Way before we became podcasters we were podcast listeners. In our first bonus episode, what we’ll be calling our Extra episodes, Cecil and Richie go over their top three podcasts and throw in a few more for good measure. You can listen to the episode or you can just review their picks below. Enjoy.
Cecil’s Top Picks
This Developer’s Life – I love this show because it’s so introspective for me. The topics they cover such as learning, and even the most recent episode, they talk about faith. They’ve also covered motivation, pressure and criticism. Those topics for me, hit so close to home. I’ll go back two or three seasons and I just re-listen to the old episodes over and over again because I just love them that much.
Get Up and Code – So I’m not a super-athlete like John is really or anything like that but I like working out. It’s another dimension of me that I do when I’m not writing code or doing something involving technology. I like swimming. I like going to the gym. This podcast actually discusses a lot of little techniques, discussion nutrition, different types of workout techniques, and even about the technology behind it and different apps that you can use to help supplement your workouts.
The Freelancers Show – I really like this show because they discuss a lot of the things you wouldn’t know about freelancing. This show really goes into the different things a freelancer needs to do such as budgeting, how to plan out your projects, how do you bring on new people, how you quote estimates, and acquire new clients. They give really good advice. I love the show and I highly recommended it.
Richie’s Top Picks
Rachel and Miles Xplain the X-Men – Rachel and Miles have endeavored to go over the entire forty year history of X-Men and explain every issue. This show is funny and honest look at the X-Men comic series from two of it’s biggest fans. It’s so enjoyable to hear people talk about their passions and for these two, it’s the X-Men. The unique way they explain the crazy, somewhat nonsensical history of the X-Men is truly amazing. I love it. You need to check it out.
WDW Radio – I’ve listened to this show almost from its inception. I enjoy this show because as a kid I really loved Disney. Walt Disney World meant so much to me growing up. So much so that when I was in college, I interned there for two summers. Lou Mongello does such a great job of showing what’s going on in the parks and interviews interesting guests. One would think, “how long can one person talk about for Disney World?” Well for Lou, it’s over nine years. The show has won numerous podcast awards and has some of the highest production values in any podcast.
.NET Rocks – I’ve been listening to this .Net Rocks from the beginning. Back in the day when .NET just came out, there was no content for .NET except for the documentation but we did have .NET Rocks. Even if you listen to those early episodes they’re still relevant. From a technical perspective, I don’t think you get any better than in Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell they both really know their stuff. But my favorite episodes are the Geek Out episodes. They are just straight wonderful. If you’re a .NET developer and not listening to .NET Rocks, you really should be.
Cecil’s Honorable Mentions
The Web Platform Podcast – I’m a big web guy. I love talking APIs, HTTP, and JavaScript Frameworks. This show talks to a bunch of the people that are in the web space. They’ve talked to the Angular team, the HTTP2 team, and the people that are creating browsers and web servers. Most of the technology they talk about is upcoming stuff and things we should be paying attention to.
The Changelog – I really like The Changelog because they talk about stuff that I have no idea about. They discuss Ruby, PHP, Go, concurrent systems, and all this other stuff that I typically don’t touch in a regular day. So for me, it’s good to step out of my comfort zone and expierence something that I’m not completely familiar with and really try and see where the other side of the development world is going.
Richie’s Honorable Mentions
Freakonomics Radio– I think what makes Freakonomics Radio a really great show is that they really get into the kind of the ‘why’ certain things work in the world. They obviously have a more of a business-y, economic way of looking at things, but they always make it interesting. It always makes you step away and think,”Wow. I didn’t think of it that way.” That’s why I really love Freakonomics Radio.
Hanselminutes – I love the way Scott Hanselman interviews. He gets down to the nitty-gritty of things and always has different and unique guests on the show. It’s not what you expect from a technology podcast. Hanselminutes is definitely one of those unique shows you should check out.
Nerdist– Nerdist interviews a ton of different celebrities and people in the entertainment industry. Chris Hardwick is really, really good at interviewing people and he just has a conversation and things just really flow. It’s really funny. It’s not safe for work. Doesn’t mean you can’t listen to it at work but just have headphones on. It’s really one of those shows that I really enjoy to pick up.
Special Mention
Serial – Serial is amazing. Serial is a long-form reporting that investigates a murder of a girl. Throughout the show, they take different aspects of the case and you’ll constantly going back and forth saying, “He did it. He didn’t do it. He didn’t do it. He did do it.” It’s a really great mystery.
