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First Principles Daily
By Patrick
A daily narrative podcast that reasons about the world from first principles — the 'magic wand number' and the 'Idiot Index'. Episodes alternate between a concrete example of first-principles thinking... more
FAQs about First Principles Daily:
How many episodes does First Principles Daily have?
The podcast currently has 75 episodes available.
First Principles Daily episodes:
July 20, 2026Ep 45: Before the cotton gin, one worker cleaned roughly a pound of fiber per day by hand; the machine that attacked only the seed-separation step raised that output by a factor of fifty almost overnight. 
July 19, 2026Ep 44: A house built from lumber, gypsum, concrete, and glass still costs many times the value of those raw materials because the expense sits in assembly, regulation, and financing rather than in the stuff itself. July 18, 2026Ep 43: A watch whose price once tracked hundreds of skilled labor hours now costs a few dollars because engineers replaced the entire mechanism with a vibrating quartz crystal and a silicon chip. July 17, 2026Ep 42: A ton of old circuit boards already contains more gold than a ton of virgin ore, yet the cost to recover it still sits many times higher than the metals themselves. July 16, 2026Ep 41: Ice once cut from frozen ponds and hauled across oceans now costs pennies to produce anywhere because engineers asked what it truly takes to pump heat out of a box. July 15, 2026Ep 40: A package can cross an ocean for pennies per kilogram, yet the last few kilometers to a doorstep often multiply the total cost several times over. July 14, 2026Ep 39: Battery packs that once cost several thousand dollars per kilowatt-hour now sit near one hundred dollars because teams priced the metals and assembly energy alone and attacked everything else. July 13, 2026Ep 38: A routine dental filling can cost hundreds while the materials inside are worth only a few dollars, showing where the real price drivers sit. July 12, 2026Ep 37: Intricate patterned cloth once demanded teams of skilled hands per row; punched cards collapsed that labor into the cost of thread and a stack of holes. July 11, 2026Ep 36: Cement that binds our buildings costs many times the limestone and fuel alone, because the century-old kiln process itself is the real expense.
FAQs about First Principles Daily:
How many episodes does First Principles Daily have?
The podcast currently has 75 episodes available.