What is your favorite podcast?
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Trivial inconveniences make the world go around, determine everything that actually happens in reality.
(This post makes multiple slightly inconvenient and legible requests about presentation that can't be deniably ignored, hence people won't be sharing, at least not nearly as much as they would otherwise. It's been 12 hours since the post, currently at zero answers.)
1While it's true, that the post does make requests, I think it's less inconvenient than lukeprog's demand in The Best Textbooks on Every Subject to recommend a textbook over two other textbook on the same topic.
It possible that a lower quality bar for this post would have been better because it makes it easier for people to contribute, but those decisions are always hard to make.
It's more about the number of requests and their non-optional nature than difficulty of some key request or of making a well-presented recommendation. Inconvenience is not difficulty, for example some of the requests are asking for things that I feel shouldn't be part of a recommendation, and it would be inconvenient to go against my own aesthetic judgement, or alternatively break the form of the presentation to object.
I like how it explores a variety of important topics deeply without becoming less relevant even after so many episodes. It has a good length of ~60-90 minutes per episode. Spencer's questions are often great, plus he tends to bring his own insights and perspectives to the table that add a lot.
The episodes that I learned the most from were probably the ones on different psychological conditions, such as talking to a narcissist, a sociopath, someone with borderline, or to a victim of sexual abuse.
People who are interested in rational discussions of science, psychology, mental health, ethics etc probably have a good shot at getting something out of the clearer thinking podcast.
Making Sense podcast.
The host speaks with great clarity and insight.
I like the science related stuff more than the politics.
Points to reliable sources and presents good arguments AFAICT.
1Revolutions
I like how it is a focused podcast on just the most important 10 revolutions of human history. Told humorously and researched thoroughly, it aims to teach the general truth through indepth case studies.
It teaches history very well. By using the revolution as the narrative skeleton, you are kept on track by the chronological evolution of the event. While learning the people and systems through context and fractal expansion on the details of the said participants.
Yes, mostly.
People with a vague interest in history and likes stories told well.
- I like that I finish each episode feeling like I understand the world a little better, that it's generally free of argument (i.e. not in a debate format), and the episodes are rarely longer than an hour.
- Guest speakers tend to be folks who have gone through the process of building something (software, hardware, author, etc)
- Podcast run by Patrick McKenzie, who has established considerable credibility via the blog Bits About Money (at least with me)
- Would recommend to folks interested in learning about the incentives and processes involved in infrastructure projects of all forms and fashions, who are comfortable with idioms of technical conversations, but who still broadly want to be entertained.
Most people here probably know it, but for the few of you who don't: in-depth AI podcast with many high-profile guests from AI labs and beyond. Often brings up AI Safety concerns, but the general vibe of the podcast is usually rather somewhere between excited and optimistic. Dwarkesh is quick on his feet and tends to ask many good questions, often "good-faith-challenging" his guests.
He's great at extracting the world views out of his guests and at keeping conversations very engaging even over many hours. My impression is that he vibes well with most guests and gets them to share their views more freely than they would otherwise. Most noteworthy for me were the episodes with Sutskever, Aschenbrenner, gwern, and of course the AI 2027 one with Daniel Kokotajlo and Scott Alexander.
If the above sounds interesting, then consider this a recommendation.
If you consider Mechanize to be net-negative and don't want to support anyone funding them, then rather don't consider this a recommendation.
It's entertaining yet refreshingly skeptical of science (in a, you know, rather rational way) and the problems it has. Tears apart many papers, myths and misconceptions. Tom Chivers keeps mentioning Bayes and Scott Alexander. Has some episodes on general scientific & statistical concepts and the major problems in science, as well as many object-level ones on concrete research topics, such as growth mindset, autism, seed oil or IQ. I prefer the latter ones. Spoiler alert: the outcome of most episodes is "we know much less than people think", about pretty much anything.
One weakness of the show may be that they're possibly erring too much on the "there may be some evidence for X but can we really tell? Actually, nobody really knows and it's all just guessing based on a bunch of very flawed studies" side. Occasionally the hosts seem a bit less well prepared than they could be. Still, on the majority of topics, I find their episodes rather enlightening. Another plus is that they have some episodes on their past mistakes on the podcast (of which there are indeed quite a few).
If you're a bit cynical and enjoy two witty Brits making fun of bad science while learning a few things about the state of research, you might enjoy this one.
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