I love the podcast. My two favorite podcasts are: “NPR’s Planet Money” and “This American Life”.
If you’re looking for something to listen to, check out these two episodes:
“A Former Crack Dealer on The Economics Of Drugs”: My favorite thing about economics is that when done well it tells the truth about human behavior. In this podcast the Planet Money team interviewed one of LA’s biggest crack dealers in the 1980s and 1990s. It got me thinking about the costs of both making drugs legal and keeping them illegal. The drug dealer favored prohibition. Really good stuff.
Very Tough Love: This podcast is very rich. Ira Glass examines a Georgia drug court that he concludes is like no other court in the country. Find out how a woman who forges two checks totaling $100 ends up in drug court for over 10 years and serves 20 months in jail including a stay in solitary confinement. The story reminds us that our justice system is human and thus imperfect. Though the podcast doesn’t touch on it directly – it also represents a failure of lawyers to bring legal challenges to the court. Lawyers should not be cowards and judges should not be elected.
So if you’re driving somewhere or going for a run this weekend – download these podcasts. They’ll get you thinking.