Ask HN: What podcasts do you listen to regularly?

208 points by lsr_ssri ↗ HN

151 comments

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The Tim Ferriss Show. He deconstructs world class performers and shares some of the unique characteristics and habits that make these people successful in their industry. A recent episode (episode #334) features Drew Houston, co-founder of Dropbox.
The Indicator and Planet Money are both great. They do a good job of explaining economic subjects from the yield curve to farming insurance for Africa in a fun/digestible way.
99% Invisible, Planet Money are good.
No Such Thing As A Fish - from the team who do research for the show QI

ABC Radio Nation does quite a few great shows, you’ll find them at http://abc.net.au/rn

I absolutely love No Such Thing As A Fish. I religiously listen to and wait for every new episode.
I didn't know that was still going. They had a brief stint on TV a few years ago.
I love this podcast - it's such a lighthearted escape from daily life.

One thing I couldn't find out from their website: what happened to the fifty-odd early episodes which're no longer available?

You'd have to pay for them, episodes 2-52
'How I Built This'. Everything else that my wife and I have tried listening to is either extremely dull or frustratingly conversational.
What is it about the conversation that you find frustrating when listening to those types of podcasts?
It annoys me when I have gone to the trouble to hear about a specific topic only to have the hosts chat for the first 8 minutes about their personal lives or about stuff that is completely off topic. Focus would be appreciated.
For me it's the same. I don't have much time to listen to podcasts so general chat or low density talk just isn't efficient.

I like some conversational podcasts like After On where they tend to stick to discussing the topic at hand but I couldn't get into Stuff You Should Know or Joe Rogan as there was a lot of general chat in there or not high enough information density.

I don't want to hear 5 minutes of why somebody thinks something is worth doing a podcast on: just tell me the interesting stuff and I'll judge for myself.

Jason Calacanis of course!

Startups: This Week In Startups

Startups: Mixergy https://mixergy.com/

Startups: How I built this

Startups: Rocketship

Startups: Steve Blank podcast

Startups: The SAAS podcast

Startups: Startup grind

Startups: Art of Product

Startups: Rocketship

Fantasy fiction: Podcastle

Fantasy fiction: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Horror fiction: Psuedopod

Sci fi fiction: Clarkesworld

Sci fi fiction: Lightspeed magazine

History: History of the Crusades

History: In Our Time

History: Emperors of Rome

Science: ABC The Science Show

Life: The Moth

Life: Modern Love

Games: IGN GamesScoop

Games: Eaten By A Grue

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Risky Biz infosec podcast - https://risky.biz/
Despite not working in infosec I tune into risky busisness (risky.biz) every week, it's a good round-up of the week without the overreaction you sometimes get from twitter and here in the immediate aftermath of a big leak or vuln.
Planet Money just turned 10 years old and in that time I haven't found a podcast that has been more consistently informative and entertaining.

Some recent highlights:

- P is for Phosphorus https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

- How the Social Security Number Became our National Identification https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/03/14/593620579/epis...

- The Poop Cartel: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/25/632444815/epis...

Planet Money was invaluable in understanding what was happening during the 2008 financial meltdown. They were creating new episodes nearly every other day to explain the next domino that was falling.

Since then they've done a nice pivot into using that style to explain other gears in the global economy. The series about making a T-shirt, for example, was excellent.

Another vote for Planet Money as it has been my top podcast! I would note that the indicator is far inferior to Planet Money as it is more the politicaly charged flavor of the show.
red scare (female russian immigrant socialists in new york critique metoo and other neoliberal stuff in a sexy manner)
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - Carlin has an amazing way of telling stories, and he goes really in-depth.

Critical Role - A group of people playing Dungeons and Dragons, the episodes are long and always keep me chuckling most of the way through.

I listen to mostly political, comedy, and political comedy podcasts:

* Doug Loves Movies

* FiveThirtyEight Politics

* Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 (for The Now Show)

* MSNBC Rachel Maddow

* My Brother, My Brother and Me

* News Quiz Extra

* No Such Thing as a Fish

* Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast

* What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law

* Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes

Con Law is a great podcast. I'm always amused by Roman Mars's description of Elizabeth Joh. Also, WITH consistency blows me away. Last week's episode with Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman made me say "holy shit!" out loud at least twice.
Why is this being down voted?

If you disagree - maybe leave a comment?

Tim Ferris interviews so many interesting people.

a16z podcast. They always have very well thought out and interesting things to say for the startup space.

EconTalk - interviews with social scientists about various topics. The interviewer is an economist so it's an interesting discussion between experts.

Economics detective radio - similar to EconTalk

Rationally speaking - interviews related to rational thinking.

80,000 Hours podcast - in depth interviews about the world's biggest problems and how to use your career to solve them. (Disclaimer: I used to work for them, but I genuinely love the podcast)

Feeling good podcast - by one of the pioneers of cognitive behavioural therapy, discusses mental health techniques.

InfoSec news: risky.biz

Startups: Masters of Scale

Startups: a16z

Startup History: How I built this.

Comedy: Nothing beats the old episodes of the Bugle for a laugh.

