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I was interviewed on Intelligent Speculation talking about critical thinking and how my physics background helped create a different framework for personal finance.

Interview here [2:25hrs]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNw-D57ZIzg or https://pod.link/1447966246

Don't forget to like&subscribe and all that.

Thanks for sharing. I listened to the entire podcast. I found your comments interesting as always but unfortunately I felt like the host was not good about letting you finish your thoughts.

I listened to the whole thing in the background. I learned a few new things (e.g. Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development). I checked out his channel in general, and while I really like his mission, I think that the people who need to learn what he is preaching, won't get to it. A problem of our society in general, which I don't know how to solve

I've only managed to listen to 16 minutes so far. I'm finding the host so infuriating that I'm really struggling to keep going. Apart from the constant interrupting and telling his own boring stories, just within that first short period he hadn't heard of the mathematician Gauss, nor was he familiar with the city of Basel, despite claiming to have visiting Switzerland on his "bucket list". Maybe if anyone else has got further through the video they could report that it improves as it goes on, and inspire me to sit through the rest of it!

Something I did find interesting though was that Americans would be surprised that a child would stay with the same teacher and class and progress at the same rate as all the other children throughout primary/middle stage education. I'd kind of assumed that was the only system unless you go private - my elder daughter is 8 and at the moment their maths consists of going back over the 2, 3 and 5 times tables after half the class did zero work during six months of lockdown. My daughter isn't a child prodigy or anything, she just already knows 100% of the times tables seeing as there aren't that many to learn and they've been doing it for 3 years now. It reminds me of what Elon Musk has written about the frustratingly slow download speed of teacher to pupil teaching, especially for those who prefer book learning and going at their own pace.

I listened to it and I thought it was alright, though the audio wasn't mixed that well - it was rather hard to hear Jacob. The host was mostly restating Jacob's points and emphasizing after that first biographical bit. I think if it was edited down it would be more captivating - the meat of the conversation was too thinly spread. Usually the host does voiceovers after the fact to give context to just the juicier bits. But I'm not a podcast person so maybe I'm not the target market for this style.

Heh, you guys always complain about hosts not letting me finish I think the problem is that my thoughts tend to be 20 minutes long. Also, I'm never sure whether I'm covering stuff that "everybody knows" or not, so it's good when the interviewer steps in to elaborate. I think this is a general pattern for how my interviews work out.

Back when I was on that TV documentary, we had to break that pattern. The only way to do that was to give me a complete list of all the questions so I knew what came next and thus what [supporting points] to avoid => short answers. Otherwise, I would just have launched into building up my points as usual.

Whoever does the show has a choice between editing me [down] to something that fits their audience ... or providing something close to the full recording. In this case you got the full run or very close to it.

I'm always hard to hear. I mumble. I do think my accent is getting weaker though compared to podcasts from 10 years ago.

Imo he should have let you talk. His interruptions did not help you build on your points and added nothing interesting to the conversation. I hesitated saying this because if you agreed to be on his podcast he's probably your friend, but I'm relieved many others felt the same. A true friend would bring back to him feedback of his atrocious interviewing technique - i'll leave it to the westerners to be tactful about this; as a slav from the wild wild east, i'll go right ahead and say he's just bad. he managed to turn a chance to speak at length with a very interesting person into a drudgery to listen. I personally made it to about 25 min, and I am a podcast fan and interested in your ideas. If that's the best he can do with people who are pretty much the perfect hand-picked audience for his podcast, he's not going to be able to get many more listeners or subscribers.

I really don't care about the host (apologies if you're reading it!), just go 'forward' as is it easy to follow Jacob without the facilitator.

NB, I did a short counselling course recently, and I think core counselling skills would work wonders for someone wanting to hold good quality interviews.

EDIT: I like the bit on perspectives of different fields stemming of the joke about an engineer, physicist and mathematician (1:11:10 - 1:14:50, then skip the host and again 1:16:35 - 1:17:10, skip the host and 1:18:30 - 1:19:55)

guitarplayer wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 02, 2020 1:26 pm

I like the bit on perspectives of different fields stemming of the joke about an engineer, physicist and mathematician (1:11:10 - 1:14:50, then skip the host and again 1:16:35 - 1:17:10, skip the host and 1:18:30 - 1:19:55)

Thanks for the runtime info - I enjoyed watching those parts too.

Oh, nice, thanks for these guitarplayer! But yeah, if people interested in the subject of your podcast are exchanging runtime info so they can figure out how to avoid you, that might be a tough pill to swallow but you've got to swallow it if you want to be a successful podcaster. I hope the feedback here is taken in that light - helping to motivate improvement - as this is how it is intended, at least on my part.

Yeah, in case he is reading this, please note that I'm a really impatient person. It's not so much not suffering fools gladly as not suffering any small talk whatsoever. Sometimes I have to do it in my personal life, for work opportunities and so on. But not for entertainment! So no offence meant, sorry.

If we open box of wishes/advices for Intelligent Speculator:
- time stamps for major topics in the audio
- I'd also suggest providing minimally/semi corrected YT transcription for better availability for average person
(I assume that monetization/reaching more people is the goal).

As [almost] always, you can open an auto-generated transcript in the dot-menu on youtube. I don't find those all that great since people tend to talk differently than they write. Also you can't see who is talking.

I usually "listen" to podcasts by switching on subtitles (CC) and then setting the speed to 2x (shift > ). This moves it up to ~200 words per minute while making it possible to keep track of who is talking.

Interesting communication problem... again .

As [almost] always, you can open an auto-generated transcript in the dot-menu on youtube.

Yes, I know it. I simply assumed Intelligent Speculator is interested in widening his audience (for personal gain or whatever). I think reaching today masses with 2hr audio at best in semi good quality will backfire.

My point was to give constructive feedback, not my personal inability to digest the podcast/dissatisfaction with it.

Also, you can't see who is talking.

It's possible to figure it out .