Podcasts I Am Enjoying Now

We are living in an amazing era where expert knowledge is available to us at our fingertips. In fact, there is sooo much interesting stuff out there that any one with any interest in even the most esoteric of topics can find a podcast or blog devoted to it. Over the last few months, I have been listening to several podcasts that have enriched my life significantly and here are my top three.  I hope you get to listen to some of these and benefit from their wisdom:

1. People I Mostly Admire:  This podcast by Steve Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, is absolutely my favorite podcast, and each week I eagerly await the next episode. In this podcast, Steve, who is a behavioral economist, interviews people famous for having achieved some level of excellence in the field of their choice. The goal of the podcast is to expose us to unique and some times controversial ideas to get us thinking. Past guests have included Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast & Slow), Rajiv Shah (Who led the mission to help Haiti recover from a devastating earthquake), Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, the Arnold who beat up bad guys in movies and then became a two time governor of California), Fei-Fei Li (who taught computers to recognize images), Abraham Verghese (who is a wonder Infectious Disease specialist and a great writer of stories) etc etc. Each episode comes with a list of additional reading material if one is interest in digging deeper into the topic of the guests interest. Where else would you get to listen to such eclectic group of people
2. Empire: Here is a podcast for the history buffs. Run by the incomparable historian duo William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, this podcast started as a deep dive into the origins and demise of the British Empire in India but quickly morphed into an analysis of all forms of empires, from British to French to Russian to Persian etc. It would be a huge disservice to this podcast to be called ‘entertainment’ but the entertaining it is while being tremendously educational! If all history teachers were to adopt the conversational and easy going style of Anita and William, (suffused with a huge dose of irreverent humor)  students will come to enjoy history once again. The podcast has become  so popular that it has spawned a club of sorts where one can fawn over Anita’s wit and Williams deep knowledge a week or two in advanc of the general public. Cheapskate that I am, I haven’t joined the club but I do intend to support the podcasters by buying their books. 
3. The Investors Podcast Network: The third podcast I listen to most often is We Study Billionaires by The Investors Podcast Network. This podcast does deep dive into the investment strategies of investors who have made it big. Some of the investors they have covered are Charile Munger, Warren Buffet, Stig Brodersen etc, but the TIP doesn't just focus on investors, sometime they interview people who have written influential books (eg. Robert Caldini of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion) or developed an investing philosophy that is different from the traditional (eg. Jonathan Boyer who releases "The forgotten 40 list of stocks for each year). TIP also puts out other genre of podcasts such as one on Bitcoin (which I ignore) or Richer Wiser Happier (which I sometimes listen to) that breaks the monotony of TIP. I have found these podcasts as a source of many ideas to improve my own thinking about investing and life in general. 

There are hundreds of podcasts available to anyone with interest in any topic, and believe me I would love to listen to them all. However, with these three podcasts, I have enough subject matter to listen to as I am working in my vineyard or driving on the highway.  

Just the way Ekalavya in Mahabharata learned the art of archery without a guru, today anyone can learn the principles of living a good life simply at the press of a button with these free resources.