Stefanie Stantcheva’s (@S_Stantcheva) approach seemed like career suicide. In fact, it won her the John Bates Clark Medal. She talks to fellow winner @StevenDLevitt about why she uses methods that most of the profession dismisses.

From recording some of the first rap hits to revitalizing Johnny Cash’s career, @RickRubin has had an extraordinary creative life. In this episode he talks about his new book — and helps @StevenDLevitt get in touch with his own artistic side.

More than two decades ago, Adam Riess’s Nobel Prize-winning work fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. His new work is reshaping cosmology for a second time.

Uri Simonsohn (@uri_sohn) is a behavioral science professor who wants to improve standards in his field — so he’s made a sideline of investigating fraudulent academic research. He tells @StevenDLevitt how he does it.

Former U.S. Secretary of Education, 3×3 basketball champion, and leader of an anti-gun violence organization are all on @arneduncan’s resume. He’s also Steve’s neighbor. The two talk about teachers caught cheating in Chicago public schools.

Kate Marvel (@DrKateMarvel) spends her days playing with climate models. As a physicist she gets tired of being asked to weigh in on economics, geopolitics, and despair — but she defends the right of scientists to have strong feelings about the planet.

Twenty years ago, before the “Freakonomics” book tour, Bill McGowan (@BillMcGowan22) taught Steve Levitt to speak in public. In his new book he tries to teach everyone else.

Former professional poker player @AnnieDuke wrote a book about @StevenDLevitt’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.

Psychologist David Yeager thinks the conventional wisdom for how to motivate young people is all wrong. His model for helping kids cope with stress is required reading at @StevenDLevitt’s new high school.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a botanist, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and the author of the bestselling “Braiding Sweetgrass.” In her new book she criticizes the market economy — but she and Steve find a surprising amount of common ground.

Palliative physician B.J. Miller (@bjmillermd) asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?

Historian Tom Holland (@holland_tom) escaped a career writing vampire novels to become the co-host of the podcast “The Rest Is History.” At @StevenDLevitt’s request, he compares President Trump and Julius Caesar and explains the culture wars.

John Green (@johngreen) returns to the show to talk about tuberculosis — a disease that kills more than a million people a year. @StevenDLevitt has an idea for a new way to get treatment to those in need.

Abraham Verghese (@abe_verghese) is a physician and a best-selling author. He explains the difference between curing and healing, and tells @StevenDLevitt why doctors should spend more time with patients and less with electronic health records.

Jens Ludwig has an idea for how to fix America’s gun violence problem — and it starts by rejecting conventional wisdom from both sides of the political aisle.

On this week’s episode: Ellen Wiebe is a physician who helps seriously ill patients end their lives in Canada, where assisted suicide is legal. Is death a human right?

Things haven’t always come easily for Yul Kwon. Steve Levitt talks to Kwon about his debilitating childhood anxieties, his compulsion to choose the hardest path in life, and how Kwon used game theory to stage a victory on Survivor.

Can robots get a grip? Ken Goldberg is at the forefront of robotics — which means he tries to teach machines to do things humans find trivial.

Suzanne O'Sullivan is a neurologist who sees many patients with psychosomatic disorders. Their symptoms may be psychological in origin, but their pain is real and physical — and the way we practice medicine, she argues, is making health problems worse.

Reginald Dwayne Betts spent more than eight years in prison. Today he's a Yale Law graduate, a MacArthur Fellow, and a poet. His nonprofit works to build libraries in prisons so that more incarcerated people can find hope.