What is the Opportunity Cost to Listen to Three Podcasts?

I'd like to humbly recommend a few podcasts. I understand-- because of the first podcast that I am recommending-- that there is an opportunity cost to listening to these. You could be listening to the radio. Or some banging tunes on Spotify. Or some other podcast. Or you might choose to meditate in silence, repeating some mantra in your head at an extremely high internal volume (which no one else can hear . . . which strikes me as crazy).

LUMEN DE LUMINE! OM! 

So if you don't listen, that's your choice. You might have something better to do.

1) Planet Money: Episode 963: 13,000 Economists. 1 Question.

The folks from Planet Money  visit the American Economic Association's annual conference and ask one question: "What's the most useful idea in economics?"

Here's what international economic advisor Lisa Cook has to say:

GOLDSTEIN: What is the most useful idea in economics?

COOK: It is, I think, opportunity cost.

GOLDSTEIN: What is opportunity cost?

COOK: It is what you give up in order to engage in some activity.

GOLDSTEIN: What you give up in order to do something.

COOK: Right.

GOLDSTEIN: Opportunity cost tells us the cost of doing any one thing is giving up doing anything else. So the cost of going to college is not just the tuition you have to pay. It's all the wages you give up by not working or by working less because you're in college. Businesses also think, or should think, about opportunity cost. You know, the cost of, say, building a new factory is not just the money the business has to pay for the factory. It's also whatever other thing the business doesn't do with that same money, right? It's, say, giving up on that new R&D plant that might've yielded the billion-dollar idea.

FOUNTAIN: And in a more personal sense - you know, day-to-day life - opportunity cost means the cost of doing something at any given moment is not doing something else at that exact same moment. And literally at this moment, Lisa Cook is giving up the opportunity to do so many things.

GOLDSTEIN: Can you just, like, rattle off a few of them?

COOK: I could be at the session on the economics profession's race problem.

GOLDSTEIN: OK.

COOK: And I could be running. I have my running shoes with me. I have lunch in my bag. I could be finishing lunch.

GOLDSTEIN: So sorry.

COOK: Oh, there's one other thing that I really want to be doing, and I am binge-watching "Chernobyl."

GOLDSTEIN: That is not even to mention, like, all of the just meeting, talking with a thousand other economists, every happy hour, every talk, every poster. All of those things you are not doing right now...

COOK: That's right.

GOLDSTEIN: ...Because you're standing here talking to me.

COOK: That's right.

GOLDSTEIN: The opportunity cost of this interview is incalculable.

COOK: That's right (laughter).

GOLDSTEIN: Thank you so much for talking with me.

COOK: The pleasure's all mine.

2) Crimetown's "The Ballad of Billy Balls"

Just started this series. Three episodes in. Compelling, gritty, and already lots of twists and turns. But don't trust me. The Atlantic ranked this as the #2 podcast of 2019 . . . runner up to a series about Mr. Rogers. Mr Rogers? Weird. 

Here's what they said about it.

CRIMETOWN PRESENTS: THE BALLAD OF BILLY BALLS

You might think you know what to expect from The Ballad of Billy Balls. It opens in 1970s New York City and describes the death of the titular musician, before launching into an audio montage of conspiracy theories about what really happened. The host iO Tillett Wright tells you the goal is to find out the truth, 37 years later. You might think you recognize this story’s shape: a narrative of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and murder, kicked off by love at first sight. But there’s no way to explain why this first impression is wrong without ruining the joy of listening to the show unfold. Dumb luck made this podcast possible on so many levels—the magnetic attraction that brought a young couple together, the fact that they recorded themselves for us to hear, the senselessness of Billy’s death, the way he was interned in a mass grave. But luck isn’t the reason to listen. The show was made by storytellers who not only found the good stuff when they went digging, but also knew exactly how to use it.

3) The Indicator: "How Trade Wars Fill the Swamp"

I love this short (usually) breezy podcast on economic indicators. But this one will make you angry. Capitalism at its worst. The Trump administration at its worst. The small businessman being punished for being small. Lobbyists, lawyers and corruption at every turn. All in 9 minutes.