“Ben & David do bring additional research: magazine articles, annual reports, and sometimes notes from conversations with people who worked at or invested in the companies under discussion. And some of their episodes are about companies that haven’t been written up in books, in which case the guys tend to rely on magazine, newspaper articles, and tech blogs. But more often than not, the substance of an Acquired episode is somebody’s book supplemented by Wikipedia. In a sober moment, Ben admitted: “Acquired has an opportunity in the world because people don’t read books. And we just go read books and tell people about them.”
So the essence of Acquired’s schtick is exploiting analog media for a digital audience. Ben & David summarize and riff off great nonfiction by serious historians and business journalists who’ve put ten thousand hours into their books”
https://shush.substack.com/p/how-to-get-rich-with-nonfiction