My podcast diet has become stale. I work from home more, commute less, and have decided not to wear AirPods when others are around, With a family of five this means no more than 30–45 minutes in the early morning before anyone else is up. And those minutes are filled with the usual suspects, which continue to be fine, but they are also two elderly economists with similar views. Where’s the variety?
So, here is an aspirational list of things I will try out in 2024. Be warned: a few years ago I put Lex Friedman’s podcast on a similar list, and apologized profusely after realizing it was a good cure for insomnia and not much else. As always, caveat lector.
- Who Killed JFK looks like someone was playing podcast Mad Libs. (Seasoned journalist) Soledad O’Brien and (B-list celebrity) Rob Reiner discuss (a controversial topic) the JFK assassination. I vaguely remember O’Brien from The Site, back when MSNBC was trying to live up to its first two initials and went all tech all the time. What strange turn of events got her to host a conspiracy theory podcast?
- The Vergecast got on the Maybe list after the POSSE episode. I bumped it up to the Regulars after their In Memoriam to Twitter. I foresee many skipped episodes — 1–2 hours twice per week feels exhausting — but I also skip plenty of ATP and still get enough out of it to be a member.
- Life and Art from FT Weekend is the audio version of the second-best part of FT (the best being the daily Big Read), so how couldn’t it be good? I’m about to find out!
- Conversations with Coleman is what I imagine Tyler Cowen’s podcast would be if he weren’t an old white economist. I also think it’s time I finally started listening to a podcast by someone significantly younger.
- Greatest of All Talk is already on my list, so this is a bit of a downgrade. While I enjoy listening to basketball talk, three hours each week is just too much. This is the year I’ll decide whether to cut it off completely.
If the links above were not explicit enough, here are my actual regulars: ATP, EconTalk, Conversations with Tyler, with a sprinkling of The Talk Show and Dithering. They all feature prominently in years past: 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 — 2018 — The one where I took a break from podcasts — The very first one.