some of my faves

podcasts1

  • ★★★★★

    Volts

    [Clean Energy] The best podcast on clean energy. Unbiased and exhuastive in coverage.

  • ★★★★★

    Thinking Basketball

    [Basketball] Tune in for the rigorous analytics, stay for the nonstop banter.

  • ★★★★★

    Odd Lots

    [Business] Warning: side effects include learning way too much about storing hydrogen in giant salt caverns.

  • ★★★★★

    FiveThirtyEight

    [Politics] Make Politics Fun Again.

  • ★★★★★

    Venture Unlocked

    [VC] Down to brass tacks, no frills interviews with VC/LP leaders.

  • ★★★★★

    Straight Up Chicago Investor

    [Real Estate] For the 2 of you who live in Chicago and think real estate is cool.

  • ★★★★★

    Invest Like the Best

    [Investing] Great guests, great questions. Not much to add.

  • ★★★★★

    Catalyst

    [Clean Energy] Shayle is one of the *good* VCs. He gets it.

  • ★★★★★

    20VC

    [VC] Harry has an abrasive personality, but it means we get to hear great guests answer hard questions.

  • ★★★★★

    War on the Rocks

    [Defense] The war in Ukraine has re-instilled public interest in defense. War on the Rocks provides an interesting dive into that side of the world.

  • ★★★★☆

    Russia Contingency

    [Defense] Great premium pod from WotR. 4 stars only Michael Kofman has a bajillion other jobs and can only release a pod once in a while.

  • ★★★★☆

    Acquired

    [Business] Have 4 hours to learn the ins and outs of your favorite legendary company? This is the one for you.

  • ★★★★☆

    The Full Ratchet

    [VC] Another no frills podcast on VC, with hints of the midwest.

  • ★★★★☆

    Yet Another Infra Deep Dive

    [Dev Infra] At the forefront of structural changes in developer infrastructure.

  • ★★★★☆

    Y Combinator

    [Startups] Short, interesting episodes on startup concepts.

books2

  • ★★★★★

    A Song of Ice and Fire (1-5)

    [Fiction] The universe GRRM has built truly feels alive.

  • ★★★★★

    The Power of Creative Destruction

    [Economics] Introduced me to the idea of creative-destruction and the power of an economic model that balances opportunities for rent-seeking and rent-destruction.

  • ★★★★★

    The Innovator's Dilemma

    [Economics] A classic that's shaped the tech industry. Should be instinctual at this point, yet I still find myself coming to different conclusions when I consciously incorporate Christensen's lessons.

  • ★★★★★

    The Energy Switch

    [Energy] A comprehensive and tangible view of the omnipresent yet amorphous system we call 'The Grid' and it's evolution as we move away from traditional fossil fuel generation.

  • ★★★★★

    Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 - book 1

    [History] I love history, with WW2 and the USSR at the top of that list (I'm half-Russian). This series is a slog but really gets at the why's behind the USSR, Russia and Stalin himself. As an aside, the 1917 revolution reads straight out of a fiction novel and that part of the book was an absolute page-turner.

  • ★★★★★

    How to Change Your Mind

    [Psychology] Straight-laced boomer journalist explores psychadelics and the potential benefits they may bring. Michael Pollan goes in without prior experience or assumptions, and changes his mind in more than one way.

  • ★★★★★

    Snowball

    [Biography] In-depth biography of Warren Buffett. Must read for all you Buffett stans.

  • ★★★★★

    Steve Jobs

    [Biography] Severe personality flaws aside, there are a lot of great insights to draw from the way Steve Jobs operates, the emphasis he places on user-experience and how sheer willpower can move mountains.

  • ★★★★★

    Elon Musk

    [Biography] Elon shares lots of parallels with Steve Jobs: dreadful personality flaws, a habit of shooting yourself in the foot, undying willpower and first-principles reasoning. There's some real nuggets of wisdom in the way Elon approaches problems, more so than Jobs. If you ignore his social media outbursts (I've long muted him on twitter), you might find this book pretty enjoyable.

  • ★★★★★

    A Wild Sheep Chase

    [Fiction] I don't understand Murakami books, yet I can't look away. This is the first one I read and though I remember very little of it, I remember a feeling of nostalgia for a weird upside down magical world that only exists in Murakami's mind.

  • ★★★★★

    Liar's Poker

    [Memoir] Michael Lewis set out to write a memoir of the debauchry and value destruction he saw at Wall Street. Instead kids "read my book as a how-to manual". I can't blame them - The Big Swinging Dicks were having all the fun.

  • ★★★★☆

    Hubris

    [History] I guess the Iraq War is technically history.. Anyways, it was interesting and infuriating to read about the utter idiocy that lead to the Iraq War, as well as the poor tactical decisions that dug the US deeper and deeper into failure.

  • ★★★★☆

    World After Capital

    [Economics] Splits humanity in 3 epochs based on the prevailing resource scarcity: (1) Land (hunter-gather up until Industrial Revolution, (2) Industrial Capital, (3) Human Attention. It's an interesting, albeit surface-level, view into a world where the marginal cost of an increasing number of goods is 0 (eg: viewing a youtube video has a marginal cost of essentialy 0).

footnotes

  1. I listen to a lot of podcasts. These are the ones I listen to consistently, hence why all are 4 or 5 stars.
  2. More books. Like with podcasts, these are my favorites, so all have many stars.