What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?
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Listening to a lot of Lex Fridman podcasts recently. He's a young AI researcher who is like a more intelligent and science-oriented version of Joe Rogan. Same open mindedness and gift for interesting questions. Longest conversations in the podcast game, with the longest I've seen over eight hours. Most are over three. First time I've ever heard Robin Hanson interviewed, so that was a treat. He's talked to almost everybody in the public intellectual game, many several times. Just got done with his conversation with Jordan Peterson, 3.5 hours long. Jordan made himself cry twice. Good stuff.
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How the hell do you two have the time to listen to all of this crap? There’s only so much time in the day…
Sleep 6
Work 10
Family time - 2-3
Wife time - 2-3
Chores - 1-2
TNCR - 1Where do have any time for this?
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@LuFins-Dad said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
How the hell do you two have the time to listen to all of this crap? There’s only so much time in the day…
Sleep 6
Work 10
Family time - 2-3
Wife time - 2-3
Chores - 1-2
TNCR - 1Where do have any time for this?
Lots of tasks can be multitasked with audio only stuff.
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Here's Mr Peterson and Andrew Huberman discussing human and mammal brain stuff.
Link to videoI think it's easy to lose sight of how lucky we all are to be privy to such conversations. When I was a kid, I thought there were ivory tower intellectuals who were so much smarter than me. But here they are, presenting themselves, intentionally, talking about the leading edge of their thoughts, and lo and behold they are people just like you.
Not just like you, if you're a progressive. So sad, too bad. But there are literally no public intellectual conversations on the 'progressive' side of the cultural conversation. You can have your Jon Stewarts. He's as close as you'll get.
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@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
Here's Mr Peterson and Andrew Huberman discussing human and mammal brain stuff.
Here's your bit of medical trivia. This podcast, at least in the early parts, talks about anxiety and the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve (cranial nerve #10) is the farthest reaching nerve from the brainstem (the medulla). In fact, the etymology of the name, "vagus", has as its root, the same basis as "vagrant," or wanderer. Unique among the nerves exiting the brainstem, the vagus goes all the way down to the GI tract.
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@Jolly said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
Just as a dumb question...How much impact on the general public do podcasts have?
I have been exposing myself to the ideas of the world's most intelligent, thoughtful, and well-studied people, since the advent of the podcasts. At least my personal feed, is entirely devoted to that. It's just reality, and astonishing, and rather disheartening, that this is how humans can sound. They're actually almost all Jewish. It is what it is.
But I am not your average person. Most podcasts are garbage.
But the internet, which is the abstract of my podcast feed, allows for this.
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@Jolly said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:
Just as a dumb question...How much impact on the general public do podcasts have?
I think pretty small effect. I use for an example the forum thread about the Fox News hosts. Tucker Carlson replaced person B who replaced person A, who I think were very very popular when they were on Fox News. Both person A and B have podcasts? They may be quite popular, but do not have the same overall recognition or impact as they did before when they were on TV.
A lot of the people you mention here, I have never hear of before.
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This is an amazing conversation. I'd never heard of this guy, Balaji Srinivisan. He's a general partner at Mark Andreesen's venture capital business. Actually they remind me of each other, listening to them. He's got fascinating things to say about so many things. Health care, the FDA, crypto and its applications and importance, the future and past of humanity, too many to remember after one listen. It's an over 7 hour conversation. Among other things, the guy is clearly tireless. It did convince me that I should probably get off my butt and invest in bitcoin.
Link to video -
On the latest Dishcast, a very interesting conversation between Andrew Sullivan and Chris Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News for “committing journalism” on election night of 2020 and calling AZ for Biden.
They barely mention that, though. It’s mostly a long and informed lament about the deterioration of US media over the last 25 years, left and right, and what the myriad causes have been.
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Haven't started this yet, but it looks interesting.
A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
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This guy, named Nathan Cofnas, a Philosophy professor at Cambridge, is especially strong in his deconstruction of wokeism. Strong in that he simplifies to what I would consider irrefutable and obvious, if one actually thinks about it. His claim is that the denial of genetic differences between races, or in other words the axiom that all groups are genetically equal cognitively, necessarily leads to wokeism. He goes as far as to claim that explanations around bad cultures are "silly", a claim which he never substantiates in the discussions I've listened to, but which he implies there is plenty of evidence for. Of course the evidence for an IQ difference between racial groups is overwhelming, and he makes the obvious point that anybody familiar with the data does not dispute it. They only pretend to, or they are morons. He takes issue with the Heterodox Academy, a group of academics founded ~10 years ago, with a charter to be able to think and discuss such things out loud. As it turns out, The Heterodox Academy still treats genetic IQ differences as third rail. He names names regarding primary offenders, among them famous free thinking public intellectuals like Jonathan Haidt and John McWhorter. He wrote this piece about it.
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/35/4/four-reasons-why-heterodox-academy-failed
Heterodox Academy responded:
A couple podcast conversations with Cofnas:
Link to video
Link to videoThe only other legitimate academics this fearless in the face of the social death penalty around these issues are Amy Wax and Charles Murray. Not even Glenn Loury is willing to go as far, though he's willing to talk to these people, and respects their views.
But yes, there is a reason the genetic IQ thing is the ultimate taboo in western cultures. That taboo is the lynchpin of all the social power the left accumulates. If the real explanation is disallowed, any number of curated fake explanations, which just so happen to accumulate power to one political group, can be invented and forced onto the public via propaganda that nobody dares deny.