Category: Life

Michael Easter on the Comfort Crisis

EconTalk | 19 July 2023 | 1h 13m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Michael Easter about his book The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self. Argues modern life is too easy, too comfortable. To be healthy, we need to move out of our comfort zones and every once in a while try to do something, especially something physically demanding, that we didn’t think was possible. Discusses rising levels of anxiety and depression in the West and why taking on challenges can be part of the solution.

I skipped this in 2021 but came back to it after reading the complimentary review by Mr Money Mustache.

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Bruce Caldwell: The Life and Ideas of F.A. Hayek

Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis | 18 January 2023 | 0h 38m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Bruce Caldwell about his book Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950, co-authored with Hansjoerg Klausinger. Discusses the first five decades of Hayek’s life and work, covering his early career in Vienna, his relationships in London and Cambridge, especially with Keynes, his defence of classical liberalism, writing The Road to Serfdom, and of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society.

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Katherine Rundell on the Art of Words

Conversations with Tyler | 11 January 2023 | 0h 53m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Katherine Rundell about her book Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. Discusses how she became obsessed with John Donne, the power of memorizing poetry, the political implications of suicide in the 17th century, the new evidence of Donne’s faith, the contagious intensity of thought in 17th-century British life, the effect of the plague on the national consciousness, the brutality of boys’ schooling, and more.

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Polly Morland on A Fortunate Woman

Baillie Gifford Prize | 31 October 2022 | 0h 30m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Polly Morland about her book A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story. Discusses how she reprises John Berger’s medical classic A Fortunate Man, writing about the work of a country doctor in the same valley as Berger’s work – all while managing her mother’s care for dementia.

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A Hidden World of Sound

Many Minds | 14 December 2022 | 0h 58m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Karen Bakker about her book The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants. Discusses the twin fields of “bioacoustics” and “ecoacoustics”, why sound is such a ubiquitous signalling medium across the tree of life, why scientific discoveries about sound have often been resisted, whether animal communication systems constitute languages, efforts to decode those systems using AI.

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Russ Roberts on Wild Problems

The Tim Ferriss Show | 5 August 2022 | 1h 57m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Russ Roberts on lessons from F.A. Hayek and Nassim Taleb, decision-making insights from Charles Darwin, the dangers of scientism, his book Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us, learnings from the Talmud, the role of prayer, and the journey to transcendence.

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John Goetz: Tracking Down a Torturer

The Prospect Interview | 7 June 2022 | 0h 43m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with John Goetz about his article What happened in Guantánamo: a former prisoner and interrogator speak 17 years on. Describes the story of former Guantanamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi and the man who tortured him, Mr X; how Goetz and his colleague Bastian Berbner tracked down Mr X seventeen years later; and what it taught them about the war on terror.

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Self-Help for Data Nerds

People I (Mostly) Admire | 14 May 2022 | 0h 52m | Listen Later | Podcasts | Spotify
Interview with Seth Stephens-Davidowitz about his book Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. Offers advice for everyday life distilled from mountains of data. Covers appearance, wealthiest occupations, factors that predict entrepreneurial success, the relative importance of genetics across various sports, mental health and beating depression, Google trends, racism, dating, and desensitising rejection.

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