I listened to many podcasts this year. My favorite podcast was The Prince from The Economist, an 8-part (plus extras) series telling the story of Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of the Peoples’s Republic of China, the most powerful person in the world (sorry Joe…) Despite restrictions on foreign journalists inside China, host Sue-Lin Wong and her co-authors created a deep and personal view of the leader of China and his vision for the 1.4 bilion people under his control. The story is primarily told through interviews with Chinese and non-Chinese people with first hand experience of Xi and China, although many now live outside the country. I highly recommend this podcast to anyone who wishes to better understand what must be the most important country and leader in the world over the next ten years.

I also listened to another 8-part podcast called Gatecrashers which tells the story of how the Ivy League schools discriminated against Jews in the twentieth century. Each episode tells a story from one of the eight schools, starting with Columbia and ending with Harvard. It’s super interesting and both desettling and uplifting overall.