I am really into my podcasts, listening for upwards of 1500 hours per year. For that reason, I’ve listened to a lot of great and not so great shows. Below I’ve listed all the shows I am currently listened to or used to listen to before the came to a close. I have grouped them into categories and used the following key to add some more detail:
- (*): A must-listen. It’s probably worth trying at least one episode to see if it’s you you.
- (?): A podcast that provides a lot of educational benefits and introduces new ideas.
- (~): A show I listen to more out of obligation than actual enjoyment.
- (-): Short podcasts (in terms of catching up on the entire feed).
- (#): Wild-cards. Certainly not for everyone but incredibly beneficial for some.
- (^): A podcast that is incredibly enjoyable to listen to.
My recommendations are intended for someone with similar interests to me so bring your own priors to the table; if you’re not a technical person, no matter how much I recommend a technical podcast, it’s probably not going to be for you.
Sidenote
I listen to podcasts using Podcast Addict. I typically listen with a speed multiplier between 1.6 and 2.2 (see podcasting) depending on how technical the conversation is (slower), how slow the speaker talks (faster), and how funny the podcast is (slower). I never enable silence-skipping; I believe this makes it much harder to listen as we’ve grown to expect certain rhythmic patterns of speech which are broken by this setting. Instead, I find that allowing silence but raising the speaker’s speed even further provides a faster listening experience.
News (and Politics)
Note: With news podcasts, I find that little benefit is provided by listening to the back-catalogue._
- Clockwise
- Hacker News TLDR
- Late Night Linux (^)
- More or Less: Behind the Statistics
- Politics Unpacked from TLDR News
- Politics Weekly
- Talking Tech (~)
- The Intelligence (*)
- The Newsworthy (*)
- This Week in Linux
- The Daily Briefing
Data Science and Statistics
- Data Skeptic
- DataBasic
- DataFramed
- Linear Digressions
- Machine Learning Cafe
- Not So Standard Deviations (~)
- PyDataMCR
- R Podcast (~)
- Royal Statistical Society (~)
- Talk Python to Me
- The New Age of Risk Analytics (#~-)
- This Week in Machine Learning (~)
Technology
- Command Line Heroes
- Cortex (*)
- Flashback
- The Test Drivers
Mathematics
- A Brief History of Mathematics (?-)
- Ben, Ben, Blue (*?-)
- Game Changer
- An Opinionated History of Mathematics (#-)
- The Numberphile Podcast (*#)
Philosophy
- Cortex (^*?)
- Intelligence Squared (~)
- Lex Fridman Podcast (*#)
- The Portal (*#)
Society and Culture
- Book Cheat (^)
- Build for Tomorrow (*-)
- Lingthusiasm (*^-)
- More or Less
- Nice White Parents (*-)
- Powered by Audio (#)
- Serial (*-)
- The Audio Long Read
- The Cottonwood Treehouse (~-)
- The Secret History of the Future (?-)
- Wild Wild Tech (-)
Comedy
All comedy podcasts require a (^) by definition.
- Hamish & Andy
- Hello Internet (*)
- OK, I’ll Talk (*)
- No Such Thing as a Fish (?)
- Plumbing the Death Star
- The Crackermilk Podcast (#-)
- The Unmade Podcast (*#)