173. Steve Levitt Says Goodbye to People I (Mostly) Admire

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26:31Levitt, I have to say, I have not heard you as excited since, well, maybe when you visited me in New York, maybe a month ago, I had Clamato for you. You were excited by that. But outside of Clamato, this is the most excited I've heard you in a long time. And it strikes me that you are the one that's engaged now plainly. And it also strikes me that the way that you got engaged in this project, at least, was by actually, I hate the cliche phrase, but like going out of your comfort zone to actually become an interviewer. Because when we first met, that was one of your least favorite things to do.

27:08So I feel like you having done People I Mostly Admire for the last five years, it feels like it changed you fundamentally. Oh, it did for sure. I mean, every idea that I have just put out there, I have stolen from one I guess, and repackaged it in my own words. There's no doubt about that. As it should be. That's what knowledge transfer is supposed to be. David Eagleman came on my podcast and he works on the plasticity of the brain. That was such a good episode. I love him. He introduced me to this phrase of just-in-case learning versus just-in-time learning, which has transformed my way of thinking about the world because everything we do in school is, oh, well, we're going to teach you proofs about triangles because maybe you're going to, in 15 years, be an architect and somehow need this.

27:55Of course that doesn't work because no one remembers it for five minutes versus just-in-time learning where somebody really needs to know something to solve some problem so they learn it. For me, I spent 16 years failing to learn any math at all. And then when I got admitted to MIT and I looked in those first syllabi What I was going to have to know, I learned five years of math in three weeks because I needed to learn it. I didn't have the words for it then, but I realized what just-in-time learning was. Or another example, I fiddled around all through high school, didn't care about anything, did all my box checking.

28:32And then when they opened a racetrack in Minnesota, Canterbury Downs, and I was losing all my money trying to bet on horses, I need to be better. And that's when I decided I would really learn how to computer program. And so I would stay up all night doing something that had never occurred to me that would have any value, but it was with the purpose of trying to win at the racetrack. I've lived these things that I'm now preaching. But going back to your question, it is true that being an interviewer was roughly the last thing that I ever should have done. You and I have been on book tours, and there's nothing better for me than going on a book tour with you because you are the ultimate extrovert and you love to talk to people.

29:13and I can spend the entire time just sitting there looking around. You say that. I deeply dispute that. For instance, we recently had a little 20th anniversary Freakonomics party and I made a little speech and then I said, Levitt, would you like to say a few words? And you literally said no. And then I keep going because it felt like it was too short. And then five minutes later, you start telling the story and it was great and you're just going. So I think you have this image of yourself as less, I don't know, whatever you want to call it, adept or excited about. Look, I've known you a long time now.

29:50I know what I feel is pretty much the real you, the inside you, the always you. And I think you give yourself not enough credit for what's the inside always you. Well, that's kind of you to say, but like my wife would say, what do you want for your birthday? And the answer I don't say, because it's too rude, is I would like everyone to go away and I have a week where I didn't talk to a single person and nobody bothered me for a week. That would be my dream. And I might get tired after a week, but I can't remember a time where I was alone and I ever thought, geez, I wish I weren't alone. Why are you not going to a silent retreat every week?

30:31The problem with silent retreats is they actually have a lot of routine. They make you work. You have to clean the dishes and stuff like that. I literally just want to be alone. Let me ask you this. Over the five years you were doing People I Mostly Admir interviews, who were your three, I want to say the most memorable, let's say, for you? Just name the three and why. So my own daughters, Amanda and Lily. That was a great episode. Number 46 for anyone who hasn't heard it, if you want to look it up. Just because it was so surprising to me. I haven't had a good conversation with my daughters. in a decade, but something about being locked up in a studio.

31:08We were face-to-face in a studio, and my having had to prepare just led it to be really magical. I think it was unexpected for everyone. Another episode that has really stuck with me was an interview I did with a doctor who focuses on end of life care, B.J. Miller. B.J. had a terrible accident when he was at Princeton, and he lost his legs and arm. He was trying to jump on a train or something? They have this electric train, the little putt-putt train that goes from the Amtrak train to the campus. And he touched the electrified wire in a terrible accident. And so I've seen a lot of interviews with BJ.

31:48And when people see him, they can see that he's had limbs amputated. And he always explains to people how that happened. And I had a thought of, well, this is radio, this podcast, so people can't see him. So I want to have a conversation with BJ in which nobody who doesn't know him is going to understand that he's had this accident. And if you re-listen to the episode, at first he's kind of stuttering and stammering around a little bit, I think because he had 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.

32:39For 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 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.

