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Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by bduerst on Monday December 05, 2016 @06:56PM (#13111035)
Side topic: Does anyone know any good podcasts that fit his genre of “Podcasts About Mundane Stuff That Are Actually Fascinating"?
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by samsolomon on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:02PM (#13111064)
99 Percent Invisible sounds like exactly what you're looking for. Most of the episodes are related to architecture or design.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episodes/

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by crftr on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:47PM (#13111320)
Somewhat related, Twenty Thousand Hertz. Stories behind interesting sounds.

https://www.20k.org/

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by tbihl on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:53PM (#13111346)
Econtalk. Russ Roberts is a fantastic interviewer, with only a few weak performances in his decade of weekly podcasts.

He probably skews a bit libertarian for the typical HN'er to agree with, but he gives voice to a lot of points of view, and he brings on good guests. At least half of the podcasts have sufficiently interesting titles that they could be easily voted to HN front page, and the depth of discussion is good for the hour each guests receives.

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by e1g on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:36PM (#13111568)
+1 for Econtalk. Despite the name, the podcast is not about the (relatively boring) econ theory, or even the direct application of it. Econtalk uses economics in the same way as "Freakonomics" - as a framing device to talk about incentives, complex systems, and far reaching effects that are not obvious on the first pass.

I find Econtalk discussions meaningful and rigorous, in contrast to carefree series like "99% Invisible" / Invisibilia / Startup. The latter are great as a chewing gum for the brain, but they are mostly trivia and I do not recall learning anything useful from them over the years.

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by eldavido on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:06PM (#13111413)
Unequivocal +1.

It's notable that he's getting better over time. I started listening to the more recent ones, then went back and listened to the old ones, and they were quite a lot worse.

Off the top of my head, my favorites have included the episode about how the budget gets passed in the US, the one about justice and the prison system, the food bank market where food gets priced for exchange, and the one about medical ethics and the question of "too much information".

I'd love to have an "EconTalk meetup" in the bay area.

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by amha on Monday December 05, 2016 @11:47PM (#13112325)
+1, too. EconTalk is amazing. It sounds like I'm listening to a really fascinating conversation between two really smart and really knowledgable people.
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by tebuevd on Monday December 05, 2016 @10:42PM (#13112071)
It's pretty good, but sometimes boring. Do you have a few "must-listen" episodes to recommend?
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by branchless on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @07:38AM (#13114145)
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by tbihl on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @04:27AM (#13113340)
I had a second podcast occur to me, thought it stays on a narrower track. There's a five year old podcast called Strong Towns done by a guy who runs a non profit by the same name. The recent stuff isn't so good, but if you go back to the beginning and listen to stuff from 4-6 years ago, you get to listen to this pretty smart civil engineer/planner have his epiphany of why infrastructure is so screwed up in most towns in the US. He deconstructs the problems with our car dependency and living patterns primarily from the angle of how it's bankrupting towns and cities. I listened to it over the summer when I was doing a cross country road trip, which turned out to be a great backdrop for it.
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by sheltron on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:41PM (#13111588)
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by cujo on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @05:32AM (#13113616)
Haven't been through the whole catalog, but #3 and #4 were very good.

"Lots of things in the world seem ordinary. But when you dig deeper, it turns out, they’re fascinating. Surprisingly Awesome tells those stories."

https://gimletmedia.com/show/surprisingly-awesome

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by donum on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:04PM (#13111079)
Chaos Radio Express (https://cre.fm/)

It's german though.

Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by Kazooie on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:03PM (#13111072)
I only listened to the first few, but that is exactly the premise of Surprisingly Awesome: https://gimletmedia.com/surprisingly-awesome/
Re:My Favorite Books of 2016 by Rebelgecko on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:04PM (#13111082)
Check out 99% Invisible