We absolutely should not.
Gonna guess you guys have seen the Quillette DSA hoax? If not there’s a piece on it here:
The prankster, who declined to give his name, describes himself as a “left populist” Illinois resident in his 20s who listens to popular socialist podcast Chapo Trap House.
Extremely sloppy citation from You’re Wrong About co-host Michael Hobbes:
According to a 2016 study, autonomous vehicles must drive 275 million miles without an accident to achieve the same safety standard as the average human driver. According to the same study, Google’s self-driving cars had logged about 1.3 million miles by 2015 and had beeninvolved in 11 accidents, making them roughly 2,300 times more dangerous than human drivers.
I hope it’s obvious to everyone that there’s no way the first sentence is true. What the study actually says is that autonomous vehicles would have to drive that far to provide enough data to statistically infer that they are no more dangerous than humans. I’ve @d him on Twitter about this but I’m not sure he’s read it.
Oof yeah that’s really bad. For comparison there are professional truck drivers who have 2-3M miles under their belts without an accident- and they are absolutely the best of the best with a couple of decades of experience driving 500+ miles per day. They aren’t remotely the norm.
What is Chapo? The only one I know is El.
For those who were fans of season 1 of Crimetown, “Doctor Broad” is on twitter
As a pedestrian in the heart of an autonomous vehicle test area, I’ve nearly been killed by humans a couple of times, 0 by computers. There was one time I felt like one was facing me down but it was probably just confused about what I was going to do- it came to a stop and refused to go on until I had crossed the street in front of it. It made me a little uncomfortable but I wasn’t going to wait all damn day.
Matt>>>Felix
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Latest Ezra has Matt Bruenig on it and they talk Healthcare. Really frustrating listen so far; Ezra just seems so lost in political bullshit that he misses the forest for the trees–missing that single payer is by far a better system and is the system we should be fighting for.
Anyone know if Al Franken’s podcast is any good? I always liked him on Air America
I couldn’t make it through for the opposite reason. I thought Bruenig was insufferable.
My all-time favorite political podcast is On The Media, which largely focuses on media criticism and how political events are covered. They have a series of Breaking News Consumer Handbooks, the one on mass shootings is a classic of the genre and an absolute must-listen if you have nine minutes to spare:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/breakingnews-consumers-handbook
Bag Man is a history of Spiro Agnew and the crazy shit he was up to. It’s amazing.
Planet Money is great.
Non-political, my all-time favorite podcast is I Don’t Even Own a Television, a comedy podcast about bad books. Two of the best episodes to get you started are
Those Who Tresspass – Bill O’Reiley’s self-insert novel in which Bill O’Reiley kills his co-worker with a spoon. Shit is wild.
Night of the Crabs – Giant crabs. They attack.
For super-nerds, the journal Science has a podcast. The latest episode is titled: “One million ways to sex a chicken egg, and how plastic finds its way to Arctic ice.” It’s actually really horrifying, listen to another episode instead.
Also for nerds: the improv sci-fi comedy podcast Mission to Zyxxx. It’s so great.
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Fine. I’ll listen to I Don’t Even Own a Television. It’s been recommended a bunch around here lately.
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Entirely by Trolly, I think (edit: my mistake, superuberbob in the OP too). I listened to a few eps out of respect for my man Trolly and… eh. I like it as an idea, but I don’t think the hosts are that naturally funny, and it has the problem that (unlike something like RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst, or MST3K or whatever) you don’t get a firsthand experience of what it is they’re making fun of. They read a few passages from the books but it’s not really enough to get to grips with them. I enjoyed eps more when I had read the book under discussion (Ender’s Game and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) but when I hadn’t I tended to feel like I wasn’t in on the joke. I gave up on it, but I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my life or anything, so give it a shot, maybe you’ll like it more.
Ender’s Game is a weird book. I liked it when I read it as a teenager, but as I got older I realised it sucked without even needing to reread it.
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Any ep recommendations for a first listen to Citations Needed?
Tough to pick one. They usually have descriptive titles so you know what you’re getting into. I found the ones on Bill Gates pretty thought provoking - they challenge the narrative that he’s a great, benevolent being. Episodes 45 and 46. Episode 55 shits on Jake tapper. Several episodes dive into how libertarian philosophy has inserted itself into our media, with episode 64 going after Mike Rowe (I loved dirty jobs when I was younger)
I would suggest just scrolling through their list and picking out a few that seem way out there or counter to what you believe. They haven’t always changed my mind but they do a damn good job of explaining it.
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Yeah citations needed is one podcast that I think is consistently strong. The two parts of their MSNBC takedown were also excellent.
Been listening to Talking Politics, which is British but has smart people talking politics.
Also, there’s a slate star codex podcast where some guy reads the latest SSC post. Solid if you like SSC.
Also for sci-fi nerds there’s Decipher SciFi which breaks down science fiction films and discusses them in the context of the real world.
They’re also working on Decipher History which another part of Decipher Media Network.
Full disclosure: My cousin is a co-host on the shows and founder of the network
Listened to the first two eps of Useful Idiots with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper. I’m a Taibbi stan so I enjoyed it, Halper is alright as well. I don’t think it was essential listening or anything, but if you’re looking for another hour of comic-edged chatter about the political events of the week, it’s pretty good. I skipped the Tulsi Gabbard interview on the first ep because I don’t really care what she has to say.
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