Ask HN: What Podcasts are you listening right now and why?

79 points by dirtylowprofile ↗ HN
I am new to this Podcast thing on iPhone, and I'm looking for either something funny or about startups.

78 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] thread
Revisionist History with Malcolm Gladwell
Hardcore History
You can't beat this for sheer quality.
Reply all is funny and about the internet. The Dig is not funny or about startups but I just discovered it and wanted to share. Smart policy discussion with a lefty viewpoint.
Software Engineering Daily, has some focus on startups
Hardcore History

The Economist (Paid for but worth every cent, 8 hours of news)

The Economist asks

Tim Ferris

No such thing as a fish

Radiolab

All songs considered

In addition to what I consider the usual suspects (Startup [Gimlet] / Radiolab / This American Life), I just added two a little more off the beaten path:

The Pitch - Shark Tank on a podcast essentially. Somewhat deeper. The more recent episodes are way better than the first ones so just skip to the end.

Waking Up - so refreshing to hear someone as thoughtful as Sam Harris on a regular basis. I love that he is so calmly rational that he can have productive conversations with everyone from left to right, atheist to Muslim.

LOVE Waking Up, been both a reader of Sam Harris' books and a Patreon supporter for a while now. Dave Rubin also manages to bring a lot of interesting guests to his show.
Waking Up (Sam Harris) is excellent. I'm a Patreon supporter.
+1 for Waking Up. Sam could not have chosen a better title for his show.
The IndieHackers podcast has been really great so far.
The Political Gabfest - Slate The Ezra Klein Show - Vox The Weeds - Vox Waking Up - Sam Harris
I highly recommend Embedded.fm if you're interested in any thing in the embedded software world.
What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

The West Wing Weekly

Planet Money

Heavyweight

The Adventure Zone

This American Life

In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg

Invisibilia

StartUp

Freakonomics

Radiolab

99% Invisible

The Tobolowsky Files

S-Town

Coffee Break German

1. a16z

2. Acquired - Podcast about Tech Acquisitions + IPOs

3. Recode Decode by Kara Swisher

Some that haven't been mentioned:

Security Now - Steve Gibson basically reviewing the week in software and hardware security.

Rationally Speaking - Intellectual stuff

No such thing as a fish - fun trivia from the people behind the QI tv show.

Rationally Speaking and Security Now in the same list make my head hurt. Julia Galef has entertaining, highly intelligent and nuanced conversations with brilliant people. Gibson tries to sell tools that are "good because they are written in assembly".
If you're interested in Security Now, you might like Risky Business: https://risky.biz

It feels like an upgrade to me, by people who spend their days working in infosec. They've had interviews with members of LulzSec, the NSA's General Counsel, and the guy behind PwnAllTheThings. They also broke the inside story of what actually happened in Australia's national census outage.

My one hesitation is it's starting to feel like pro-5eyes propaganda. They were very dismissive of the Shadow Brokers last year (because "NSA superiority"), and have had to rewrite history since the actual 0-days & WannaCry were released. So I don't listen to every episode anymore, but I do find it informative.

I'm a big fan of Skeptoid (http://www.skeptoid.com). Brian does a great job of telling the story of many popular pseudoscientific/conspiratorial/unexplained things and then addresses them with evidence and scientific skepticism but in an insightful way without mocking or being judgemental.
Upfirst

why oh why

planet money

radiolab

all songs considered

Dinner party Download

Hidden Brain

Radio Lab

The Splendid Table

Gastropod

You are not so Smart

Two which I really enjoy:

- In Our Time. Legendary BBC Radio 4 show in which four experts discuss a topic (e.g. 'enzymes', 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead', 'The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum') in terms a layperson can understand for about an hour, guided by a host who asks all the dumb questions for the listener.

- Norm Macdonald Live. Former SNL castmember spends a couple of hours interviewing e.g. Billy Bob Thornton, Adam Sandler, etc.). One of the most consistently funny and off-key shows I've ever heard.

I couldn't agree more about In Our Time. It's my weekly go-to programme on Radio 4 regardless of what subject they're discussing. On many subjects they've discussed I've usually picked up one or two books to learn more about events, people and things I didn't even know existed.
Masters of Scale - just started and really great, Reid Hoffman talks about startups and growing them.
I started to listen the first episode but felt a lot of overlap with How I Built This that I had to stop listening.