This Week in Podcasts
The conversations worth your time from the shows we cover, updated as the week unfolds. When a guest works the press circuit and turns up on more than one show, we line the appearances up here so you can see who is everywhere and what they actually said.
Martin Picard says Alzheimer's isn't caused by amyloid plaques, it's an energy disorder
The mitochondrial scientist makes a clean break from the story most people learned about dementia, though his replacement theory needs more humility than the podcast gives it.
Khabib Nurmagomedov says Islam Makhachev can pass Jon Jones, but age is already closing the window
Khabib makes the case for Islam Makhachev as a future GOAT, then immediately points to the thing that could beat him before another fighter does: the calendar.
Christopher Kerr says nearly 90 percent of dying patients see dead loved ones before death
The hospice doctor’s claim is stronger as end-of-life research than as proof of an afterlife, but it is specific, startling, and harder to dismiss than a campfire story.
Maureen Callahan says Lena Dunham’s wedding outfit looked like “a big semen dump”
The line is gross, specific, and built to travel, but the bigger claim underneath it is the old Lena Dunham discourse in a new corsage.
Ari Emanuel says Jeff Katzenberg tried to charge him $1 million for a Joe Biden meeting
The Hollywood superagent turned a book-plug visit into a live demonstration of why his grudges need their own legal department.
Emmanuel Ameisen says Claude can make hidden plans before it writes
The Anthropic interpretability researcher says the “next token” machine sometimes carries a backstage plan, which is not consciousness, but is also not your iPhone autocomplete.
Loren Castle says Sweet Loren’s became profitable after allergen-free cookie dough outsold every original flavor in six months
The cookie dough company’s breakthrough was not making a slightly healthier Toll House rival, it was realizing the supposedly niche allergy aisle was the main event.
Matt Cox says Karen Read is guilty, but planted evidence meant she had to go free
Cox's take is not that Karen Read was framed because she was innocent, but that police may have framed a guilty person and handed her reasonable doubt on a platter.
Dr. Daniel Amen says CTE is not untreatable and 80 percent of his NFL patients got better
Amen's football brain claim is the kind of thing parents, former players, and skeptics should all want proven by someone other than Amen.
Maureen Callahan says Keri Russell embarrassed her children by talking about sex with Matthew Rhys
Callahan turned a flirty Keri Russell anecdote about The Americans into a prosecutorial brief on celebrity oversharing, with the kids as Exhibit A.
Vincent Oshana says Trump personally pushed FIFA to review Folarin Balogun’s red card
The PBD panel turned a soccer discipline ruling into a stress test for America First sports politics.
Jensen Huang says NVIDIA will sell a few trillion dollars of computing over the next several years
The NVIDIA CEO turned a Taiwan walk-and-talk with Lex Fridman into a very expensive thesis about the future of compute.
Steve Stewart-Williams says castration before puberty could erase the male lifespan gap
The evolutionary psychologist’s bleak little longevity claim is less a life hack than a warning label on testosterone.
Howie Mandel says a clipped hand-job joke cost him a fortune
Mandel told Bill Maher that a joke clipped out of context made a brand walk away, which explains why the Comedy Store feels safer to him than the internet.
Dickie Scruggs says inmates were relieved he was a 'real criminal' and not a child molester
The former King of Torts gives a bleakly funny account of how status works inside federal prison, where even disgrace has its own hierarchy.
Cesar Millan says learning how to walk your dog eliminates 90 percent of behavior problems
On Huberman Lab, the Dog Whisperer reduced most canine chaos to one blunt prescription, walk the dog before you try to love the dog into sanity.
Dr. Lara Boyd says your brain changes most when you succeed only 50 to 60 percent of the time
The neuroscientist turns the usual self-help command to “do hard things” into something more precise, and more annoying, your brain likes the zone where you’re barely making it.
Maureen Callahan says Kelly Clarkson’s Art of Play feud was really about not being Brooklyn-cool enough
Callahan’s verdict on the Brooklyn toy-store dust-up is funny, class-coded, and probably more persuasive than Art of Play would like.
Tara Bosch says food startups should try natural grocery before mass retail
The SmartSweets founder's advice is less glamorous than a Target endcap and more useful: natural grocery can give tiny CPG brands room to prove they deserve the shelf.
Oz Pearlman says you should approach people at an angle because head-on feels like danger
The mentalist turns a restaurant-magician survival tactic into a surprisingly practical rule for the first 10 seconds of any conversation.
Josh Brolin says No Country for Old Men paid him $100,000 and he cleared about $30,000
Brolin used the number to puncture the fantasy that one great prestige role instantly turns an actor into a mansion with cheekbones.
Maureen Callahan says Kelly Clarkson’s Brooklyn toy-store fight was really over a singing bird permanently attached to the wall
The alleged Pretty Woman moment gets a lot less cinematic once the store says the prized item was Molly, a performing bird automaton attached to the wall.
Simon Sebag Montefiore says October 7 was one of the most successful Arab victories since Saladin defeated the Crusaders
The historian’s ugliest and most useful point is that Hamas didn’t need to win in Gaza if it could win on campuses, in streets, and in the Western imagination.
Sean Stone says Osama bin Laden was CIA and the man killed in Abbottabad may have been a dummy
On the Danny Jones Podcast, Stone turns the official bin Laden story into a full intelligence-op theory, but the most explosive part is also the least proven.
Robert Greene says Christianity is a pagan religion
The author of The 48 Laws of Power has traded boardroom knives for hummingbirds, Aphrodite, and the claim that Christianity still carries paganism in its bones.