Let's break this out of the AIDS-infested Sam Harris containment thread.

Recommend some podcasts!

Starting with some from the Crooked empire:
Pod Save America: the Buzzfeed of politics podcasts. Very popular, occasionally entertaining, often low-content.

Pod Save the People: PSA with less BS and more of a Social Justice focus

Pod Save the World: PSA with less BS and more of a Foreign Relations focus

Majority 54: PSA with less BS and more wonky policy discussion (staring Jason Kander's voice)


Citations Needed: calls out bull**** in today's political discourse


Stay Tuned with Preet: former US Attorney SDNY interviews people; as would be expected, often covers criminal justice issues


Ezra Klein Show: hosted by editor of Vox


Intelligence Matters: hosted by former dep director of CIA; as expected, often covers IC-related issues


Waking Up with Sam Harris: let's leave that discussion in its containment thread


Presidential: quick 20-30minute overviews of each president, can be interesting to those less familiar with history


One that isn't politics-focused, but often covers political issues and is very enjoyable:
The Dollop: essentially, one guy lectures another guy about random historical topics, most often American history and occasionally political movements/figures. They're supposedly comedians, but it is definitely more informative than it is funny



I'll stop there and let others add more

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day!

Episode 1

Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes

We Hate Movies

You Must Remember This

Current Affairs

WTF with Marc Maron Podcast

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, Justice, and the Courts

Vox's The Weed

Chapo Trap House

Street Fight Radio

Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Hate Listen

The Brookings Cafeteria ( Not necessarily hate, but damn is it dry and stuffy)

The Ben Shapiro Show

Mark Levin Audio Rewind

EconTalk ( Not really hate, but it's sometimes dry, boring, or annoying)

WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch

Can't even recommend as a hate listen

Louder With Crowder (this show is bad, like intolerable to listen to excluding any politics, but it also has terrible politics)

The Daily (NY Times) - often political, always topical. Worth the daily 30 minute listen

This American Life - rarely political but always interesting

Politics Guys - political with a left and right co-host. It's okay.

No chance I could give Shapiro even a hate-listen, wouldn't want him to get credit for a download

Any thoughts or quick synopsis of Why Is This Happening or The Weeds? Have seen them mentioned before but haven't listened


+1 to The Daily

Yeah, I've been a fan of Dave since his podcast before the Dollop and find him pretty funny on podcasts but I've seen his standup and it's...ok.

I don't listen to any podcast on a regular basis. Normally just whatever looks interesting out of the list. Only exceptions are Hardcore History and Citations Needed.

BackStory - Three historians talk about a current event within the context of similar events in American history.
Hardcore History - There are 3 shows every year but it's top quality stuff. HH is the best history podcast out there. Just wish they split the episodes into smaller chunks and release them instead of 6 hour episodes every 3-4 months.
Pod Save America
Stay Tuned with Preet
The Ezra Klein Show
Citations Needed
China History Podcast - The best place for podcasts on Chinese history
Revolutions - From the guy who created The History of Rome podcast which is also worth a listen
History on Fire - The accent is a bit tough to get used to but it is very informative. Not Dan Carlin informative but it's released regulary.
American History Tellers

The War Nerd is the only one I listen to that hasn't been listed

The most recent episode of More Perfect (radiolab) is all about the history of Korematsu It is a great listen in light of the travel ban stuff. The actual Korematsu is interviewed.

Each episode goes deep into a famous SCOTUS case. Kind of like this American Life but always about SCOTUS.

The actual Korematsu died in 2005. Must not be that recent.

Only one I listen to is the weeds. no idea if that is particularly good, given that it is the only one, but it is good enough that I haven't found another one to fill my occasional desire on a commute

His kid is main focus.

The Weeds is great. I've listened to a couple of episodes of Why Is This Happening, and unsubscribed. Just didn't hook me. Top listens for me:
The Weeds
Political Gabfest
Stay Tuned with Preet

Those I'll listen to every episode. I'll listen to the following depending on whether I'm interested in the guest/topic:
Axe Files with David Axelrod
Ezra Klein
Master's in Business with Barry Ritzholtz
Here's the Thing with Alec Baldwin*
How to be Amazing with Michael Ian Black*
Econ Talk
Majority 54
Pod Save the World

I usually enjoy Radiolab when I listen to it, but I've got a huge backlog of episodes. So revealed preference says I must not like it that much. Same for This American Life. I've pretty much stopped listening to Pod Save America.

*Baldwin and Black are surprisingly good interviewers

Gonna paste and edit my list from the other thread, but will first address the important issues of how and when/where to pod.

