I really enjoyed his book Why We Sleep, but I think it important to inform people about the criticisms that have been been raised against some of his claims [0]. If you listen to him remember to take claims with a grain of salt. HN discussion from two months ago [1].
The thesis is still solid though: sleep is incredibly important for your health.
I take most claims by experts with a grain of salt or two. If you listen to the podcast, he basically covers the fundamentals of sleep hygeine (which are not controversial) and provides references for further study. He is also very careful to point out speculation vs evidence, and correlation vs causation.
do you have a citation on that? Sleep deprivation makes people sleepy and it does seem to have negative cognitive effects, but I'm not aware of evidence of negative health effects of lack of sleep.
Right, this is more controversial than people think. I've seen studies that you don't actually see a higher rate of mortality until the hours are ridiculously low. Like less than 4 hours, on average
This might be pretty unconventional, but I have two favourites. One is called 'The Exploring Series', and is essentially a podcast researching and summarising mythical stories, DnD lore, SCP lore, Lovecraft lore, etc. The other is Sleep With Me, which is just incessant rambling about a story or an episode of a TV show.
I don't listen to the for the content. I listen to them because they help me sleep better in the winter, when I can't open the window to hear the ambient noise outside without making myself ill. I can't sleep in pure silence, it's too quiet. Both podcast authors have very warm and soothing voices and it's so easy to fall asleep with a nice bed time story like that.
Love EconTalk. I can't find anything else that is as consistently thoughtful and thought-provoking. Any suggestions?
However, my impression is Andrew McAffee's research didn't take into account how outsourcing would affect the data! So I'm taking it with a grain of salt.
I discovered The Anthropocene Reviewed last year. My favorite review is Tetris: “Tetris is a game about time and space. Time is always speeding up, with blocks falling faster and faster, and space is always filling in. There is no winning, Tetris always ends the same way, no matter how expertly you place the blocks. You play until you die. It takes five minutes to learn Tetris. It’s not grand or ambitious. It’s merely perfect.” — https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/e...
His interview with Vitalik Buterin is probably one of the most insightful podcast episodes I've ever heard. I kind of wish a lot more of my own conversations were like that one.
The excellent Omega Tau podcast also has lots of interviews with people who flew or fly various planes including the F-16, F15, Tornado, F-14 and others.
13 Minutes was incredibly well done. A limited series best listened to from start to finish, so fair to recommend it in its entirety. For those in this audience looking for a gem: Episode 5 is about the Apollo Guidance Computer.
+1 for this. They had a great discussion about the effects automation and AI will have on the workforce. It's long but worth a listen, even if you're skeptical about UBI as a solution.
This was definitely the most impactful podcast that I listened to this year. It changed how I think and for the first time in my life I have a political candidates that I truly respect and support. Glad to answer any questions.
Can't think of a specific episode, but all the controversial ideas discussed in the Red Scare podcast have really twisted around my brain (and put words to things I thought only I were alone in observing) recently.
Tbh, some anti-tech ideas (essentially eloquently presenting steelmanned ideas I'd only had at the periphery of my mind). All their ideas which goes against the grain, that I find valuable. (Warning tho: there's a lot of dopey-ness, amateurishness, and ideas in the podcast that I don't agree with. It's not for everyone. But I've found a lot of value in it the last month of listening to it.)
I wish podcast clients had social features builtin. As much as I dislike Spotify moving into the podcast space and challenging the current free landscape of RSS feeds. Not one client has the simple ability to add an episode you liked to a playlist to share.
I have to share the link to myself on Telegram and than bookmark it myself..
Yeah, I don't use Spotify (I use a competitor that I think is a lot better) and am always annoyed when people use it to link songs.
Services like YouTube let everyone view everything, even if you don't log in. That might be your best bet for creating playlists of any kind of audio or video, though of course there are a lot of copyright infringement concerns if you're uploading podcast episodes yourself.
The Assembly Line[0] is a podcast from the NES Home brew scene. Was fun to learn that NES development continues using 6502 assembly. Can be supported via Patreon[1]
I also listen to In our time. But maybe it is because I am not native English speaker, but I find the host quite rude to the experts, often interrupts them unnecessarily etc?
I know what you mean, but I think it’s more down to the fact that it’s broadcast live on BBC radio, and they have 45 minutes to cover as much as they can of the week’s topic. The host, Melvyn Bragg, has to run a tight ship to keep the guests from drifting from the topic or going in to too much detail. (The opposite problem — a poor chairperson — is often why meetings at work can drag or seem unfocused.)
I love In Our Time. Broadcast since 1998, a podcast since 2004, over 800 episodes. And almost every single one is pure gold.
I agree with you. I find Melvyn Braggs rudeness quite useful. (And it doesn't seem like the quests mind. I mean, they're adults, they can handle some pressure to be succinct.)
That's interesting. Without a doubt, he directs the conversations forcefully. I've never thought of him as rude or interrupting, but now that you point it out it's easy for me to imagine him coming across that way.
