The Incomparable’s episode about The Boy and the Heron was a good sanity check that my own intuition was right. Yes, it’s weird and yes, most of it is just a dream, following the incoherent-but-comprehensible dream logic better than most movies. As a non-native speaker of English I did not find Christian Bale’s voice acting as off-putting as TI guests did, but I agree that he comes off as not a very nice person and even a bit of a war profiteer. How that can be any different in the Japanese version I can’t foresee, but I’ll find out soon enough.

📚 Finished reading: Toxic Exposure by Chadi Nabhan, in record time. The prose may have been clunky but the drama of the Monsanto Rondup trials was real and the book was a page-turner, so it took me less than 48 hours to zip through cover to cover.

The court transcripts make the story, especially when Chadi was cross-examined about the nuances of probability, causality and informed risk. If those topics sounds appealing, I recommend you listen to Chadi’s one-hour conversation with Nassim Taleb about the book. If only Taleb could have been there as an expert witness…

Nassim Taleb doesn’t often do podcasts unless they are with Russ Roberts, so him being a guest on The Tim Ferris Show was a surprise. The episode begins with a protracted introduction and a lot of reminiscing, but things take off in the second half which is an excellent introduction to Taleb’s concepts on probability.

Great for forwarding to friends and family who may have heard of Ferris but don’t know anything about Taleb except for his Twitter escapades (or are they now called X-scapades)? .

🍿 The Incomparable podcast recently had a series of episodes dedicated to the Back to the Future triology so of course I had to see them all again. My favorite is still Part 1, but with time Part 3 rose up to the number 2 spot and the accompanying episode of The Incomparables has nicely outlined all of the reasons why.

The VPZD Show is back after a year-long hiatus and last week’s episode checks a lot of boxes from the Things-I’m-Interested-In list:

• Maintenance of certification (the last time I wrote about it was in September)
• LLMs in medicine (back in March)
• Cancer screening (August and December)
• End-of-life care (which has been a longstanding interest)

The last topic I listed here was what the episode starts with, and is the most poignant part. Recommended.

Jonathan Haidt’s interview with Tyler Cowen was excruciating and my opinion of Tyler deteriorated significantly, but it was the push I needed to order Haidt’s new book. I thought I’d skip it because we were already in perfect agreement but I’ll make sure to turn on my confirmation bias shields.

I’ve never heard of “Movers and Shakers” before and I am unlikely to give it a try, but its producer just gave the best description of the value of podcasting I’ve read in a while. (ᔥDave Winer, who also knows a few things about podcasting)

The latest ATP members' special is their best one yet. It is called John’s Windows, it is about John Siracusa’s window management system, and it is one of those rare podcast episodes that are best viewed on YouTube. Easily worth the price of membership.

Late last year I mentioned several podcasts I would be trying out. The first one — Who Killed JFK — did not work for me. The production values were too high for the slight content it presented, and I like my podcasts on the raw side. Fortunately, a friend recommended the seven-part span of The Rest is History that covers much more than just the assassination, and I can absolutely recommend it. Even better: those were episodes 392–398, so I am now looking forward to hundreds of hours of two historians spitballing about various people and events, from Anthony and Cleopatra to the Hundred Years' War.

After a drought of good podcast episodes, both Tyler Cowen and Russ Roberts had great interviews this week:

• Cowen talked to R.F. Kuang, whose two books — Babel and Yellowface are now on the pile
• Roberts talked to Brian Klass about randomness and meaning, and yes his book Fluke is also on the pile