Podcasts et al

I have found myself in the position of temporarily commuting in my car for ~2.5 hours a day. My typical commuting activity - reading on the train or trying not to die while biking - is thus not an option. Neither is listening to NPR, which gets repetitive after about 20 minutes.

So: do any of you have preferred podcasts or audio classes that you have enjoyed? I'm looking for something interesting and informative but I'm not tied to a genre - the meatier the better. I suspect most of you have a decent handle on my interests. Any ideas? I've never really done the podcast thing so I'm having trouble knowing where to start.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

I have found myself in the position of temporarily commuting in my car for ~2.5 hours a day. My typical commuting activity - reading on the train or trying not to die while biking - is thus not an option. Neither is listening to NPR, which gets repetitive after about 20 minutes.

So: do any of you have preferred podcasts or audio classes that you have enjoyed? I'm looking for something interesting and informative but I'm not tied to a genre - the meatier the better. I suspect most of you have a decent handle on my interests. Any ideas? I've never really done the podcast thing so I'm having trouble knowing where to start.

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I'm a pretty big fan of Econtalk, and while it doesn't hurt that the host's views somewhat align with my own, Russ Roberts has a lot of guests with wildly different viewpoints on his program, and he manages to explore and engage lots of different topics in detail, while maintaining civility. Additionally, there's a large back catalog of episodes, so you'll have plenty of options to choose from.

The Freakonomics Radio and More Perfect podcasts are usually interesting, but can feel watered down, as is Radiolab, which of late has been veering into topics I find less appealing.

I found Serial to generally have a pretty good arc, though season 2 didn't have the same import as season 1 in my opinion.

538 podcasts are always good listening.

If you can get access to them as a dirty foreigner I also enjoy In Our Time on Radio 4. All the episodes are online as podcasts, but I don't know if non UK users can get them http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006...pisodes/player

I mostly listen to podcasts focusing on topics related to clinical medicine, but, when it comes to economics podcasts, I have on occasion enjoyed all the podcasts on this list:

http://timharford.com/2016/02/the-fi...casts-of-2016/

The NPR Planet Money and Hidden Brain podcasts are slick, but often unsatisfying (too often evoking the feeling you get from slick well-produced "hot takes"). I've enjoyed the FT podcasts more. The LSE lectures and "podcasts" are interesting but not really suited to the format. EconTalk has long episodes and a fairly diverse selection of topics.

I gave up on Freakonomics after a string of one-sided and opinionated podcasts, but I do love their selection of topics.

The two podcasts mentioned at the end that have nothing to do with economics are brill :up:

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Originally Posted by Steely Glint

538 podcasts are always good listening.

If you can get access to them as a dirty foreigner I also enjoy In Our Time on Radio 4. All the episodes are online as podcasts, but I don't know if non UK users can get them http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006...pisodes/player

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Yeah, you can listen to it with the BBC iplayer app at least. For some light stuff on there I sometimes listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage (popular science).