People I (Mostly) Admire

Gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna worries that humanity might not be ready for the technology she helped develop. 

Columbia astrophysicist David Helfand is an academic who does things his own way — from turning down job security to helping found a radically unconventional university. 

Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s imaginative ideas for treating disease have led to ten start-ups. She talks with Steve about the next generation of immune therapy she’s created, and why she might rather be a musician.

Climbing the corporate ladder to become head of Nike’s Jordan brand, he kept his teenage murder conviction a secret from employers. Larry talks about living in fear, accepting forgiveness, and why it was easier to be bookish behind bars.

Steve loved Michael Lewis’s latest, The Premonition, but has one critique: Why aren’t there even more villains? Also, why the author of best-sellers Moneyball and The Big Short can barely read a page of his first book without cringing.

A leading expert on the Reformation era, Brad, a University of Notre Dame professor, tells Steve about how the “blood gets sucked out of history,” and why historians and economists don’t quite see eye to eye.

The former chairman of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisors tells Steve how improv comedy was a better training ground for teaching than a Ph.D. from M.I.T., and why he’s glad he was wrong about the automotive-industry bailout.

By mid-century, 10 million people a year are projected to die from untreatable infections. Can Cassandra, an ethnobotanist at Emory University convince Steve that herbs and ancient healing are key to our medical future?

The Columbia neuroscientist and psychology professor Carl Hart believes that recreational drug use, even heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine, is an inalienable right. Can he convince Steve?

Amaryllis Fox is a former C.I.A. operative and host of the Netflix show The Business of Drugs. She explains why intelligence work requires empathy, and she soothes Steve’s fears about weapons of mass destruction.