HN Explorer

Ask HN: Favorite Podcast Episode of 2021?

220 points by hnu0847 ↗ HN
Mine was Fall of Civilizations Episode 12, about the Inca empire:

https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2021/01/12/episode-12-is-now-live/

146 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 223 ms ] thread
wdella
For excellent reporting on a dystopian intersection of tech and politics:

Darknet Diaries Episode 100: NSO

On a different note: a whimsical, impossible, and hilarious improvised musical:

Mission to Zyxx Episode 507: A Little ‘Ditty about Jack and Shai’an

drcode
Sean Carroll and David Wallace, who know their sh*t, doing a deep dive on entropy and how it relates to time and the "past hypothesis".

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/08/02/158-...

cjwilliams
Its really impressive the consistent level headed quality that Sean Carrol produces. He might be less popular because of it, but he’s not yet peddled controversy as content. Which is rare when the incentives suggest otherwise
lhoff
Hands down this Lex's interview with Joscha Bach. Very inspiring and a lot of interesting viewpoints. https://lexfridman.com/joscha-bach-2/

EDIT For German Speakers i'd also recommend these two episodes: - http://www.jungundnaiv-podcast.de/2021/09/535-aladin-el-mafa... - https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/2021-03/maja-goepel-intervi...

aspectmin
Wow - absolutely the same here. That was an amazing discussion.
fredoliveira
This one for me as well. I found myself having to pause and contemplate some of the ideas in that one several times. It's fascinating to hear Joscha describe how he models everything around us. Definitely worth a (patient, attentive) listen.
sva_
I may also recommend his appearance on 'Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal' and

> For German Speakers

Also https://alternativlos.org/42/

lhoff
I actually prefere the Talk on Alternativlos because it was easier for me to grasp the complex ideas. I was listening it again just last week. But for the mostly English speaking community here the talk with LeX is equally good.
VieEnCode
Is Bach well-regarded in the AI community? I found this podcast a very interesting listen and checked out many of his others. He is a compelling speaker, but I am in not any way qualified to verify his claims. He also seems somewhat categorical in his statements about things that perhaps don't warrant such confidence: e.g. his view of the nature of mind, consciousness, the self, dreams, etc.
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swayson
The impression I get is he specialises more around the philsophy of AI and cybernetics.
wenbin
It’s hard for me to pick one, as I’ve listened to many :)

Here’s my master playlist (the only rss I subscribe on overcast): https://lnns.co/3iXVgJq5MRa

stunt
I enjoyed many of the "The Rest Is History" episodes but oddly not any of the ones that they did in December.

https://play.acast.com/s/the-rest-is-history-podcast

marcinpikusa
My favorite podcast discovery of the year! massive lads! ;)
sundarurfriend
Ah, you're not talking about the one with Frank Skinner on it; I thought maybe it got revived recently.
stunt
Subjectively speaking of course. Also I haven't listened to all December episodes to be honest.

Great podcast overall and can't recommend it enough.

ant1frag1le
Their first episodes are a bit unorganized but this podcast became one of my favorite podcasts of all time.

Two very knowledgeable historians with extremely interesting episodes. And very very funny. I learned a lot and i found my self laughing many times while listening to them.

simonbarker87
Two really stand out to me 1. Matt Wensing on a life of entrepreneurship and software dev. Pretty recent but I’ve listened twice already.

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/236_matt_wensing

2. Ben Carpenter on the James Smith podcast. Two PTs talking about massive life changes seeking happiness and the downsides of life in the UK and mental health. Have listened to this three times now.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ben-carpenter/id144472...

bwanab
Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast has been the Russian Revolution in 2021 and as always, is very detailed and informative.
sofixa
I particularly enjoyed it. It's like listening to a slow train crash, there are just so many wrong moves by so many people it's terrifying.

