If you haven’t thought much about economics, this series from the BBC is a first-rate introduction to a lot of key ideas about how markets work.
Each episode is about ten minutes long and features at least one interesting, often entertaining and sometimes surprising ‘thing’ to illustrate fundamental principles of economics.
There are lessons galore about how technologies take off and spread, change culture, transform the environment (human and physical) for both good and ill, and the unpredictable nature of emergent order and complex adaptive systems.
Seasons one and two are here at the BBC, and downloadable free wherever you get your podcasts.
There’s also a book (amazon).
Tim Harford is great – The Undercover Economist and More or Less (also on the BBC) are well worth checking out too.