People I (Mostly) Admire

He’s the chief creative officer of Pixar, and the Academy Award-winning director of Soul, Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc. Pete Docter and Steve talk about Pixar’s scrappy beginnings, why wrong turns are essential, and the movie moment that changed Steve’s life.

• SOURCE:
  • Pete Docter, chief creative officer of Pixar.

• RESOURCES:
  • "‘Inside Out 2’ Becomes the Highest-Grossing Animated Film of All Time Globally," (The Walt Disney Company, 2024).
  • Soul, film (2020).
  • The Red Turtle, film (2016).
  • Inside Out, film (2015).
  • Up, film (2009).
  • Monsters, Inc., film (2001).
  • Toy Story, film (1995).
  • Paper Moon, film (1973).

• EXTRA:
  • "Walt Hickey Wants to Track Your Eyeballs," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).

David Eagleman is a Stanford neuroscientist, C.E.O., television host, and founder of the Possibilianism movement. He and Steve talk about how wrists can substitute for ears, why we dream, and what Fisher-Price magnets have to do with neuroscience.

• SOURCE:
  • David Eagleman, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Stanford University and C.E.O. of Neosensory.

• RESOURCES:
  • Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain, by David Eagleman (2020).
  • "Why Do We Dream? A New Theory on How It Protects Our Brains," by David Eagleman and Don Vaughn (TIME, 2020).
  • "Prevalence of Learned Grapheme-Color Pairings in a Large Online Sample of Synesthetes," by Nathan Witthoft, Jonathan Winawer, and David Eagleman (PLoS One, 2015).
  • Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, by David Eagleman (2009).
  • The vOICe app.
  • Neosensory.

• EXTRAS:
  • "What’s Impacting American Workers?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "This Is Your Brain on Podcasts," by Freakonomics Radio (2016).

Boys and men are trending downward in education, employment, and mental health. Richard Reeves, author of the book Of Boys and Men, has some solutions that don’t come at the expense of women and girls. Steve pushes him to go further.

• SOURCE:
  • Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and author.

• RESOURCES:
  • Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, by Richard Reeves (2022).
  • "The Crisis of Men and Boys," by David Brooks (The New York Times, 2022).
  • Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, by Richard Reeves (2017).
  • "An Empirical Analysis of the Gender Gap in Mathematics," by Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2010).
  • John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, by Richard Reeves (2007)

• EXTRA:
  • "What Is the Future of College — and Does It Have Room for Men? (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).

Daron Acemoglu was just awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics. Earlier this year, he and Steve talked about his groundbreaking research on what makes countries succeed or fail.

• SOURCES:
  • Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2024.
  • Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (2023).
  • "Economists Pin More Blame on Tech for Rising Inequality," by Steve Lohr (The New York Times, 2022).
  • "America’s Slow-Motion Wage Crisis: Four Decades of Slow and Unequal Growth," by John Schmitt, Elise Gould, and Josh Bivens (Economic Policy Institute, 2018).
  • "A Machine That Made Stockings Helped Kick Off the Industrial Revolution," by Sarah Laskow (Atlas Obscura, 2017).
  • "The Long-Term Jobs Killer Is Not China. It’s Automation," by Claire Cain Miller (The New York Times, 2016).
  • Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (2012).
  • "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," by Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (American Economic Review, 2001).
  • "Learning about Others' Actions and the Investment Accelerator," by Daron Acemoglu (The Economic Journal, 1993).
  • "A Friedman Doctrine — The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," by Milton Friedman (The New York Times, 1970).

• EXTRAS:
  • "What’s Impacting American Workers?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "'My God, This Is a Transformative Power,'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
  • "New Technologies Always Scare Us. Is A.I. Any Different?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "How to Prevent Another Great Depression," by Freakonomics Radio (2020).
  • "Is Income Inequality Inevitable?" by Freakonomics Radio (2017).

David Autor took his first economics class at 29 years old. Now he’s one of the central academics studying the labor market. The M.I.T. economist and Steve dissect the impact of technology on labor, spar on A.I., and discuss why economists can sometimes be oblivious.

• SOURCES:
  • David Autor, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Does Automation Replace Experts or Augment Expertise? The Answer Is Yes," by David Autor (Joseph Schumpeter Lecture at the European Economic Association Annual Meeting, 2024).
  • “Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs,” by David Autor (NBER Working Paper, 2024).
  • “New Frontiers: The Origins and Content of New Work, 1940–2018,” by David Autor, Caroline Chin, Anna Salomons, and Bryan Seegmiller (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2024).
  • “Bottlenecks: Sectoral Imbalances and the US Productivity Slowdown,” by Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Christina Patterson (NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2024).
  • "Good News: There’s a Labor Shortage," by David Autor (The New York Times, 2021).
  • "David Autor, the Academic Voice of the American Worker," (The Economist, 2019).
  • “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation,” by David Autor (The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2015).
  • “The Growth of Low-Skill Service Jobs and the Polarization of the US Labor Market,” by David Autor and David Dorn (The American Economic Review, 2013).
  • “The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States,” by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H. Hanson (The American Economic Review, 2013).

• EXTRAS:
  • "What Do People Do All Day?" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
  • "Daron Acemoglu on Economics, Politics, and Power," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Experiment," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "In Search of the Real Adam Smith," series by Freakonomics Radio (2022).
  • "Max Tegmark on Why Superhuman Artificial Intelligence Won’t be Our Slave," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • "Automation," by Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2019).

Kate Douglass is a world-class swimmer and data scientist who’s used mathematical modeling to help make her stroke more efficient. She and Steve talk about why the Olympics were underwhelming, how she won gold, and why she won’t be upset to say goodbye to the pool.

