Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. For the past five years, my Freakonomics friend and co-author

Steve Levitt has been hosting his own podcast, which is called People I Mostly Admire. The bad news is

Leavitt has decided to stop making new episodes of that show. The good news is that Levitt will be hosting the occasional Freakonomics

Radio episode. The other good news is that starting now, we are going to republish the entire

people I mostly admire archive from the beginning. So if you never heard it, or if you missed some

episodes, now is the time to get on board. Just go follow people I mostly admire

in your podcast app. You will not regret it. In the meantime, I thought that today you might

like to hear, as a bonus episode, the final installment of people I mostly admire, or Pima,

as we call it. It's a sort of exit interview with Levitt conducted by me, and it starts now.

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

Hey, Leavitt.

Hey, Dubner. How are you doing?

I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. So this is the final new

episode of people I mostly admire, at least for now. Does that mean you've run out of people you admire?

No, there are endless people I admire. I always thought it would get easier and easier to get people to come in the podcast. Because my own rule, when I'm asked to come on a podcast, is I look at who's been on it before. And if they're way more interesting and important than I am, then I'm going, I'd better do it. Because those people know better than me. I believe in markets. So I thought we got this list that got more and more impressive.

Everyone would just come, but they don't.

Other than Taylor Swift, who's on the top of your wish list?

I've always wanted Joel Osteen, the radio TV evangelist.

I just find the way he speaks to be so remarkable.

So even before I started the podcast, one day, shortly before my birthday, my wife Suzanne said, I have a surprise for your birthday. We're going to go on a trip. And my reaction was, oh, no, there's nowhere I want to go. There's nothing I want to do. And I was so afraid it was going to be a party or something. They got it wasn't a

party. How about a silent retreat? Would that have been better? That would have been better

in the party, but it still would have been pretty bad. But she took me to Houston to go watch

...