How smart is a forest? ecologist studies the relationships between trees in a forest: they talk to each other, punish each other, and depend on each other. What can we learn from them?
People I (Mostly) Admire’s Tweets
. thinks you don’t know what math is. The mathematician and author sees mathematical patterns everywhere — from DNA to fireflies to social connections.
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When Freakonomics co-authors and Stephen Dubner first met, one of them hated the other. Two decades later, Levitt grills Dubner about asking questions, growing the pie, and what he learned from Bruce Springsteen.
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. has always used field experiments to say revolutionary things about economics. He explains the value of an apology, why scaling shouldn’t be an afterthought, and why he moved to the private sector to stay at the forefront of science.
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. thinks you should quit. The former professional poker player has a new book on Steve’s favorite subject: quitting. They talk about why quitting is so hard, how to do it sooner, and why we feel shame when we do something that’s good for us.
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.’s reluctant rocket ship ride: The author and YouTuber thought his breakout bestseller wouldn’t be a commercial success, wrote 40,000 words for one sentence, and brought Steve to tears.
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. changed the way we see animals. She's not done. This week, the ethologist and conservationist discusses the thrill of observing chimpanzees in the wild, the value of challenging orthodoxy, and her next great adventure. freak.ws/3SL8byE
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Peter Singer isn’t a saint, but he’s better than Steve Levitt. This week on People I (Mostly) Admire, the philosopher known for his rigorous ethics explains why Steve is leading a morally inconsistent life.
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Congratulations to on winning the in chemistry! To celebrate, we’re re-releasing her conversation with on her innovative research, and why she might have preferred to be a musician.
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How does describe her new venture? “A scalable, software platform that can move at the speed and scale that it would have to to protect businesses, to protect all kinds of assets, not just within capitalism, but within governments.”
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Growing up in a religious family, was pulled out of a course on evolution in 8th grade. Then she went to college. “You can imagine my shock as I learned microbiology and went, ‘Wait a second, molecular evolution is happening every minute.’”
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. admires that has been able to build her life around something that only she loves: pandemics and plagues. “I do love pandemics and plagues,” says Dean. “But I love them 'cause it's the history of the world.”
. describes the sources she looked at in the early days of Covid. “You have to go looking for hints anywhere. That's why I've described my job as a health officer as a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones.”
After an amazing career in public health, has moved to the private sector. “Jumping into Silicon Valley was like landing on a foreign Star Wars planet, a whole different language and culture. Even the laws of gravity are different.”
. asks if she regrets not jumping into the private sector sooner. “No, because I needed to learn the lessons I learned the hard way to deeply understand in my soul that capitalism could build the solution, not the government.”
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“So you get to be a public health officer in Santa Barbara and pre-Covid, you're worrying a lot about tuberculosis. Was it easy to get other people excited about that topic?” —
“Uh, no it was not.” —
.’s path to becoming a doctor was far from certain. “I didn't know anyone with a four year degree when I was a child, much less someone who had gone to medical school.”
. wants to know how has handled fame after the publication of Michael Lewis’s book The Premonition. “I've largely ignored it and put my head down to build software.”
. checked her phone every morning while at the Public Health Department “to see if I had any reports back from the state on the molecular mutations of my new tuberculosis cases. That was the most exciting moment of the day.”
There were limits to how good any individual state could have handled Covid, says . “California can get an A+ but if all the other states surrounding California are not doing the same then the disease spreads no matter what California does.”
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. says concepts from evolution taught her a lot about the private sector. “Startups are the research lab of American capitalism. The startups that survive are selected for as being ones best suited for what the market wants to buy today.”
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Our guest this week, , is a physician and leading voice in the field of public health. If policymakers had taken her early warnings about Covid-19 seriously, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. Listen now:
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“I've heard it said about you that when you were young and feeling kind of blue, you cheered yourself up by reading books about the bubonic plague. Is that really true?” —
“Yes, in fact, it's still true today.” —
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Heeding the warnings of public health officer about Covid-19 could have saved lives. Charity explains why she loves infectious diseases and why she moved to the private sector.
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A cross between Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. This week on People I (Mostly) Admire:
. says that changed him. “I do not recognize the human being that started class there on September 13, 1971 and the human being who graduated in late May of 1975. I do not recognize that person. It rearranged all my molecules.”
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Legendary documentarian has known that he wanted to be a filmmaker since he was 12. Listen to him explain:
. says his new documentary reveals many uncomfortable truths about American icons. “Henry Ford bought a newspaper, and he had printed the protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the worst anti-Semitic tract.”
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Making a documentary is a constant work-in-progress, says . “We never stop researching. And we never stop writing. In our script, there isn't a word that hasn't been considered or say, ‘Yep, that works.’”
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. explains that the Holocaust didn’t just happen overnight. “This happens in drip, drip, drip. The Germans are looking — what can we get away with? What can we do?
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.’s discusses what the U.S. could have done differently during the Holocaust. “Screaming louder might have helped. We didn't do that. Maybe relieving the pressures at all the places where Jews could get out might have made it easier for people?”
It’s challenging to wrap our heads around big numbers, including the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. “Six million is just one of the most opaque phrases I've ever come across in my life. It's an impenetrable fortress,” says .
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This week, discusses his new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust. He says it’s time to revisit that story “when the democratic institutions that have held us together for 240+ years seem fragile and susceptible to the lies of a demagogue.”
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The documentary filmmaker , known for The Civil War, Jazz, and Baseball, turns his attention to the Holocaust, and asks what we can learn from the evils of the past.
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Ken Burns on heroism, horror, and history. This week on People I (Mostly) Admire:
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Economist Raj Chetty pivoted research interests a decade ago when he got his hands on a new data set from the IRS. Listen to the questions he can answer with that data:
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Raj Chetty recently found that low-income kids with more high-income friends tend to do better as adults. One explanation: “You might be more likely to go to college if you hang out with families where their kids tend to go to college.”
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There are some areas of the country where the American dream is still very much alive, like the Great Plains. But for areas like much of the Southeast or the industrial cities of the Midwest…not so much. Listen to economist Raj Chetty explain:
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About 90% of all kids born in 1940 ended up earning more than their parents. That number dropped to about 50% for kids born in 1980. Why the sharp decline? Listen now: