Charlie Munger on the Acquired Podcast (2023)

Of the thousands of hours Munger spent on stage and in front of cameras, he sat for exactly one dedicated long-form podcast: this Acquired episode, recorded over dinner at the Los Angeles house he designed and lived in for the better part of his life, and released weeks before he died. Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal got the rarest of things — Munger relaxed, at home, talking at length and off the clock.

Why listen. It is the most intimate setting in the entire Munger record. He walks through the businesses he understood best — Costco gets the loving treatment it always does — and explains, in plain language, why a great business is worth more than a cheap one, how he and Buffett actually divided the labor, and what he made of the Daily Journal’s strange second life as a software company. The dinner-table format draws out the conversational, story-telling Munger rather than the lectern Munger.

What makes it special. This is the closest you will get to sitting across the table from him. The Acquired hosts came prepared, but they mostly let him run, and the result is a warm, discursive, unrepeatable record made right at the end of his life.

Listen via the embedded Spotify player above, or on the official Acquired episode page, which also hosts the full transcript and show notes.