PODCASTS
Podcasts are a great way of multi-tasking : listen to them whilst on a run, at the gym, commuting to school, waiting for the bus, cooking dinner…! Most of you probably read slower than you listen, in which case podcasts are a great way of whizzing through books and lectures!
Do send in suggestions of your own when you find a highly enjoyable and stimulating podcast! Email us.
Infinite Monkey Cage
Witty, irreverent look at the world through scientists' eyes. With Brian Cox and Robin Ince.
Click on the image above to go to downloads.
To get you started, some specific favourites include:
The bizarre world of Quantum Physics
Exponential View
Harvard Business review presents Exponential View. Created by Azeem Ashar (@ExponentialView) and (@Azeem).
Newsletter, podcast and community focused on understanding the near future.
For staters:
Invisibilia
Unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. Invisibilia—Latin for invisible things—fuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.
For starters:
LSE Podcasts
A. veritable cornucopia of riches here at the LSE online podcasts / public lecture site.
Start with:
Gastropod
Gastropod looks at food through the lens of science and history.
For starters:
Against the Rules
Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker, Moneyball) takes a searing look at what’s happened to fairness. It feels like there's less of it every day—whether it comes to lending practices, college admissions, professional sports, or psychological well-being.
For starters:
Business Wars
Business Wars gives you the unauthorized, real story of what drives these companies and their leaders, inventors, investors and executives to new heights — or to ruin.
For starters, we recommend:
Exponent
Exponent is a podcast about tech and society.
For starters, we recommend:
The Last Archive
Who Killed Truth? In The Last Archive, acclaimed historian Jill Lepore traces the history of evidence, proof, and knowledge, in troubled epistemological times.
Start with:
Project X - The election of 1952 brought all kinds of new technology into the political sphere.
Cell Strain - In the 1950s, polio spread throughout the United States.
More or Less
Tim Harford explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life
Click on the image above to go to downloads.
To get you started, some specific favourites in the episode here include:
Are deaths from heart disease on the rise?
Does Huawei contribute £1.7billion to the UK economy?
The absence of women’s lives in data
99% Invisible
99% Invisible is a podcast hosted by Roman Mars about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.
For starters, try:
The Week Unwrapped
Great accessible way to keep up with current affairs! The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.
For starters:
The Reith Lectures
BBC Radio each year invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest.
Starters give these a try:
80,000 Hours
Conversations about the world's most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them. Fascinating discussions with brilliant people – the future of humanity, the threats we face as a species, psychology, politics… from academics and activists to entrepreneurs and policymakers – to analyse the case for working on different issues, and provide concrete ways to help.
For starters:
Wired
A whole range of podcasts for all things exponentially curious, we can’t recommend this enough!
We recommend:
Economics In Ten
Economics In Ten is your go-to podcast if you want to learn about the lives, times and ideas of the world's greatest economic thinkers. Each episode is a fun exploration of a famous economist using ten different questions.
For starters:
The Secret History of the Future
The Economist’s Tom Standage and Slate’s Seth Stevenson examine the historical precedents that can transform our understanding of modern technology, predicting how it might evolve and highlighting pitfalls to avoid.
For starters, we recommend:
A brief history of timekeeping
The Habitat
A NASA experiment: On a remote mountain in Hawaii, there's a fake planet Mars. Six volunteers are secluded in an imitation Mars habitat where they will work as imitation astronauts for one very real year. The goal: to help NASA understand what life might be like on the red planet—and plan for the day when the dress rehearsals are over, and we blast off for real.
RadioLab
An exploration of science, philosophy, and ethics. The show challenges its listeners’ preconceived notions about how the world works.
There is also now a RadioLabs for Kids!
Intelligence-squared
Perfect for Exponential Minds, Intelligence-squared offers a great podcast to promote conversations that enables people to make informed decisions about the issues that matter, in the company of the world's greatest minds and orators.
To get you started:
Free Speech and the fight for digital democracy
People Fixing The World
Brilliant solutions to the world’s problems. Meet people with ideas to make the world a better place and investigate whether they work.
For starters, some exponential curiosity here:
Using satellite photos to distribute cash
Revisionist History
Each week for 10 weeks, Revisionist History will go back and reinterpret something from the past: an event, a person, an idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood.
Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.
For starters:
Philosophy Bites
Bite-sized podcasts on all things philosophy related.
Great to pique your interest!
For starters, try:
Who is your favourite philosopher?
Plato on War - is it inevitable?
AC Grayling on Descartes’ Cogito
The Tip-Off
If you’re curious about the fun, complicated detective work that goes into doing great investigative journalism- then this is the podcast for you.
For starters:
