Show HN: The best technology podcast episodes
podnami.com
podnami.com
We'll add the Joe Rogan Experience interview with John Carmack to our list as well - one of the all time classics!
(Edit: These are other examples of billion dollar industries that equate to low quality experiences you can choose to give yourself, but which will have longer term implications.)
First of all, life isn't something that I must squeeze all "productivity" out of possible, humans need rest and downtime. They also need socialization even though that's not "productive."
Secondly, podcasts help one accomplish productive work as they turn boring mundane (yet productive) tasks like cooking, cleaning, working out, gardening, folding laundry, woodworking, etc. into slight entertainment. For example, I feel much more motivated to clean the house when I have a podcasts I want to listen to vs before I started listening to podcasts (I don't really enjoy listening to music much). Almost nobody sits on the couch idly listening to podcasts.
Walking, cooking, commuting, doing chores are the most common examples. Past that, I also listen to podcasts when I am doing boring work or writing some boiler plate code.
Podcasts aren't meant for you to get upto speed on some high end technical concept. It's a lay person's perspective in most cases. So I'm fine if Joe Rogan interviews a scientist since unlike a lecture from susskind, I don't need to pay full attention and take notes. Similarly with finance podcasts, where I'm a professional, I don't need to find one which discusses a full economics paper. I prefer one where highly technical people get together and have a high level conversation since I know the basics and I can follow their train of thought.
For a long time, I agreed with this sentiment. But as someone who spends not a small amount of time commuting, jogging, going to the gym and cooking, I've replaced a lot of passive consumption of online resources with podcasts.
I like to stay on top of the open-source and Linux adjacent news, and reading LWN while working out can be tough. I've found a few podcasts from members of those communities and listen to them. I keep short notes on my phone for topics that I want to revisit later, and find the show notes the hosts themselves curate to be treasure troves of content I might otherwise pass by. My signal to noise ratio in passive consumption has definitely gone up.
Podcasts like the Longform podcast and Current Affairs allow me to delve into content I'd otherwise have to read about.
I do not find podcasts to be a good substitute for heavy technical content, in the same way I would find YouTube videos or audiobooks to be frustrating formats to consume O'Reilly books.
For example, these days I have trouble reading books because it's so sedentary. I can only do it for 30min before I switch to a podcast or audiobook so I can run or cook or do pushups while I listen.
For me the efficiency is its main perk.
The benefit of podcasts is that they work when other forms of media don't work. I agree that they don't make good competitors to books and other more dense mediums.
Literally, multiplies the value of those activities.
Try this episode of "The Memory Palace": http://thememorypalace.us/2012/12/dreamland/
That's four minutes twenty-five seconds you might find not wasted. And none of the information in it is likely to be useful to you whatsoever.
I listen to podcasts while I'm doing the dishes, cleaning the floor, cooking, tidying the house, sewing patches, reseating the heatsink onto a GPU. No need to be driving.
Pop songs are usually an incredibly inefficient way to consume information too, but I listen to those a lot. I wonder if you do.
We will add a “classic” tag shortly for episodes older than x weeks to indicate that it’s not new content.
Thanks for the feedback!
And refusing to timestamp things calling them "timeless" reaks of arrogance and hubris.
It really depends on the topic.
Something like 99 Percent Invisible is pretty evergreen. An interview about AI research? Something from a few years ago is probably going to be a bit dated unless it's about fundamental principles. A podcast that deals primarily with current news/politics/etc.? I'm probably not going to be interested in something a year old.
All of the descriptions are cut short and end with...
As a user, that leads me to believe I can click on a cut description to see the full description. At least on mobile Safari, clicking on a description does nothing.
That's the result of our somewhat shaky truncation feature which is supposed to stop overly long titles and descriptions to break the layout. We'll look into how a "click to expand" feature could work!
You should really add context by date of release and a link to listen not : Ex for exponent episode : https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/exponent/episode-152-pl...
We will add a detailed view, alongside a RSS feed for the top list tomorrow.
https://oxide.computer/blog/on-the-metal-6-kenneth-finnegan/
This is really important for your users who use screen readers (for the blind), folks with older computers or miniature/underpowered computers.
We'll add it in the native player coming soon. Web based audio players have major drawbacks, such as limitations in background playback on mobile devices. That's why we've intentionally left the web player as simple as possible until the native player is launched.
Now if I want to heart episodes to tell other listeners about episodes I particularly enjoy...I go to the website and search/submit the episode...I guess?
Anyway, I'm interested - I just wanted to share my first impression in case it was useful.
1. How does it work? It would appear the list is user curated. New submissions are from users (via submit) and ranking is based on hearts? Is there any future plan to be able to associate # of plays with a given episode (not sure if podcast app apis allow this).
2. In relation to #1 (an asked already by others), how can I subscribe to this in my podcast app?
This looks like the kinda platform that could curb that with focus on individual episodes rather than the Podcast itself.
One of the biggest life hacks I fell into was to reserve my favorite podcasts or most anticipated episodes for a long run or biking session. I would look forward to that run all day. Often I'll double my distance just to put on another episode.
Much more fulfilling than a commute as well.
The best episodes get voted to the top and is your "daily digest" of technology to listen to.
Happy to answer questions about its tech stack or future plans!
I’d rather see an even more stripped down UI that leaves more room for the informational content.
Then again, I guess not all podcast episodes have informative and encompassing titles, like articles often do.
You're providing a great service and we'll be rolling over to a Pro plan soon!
{!userSubscribed && showBigFullPageForm}
Also, how do you view details or scrub playback position?
It's super easy to tweet out a quote and evidence that it was false. There is much more friction involved in quoting a podcast, noting the time stamp, and packaging that up with evidence in a tweet. Wish there were an easier way!
One option now is to use the clip sharing tool in Overcast and tweet out the clip, it works really well. But that is just one client.