A Few Words About Podcasts

The Chinese translation of “podcast” is an unusually elegant choice.

My Podcast Calendar

Weekly

Monday: Aotu Radio, Business Samples

Tuesday: Half-Latte Weekly

Wednesday: Half-Latte | The Rise and Fall of Business

Thursday: TSP Strange Files, Business Is Just Like This, Surprise Attack

Other Shows

Sound Bites Morning Coffee (updated on weekdays)

How I Fell into Podcasts

I remember starting to listen to podcasts on August 20, 2025. I had just finished the gaokao and returned from a trip through Japan and South Korea. I was still suspended in a state that felt both loose and strangely empty. I used Apple Podcasts. It was extremely simple, with no annual summary and almost no doorway back into your own listening history. I loved that cleanliness—the absence of constant algorithmic reminders, like a corner that belonged only to me. But for the same reason, when I tried to find the first show I had ever heard, I had almost nothing to go on.

Eventually, a few hazy memories led me back to it. Several hosts were interviewing the comedian Sun Yue about raising elephants. That was the moment I truly fell into Aotu Radio.

Aotu Radio is the kind of show that makes you want to become an archaeologist as soon as you start listening. During military training, before bed, and on the commute, I gave it nearly every spare minute. It felt unusual—not like a program, but like a group of electronic friends who were always online and chatting beside you. They joked around, but they also spoke seriously about their confusion and took apart emotions that had been hidden for a long time. I often recognized my own shadow in what they said. The sense of recognition was concrete but light, as if someone had found words for a feeling that had been blurry in my own head.

I especially like the “First Times” and “Childhood” series. They can pull you back in an instant—to an era when a few pens and a few friends were enough to fill an entire afternoon. That simple happiness is strangely difficult to recover now.

TSP Strange Files, from the same universe, offers a completely different experience. Instead of relaxed conversation, it leans toward mystery and science fiction: apocalyptic settings, rule-based horror, and case investigations. The pace is tighter, and it is easier to disappear into. I once finished the entire Three-Body Problem series in two days and caught up on more than twenty episodes in a week. The feeling was not so different from being obsessed with science-fiction novels in middle school. Perhaps only the medium changed; the curiosity did not.

Later, I found podcasts with a higher information density, such as Sound Bites Morning Coffee. In about fifteen minutes, the show explains current developments in business and technology at a brisk pace. More importantly, it does not only deliver information; the second half often takes apart a phenomenon and asks why it happened. I gradually got used to opening it on my morning commute. On a crowded subway, with noise cancellation on, I found an unexpected quiet—a slice of time that belonged only to me.

Shows such as Business Is Just Like This and Surprise Attack also arrived slowly through recommendation feeds. They are more interested in explaining the world, taking apparently complex phenomena apart through business logic and technology trends. Recently, I have been hooked on Half-Latte. Almost every episode is long—often more than two hours—but it never feels dull. It can tell the story of a person, a period of history, or an industry in full. The “Silicon Valley Legends” series in particular makes it difficult to stop after one episode.

Looking back, I started listening to podcasts simply to rest my eyes and fill the scattered gaps in the day. Without noticing, they became a steady form of company. They do not occupy every bit of attention the way video does, but they continue to offer emotion and information. They can remain in the background, or become the main character for a moment. It is now difficult to imagine daily life without them. Platforms such as Apple Music and Apple Podcasts have quietly become part of the structure of my life.

And I am happy to give some of my time to them.