Very Expensive Maps

In the Very Expensive Maps podcast, cartographer Evan Applegate interviews other cartographers about how they got into the field, the thoughts behind their design choices, and the more technical bits behind their process. With cartographers and chart makers sharing many of the same guides, this podcast, which is 33 episodes in, should be worth a listen.

Sidebar: When I read the title of Very Expensive Maps, I immediately thought of Justin Bieber talking about “very expensive” sounds at the 30-second mark of a NYT song breakdown. That’s probably not what Applegate was thinking, but it’s the same sentiment.

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On the Data Journalism Podcast

I had a short chat with Alberto Cairo and Simon Rogers on The Data Journalism Podcast. They talk to people about data journalism. It’s a podcast. Thanks to Alberto and Simon for having me and luring me out of my bubble.

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Building a happy life, interpreted through data

How to Build a Happy Life from The Atlantic is a podcast on finding happiness:

In our pursuit of a happy life, we build, we structure, and we plan. Often, we follow conventional wisdom and strategize. But what happens when our plans fall through and expectations don’t meet reality—when the things that should make us happy don’t?

In season 3 of our How To series, Atlantic happiness correspondent Arthur Brooks and producer Rebecca Rashid seek to navigate the unexpected curves on the path to personal happiness—with data-driven insights and a healthy dose of introspection.

I’m late to this, but I had some downtime during the Thanksgiving break and liked the data- and research-centric episodes. As you might expect, there’s a lot of fuzziness in the numbers and there’s more than one way to find happiness.

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Are you statistically normal?

Mona Chalabi has a new podcast Am I Normal? and it’s very good:

We all want to know if we’re normal—do I have enough friends? Should it take me this long to get over my ex? Should I move or stay where I am? Endlessly curious data journalist Mona Chalabi NEEDS to know, and she’s ready to dive into the numbers to get some answers. But studies and spreadsheets don’t tell the whole story, so she’s consulting experts, strangers, and even her mum to fill in the gaps. The answers might surprise you, and make you ask: does normal even exist?

There are two episodes so far: the first on how long it takes to get over a breakup and the second on how many friends people have. A takeaway from both is that defining “normal” is a fuzzy matter and the data only gets you part of the way there.

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Tic-Tac-Toe the Hard Way is a podcast about the human decisions in building a machine learning system

From Google’s People + AI Research team, David Weinberger and Yannick Assogba build a machine learning system that plays Tic-Tac-Toe. They discuss the choices, not just the technical ones, along the way in the ten-part podcast series:

A writer and a software engineer engage in an extended conversation as they take a hands-on approach to exploring how machine learning systems get made and the human choices that shape them. Along the way they build competing tic-tac-toe agents and pit them against each other in a dramatic showdown!

This is a podcast for anyone, from curious non-techies to developers dabbling in machine learning, interested in peeking under the hood at how people make and shape ML systems.

I’m a few episodes in. It’s entertaining.

This is an especially good listen if you’re interested in machine learning, but aren’t quite sure about how it works beyond a bunch of data going into a black box.

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Explore Explain is a new visualization podcast about how the charts get made

From Andy Kirk, there’s a new visualization podcast in town:

Explore Explain is a new data visualisation podcast and video series. Each episode is based on a conversation with visualisation designers to explore the design story behind a single visualisation, or series of related works. The conversations provide an opportunity to explain their design process and to share insight on the myriad little decisions that underpin the finished works. It also shines a light on the contextual circumstances that shaped their thinking.

Audiences will gain an appreciation of the what, the why and the how, learning about the hidden problems and challenges, the breakthroughs and the eureka moments, the pressures and frustrations, the things that were done and the things that were not done, as well as the successes and the failures.

My main podcast-listening mode was while driving, so I’m way behind, but this sounds promising. It’s right in line with Kirk’s Little of Visualization Design blog project.

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Machine learning podcast

I'm glad podcasts are a thing right now. Talking Machines is a new podcast on machine learning, statistics, and data, hosted by journalist Katherine Gorman and computer science professor Ryan Adams. One "Hello, world" episode in, it seems promising. Sometimes these technical podcasts get lost in jargon, which gets old fast, but I think they're working towards a good balance.

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Machine learning podcast

I'm glad podcasts are a thing right now. Talking Machines is a new podcast on machine learning, statistics, and data, hosted by journalist Katherine Gorman and computer science professor Ryan Adams. One "Hello, world" episode in, it seems promising. Sometimes these technical podcasts get lost in jargon, which gets old fast, but I think they're working towards a good balance.

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