I enjoy Smartless when the guest isn’t political.
Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes interview mostly A-listers. The Kamala Harris and Stacy Abrams episodes…I had to turn them off. And they make occasional references in other episodes to politics, but overall stick to ripping on each other. Top of my head top episode guests: Clooney, Downey (separate episodes)

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business

I’ve learned a metric frickton from the White Coat Investor. It is repetitive. Nuts and bolts come early. Geared towards doctors “and other high-income professionals.” Guy is an anti-debt Dave Ramsey, John Bogle disciple who understands that professional school and high-income gigs require debt to obtain, so there’s a fair focus on rapid pay down of debt, budgeting, and then useful avenues on where to put cash outside of traditional retirement accounts and some tricks within them. It’s certainly not for everyone, and the investing device is generally “buy the market, maybe some real estate (either personally or through funds.” The estate planning episodes and asset protection episodes were super interesting to me.

Tax Chats is an unusual one that I’ve gotten into recently. Professor from UNC used to talk weekly with his class for 15ish minutes about taxes- history, current proposals, impacts, etc. During the pandemic, it turned into a Zoom call, then he invited the Duke tax professor to join, and it shifted from a weekly 15-minute informal class segment to a 30-40 minute podcast. It’s odd and refreshing that they introduced to me the concept of financial accounting vs tax accounting and why there should be two separate systems (a running thread) and frequently call out most political action regarding taxes as motivated by the desire of lawmakers to stay in power rather than having any real basis in fixing societal problems. They frequently call out Elizabeth Warren in particular (though they’re awfully polite- both LDS guys if memory serves) and cite a letter they wrote/signed explaining why several of her proposals were bad.
One of them at one point mentions that most finance/tax professors tend to “lean left,” but I don’t really sense that from the show (or them), but there was an episode or two where they got into the weeds about how it would be possible (and how to) create a tax specifically for the über wealthy that wouldn’t impact anyone in the “regular” sub-billion registers. They weren’t particularly advocating for such a thing, and I’m fairly impressed with the general way they can approach what is a highly politicized topic from a very nearly apolitical perspective.

Wow, I’m fricking lame.