It's about Japan during the second world war and there's something about the absolutely insane Japanese mentality that lead civilians to commit mass suicide that captivated me.
The whole series, and really the whole of Hardcore History is absolutely amazing and even if you think you don't like history you absolutely should give it a try. Blueprint of Armageddon is still the best piece of entertainment I've ever had, regardless of media.
Strongly agree. Blueprint for Armageddon [1] about the machinations of WW1 is still the best audio narrative I've ever heard. I recently listened to it again after my first binge back in 2014 and it's still unparalleled.
Supernova in the East is also deeply fascinating and disturbing.
This is my recommendation as well. I've been listening to these as they have come out. I listened to part 5 on a long car ride recently. The description of the mass suicide after the Battle of Saipan was shocking. Most people today don't know the horrors of Imperial Japan. Most assume there couldn't be such a fanatical, vicious, and atrocity-oriented culture in contemporary times.
I'm a big fan too, but beware of his pretty bog standard reading of history. For instance, he makes plenty of insinuations in the Supernova series about how the US basically had to nuke Japan because they were so fanatical.
This is an excellent documentary. Skipping ahead to the “Discussion” section and watching through to the end gives a good summary, and it certainly opened my mind. Thanks for sharing, I’m probably going to go back and watch the whole thing.
I found the Planet Money episode Big Rigged surprisingly moving. It covered the business model of American trucking company Prime through the story of Kimberly. It was the all too familiar story of employee rights being eroded through a shady business model. Prime were exploiting workers by encouraging them to operate as independent contractors with an exclusive contract whilst also loaning them their truck, setting their rates, assigning their jobs, and asking them to pay for the training they delivered if they left within their first year of operation.
Planet Money does some great reporting, the things they uncover, man, it's depressing. The episode about plastic recycling and advertising, the episode about REDMAP, the episode about the black woman who had her traffic ticket dismissed and still owed the courts $300. There are happy jems too but right now I can't think of any.
I loved this interview Lex Fridman had with George Hotz. He's very opinionated original thinker with the credentials to back it up. He runs comma.ai, sellers of a device that can plug into many cars and drive for you.
Yeah, I got on a real big george hotz kick. I wanted to go more in depth into the interview so I built out a transcription platform to easily be able to transcribe and host audio or youtube programs. It uses aws transcribe under the hood. Here's his second interview transcript. I've been meaning to do his first one as well
I really enjoyed the ones with Manolis Kellis, particularly number 2:
https://youtu.be/t06rkOOUa7g
Manolis seems such a genuinely nice person, who's also super clever
had to give up on that one at about 1:30:00 even Lex seems tired. No offense but the ratio of trolling and content with Hotz is way too high. I enjoyed Lex episodes with his father and Alex Garland though.
No I meant Lex Fraudman. Hotz is good in my book, the guy can actuary write code an has pulled sonys pants Down in a major embarsment for them. Kudos to hotz
Andrew Kelley of Zig [1], Ginger Bill of Odin [2], and Joshua Huelsman [3] (worked on Jai) debate in earnest about moving beyond these languages and why it might matter.
Self-plug since I hosted the podcast, but three compiler devs in the same room generated my favorite banter of 2020!
Just listened to this last night and I second this! It was fascinating hearing all of the different perspectives and design decisions. I've rarely heard a podcast done so well with so many guests so kudos on a great job hosting it Abner. (You may have seen me around the discord, I'm PH Test)
Yes! While I have you here, may I ask how you listened to it? There's the video with closed captions and the audio-only version... which one did you find most convenient?
From the link below: "What are the police for? Producer B.A. Parker started wondering this back in June, as Black Lives Matter protests and calls to “defund the police” ramped up. The question led her to a wild story of a stabbing on a New York City subway train, and the realization that, according to the law, the police don’t always have to protect us. Producer Sarah Qari joins Parker to dig into the legal background, which takes her all the way up to the Supreme Court... and then all the way back down to on-duty officers themselves."
