media

1. 12 May 2023

   2022 – a belated movie & TV media retrospective

   I wrote this in December and forgot to publish it — but if I wait to keep editing it, it'll never get published. In January 2022 I listed movies and TV shows I was looking forward to. Some were great.…

2. 17 July 2020

   38 great podcasts (2020)

   I love podcasts! If you bump into me in person, there's a good chance I'll be wearing headphones, listening to a podcast at 1.8x. Here are 38 podcasts I've been enjoying lately, drawn from my current…

3. 28 April 2020

   The unmitigated joy of watching movies at 7x speed

   Try watching movies at 7x speed. You heard that right — a two-hour movie in under 20 minutes. Yes, you lose the audio and the pacing. But you gain structure, thematic clarity, and guaranteed flow. Lik…

4. 21 June 2019

   Three great podcasts for your earballs

   Three limited-run podcast series I highly recommend: Against the Rules by Michael Lewis (on referees and fairness), Ponzi Supernova (on Bernie Madoff and the people who enabled him), and The End of th…

5. 15 February 2019

   How money misconceptions can put your life into hard mode

   My son is starting to get into video games. In many games, you can choose between "easy mode" and "hard mode". Sometimes I think we unnecessarily put our lives on hard mode, when we'd lead much more m…

6. 8 February 2018

   Should I use my KiwiSaver funds to buy a house?

   The NZ news media keeps warning of "frightening" long-term consequences when people use KiwiSaver to buy a first home. This is a false dilemma. Owning a mortgage-free home by retirement is one of the…

7. 11 November 2017

   Money in the media

   Some links to interesting articles in published media such as The Press, The Sunday Star Times, and The Herald from recent months: John McCrone wrote a valuable article about "How to succeed at the re…

8. 1 October 2015

   How do you consume media? These are some of my secrets.

   Media is most people's biggest pastime, and there's more of it than anyone can consume. If you want to make the most of your time with it, it pays to be mindful about what you consume and how. These a…

9. 25 November 2014

   Podcasts

   If you haven't listened to a podcast before, I recommend giving it a go. Podcasting has improved the quality of my life in the past couple of years — it's become one of my dominant forms for consuming…