Making Sense – Sam Harris
This podcast comes highly recommended, with some caveats.
Sam Harris has, like many people a appreciate, the ability to detect bullshit instantly. In his case, it expresses itself in detection and call-outs of clearly flawed arguments. In his podcast, he interviews people from every industry. Leading experts in their field are interviewed in a way you leave with their key thoughts and valuable information, presented in a digestible way. Sam is allergic to flawed or partial presentation of information. This means he can often be elaborate to the point it might be annoying to some people. If you can look through the feeling of pretentiousness he might elicit in you once in a while, his podcasts are a valuable source of information for general education as well as industry specific, cutting edge knowledge.
The Drive – Peter Attia
Peter Attia is a Medical Doctor. He is particularly interested in long, healthy living. He noted that our knowledge about healthy living, eating and workout habits is diluted, mispresented and simply untrue at various instances. In his podcast, he speaks with leading experts in (broadly speaking) health sciences about misconceptions, cutting edge research, new findings, and various ways to improve your physical and mental state of being. His podcast can sometimes be rather an industry specific in its terminology. So be warned, it might not be the kind of podcast you passively listen to. The accessibility of his podcast could be improved. Nonetheless, the information presented is valuable enough to look up those terms unknown to you. Optimizing your physical and mental state is key to a healthy and happy life and simply to ensure you can be your best self, in business, as well as your personal life.
The Tim Ferris Show
Warning(!), if you have no knowledge of Tim Ferris whatsoever, previous to listening to his podcast, he might come across as a know-it-all, arrogant, unrealistic or a salesman. I assure you, he is not (necessarily). Tim’s podcast consists of interviews with extraordinary people, in politics, health, food, science, you name it. Tim is obsessed with efficiency. Get the most done, with the least amount of work. Not to be lazy, but to have more time doing other amazing things. Tim is one of those people who, when you hear him talk or read about him, it almost seems impossible to have done such a wide variety of things and have done them well, over the course of barely half a lifetime. Combine this with interviewing people who are experts in the few things he has not touched upon himself, and you have a recipe for accelerated learning.
Masters of Scale – Reid Hoffman
This podcast helps you understand the intricacies of scaling a product, service, or organization. The insights given through interviews with business leaders, world-class managers and startup founders is fascinating. Whether you like business or not, our world is governed by businesses who are able to scale their products and services. Understanding how they do so and why so few succeed is valuable in understanding the economic machine. Especially the mistakes made by many of the interviewees are invaluable insights into the fragility of success but the robustness of vision and passion. I have to admit that the quality of the episodes tends to vary from time to time. As time is your most valuable resource, pick and choose wisely to which fragments you decide to listen. The overall quality of the podcast is high enough though, for me to keep to it, and recommend it to you as a valuable use of pass-time.
More or Less: Behind the Stats – Tim Harford
This very accessible podcast is a very welcome one to come across. Our news is governed by hype, the ‘newness’ of events and whether it ‘thrills’ the reader. This podcasts takes news, concepts and things that govern the world around us and digests them in a down to earth way. Statistics can be very misleading and present what you want them to present. If you’re not skilled in looking for means, medium, sample size, (confounding) variables, limitations or correlation vs. causation, statistics can do more hard than good, for your understanding of our world. This podcast ensures you’ll be able to put some important matters into context. Mr Harford interviews and explains in a manner digestible for everyone. For most people, opinions are formed not by what we know, but what we feel and believe. Better than most, Mr Harford puts in a good effort to not just present hard facts, but speak to people’s compassion and beliefs.
Freakonomics Radio
Many of you might have heads of Freakonomics, a book by Steven Levitt and Stephan Dubner, in which are you (mis)conceptions on simple economic reality are shattered. In line with shattering misconceptions and misrepresentations, the team behind Freakonomics radio explores hidden truths behind a wide variety of topics, ranging from Medicine & Health to sports, education, creativity, behavioural psychology and more. It’s wise to pick and choose your episodes wisely. Not only because they are abundant, but because you will likely have a preference for one of the hosts as well as a broad topic you want to educate yourself about. This is a very accessible podcast, and not only gives you some food for thought but gives you some interesting dinner table conversation starters, which are certain to raise eyebrows and engage the crowd. The topics are presented in a way that they are easy to remember and recall. I particularly enjoy this podcast, as it gives me the ability to present known information to me in a way that makes it relatable and interesting to others.
The Knowledge Project – Shane Parrish
This podcast, like many in this list, explores a wide range of topics. Shane interviews experts in their field with the simple aim to have you learn from the best. The aim of the podcast is to give you a world-class multidisciplinary education, as you listen to ideas, methods and learnings from people who made the mistakes you are about to make and succeeded in a way you aspire to in the future. Again, this podcast is very accessible and most of the time easy to digest. Most episodes are like reading an overview on a book on everything a field of study has to offer, with the occasional deep—dive. Leaving you with enough conversation material and the ability to ask the right questions, in order to easily get to the next level of detail as you wish.
Bas van den Bergh 