• SOURCE:
  • Kate Douglass, Olympic swimmer and graduate student.
  • RESOURCES:
  • "Kate Douglass HOLDS OFF Tatjana Smith to win 200m breaststroke | Paris Olympics" (NBC Sports, 2024).
  • “The Plane Partition Function Abides by Benford’s Law,” by Katherine Douglass and Ken Ono (UPB Scientific Bulletin, Series A, 2024).
  • “Swimming in Data,” by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2024).
  • "Why Some Olympic Swimmers Think About Math in the Pool," by Jenny Vrentas (The New York Times, 2024).

• EXTRAS:
  • "The Language of the Universe," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).

Ken Ono is a math prodigy whose skills have helped produce a Hollywood movie and made Olympic swimmers faster. The number theorist tells Steve why he sees mathematics as art — and about his unusual path to success, which came without a high school diploma.

• SOURCE:
  • Ken Ono, professor of mathematics and STEM adviser to the provost at the University of Virginia.

• RESOURCES:
  • "‘Digital Twins’ Give Olympic Swimmers a Boost," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (Scientific American, 2024).
  • "Swimming in Data," by Katherine Douglass, Augustus Lamb, Jerry Lu, Ken Ono, and William Tenpas (The Mathematical Intelligencer, 2024).
  • "Integer Partitions Detect the Primes," by William Craig, Jan-Willem van Ittersum, and Ken Ono (PNAS, 2024).
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity, film by Matt Brown (2015).
  • "Proof of the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture," by John F. R. Duncan, Michael J. Griffin, and Ken Ono (Research in the Mathematical Sciences, 2015).
  • "Ramanujan's Ternary Quadratic Form," by Ken Ono and K. Soundararajan (Inventiones Mathematicae, 1997).

• EXTRA:
  • "Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).

Artist Wendy MacNaughton knows the difficulty of sitting in silence and the power of having fun. She explains to Steve the lessons she’s gleaned from drawing hospice residents, working in Rwanda, and reporting from Guantanamo Bay.

• SOURCE:
  • Wendy MacNaughton, artist and graphic journalist.

• RESOURCES:
  • "What Happens if Two Complete Strangers Draw Each Other?" video by the National Gallery of Art (2024).
  • How to Say Goodbye, by Wendy MacNaughton (2023).
  • "How to Have Fun Again," by Wendy MacNaughton (The New York Times, 2022).
  • "Inside America’s War Court: Clothing and Culture at Guantánamo Bay," by Carol Rosenberg and Wendy MacNaughton (The New York Times, 2019).
  • "Drawing the Guantánamo Bay War Court," by Wendy MacNaughton (The New York Times, 2019).
  • Think Like a Freak, by Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner (2014).
  • DrawTogether.
  • The Grown-Ups Table.
  • Zen Caregiving Project.
  • DrawTogether Strangers.

• EXTRAS:
  • "Rick Rubin on How to Make Something Great," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
  • "Does Death Have to Be a Death Sentence?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Sendhil Mullainathan Explains How to Generate an Idea a Minute (Part 2)," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • "Sendhil Mullainathan Thinks Messing Around Is the Best Use of Your Time," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).

Bestselling author James Nestor believes that we can improve our lives by changing the way we breathe. He’s persuasive enough to get Steve taping his mouth shut at night. He explains how humans dive to depths of 300 feet without supplemental oxygen, and describes what it’s like to be accepted into a pod of whales.

• SOURCES:
  • James Nestor, author and journalist.

• RESOURCES:
  • Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor (2020).
  • Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves, by James Nestor (2014).
  • "Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead," by James Nestor (Outside Magazine, 2012).
  • "The Brain on Sonar — How Blind People Find Their Way Around With Echoes," by Ed Yong (National Geographic, 2011).
  • "How I Held My Breath for 17 Minutes," by David Blaine (TED Talk, 2009).
  • Project CETI.

• EXTRA:
  • Data Science for Everyone Survey.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals founder Ingrid Newkirk has been badgering meat-eaters, fur-wearers, and circus-goers for more than 40 years. For a woman who’s leaving her liver to the president of France in her will, she sounds quite sensible when she tells Steve what we can learn from animals, why she supports euthanasia, and who’ll get her other organs. 

• SOURCE:
  • Ingrid Newkirk, founding president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Paradoxical Gender Effects in Meat Consumption Across Cultures," by Christopher J. Hopwood, Jahn N. Zizer, Wiebke Bleidorn, et al. (Nature Scientific Reports, 2024).
  • "PETA President Bequeaths Her Rump to a Reality Show," (PETA.org, 2023).
  • Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion, by Ingrid Newkirk (2020).
  • "One Last U.S. Medical School Still Killed Animals to Teach Surgery. But No More," by Darryl Fears (The Washington Post, 2016).
  • "The Naked and the Dead," by Katie Glass (The Times, 2013).
  • "The Betrayal of 'No-Kill' Sheltering," by Ingrid Newkirk (PETA YouTube channel, 2013).
  • "The Lab-Monkey Controversy That Launched the Animal-Rights Movement," by Caroline Fraser (The New Yorker, 1993).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Suleika Jaouad’s Survival Mechanisms," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "Jane Goodall Changed the Way We See Animals. She’s Not Done," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Peter Singer Isn’t a Saint, But He’s Better Than Steve Levitt," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Bruce Friedrich Thinks There’s a Better Way to Eat Meat," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • Project Donor.