Which podcasts are we listening to?

[Ah.hell]

Conan O'Brien needs a friend.  The latest episode had the platonic Conan bit.   Absurd and had me laughing out loud but if you described it to me I couldn't imagine how it would be funny.  And the most Conan thing of all, it lasted too long.

[Sawyer]

Blowback S2 now being released from behind the paywall.  All about the history of Cuba and the US.

Also trying some 5-4 episodes to keep my legal hatred bender going as long as possible.  Not quite as strong as ALAB, but worth checking out if you want further proof that most people involved in sculpting our legal system are 100% hacks.

[Sawyer]

Okay I may have to spring for the full Patreon level subscription to 5-4.  Along with ALAB it is really helping me understand the proper way to understand the upper echelons of our legal system - and to some extent all of the US government - is as a cohort of alien freaks who have no concept of how ordinary human beings think, feel, or do their jobs.  The latest gut punch was learning about the Bowles v. Russell case.  Clarence Thomas deserves an eternity in the pits of hell for this one, and in a better world we'd just legally grant Keith Bowles the right and privilege to send him there.

[watt]

Here are a few of my favorite episodes I've listened to in the past few months.
All links are to spotify.


    # Decoding the Gurus
Eric and Bret Weinstein: A Dark Horse Gallops through the Portal
Is Eric Weinstein Feynman-Negative?
Bret Weinstein & Jordan Peterson: Two gargantuan intellects stare into the abyss
Interview with Matthew Remski on Conspirituality
Interview with Robert Wright on crackpots, gurus, and modern media ecosystems


   # Afford Anything - Paula Plant
The Scout Mindset, With Julia Galef
The Art of Decision-Making, With Annie Duke
When Career Zigzagging is Smarter - with David Epstein


   # EconTalk - Russ Roberts
Doug Lemov on Reading
James Heckman on Inequality and Economic Mobility
Melanie Mitchell on Artificial Intelligence
Deer on Autism, Vaccination and Scientific Fraud
Amy Webb on Artificial Intelligence, Humanity, and the Big Nine
Julia Galef on the Scout Mindset
Rory Sutherland on Alchemy
Jonathan Rauch on the Constitution of Knowledge
Jerry Muller on the Tyranny of Metrics
Schneier on Power, the Internet, and Security
Sherry Turkle on Family, Artificial Intelligence, and the Empathy Diaries


   # The James Altucher Show
741 - You can't just be something, You have to do something! with Brandon Webb
601 - WHY Strategic Thinking is So Valuable (& how to do it) with Maria Konnikova
742 - Stoicism vs. Absurdism, and I am adapting to one of them.


   # Into the Impossible with Brian Keating
Steven Strogatz: The Infinite Power of Calculus
Jo Dunkley: This Is Our Universe


   # Command Line Heroes
Talking to Machines: LISP and the Origins of A.I.
Fail Better: Embracing Failure
The Infrastructure Effect: COBOL and Go
Looking for Search
The World of the World Wide Web


   # Darknet Diaries
Ep 2: The Peculiar Case of the VTech Hacker
Ep 6: The Beirut Bank Job
Ep 9: The Rise and Fall of Mt. Gox
Ep 28: Unit 8200
Ep 29: Stuxnet
53: Shadow Brokers
83: NSA Cryptologists
98: Zero Day Brokers


   # The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk
423: Julia Galef - Why Some People See Things Clearly & Others Don't
430: Matthew Dicks - Change Your Life Through The Power Of Storytelling
347: Steven Strogatz - How Calculus Reveals The Secrets Of The Universe
365: James Altucher - How To Become An Idea Machine (The 10,000 Experiment Rule)
078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon
310: David Epstein - Why Generalists Will Rule The World
243: Annie Duke - How To Make Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All The Facts (Thinking In Bets)
155: Russ Roberts - A Guide To Human Nature & Happiness


