Agreed, and he asks unique questions not only because he's got an unusual turn of mind, but because he does (or seems to do) an enormous amount of prep work for

Agreed, and he asks unique questions not only because he's got an unusual turn of mind, but because he does (or seems to do) an enormous amount of prep work for each interview. Some of my favorite moments on that show are when he asks a subject something related to an old blog post they wrote on a personal topic, or a paper they contributed to as a grad student, and they're like "wait, you know about that?"