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Wednesday, January 25, 2023

The Most Popular Podcast Genre? Comedy (And News Is No Longer Number Two)

 KGB Managerial Leninism - When McKinsey comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanovitch and Michael Forsythe


The true corporate horror story that’s scarier than Stephen King


The Most Popular Podcast Genre? Comedy (And News Is No Longer Number Two)

"Edison Research's quarterly analysis of the top genres shows Comedy continues to have the most listeners. The bigger surprise could be that despite the fall election season, the News genre lost ground. It slid back to third place (behind) the all-encompassing Society & Culture." - Inside Radio


The Pile of Talent test

The economist Tyler Cowen suggests a thought experiment to illustrate this point.

Take out a piece of paper. In one column, list all of the major problems this country faces—inequality, political polarization, social distrust, climate change, and so on. In another column, write seven words: “America has more talent than ever before.”

Cowen’s point is that column B is more important than column A. Societies don’t decline when they are in the midst of disruption and mess; they decline when they lose energy. And creative energy is one thing America has in abundance.

Here is the full Atlantic piece from David Brooks, mostly about reason to be optimistic about America.  Of course there is even a stronger version of The Pile of Talent test that you could run for the world as a whole.


68 Days of Silence: Why the White House Stayed Mum on Classified Documents NYT. “Since the Biden documents were found last fall….” Note lack of agency.


Ex-Clerks and Experts Left Puzzled by Vague Report on ‘Dobbs’ Leak National Law Journal. The deck: “‘I suspect the justices decided that the risks to the separation of powers were greater than the risk of not finding the leaker,’ said law professor Josh Blackman about the high court’s choice to not use federal investigatory resources.”