One hundred podcast episodes. That's how many we've done. And that's about, well, one hundred

podcast episodes more than I ever thought I would host in my lifetime. It took years

of arm twisting by my freaking obnoxious co-authors Steven Dubner before I finally saw the light.

The podcasting would allow me both to talk to fascinating people who otherwise wouldn't

talk to me, and also to bring more attention to the issues I care about. So I finally took

the plunge two and a half years ago, and despite some occasional rough patches, I'm so glad

I did. I think I basically said, what if monsters really do exist? And they scare kids?

For a living, that's their job. They clock in, they clock out, they don't.

The only way I could get through day after day of feeling this miserable was to promise

myself that after I finished those books, if I still felt like this, I would end my life

because I didn't want to live like that. Welcome to People I Mostly Admire with Steve

Levin.

Today I'll look back at the highs and the lows of the first one hundred episodes reflecting

on what I've learned along the way.

The ideal guest for People I Mostly Admire, Pima is smart, creative, reflective, and a

little bit weird. Not coincidentally, those are the exact same traits that lead to break

through ideas. So it's no surprise that thirteen of our guests have won either Nobel prizes

or MacArthur Genius grants or both. You might think those awards would mean everything

to our guests, but that's not how it's a case.

Chemist Carolyn Bertosi has won a Nobel Prize and a MacArthur Genius grant, but before that

in college, she was in a band with a legendary musician Tom Morello, the guitarist for

raging into the machine in audio slave. I asked her if she ever thinks to herself, damn,

...