I recently got a new phone, a Moto G6 from Project Fi (Google's cell phone service) for $250 unlocked. I pay $40 for voice and data. I used to pay $110 with Verizon. Fi is better in every way. For data you just pay what you use, and it's great if you're mainly on wifi. So that's like $1k/yr savings. My last phone, also from project Fi, was a Nexus 6P. Big phone but battery eventually degraded to about 1 hr of use. The G6 is like 8-10 hrs of heavy use. Buy a 13k-15k mAmp Ankara battery back up and you could go for 40 hours. Following this advice will likely improve your quality of life.

Now, choice of podcast app is also key. I've tried many and use Pocket Casts, the top paid podcast app on Google play. It's great and was like $5-10. It's insane what I'll drop on random stuff and them hem and haw to buy a one time $2-5 app. Buy the apps people, it's literally insane not to. I just ate a random $15 dinner from the store, but why should I spend $7 for a great thing I'll use for years. Hell, I spend $1k/ on newspapers, magazines, patreons, and such. $160/mo for cable and net. So, in conclusion, buy the app.

Now, how to listen? From phone, ear buds, remote Bluetooth speaker. Even my TV/stereo/dvr receiver has Bluetooth, so I listen on that when I want to.

When to listen. Well, that's up to you. I actually don't listen when I do work that requires concentration, and my commute is short, but I listen 2-3 hours a day when getting ready, cooking, cleaning, laundry, chores, sometimes when reading 2p2, definitely when exercising, when that happens, or playing games/doing crosswords (recently discovered crossword apps are a great on phones.)

Having a solid phone with essentially infinite battery life makes all this easier. Will get to specific podcasts in later post. But if you don't have a great phone with long battery life, check out the Moto G6, which is like a premium phone for under $250.

Which ones? I really liked the one I listened to w/ Ezra Klein, but realized that could just as easily been because of Klein as Hayes.


btw, it disturbs me that me and bware are the only people that have mentioned Pod Save The People. DeRay has a podcast and you people aren't listening to it? SHAME.

Ok, here's podcasts I listen to, ranked in order of what I'll play first when there are a bunch I haven't listened to.

The Weeds (Vox)-Matt Yglesias is great and he normally has on Sarah Kliff and one other informed policy person (sometimes Ezra Klein) to discuss a policy topic in soem detail for an hour or so. There are always surprises in the policy weeds, and usually some great irony that has been overlooked in the cacophony of talking points that usually passes for political discourse in America. Yglesias is great. The guy is an information/theory sponge with a rapier wit, very widely read, and can spot irony and hypocrisy from miles away.

He was a philosophy major at Harvard but apparently mainly smoked a lot of pot. Something very funny he related on another podcast is that he wrote a crap senior thesis as a rush job. The professor asked him what he planned to do after graduation, and he said that he planned to move to NY and work at a magazine, whereupon the professor said, witheringly, "that sounds about your speed." Anyway, he seems to have cut out the pot, helped co-found Vox with Ezra, and now tweets up a storm, while also reading, writing, and podcasting.

Hardcore History--I put this here not because I listen to it right away, but because it was my first major podcast and is a big deal in the podcast arena. Dan Carlin is great at relating historical events in a context-sensitive way. He really paints a picture and gets you into the moment, so you can appreciate the nature of events. What was "normal", what was unusual, what was exceptional and, often, world-changing. I don't think you can listen to a few of his podcasts, which tend to be very long and appear infrequently, and not gain a deeper appreciation of history generally.

OTOH, I find his occasional Common Sense news and current events podcast incoherent. His diagnosis for everything, some kind of amorphous "corruption, is incoherent and turns on a naively idealized conception of the world and political affairs. It's like he's the opposite of Madison, a realist who tried to architect governmental systems based on an understanding of history and a wary understanding of human motives and action. Not going to write a thesis on the problems with Carlin's politics, but I find him surprisingly ignorant for a guy that's so well read in history. If you want to find a Hardcore History episode to begin with, I'd suggest the one on the eastern front in WWII or the one about a town that revolts and is punished during the early Protestant Reformation. The stuff on the Mongols is also good. Most of the episodes are.

Trumpcast (Slate)-Generally weekly(ish) podcast of the continuing nightmare of Trump. Host is usually Jacob Weisberg, who runs Slate, though sometimes Jamelle Bouie (who is solid) or Virginia Heffernan (also solid), generally with a top-tier reporter or academic with some subject matter expertise in an area relevant to Trump's dumpster fire of a presidency.

