Podcasts are good for the brain
Over the last few years, I have year on year increased the number of podcasts that I consume and find that they are a great way to find out about some of the new tech, stay motivated or just chill out and unwind a little. The cycle commute into work and the odd plod/pootle for exercise is podcast prime-time!
My subscriptions evolve with podcasts ceasing to be, and my tastes changing. It has taken a long time to discover many of the podcasts, some of which have been running for 10+ years, so I thought it would be useful to throw the list together here and periodically update it. I am also hoping that anyone who finds this list useful will fire across any of their recommendations. It is always nice to discover a new podcast with a back catalogue to work through.
In case you are interested, I use PocketCasts to manage my playlist. It has a new releases feed and I’ll typically look at the new shows that have come in every couple of days and either queue them to the “playlist” or archive them if they are not of interest. If I ever clear the queue then I’ll take a look through some of the backlog and see if there’s anything there that piques my interest.
The podcasts are broadly split into 3 categories…
- Tech-focused podcasts to try and keep up to date with what is going on.
- Startup/Founder podcasts to help me think about what I’m wanting to achieve with Cortex and our products. But more generally I find these motivating.
- “chewing gum for the brain” - It is often nice to just listen to something non-technical!
My current subscriptions are shown in the image at the top of this page. They are all detailed in the 3 sections above and ranked in order of most fouritest at the top.
My Favourite Tech Podcasts
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1-2 a month |
| This is now one of my favourites. The host Dan Clarke is easy to listen to, has some good guests and loves the tech. Another largely .net focused podcast but has also covered some of the softer skills and Container-y stuff. |
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Weekly |
| Discovered this one towards the end of 2022 and is now one that bumps up the listening queue as episodes arrive. Two tech friends catch up weekly and talk tech. Largely .net focused with a mobile slant but the pair love tech and have some well-rounded discussions on all sorts of topics (cloud, all the big tech conferences, macos, AI etc). |
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Weekly |
| Another excellent and well-polished podcast. Scott is a seasoned developer come community manager at Microsoft and interviews guests from all stages of their careers in a variety of technologies. |
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Fortnightly |
| 3 software developers taking on a variety of topics from software design, Docker, Microservices and more recently Site Reliability Engineering. |
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Weekly |
| .NET Rocks! is somewhat of an institution in the .net dev world. The show is polished and has a well-worked format with two hosts that bounce off one another interviewing a guest from the .net world. As the name implies, it is very much .net focused, and for me is a good way to stay up to date with what is going on in this space and find out more about different frameworks and libraries. |
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Fortnightly |
| A decent .net development podcast covering good topics with interesting guests. |
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Weekly |
| A relatively new podcast that seems to be slowing down. Some interesting guests though - it's all about the guests. Discovered this one at the start of the year when they interviewed Michael Lynch who is an interesting entrepreneur I follow (stalk) from afar. |
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Monthly |
| The latest one I have subscribed to and is moving up the list. Not sure how I stumbled upon this one, but it is another tech podcast with two hosts bouncing a conversation around on various topics. The two hosts are long time friends with different professional careers (game dev and business dev). Ben is a TDD evangelist/author. |
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Weekly |
| A short, sweet wrap up of the top tech news items. BBC produced the the production quality is excellent. |
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Weekly |
| One of the longer podcasts normally weighing in at 70+ mins. Has a weird knack for covering areas that have been on the list to find out more. For example, this month it has covered Mob Programming - that surely could never work! |
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Weekly |
| Hosted by Richard Campbell (from .net rocks). A Microsoft focused show which is a great way to stay up to date with what is going on with Azure, AD, SqlServer and the like. |
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Weekly |
| This one sits between the tech and chewing-gum categories. Covers some interesting science/space topics. |
My Favourite Startup Podcasts (Founder Podcasts)
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Weekly |
| A real gem. Always slides into play next position as it comes out. Great guests and format. Covers the earlier stage start-ups and as the names suggests, smaller ventures. They've recently cut loose from stripe overlords so it will be interesting to see how things change. I'm hopeful it will get even better. |
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Weekly |
| Am really enjoying this one. A weekly podcast typically with a guest startup founder talking through their journey but often targets a specific topic. Very insightful and motivating. Am slowly working my way through the backlog. |
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Monthly(ish) |
| Another excellent podcast following a similar format of interviewing a startup founder. The host clearly does the legwork upfront and all are interesting and informative. |