I definitely know what you mean, and you can see it mentioned in reviews on Apple's podcast app quite frequently. I think it's mostly a cultural difference.
It feels like he conducts the show sort of like a stern professor at storied British school or something along those lines. Very concerned with concision and clarity. I don't tend to mind it but I can see why it would seem odd or off-putting to people.
I recently discovered iot, and good lord is that the best podcast. I adore how the host wrangles academics on his show to keep them on topic. Just hilarious. And the topics are all over the place, making each week a real undiscovered gem.
I love IOT and appreciate Melvin Bragg, but I’ve increasingly felt he tends to arbitrarily challenge (and even bully) some of his guests - typically younger women. On the other hand, he has “regulars” who, suave as they may be, invariably get a pass to ramble - and they are all old English men. He also clearly has much less patience for scientific topics than the humanities, and on literary subjects he pushes his own biases pretty strongly (which is a bit of an abuse of power). I have this feeling that he’s turning into a latter-day John Humphrys, it might be time for some rotation.
Yes to all this. I think he has gotten more curmudgeonly over the last couple of years, and definitely seems to let the "emeritus" set hold court for awhile, while being much more curt and critical of others.
I think part of his sharpness with scientists is rooted in a commitment to making specialists speak plainly and understandably for the audience, without jargon or insider-y concepts.
I'm not sure what is meant by impactful, but for me the most interesting podcasts this year have all been miniseries, namely
* 13 Minutes to the Moon (13 episodes) - a documentary about the 13 minutes leading up to the first moon landing
* The Drop Out (8 episodes) - a documentary about Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes
* The Missing CryptoQueen (10 episodes) - a documentary about the OneCoin scam and how far it has reached, along with the disappearance of its founder.
In terms of stand out episodes:
* Supernova in the East III (Hardcore History) - a continuation of the 'Supernova' series, I recommend listening to the first 2 though.
Sean Carroll's solo podcast where he explains how the plank lenght is relative and how we should arrive at quantum gravity through the means of quantum physics, not by quantizing relativity. Blew my mind several times over.
Impactful for me in terms of making my daily 1h commute actually enjoyable...a bunch of funny, crazy, sad, happy stories about drugs, homelessness, prison and lots more called "It's All Bad" https://www.instagram.com/itisallbad/?hl=en
Came across it on a Marc Maron WTF episode..which is also great (WTF podcast)
I would say Naval Ravikant in Joe Rogan Experience [0]. A bit preachy (similar to Osho whom he quotes) but there is some things that are actionable and is an interesting point of view.
I'm catching up on Knowledge Project (which is quite a listen) so these are not from 2019, I just happened to listen to them last year. The ones that had the most impact are:
- Is Sugar Slowly Killing Us? My Conversation with Gary Taubes [1]. I got interested in this subject following the NYT expose on how sugar lobby shifted blame onto fat [2]. This builds up on that for me.
- Survival of the Kindest: Dacher Keltner Reveals the New Rules of Power [3] This may be a selection bias as I had a feeling "survival of the fittest" is perhaps productive in short run but would end with species of one. Imho, the way to succeed is to collaborate and share knowledge else we may never have survived hunter gathering phase. So this episode resonated with me.
A16Z's Incenting Innovation Inside Loonshots to Moonshots [4]. Having been through a significant cultural shift at my organization, the analogy of water freezing at 32F and hysteresis to explain how company culture could change dynamically or how in the same organization there are pockets that could be at two extremes on a spectrum, was quite spot on.
I'd recommend episodes 4/5 (one story split over two episodes) of the 1619 Project as well, learned a lot about how finance works in an agriculture setting.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadSuperFastBusiness: https://www.superfastbusiness.com/list-all/
It was really a wake up call for sleep hygeine, and prompted me to get a sleep study, which has changed my life after getting a sleep device.
The thesis is still solid though: sleep is incredibly important for your health.
[0] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850
do you have a citation on that? Sleep deprivation makes people sleepy and it does seem to have negative cognitive effects, but I'm not aware of evidence of negative health effects of lack of sleep.
I don't listen to the for the content. I listen to them because they help me sleep better in the winter, when I can't open the window to hear the ambient noise outside without making myself ill. I can't sleep in pure silence, it's too quiet. Both podcast authors have very warm and soothing voices and it's so easy to fall asleep with a nice bed time story like that.
We're still children inside, after all.
[1]: https://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
[2]: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/margaret-atwood/
However, my impression is Andrew McAffee's research didn't take into account how outsourcing would affect the data! So I'm taking it with a grain of salt.
Someone shared this article with me recently that looks at how trade affects CO2, but I haven't dug into it yet: https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
Beautiful essays by John Green. I only started listening at the end of December.
--
I've also been checking out the Political Philosophy Podcast, and I've liked what I've heard till now: https://www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/
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Again, I can't choose specific episodes, but Heavyweight is pretty amazing too: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/heavyweight
Special mention for the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/anthropocene-reviewed/e...