Pod Save America (Crooked Media)- Tuesday show has John Favreau (Obama speechwriter), Tommy Vietor (Obama pokesperson and NSC staffer), and Jon Lovett (former Obama speechwriter who left to go work on film/TV after a few years at the WH. Thursday show is Vitor and Favreau and usually an interview. Lovett hosts a solid liberal gamshow/talkshow "Lovett or Leave It" on Thurs that airs Fridays.

These guys have probably had more success with Crooked Media than any other podcast startup (they actually started off with "Keeping it 1600" prior to the 2016 election, a part of Bill Simmons' then ESPN-based network). The Tuesday show is best, where they go over recent political and policy developments and the dumpster fire of the Trump administration. Favreau and Vietor are smart, crisp, waspy, and duly concerned. They could be VPs at any major company. Lovett is smarter, wittier, and a bit darker, as befits a gay math major from Harvard. In my mind he's what puts the show over the top. As others have noted, Crooked Media has several other good podcasts, but there are only so many hours. I'll sometimes listen to the others if I see a guest or topic I like.

Sam Harris-Waking Up Podcast--Sam Harris Show is like a smarter version of the Charlie Rose show, with a lot more edge. Despite what Fly and others may say, Harris is genuinely smart. He went to Stanford, did some drugs and then spent a few years of meditation/study in like India or wherever, returned to Stanford for a degree in philosophy, then got a neuroscience PhD at UCLA. I particularly like the depth he brings to philosophical subjects, where he's reasonably well-read. He's great on atheism, understanding the current state of AI, knowing stuff about psychology and cognitive science, hates Trump with a passion. He also knows a fair bit about drugs and meditation (if one is into that, it's one of his things). He's not uncontroversial, and I don't always agree with the stances he takes, especially regarding the Charles Murray thing, then the Ezra Klein spat, and providing a platform for Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro (even if he strongly disagrees with them), but he's probably the smartest "general interest"/topic of the day podcaster I know.

Probably what I like most about Harris is that, most of the time, he seems to be trying to get things right and is willing to push arguments past the point where debates/discussions devolve into hand waving. Also, he doesn't accept ads, which is kinda punk.

Here are a few niche podcasts:

The Diplomat's Asia Geopolitics is hosted by Ankit Panda, a reporter for The Diplomat and is typically conversations between him and other reporters or area experts on current events as they pertain to Asia & Pacific geopolitics.

The National Security Law Podcast is a weekly podcast by a couple law professors covering the previous week's legal news and decisions and how they affect uh...national security.

Macro Musings can get fairly technical, but is an interesting podcast focused on macroeconomic policy by a former Federal Reserve economist - libertarian-leaning host, but the interviews are with people across the ideological spectrum.

I'll second Pocketcasts as the best Android podcast app as well.

[continuing]
Why is This Happening--New podcast hosted by Chris Hayes. Really like Chris Hayes, another guy with a background in philosophy. He tends to be almost overly sincere, but he's a very smart guy. While fairly humble, he's not a guy you want to meet for an LSAT-off in a dark alley. His wife is a former Supreme Court clerk who had a high-level WH-counsel job under Obama (and now does legal reporting for ABC).

The Ezra Klein Show (Vox)-Ezra Klein is actually kind of a big deal in the media landscape now. Just a dude who is smart (dad was a UCLA math prof), flailed around at UC Santa Cruz, then UCLA, and then started one of the best homegrown political blogs, leading to various jobs, then eventually co-founding Vox. He's a lot like Chris Hayes in disposition, politics, always trying to understand what motivates the opposing side, generally giving his adversary too much charity. He's another guy just trying to apply his intelligence to understand this mixed-up world. Likes ideas and finds then interesting, but is sometimes too conventional, in his reliably unconventional way. He actually used to occasionally guest host for Charlie Rose and probably could take over that show if he wanted.

The Gist (Slate)-Daily podcast on assorted topics. Mike Pesca is a national treasure and would replace Charlie Rose in a just universe. Smart, informed, witty commentary on the topics of the day, usually with a solid guest.

538-Nate, formerly of the 2p2 forums, is Nate, and that's pretty good. Generally decent discussion of politics and polls. Losing Harry Enten to CNN was less than ideal, but still, usually a pretty good listen.

Politico's Nerdcast-Fairly conventional, with various subject-matter political reporters. Nothing overly fancy, but I often learn some inside baseball or procedural details that isn't covered elsewhere.

