Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions

The founder of Microsoft and screen actress Rashida Jones make an unlikely two-person expert panel, said Lian Brooks in Elle.com.

But in their new sixepisode series, they skillfully field some of life’s more challenging questions: “Is there an absolute truth? Is inequality inescapable? Is it too late to stop climate change?” The co-hosts always have knowledgeable guests to turn to, and though a conversation about an insoluble problem “might sound like a heavy listen,” Gates and Jones keep the sessions briskly informative. In Episode 1, Gates’ longtime friend Anthony Fauci talks about how Covid-19 will alter American life permanently. In the next, economist Raj Chetty and Aja Brown, mayor of Compton, Calif., offer surprising insights about growing economic inequality. Gates and Jones establish a complementary dynamic early on: “He’s the optimist, she’s the pessimist,” said Stefan Milne in SeattleMet.com. Otherwise, “they offer no explanation as to why this thing exists.” But even that first episode, which breaks little new ground, proves “a decent listen.”

“The best podcasts offer windows into worlds to which we wouldn’t usually have access,” said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times.

“Gamblers, which offers striking portraits of six gambling professionals, does this masterfully.” Host David Hill tags along with people like Gina Fiore, a blackjack and poker player who wears disguises when she practices her trade because her most profitable MO is identifying and exploiting casino dealers who inadvertently reveal their “hole card.” Fiore has run afoul of law enforcement more than once. Other subjects include an international pool hustler and a tattooed young woman who frequently out-handicaps the mostly male devotees of horse racing. The six-episode series “skates lightly over the ethics of the business,” but it doesn’t neglect its perils. “I’ve never been particularly interested in gambling,” said Daisy Alioto in Airmail.News. Even so, I enjoyed learning about these characters’ “legal, illegal, and barely legal hijinks”—and the ways they try to avoid trouble. “Who among us hasn’t walked around with cash hidden in their shoe?”