//podcastplus.net/feed/buster-bensons-likes~b7d839a5 A feed of podcast episodes liked by Buster Benson on Breaker. Mon, 03 Aug 2026 03:17:01 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP1708439239.mp3?updated=1589490852 The Times of London called Mariana Mazzucato “the world’s scariest economist.” Quartz describes her as “on a mission to save capitalism from itself.” Wired says she has “a plan to fix capitalism,” and warns that “it’s time we all listened. ”Mazuccato is an economist at University College London and Founder and Director of UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She’s the author of  The Entrepreneurial State  and  The Value of Everything  — two books that, together, critique some of the most fundamental economic assumptions of our time, and try and chart a different path forward. This is a moment that demands critique. The workers who are being called “essential” now were treated as disposable before — paid low wages, offered little respect. The difference between states with innovative, capable public sectors and states where government agencies have been dismissed and defunded is on terrible display.  The debates Mazzucato has been trying to ... Mon, 18 May 2020 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP1708439239.mp3?updated=1589490852 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP8224086718.mp3 While you read these words, the universe is splitting into countless copies. New realities, all with a version of you, exactly like you are now, but journeying off into their own branch of the multiverse. Maybe. Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at CalTech, the host of the Mindscape podcast, and author of, among other books,  Something Deeply Hidden,  which blew my mind a bit. He is also a believer in, and defender of, the “many-worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, which has to be one of the five most fun things in the world to think about. Science! This is a conversation where I get to do something I’ve always wanted to do: Ask a real quantum physicist all of my questions about quantum physics. And then ask again, when I don’t understand the answer, which I usually don’t. And then again, when I sort of understand, but there’s still a part tripping me up. Carroll is wonderfully patient and beautifully clear, and the result is a conversation I haven’t stopped telling fr... Thu, 14 May 2020 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP8224086718.mp3 https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/rss.art19.com/episodes/c2cff9bc-2f4f-48a7-87a0-0210f42adee3.mp3 This is the first episode of The Portal which was 100% recorded at home, during quarantine, under social isolation. The guest is none other than my own son Zev Weinstein and the recording was timed to straddle his midnight transition from being 14 into being 15 years old.  Zev is currently a 9th grader who occasionally posts to his YouTube Channel GenerationZ ( https://www.youtube.com/c/GenerationZW ) and his Twitter Account @Zev__Weinstein ( https://twitter.com/Zev__Weinstein ). In this episode, we sit down to discuss history, poetry, COVID19, jewish humor and other issues, as well as the three questions I am frequently asked about on the topic of parenting:  A) What is the proper approach to parenting a child whose learning differences are significant?  B) Do you have any novel approaches to parenting?  C) What is the best way to parent young boys in a world that cannot find a shared positive vision of masculinity worth celebrat... Wed, 13 May 2020 21:25:02 +0000 https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/rss.art19.com/episodes/c2cff9bc-2f4f-48a7-87a0-0210f42adee3.mp3 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/CAD5260673130.mp3 Back in March, counter-culture icon and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog Stewart Brand made a statement on Twitter that surprised some people: He had decided, and had communicated to his wife and the rest of his family, that if he got sick from the coronavirus, he wanted to refuse invasive procedures, including being put on a ventilator. It sparked a conversation about medical freedom and what it takes to have a sense of agency over death. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED editor-at-large Steven Levy has a conversation with Brand and his wife Ryan Phelan about their decisions, and why it's important for people to have conversations about their medical wishes. Show Notes:   Read more from Steven Levy’s conversation with Stewart brand here . Follow all of WIRED’s coronavirus coverage here . Steven Levy can be found on Twitter @ StevenLevy . Stewart Brand is @ stewartbrand . Ryan Phelan is @ Ryanphelan6 . Lauren Goode is @ LaurenGoode . Michael Calore is @ snackfight . Bling the m... Fri, 01 May 2020 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/CAD5260673130.mp3 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP1278151179.mp3 The coronavirus is “a nightmare scenario” for media, wrote New York Times columnist Charlie Warzel. “It is stealthy, resilient and confounding to experts. It moves far faster than scientists can study it. What