David Eagleman upends myths and describes the vast possibilities of a brainscape that even neuroscientists are only beginning to understand. Steve Levitt interviews him in this special episode of People I (Mostly) Admire.

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

Adam Moss was the best magazine editor of his generation. When he retired, he took up painting. But he wasn’t very good, and that made him sad. So he wrote a book about how creative people work— and, in the process, he made himself happy again.

• SOURCE:
  • Adam Moss, magazine editor and author.

• RESOURCES:
  • The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing, by Adam Moss (2024).
  • "Goodbye, New York. Adam Moss Is Leaving the Magazine He Has Edited for 15 Years," by Michael M. Grynbaum (The New York Times, 2019).
  • Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by Samin Nosrat (2017).

• EXTRAS:
  • "David Simon Is On Strike. Here’s Why," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2023).
  • "Samin Nosrat Always Wanted to Be Famous," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "What’s Wrong with Being a One-Hit Wonder?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

In a wide-ranging conversation with Ezekiel Emanuel, the policymaking physician and medical gadfly, we discuss the massive effects of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. We also talk about the state of cancer care, mysteries in the gut microbiome, flaws in the U.S. healthcare system — and what a second Trump term means for healthcare policy.

• SOURCES:
  • Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for Global Initiatives, co-director of the Health Transformation Institute, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

• RESOURCES:
  • "Obesity Drugs Would Be Covered by Medicare and Medicaid Under Biden Proposal," by Margot Sanger-Katz (The New York Times, 2024).
  • "International Coverage of GLP-1 Receptor Agonists: A Review and Ethical Analysis of Discordant Approaches," by Johan L. Dellgren, and Govind Persad, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel (The Lancet, 2024).
  • The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma, by Mustafa Suleyman (2023).
  • "The Significance of Blockbusters in the Pharmaceutical Industry," by Alexander Schuhmacher, Markus Hinder, Nikolaj Boger, Dominik Hartl, and Oliver Gassmann (Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2022).
  • Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System, by Ezekiel J. Emanuel (2014).
  • "Why I Hope to Die at 75," by Ezekiel J. Emanuel (The Atlantic, 2014).
  • "Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals," by Ziad F. Gellad and Kenneth W. Lyles (The American Journal of Medicine, 2014).
  • Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family, by Ezekiel J. Emanuel (2013).
  • "Bounds in Competing Risks Models and the War on Cancer," by Bo E. Honoré and Adriana Lleras-Muney (Econometrica, 2006).

• EXTRAS:
  • "How to Fix Medical Research," by People I (Mostly) Admire (2024).
  • "The Suddenly Diplomatic Rahm Emanuel," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "Ari Emanuel Is Never Indifferent," by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "Who Pays for Multimillion-Dollar Miracle Cures?" by Freakonomics, M.D. (2023).
  • "Who Gets the Ventilator?" by Freakonomics Radio (2020).