   # The Lex Friedman Podcast
Stuart Russell: Long-Term Future of AI
Peter Norvig: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
Garry Kasparov: Chess, Deep Blue, AI, and Putin
Michael Stevens: Vsauce
Melanie Mitchell: Concepts, Analogies, Common Sense & Future of AI
Jim Gates: Supersymmetry, String Theory and Proving Einstein Right
Grant Sanderson: 3Blue1Brown and the Beauty of Mathematics
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow, Deep Learning, and AI
Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles
#166 – Cal Newport: Deep Work, Focus, Productivity, Email, and Social Media


   # Modern Wisdom
#084 - David Epstein - Specialisation Is For Insects
#352 - Ben Aldridge - How To Be Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
#214 - Cosmic Skeptic - How Do We Define What Is Good & Bad?
#049 - Rory Sutherland - Psychology In The World Of Advertising
#233 - Annie Duke - How To Make Better Decisions
#105 - Thomas Johnson - What Is An Ethical Hacker?
#255 - Rory Sutherland - The Psychology Of Irrationality


   # Point of Inquiry
Andrew Skolnick - The Dangers of Alternative Medicine
Stuart Firestein - How Ignorance Drives Science
Paul Offit, MD - Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine
Paul Offit, MD, on Measles in the Magic Kingdom and the Anti-Vaccine Movement
Leonard Mlodinow: Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior
Cancer Quack Stanislaw Burzynski: Exposed
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe and Science-Based Medicine's Steven Novella
Cara Santa Maria - Talk Nerdy to Us
Steven Novella - Exposing Medical Nonsense
Banachek - From the Inside of Being a Mentalist


   # Positively Blue Team
Mythical Malware Analysis
Behavioral Engineering


   # Rationally Speaking
Maria Konnikova on "Why everyone falls for con artists"
Maria Konnikova on How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes
Ben Buchanan on "The Cybersecurity Dilemma"
Eric Jonas on "Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor?"
When Smart People Endorse Pseudoscience
Tom Griffiths and Brian Christian on "Algorithms to Live By"


   # The Knowledge Project
#89 Maria Konnikova: Less Certainty, More Inquiry
#87 Hannah Fry: The Role of Algorithms
#73 Steven Strogatz: Exploring Curiosities
#68 Daniel Kahneman: Putting Your Intuition on Ice
#117 Kat Cole: The Power of Possible


   # The Wright Show
Does Moral Truth Exist? (Robert Wright & Gideon Rosen)
Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (Robert Wright & Lee McIntyre)
Kant's Transcendental Philosophy (Robert Wright & David Ottlinger)
The Structure of Unscientific Revolutions (Robert Wright & Mickey Kaus)
Is Eric Weinstein a Crackpot? (Robert Wright & Timothy Nguyen)


   # The Michael Shermer Show
199. David Potter — Disruption: Why Things Change
44. Dr. David P. Barash — Human Nature Through a Glass Brightly
10. Dr. Carol Tavris — Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)
23. Dr. Kenneth R. Miller — The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will
173. Naomi Oreskes — Why Trust Science?
190. Jonathan Rauch — The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
77. Dr. Lee McIntyre — The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience
118. Stuart Russell — Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

[daniel1948]

The latest addition to my list of podcasts is The Constant: A history of getting things wrong. I'm not sure he's as skeptical as he could be, but he's a great story-teller and presumably the stories are true, within reason.

Our Fake History. This is at present my favorite podcast. Sebastian Major is a historian who relates historical myths (thus the "fake history" in the title) and then presents the actual history according to the best information available to historians today. Like the above, he's a great storyteller.

Both are available wherever you get podcasts.

[arthwollipot]

I've enjoyed two podcasts recently. Both had short runs in their first season (5-6 episodes) and both are planning additional seasons.

The first is The Worlds Greatest Con, by someone who should be known by many skeptics, Brian Brushwood. He's a magician and storyteller, and was a good friend of Randi. I almost met him once at TAM. More recently he's one of the hosts of the Modern Rogue YouTube channel, which is also very good. The first season tells the story of Operation Mincemeat, which was an operation in WW2 where the British dumped a dead body on the coast of Spain, hoping that the false information the body carried made its way back to Nazi intelligence. Brian is a great storyteller and it is very engaging.

