My guest today is Austin Gullsby. He's a top academic economist and he was chairman of

the Council of Economic Advisers and the Obama Administration. But his talents extend

far beyond economics. He's a national champion debater. He was named Washington's funniest celebrity

and he even made Salon's list of sexist men. I said look you're telling everybody you're the

skinny guy with a funny name. You stole my bin. That's been my bin for 10 years.

Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

I first met Austin roughly 30 years ago. On the first day of MIT's economics PhD program,

I immediately despised him. All of the first years were quiet, nervous. Except Austin,

he blew into the room, booming voice, unflappably confident acting more like a faculty member

than a new student. I turned to the person next to me and I whispered, who does that guy think he is?

My neighbor responded, he thinks he's Austin Gullsby. It turns out even before Austin got

to graduate school, he was already a legend in economic circles. As much as I initially wanted to

dislike Austin, I couldn't. He was smart. The funniest person I'd ever met and also remarkably

kind and thoughtful despite the bluster. We became close friends, partners in crime trying to

survive MIT and we've been colleagues at the University of Chicago for 25 years. We wrote a

textbook together and we live a few houses away from one another. Austin loves to talk and he

could add it. So my main task today will be to get him started and to stay out of the way.

Austin, it's always great to talk with you. We've known each other for 30 years and it's been

so much fun watching you go from being an unknown, brash young PhD student to a well-known,

still equally brash, thought leader. Professional economists go to this thing called the AA

meetings, the American Economic Association meetings. And I have some recollection that you

started going to those when you were like 15 years old. I definitely went in high school.

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