What I'm Reading and Listening To, January 2026

2026-01-02 ~500 words

Welcome to the annual content consumption post. I’ll keep it quick.

You can find past years’ posts here:

Before the full list, here is just the delta:

Removed:

  • The Intelligence from the Economist – good podcast, but I prefer reading my news so I switched to their email newsletter
  • The Morning Briefing by the New York Times – I was a reader for years, but I don’t think its coverage was as principled or thoughtful as I’d want. The Economist has supplanted it.
  • EconTalk – I still usually listen, but there are more and more episodes I don’t find interesting, and I think the host can be out-of-touch in some ways.
  • Cortex – One of the hosts (my preferred) left the show.

Added:

  • The World in Brief from the Economist – I switched to the Economist newsletters as my primary news source
  • The US in Brief from the Economist – same as above

Newsletters

  • Astral Codex Ten by Scott Alexander (paid version, but almost all the content is free) – Rationalism, with research and opinions on almost everything important. This continues to be the MVP of my content.
  • Slow Boring by Matt Yglesias (paid version) – Political commentary/analysis. Some hot takes but with empirical backing. Moderate left.
  • Benedict’s Newsletter by Benedict Evans (free version) – Tech business news and commentary
  • Stratechery by Ben Thompson (free version) – Tech business commentary
  • Silver Bulletin by Nate Silver (paid version) – Commentary on everything. Most isn’t worth reading, but when it comes to election forecasting, I think Nate remains clearly the best at it.
  • Python Weekly (free) – News and articles relating to Python (the programming language)

Podcasts