Also it changed my perception of many of the participants.

danr4
these threads always bring the worst of my FOMO.
andreilys
Tim Ferriss's second episode with Balaji was great. It was around 4-5 hours, and Tim just steps aside letting Balaji brain dump on all sorts of interesting topics and ideas.

https://tim.blog/2021/11/15/balaji-srinivasan-2/

tailspin2019
Just started listening to this on your recommendation. (Thanks!) I wasn’t familiar with Balaji before now but he’s clearly a smart guy and a deep thinker.

I find myself disagreeing with quite a lot of what he’s saying (to the extent that I’m educated enough on some of the topics to even have an opinion), but will keep listening as it’s interesting to hear a viewpoint that’s perhaps slightly outside of my normal bubble.

andreilys
That's probably my favorite part about Balaji, is his thinking is so multi-faceted and original that you're naturally going to come across things you agree with him and disagree.
f0e4c2f7
Hopefully posting this doesn't get it taken down...

I really enjoyed that interview on Tim's podcast and I've been working my way through some of Balaji's other interviews and videos online.

I'm currently watching this one someone posted of his coursera course from 2012 all pasted together into one video over 7 hours long. I have come to like this format more and more on youtube becuase you just resume and don't have to worry about finding the next video etc.

Anyway, watching this in the context of it being from 2012 is pretty mindblowing and the advice has seemed like it would have been quite good back then (some of it still now too I'm sure.)

The name of the course was Startup Engineering. I don't believe it's available on Coursera or anywhere else anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QC1FK2_pqg

guidovranken
I used to follow Balaji on Twitter, he frequently had original and eloquent perspectives on things, but his incessant web3 evangelism turned me off.
m_ke
He's the Jordan Peterson of tech, profound sounding with zero substance.
dnautics
The crazy thing to me is that he gave an interview? once in how genomics is not "big data" in the same way that anything else is big data in tech and that interview seems to have been memory holed, even though imo it's the most profound analysis I think he has ever given (I used to work in genomics and now I work in ml), and there is a real sub community of the tech sector that needs to understand what he said but doesn't.
heymijo
Memory holed is a good term for balaji. I don't recall the specifics but a few years back I put him in a bucket of people not worth listening to.

It was when he was sort of an a16z partner, but also had a bitcoin startup (hardware to mine cryptocurrency) funded by them, then he made a bid to be a part of the Trump administration and scrubbed his entire Twitter timeline. This was probably 6 years ago now. He seemed disingenuous then. Don't know about him now.

porknubbins
This was an incredibly broad ranging episode though I think Balaji throws out a lot of ideas with an unwarranted level of certainty. The parallel of historical centralization-decentralization-recentralization cycles (ie the Protestant reformation-Catholic counterreformation) to the internet was pretty interesting.
jkeat
TrueAnon's trilogy on Tesla

https://soundcloud.com/trueanonpod/lamest-show-1

> how a nerdy dot-com gold chaser hacked the self-satisfied neoliberal green political regime and orchestrated a cacophonous symphony of thirsty social media marketeers, auto industry executives, captured and bought off media, and the bull market ride of the century. At the center of all of this is the pied piper of the redditmen, our very own epic bacon PT Barnum — Elon Musk — who rightly understands that branding really is everything and that so long as you can keep the music going the party doesn’t have to end.

BrissyCoder
+1 came here to post this.

I knew Musk was a bit of an asshole but didn't realize to what extent he was an absolute fraud.

[dead] elevenoh
[dead] shimonabi
lwhalen
Indeed, deadly misinformation about a disease with a 99.8% survival rate. The shame, the horror...
Bilal_io
809300 deaths out of 51574787 cases is 1.5%. that's nothing if you don't care about the people that died, or the many that suffered and lived.
qwerqsdfqw
How many deaths does it take be considered deadly?

Based on the survival rate of 99.8% in 7B (approx world's population) is about 14M deaths (if we are not there yet, we should be tending towards it based on the survival rate). Besides, this doesn't consider cases of long covid, financial and other impact on people/families etc.

sveng
This doctor's claims made on that podcast have been largely debunked.[0] And his association with a serious-sounding medical group is rather revealing.[1]

JRE as Entertainment? Yes. Accurate guidance on important science issues? Not so much.[2]

[0]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/joe-rogan-...

