Pods & Recs No. 87

4 min readNov 9, 2019

Today we have a fantastic episode with a growth investor, a talk with Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller on his newest book, the impact of the intangible economy, and Lebron James on how he has prolonged his career.

If you missed the last few editions of Pods & Recs, feel free to view them here: 86, 85, and 84.

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Business

***Must Listen*** The Long View: Dennis Lynch: ‘Have a Growth Mindset and Be Willing to Learn New Things’. Lynch is the Head of Counterpoint Global at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. He is a growth investor that is agnostic to market size. His firm tries to take advantage of classification bias and look for over- and under-reactions in the market to gain an edge, and discusses why analyzing a company’s financial leverage is important to assess whether or not his investment thesis has changed and how his team thinks about innovation and valuations. He also applies some of these ideas to valuing Facebook and private companies. [November 6, 2019–53 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
Hidden Brain: The Talk Market. Nobel Prize winner and economist Robert Shiller has been making the podcast rounds to promote his newest book, Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events, and I think this is the best episode he’s appeared on so far. The idea of the book is to explain how psychology and stories shape our lives and how narratives effect our economic system. They explain this idea through the lens of the growth in popularity (and price) of bitcoin since inception and how stories around it created FOMO. They also explain how narratives contributed to the Great Depression. [November 4, 2019–37 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
Political Economy with James Pethokoukis: Stian Westlake on the rise of the intangible economy. As companies around the world have fewer hard assets and more intangibles, having an understanding of how this changes the analysis on companies and economy becomes more valuable. The guest is Stian Westlake, a co-author of Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy. He discusses the impact on accounting standards, why companies are now able to grow with fewer employees, the influence on the housing market and wealth disparity, and why investment in intangibles has started to slow over the last ten years. [October 30, 2019–35 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link
Planet Money: #949: The Pigou Club. This was a fun episode on Economist Arthur Cecil Pigou first explaining the concept of a negative externality and how to deal with it. The idea explains a way to charge for a cost on society for things like pollution or alcohol consumption, and further explains what’s happened when Canada recently decided to implement a carbon tax. [November 1, 2019–21 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker | Website Link

Sports

Trained: Lebron James and Mike Mancias | A Training Lifestyle Takes Planning. Arguably no professional athlete has performed at such an elite level for a period of time longer than Lebron James. This episode takes a look into his training routine with him and his trainer. The ideas can be applied to any aspect of life. They discuss breaking down long term goals into day-to-day goals and having a deliberate approach while focusing immensely on sleep, recovery, and meditation. The episode is a good listen for anyone working towards a goal and wants to learn how to best do so. [November 26, 2019–26 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Overcast | Breaker