Infinite Monkey Cage, Material World, History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Thinking Allowed, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry.
Hello from the magic tavern - if you like D&D then you’ll fall in love with this.

Welcome To Night Vale - bizarre and compelling

Wonderly! American history tellers is absolutely fascinating. Also Atlanta Monster is f’in gripping.
* Pod Save America - "Four former aides to President Obama — Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor — are joined by journalists, politicians, comedians, and activists for a freewheeling conversation about politics, the press and the challenges posed by the Trump presidency."

* 99% Invisible - "Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture." - Roman Mars' voice and production is amazing, and I find the subject matter fascinating.

* Planet Money - "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening." - Often interesting looks at economic aspects of society.

* The Adventure Zone - "Justin, Travis and Griffin McElroy from My Brother, My Brother and Me have recruited their dad Clint for a campaign of high adventure." - They're playing D&D with their dad. It hooked me.

Joe Rogan Experience [0]. I love that he sits down with people and actually has long in-depth conversations with them. Here's a few interesting ones:

* Let's start with his Elon Musk discussion [1]. It came out 2 weeks ago and it already has 14m views. They basically discuss a bunch of his ideas along with things such as AI and the future of humanity. It's fascinating to get a peek into the kind of person he is.

* His discussion with Matthew Walker has been one of the most enlightening ones for me [2]. He's a sleep expert, and in the podcast they go over different myths relating to that. There was recently a HN post [3] where some people were quoting him and his book.

* Another big favorite of mine was his discussion with Paul Stamets [4], a mycologist (i.e. a mushroom expert). They discuss some of the effects of different kinds of mushrooms, including psilocybin mushrooms (colloquially known as magic mushrooms).

* I loved his discussion with Gary Johnson [5], the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate for 2016. How many other presidential candidates would you imagine would be willing to sit down and answer hard-hitting questions for +2 hours? He also had a discussion with Larry Sharpe [6], the Libertarian Party's candidate for governor of New York in 2018. Full disclosure: I recently joined the Libertarian Party. Listening to these podcasts pushed me to learn more about their movement.

* He had a discussion with Mikhaila Peterson [7], the daughter of Jordan Peterson, which many might find interesting. She had been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and other medical issues all her life, and switching to a carnivore diet made all the symptoms go away

[0] http://podcasts.joerogan.net/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18050090

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQIuHGbKckY

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSmggQZno6w

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF_7688Zk6s

Netflix should take best of Joe Rogan podcasts in the repertoire. When properly translated, they have worldwide audience. Joe Rogan standups are actually of lesser value, because they mostly deal with domestic issues in America.
Perhaps not quite what the OP is looking for, but I use podcasts mostly for music consumption. My favorite (for quite a while now) is The Anjunadeep Edition [1], which delivers a 1 hour continuously-mixed "deep" (often programming-friendly) electronic music every week. I'd be curious to hear what other music podcasts HN recommends.

[1] Here's a recent episode I enjoyed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chn4SZWnJbc

Same same! Would love to read more music podcast recommendations. My personal pick is The Concert by the Gardner Museum. Each episode is a live performance of classical chamber music. Sadly shut down last year but there are 12 years of archives online and all episodes are still available in the feed.
Signed up after years of lurking just to ask for more classical music podcast recommendations. Thanks to your recommendation, I have listened to "The Concert" for the last couple of hours while working and it's absolutely incredible. Amazing quality, brief introductions packed with interesting bits of info and a great selection.

I have classical playlists in youtube but their quality is nowhere near this podcast's and I didn't learn anything about the genre while listening to them since it's just popular tracks passing one after the other in the background without an introduction.

I prefer to listen to music podcasts as well.

My absolute favourite is KEXP's Music That Matters[1] of the KEXP Live In-Studio performance fame[2]. They have an amazing artist selection.

I love the soothing voices of Cheryl Waters, Kevin Cole and John Richards, the short background informations they provide about the bands and their upcoming releases and tour dates, and the music usually spans across multiple genres which broadens your listening horizont and appreciation of other styles which you might not usually listen to.

But most of it all, I truly enjoy discovering new music from them which almost always is spectacular.

[1]: http://feeds.kexp.org/kexp/musicthatmatters [2]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUh4W61bt_K6tflBpjWgn...

Sidenote: I also like that they prominently (actually, "equally" should be the more fitting word in a better world) feature female musicians/bands (which you sadly cannot say from most other music podcasts / radio shows... most of it features male voices/artists), even without ever mentioning "Ladies" or all-female or otherwise including the gender in their short artist announcements (as it should be).

Yes!

Out of the more recent episodes 201-David Hohme & 206-Modd were top quality.

If you enjoy Anjunadeep then I think you will also like 'When We Dip' , Canopy Sounds and Magician on Duty podcasts. They really go well with the anjunadeep style although I would say is more laid back then Anjunadeep (which has an at times housier/trancier vibe).

- Dan Carlin's Hardcore History(there are like 2 episodes a year, but usually amazing) - Freakonomics - Software Engineering Radio - Joe Rogan Experience(selected, but as it is released every day I can say that I do this regularly - Revolutions Podcast - Tim Ferris Show