My favourite Podcasts

I've been listening to various podcasts while commuting to and fro from work for last couple of months, and I couldn't be happier.

Before I discovered podcasts, my options of utilizing a considerable amount of my daily waking life were limited to music from FM radio station or music from my USB stick. Former were annoyance due to abundant number of advertisements, which are often repeated, and limited selection of latest songs, which were also repeated, and which were less of musical delight but more driven by latest movie marketing. Later was considerably preferred, but became boring due to my inability to update my collection often and hence repeating same collection. I tried audio-books few times but quickly discarded the option for they required too much concentration detrimental to safe driving.

Enter world of podcasts! Podcasts are best described as audio blogs. They are delight because they are almost inexhaustive, being updated weekly, and are not as distracting in effect being similar to listening to radio news, and are wildly interesting, entertaining, educational and useful. In some way, I feel they have made my driven less stressful since I am no hurry to reach my destination, instead preferring continuation of my favourite show.

Below is collection of some of my favourite podcasts, in decreasing order of my preference, alphabetically within each sub-group, and my commentary on the same:

List Updated on 11th June 2020

Great:

• Anthropocene Reviewed — Host's personal opinion on various random things, often including esoteric history and personal anecdotes, told in soothing narrative
• EconTalk (Library of Economics and Liberty) — This isn't very entertaining but if you want your mental horizon to be stretched with very deep fundamental concepts, this it it. Falls into a category of podcast you should listen to but probably you won't.
• Every Little Thing — is discussion on minor topics and histories of science.
• Futility Closet — Extremely affable narratives from history of world telling history of minor things and incidents. As they describe themselves, will suit you if your mind is curious about oddities and find pleasure in information for sake of it.
• Indicator from Planet Money — News and stories around current economic metrics from USA.
• Planet Money — Stories of past and present things that make modern economy.
• Radiolab from WNYC — Interesting informative stories about various themes, primary around science and technology.
• Science Vs — This is one the best show to learn about the scientific basis of many common conceptions and misconceptions. Each episode looks at academic literature and tries to synthesize positive, neutral, or negative decision on key questions. Examples of questions explored are the effectiveness of vaccines, diets, multi-vitamins, political questions on abortions, gun control, etc.
• What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law — Show talks about various topics in US Constitution Law and how they are interpreted in the current environment, their history, their usefulness, key cases, etc. and ties them back to US President's Trump's actions.

Very Good:

• 60-Second Science — Quick bites into latest scientific research. Mildly interesting.
• 99% Invisible — Short stories about man-made things that shape the world, and design consideration thereof.
• Completely Optional Knowledge — Simple explanation of science queries. Can be too simple and verbose at times for my knowledge.
• Criminal — Stories of crimes, laws, and their history from USA
• Freakonomics Radio — Logic and data driven look at almost everything in world around us. Built from book of the same name, this is absolutely wonderful podcasts which brings out best practices in various fields from all over the world. Intelligent and stupid questions, all are honored.
• Linear Digressions — Discussion on recent paper in Machine Learning space, or general topic related to Data Science world in simple to understand language.
• The Allusionist — Etymology of words explained in saucier language.
• The Data Skeptic Podcast — This just fits into my groove of analytic science, so I love it for its discussion and references. Will work if you have interest in the science of data driven decision making.
• The History of India Podcast — No one told story of ancient India sourced from ancient text better than this! Making history informative and fun.
• The Infinite Monkey Cage — This is general discussion, with some comedic input, on scientific concept done in live stage setting.
• Reply All — This is discussion on internet, technology and social issue surrounding them. Fairly humour, creative, except for its 'Yes-Yes-No' segment where conversation on dissecting an viral tweet.
• Science Friday — Interviews on cutting edge research or latest discovery in world of Science.