John Carmack on Joe Rogan - not really impactful but still a really good episode.
1) B-52 Stratofortress 2) Mig-29 Fulcrum 3) SR-71 Blackbird
The Seen and The Unseen -
1) Our Colorful Past 2) The 2019 Elections 3) The India-Pakistan Conflict 4) Kashmir and Article 370
Lapham's Quarterly -
1) William Dairymple
The Joe Rogan Experience -
1). Edward Snoweden
NPR Throughline -
1) The Dark Side Of The Moon
Podcast series -
1) 13 Minutes To The Moon 2) The Chernobyl Podcast
My inner jet-obsessed child is very excited for this.
Nice find OP! Would love to find a podcast that covers WW2 battles (e.g. Battle of Midway)
https://omegataupodcast.net/
There is also an excellent episode where the host Markus, got to live his childhood dream and fly an F-16!
It's also excellent on science and engineering generally.
https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/podcasts#favorite-episodes
I wish podcast clients had social features builtin. As much as I dislike Spotify moving into the podcast space and challenging the current free landscape of RSS feeds. Not one client has the simple ability to add an episode you liked to a playlist to share.
I have to share the link to myself on Telegram and than bookmark it myself..
> As much as I dislike Spotify moving into the podcast space and challenging the current free landscape of RSS feeds
Seems like Spotify (as a podcast client) does what you want it to. Why you then dislike it?
Aside from above. I dislike the idea of a podcast being available on only one 'platform'.
Services like YouTube let everyone view everything, even if you don't log in. That might be your best bet for creating playlists of any kind of audio or video, though of course there are a lot of copyright infringement concerns if you're uploading podcast episodes yourself.
It could happen here - first episode
The foreign American - indigenous people
[0] https://open.spotify.com/show/2VsQ6qauI2R8yqbfNTnIk7 [1] https://www.patreon.com/nesassemblyline
I'm excited to try others listed here that are new to me, though.
I love In Our Time. Broadcast since 1998, a podcast since 2004, over 800 episodes. And almost every single one is pure gold.
It feels like he conducts the show sort of like a stern professor at storied British school or something along those lines. Very concerned with concision and clarity. I don't tend to mind it but I can see why it would seem odd or off-putting to people.
I think part of his sharpness with scientists is rooted in a commitment to making specialists speak plainly and understandably for the audience, without jargon or insider-y concepts.
* 13 Minutes to the Moon (13 episodes) - a documentary about the 13 minutes leading up to the first moon landing
* The Drop Out (8 episodes) - a documentary about Theranos/Elizabeth Holmes
* The Missing CryptoQueen (10 episodes) - a documentary about the OneCoin scam and how far it has reached, along with the disappearance of its founder.
In terms of stand out episodes:
* Supernova in the East III (Hardcore History) - a continuation of the 'Supernova' series, I recommend listening to the first 2 though.
Excellent exploration of the intersection of psychotherapy and meditation. With bonus Circling practise and Integral theory talk thrown in.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/meditation-emotions-bi...
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/09/09/63-s...
Came across it on a Marc Maron WTF episode..which is also great (WTF podcast)
https://samharris.org/podcasts/175-leaving-faith/
It's a major social/political issue of our time with no obvious/imminent end in sight and I recommend the episode to everyone.
I'm catching up on Knowledge Project (which is quite a listen) so these are not from 2019, I just happened to listen to them last year. The ones that had the most impact are:
- Is Sugar Slowly Killing Us? My Conversation with Gary Taubes [1]. I got interested in this subject following the NYT expose on how sugar lobby shifted blame onto fat [2]. This builds up on that for me.
- Survival of the Kindest: Dacher Keltner Reveals the New Rules of Power [3] This may be a selection bias as I had a feeling "survival of the fittest" is perhaps productive in short run but would end with species of one. Imho, the way to succeed is to collaborate and share knowledge else we may never have survived hunter gathering phase. So this episode resonated with me.
A16Z's Incenting Innovation Inside Loonshots to Moonshots [4]. Having been through a significant cultural shift at my organization, the analogy of water freezing at 32F and hysteresis to explain how company culture could change dynamically or how in the same organization there are pockets that could be at two extremes on a spectrum, was quite spot on.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44
[1] https://fs.blog/2017/11/gary-taubes-sugar/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in...
[3] https://fs.blog/2018/03/dacher-keltner-power/
[4] https://a16z.com/2019/03/24/loonshots-moonshots-incentives-o...
And generally Why Is This Happening is fantastic. Here are three of my favorite episodes from the past year:
Michael Lewis of Moneyball fame: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-break-federal-gove...
David Wallace-Wells on climate change: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/fighting-climate-actio...
Jesse Eisinger from ProPublica on the challenges of taxing the super-rich: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/can-we-tax-rich-jesse-...