I walk a lot of places. Sometimes I want to listen to music, but sometimes I want to learn something. When I want to learn something, I turn to my trusty podcasts. I’ve got about 5 that I listen to pretty much every podcast from during the week.
When it comes to podcasts, I’m a firm believer that diversity is king, only one of the podcasts I regularly listen to is related to what I do day to day, and none of them are related to each other. They do have a few things in common, notably; high quality content, smart guests (only one doesn’t regularly have guests), and most of all, they all have a clear identity.
In no particular order:
a16z – Tech/start-up podcast that casts a pretty wide net – Thanks Andreessen Horowitz
Econtalk – An absolutely incredible amount of content out of Russ Roberts – top notch guests
The Tim Ferriss Show – Tim’s stated goal is to interview top performers and find out ‘how they do it’. He’s a hugely talented interviewer
Fireside Markets – I couldn’t actually find a link to the podcast area of the website, anyway… James Osborne, a financial planner, hosts this podcast mostly focused on the planning industry. He’s just starting out (maybe 8 episodes), lots of interesting content, hope it keeps going.
Jalen & Jacoby – Basketball podcast, they give the people what they want.
Honorable mention to the two fivethirtyeight podcasts, hot takedown and what’s the point (I think the latter is brand new), which I’ve enjoyed in the few listens I’ve given them.
I’m sure in time the podcasts will fall victim to the same cycle as the blogs I read — I’ll add more and more that I like until I can’t read them as much as I want, then the reckoning will come and I’ll unfollow 80%. For now, <10 feels like the sweet spot.