Good:

• A Skeptics Guide to Conspiracy — This is very good in content but not so much in editing. I think they could say that same in half the time as there is a lot of repetation in conversation. However, this discusses latest research in science, with few good puzzles thrown in.
• HBR IdeaCast — Management gyaan isn't my cup of tea, but listening to key stories of Harvard Business Review is still worthwhile.
• Hidden Brain — Anecdotes from behaviour science and psychology.
• Inside Forbes India — India related stories from business world.
• The Economist — Weekly round of world new and explanations on money, market and science. Useful for getting critical international news, and free! Content is heavily biased towards US and UK with bit of Japan, China and Europe but then one can assume it's driven by where money is.
• This American Life — Interesting, emotional and amusing stories from various walks of life, on varying theme
• Sawbones — Humour filled history of medicines and surgery
• StarTalk Radio — This has decent enough content on astronomy, astrophysics, and anything Universe related, but there is lot of banter and chit chat which makes it inefficient for me.
• Stuff You Should Know — This is 'how things work' of podcasts. It's mildly entertaining but content is too low key and slow for my taste.

Good but Defunct:

• 30 Animals that Made Us Smarter — How science and tech uses "biomimicry" to learn from nature and animals.
• 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy — Stories of small things and their impact on world.
• Dissecting Love — Science and biology of relationship and sex. Need I say more?
• More Perfect — This show goes into the story behind pivotal cases in front of US Supreme Court, past and present, and how law and precedent and arguments are shaping the legal opinion.
• Invisibilia — Bit verbose and emotion insight into hidden psychological narrative governing current world and human life.
• It's Your Universe — Journey into Solar System. It's only one season though!
• Serial — This is a serialized radio show with one story. First season presented a true murder mystery thriller. Very gripping.
• The Intersection — Melting pot of Science, History, and Culture in this Indian quality podcast.

If you can recommend any other, I will be really thankful!

Vedika - Day 825

I've not been able to update this blog and my frequency is dwindling. It may die natural death. Hence, I've moved to Twitter. That is, Vidhi is on twitter since 13th Jun'14. Follow her (but who is reading this blog anyway?) at here handle: VG01AG01. This gives me incentive to post because (1) posts are smaller (2) it's new platform. Let's see how long I stay there.

Below is screencap of tweets in last one week.

Vedika - Day 784

Vidhi understands that she has many names. She responds to them well. She connects Vidhudi to Chachu. Vedika Gupta to formal name when asked by stranger. And more. Her emphasis on Vedika Gupta, not yet uttered clearly enough to let stranger understand completely, is absolutely adorable.

As her vocabulary increases, she often corrects us. Having forgotten teaching her, we sometimes slip in something simpler for more complicated word, giving her opportunity to correct us. And her correction takes always the form: <full wrong phrase> NOoooo, <full right phrase>. For example, when inquired about whereabouts of her Chacha by her, we may respond that he has gone out. She quickly chimes, "chacha gone out, No..., chacha gone to gym". As she has started talking, her voice and dialogues are source of surprise and joy, and worthy of recording for preservation. We have not found a quick way to record her utterances, unlike quick video shooting by phone. Unfortunately, she has become conscience of videographing, and immediately stops whatever she is doing and demands to be shown what is being captured.

In a new twist — which her mother finds corruption of her English grammar, and I find sign of her ability of go beyond specified words and understand deep context — she has started making-up fake words. Specifically, fake verbs. She announced other day that she is "office kaaming" when pretend working her mother's laptop. Looking at cats sleep, she said that they were "needing". When her toys fall down, she rues that they are "bumbing." She has, for reasons unknown, also started adding "only" to end of each setence. We worry her deviation from grammatically English to Indian English! Her most common sentence these days is: "They are bumbing only!".

She has picked up names of most vegetables, fruits, letters, numbers, days of the week, months of year, seasons, opposites, and shapes by now. She has even started recognizing letters in written form even when presented out of sequence. Her favourite, now, being letter A. Her understanding doesn't disassociate 'A' from 'Apple' now. So, as she spots an A, on keyboard often, but also in newspaper, she shouts that there is Apple there.

