Technology, Quality Management, Short Stories, History, and other Podcasts

When I commute to work, or when I walk around as an exercise, or even when I hike, I have plenty of time to listen to stuff. In the recent years I have been using an app called Podcast Addict on Android to download and listing to podcasts. I like it a lot and as far as I understand it is developed and maintained by a single person, Xavier Guillemane, so I've upgraded to the paid version to support him.

Anyway, let me share a number of podcasts I have been listening.

Programming and Testing related

• Agile for Humans by Ryan Ripley
• AB Testing - in which Alan Page (@alanpage) and Brent Jensen (@BrentMJensen) talk about testing, management, change, and culture.
• DevOps Cafe John Willis and Damon Edwards
• Agile in 3 Minutes by Amitai Schleier
• This Agile Life
• Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman
• ChangeLog on Open source and about the people behind Open Source. Created by Adam Stacoviak (@adamstac) and Jerod Santo (@jerodsanto).
• CodeNewbie Saron Yitbarek (@saronyitbarek) interviewing people who have been in the hi-tech world for some time in the hope of helping newbies along the path.
• Python Testing Brian Okken (@brianokken) started it as a podcast about Python and testing, but in the meanwhile he has done a mix of things about testing and software development in general.
• TestTalks by Joe Colantonio (@jcolantonio) at first he was talking alone, but nowadays he is interviewing people.
• Request For Commits another great podcast managed by the ChangeLog people and hosted by Nadia Eghbal and Mikeal Rogers.

Then of course there is the Code-Maven Open Source podcast that I am creating.

Stories, History

• The Moth excellent short stories by a variety of people. Almost every episode has strong emotional content. Sometimes it is laughter and joy, sometimes it is crying and sorrow. Sometimes it is a mix. People give me funny looks when I laugh out loudly during my walk.
• Dan Carlin has two podcasts. I've listened to a few episodes of Hardcore History where each episode last 3-4 hours. He presents historical events in a very interesting way. The other podcast, Common Sense, is about current politics, but I have not listened to it yet.
• Serial

Business

• Smart Passive Income Pat Flynn who became a millionaire by selling content via the Internet shares his ideas.

Hebrew

• Reversim the podcast of Ori and Ran - TODO - I have not listened to this yet

Podcast search engines

The Podcast Addict has a built-in search engine, but if you'd like Podcrawler can also help you find podcasts.

To find Hebrew language podcasts you might want to visit iCast.

Using Podcast addict

A quick intro on how I use it:

Using the search interface of Podcast Addict I have found the above podcasts and subscribed to them. Once in a while, when I am on a wifi connection, I click o the sync button to get the list of most recent episodes of all the podcasts I am subscribed to.

Once the list is updated I select a number of episodes I have not heard yet and click to download them. On each episode there is a little sign, a stripe across the thumbnail, that shows if I've listened to that episodes already. That makes it much easier to know which one is next.

My client has been configured to only download episodes when I am on a wifi so I won't waste my mobile bandwidth.

Then when I go for a walk, or when I am driving to a client, I have time to listen to these episodes.

Much healthier then listening to the news.

Other podcasts

A few days after posting this I got a link to 15 Top-Notch Podcasts for Programmers & Software Developers and then found the Reddit discussion about it.