By cataloging the steady march of human progress, the Harvard psychologist and linguist has become a very public intellectual. But the self-declared “polite Canadian” has managed to enrage people on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Steve Levitt tries to understand why. This episode originally aired on August 21st, 2020.

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In the last episode of the podcast, Stephen Dubner turns the microphone on Steve Levitt. They talk about Levitt’s favorite — and least favorite — moments from the show’s five-year run, his quest to reform education, and his next podcasting gig.

• SOURCES:
  • Stephen Dubner, host of Freakonomics Radio, co-author of Freakonomics books.

• RESOURCES:
  • "How to Help Kids Succeed," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2025).
  • "Feeling Sound and Hearing Color," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "Richard Dawkins on God, Genes, and Murderous Baby Cuckoos," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "Arnold Schwarzenegger Has Some Advice for You," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "Werner Herzog Thinks His Films Are a Distraction," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
  • "Drawing from Life (and Death)," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
  • "Yuval Noah Harari Thinks Life is Meaningless and Amazing," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Is This the Future of High School?," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Does Death Have to Be a Death Sentence?," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "Sal Khan: 'If It Works for 15 Cousins, It Could Work for a Billion People.'" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • "Jared Diamond on the Downfall of Civilizations — and His Optimism for Ours," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • "Amanda & Lily Levitt Share What It’s Like to be Steve’s Daughters," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • "How Rahm Emanuel Would Run the World," by Freakonomics Radio (2020).
  • The Levitt Lab.

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The late Robert Solow was a giant among economists. When he was 98 years old he told Steve about cracking German codes in World War II, why it’s so hard to reduce inequality, and how his field lost its way. 

• SOURCES:
  • Robert Solow, professor emeritus of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Secrecy, Cigars, and a Venetian Wedding: How the P.G.A. Tour Made a Deal with Saudi Arabia," by Alan Blinder, Lauren Hirsch, Kevin Draper, and Kate Kelly (The New York Times, 2023).
  • "Global Assessment of Environmental-Economic Accounting and Supporting Statistics: 2020," by United Nations Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (2021).
  • "Where Modern Macroeconomics Went Wrong," by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2015).
  • "As Inequality Grows, So Does the Political Influence of the Rich," (The Economist, 2018).
  • "Big Bang Financial Deregulation and Income Inequality: Evidence From U.K. and Japan," by Daniel Waldenstrom and Julia Tanndal (VoxEU, 2016).
  • "The Fall And Rise Of U.S. Inequality, In 2 Graphs," by Quoctrung Bui (Planet Money, 2015).
  • Nobel Prize Biographical, by Robert Solow (1987).
  • Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mills (1848).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Is Economic Growth the Wrong Goal? (Update)," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

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Michael Crow is the president of Arizona State University, which U.S. News & World Report has called the most innovative school in the country for 11 years running. He tells Steve about why higher education needs to change, and how A.S.U. is leading the way. Plus: Steve has an announcement about the podcast.

• SOURCES:
  • Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Fifth Wave: The Evolution of American Higher Education, by Michael Crow (2020).
  • "College Admissions Shocker!," by Frank Bruni (New York Times, 2016).
  • New American University.
  • Dreamscape Learn.
  • University Innovation Alliance.
  • FYI.AI.

• EXTRAS:
  • "Chemistry, Evolved," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2025).
  • "America’s Math Curriculum Doesn’t Add Up," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2021).
  • Data Science 4 Everyone.

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Michael Greenstone knows it’s corny, but he wants to make the world a better place — by tracking the impact of air quality, developing pollution markets in India, and … starting a podcast, which Steve says proves he’s over the hill.

• SOURCES:
  • Michael Greenstone, professor of economics at the University of Chicago.

• RESOURCES:
  • "New evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China's Huai River Policy," by Avraham Ebenstein, Maoyong Fan, Michael Greenstone, Guojun He, and Maigeng Zhou (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017).
  • "Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China's Huai River policy," by Yuyu Chen, Avraham Ebenstein, Michael Greenstone, and Hongbin Li (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013).
  • Shocked, podcast.
  • Air Quality Life Index (AQLI).
  • Emissions Market Accelerator.
  • Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).

• EXTRAS:
  • "This Is Your Brain on Pollution," by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
  • "The Simple Economics of Saving the Amazon Rainforest", by People I (Mostly) Admire (2020).

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Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with cancer at 22. She made her illness the subject of a New York Times column and a memoir, Between Two Kingdoms. She and Steve talk about what it means to live with a potentially fatal illness, how to talk to people who've gone through a tragedy, and ways to encourage medical donations.

