With our move to Florida a couple of years ago, my job changed from covering just one hospital (in Virginia) to providing care at two hospitals that are about an hour apart. While I rarely have to go to both hospitals at the same time, occasionally I have to go to both places or have to spend some time going to Tampa for meetings. Instead of listening to music, I have gotten into listening to podcasts in my car while I am traveling. I have actually gotten to the point where I can listen to them on double speed and if I listen to them on regular speed, it sounds really slow. By my count, I have 33 different podcasts on my stream. These vary from news, leadership, the Gators, history, and medicine. I thought it might be fun to figure out my top 5. This was not easy to do. At the end of the day, I tried to figure out which podcasts I prioritize when I have a number of them to listen to.
These are in no particular order:
1. The Daily—I have listened to this podcast since it debuted in February 2017. It is a daily podcast produced during the week and hosted by Michael Barbaro. This podcast focuses on a big issue in the news and gets into some detail about it. I personally have found it well balanced and enjoy that at the end of each podcast they have a short, “here’s what else you need to know today.” For me, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on the big news items of the day if I listen to this show daily.
2. How I Built This—this is an NPR podcast hosted by Guy Raz. I have several podcasts that he hosts on my stream including TED and WOW in the World. This podcast has been fascinating to me as it looks at the stories behind how some of the biggest brands and companies in the world came to be. There have been episodes on Stitch Fix, Southwest Airlines, Jet blue, Angie’s List, FUBU, to name a few. The podcast always features a version of Guy Raz asking if the interviewee thinks their success is luck or hard work and most will tell you it’s a combination. Finally, every episode features a listener and what they are building and some have been amazing.
3. The Jordan Harbinger Show—My wife turned me on to this show when it had another name. The host then went out on his own and the podcast has improved because of it. He likes to talk about many different topics and interview many different types of people. There are a lot of episodes on networking and how to improve ones life, but I think trying to lump this podcast into self help does it a disservice. It’s really trying to figure out how successful people function and providing a practical application to the listener.
4. The Dooley Noted Podcast—I enjoy this podcast for my Florida Gator fix. I personally like this one because it is a broad overview of most of gator athletics and includes all sports, but is driven primarily by football. I enjoy reading Pat Dooley’s columns so it’s no wonder that I like to listen to his podcast as well. He often has great guests and can provide some insider information from his time covering the programs. He is very knowledgeable and I enjoy this podcast because I get a broad overview—if I want to relive a football game and figure out why Florida won or lost, I listen to the The Gator Nation Football Podcast as they go in-depth after every football game with X’s and O’s.
5. Revisionist History—Malcom Gladwell’s podcast about history. He likes to reframe historical events that we think we understand and go into detail and show us that we don’t really understand the events quite as well as we thought. I enjoy this podcast because he is a good storyteller and I personally enjoy his takes on certain events. One of my favorite episodes was from the first season and it was about Wilt Chamberlain. It focused on how he was such a great basketball player except for free throw shooting. However, for a period of time he shot his free throws underhanded similar to how Rick Barry shot his free throw shots (Rick Barry’s son Canyon Barry played for UF and shot the exact same way). With this new technique he had more success shooting free throws and had a 100 point game, but then changed back to shooting overhand. Malcom Gladwell discusses why this might be the case.
Those are my top five. Sadly, like books, there are more podcasts to listen too than I have time to do it—but if you have one I should listen to hit me up on twitter @jpwilsonmd