People I (Mostly) Admire Recognized As Best Interview Podcast By AdWeek

Adweek announced its third-annual Podcast of the Year Awards—selected by a jury of industry professionals from hundreds of entries representing podcasts of all sizes—a few common themes are obvious: Building unique communities, being willing to confront today’s cultural challenges and conflicts, and having the tenacity to create compelling content.

AdWeek chose People I (Mostly) Admire in the Best interview Podcast category.

Launched in August 2020, People I (Mostly) Admire finds University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling Freakonomics books, interviewing a wide array of thinkers, researchers, government leaders, authors, and the occasional celebrity. 

 "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 has turned 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.

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. 

Listen to People I (Mostly) Admire at https://freakonomics.com/pima/ or on any podcast platform. Recent episodes investigate the simple economics of saving the Amazon rainforest, why superhuman Artificial Intelligence won't be our slave, and why some cities thrive while others fade away.