Ask HN: What is the best podcast you listened to in 2021?

The Huberman Lab Podcast is amazing: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2D2CMWXMOVWx7giW1n3LIg

A HN comment turned me onto this podcast several years ago and its one of the ones that has endured and is part of my regular rotation. The hosts present and comment on the coverage of various current events in the broadcast press. Because so much of current events is political, there are plenty of opportunities to quibble regarding opinion and some people get annoyed at their style that lampoons the morning zoo formay. But, I get value from their aggregation and analysis, since I don't own a TV and am kind of insulated from the day-to-day press narrative.

So as to not post again in the thread, Le Show by Harry Schearer is a political satire radio show from a man who used to voice a ton of characters for The Simpsons. Hes been doing his show for over 30 years and its still very entertaining. I have listened to it for the majority of my life, when it used to broadcast on the radio (it still does). Give it a listen!

https://www.wwno.org/show/le-show

Acquired is by far the best podcast I've listened to this year:

https://acquired.fm

The hosts tell the stories of great businesses (for example: TSMC, Berkshire Hathaway, and Standard Oil). They dive into each company's history (which is always fascinating), analyze what made the business tick, and discuss the lessons that can be learned from it. It's a bit like How I Built This, but geared toward founders rather than the general public and also much more entertaining.

Darknet Diaries is the best one at the moment. Everything is perfectly put together in the show.

The recent shift towards philosophy is fascinating.

I studied engineering because I thought we made most of the advancements that change the world through the application of technique.

It didn’t take me long to realize the importance of economic constraints and the mysterious way in which the market acts as a complex, mediating system. I became fascinated with economics.

But then, reading Adam Smith, heck, even Hayek, it’s evident that these guys were also doing philosophy. Their philosophic substrate is what they built their economics on. And that is fascinating. The line separating positive and normative turned out to be blurrier than I thought.

I still have an engineering mindset, but I try to be more thoughtful about what can be solved by it, and how the scope in which I apply it matters for my happiness and the ones I love.

My objective function is no longer max U.

Some of my favorite episodes are, top of my head, Mary Hirschfel on Aquinas and the market; Agnes Callard, on aspiration; Michael Munger on Desires and Morality; the ones with Zena Hits and Jeniffer Fray, but there are so many more.

Thanks Russ!