People I (Mostly) Admire

Nobel laureate, bestselling author, and groundbreaking psychologist Daniel Kahneman died in March. In 2021 he talked with Steve Levitt — his friend and former business partner — about his book Noise: ...

6 Apr 202441min

Google researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas spends his work days developing artificial intelligence models and his free time conducting surveys for fun. He tells Steve how he designed an algorithm for the...

30 Mar 202456min

After Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Rajiv Shah headed the largest humanitarian effort in U.S. history. As chief economist of the Gates Foundation he tried to immunize almost a billion children. He t...

16 Mar 202457min

The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg wrote his new book in an attempt to learn how to communicate better. Steve shares how the book helped him understand his own conversational weaknesses. SOURCES...

2 Mar 202447min

Cat Bohannon’s new book puts female anatomy at the center of human evolution. She tells Steve why it takes us so long to give birth, what breast milk is really for, and why the human reproductive syst...

17 Feb 202448min

Economist Daron Acemoglu likes to tackle big questions. He tells Steve how colonialism still affects us today, who benefits from new technology, and why democracy wasn’t always a sure thing. SOURCE:Da...

3 Feb 202444min

Journalist Walt Hickey uses data to understand how culture works. He and Steve talk about why China hasn’t produced any hit movies yet and how he got his own avatar in the Madden NFL video game.  SOUR...

20 Jan 202450min

Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a bodybuilder, an actor, a governor, and, now, an author. He tells Steve how he’s managed to succeed in so many fields — and what to do when people throw eggs at you. SO...

6 Jan 202439min