I find the whole Darknet Diaries podcast really fascinating. It covers topics like hacking (black hat, white hat), activism, hacktivism, cyber security and so forth, with a narrative approach that's very pleasant to listen to. This episode in particular talks about what PSYOP (Psychological Operations) is (basically how to use techniques to manipulate people to reach an outcome both in a war scenario and not) by talking to experts in the field and telling their stories. The episodes are all very good and high quality in my opinion, in fact I'm still working my way through the whole backlog, but I don't have much left already. I picked this one because it left me particularly uncomfortable at the end, while at the same time having taught me something.
Each episode also lists its sources (of the information, ndr) on the episode page of their website, which I find amazing.
HENRY: Psychological operations is a skill set which is used to persuade, change, and influence the behavior of the target audience.
JACK: To persuade, change, and influence the behavior of a target audience. To persuade, change, and influence the behavior of a target audience. Huh.
HENRY: That could be with your adversary or with your friendly population. The main thing that PSYOP does not do is PSYOP – perform PSYOP on the American public.
Sure they don't! This is as reassuring as "The NSA does not wiretap Americans".
"The Program audio series" is the only fiction podcast I listen to I heard about it first on HN.
It's hard to single out one episode as a favorite, but I really liked a recent one that is a good standalone episode. ("Read-only memory Computer" == ROM-COM) is the perfect display of the show's signature combination of humor, tech, and wit.
Art Of Manliness Podcast #619: What Driving Tells Us About Agency, Skill, and Freedom
Self-driving cars are the future of transportation, right? No more car maintenance, no more traffic, no more accidents. It may sound great on the face of it, but in this thought-provoking conversation, Matthew Crawford argues that shifting from being a driver to being a mere passenger represents a kind of existential risk.
Joscha Bach was for sure one of my favourite discoveries this year. He seems like someone who has deeply thought about many disciplines including CS, philosophy and psychology
I was going to put this one. I'm a fan of Reply All, but this was an episode that was so good it almost didn't seem real. Low spoilers, but they downplayed the ending so much that even without it, it'd have been a really good episode. But with the ending, I straight up dropped my jaw. Such a cool, relatable, story.
I'm listening now and enjoying it. Very relatable as I have an 80s horror movie I saw one scene of when I was a kid and I still have not been able to find it. Haunts me to this day. A family is outside all afraid and some force is tugging a chain into the sky.
I had a scene that haunted me as a kid and I thought there was no way I'd ever find it (literally had little more than the fading scenes from the dreams).
And this year I found it. I'd always remembered it wasn't a cartoon or live action - but something in between. So it turns out it was the scenes of 'death' from Jim Henson's "The Storyteller". Just something about the creepy face that did it as a kid. Was definitely a strange sensation to connect it all and see the images anew. Humans/memories/brains are weird. (The Storyteller, Season 1, Ep 5 - it's on Amazon Prime in Canada)
It was done right before the first Crew Dragon launch. They do such a great job of digging into a company’s history and the business model that powers them.
100% agree with SpaceX, mine 2nd would be Pinduoduo and how revenue and cash held can be completely different and how advanced China is many areas (like logistics) compared to the west.
https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/pinduoduo
A magnificent BBC podcast series that covers in extreme detail the Apollo 11 mission, including explanations of the busy chatter that you hear from mission control audio.
They had a series about Apollo 13 this year. It needed to be paused because one of the producers were a doctor that needed to help with Covid, but later it was completed.
Bellingcat - The Executions & The Hunt ‘the two-part series tells the story of a gruesome video that captured the world’s attention in 2018 and how a remarkable open source investigation sought to unravel its secrets.
The video, which had spread rapidly online, appeared to show unarmed women and children being murdered by men in army uniform. Which army the men belonged to was not clear. Nor was it apparent where the incident had taken place or who the victims were. But an international team of investigators and volunteers was determined to uncover the truth.’
You're Wrong About is probably my favorite podcast discovery of the last year. I generally dislike shows with the format of "the host reads a few articles and pretends to be an expert on it." But they do an above-average job on this show.
I haven't listened to the Disco Demolition Night episode. There was a good treatment of it years ago on the short-lived Gimlet podcast Undone: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/undone
To me it was the conclusion of a series rather than a single episode: the 5-part "How to duck up an airport" podcast [1] explaining what went wrong with Berlin's long-delayed BER airport published their last episode this year.
