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Comment by wcfields | Hacker News Reader

Planet Money podcast a covered this topic a few months ago:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/epis...

Thanks for this. I was curious about the details and the podcast (I read the transcript) explains all of it.

I was wondering how they made so much money and why it doesn't happen anymore. Turns out the initial cornering of the market was done in secret at a standard price. Nowadays buying at such scale secretly is impossible, so the price goes up and makes cornering the market prohibitively expensive.

Such a good episode!

Planet Money is so good that I've worked my way through 10 years of back-episodes over the last year or so, it's one of few podcasts which is worth doing that.

Try Freakonomics if you haven't already. I did the full back catalog on both.

I've been listening to How I Built That with Guy Raz lately too. Also a good podcast. I spend a lot of time in my car so good podcasts help keep my sanity.

I stopped reading Freakonomics after their horrible climate change chapter in the 2nd book. I don't know much about climate science, but even I could recognize a lot of the basic errors in that chapter. That made it hard for me to trust their writing on other issues.

To conclude, the reasons why Levitt and Dubner like geo-engineering so much are based on a misreading of the science, a misrepresentation of proposed solutions, and truly bizarre interpretations of how environmental problems have been dealt with in the past. These are, in the end, much worse errors than their careless misquotes and over-eagerness to shock highlighted by the other critiques. [0]

[0]: www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/10/why-levitt-and-dubner-like-geo-engineering-and-why-they-are-wrong/

At the risk of derailing things and spiraling into off-topic chatter... is anyone else really bothered by the background music on the Freakonomics podcast? They seem to use the same tracks every episode. Ten years ago that wasn't particularly grating, but as production values in podcasting have gone up listening now I feel like I'm hearing a marketing video thrown together on fiverr.

I'm bothered by the fact that they have background music at all. I listen to a lot of BBC podcasts and none of them have background music. Only a few use music at all, mostly as a kind of punctuation and emphasis for dramatic parts.

I find most podcasts that I have tried that originate in the US unlistenable because of the background music.

I came here to post that same link. It was an interesting Planet Money episode.

I recently just heard it. And it great story to hear.

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