The human cost of ultrahardcore
The difficulty mode nobody wants to work in, the deal with Stradivarius violins, talking to animals, vibing with chill existentialism, and more podcast recommendations and links to make you think.
Welcome to Hurt Your Brain #188, the place to get podcasts and links that will make you think.
My typical listening volume has been interrupted by doing some serious back-catalog catch-up around Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. CONAF (for the cool kids) is the ultimate comfort listening for me. I highly recommend the first David Sedaris appearance. The recent interview with Harrison Ford made me finally realize that Ford is actually hilarious, and not a super grump like I thought he was (my new assessment is he is just over the media circuit and people also don’t know how to handle his very dry sarcasm).
My main mode for this newsletter is to recommend things that will make you think, but damn do I love to go on long detours with comedy podcasts every now and then. Plus, good comedy does make you think! Send me your best comedy recommendations if you have them.
Onwards to the main event.
PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS
Land of the Giants: The Human Cost of Ultra Hardcore
The Big Idea: Sell people on the mission, take advantage of their willingness to work 100 hours/week, cut corners on safety and regulations, and worry about the fallout later when you have a massive valuation. This seems to be a the Elon Musk playbook, and this series and episode doesn’t hold back on how Tesla as a company has treated its employees.
The previous episode was a great breakdown of the electric vehicle landscape for anyone interested in exploring their options (like me).
Stuff You Should Know: Selects: What’s the deal with Stradivarius violins?
The Big Idea: Stradivarius was one of the first makers of violins, and also the best. It’s widely accepted that they really are objectively still the best violins, even if it’s debatable if they are worth the millions they go for nowadays. This explores why they are the best and who Stradivarius was.
The Daily: How a Paradise Became a Death Trap
The Big Idea: An extremely harrowing personal account of escaping the fire in Maui. This is the story that helped me understand what actually happened in this tragedy.
Unexplainable: Can we talk to animals?
The Big Idea: The notion of using AI to converse with animals is a little mind blowing and this episode explores the upsides and downsides really well.
A downside I never would have thought about is with whales. If we are able to introduce a whale song into the wild created by AI, this could have untold unintended consequences.
RECOMMENDATION FROM THE ARCHIVE (HYB #85)
The Truth: The Body Genius. In this newsletter I mostly recommend non-fiction shows where you can learn interesting things, but I like to give myself the ability to recommend fiction shows every so often. It's a thriving genre that I admittedly am fairly ignorant of, but I just have to bring up The Body Genius from The Truth because it's pretty great. See this as an opportunity to learn about how fantastic fiction podcasts are if you don't listen to them typically.
The Truth "makes stories for your ears", and produces short self-contained or short run series of scripted audio stories.
The Body Genius is their recent 5-part series about a Hollywood personal trainer who finds himself caught in a murder mystery.
The writing, voice work, music, and sound design are all top notch. The writing in particular was sharp and often funny.
I had heard lots of positive things about this show, but I was sold on finally downloading it when I checked out the website and found the short illustrated gifs for each episode to be intriguing. Shout out to all the shows with custom illustrations for each of their episodes, it works!
PODCAST LINKS
The 5 Best Podcasts About Cults. From the fine folks over at Podcast Review.
OTHER LINKS TO MAKE YOU THINK
TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time. If you have a half an hour to kill, I absolutely recommend this insane video. Get a glimpse of what the entirety of the future of the universe will look like, with the speed of the time lapse doubling every five seconds. Amazing visuals, amazing voiceovers, amazing soundtrack. I would describe this as chill existentialism. Watch with good headphones or on a large TV.
VISUALS
I’m putting all of today on 1.5x speed
This will be a real hit at your next baby shower
There’s a real benefit to “too many podcasts”
FOR FUN
Before and after you discover the subreddit for a hobby
Alright that’s all for today. Please like or comment (or reply) if you want to share any comments. See you next time.
P.s. Watching all of The Bear on Hulu and then all of BEEF on Netflix (not about food) is a great pairing if you want to add some casual stress in your life while enjoying top tier entertainment.