It won't take you long to figure out that I'm not your regular interviewer.

I'm not very polished, I'm not very articulate, but I just think differently than other people. Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner, and that's my freakinomics friend and co-author Steve Leavitt.

He's an economist at the University of Chicago. I've worked for two decades

on the edges of economics studying strange phenomena, human behavior in weird circumstances.

But now, Levitt is ready to try something different.

I've gotten really interested in trying to figure out how to leave the world a better place.

And that's how I spend my days now, not writing academic papers.

Levitt is now ready to start his own podcast.

It's called People I Mostly Admire.

And one of the things I hope to do with this podcast is to get these

interesting, smart, insightful, offbeat people to offer advice, not necessarily

about their expertise in their profession, but about general things in life.

Sometimes they're going to give great advice, sometimes they're going to give terrible advice, and I think that's part of the fun.

Why should you listen to the show?

I would say listen to this show because I think we're going to have some of the most interesting people come on and talk and some of them are going to be household names and some of them

are going to be people that you would never hear of otherwise.

For instance, the old-time Jeopardy champion, Ken Jennings.

Just don't neglect the thing about you that makes you weird.

And one of the saviest book agents in publishing Suzanne Gluck, who happens to be Levitt's agent and mine.

Harper Collins hired McKinsey to consult on how to be more profitable and they said

just published the bestsellers if we only knew.

The perfect guest for me is someone who's not only wildly intelligent but also a little bit off the rails.

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