The airport is a master class in how not to plan a project. The airport spent more than 5 times it's budget, it opened 9 years late, and may already be too small. There was talk that they may already be broke, and that was before Corona brought down air traffic to a halt. The podcast goes through everything that went wrong, starting in the early 90s.
Technically from 2019 but heard it this year, it's 1984 (the year not the book) [1] an outstanding episode from the excellent Theory of Everything podcast [2] by Benjamin Walker. As bonus you also have an episode about the book 1984 [3].
Hang up and Listen: The Last Last Dance. An exploration of Michael Jordan's time on the Wizards.
99% Invisible: In the Unlikely Event. About the design of airplane safety cards and how getting people off the plane quickly saves lives.
Planet Money: All Your Genes Are Belong to Us. On gene patenting. Good interview subject with the plaintiff who overturned these patents.
Software Engineering Daily: Federated Learning with Mike Lee Williams. Don't usually like this podcast very much, but this episode was an excellent overview of how federated learning works.
The Allusionist: No Title. Interesting examination of titles (e.g. "mrs.", "mr."). This podcast always has hilarious asides.
30 for 30 Bloodlines. A mini-series on the state of horse racing.
Retronauts: '90s Video Game Websites.
You're Wrong About: Shaken Baby Syndrome. Exploration of how this basically made-up syndrome became weaponized.
Don't remember the exact episode name but there was a recent episode of The Weeds on college debt which added some nuance to that discussion that I wasn't aware of.
Two old friends riffing off each other about the world.
I've listened all the way through twice and both times have found myself laughing out loud and deep in thought simultaneously.
I look forward to seeing how Eric Weinstein will continue to evolve The Portal in 2021. No doubt he will continue to deliver outstanding content in his own uncompromising style.
On second place, it got to be Notpetya, by Darknet Diaries (https://podd.app/podcast/darknet-diaries/54-notpetya). Technically released in late december 2019, but I listened to it in januari 2020. It's about Notpetya, the virus/worm that attacked a country in 2017.
Yes! Darknet diaries. Episode 67 - The Big House, where he gets his mum to break into a prison for him, it was just so well done. Made me want to change careers ;)
If I had to pick only one, Dev Game Club's episode 236 where they start talking about Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
It's a weekly podcast where two veteran game developers play and discuss games of the past and their relevance today. There's tons of podcasts where random gamers discuss games, but very few that can do a deep dive into the technical aspects. Each game gets discussed for several episodes. It's a fascinating perspective and the two hosts have great chemistry.
I found a section in podcast that talks about: "we tend to present our best sides to strangers rather than to people who inhabit our lives is very sad", really insightful.
The "David Tennant Does a Podcast With…" episode where he interviewed George Takei, talking about his imprisonment as a child during WWII because he is Japanese-American was very interesting.
This is a really good interview podcast, I also recommend
the episodes with Olivia Colman & the one with Ian McKellen. Honestly most of the episodes are worth checking out.
The Song Exploder episode about Mobb Deep was great because it explored the genesis of a legendary hip hop act and very touching for the story of their friendship through fame and eventually the death of Prodigy. And as with all these episodes the background into the song (Shook Ones pt II) is also very interesting
Bianca Giaever is my favourite story teller. She made a mini series podcast called Constellation Prize for the Believer magazine this year. I want to say that my favourite episode is "My Year with Franz" where she spends a couple of years listening to Franz Wright's (a poet) recordings which he made in the last years of his life. It is very moving and sad story. However, I am not 100% sure that this qualifies as a 2020 release, since its a re-release of her work and the original was released on 2019.
However, Crossing Guard (first episode in Constellation Prize) is also very good. It is Bianca interviewing a crossing guard and it gets very existential. I listen to it when I feel lonely.
Not Overthinking - How can we treat children morally? (Pt. 1)
"In this episode, we review Ali's unemployment, talk about how to talk about workism, and Taimur finally elucidates some concrete ideas about how society treats children immorally, and how we treat children better.