Her sentence structure of some of common phrases brings out hilarity. As perhaps mentioned earlier, she declared few weeks ago that vidhi ke ghar main to daadi bhi hai as way of saying that there is dadi in the house. Yesterday, she went on sing-song about vidhi bhi su-su karti hai, chacha bhi su-su karte hai, papa bhi...you get the drift.

In playgrounds, I find her silent and non-interactive. She is timid, and doesn't reach out to, nor responds when reached out to by, other children. She prefers going one round on each of two identical but different coloured swings and see-saws. She avoids slides, for reasons unknown. I want her to run and do bit of body movement, which she avoids. If, and when, she runs, it is hilarious with her both arms raised and bent at elbows, whole body shaking.

Her nightly tantrums are still ongoing. She not only wants things to be done in certain very very precise way to her, but also wants you to align yourself to her precise specifications. That means direction of sleep, where your body parts lie, speed of fan, presence and location of her soft toys, and whether or not you use blanket. She instruct once, and then cries till her demands are met. Which are often, but when not, can lead her to cry for hours, and then fall asleep sobbing. This happening every night is naturally source of huge annoyance to her mother and I. Once in a while she would get a slap for it. That is more of outlet of our frustrating demeanor rather than any step towards solution. And solution, most of the nights, is none, for it feels that she wants to cry.

Vedika - Day 754

When Vidhi visited her Mama's house in Hyderabad early this year, she heard her mom being addressed by her name, Radhika, by her elder brother and mother, who are, Vidhi's Mama and Nani respectively. Quick to pick anything new, she has taken on to call her mom Radhika and Radhika Mummy, apart from Mummy. And she does take on more assertive tone with name when she has to call her mummy second time or more. Which kind of makes sense. But is very odd to hear, and extremely difficulty to get rid of.

In Vidhi's world, each object, person, activity, emotion is a fully fledged entity. It appears that she understands that her doll is not exactly same kind of friend to her as are her classmates at Day Care. But then, sometimes, as adult you find that perhaps that's not true. In her world, her plastic dog feel hungry when she does, demands milk, requires petting and hugging, and gets tired. She requests, often, to feed her toys/furniture and ascribes other anthropomorphic qualities to them.

Her obsession with Lakdi ki Kathi was talk of the house. Well, everything she does is talk of the house, but this obsession went a level higher. She would demand and listen to this song for hours at end. She would dance in circle as in the song. She would notice a flicker of Teddy Bear near the end of song and point it out to us. She would make hand gestures to mimic tiny Urmila Matondkar. So, of course, as doting parents we decided to find out where to acquire one for her. We knew that that can be bought from Channapatna, a toy town, about an hour's drive from Bangalore. But we wanted to find something in town. Two local hangouts were found wanting, and once we rejected because she swung so much that we felt that she would fall off the horse. In the end, we bought one when we visited Bannerghatta National Park with her bua Khushboo Gupta. As anti-climax go, her fanaticism has subsequently tapered off quite a bit. Lakdi ki Kathi is neither as much demanded on video nor actually played with.

Vedika - Day 751

Having trained her to use appropriate words for relieving herself, we decided that may be now is time for her to sit by herself on commode. So we got this.

In the shop, we wanted to ensure that size fits her well, and we asked her to sit on it, while kept on floor. Later, at home, having recalled seeing swimmers use ring floaters to swim, and her own experience of being asked to sit in center, Vidhi decided that it is her ring floater!

She, announced to our amazement how she will swim in this. When her Chacha decided to give the potty seat a try on real potty, she followed, saw, screamed and snatched this from his hand. Her words, "udhar mat rakho, ganda ho jaayega." Hilarity ensues!

Vedika - Day 736

We are going to be shameless and announce that Ms. Vedika has won two prizes this year in her day-care in today's annual day program!!