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PODCAST

Let"s Know Things

A calm, non-shouty, non-polemical, weekly news analysis podcast for folks of all stripes and leanings who want to know more about what"s happening in the world around them. Hosted by analytic journalist Colin Wright since 2016. letsknowthings.substack.com

news news commentary

All Episodes

18:48

Vibe Coding

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/04/01

This week we talk about Studio Ghibli, Andrej Karpathy, and OpenAI.We also discuss code abstraction, economic repercussions, and DOGE.Recommended Book: How To Know a Person by David BrooksTranscriptIn late-November of 2022, OpenAI released a demo version of a product they didn’t think would have much potential, because it was kind of buggy and not very impressive compared to the other things they were working on at the time. This product was a chatbot interface for a generative AI model they had

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19:22

Tesla Protests

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/03/25

This week we talk about Elon Musk, deportations, and the First Amendment.We also discuss electric vehicles, free speech, and Georgia.Recommended Book: Red Rising by Pierce BrownTranscriptGreenpeace is a protest-focused, environmentalist nongovernmental organization that was originally founded in Canada in the early 1970s, but which has since gone on to tackle issues ranging from commercial whaling to concerns about genetic engineering, worldwide.They have 26 independent organizations operating

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19:29

US Market Uncertainty

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/03/18

This week we talk about tariffs, consumer confidence, and trade wars.We also discuss inflation, GDP, and uncertainty.Recommended Book: A Brief History of Intelligence by Max S. BennettTranscriptOn January 20, 2025, mere hours after being sworn into his second term in office as President of the United States, Donald Trump announced new 25% tariffs on most incoming goods from Canada and Mexico, accusing the two allies of failing to halt the flow of drugs and illegal migrants into the US. These tariffs

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21:13

Ukraine Conflict Implications

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/03/11

This week we talk about Euromaidan, minerals deals, and propaganda.We also discuss European security, NATO, and the western-led world order.Recommended Book: Storm Front by Jim ButcherTranscriptIn February of 2014, pro-Russian protests racked parts of southeastern Ukraine and Russian soldiers, their uniforms and weapons stripped of flags and other identifying markers, occupied another part of Ukraine called Crimea.This was seemingly in response to Ukraine’s overthrow of its pro-Russian president,

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20:42

Blue Ghost Mission 1

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/03/04

This week we talk about Luna 2, soft-landings, and Firefly Aerospace.We also discuss the private space launch industry, lunar landers, and regolith.Recommended Book: The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. CoreyTranscriptIn 1959, Luna 2, a Soviet impactor-style spacecraft, successfully reached the surface of the Moon—the first-ever human-made object to do so.Luna 2 was very of its era; a relatively simple device, similar in many ways to the better-known Sputnik satellite, but getting a craft to the moon is

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18:42

Coffee Inflation

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/02/25

This week we talk about arabica, robusta, and profit margins.We also discuss colonialism, coffee houses, and religious uppers.Recommended Book: On Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy HicksonTranscriptLike many foods and beverages that contain body- or mind-altering substances, coffee was originally used, on scale at least, by people of faith, leveraging it as an aid for religious rituals. Sufis in what is today Yemen, back in the early 15th century, consumed it as a stimulant which allowed them to

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20:59

Bird Flu

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/02/18

This week we talk about H5N1, fowl plague, and viral reservoirs.We also discuss the CDC, raw milk, and politics.Recommended Book: Nexus by Yuval Noah HarariTranscriptIn late-January of 2025, staff at the US Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, were told to stop working with the World Health Organization, and data, and some entire pages containing such data, and analysis of it, were removed from the CDC’s web presence—the collection of sites it maintains to provide information, resources, and raw

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17:19

Planetary Defense

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/02/11

This week we talk about DART, extinction events, and asteroid 2024 YR4.We also discuss Bruce Willis, Theia, and the Moon.Recommended Book: Exadelic by Jon EvansTranscriptIn the 1998 action flick Armageddon, an asteroid the size of Texas is nudged into a collision course with earth by a comet, and NASA only notices it 18 days before impact.The agency recruits a veteran oil driller, played by Bruce Willis, to fly out to the asteroid and drill a hole in it, and to detonate a nuke in that hole, which

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23:17

US Protectionism

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/02/04

This week we talk about tax hikes, free trade, and the madman theory of negotiation.We also discuss EVs, Canada, and economic competition.Recommended Book: How Sanctions Work by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali VaezTranscriptOn January 20, 2025, the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, was inaugurated as the 47th President of the US following a hard-fought election that he ultimately won by only a little bit in terms of the popular vote—49.8% to 48.3%—but he

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21:52

DeepSeek AI

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/01/28

This week we talk about OpenAI, the Stargate Project, and Meta.We also discuss o1, AGI, and efficiency.Recommended Book: The Shortest History of Economics by Andrew LeighTranscriptOne of the bigger news items these past few weeks, in terms of the numbers involved, at least, was an announcement by US tech company OpenAI that it will be starting a new company called the Stargate Project, which will boast a total $500 billion-worth of investment, the first $100 billion of which will be deployed

