My Top Ten Podcast Episodes of All Time
Podcasts are an incredible medium. We get the opportunity to be flys on the wall and listen to some of the smartest living humans have intimate conversations. This is unprecedented from a historical standpoint. Recently, I have taken this for granted. In 2023 I did not listen to many podcasts compared to previous years. The reason for this is that I go back and forth between podcasts and audiobooks, and this last year has been very audiobook heavy for me. I find it important to strike a balance between timeliness and timelessness. This relates to many aspects of my life, podcasts and audiobooks included. Podcasts being the timely, and audiobooks being the timeless (the kind I usually try to listen to at least).
My plan for this week’s post was to do a top five or top ten list of podcasts from 2023. I went through my library and looked at all of my “played” episodes and none of them stood out. I began thinking about how we live in a world where it seems like the only information that matters is the most recent. This applies to articles, shows, movies, and certainly podcasts, being the newest of all of these mediums.
Here are my top ten podcasts of all time (in no particular order). These are episodes and series that have had a big impact on the world and on myself and that I think will remain relevant for many years to come.
This podcast was my first exposure to the treasure trove of knowledge that is Naval Ravikant. This is a man who has changed the way I view money, happiness, work, and life in general, and it all began with this podcast. One of the biggest takeaways I had when I first watched this was Naval’s view that happiness is a choice, and that you have to work at it in order to be happy (I mention my current views on this in my article on happiness). If you don’t have two hours to spare to watch this video, just read some of the comments, and you will see how meaningful this episode has been to people. Currently there are just under fifteen thousand comments and I scrolled for five minutes and did not see one negative comment. This is normal for the Youtube comment section in my experience.
This is much much more than one episode, but since there are no rules here, this is number two. This show is a comprehensive history of the Roman Empire consisting of 179 episodes ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour in length for a total of 73 hours. Before listening to this podcast, I had no notion of the extent to which the founding fathers of the US tried to emulate the Roman Republic. I had no idea that so many of our traditions, practices and words all have their roots in the Roman Empire. This is an absolutely amazing show and worth every minute.
This is another series, although much shorter, from the “Hardcore History” podcast. It covers the subject of Ghengis Khan, and the Mongol Empire that he established. It is five episodes for a total of just under fourteen hours. This series costs $13 at the moment. It came out in 2012 and is my favorite that I’ve heard from Dan Carlin, although I regretfully have not listened to all of “Hardcore History.” Carlin has been podcasting since 2006 and has recorded over 300 hours of content between “Hardcore History” and his other podcast “Common Sense.”
This was Rogan’s first interview with Musk, and it had a massive impact at the time. I remember people saying that it “broke the internet.” At one point during the episode, Musk smokes some weed on camera. This is not normal behavior for the CEO of a fortune 500 company, and it affected the share price of Tesla (or perhaps it was just the whole appearance and ordeal). The reason I have this on the list is that it was my first time listening to an interview with Elon Musk, it was a watershed moment for Musk, for Rogan, and for podcasting in general. It was an unprecedented moment in history. One of the richest people in the world at the time (now the richest), having a candid conversation for the general public to see.
Maria Popova has a blog called The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), which in her words is “an evolving record and ongoing celebration of my readings and my loves, of all that makes me feel most alive.” It draws from art, philosophy, history and everything in between. This episode is on this list because of how much I love Maria Popova’s work, it’s the only interview I’ve heard of her and because it is a damn good and useful podcast. In it, she talks about why her articles do not have dates on them (only in the URL). She believes we live in a “new fetishistic culture” and she wants to do her part to decondition that.
History on Fire has so many great series to choose from. It’s a tough choice, but this is my favorite of the bunch. Hernán Cortés, along with 600 men conquered the Aztec empire which was estimated to be around five to six million people at the time. It is a brutal, crazy and sad tale, which I knew nothing about prior to listening to this podcast.
This is a hidden gem, but one that had a big impact on me. Ben does a great job in this episode explaining why a one size fits all approach can never work with diet. He explains how you can go about figuring out what the optimal diet is for you, and what some of the upsides and downsides are with popular diets such as vegan, keto, carnivore, etc. As far as a single podcast goes, this one is about as comprehensive as it gets, and it still holds up (5 years after release).
This episode came out in 2018. At the time, I was beginning to appreciate the fact that sleep is kind of important. I thought I knew a little bit about it, but this episode made me realize that I did not. Like the other Rogan episodes I have on this list, they are on here because Joe does a good job of getting people to explain things in an easy to understand way and because the JRE is most often their exposure to the masses.
Questioning Sam Harris | Sam Harris | EP 224 (The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast)
These two have a divisive history with one another, and it is far from the first time they had spoken, but this one stuck with me because of the mutual respect and admiration that they showed to one another. This does not always come across when these two intellectual titans butt heads, but in this episode it does. They try to hash out the fundamental differences that they have around issues such as religion, postmodernism and consciousness, and perhaps for the first time in their history together, they actually make some progress. If you watch nothing else, just watch the last minute of them saying goodbye to one another (this podcast is recorded over Zoom).
How to Get Rich (Naval Podcast)
Do not let the title mislead you. In the past and present I would never click on a link with that as the title, but if you know who Naval is then you would. This podcast began as a “tweet storm” that Naval did on Twitter (before twitter threads existed). In this he expands on all of those ideas. A few of the topics include:
Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status 1:51
Make Abundance for the World 7:00
Free Markets Are Intrinsic to Humans 10:39
The topics are all of Naval’s hard earned principles on wealth, and they are as much philosophical as they are practical and useful.
I hope that some of you find this list useful and get some enjoyment out of these podcasts. These are all ones that you can listen to again and again and continually learn something new. Let me know what you think in the comments below!
I agree, JRE 1169 is a classic
I'm going to listen to try and listen tomore podcasts in 2024 and you have started me off with a great list!