Essential Listening: Building Trust

Last week Essential Listening was on holiday, so this week’s edition is bursting at the seams with great podcasts. So let’s get right down to it. For a wide array of additional podcasts, you can access earlier installments of Essential Listening.

• Barry Ritholtz talks with Helaine Olen, co-author of the recently published The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated, about the history and current state of the personal finance industry. They also discuss the failure of financial literacy education in the current economic environment. (The Big Picture)
• Jake Taylor asks five good questions of Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal columnist and author of The Devil’s Financial Dictionary. They discuss why Wall Street is so ripe for satire and what investors need to do to cultivate their skills. (Five Good Questions)
• In practice, short selling is not the opposite of going long. Luke Kawa and Tracy Alloway speak with famed short-seller Marc Cohodes about the process of short selling, including some legendary cases where good old-fashioned legwork turned up companies with plenty of room to fall. (Odd Lots)
• How do you build a modern investment management firm with a social media–first mentality? In this video from the 2016 CFA Institute Wealth Management Conference, Joshua Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, explains how the firm has used blogs, in particular, to attract both clients and employees. (Enterprising Investor)
• Hardly a day goes by that SpaceX or Tesla Motors isn’t in the news. James Altucher talks with Ashlee Vance, author of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, about the man behind the companies. What, if anything, can we learn about succeeding from Musk’s experience? (James Altucher)
• One of the overlooked aspects of start-ups is leadership. In this group conversation, experienced CEOs Ben Horowitz and Dick Costolo discuss what it takes to build trust within your team and what lessons we can take away from the military. (a16z)
• Harry Stebbings interviews Baiju Bhatt, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood, about how he helped to bring commission-free trading to the public. They cover the importance of app design and the next steps for Robinhood. (The Twenty Minute VC)
• Michael Covel and Anders Ericsson, co-author of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, examine the role of desire and deliberate practice in improving performance and how to be a world-class performer. (Trend Following)
• The golden age of cable allowed 1,000 (or so) flowers to bloom, including a channel called RFD-TV that focused on rural living and farming. But cable unbundling is beginning to unwind that virtuous circle. Stacey Vanek Smith reviews the rise and laments the fall of RFD-TV. (Planet Money)
• Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, has been in online media for a long time. Here, Smith opines about the state of the industry and the need to approach it with a light touch. (Longform)
• There is no shortage of ads around New York City for Verizon’s FioS service. Why, then, are those who want it and have the right to it denied it? PJ Vogt asks around, and finds some good and not-so-good reasons for customer’s frustration with slow internet service. (Reply All)
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is in the news as much for its potential downsides as for the opportunities it may present. Unfortunately, many of those discussing AI aren’t on the cutting edge of today’s research. Todd Bishop talks with Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, about the state of the art and why humans, not surprisingly, will always lose to computers at Go. (GeekWire)
• Speaking of technological progress, why are we still working so darn hard? In this video, George Mason University professor of economics Tyler Cowen considers why we continue to spend an inordinate amount of our time toiling away despite the vast growth in the economy and personal income. (YouTube)
• Not so long ago, meditation was thought of as a quasi-spiritual practice reserved for a small minority. Now meditation and mindfulness are household words. This is due, in part, to the popularization of the disciplines by people like Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works — A True Story. Jordan Harbinger and Harris knock around how to tame your deceptive inner voice (or “malevolent puppeteer”) through meditation. (Art of Charm)

If you know of a podcast that other readers and listeners might enjoy, let us know in the comments section below. I may highlight it in the next installment.

You can read more from Tadas Viskanta on his blog Abnormal Returns or follow him on Twitter @abnormalreturns.

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All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.

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