Posts in: podcasts

A not so great Plenary Session 🎙 episode this week, in which Vinay wonders why people are leaving academia for industry while his guest explains how important page breaks and pictures are in NIH grant proposals he reviews, while “the science is all the same”.

Infuriating!

Two excellent episodes of Healthcare Unfiltered 🎙 in two weeks:

More podcasts with both would be a very good thing. Highly recommended!

🎙 Out of the two podcasts about randomized controlled trials that came out this week, I much preferred this one. Confirmation bias.

Frustrating to listen. Yes, well-done RCTs are prohibitively expensive and many good ideas are box-checked to death. The solution isn’t to ration RCTs, but to make them less costly (and not just in money) 🎙

🎙 A fantastic episode of EconTalk this week: Richard Gunderman and Russ Roberts discuss “Master and Man”, Tolstoy’s short story about two men in a snowstorm, but also about capitalism, sociopathy, and religion. This one will easily make it into the year’s top 5.

It’s only the first episode, but The Joy of Why looks to me like the podcast RadioLab used to be, in content if not in sound design. Can’t wait for more 🎙

After long last, an episode of Conversations with Tyler worth linking to: Lydia Davis on language, translations, short stories, thick books, and much more 📚

Voices in my head, 2022

Listen to podcasts long enough and you are bound to develop tastes. After 15-some years, mine are these: conversations over stories, with minimal to no editing, and lasting no longer than a couple of hours per episode. Even within these constraints, the list of podcasts I could listen to is near-infinite. Yet these are the few to which I keep returning:

  1. Omnibus, which survived John Roderick’s attempted cancelation to continue providing two poorly-researched topics per week. Highlights of 2021: Mobile Jubilees, The Bottle Conjuror, Officials General, Merkins (yes, those), and The Phantom of New Guinea in which the curious popularity of an obscure Canadian detective show in Serbia makes an appearance.
  2. EconTalk, which continues to be the best general-interest interview show for people who’d rather avoid snake oil salesmen. Highlights of 2021: Dana Giola on poetry (which is in fact the best episode of 2021), Julia Galef on her book Scout Mindset (which I am yet to read, but oh well), Anja Shortland on lost art, Bret Devereaux on ancient Greece and Rome, and Johann Hari on lost connections (which reminded me of a particularly sad episode from my tenure as a heme/onc attending).
  3. Healthcare Unfiltered is the first new healthcare-related podcast I’ve started listening in years. Chadi Nabhan is a good interviewer with an even better access to relevant guests, particularly when he attempts to bring together both sides of a twitter-heated medical debate. Highlights of 2021: Bishal Gyawali on clinical trial design, Aaron Goodman and Matt Wilson on CNS prophylaxis for DLBCL, Barbara Pro and Mehdi Hamadani on PTCL, Mikkael Sekeres and David Steensma on mid-career transition, and Aaron Goodman versus the world, supposedly about randomized clinical trials.
  4. Plenary Session was back on my playlist this year, and mostly Covid-free. Highlights of 2021: Chris Booth, Adam Cifu, Manni Mohyuddin, Bapu Jena, and again Aaron Goodman (who should really start his own podcast instead of squatting in other people’s).
  5. The VPZD Show is the one about Covid. Prasad and Damania have their hearts in the right place and fairly sharp minds; they can evaluate evidence on merits and are willing to admit past mistakes. Without mourning days past when these characteristics were more common — because in fact they weren’t — I’ll just note that in times like these, they are essential. Highlights of 2021 include the entirety of the show, which has only just started.

Previous editions: 2021 — 2020 — 2019 — 2018 — The one where I took a break from podcasts — The very first one

Voices in my head, 2021

If there is a theme to this year’s list it is the intentional omission of all things biomedical, which I hope is self-explanatory considering (waves around) all this.

  1. Omnibus, wherein two nerds, one professional the other amateur discuss topics of great interest, including bad architecture, bad cinema, a bad sister, and a very bad husband. It is at once entertaining, educational, and en…titilating?

  2. Lex Fridman Podcast, wherein the said Lex Fridman, an AI researcher from MIT, discusses history with Dan Carlin, programming with Chris Lattner, cryptocurrency with Vitalik Buterin, Joe Rogan with Joe Rogan, et cetera, et cetera. File under “good for exploring the back catalogue, not so much for regular weekly listending”, like so many others.

  3. 20 Macs for 2020, which is a weekly-ish countdown of notable Apple computers, with comments from notable Apple aficionados. Listen and appreciate how enthusiastic some people can be about some things.

  4. Dithering, which is a — shock, horror — paid podcast, but one well worth your money and time if you know the two men responsible, Ben Thompson and John Gruber.

  5. People I (mostly) admire, wherein an economist of some fame and with a good sense of humor talks to, well, people he (mostly) admires, including Ken Jennings of the first podcast on this list, and what a nice way to end it.

Previous editions: 2020

Voices in my head, 2020

EconTalk with Russ Roberts is the best interview podcast I’ve listened to, period. Unlike Tyler Cowen Roberts focuses on an issue or two, not the personality being interviewed. He gives fewer if any passes. The effect is that I feel like I’m actually learning about the thing in question, not just getting acquainted with Cowen’s personality du jour. Whether any learning actually takes place at my advanced age is another matter.

My top 5 episodes:

Honorable mentions: Cowen, Holiday, Hossenfelder, Bertaud

Conversations with Tyler are as good as ever. This year’s favorites:

(Note that the majority are episodes with women - Cowen has Roberts easily beaten here)

Breaking Smart with Venkatesh Rao I would recommend to anyone who’s enjoyed the above-linked interview Russ Roberts did with Rao on one of the better Breaking Smart essays. It’s 15-20 minutes of Rao performing mental stretching excercises, solo.

Plenary Session with Vinay Prasad is another podcast that shines with the solo performances, but the interviews aren’t half-bad either. That isn’t a surprise, since this year Prasad has talked to David Steensma, Frank Harrell, Adam Cifu, H. Gilbert Welch, and Clifford Hudis, among others. Sadly, the podcast still doesn’t have a proper website, so I can’t link to any of these episodes directly.