder of what you can do. I would frequently be up until three or four in the morning trying to pull together some kind of set of themes I'd be able to talk with people about.
Well, I'll share a secret with you. The reason that a lot of writers and especially journalists become journalists is because it forces you to do the work. Which was good and bad, especially if there's a quota that you have to fill, it can get sloppy. But well, to that point, Pima was every week originally to every other week. What was that change about?
Oh, I couldn't do it. It was ruining my life when I had to do it every week.
I love how three minutes ago you said, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. And now it's ruining your life.
Well, every week was bad because at first it was kind of exciting, but I really, maybe because I'm insecure or maybe because I felt such an obligation to these amazing guests to do a good job, but I would invest. I learned it from you, really. I learned it from you to invest an enormous amount of time in preparation for these interviews. So,
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Chapter 6: What role does engagement play in modern education?
But every other week was perfect because it was just enough to make me feel like I always had a little pressure on me, but not so much that I had to be grumpy and mean to everyone else in my life to get it done.
So if it was perfect, why do you want to stop?
My dilemma is that I have so many amazing possibilities out there for things to do that I never get done a third or a tenth of the things that I could do. I started this one school called the Levitt Lab, and I fought so hard not to have it called Levitt. I win many battles, but that one I did not win. And the first one is located in the middle of the Arizona State campus in Tempe, Arizona.
And we're going to start two more in the fall of 2026. One outside Boston and one in LA. And I have found that to be a uniquely rewarding experience. I can't even explain why, because, you know, I'm not a people person in any way, shape or form. But there's something about the students, about the learners when I'm on the campus and how engaged they are. these learners are with it.
I'm not sure why that touches me so deeply, but it really, it feels almost like when my grandchildren come, this is the thing I'll talk to them about. Obviously Freakonomics has been awesome and it's had a big impact, but it feels to me like if I could actually make a dent in the way that we teach and change education, that would really feel like I did something.
When did you start getting as driven as you are by that appetite? Was it always in you or is it more recent?
No, it wasn't in me at all. And the first hint of it came when I did that guest spot on Freakonomics Radio and we talked about math education. And that was just a lark. I was just doing that because I was angry because I thought that my kids were suffering so much. The response to it kindled a little bit of a spark, but it was really on my podcast talking with Sal Khan.
And Sal Khan is the first person who introduced me to what's called mastery learning. It's just the idea that the model of how we teach kids in a classroom with a teacher and 30 kids all being taught the same thing And then moving on to the next topic as soon as that one's over and ignoring whether the kid has learned it or whether the kid already knows it.
It's just a terribly inefficient way of doing things. And once Sal Khan told me about mastery learning and showed me the data, which is really shocking how much faster kids can learn, suddenly it changes the way you think about education because if you can actually do mastery learning, you free up three or four hours in a school day that you can spend however you want with the kids.
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Chapter 7: How does AI influence the future of education?
And I had to say on the podcast two more times to talk about that. And then it just felt like if you can have a big impact in an online school. well, just imagine what you might be able to do in person. And even then I was excited about it, but it wasn't until I actually was on the ground at the school in Arizona that it fully hit me how powerful it is to see young people engaged.
When you're trying to recruit students, how are you communicating to students and their parents? Like it's this kind of school and this is what's going to happen.
Actually, the way I pitch it is, was deeply affected by another one of the guests that we had on the show, David Yeager, who's a psychologist at University of Texas at Austin. It's interesting, when you can get a set of parents and kids into the room who are potentially interested in going to your school, I talk only to the students.
Everyone else in the room talks only to the adults, but I just turn to the kids and I say, hey, I'm really embarrassed to have to say this, but my generation, me, your parents, We all have been telling you a complete set of lies.
We've been telling you that if you work hard and you get good grades and you do a little bit of volunteering, then you'll get into a great college and you'll go to college. And after you graduate, you'll have a great career. And it's all a set of lies. Because it is. What we're teaching kids doesn't make sense. By the time they get to high school, nobody's engaged.
And the saddest part for me is watching some of my students at the University of Chicago. These are the students who've won the high school lottery, right? They've done all the things right. They've been valedictorian and they've gotten great SATs and ACTs. And they get to the U of C, one of the most exclusive schools in the world. And they don't want to learn.
They don't care the slightest bit about learning. All they want to do is get A's. They want to check boxes. To me, that is about the most discouraging thing I can imagine. These are such talented kids who have been given an incentive scheme, which has beaten all the life out of them. What were you like at 22, let's say? Oh, God, I was exactly like that. I was the worst college student imaginable.
I was way ahead of my time because I was exactly like these box checkers before anyone else was. So at Harvard, I had no intrinsic interest in anything. My way of choosing classes was to say, I'm going to take all the biggest classes and because as long as there's 800 students in it, I'll be completely faceless. I'll never have to talk to a professor.
They'll be really easy because they always grade the big classes easy. And mostly I was at Harvard to play wiffle ball and street hockey and video games and drink a lot. I got straight A's at Harvard, basically, but without ever trying to learn anything. It was only when I graduated that
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Chapter 8: What does Steve Levitt hope to achieve with his new projects?
and went and worked in consulting that I realized that I actually liked ideas and I was curious about ideas. Do you tell that story to these would-be high school students of yours? I have not told that story to the high school students.
Because it's a little bit like a scared straight story. Here comes this guy, Steve Levitt, accomplished economist, taught at University of Chicago for many years, PhD from MIT, went to undergrad at Harvard, and he's here to tell you that it's all... a facade or mirage or whatever you want to call it.
If I were working with you on this project, I would encourage you to open up like that, especially since you were, as you put it, ahead of the curve on just ticking the boxes. Because I just wonder how the message that you're selling gets received otherwise. Because I just don't know how many people are really frustrated about the status quo that you're describing.
It seems like everybody's bought into it.
Well, you're right. It's really hard to convince people. And the only people who really came to our school were people who were so deeply dissatisfied with traditional education, mostly because they were bullied or they felt like they didn't fit in. But I think really the people who will ultimately benefit the most from my approach to education, if it ever takes off,
are the talented people because this rat race that is taking such a toll on the mental health and on the creativity and on the joy of the people who are succeeding is really destructive. And the subtle thing that we do at our school that I think is maybe the single most powerful thing we do is is we celebrate a much wider array of accomplishment.
So in a typical school, there's only one way to succeed. You get straight A's, you get to be the valedictorian, and that is the key to the elite schools. But at our school, kids are writing their own music and producing it or making stop motion films where they're building with their hands devices to measure particulates with mechanisms to turn on a fan that sucks the air pollution out.
Or a novella. One of our students is writing a novella. You can write an awesome novella and everyone else around you can cheer and say, that is fantastic. I'm so glad you did that. Without having at the same time, each student think, oh no, I didn't write a novella. That means I'm going to be a failure because I'm doing my stop motion film.
And as long as you open the aperture and make it so that there are lots of ways to succeed, suddenly you go from a world in which it's us versus them. The us is me and my parents, and the them is the other kids at the school. The us is all the kids at the school who are being empowered to do great stuff.
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