This year, I probably listened to more podcasts (usually on a computer, often with video) than I have any other year. The podcast browser is a useful recommender. Podcasts emerged as the medium of choice for the Intellectual Dark Web. If you search YouTube for Jordan Peterson, Eric Weinstein, Jonathan Haidt, or Steven Pinker, you can find dozens of hours of material. For the most part, I still believe that the printed word is a superior medium. But sometimes the podcasts rise to a high level, particularly when they are conversations. My top list:
1. Tyler Cowen and Paul Krugman.
2. Ezra Klein and Jonathan Haidt.
3. Russ Roberts and Yoram Hazony.
4. Russ Roberts and Bryan Caplan.
5. Ezra Klein and Lilliana Mason.
6. Russ Roberts and Bill James.
11. Tyler Cowen and Paul Romer (available after you wrote this post?)
Not on econ, but I would still heartily recommend classics translator Quintus Curtius qcurtius.com who does a lot of podcasts.
The printed word is defintitely superior, though with the exception of some Cowen-Smith ones on Bloomberg, it’s not often used for “conversations”, except of the awful twitter variety.
Cheap digital storage and broadband and free, simply software has made doing multimedia super easy, but it’s like the tempting intellectual junk food of information compared to clear, concise writing. I think it is a big reason we are transitioning to a post-literate society, where even most smart people don’t spend nearly as much time reading and writing long-form works.
I often find podcasts or conversational videos to be more frustrating than illuminating, since conversations invite a more casual intellectual atmosphere in which ambiguities multiply and get passed over quickly instead of participants being pressed to clarify their positions or arguments. If one is left scratching one’s head regarding “What, exactly, do these people disagree about, and how might one resolve that dispute?” then the time was mostly wasted, not just for the listener, but for the conversants too (except, perhaps, for the purposes of mutual-promotion).