I’ve been listing podcasts since 2014 and 5 years ago to the day it became a yearly ritual. Here is to another year of quality podcasts.
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The Joy of Why by the mathematician Steven Strogatz is the best science podcast from the best science website, Quanta Magazine. He doesn’t pander to the listener and focuses more on the practicality of science than the gee-whiz isn’t science so gosh darn great ethos that plagues other popular science podcasts. The downside is that it is sometimes just at the edge of my understanding Or, if the talk is about mathematics, way way off. but is that really such a bad thing?
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The Jim Rutt Show is a strange beast. The topics are more about the philosophy of science than science itself — with rare but brilliant exceptions — and Jim has a no-nonsense, tells it like it is personality that I find endearing but some might say is a bit grating. He also has unusual ideas about the future of humanity — “Game B” is the preferred name — which I am yet to digest, but that only comes up rarely.
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FT Weekend by Lilah Raptopoulos is probably the heart of “Game A”: nominally it is for and about the ultra-rich readers of the Financial Times — think the abominable passengers of the yacht in Triangle of Sadness — catering to their tastes and interests, but really it is there to satisfy the podcast-listening upper middle class’s interest in that world. Funnily enough, I watched Triangle of Sadness based on Lilah’s interview with the director.
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Conversations with Tyler by Tyler Cowen haven’t made an appearance in a while, but I continue listening and this year has been one of the better ones. His interview with Jeremy Grantham, the investor turned philanthropist, is hands down the best one hour I’ve spent listening in 2022.
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Countdown with Keith Olbermann is my guilty pleasure which at one point I listened daily but then realized it was unsustainable and saved it only for special moments like the day after the American midterm elections or Keith’s twitter ban. Snark is like candy — pleasurable in tiny bursts, but too much will rot your brain. Caveat audiens.
These are only the new or semi-new regulars. Others continue being in rotation: With rare exceptions, but so it goes. 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 — 2018 — The one where I took a break from podcasts — The very first one