[continued]
Opening Arguments-Twice weekly legal podcast focused on SCT, Trump's legal issues, or what the hosts happen to find interesting. One host is a comedian and the other is an experienced lawyer who went to Harvard Law. The lawyer is quite good. Very down to earth but very good on explaining and synthesizing the law and related practicalities. He doesn't dumb things down, and it's nice to have a lawyer podcaster who is focused on civil law and litigation instead of criminal (which is actually a niche practice area). I just started supporting these guys. Best "general legal" podcast I know of.

All the president's lawyers-Josh Barro and Ken White (Popehat). Popehat is an experienced criminal defense/first amendment lawyer who used to be a federal prosecutor (AUSA). His opinions are generally well informed and rarely conventional. His twitter feed, @Popehat, is great. Can tell you what legal news and developments actually mean.

Slow Burn (Slate)-Great 10 or so episode series about Watergate. Some crazy facts and parallels you never knew, good narration and drama.

Rationally Speaking-Good podcast revolving around various academic guests discussing their work and interests, often touching on science and philosophy. The host, Julia Galef, is pretty good, but not awesome.

New Yorker Radio Hour-David Remnick is a hero, and the podcast can be very good when the topic is interesting.

Stay Tuned with Preet-Preet Bharara, former US Attorney from the SDNY, fired by Trump. He's quite good and very knowledgeable. The podcast would be better if he had lower profile guests, as he's best when discussing the realities of DOJ/investigations/prosecutions. He sometimes is too "political", not airing harsh opinions even when he may harbor them. Still, a great and informative source.

Radio Atlantic-I really like Alex Wagner. Podcast can be good when the topic is good. David Frum is uneven.

On the media-Good liberal hosts bringing forth the sometimes surprising facts behind the clutter of news on things like opioid addiction, Trump machinations, civil forfeiture, etc.

Honorable mention: Slate political gabfest, Longform,
Today, Explained, The Daily, Trump, Inc., Fresh Air, Planet Money, and others.

There are also generally great niche podcasts for whatever niche you are in.

U Talkin' U2 To Me?

R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me?

Every episode is 90 min of nonsense ****ing around with Adam Scott of Parks and Rec and Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang Bang and about 30 min of talking about the music of the bands in the title. Recommend even if you don't like these bands, but must enjoy two funny people talking a bunch of bull****.

On the more serious side, I'm really into Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, which can be summed up as (very) deep dives into selected revolutions throughout post-Renaissance history. Imo Revolutions > Hardcore History.

[continued]

[revised] Honorable mention: Josh Marshall Podcast (TPM), Slate Political Gabfest, Longform, Lawfare Podcast (top source for natl security law), Today, Explained, The Daily, Trump, Inc., Fresh Air, Planet Money, and others.

There are also generally great niche podcasts for whatever niche you are into. Podcasting has all the benefits and costs of a very low barrier to entry (though not THAT low; many people are no good at it).

Pod Save America should only be for hate listening.

Most of these were listed, but in order, highlighting the ones that weren't listed:

Citations Needed (absolute must if you consider yourself serious about American politics)

Chapo Trap House (dunking on the center, right, corporate cultural products, etc.)

Michael and Us (they went through every Michael Moore film and usually trashed them from the left; now they're continuing with other political films)

Current Affairs (left politics and culture with less fury than some of the others, magazine is fantastic too)

538 (whatevs)

Majority Report with Sam Seder (not subscribed, but often watch clips on YouTube if I'm eating at home and want something on)

Hate listen to The Tom Woods Show sometimes. Libertarian podcast that makes it clear that while claiming to be all about freedom, they're actually about white Christian supremacy and triggering "leftists" (corporate liberals).

I did once and can definitely see the appeal. He speaks quickly and confidently, and this makes his points often seem smart and correct if you haven't been inoculated. Especially dangerous for non-thinking liberal types to listen to because he can easily fool them with "the Democrats have gone SO FAR LEFT it's out of control" and get them to move further right. Good article on him if you ever need ammo: https://static.currentaffairs.org/20...ds-philosopher

I'm kind of disappointed that podcasts have become such a popular medium, because a lot of these are subjects I'd like to listen to more but my podcast listening time is, like, 5 hours/week on my commute to/from work, and even then I don't necessarily feel like listening to one every day.

I can read tons of articles in a day but listening requires my full attention, so it's not really something I can just "have on", at least not without missing tons of what they talk about.

There's cooking, cleaning, and other chores to be done.

2x speed rules. I can’t listen at 1x anymore. Sounds like slow talkers.