Ask HN: What podcast episodes changed the way you think about startups?

Well there was that time my evil twin came out because I read a bad book...

But really any kind of literature has problems with hero worship which in turn comes out of a kind of survivorship bias. There's almost nothing you can learn from studying Apple that applies to your business so the cult of Steve Jobs is basically pointless.

(e.g. Jobs completely called the 1980s wrong because he had no idea how slow progress was going to be in the microcomputer space... Had he skipped the /// and Mac and shipped the //gs a year or two earlier they could have avoided at least one of their near death experiences [1] and had a straighter path to where they wound up)

[1] Choosing Motorola in retrospect was a choice between certain death and a near death experience but that's only clear in hindsight where we know Motorola took down almost all the opposition to the PC

Depends on the book. There are a lot of books that are the equivalent of a podcast episode (anything by Malcolm Gladwell) or a series of podcast episodes (anything by Robert Greene) and even some serious and influential books in the social sciences and can be cooked down to a single university lecture like

Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman

Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson

The Zero-sum Society by Lester Thurow (want to know why the world gave up on tariffs?)

maybe some worthwhile management books could be extended into a podcast series, I'd say

Quality is Free by Phillip Crosby

Then there are some books that really could change your life, say

Solid State Physics by Ashcroft and Mermin

The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth

Principles of Compiler Design by Aho and Ullman

Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art by Steve McConnell

The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home by Paul Stamets

Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe

Being and Event by Alain Badiou

Liberation in the Palm of your Hand by Pabongka Rinpoche

The Art of Happiness by Mirko Fryba

All of which have the element that they'll only change you if you engage deeply with them or the subject, like for the Rippetoe book you're going to have to pick up a bar.