People I (Mostly) Admire
Episodes
24. Amaryllis Fox: “What Does This New Version of Mutually Assured Destruction Look Like?”
17 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
She spent nearly a decade as an undercover C.I.A. operative working to prevent terrorism. More recently, she hosted The Business of Drugs on Netflix. ...
23. Greg Norman & Mark Broadie: Why Golf Beats an Orgasm and Why Data Beats Everything
10 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Levitt is obsessed with golf — and he’s pretty good at it too. As a thinly-veiled ploy to improve his own game, Steve talks to two titans of...
22. Sal Khan: “If It Works for 15 Cousins, It Could Work for a Billion People.”
03 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Khan Academy grew out of Sal Khan’s online math tutorials for his extended family. It’s now a platform used by more than 115 million people in 190...
21. Pete Docter: “What If Monsters Really Do Exist?”
27 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s the chief creative officer of Pixar, and the Academy Award-winning director of Soul, Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc. Pete Docter and Steve t...
20. John Donohue: “I'm Frequently Called a Treasonous Enemy of the Constitution.”
20 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s a law professor with a Ph.D. in economics and a tendency for getting into fervid academic debates. Over 20 years ago, he and Steve began studyi...
19. Marina Nitze: “If You Googled ‘Business Efficiency Consultant,’ I Was the Only Result.”
13 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
At 27— and without a college degree — she was named chief technology officer of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Today, Marina Nitze is trying ...
18. Robert Sapolsky: “I Don’t Think We Have Any Free Will Whatsoever.”
06 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, with a focus on the physiological effects of stress. (For years, he spent his summers in Kenya, a...
17. Emily Oster: “I Am a Woman Who Is Prominently Discussing Vaginas.”
27 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the cou...
16. Joshua Jay: “Humans Are So, So Easy to Fool.”
20 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s a world-renowned magician who’s been performing since he was seven years old. But Joshua Jay is also an author, toy maker, and consultant for...
15. Tim Harford: “If You Can Make Sure You're Not An Idiot, You've Done Well.”
13 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s a former World Bank economist who became a prolific journalist and the author of one of Steve Levitt’s favorite books, The Undercover Economi...
Yul Kwon: “Hey, Do You Have Any Bright Ideas?” (Part 2)
06 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He’s so fascinating that Steve Levitt brought him back for a second conversation. Yul Kwon currently works at Google, but he’s been a lawyer, poli...
13. Yul Kwon: “Don't Try to Change Yourself All at Once.”
30 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
He has been a lawyer, an instructor at the F.B.I. Academy, the owner of a frozen-yogurt chain, and a winner of the TV show Survivor. Today, Kwon works...
12. Sue Bird: “You Have to Pay the Superstars.”
23 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
She is one of the best basketball players ever. She’s won multiple championships, including four Olympic gold medals and four W.N.B.A. titles — th...
11. Paul Romer: “I Figured Out How to Get Myself Fired From the World Bank.”
09 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For many economists — Steve Levitt included — there is perhaps no greater inspiration than Paul Romer, the now-Nobel laureate who at a young age r...
10. Suzanne Gluck: “I'm a Person Who Can Convince Other People to Do Things”
26 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
She might not be a household name, but Suzanne Gluck is one of the most powerful people in the book industry. Her slush pile is a key entry point to t...
9. Moncef Slaoui: "It’s Unfortunate That It Takes a Crisis for This to Happen"
12 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Born in Morocco and raised mostly by a single mother, Moncef Slaoui is now one of the world’s most influential scientists. As the head of Operation ...
8. Peter Attia: “I Definitely Lost a Lot of IQ Points That Day”
28 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
He’s been an engineer, a surgeon, a management consultant, and even a boxer. Now he’s a physician focused on the science of longevity. Peter Attia...
7. Caverly Morgan: "I Am Not This Voice. I Am Not This Narrative."
14 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
She showed up late and confused to her first silent retreat, but Caverly Morgan eventually trained for eight years in silence at a Zen monastery. Now ...
6. Nathan Myhrvold: “I Am Interested in Lots of Things, and That's Actually a Bad Strategy”
31 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
He graduated high school at 14, and by 23 had several graduate degrees and was a research assistant with Stephen Hawking. He became the first chief te...
5. Susan Wojcicki: “Hey, Let’s Go Buy YouTube!”
17 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
She was the sixteenth employee at Google — a company once based in her garage — and now she's the C.E.O. of its best-known subsidiary, YouTube. Bu...
Steve Levitt: “I’m Not as Childlike as I’d Like to Be”
10 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Levitt has so far occupied the interviewer chair on this show, but in a special live event — recorded over Zoom and presented by WNYC and the ...
4. Ken Jennings: “Don’t Neglect the Thing That Makes You Weird”
03 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It was only in his late twenties that America’s favorite brainiac began to seriously embrace his love of trivia. Now he holds the “Greatest of All...
3. Kerwin Charles: “One Does Not Know Where an Insight Will Come From”
19 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The dean of Yale’s School of Management grew up in a small village in Guyana. During his unlikely journey, he has researched video-gaming habits, co...
2. Mayim Bialik: “I Started Crying When I Realized How Beautiful the Universe Is”
05 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
She’s best known for playing neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, but the award-winning actress has a rich life outside of her a...
1. Steven Pinker: "I Manage My Controversy Portfolio Carefully”
22 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “...
Introducing “People I (Mostly) Admire”
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Levitt has spent decades as an academic economist, “studying strange phenomena and human behavior in weird circumstances.” Now he’s turnin...