The Freakonomics podcast network is growing impressively with the release of its third show, People I (Mostly Admire). Freakonomics, a collaboration between writer Steven Dubner and University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, has achieved success in publishing, radio and podcasts. Freakonomics is an early podcast adopter and has a loyal and sizable fan base.
Dubner typically has managed the podcast duties and capably so with acumen and wit. In fact, his latest show, No Stupid Questions with Grit author Angela Duckworth is an ideal podcast for those who can juggle conflicting concepts and fuzzy facts without curling up into a fetal ball of rhetorical miasma.
In People I (Mostly Admire), Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt takes the podcasting reins and interviews some of the most interesting, unorthodox people around.
“The perfect guest for me is someone who's not only wildly intelligent, but also a little bit off the rails,” Levitt says. “Someone who thinks differently and who doesn't care at all how the world perceives him or her.”
Levitt has spent decades as an academic economist, “studying strange phenomena and human behavior in weird circumstances.” Now, in People I (Mostly Admire) he turns his curiosity to something new: interviewing some of the most interesting, unorthodox people around — from actresses to athletes, authors to inventors.
This is not your typical interview podcast, however, First, Levitt's vibrant mind and insightful queries encourage guests to go well beyond cursory responses and prepared talking points. Second, Levitt's roster of guests focuses on mental acuity and high-intensity intelligence instead of vapid oversharing about celebrity life. To his credit, Levitt is not only simply interested in eliciting responses from his podcast guests, but also in "fracking" for illumination and comprehension.
Take, for example, Levitt's first episode with Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker
where Pinker speaks frankly about enraging people on opposite ends of the
political spectrum.
https://freakonomics.com/
Yale School of Management dean Kerwin Charles
talks about video-gaming habits, communicable disease
and why so many African-Americans haven’t had the kind
of success he’s had:
https://freakonomics.com/
In the third episode, Levitt talks to actor and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik where she discusses the advantages of being strange and why sitcom
acting isn't that difficult.
https://freakonomics.com/
Upcoming guests include YouTube
CEO Susan Wojcicki, Jeopardy! champion Ken
Jennings, Survivor winner and former Facebook
Product Management Director Yul Kwon, literary agent
Suzanne Gluck, legendary golf champion Greg Norman, meditation teacher Caverly Morgan and Nathan
Myhrvold, who started college at 14 years old, became a student of
Stephen Hawking, a start-up whiz-kid, Microsoft’s first C.T.O. — all
while continuing to work as a scientist with published research in
paleobiology, climate science, and astronomy, becoming a French-trained
chef, author of a James Beard-winning cookbook, serving as a judge on Top Chef, and filing nearly 1,000 patents.
Levitt isn't a flashy interviewer and has a modulated tone and patient speaking cadence along with a willingness to draw out his guests into discussions that reveal something about them personally and a state of the world we live in.
People I (Mostly) Admire premiered on August 21st and new episodes will drop every two weeks.
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