Below is a list of podcasts that I heard that I found interesting or stimulating.

Notes:

• Format: - podcast: Show Title: Short description
• This is when I listed to the podcasts does not necessarily mean they came out the week I heard it
• Most recent week is at the top

2023 Week 49 (December 04 - December 10)

• Short Wave: Companies say they’re closing in on nuclear fusion as an energy source. Will it work?: Come on! it is only 50 years out! Until it is here! Just like my move to Spain was 5 years out for years and years, until one day we up and moved here!

2023 Week 48 (November 27 - December 03)

• Planet Money: How political campaigns are raising millions through unwitting donor: So interesting that of all the sites that were using this trick of having a discrete checkbox by default to make it a weekly donation were Republican websites…

2023 Week 47 (November 20 - 26)

• Morning Edition: How to keep an eye out for cyber scams during this holiday shopping season: How cool to hear a clear a simple explantation of DMARC on public radio!!

• Planet Money: China’s real estate crisis, explained: Great article that helps to put in context current delicate financial situation in China. Also I love stories about billionaire Chinese people and always wonder how they can still consider themselves a socialist country.

2023 Week 46 (November 13 - 19)

• Morning Edition: What would happen if Congress stripped $14 billion from the IRS’s budget?: What better way to ensure that tax avoidance and abuse can continue than underfunding the organization chartered with controlling it? Seriously the current republican party is so transparent it becomes clear no one looks as they are constantly screaming squirrel to misdirect the attention deficit public.

• Hungry For MO: No apologies for St. Louis pizza: OMG the things I learn from Podcasts! Provel cheese? square flatbread pizza? Appears I will have to wait for a trip to Missouri try this as Provel does not seem to be readily available in other states let alone other countries such as Spain.

• Morning Edition: Kernza, a climate-friendly grain, gets the attention of brewers, distillers: Wow it is not every day where a new grain is added to our bread basket and I can’t wait to try a Kernza beer and single malt whisky!

• Morning Edition: Passions between lawmakers spilling into violence are nothing new on Capitol Hill: I love it. The republican party is full of such scum bags with no morals or scruples they are resorting to playground violence.

2023 Week 45 (November 6 - 12)

• All Things Considered: Washington, D.C., celebrates beloved pandas before they return to China: Wow. Panda Diplomacy! I suppose the black and white ugly little bamboo junkies here in Madrid are on loan as well.

• The Spiritual Edge: Speaking for salmon: Wow. Love the origin story that was told that they explained that all the spirits were in Shasta mountain and the began leaving becoming beings and “And finally, they chose to be human. And they come running out this door and wandering down the stream and the Creator looked at that human and said, that one is going to need a lot of help. It’s going to have a hard time figuring out what it’s going to do.”. Yes I agree with that creation story that we need a lot of help.

• Morning Edition: Supreme Court to decide if gun bans for domestic abusers are constitutional: What. I do not understand. “In a landmark decision, the six-justice majority ruled that in order to be constitutional, a gun law has to be analogous to a law that existed at the nation’s founding in the late 1700s.” The whole point of the constitution is that it has to be a living document, and the Supreme Court is who is responsible for interpreting how the historical document applies to current situations. If we have to apply all law with 1700 lenses we might as well join the amish.

• All Things Considered: The last army base named for a Confederate general is now called Fort Eisenhower: The important thing here is not forget that the naming of bases and building of monuments for southern separatists was an intentional effort to further continuing and justifying the racial segregation. As Susan Crane mentions “Learning history is always the practice of making choices, choices of what we pay attention to”.

2023 Week 44 (October 30 - November 5)

• All Things Considered: Step into the world of undead brands: Interesting. Reminds me of my brother in law commenting that a Lacoste he bought when he was a kid lasted for ever, but not any more.

• Morning Edition: NPR history podcast ‘Throughline’ examines the rise of Halloween’s popularity: Interesting that the transformation of what we celebrate today started due country kids taken to the city began causing problems. Reminds me of when I was at school in Riverside and a city next to it (can’t remember the name) grew from 10k to 100k super quickly and a lot of the people who moved there were trying to escape the gangs from other Los Angeles areas, not realizing they brought just what they wanted to escape with their kids.

