EconTalk – An excellent podcast that I’ve been listening to somewhat regularly for a long time. It’s great if you love economics, but it’s also great if you just love interesting people, big ideas, and non-conventional thinking.
School Sucks – I’ve heard about this one for a while and finally started listening to it. I love it. It covers a lot of topics, but the main theme is that the schooling mindset is anti-intellectual and stunts our imagination and development. In the vein of thinkers like John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, and Peter Gray.
Alan Watts Podcast – A collection of recorded talks given by Alan Watts on religion, philosophy, science, meditation, and everything in between. If you’ve never read Watts, this is a great way to get acquainted with his mind-stretching ideas and style. If you have read him, it’s a cool experience to hear his voice.
Startup – A very cool almost real-time story of a podcaster starting his program and launching a company around it. Longtime NPR Planet Money and This American Life host Alex Blumberg sets off on his own and shares the trials and tribulations of starting a company. It’s entertaining, transparent, and inspirational.
The Tim Ferriss Show – I just started listening to this show by the author of the (badly named) Four Hour Work Week. In the early episodes Tim takes a while to get to some of the best content and conversation, but he has excellent guests and wide ranging conversations about optimizing human performance and much more. You never know what you’ll get, but it will be something new and challenging.
TED Radio Hour – An excellent way to get snippets and highlights from some great TED talks, with additional background info and interviews with the speakers. Episodes are thematic, and have sound bites and interviews built around three or four TED talks on the theme. I just pick themes of interest to me and skip around. They do a good job of overcoming lack of visuals by adding extra audio content.
The James Altucher Show – I’m not a regular listening, but I like to check in and see what guests he has and pick and choose episodes. They’re always good when I do!