This is the first of a two-part discussion about how society short-changes children. I don't agree with all the ideas, but it's certainly changed how I think about children.
Thanks for the recommendation--I'm listening to it now and enjoying it. It's inspiring me to want to create my own simulation in R. This was a good quote: "if you think things are static, you aren't looking big enough".
An incredibly emotional story on my favorite podcast about cold War history making one of the most powerful narrative from the lady who experienced it all. Listen to her story on Cold War Conversations.
I can't find the link but there was a podcast earlier in the year, around February I think, with Bob Iger and the strategy for Disney and Disney+.
It's stayed with me as the timing for the launch was almost perfect with the lockdown 1 starting here in the UK.
A sincere discussion of the film as an anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist film, that challenges the common view of the film as a 'white saviour' ferngully-like and attempts to explain why the film was so "un-meme-able" in contrast to recent Marvel movies.
How is this the only reply that was downvoted? Is CTH that much more polarizing than Cumtown or True Anon? (Haven't yet listened to the episode)
I've enjoyed this year's Chapo episode about White Fragility, "No Crying in Raceball", but it has probably not aged well as the hype about the book has since died down.
Fairly off topic for HN, but this is my honest answer.
The Bugle: Spready Mercury. I’ve listened to the bugle since 2008 and hearing John oliver on it again gave me hope that there are still good things that can happen in spite of all of the chaos that’s going on in the world right now.
Wow, I was an enthusiastic Bugle listener years ago and it fell off my radar. Zaltzman and Oliver's comedic chemistry is nearly unmatched in podcasting. Going to listen now, thank you for mentioning it!
It's about "therapy boarding schools" or "residential treatment facilities" that purport to help teens with behavioral or emotional issues, drug addiction etc. but often are absolutely horrifying dens of severe child abuse and borderline cult-like brainwashing techniques to get kids in line.
I can personally attest to the accuracy of their description of what goes on at these places, as I spent 18 months in one of the facilities that they're talking about. In fact, I'd say that Brace Belden didn't even cover some of the most terrible parts. That being said, it's a great intro for the uninitiated.
Keep in mind that this is kind of a comedy podcast that's highly irreverent and critical of society as a whole, and is often pottymouthed.
I suggest skipping the first 15 minutes or so, as it's a lot of goofing around before they get to the main topic.
To clarify, I do not endorse this podcast overall. I don't endorse any podcasts as I rarely listen to any of them. I had a friend suggest this particular episode because she knew about my experiences at this facility and thought I'd find it interesting. This is the only episode of this show that I've ever listened to.
I will be launching a podcast soon and would love to listen to you about this. Can promise nothing regarding audience size but do guarantee a good interview (used to have a radio show back in the day). This subject has begun to haunt me. Deets in profile.
I appreciate the offer, but sadly it's not something I'm really comfortable reliving.
When I get into details about that time period I have a tendency to dissociate somewhat, which I've been told by psychiatrists and psychologists is due to PTSD that I developed from the experience.
I normally do my best not to think about it at all, but the recent Paris Hilton documentary brought a lot of eyeballs to these places which has led to a lot of public discourse. I think that's great, I'm happy that it's not being ignored as much as usual, but there are plenty of other people that would be better suited to educate the public than me.
Thanks! A thought just popped into my head on this topic. There's apparently a podcast called Troubled that specifically tackles this topic. I have no idea if it's good or not, but it was also suggested to me. I didn't get around to it because I don't really listen to podcasts often. You might find some interesting people on that!
Wow. Thank you for sharing. That was super fascinating, I’ve never heard of these schools.
I’ve never really listened to TrueAnon but the host is pretty interesting. He fought with some socialists against isis in syria and helped unionize anchor steam brewery here in sf.
It's about Japan during the second world war and there's something about the absolutely insane Japanese mentality that lead civilians to commit mass suicide that captivated me.
The whole series, and really the whole of Hardcore History is absolutely amazing and even if you think you don't like history you absolutely should give it a try. Blueprint of Armageddon is still the best piece of entertainment I've ever had, regardless of media.
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-66-supern...