33:14She's an artist. That was a beautiful episode. I mean, beautiful makes it sound softer than it is somehow, but that was a really good episode. 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.

33:45But then when I reached out to Wendy later, she said the same thing back. Somehow we really connected in a deep way. I remember that in the interview, you said something to her like, I see you as being not constrained by the two things that almost everybody worries about, which is that the thing that you want to do might end up taking a lot of time and it may end up not making you any money. And you said that to her and she's like, oh my God, nobody's ever recognized that except my therapist. And that's when I realized that you had become just a very astute interviewer. Not that you weren't always astute about the world, but there's a different component to bringing it out in someone like that.

34:23A lot of it was preparation. And again, I learned that from you. When you first interviewed me back 20 some years ago, you showed up my door and you had read, or at least could credibly convey to me that you had read all 60 or 70 of my papers. It was shocking. And we had amazing conversations because you had invested so much. And I think that's one thing that you just can't get around. If you show someone that you care about their work, they want to talk about it. they do. There's no substitute for hard work. You can have very little talent for interviewing, but I think if you've really prepared, it can still go pretty well.

34:59I'll tell you another interview that was really special for me was with Yuval Noah Harari. And I really, again, I stole it from you. It was an observation you had made many years ago. Yuval, in general, Yuval Noah Harari is a tough nut to crack. I'd watched a lot of interviews with him and he plays it very close to the vest, and he's really serious and sometimes argumentative. You had taught me something many years ago. You had said the only thing that anyone ever likes to read are stories. The only good stories are about people and personalities, and you have to make it very personal and build up the character of them, and there's got to be tension and whatnot.

35:40And so what was interesting as I read his amazing book, Sapiens, there is not a character in the entire book. So he violates your first rule of storytelling. How can this book 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.

36:19And 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. I think that's right. Yeah. I do remember that point he made about how when politicians get in trouble for saying something in private that could be considered offensive or whatever, antisocial. He was saying you have to let people have a private life, especially public people. I mean, that's one thing that I remember from a conversation I heard four years ago, which I think is probably on average pretty good because I remember mostly zero from a week ago.

36:58He 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, and if you ask them a real question, they just start dissembling. They don't actually know anything. Yeah, or you get exactly the same thing over and over. Yeah, yeah. 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.

37:36Now, 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 Yuval. And Jared Diamond, I think, fell more into that other camp where I felt like if you had read his books, then when you talked 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. Their books have a lot of similarities, and yet talking to them was a completely different experience.

38:11Was that a big disappointment for you, that conversation? The Jared Diamond one? Yeah, did it upset you? Did you feel you wasted your time? No, it was interesting for me to see it. I've always cared a lot more about process than outcome. And so when I do an interview and it turns into an amazing episode, that feels good. But I'm also almost equally as intrigued when I do an interview and it's bad. I feel awful when it's me. I feel such a tremendous obligation to my guests. And if I do a bad job, it's very hard for me to shake. It really haunts me. What share of interviews would you say that you actually did a bad job?

38:55A bunch of times I missed the boat. I'll tell you one where I didn't miss the boat, but it would eventually cause me to miss a boat on a later occasion. It was with Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins was an interesting interview for me, first because he's legendary and he's such a huge thinker. The other problem is that he's written, what, 20 books? It was really hard to try to tackle his whole canon of knowledge that he had created. And the easiest and the best interviews always were with Freakonomics fans. There's this power dynamic that happens in interviews where the interviewer is way below the interviewee.

39:34And it's really hard to have a normal conversation because of that power dynamic. But because so many of the guests knew Freakonomics and liked it, we could have different kinds of conversations. Well, Richard Dawkins was not one of those people. He had no idea who I was or why he was talking to me. But over the course of 60 or 70 minutes, I surprised him enough times that by the end, he said, wait, who are you again? Didn't he then invite you to do a live event with him? He did. So that felt really good to me because at the end, he said, will you be the interviewer for a live event that I'm doing in Washington, D.C.?

40:10And that felt really great that he bestowed that honor on me. And then I totally blew it because when we went to the live event, I really thought of it as being an extension of people I mostly admire. And my interview with him had been almost all about the science because what's interesting to me is what he's done in science. But it turns out that the kind of people who will pay$75 to come see Richard Dawkins' talk are not interested in his science. They're interested in his social ideas about atheism and whatnot. And I totally missed the boat. And the entire session fell totally flat until Richard managed to successfully steer the conversation towards atheism.

