38
September 2, 2026
Vanguard
Acquired · Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal · 3 hr 48 min
The story of a company built to make itself less profitable on purpose, and how that quiet decision moved trillions. Long, and worth the whole length.
Previous episodes
Every good conversation,
still worth your time.
One choice for each day. Nothing to catch up on — browse if you like, or wait for tomorrow.
37
September 1, 2026
How memory changes you
The Gray Area · Sean Illing · 59 min
A conversation about memory as an act of construction rather than storage, and what that means for who you think you have been.
36
August 31, 2026
Patient Zero
Radiolab · Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich · 52 min
How a story about the beginning of an outbreak becomes a story about how we assign blame. Radiolab at its most patient and least sensational.
35
August 30, 2026
A road trip through the data center debate
Search Engine · PJ Vogt · 41 min
PJ Vogt drives to the places where the cloud actually sits and listens to the people who live beside it. Curiosity instead of a verdict.
34
August 29, 2026
Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: The Queen’s Spymaster (Part 1)
The Rest Is History · Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook · 1 hr 12 min
Espionage before there was a word for it: plots, ciphers and a state learning to watch its own people. Told at eye level, with the details that make it stick.
33
August 28, 2026
Joel Mokyr on Clans, Corporations, and a Culture of Growth
Conversations with Tyler · Joel Mokyr · 46 min
Mokyr has spent a career on why sustained growth started where it did, and Cowen pushes him past the textbook story into culture, clans and institutions.
32
August 27, 2026
364 | Stuart Firestein on How Science Relies on Ignorance and Failure
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Stuart Firestein · 1 hr 16 min
Firestein argues that science runs on ignorance rather than facts, and Carroll lets the idea breathe. A rare hour that makes not knowing feel like a skill.
31
August 26, 2026
The Bone Wars
99% Invisible · Roman Mars · 45 min
Two rival paleontologists turned the American West into a feud, and modern dinosaur science still carries the dents. Funny, then quietly sobering about how knowledge really gets made.
30
August 25, 2026
What Art Does For Your Brain
Hidden Brain · Daisy Fancourt · 49 min
A careful look at why standing in front of a painting changes something measurable in us. The episode resists the wellness pitch and stays with the evidence.
29
August 24, 2026
Ursula K. Le Guin interview
Between the Covers · Ursula K. Le Guin · 1 hr 30 min
A slow, generous conversation with a writer who spent her life insisting that imagination is a moral faculty. David Naimon asks real questions and then, rarely for an interviewer, gets out of the way.
28
August 23, 2026
The Destruction of Pompeii
The Rest Is History · Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook · 56 min
An ordinary morning that became the best-documented catastrophe of the ancient world. Holland and Sandbrook stay with the small human details — the bread, the dog, the letters — and that is what makes it unforgettable.
27
August 22, 2026
The Arrow of Time
Sean Carroll's Mindscape · Sean Carroll · 1 hr 24 min
Carroll explains why the past differs from the future without once losing the thread or talking down to you. It is physics, but it lands as something closer to a meditation on memory and mortality.
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