On The Media - a podcast analyzing the media, giving historical and scientific context to news coverage. In the process, it turns out to be the best in depth news shows. Academics and journalists love this show but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a hit with the greater public. I recommend this show very highly.
Also listen to a bunch of nerdy academic podcasts like The Dissenter and New Books in Science, Psychology, Philosophy, etc in the New Books networks.
I recently Discovered the Blowback podcast and it kind of reminds me of Behind the Bastards podcast in subject matter. Revealing more of the happenings behind some of the US (and “western”) actions in various situations that most Americans probably consider cut and dry examples of “we’re the good guys” when it’s more complicated.
Like I didn’t know we, and many western countries, sold chemical weapons to the Iraqis throughout the 80s for them to use on Iran, and then used them as an example of how evil Saddam Hussein is when he invaded Kuwait (something something the us ambassador said we didn’t care about beforehand) and we needed to justify a war. West Germany sold chemical weapons to Iraq and protective gear to the Iranians.
It’s not so much US bad, but illuminating that the government does shitty things and supports shitty people and we should probably make that stop, or at least own it honestly.
Ezra Klein show - it’s actually a podcast about US politics which I don’t really care about, but they have often very interesting guests and Ezra is a very good interviewer / generally intelligent person.
Lex Fridman - originally about AI, nowadays various intellectual topics with high profile guests. I actually don’t really like Lex himself, but fortunately he doesn’t speak often.
A bunch of podcasts on Ukraine/Russia - War on the Rocks, The Russia contingency (paid), In Moscow’s shadows (Kremlinology). Geopolitics Decanted.
I actually find Ezra and Lex unbearable for different reasons.
Lex is just really not good at interviewing and given his stances, I can’t really trust that the “experts” he interviews are respected/knowledgeable in their fields. Also, I got the feeling that he is kind of an idiot.
Ezra is way too much up his own ass in high minded philosophical debates, that don’t really mean anything. It sounds smart, but if you actually listen, you realize that he just spent 5min saying almost nothing.
If you’re interested in Russia, I’ve been listening to Sad Oligarchs, which is about the fact that a lot of Oligarchs are “killing themselves” when there’s no explanation for it. It’s been really interesting so far.
As a testament tp their quality, several “interesting” videos made by Tom Scott and Veritasium were also 99pi episodes before they found out those things. For example, Veritasium did the Snake Antibody Facility video, where Snake venom is milked by hand last year. 99pi did it half a decade ago.
You Are Not So Smart: You’ll marvel at both how flawed our reasoning can be and how well we make up for it by being collaborative creatures
Behind the Bastards: Everything you don’t know about the worst people in all of history, including people you didn’t even know of
Twenty Thousand Hertz: Stories of pretty much anything as long as it works well in an audio medium. Best sound design in the game; like candy for your ears
Cautionary Tales (Tim Harford): Stories of people making huge mistakes or taking insane risks. Fun because sometimes the mistake was trusting their intuition instead of a rigorous process, but just as often it was ignoring their intuition in favor of a rigorous process
Build for Tomorrow, formerly Pessimists Archive: History of people freaking out about new stuff that is totally benign today but they thought would ruin civilization. Like mirrors, bicycles, teddy bears, pinball machines
Team Human: Kind of the opposite. All about how “progress” has harmed indigenous people, minorities, women, etc. and talking to people about how to address our modern problems with “anti-human” technology and economics
Cautionary tales: stories of how things went wrong
Darknet diaries: stories from the dark web
intelligence squared: thought provoking debates about anything and everything
The numberphile podcast: interviews with mathematicians by Brady Haran. If you like the kinds of videos Brady makes, you’ll probably like this too. You know, stuff like sixty symbols, mumberphile, perioedic table of videos etc.
You are not so smart: podcast about psychology
your undivided attention: discussion and interviews about social media. What it’s like to work for a social media company. How social media influences your business, or how it affects your life. How different parts of it are intentional and some are unintentional.
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