Who is my favorite public intellectual?

Over the weekend I sat in on Anna Gát’s Interintellect Salon, which I enjoyed.  Many of the participants were asked who is their favorite public intellectual.  My answer was something like:

Alex Tabarrok, he’d better be, I’ve been working with him for thirty years!  There would be something wrong if he wasn’t.  And I always look forward to reading what he writes.

So there you go.  None of the other answers, worthy though they were, had equivalent support in demonstrated preference.