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weekly |
| A pair of podcasts. Interviews with some massive names (Richard Branson, Cheryl Sandberg) and a weekly podcast covering different business topics focussing on why companies thrive and succeed. |
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Monthly |
| A lot of solo episodes. Asia tackles a different topic each time covering topics such as 'finding product market fit', 'first marketing hire', 'prioritisation'. There's backlog of around 30 and it has been useful hitting topics that are applicable to us now. |
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1 a month(ish) |
| One on one interviews with founders and CEOs. He covers off the story behind the company in question, lessons learned etc. Some interesting episodes. Over 100 in the backlog too which are worth scooting through. |
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Weekly |
| Some good content and interesting guests. Would be of more interest to content focused businesses. Still some good takeaways. Only real criticism is the number of ads that are included. |
“Chewing Gum For The Brain” podcasts
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2 Seasons |
| The show's blurb covers it perfectly... a paranormal thriller – part Raymond Chandler, part Philip K. Dick, and all macabre all the time. AGENT STOKER is the love child of The Shadow and Black Mirror, it’s 'The X-Files with a drinking problem.' The second season is in flight and is a nice escape. |
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Weekly |
| Very broad - covers all sorts of weird and wonderful topics. Learn something new every week, even if it is a useless fact or two! |
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Finished |
| Alas, this one has finished, but there are 147 episodes to work through. Brian Cox is ace and whilst the canned laughter does get on ur tits a little, it is an interesting one. |
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Monthly |
| Interviews with some big name game developers / designers. |
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Weekly |
| This relaunched at the end of last year with fortnightly interviews with developers and designers from the games space. I discovered it when they interviewed Dan Marshall who created 'Ben There, Dan That' and 'The Swindle' which is one of my favourite games, but they interview some designers. More recently they have also been releasing weekly news wrap ups, which are ok, but I'm there for the deeper content. |
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Weekly |
| Has some interviews with developers of some of the games from my childhood (Civilisation, Age of Empires, Diablo). Also goes pretty deep on games such as IK+, Diddy Kong Racing which takes me back to some happy places. |
Retired
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Multiple Seasons |
| This was a good listen. A one-off with closure at last at the start of 2023. Moved to the retired list as it is a one off series. |
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1 Season |
| A one-off investigative adventure by Patricia Nilsson who peeled back the layers to find out who was behind the biggest porn companies on the internet and how they grew to control it all. |
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Seasonal |
| Not sure if these are still being produced, or if they are waiting for the GDC's to get back into full swing post-covids. In any case, there are almost 30 episodes which I am working through with some great guests (Derek Yu, Greg Kasavin). |
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one-off |
| The Unicorn Launcher covered the 1-year journey of two Australian tech founders pulling apart and rebuilding their small company under the guidance of Silicon Valley coach, Matt Mochary. An interesting listen. |
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1-2 a month |
| This is a brand spanker with the first season having just been released. Another polished podcast with inspiring stories for businesses that were grown from nothing and sold. All the businesses covered so far were sold for millions rather than billions which makes it all the more relatable! *Looks like this one may have also stopped* Be sure to listen to the 10 episodes that they have though. |
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??? |
| An Australian host interviewing founders. Covid I think disrupted this one and there hasn't been any new content since June '20 but the 21 episodes in the backlog are worth listening to. The Transferwise story was fantastic. *Think this one is no longer active* May come off the list next time. - Backlog is worth listening too though. |
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??? |
| A cool concept for a podcast. The host interviews a guest, talking through how they overcame some form of adversity with their business. Like Building a Unicorn above, this one is from Australia but has also not had any new content since the end of 2021. The backlog (41 episodes) is still worth a listen though. |
In the bin
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Multiple Per Week |
| This could be a real 5* podcast but for the funeral music that plays in the background and the volume of ads. The show has a good format and has some great guests. Is one I listen to when I have my phone to hand so that I can skip past the ads. **Too many ads** |
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twice a week |
| Much like the site it covers a broad range of technologies. They are normally <30 mins which is a decent length to cover off some of the goings-on in tech spaces on the peripheral. It also covers some of the hot topics in the news that week. This has been taken off the list as it has become too much of a 30 minute sponsored advert. The logitech series they did pulled the trigger. Since StackOverflow has been acquired this one became less about the tech and more about a revenue stream for them. |
2022
The list from 2022 are shown below.