• Weekend Edition Sunday: A 75-year-old rodeo cowboy is being inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame: OMG we are not all made of the same fabric: “They called him Tombstone, and he drug me around. I broke some ribs, punctured lung, dislocated my right knee. But other than that, I was OK.”

2023 Week 43 (October 23 - 29)

• More Perfect: Clarence X: From the preview sound bite I did not think I was going to like this one, but in the end it was one of those episodes that has caused a lot of thinking, internet searching, and reflections. I never have quite understood black republicans, but now I think I have a better grasp and understand where they are coming from. Highly recommended!
• All Things Considered: In this race, runners circle the same block in Queens for 3,100 miles: OMG. A yearly race where people run for 52 days in a row from 6am to 12am! If you participate every year you are running 12% of the year!
• Planet Money: The flight attendants of CHAOS: I remember vaguely when Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers in the 80’s, but never realized how significant it was and the harm done to collective bargaining in the US. Just love the think outside of the box and art of war tactics that the Union came up with. Must hear.

2023 Week 42 (October 16 - 22)

• Morning Edition: Republican states swore off a voting tool. Now they’re scrambling to recreate it: Just boggles my mind the shenanigans the republicans are going through to break democracy in the United States.

2023 Week 41 (October 09 - 15)

• A Fork in the Road: The Cotton Sheets Made by Cotton Farmers: Love that they are trying to localy produce all parts! Also interesting that the cost of the sheets does not seem so crazy after just having bought new sheets a couple weeks ago in a large department store (but what we bought were portuguese sheets that are quite a bit nicer than your average run of the mill sheets).
• Freakanomics: How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events: Very interesting and very true that failure is always a chain of events.

2023 Week 40 (October 02 - 08)

• Weekend Edition Sunday: Norovirus in the wilderness? How an outbreak spread on the Pacific Crest Trail: OMG. Clear life lesson: Always wash hands with soap after bathroom and before eating. And boil water 3 minutes

• All Things Considered: Pregnancy really does change the brain, study shows: As much as we would like to forget that we are animals this study is an interesting reminder we are just a biological sac of chemicals that got us to where we are now.

• Throughline: Tenochtitlán: A Retelling of the Conquest: Wow. So interesting.

• here&Now: What you think you know about dinosaurs might be wrong: OMG. Modern humans have been around 200 hundred thousand years (200,000). Dinosaurs were around 160 million years (160,000,000). Fuck. Given that it has only taken us 263 years (time since industrial revolution) to seriously impact our world, the answer to the Fermi paradox seems pretty easy to un paradox.

• All Things Considered: This MacArthur ‘genius’ knew the initial theory of COVID transmission was flawed: Yep. Sometimes prevailing wisdom is wrong. Listen to your own instinct, feelings, and above all, your mother-in-law if she is a Meiga as I am blessed to have.

• Morning Edition: It’s that time of year again: Fat Bear Week is back: Can’t believe this has been going on since 2014 and I only discovered it now!

• All Things Considered: NYC: Trash bags out, bins in: Seriously. The longer I live out of USA the more I see it as a third world country. Trash bags on the streets of NY city? And I had been wondering why there have been so many radio segments mentioning the problems of rats in NY in the last few years…

2023 Week 39 (September 25 - 30)

• Planet Money: Why September, on average, is the worst month for the stock market: Interesting! Spoiler: bad news takes longer to affect stocks because less people own them. That coupled with everyone being on vacation in August, causes September to be the worst month for US stocks (Asian markets have the worst month after their new year holidays)