• SOURCES:
  • Suleika Jaouad, author.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life, by Suleika Jaouad (2025).
  • The Alchemy Journal, by Suleika Jaouad (2025).
  • “The Art of Survival,” by Jennifer Senior (The Atlantic, 2024).
  • American Symphony, film by Matthew Heineman (2023).
  • Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, by Suleika Jaouad (2021).
  • “Max Ritvo, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight, Dies at 25,” by John Schwartz (The New York Times, 2016).
  • “Life, Interrupted,” column by Suleika Jaouad (The New York Times, 2012-2015).
  • The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green (2012).
  • Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America, by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009).
  • The Isolation Journals, newsletter by Suleika Jaouad.

• EXTRAS:
  • “John Green’s Reluctant Rocket Ship Ride,” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • “Does Death Have to Be a Death Sentence?” by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).

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Physicist and former pop star Brian Cox tells Steve about discovering the Higgs boson, having a number-one hit, and why particle physics research will almost certainly not create a black hole that destroys all life on earth.

• SOURCES:
  • Brian Cox, physicist at the University of Manchester.

• RESOURCES:
  • Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw (2023).
  • "Higgs10: The Higgs boson and the rise of the Standard Model of Particle Physics in the 1970s," by John Ellis (CERN, 2022).
  • Out of Silence, by Dare (2004).
  • "WW scattering at the LHC," by J. M. Butterworth, Brian Cox, and J. R. Forshaw (CERN, 2002).
  • A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking (1998).
  • "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities," by Roger Penrose (Physical Review Letters, 1965).
  • "The Value of Science," by Richard P. Feynman (Internet Archive, 1955).
  • "Brian Cox Live."

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Irving Finkel is an expert on cuneiform — the oldest known writing system. He tells Steve the amazing story of how an ancient clay tablet unlocked the truth about Noah’s ark (and got Finkel in trouble with some Christians).

• SOURCES:
  • Irving Finkel, curator in the department of the Middle East at the British Museum.

• RESOURCES:
  • "How to write cuneiform," by Irving Finkel (The British Museum, 2021).
  • "PBS Nova: Secrets of Noah's Ark," (2015).
  • The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood, by Irving Finkel (2014).
  • "Epic Hero," by David Damrosch (Smithsonian Magazine, 2007).
  • "How Egyptian hieroglyphs were decoded, a timeline to decipherment," (The British Museum).

• EXTRAS:
  • "Jane Goodall, Who Chronicled the Social Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91," by Keith Schneider (New York Times, 2025).
  • "Jane Goodall Changed the Way We See Animals. She’s Not Done." by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).
  • "D:Ream - Things Can Only Get Better," (1993).

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Moon Duchin is a math professor at the University of Chicago whose theoretical work has practical applications for voting and democracy. Why is striving for fair elections so difficult?

• SOURCES:
  • Moon Duchin, professor of mathematics at Cornell University.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Gerrymandering: The Origin Story," by Neely Tucker (Timeless: Stories from the Library of Congress, 2024).
  • "Redistricting for Proportionality," by Gabe Schoenbach and Moon Duchin (The Forum, 2023).
  • "The Atlas Of Redistricting," by Aaron Bycoffe, Ella Koeze, David Wasserman, and Julia Wolfe (FiveThirtyEight, 2018).
  • "In a Comically Drawn Pennsylvania District, the Voters Are Not Amused," by Trip Gabriel (The New York Times, 2018).

• EXTRAS:
  • "State of Texas to begin calling witnesses in federal hearing over Trump-backed congressional map," by Blaise Gainey (KUT News, 2025).
  • "Utah's Redistricting Battle Explained," (PBS Utah, 2025).
  • "Is This the Future of High School?" by People I (Mostly) Admire (2022).

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Frances Arnold pioneered the process of directed evolution — mimicking natural selection to create new enzymes that have changed everything from agriculture to laundry.

• SOURCES:
  • Frances Arnold, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. 

• RESOURCES: 
  • "Innovation by Evolution: Bringing New Chemistry to Life," by Frances Arnold (Nobel Lecture, 2018).
  • "Bacteria taught to bond carbon and silicon for the first time," by Aviva Rutkin (New Scientist, 2016).
  • "Directed evolution of cytochrome c for carbon–silicon bond formation: Bringing silicon to life," by S. B. Jennifer Kan, Russell D. Lewis, Kai Chen, and Frances H. Arnold (Science, 2016).
  • "The Director of Evolution," by Jennifer Ouellette (Slate, 2013).
  • "Engineered ketol-acid reductoisomerase and alcohol dehydrogenase enable anaerobic 2-methylpropan-1-ol production at theoretical yield in Escherichia coli," by Sabine Bastian, Xiang Liu, Joseph T. Meyerowitz, Christopher D. Snow, Mike M. Y. Chen, and Frances H. Arnold (Metabolic Engineering, 2011).
  • Gevo.
  • Provivi.

• EXTRAS:
  • "How to Help Kids Succeed," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2025).
  • The Levitt Lab.

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