Blog of Andrés Aravena
Methodology of Scientific Research:

Recommended Podcast

23 February 2020

One of the things I do to not get bored in public transport is to listen podcasts. I have several favorites, but that is a story for another day. Today I want to recommend two recent episodes of one of my favorite podcasts.

It is called “Akimbo”1 and is, in theory, about marketing. The two episodes published on 11 and 18 of February, 2020, are really about science and how science works. In particular the author speaks about statistics, correlations, causality, beliefs, and engineering. All subjects very connected to our course “Methodology of Research”.

The speaker is a marketing guy called Seth Godin, well known in California and similar places. Google him to find more about him, his books and his followers. Some of his books have been translated to Turkish and are inexpensive and easy to find.

Furthermore, I can recommend all the episodes of “Akimbo” podcast. Almost all of them discuss interesting and stimulating ideas, which you may disagree with, but that will make you think. And you will probably realize that I repeat some of Godin’s ideas in my classes. He is certainly one of the persons who influences strongly my current way of thinking.

The best way to listen to them is to look for “Akimbo” in the podcast application in your smartphone (you do have a podcast app, don’t you?). If you do not want to listen in the public transport, and prefer to listen sitting in front of the computer, the episodes can be found following these links:

If you want to read the transcripts, you need another app called “Thisten”. Why do they use an app for transcripts? It is a mystery to me. Other podcasts have transcripts on their webpage. Not this one.

What they do have in their webpage is some show notes, which complement the podcast with specific details, and allow further explorations. Seems like a good idea. See for example the notes about “Sample Size”.

The last question that someone may ask is Why do I care about marketing?. As I said before, that is a story for another day.