seems to be true today may be wrong tomorrow.” Warzel is right. We’ve talked a lot in recent years about fake news. But combatting information we know is false is a straightforward problem compared to covering a story where we don’t know what’s true, and where yesterday’s expert consensus becomes tomorrow’s derided falsehoods. In these cases, the normal tools of journalism begin to fail, and trust is easily lost. There’s been a lot of criticism of what the media missed in the run-up to coronavirus. Some of it has been unfair. But some of it demands attention, reflection, and change. There’s also a lot the media got right, and those successes need to be celebrated and learned from. The questions raised here are hard, and go to one of the trickiest issues in journalism: how d... Thu, 30 Apr 2020 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP1278151179.mp3 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP9618126346.mp3?updated=1587845928 In 2015, I asked Bill Gates a simple question: What are you most afraid of?  He replied by telling me about the death chart of the 20th century. There’s the spike for World War I. The spike for World War II. But between them sat a spike as big as World War II. That, he said, was the Spanish Flu, which killed an estimated 65 million people. Gates’s greatest fear was a flu like that, ripping through our hyperglobalized world.  Gates saw this coming, and he tried to warn the world. But the virus came, and we weren’t ready. Now, we all live in his nightmare.  Gates has reoriented his foundation and committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the world’s fight against coronavirus. He recently published a long essay detailing what we know and don’t know about the disease, and what we need to invent and deploy to safely return to normalcy. I spoke with Gates to explore those questions, plus a few more. What does it feel like to be at the center of so many coronavirus conspiracy theories? Wh... Mon, 27 Apr 2020 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP9618126346.mp3?updated=1587845928 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP2259457836.mp3 It’s been a while since I’ve been able to introduce a conversation on this show as fun. But this one was. I needed it. Maybe you do, too. Madeline Miller has written some of my favorite novels of the past few years. Her books — the Orange Prize-winning The Song of Achilles and the New York Times No. 1 bestseller Circe , soon to be an HBO series — are brilliant reimaginings of some of the most revered texts in the Western canon. Miller’s also a trained classicist, a Shakespeare director, a Latin teacher, and a Greek mythology obsessive.  This is a conversation about story and myth, about how our conceptions of godliness and human nature have changed, about the difficulty of translation and the resonance of superheroes. We debate whether Achilles is the worst and agree that anyone who loves language should read Sandra Boynton. Miller reveals how to train yourself to write a beautiful sentence and how to steel yourself to tell the stories you burn to see but that the canon has wiped out.... Thu, 23 Apr 2020 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/chtbl.com/track/524GE/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP2259457836.mp3 https://media.transistor.fm/9a478b08.mp3 Show notes Buster shares a bit about his new book: Why Are We Yelling? Buster talks about his initial rebellion against working with software How Buster’s interest for the internet eventually started What it was like working in the industry before becoming a founder Buster's thoughts on social gaming industries and consumer behavior Links & Resources Buster’s book - Why Are We Yelling? 750 Words - Learn a new Habit: Writing every day Buster’s Website Buster’s Twitter Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:40:00 +0000 https://media.transistor.fm/9a478b08.mp3 https://media.transistor.fm/e4e933a9/9a478b08.mp3 Show notes Buster shares a bit about his new book: Why Are We Yelling? Buster talks about his initial rebellion against working with software How Buster’s interest for the internet eventually started What it was like working in the industry before becoming a founder Buster's thoughts on social gaming industries and consumer behavior Links & Resources Buster’s book - Why Are We Yelling? 750 Words - Learn a new Habit: Writing every day Buster’s Website Buster’s Twitter Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:40:00 +0000 https://media.transistor.fm/e4e933a9/9a478b08.mp3 https://chtbl.com/track/42D75/traffic.megaphone.fm/CAD4124100729.mp3 The first Unlocking Us podcast is here! Along with the excitement of sending this into the world, I’m feeling equal doses of fear, awkwardness, and vulnerability. In this episode I talk about my strategy for staying in tough first times versus tapping out and shutting down. When we get to the point that we only do things that we’re already good at doing, we stop growing. And truly living. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Fri, 20 Mar 2020 05:01:00 +0000 https://chtbl.com/track/42D75/traffic.megaphone.fm/CAD4124100729.mp3