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/rgzvr3/something_...

[2]https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health-and-nutrit...

rzz3
It’s sad that HN deletes the original comment so I can’t see what this is in response to, though I see the doctor’s name in your links. Going to watch the original and then read your links. Even though this “doctor” is probably a whack job, I love listening to people I disagree with and seeing their points rebutted.
hnu0847
If you click on your username in the upper right hand corner, there should be a "showdead:" option that you can set to "yes" in order to see these posts.
thricegr8
Undoubtedly that personal award goes to Citations Needed Episode 73: Western Media’s Narrow, Colonial Definition of ‘Corruption’. You can read the transcript on Medium [1] or listen on Spotify [2].

It may seem a bit bromide for HN, but it really shattered my world view. Or at least was the impetus of a rather radical shift in how I viewed global power structures, old wealth, and the evil systems in place today that continue to perpetuate global inequality. In the episode, they dig into these popular "corruption" indices, why the Global South is always painted as the "most corrupt", true sources of institutionalized corruption, where the real tax havens and how they operate. It even highlights a (previously unknown to me at least!) stark and admittedly macabre distinction between London, the city in England and the ancient The City of London [3]. Yes there is a huge difference with the latter being a 1,000 British colonial-era holdover that's home to the largest tax haven hub in the world.

As a bonus, it features Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist who wrote The Divide [4]. Which, for reasons outlined above, is also one of my favorite books ever. If you find my poor attempt of summary or the article/podcast interesting, I'd implore you to buy the book and learn something new.

All the world is a stage and indeed we are merely players.

[1] - https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-73-western-medias...

[2] - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7cf3g7670FYKrD9OE6vHQd?si=v...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

[4] - https://www.jasonhickel.org/the-divide

Edit: Just to clarify, this episode is from 2019. I did not interpret the question clearly and assumed it was in the spirit of "Favorite podcast episode you listened to this year". Hope this helps.

istjohn
I'm intrigued, but this episode is from April 2019.
thricegr8
Ya know, you're right. I guess I assumed the OP meant more along the lines of "What was your favorite podcast episode you listened to this year" vs the more literal translation. I'll throw in an edit to clarify.
akudha
Thank you for recommending episode 73, it was very interesting. I had some idea from this book https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-of-Economic-Hitman-audiob... but this is even more interesting. I read this book more than 15 years ago, I suppose things are much more sophisticated, crooked and hidden now :(

This is all soooooo depressing :(

Brakenshire
> Yes there is a huge difference with the latter being a 1,000 British colonial-era holdover that's home to the largest tax haven hub in the world.

In what sense is it a colonial-era holdover? Unless you mean Norman colonialism.

dundarious
It just means it is in some meaningful sense unchanged since that time-frame. It says nothing about whether The City itself was colonized.
wodenokoto
I’m guessing this is not the same citation needed as when Tom Scott does citation needed with the technical difficulties.

Here’s a link to one of their episodes: https://youtu.be/1nd5HsxWXTI

tmsh
Steve Yegge’s tech predictions for the next 10-30 years:

https://youtu.be/8xwSRB3eGXY

f0e4c2f7
I didn't know Steve had a podcast. I've read some of his writing and really enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing I'll check it out.
sundarurfriend
Me neither! The first one on this page that's got me excited.
bijant
Odd not to see an episode from the Odd Lots podcast here (going by how often it gets cited in economic/supply chain discussions around here)

My favorite would certainly be an Amp Hour Episode if I knew which one to pick. Have still held out for the annual Keyzermas Episode so that one could easily take the title.Chris Gammell is just an all-around cool dude who's always asking the right questions to get the most out of his guests.

Honorable Mention goes to some reverse engineering podcast that must remain unnamed. Its great but far to infrequent.