I am a late mover to most technologies, and this year is when I fully jumped on the podcast train. Here are some of my favorites, by category.
Professional Development
Office Hours – I don’t care if it’s cheesy to plug the podcast from the company you work for because Office Hours is often pure gold. Isaac and TK take submitted questions as well as riff off of situations they encounter with young professionals, and it’s often unfiltered. One time, Isaac’s initial response to a question was, “What is WRONG with you?”
Masters of Scale – Isaac recommended this podcast to the Praxis staff, and it has been fascinating. If you’re interested in how companies like Google and Facebook grew to current size without imploding or how serial CEOs know when to start a new company, check out this podcast.
How I Built This with Guy Raz – Similar to Masters of Scale, this podcast interviews founders of various companies. Some of my favorites have been Stonyfield Yogurt, Rent the Runway, and Buzzfeed. Nearly all of these founders had the odds against them in some way, and it’s inspiring to hear how they overcame them.
Forward Tilt – Yes, I’m plugging another Praxis podcast, but these episodes are little gems and under 10 minutes each, so they’re easy to take a listen.
Intellectually Engaging
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know – This is a fun game show style show where contestants compete to tell the most interesting, useful, and true fact based on the night’s theme. The show has gone through a few different versions (used to have a panel of judges, now sometimes the host invites one other guest to be the judge and that’s it), but it has always been very entertaining.
Freakonomics Radio – Economics is everywhere, bro! Since I’m an econ nerd, I like to occasionally listen to this podcast as well. Some of my favorite episodes talk about lying, the war on sugar, the demonization of gluten, and when helping hurts.
Soccer
From being in the car with my husband, I’ve listened to quite a few soccer podcast episodes. My two favorite shows are:
Total Soccer Show – This is the intellectual soccer podcast. They provide in-depth technical breakdowns of matches as well as report on current events in major soccer news. They also have a less serious episode where each host fields a full team based on Parks and Rec characters.
Dirty Tackle– This is the inappropriate NSFW version of analyzing world soccer. They sing their own opening song and have a segment called “True, are ya?” where one of the hosts either reads a fact or makes something up, and the other two have to guess. It’s hilarious.
Pure Entertainment
The Shipping Room Podcast – This podcast is about TV relationships which might sound shallow but I am not ashamed because I really enjoy this show. A friend introduced me a little over a year ago when they did an analysis show of the Gilmore Girls revival. I literally banged on the table a few times in agreement when listening to that episode. I sporadically listened over the next few months before getting hooked this summer. It’s been a fun to have a shared experience with the hosts and other listeners as they discuss famous OTPs (one true pairings), BroTPs (best friend pairings), and NOTPs (people who don’t belong together). [Note: the show is currently on hiatus as one of the hosts just had a baby. You can still listen to the last 2+ years of content, though!]
Good Christian Fun – One of the hosts of this podcast came from Gilmore Guys, which is how I heard about this new show. GFC analyzes Christian pop culture without proselytizing or harshly judging (most of the time) it. Since I grew up very conservative Christian, it’s fun to listen to them talk about things that were normal in my childhood (VeggieTales, Relient K, the Left Behind books/movie) but might not be to the general public. It definitely is borderline (and sometimes definitely is) sacrilegious, so listen with care if you’re easily offended.
If you have holiday travel coming up, I just supplied you with endless hours of entertainment. Enjoy!
Sara Morrison 