Welcome to people I mostly admire. This is a special bonus episode, a live event recorded over Zoom and presented by WMYC and The Green Space in New York

City. The event featured Steve Levitt in conversation with his Freakonomics co-author, Stephen

Dubner, covering topics such as the birth of this podcast, the power and limits of data science,

and why Levitt's efforts to make the world a better place

usually anger everyone across the political spectrum?

Good evening, and thanks for joining us tonight. I'm Stephen Dubner. I'm one of the co-authors

of the Freakonomics book series, and I also host Freakonomics Radio, which is now celebrating

its 10th anniversary. And the man on the other side of your screen is my Freakonomics friend

and co-author Steve Levitt. Levitt, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sure. Steve Levitt, and I teach economics at the University of Chicago for the last 20 years. I've

read books with Dubner. And more recently, I've kind of given up on academics and decided

it would make sense to try and maybe have a little impact on the real world. So I've

started a center called Risk at UChicago that's trying to do good. And against my better judgment, I started a podcast to all

people I mostly admire. You say against your better judgment as if somehow you were

press ganged into service, you were begging to have your own podcast. Were you not? No, it's not

that you forced me. It's just that I pretty much try to avoid anything that has actual

requirements and demands on me and or deadlines. And so it breaks all my rules to actually do something

where I'm obligated to someone else to show up at some time to do something. So, Levin, we should say

that our partnership began quite a few years ago when I interviewed you for the New York Times Magazine article that ultimately led to Freakonomics.

And so I thought I'd basically just interview you again tonight, although, you know, you may end up turning things around since you yourself are now an accomplished interviewer with your people I mostly admire a podcast.

So that's my first question. Which side of the mic do you prefer? Oh, God, I would tick being the interviewee

a thousand times over the interviewer. So, okay, I returned to the question. Why on earth are

...