The second is Stuff the British Stole, which is an (Australian) ABC show by Marc Fennell. Each episode covers an item that was removed from its culture by British imperialists. It covers the history and cultural context of these objects in-depth. I heard an interview with Marc on 99% Invisible, which is how I found out about it. He was a little cagey about what's coming up in future seasons, but he did let on that he has been speaking to quite a few Greek people.

[Ah.hell]

The latest addition to my list of podcasts is The Constant: A history of getting things wrong. I'm not sure he's as skeptical as he could be, but he's a great story-teller and presumably the stories are true, within reason.

Our Fake History. This is at present my favorite podcast. Sebastian Major is a historian who relates historical myths (thus the "fake history" in the title) and then presents the actual history according to the best information available to historians today. Like the above, he's a great storyteller.

Both are available wherever you get podcasts.

Our Fake History is on my list too.  Great show

[Sawyer]

I kept seeing it mentioned with the latest Rogan fiasco, so I'm finally trying Decoding the Gurus.  Feels like a nice bridge between the good ol' days of scientific skepticism and the more explicitly left-wing critiques of IDW figures.

I've almost through the first episode about the Weinsteins.  As usual I'm struck by how the backstory with people like this is just so sad and pathetic.  Couldn't get a paper published in Nature?  That's it?  That's what set Brett Weinstein on the path to ultimately becoming an ivermectin quack.  I guess I'm grateful that I dropped out of grad school when I did, because I'm far happier owning my failures than if I had gone down this dark path.

[lonely moa]

The Coming Storm"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001324r/episodes/downloads

[xenu]

The Coming Storm"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001324r/episodes/downloads

I finished it last week. It's not to bad. Most of what I knew already.

"How it happened" is a good podcast too.

[spinach]

I subscribe to about 50, usually listen 2x speed, except the spanish ones
selected podcasts

planet money
stuff you should know
behind the bastards
freaknomics
cautionary tales
this american life
the bugle
science with dr karl
radiolab
uum (uncovering unexplained mysteries)
the album years
tales from the rabbit hole

[daniel1948]

I've been listening to Lexicon Valley lately. I'm still not sure whether or not it will stay on my list. John McWhorter is a linguist who talks about languages. It's interesting. He also intersperses the presentation with show tunes. I'm not a fan of show tunes.

I first listened to it when someone recommended his episode about the use of "they" as a singular pronoun, in a thread where that was being argued over. McWhorter talked about how languages change, and that "you" was at one time strictly a plural pronoun, and people raged as vehemently against its use in the singular as some folks today rage against the use of "they" in the singular.

At other times he discusses aspects of language so arcane that I lose interest.

[arthwollipot]

stuff you should know

Stuff you should know always comes across to me as a couple of guys who know absolutely nothing about a subject doing a tiny amount of research and then trying to explain that subject. As a result, some of their explanations can be extremely dodgy.

[daniel1948]

stuff you should know

Stuff you should know always comes across to me as a couple of guys who know absolutely nothing about a subject doing a tiny amount of research and then trying to explain that subject. As a result, some of their explanations can be extremely dodgy.

Thanks. I'll avoid that one. (The title kind of puts me off anyway. If someone says, "Hey, here's something interesting," they'll get my attention. If they say "Here's something you should know," I'll be inclined to think "Whatever!")

[arthwollipot]

stuff you should know

Stuff you should know always comes across to me as a couple of guys who know absolutely nothing about a subject doing a tiny amount of research and then trying to explain that subject. As a result, some of their explanations can be extremely dodgy.

Thanks. I'll avoid that one. (The title kind of puts me off anyway. If someone says, "Hey, here's something interesting," they'll get my attention. If they say "Here's something you should know," I'll be inclined to think "Whatever!")

Oh, they frequently talk about interesting things. They just sound like they have no idea, even when what they're actually saying is accurate.