2023 Week 38 (September 18 - 24)

• Planet Money: How the Phillips Curve shaped macroeconomics: It does not get better than a crocodile hunting engineer creating a water flow machine to demonstrate economic pressures and defining a generation of macro economic policies based on data mining and visualization.
• Planet Money: “Based on a true story”: Love the quote that the producer Aaron Ryder says a couple times in the story: “But, you know, Hollywood - we’re a bunch of heat-seeking missiles”. A boy is he a persistent missile!
• All Things Considered: Drought in Spain sends olive oil supply down and prices sky high: I was wondering why olive oil is suddenly so expensive in the supper market! Gotta love NPR to keep me informed!
• All Things Considered: This Republican senator wants an expanded child tax credit — with work requirements: Find it hard to believe I agee with Marco RUBIO, but he is right. A tax credit requires that you are actually working and paying taxes to get a credit on them, otherwise it is just a child payout…
• Throughline A Tale of Two Tribal Nations: OMG a really facinating history of how one tribe managed to hold land despite everything against them. I loved how Hole-in-the-Day sees how the tide of settlers is unstoppable and adapts his strategies to how to the get the most for his people.
• All Things Considered: Locals push back against plans to build a tech utopia in Solano County, Calif.: Interesting interviews with locals who have sold and other have not sold.
• Pop Culture Happy Hour: Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour is a cozy, hypersonic, soul-healing experience: Hilarious listening to 3 super fans discuss their Beyonce’s Resissance concert experience.
• Here and Now: 261 million birds are predicted to be migrating south: OMG had no idea so many millions of birds migrate every year. Here in Madrid I am only tracking what I call the “squeakers” a swallow like bird that arrives in May and sticks around until about mid summer.
• Morning Edition: People who adopt healthy habits can reduce risk of depressive episodes, studies say: Interesting and as positive outcomes are based on: (1) getting enough sleep, (2) eating well and (3) exercise.
• Short Wave: Why the earliest galaxies are sparking drama and controversy among astronomers: I love that after all the heart ache that the James Web Telescope gave us is pushing and questioning our established norms!
• Planet Money: How to launder $600 million on the internet: Great story, two things struck me: fucking north koreans and I love to hear a chink in the crypto money armor has been found.
• All Things Considered: How Popeyes kicked off the chicken sandwich wars: I never realized how fortunate we were to have a Popeyes open close to our house in Madrid and then discover on our own without ever knowing all the hype how good their spicy chick sandwich (with pickles) was!
• All Things Considered: Baby babble isn’t just goo goo! And hearing 2 languages is better than one: When my wife got pregnant 23 years ago we investigated the state of science at the time and I am happy on the path we decided: each parent would exclusively speak to our children in their native language and this podcast confirms (phew) we did the right thing and introduces a term I love: enhanced neuroplasticity (means that kids brains are silly putty and have an amazing ability to adapt).

2023 Week 37 (September 11 - 17)

• Endless Thread: Artist: Known — Illustrator for ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ gets long-overdue credit: Interesting hunt to find the artist who did the cover art for 1976 edition of the book A Wrinkle in Time. Internet is a powerful tool when things are crowd sourced!
• Civics 101: Classified Documents: First time I have ever heard this podcast and I found it very detailed and loved that it deep dived into all aspects of classification of documents for the US government.
• Throughline: Getting to Sesame Street: VERY interesting history and highly recommended! Amazing ground breaking program on so many fronts: utilizing TV as an educational tool, kick starting children for kindergarten, racial integration, tackling tough subjects in a natural way, etcetera).
• Freakanomics: When Is a Superstar Just Another Employee?: Interesting dive into how important opinion surveys can be for any organization. Also turned me onto Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl which I have added to my reading queue (assuming I ever finish Moby Dick).
• All Things Considered: Journalist Michele Norris wants to hear about your mama’s kitchen: Interview of former NPR host who has started what sounds like an interesting podcast asking people what they remember of their kitchen growing up. Sounds interesting and I have added it to my podcast app to check it out!
• Petrie Dish: Summer ends in the shadow of new COVID-19 threat: Interesting reporting on the latest wave and two things struck me: (1) always remember to take into consider starting point when people discus % of increase (2) how people with means can afford to get sick and be in bed for a while with COVID while others just don’t have that luxury.
• Freakanomics: A.I. Is Changing Everything. Does That Include You?: Final episode by guest host Adam Davidson that wraps things up nicely and really helped me better understand how the current LLMs work and how to properly formulate the question thanks to the insights of probably the first ever “prompt engineer” Anna Bernstein. My final take away: Chat GPT and other AI tools that have come out need to be seen as a tool to help and to leverage.
• Throughline: The story of ‘Monopoly’ and American capitalism: OMG what an amazing rabbit hole! Made me want to read more about the economist Henry George who’s work inspired the original Monopoly that was created and patented(!) in 1904 by Lizzie Magie as a way to teach his ideas.