40:54People started clapping and cheering. It's a horrible feeling to be sitting in an auditorium knowing that everybody is really angry at you because you're doing such a terrible job. I haven't quite had that pleasure, but I look forward to it one day. What other guests on Pima were either difficult, unfun, disappointing to you, I would say one of the most disappointing episodes I did. Can I guess? Yeah. I'm going to say it's either Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or maybe Avi Loeb. So the two single most disappointing episodes I ever had were, you had one of them. One was Schwarzenegger, and the other was Werner Herzog.

41:36Oh, really? It's just the Germans and Austrians then. Both of them had no idea who I was, which was part of the problem, I think. But the Werner Herzog one was the craziest interview I ever did. Part of it got edited out. But we sat down to talk, and I started asking about his movies. Of course, Werner Herzog is this incredibly well-known director of movies. And he said, oh, I'm not going to talk about my movies today. I'm a poet. I'm talking about my poetry. Well, unfortunately, I've never read any of his poetry. I don't even know what he's talking about. So we kind of messed around for a little bit.

42:09And I said, so anyway, that reminds me, in Fitzcarraldo, it's like, oh, very clever, Stephen, but we are not talking about my movies today. Oh, my God, that was hard work. And Schwarzenegger, it was difficult because he wouldn't put on headphones because he didn't want to mess up his hair because he was going on TV afterwards. So he couldn't hear me talking, and I couldn't get him off his script. He has a script. He has a life story. He was just giving a kind of stump speech. Yeah. Did you think about not publishing it then after? Well, it was such a coup to get Schwarzenegger, and it was so exciting.

42:46I did finally have one moment where I got him off of his stump speech, which was really fantastic. I brought up something that happened when he was running for governor of California, and someone had thrown eggs at him, and his suit was covered in eggs. And I'd seen the video of it, and it was really fascinating to watch because he got slammed with eggs and he didn't even change the expression on his face. He just kept on walking as if it hadn't happened. And then he went to a press conference and he gave maybe the best press conference I've ever heard in my life because they said, well, what about, you know, this person who threw eggs at you?

43:23And he said something like, well, I hope next time he'll throw some bacon too so I have a whole breakfast. Who says something like that? It was awesome. And somehow in reliving that story, He changed his tone completely. So if nothing else, for that one minute of the podcast, I felt like I would not throw it away because that felt like such a triumph.

43:47You're listening to People I Mostly Admire. I'm Steve Levitt. After this short break, Stephen Dubner and I will return to talk about my next podcasting gig.

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46:07Although People I Mostly Admire is ending, I'm not planning on completely disappearing. That's where Stephen Dubner picks up our conversation.

46:22So I can imagine that people listening to this, to them, this sounds like all bad news in that people I mostly admire is going away, but actually there's a massive silver lining. Do you want to take it? Sure. Well, I have to say one of the frustrations with people I mostly admire is that podcasting is such a competitive world. There's so much great content out there that it's hard to get a really big audience. And it has a big audience, but nothing like your Freakonomics radio podcast. And so you've been kind enough to say that I might have the opportunity to guest host. Oh, it wasn't kindness.

47:01It's exhaustion. I'm like, please come in. Help. No, seriously, I just want to say when we started having this conversation about you maybe shutting down Pima and starting to do whatever, a handful of episodes of Freakonomics Radio a year, who knows how many it might be. It coincided with me really wanting to, you know, it's a weekly show Freakonomics Radio, which is really hard to do high quality all the time. And I do love it, but it's grueling and exhausting sometimes. So I think this is like getting the band back together 20 years after we wrote the first book. I mean, selfishly for me, I think it's great.

47:37But also, editorially, I don't mean to flatter you so much, but I'm just really impressed with what a good interviewer you've become over the past five years doing people I mostly admire. So I think you're going to make great Freakonomics Radio episodes. Do you want to just give a preview of one or two that you're working on already? I'd more like to keep those secret, actually. I think it's better to keep them secret. But let me say this. What I love about the format of Freakonomics Radio is that you tackle issues and policy. And maybe there is a way in this long form interview Pima format of actually trying to make headway on policy, but I never figured out how to do it.

48:15I agree with you. I feel like there are two basic types of conversation. One is about a person and one is about a thing. And yeah, you can knit them in, but it's hard sometimes. I have a handful of policy ideas that I think are really important. And I love the idea of pursuing them through the Freakonomics radio format with the hope that really I can make an impact. For example, AI and education. We talked for one minute in this episode today about AI and education, but I think it's a really important issue that isn't being treated in the right way. And because of these two very different camps, people who think AI is the best thing in the world, people who think AI is the worst thing in the world, understanding how it is both at the same time, but in a really sensible and thoughtful way, I think that's the kind of message I want to have people talking about.

