Favorite Podcasts

The creation of AI models is a philosophical *and* political question. The how the AI will understand its sovereign, whether it will respect that, and what alignment will look like are deeply political questions. If the president wants an AI to do something that the AI deems harmful, can the AI say no? What does it mean to live in a world where the AI would always agree? Should the fact it would be unmoored from a strong moral code make it a potential risk for the very people trying to “pilot” it? Is this some of what’s wrong with how we conceptualize AI right now? We imagine we’re driving it, pointing it, pulling a trigger?

The bees! There's a part of me that aspires to be so curious about pain, so open to discomfort.

Thought the episode was going to be about OCD but took a turn and still really came through. An improbable rollercoaster about a man's pursuit to find a song he cannot name.

Not sure this is a best of all time, per se, but I laughed out loud when an interviewer was trying to help Timothée by supplying him with a word and he just said something totally different. Re: --- Chalamet: “il veut..." (looking for word) Interviewer: trying to be helpful "être le mauvais garçon" Chalamet: deadpan "un gars qui s’exprime.” --- trop beau. In order to find this funny, though, it is essential to watch the interview from the start. You gotta let the vibes build (have we learned nothing from Marty Supreme??). But of course this was a lesson I learned practically because I did try to watch it cold open and was like 'what on earth about this could have possibly made me break out laughing'

Relationships are about having a stake in the game, and that’s something which AI doesn’t have. Implicit ongoing claim about how ai doesnt suffer, but feel like this might get complicated if we ask what is all this

Maduro election coverage 2024. Followed by this episode which asks Venezuelan activists how they feel about the U.S. incursion: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/extras/the-americans-outside-my-window

Far from comprehensive, but first time I had any type of intro explainer to the idea of a federated internet.

Oh man dating could be so so so weird. Or it is. But for real, though.

... Never listened (?)to but seems to include a story about DC tunnels?

The thinking around inclusion that influence the set design of Sesame Street—the trash, the attitudes, the community. @TAG?

On the scale of days, most of the time, negotiating in car dealerships is kabuki theatre. On the scale of days at the end of the month, I really could not have imagined how fluid things can become. The national brand has a crazy power dynamic with its dealerships. This is one of Ira Glass’s favorite episodes, and that's high praise.

I listened to season 1, where people who were leaders in their communities (think your pastor) were subjects in psychadelics research. Records their experience and the questions they wreslted with as they decided what were appropriate and inappropriate altered states, among other things. Also this is a banger of a trailer.

It was privately owned. Privately. Next time you think something would make an incredible public service but that just isn't imaginable, REMEMBER: ambulances were private.

Woof, classic. This is a problem worth knowing about.

Electricity go in. Electricity go out. Dial go spin. But then: argue about value of dial by time of day. This episode felt very specifically like continuing to zoom in--where I typically conceptualize of information as collaging together adjacently until the picture forms. I felt like I had the picture, and then I was given a higher and higher magnifying glass.

The world is not built for women. Maybe mentions the cockpit design problem. These are important problems to understand for their structural implications on how much of the infrastructure in society is conceived.

Robert Caro made New York what it is and this man was crazy. Just bulldozing civil rights.

I had no idea FEMA, in the worst case-scenarios, will buy peoples' homes. You can avoid the problem of rescuing people if you just have the people leave the place they'd need to be rescued from. And these people have no viable alternative on the housing market because no one is going to buy their home that has become a flood zone. Wild.

Sqeaky floors in Bear Pond Books, Montpelier, Vermont. If you know what they sound like, you will have access to a completely unique set of feelings about this episode.

People adapting and adapating and adapting again to hone their workflow for producing TV transcriptions at the start of this era.

Just here for the trees, skip the card art.

The best drama/journalism/plot twist podcast I’ve ever heard. Bizzare.

The part of our brain that remembers... is really the part of our brain that constructs ideas. There is no "remembering" or retrieving old memories; there is only creating new memories. And in those creations, there are modifications. Remembering again and again actually... creates more opportunity for becoming disconnected from the truth of what happened.

She's stuck in her mind. The impacts this had on Emily and her family give me chills.

What if the rules, understood reasonably, create an incentive for all teams to try to lose. What if this happened at the highest levels of competition? Also I don't know what the tie-in is but I just also have Micheal Scott's win-win-win on the brain.

Just plainly tinkering and iterating in real life for a viscerally appreciable project.

Of the mini-episodes, I’m here for different time and a pre-modern subscription service for music.

We don't really want total silence. Fountains in a park are a widespread manifestation of this fact--the gurgling helps let other tinier noises—the scuffing of feet, the crack of a twig, someone trying to whisper privately—go unnoticed.

The hidden costs of parking are embedded all around us. One that I really never considered was how cruising around for parking (like circling the block until a spot opens up) or double-parking—these actually slow public transit and endanger cyclists and pedestrians.

Finding the cracks in the world. Making something beautiful out of the unseen--the unappreciated. @TAG on the mind

Coming from a place of having simply zero interest in basketbal, this episode has been one which gripped me, and I think it’s a testament to the storytelling that it did as much.

Ohhhh, waiiitttt Temperance Alley Garden where you at

This feels like one where the concept being so weird is unto itself an accomplishment. I didn't get through too many of the others in this series, but--of those I did--this one stuck with me the most.

@ TAG again??