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23:06

Gaza Peace Deal

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/01/21

This week we talk about October 7, the Gaza ceasefire plan, and Netanyahu.We also discuss Hamas, Qatar, and the new US administration.Recommended Book: Witch King by Martha WellsTranscriptOn October 7, 2023, the militant group Hamas launched a sneak attack from the Israeli occupied Gaza Strip against Israel itself, killing about 1,200 people and taking just over 250 hostages.Israeli forces were caught stunningly unaware by this, but shortly thereafter, Israel launched a counterattack into Gaza,

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20:38

LA Wildfires

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/01/14

This week we talk about the Pacific Palisades, Hurricane Katrina, and reinsurance.We also discuss developed property values, arsons, and the cost of disasters.Recommended Book: The Data Detective by Tim HarfordTranscriptNatural disasters, whether we’re talking about storms or fires or earthquakes, or some combination of those and other often related issues, like flooding, can be incredibly expensive.This has always been true, both in terms of lives and material damage caused, but also in terms of

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23:28

Lone Wolves

Let"s Know Things ·

2025/01/07

This week we talk about Luigi Mangione, VAW attacks, and mass shootings.We also discuss stochastic violence, terrorism, and Cybertrucks.Recommended Book: Some Desperate Glory by Emily TeshTranscriptThe terms “Lone Wolf,” “Lone Wolf Actor,” and “Lone Wolf Killer” are interchangeably used in many countries—though most commonly and prominently in the United States—to describe someone who commits a mass-killing or other mass-casualty event, but who is not part of an organization like a terrorist group

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21:09

South Korean Tumult

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/12/17

This week we talk about Yoon, martial law, and impeachment.We also discuss the PPP, chaebol, and dictators.Recommended Book: Starter Villain by John ScalziTranscriptIn the wake of WWII, Korea—which was previously held by the recently-defeated Japanese Empire—was split into two countries, the north backed by the Soviet Union and the south backed by the United States and its allies.North Korea had a guerrilla fighter and staunch Soviet-style communism activist, Kim Il Sung, placed at the head of its

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19:54

Assad Overthrown

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/12/10

This week we talk about coups, the Arab Spring, and Bashar al-Assad.We also discuss militias, Al Qaeda, and Iran.Recommended Book: The Algebraist by Iain M. BanksTranscriptIn the early 2010s, a series of uprisings against unpopular, authoritarian governments spread across the Middle East—a wave of action that became known as the Arab Spring.Tunisia was where it started, a man setting himself on fire in protest against the nation’s brazenly corrupt government and all that he’d suffered under that

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21:27

COP 29

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/12/03

This week we talk about emissions, carbon credits, and climate reparations.We also discuss Baku, COP meetings, and petrostates.Recommended Book: The Struggle for Taiwan by Sulmaan Wasif KhanTranscriptIn 2016, a group of 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, usually just called the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated the previous year, and which, among other things, formalized the idea of attempting to keep the global average

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20:35

Bluesky

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/11/26

This week we talk about Mastodon, Threads, and twttr.We also discuss social platform clones, user exoduses, and communication fractures.Recommended Book: Invisible Rulers by Renée DiRestaTranscriptIn 2006, a prototype of a software project called twttr, t-w-t-t-r, was developed by Jack Dorsey and Florian Weber, that name used because the full twitter.com domain, the word with all its vowels, was already owned and in use, and because the vowel-less version of the word only had five letters, which

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21:38

AI Scaling Walls

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/11/19

This week we talk about neural networks, AGI, and scaling laws.We also discuss training data, user acquisition, and energy consumption.Recommended Book: Through the Grapevine by Taylor N. Carlson TranscriptDepending on whose numbers you use, and which industries and types of investment those numbers include, the global AI industry—that is, the industry focused on producing and selling artificial intelligence-based tools—is valued at something like a fifth to a quarter of a trillion dollars, as of

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20:37

Online Tutoring

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/11/12

This week we talk about the Double Reduction Policy, gaokao, and Chegg.We also discuss GPTs, cheating, and disruption.Recommended Book: Autocracy, Inc by Anne ApplebaumTranscriptIn July of 2021, the Chinese government implemented a new education rule called the Double Reduction Policy.This Policy was meant, among other things, to reduce the stress students in the country felt related to their educational attainment, while also imposing sterner regulations on businesses operating in education and

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19:29

British Coal

Let"s Know Things ·

2024/11/05

This week we talk about peat, pig iron, and sulphuric acid.We also discuss the Industrial Revolution, natural gas, and offshore wind turbines.Recommended Book: Deep Utopia by Nick BostromTranscriptThis episode is going live on election day here in the US; and this has been quite a remarkable election season for many reasons, among them that there’s been just a boggling amount of money spent on advertisements and events and other efforts to claim attention and mindshare, and in part because the

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502 results

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