Good faith disagreements

I am big on podcasts. It’s like college lectures but I get to pick the panelists and the professors. I listen to a lot of them. I try out a lot of them. Sometimes it’s about the interviewee. Sometimes its about the interviewer. Sometimes its about the topic. Sometimes its just random to explore new ideas.

Whatever it is, it’s all about curation. As with every medium, there’s great, meh & shit.

I get that many don’t like listing to podcasts. And, thats for a good reason. Many podcasts are just word salads. Many are rehashing of trite ideas. Many are way too long. So many are complete waste of time.

This is especially a problem in the tech podcast world where investors keep talking about the same ideas at different paces with different interviewers.

I enjoy listening to authors when they go on podcasts tours for promoting their books. Its a great way of filtering out what newer books not to read.

Overall, I really like the format. It is like listening in on 1:1 coffee meetings between people.

Today, I listened to two podcast episodes.

The first one was between two economists Noah Smith and Russel Roberts. It is an epitome of civil good faith discussion between two ideologically & intellectually diverse curious people. It does not matter who I agree more with. That’s irrelevant. I wish we could have more conversations on more topics like this one.

The second one was between Kara Swisher and 'Winners Take All' author Anand Giridharadas. I disagreed with the tone, attitude and pretty much most of what is said in this conversation but I look forward to reading the book Winners Take All.