49:07There's just gross mistakes that we're making in terms of the incentives that we're applying to, say, pharmaceutical development. There's stories to tell there that matter. I don't think of myself as a journalist at all. So what I have done at Pima, I don't think of that as journalism. I think of that as just me having conversations with people. What you do on Freakonomics Radio is actually journalism. And I'm excited to try my hand at being a journalist for a little while. I think it's going to be great for Freakonomics Radio. I think it's going to be great for me. I hope it's great for you. I think it's going to be great for listeners.

49:40Listen, you did a wonderful job the last five years with people I mostly admire. So congratulations and thanks for letting yourself be talked into it. Well, you know, one thing I'm glad is that I finally quit something on time because I always wait until too long, like everybody else does. And when people say, have you ever quit something at the right time? I'm going to say, well, I might've quit too early, but at least I didn't wait too long.

50:07Even though I know it's the right thing to do, it's still hard to say goodbye to this podcast. In recent weeks, we asked you, the listeners, to send us voice memos about particular episodes of the podcast that affected your lives. I was so moved by the hundreds of kind messages we've received. Such a beautiful reminder of the community of smart, thoughtful people that this podcast created. I would have liked to play all of them for you. but in the end we made some really tough choices and we settled on four to share here they are hi steve morgan and the puma crew this is yvonne from oxford in the uk i am as expected devastated by the end of people i mostly admire it's one of my most shared podcasts and i've sent random episodes to all sorts of different people with the strap line i thought you might find this really interesting.

50:59After scrolling through all the episodes, I would say Richard Thaler was such a great combo of educational and entertaining and just seemed like a really nice guy. But of all the episodes, I use advice the most from Charles Duhigg, who has helped me think about what people want from conversations. And I think if someone might be ranting or angry, I always try and figure out if they want to be heard, helped or hugged. Whilst I'm really sad Pima is over, I wish you guys all the best with your next venture. I'm sure whatever you do will be absolutely amazing. Hi, Stephen Morgan. This is David Readman.

51:37Episode 27, Daniel Kahneman on why our judgment is flawed and what to do about it, became the foundation for my PhD dissertation. Kahneman talked about his book Noise, which is the variability in human judgment. And I took Kahneman's concept of a noise audit, which is measuring the aggregate variability in a group, and use this to evaluate how school police officers assess threats of violence at K-12 schools. I then did a second noise audit of large language models assessing the same decisions and compared the variants in humans versus AI assessments. Thank you so much for the interview with Kahneman.

52:16Without it, I never would have known where to start. Hi, Stephen Morgan. This is Madison in New York State. I've been a longtime fan of the podcast. An episode and a piece of advice that changed my life was the first episode you did with Sendhil Muleenathan. You guys talked about Sendhil's observation that people tend to become like those that they spend a lot of time with. And he had had students who were like, I'm going to go into consulting, but not become like those people. And then they did. And that really stuck with me. And actually within a year of listening to that episode. I left a role in consulting because I found myself looking around and realizing I did not really want the lives of the people around me and that just wasn't going to make me happy.

53:06And within a year, I was working full time at a small locally owned gym where the people were very different than me on their resumes, but we valued similar things and they were changing people's lives in ways that I really admired. And four years later, I'm a lot more like those people at the gym and I'm grateful for it. So thank you. Oh, I'm going to miss people I mostly admire. Steve, your genuine thoughtfulness and curiosity brought up the best in people who were all very unique and yet totally inspiring and uplifting. So, Steve, you were great in this studio, and thank you for letting me in on the conversations.

53:51But enough talking. I know you're going to do great things outside the studio. Maybe. That's why I mostly admire you.

54:05That was Diana Choquette from New South Wales. Thank you again, listeners, for your voice memos, your emails, and your loyalty over the years. I also want to thank my producer, Morgan, who's been with the show since almost the very beginning and who've really made it what it was. Starting in the new year, we'll be replaying the entire archive of people I mostly admire, starting from the beginning in the podcast feed. And keep checking the Freakonomics Radio feed. My first Freakonomics Radio episode will likely be coming out in January or February of 2026. And if you want to be in touch, I still plan on reading every email we receive at our email address, Pima, P-I-M-A, at Freakonomics.com.

54:46Thanks again for being part of something that has been so, so special to me.

54:58People I mostly admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio and the economics of everyday things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy and mixed by Greg Rippin. Our theme music was composed by Luis Guerra. We can be reached at pima at Freakonomics.com. That's P-I-M-A at Freakonomics.com. Thanks for listening.

55:35Is this real? Oh, yeah.

55:41The Freakonomics Radio Network, the hidden side of everything.

55:49Stitcher.

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