The Magic of Podcasts

One of the advantages of the buttock breaking 6 hour crawl between Wroclaw and Warsaw on the train this weekend was I got to listen to a lot of great lectures and talks on my Itunes podcasts. David Owen on the hubris of leaders in power, David Aaronovitch on conspiracy theories, Tom Feiling on his recent documentary on the cocaine industry, Professor Ha Joon Chang on his recent book '23 things you don't know about Capitalism', Jonathan Powell on his new book 'The New Machiavelli', the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto on the importance of record management in improving developing economies. In addition a number of Stanford University lectures on clean coal, carbon capture storage and energy production. There is a wealth of expertise out there, all for free, and if they talk too slowly you can speed the recording up by 1.5 times or 2 times. David Aaronovitch speaking twice as fast as normal is a terrifying experience, I can assure you!

I can’t recommend them more highly, it's like going to the world's best free and convenient to you university. Among many things the lectures have stimulated me to read more about Frederich Hayek, finally read Swift’s A Modest Proposal, and learn more about the inspirational life of Helen Keller.