Ah, yes! Finally! 
Great timing! I picked up an MBA this weekend and this episode will be a slick way to get familiar with the new features.
Oh… welI guess I’m a “left gives it more heft” type guy then
Hidden dock, at the bottom. (I rarely want to access the dock.)
ActiveDock on the bottom, switch glass on the right.
My dock on the same side as my mouse/trackpad. On long days I tend to switch hands.
Actually Messages is only workable in 11.1 since they finally fixed the bug where you had to choose a suggested contact with the mouse in the address field.
In the normal 11.0 Messages was a pain to use.
Loving Big Sur so far!!!
Oh and my dock is of course on left side and fixed. I switched from hidden to fixed after I had problems with false positives on making it appear on the left in apps like Excel, where you work close to the left edge of the screen.
Can somebody show me a picture of the this hidden proxy icon David was talking about? I don’t understand the use of that or where it is. (edit: Duck Duck Goed it and I am in the know now, no need to answer:)
What happens when you have multiple displays connected? I think having it on the sides is better than the bottom, but that has been what’s always put my dock on the left side
“Stephen identifies dock positions by feel”
I’ve been placing my dock on the left for years and just changed it to the right side because I realized it made more sense to me this way. (Sorry David 
)
I’m not dogmatic about keeping my dock on the left, but for me, the it’s a good fit for the natural F-shaped scan of the screen my eye does. Also, since desktop icons right-align, I find myself using the gap between my windows and the right edge of the screen to interact with the desktop and the right-aligned dock covers too much of that space. Just a personal preference, of course, and I’m glad I settled on my usual dock position long before I ever listened to a Mac podcast so it feels more authentic. 
In 13 years of Mac ownership, I’ve only connected an external display a handful of times, mostly because I didn’t have one until this past May. So it really hasn’t come into play. With my incoming Air, I might do it occasionally but likely will treat the external the same way I do with my PC laptops - as the only (albeit much larger) display.
The Dock! I keep my hidden, call up apps using Alfred and hardly ever see it, same goes for menubar, I have bartender app but hardly use it really. I try to do everything from the keyboard still and with my pared down app system and workflow it works well. So I hardly see a visual difference with Big Sur! weird how this varies from user to user.
Oh dear though, this year I got my full spec MacBook Pro 16 inch, it is beyond the capacity I need but I still hunger now for the new chip!! it is ridiculous!.
You’re not alone! 
I don’t use the dock at all. So, I just leave it at the bottom (hidden). I never switch applications with it, go to a folder with it…I wouldn’t notice if it disappeared.
More interesting to me - as a dock hider - is where Notifications / Widgets are placed.
Oh wait… 
(In a hypothetical later release I would want widgets and notifications on my second screen, possibly my third one, permanently displayed.)
I really haven’t noticed any material difference between Big Sur and Catalina. Look forward to listening to the episode to see what I’ve missed so far!
Dock: bottom - I use it all the time… what am I missing?!
Nothing. I’ve seen people arrange their Macs in ways I would never consider. Including raising an iMac so high it looked like they were a little kid sitting on the front row at the movies.
IMO, if that’s what works for you, great.