I was on Tuesday’s edition of our “The Journal” podcast talking about my recent story on India, Covid-19, and accusations that the government is censoring social media over its handling of the crisis.
You can listen online here or find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or other services. It was out May 4 and is called “India’s Social Media Crackdown.”
Adapted from an edition of my newsletter, Newley’s Notes, sent November 2, 2020. Image via C D-X on Unsplash.
Last week I shared my ten favorite email newsletters.
🎧 Now let’s turn to podcasts. Here are my faves:
💰 1) Conversations with Tyler – academic and author Tyler Cowen talks to extremely smart people. That’s pretty much it. The focus is nominally economics, but you don’t need to be an econ nerd to enjoy it.
😂 2) Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin. The great actor interviews creative types. His 2014 chat with Jerry Seinfeld was incredibly funny.
🎵 3) Desert Island Discs – What music would you bring with you to a desert island? A simple premise, an immensely enjoyable and moving show. Don’t miss Arsenal legend Ian Wright or documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux.
⚽ 4) For soccer news, I like Football Weekly, from The Guardian, featuring a well-informed and (mostly) lovable bunch of journalists…
🧤 5) …and Goalkeepers’ Union – former Watford and Brentford goalkeeper Richard Lee discusses all the week’s top GK news.
📰 6) The Journal – The Wall Street Journal’s daily podcast featuring the biggest stories and interviews with our reporters. (I was on last year talking tech in India, and in July discussing Hong Kong and U.S. tech titans.)
💪 7) The Peter Attia Drive – Longevity-focused physician Peter Attia talks to extremely sharp experts in the fields of medicine, psychology, fitness, sports and more.
📚 8) Asia Matters – my ex-WSJ colleague Andrew Peaple and my ex-Columbia University classmate Vincent Ni talk to journalists, academics, and others about news and politics throughout the region. (I joined last year to talk about India, China, and tech.)
🎸 9) Bob Dylan: Album By Album – here’s an unconventional one. Ben Burrell discusses the musical genius’s records, one by one.
🔨 10) Cool Tools: Renowned author and technologist Kevin Kelley and tech editor Mark Frauenfelder interview guests about the tools they find indispensable.
What do you think of my picks? Leave a comment or find me on Twitter; I’m @Newley.
Foodies with wanderlust, take note: Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, is featured on the Oct. 10 episode of the Splendid Table, a podcast about cooking and eating. ((Related posts: My favorite podcasts (June, 2007) and My favorite podcasts: updated (Nov., 2008).)) You can find the episode here, where you can listen to the entire show or scroll down to hear Matt’s segment.
Matt, whose work I’ve praised before, tells host Lynne Rossetto Kasper about his tactics for finding tasty food while on the road. I especially enjoyed hearing about how he discovered the best dishes in Ho Chi Minh City.
(Thanks to A for the tip.)
As I’ve noted before, I really love podcasts. And I wanted to update the list of my favorite podcasts that I posted last year. So here goes.
First, here are some recent finds; none of these are new, but they’re new to me ((If you’ve never listened to a podcast and wonder what all the fuss is about, check out this three-minute YouTube video: Podcasting in Plain English.)).
— The Sound of Young America ((Note that the title is misleading; the show has little to do with America’s youth.)). Tagline: “A Public Radio Show About Things That Are Awesome.” Textism has a good overview of this podcast.
— The Moth‘s format is simple: People get up on stage, without notes, and tell stories about their personal experiences. There’s some wonderful, wonderful stuff here.
— RadioLab. A podcast about science and philosophy. Sometimes it’s a little too experimental, sonically speaking, for me. But the topics are always intriguing.
And then there are my (mostly well-known) favorites: podcasts that I’ve been listening to for a while and still really like:
— the ESPN Soccernet podcast ((Which also happens to have a lively Facebook group)),
— On the Media,
— PRI’s The World, and
— World View, from the New York Times.
Got a favorite podcast to share? Let us know in the comments.
Don’t miss This American Life episode 352: The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar, by reporter Tal McThenia. The show aired on March 14. From the show notes:
In 1912 a four year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. (The picture [above] was taken just days later.) In 2004, his granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather’s kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family’s century-old prayer. We devote our entire episode to the story.
Related: my favorite podcasts.