My Fave New Podcasts of 2022

As someone who does a lot of my learning via podcasts, I’ve been putting up picks lists for 3 years straight (see main 2019 list, then my 2020 and 2021 diffs), so it’s time to do year 4 (!)

As a reminder, this list is just personal recs, so “new” means “new to me” rather than “started this year”.

Best New Tech Podcasts in 2022

My tech interests this year were very skewed by my deepening interests in Data Engineering and AI.

For a full read on data podcasts I surveyed, check out the Airbyte Staff Picks blogpost. But the main ones I would recommend are:

• The Analytics Engineering Podcast (site, RSS)
• The Data Engineering Podcast (site, twitter, RSS)
• Drill to Detail with Mark Rittman (site, twitter, RSS)
• Catalog & Cocktails (site, twitter, RSS)
• Analytics Power Hour (site, twitter, RSS)
• Monday Morning Data Chat (youtube, RSS)

Read thru the Staff Picks blogpost descriptions for a few extra details on why we recommended them. Going thru the backlogs of these will get you up to speed on the history and development of the data engineering/warehousing field in the past decade.

As for AI podcasts, this list is relatively new and unvetted, but:

• The Inside View - Michaël Trazzi (youtube, audio) - introduced me to Ethan Caballero and Connor Leahy
• The Gradient Podcast (substack podcast) - I enjoyed the Melanie Mitchell and Sara Hooker episodes.
• Yannic Kilcher (youtube, podcast) - usually puts out in depth walkthroughs of major papers quite quickly after they drop
• Machine Learning Street Talk (youtube, audio) - very very long interviews with academics, with very long monologues as well. A little hard to follow but hopefully will get easier as you go deeper. Sara Hooker again was excellent.
• Vanishing Gradients by Hugo Bowne-Anderson (site, RSS) - still early but evaluating

The only new webdev focused tech podcast I started enjoying this year was Compressed.fm with Amy Dutton and James Quick, who seem like a powerful duo complementing each other very well. I was a guest on Episode 64 this year, talking about Part Time Creators.

Best New Business/Crypto Podcasts in 2022

By far the biggest business podcast to explode on the scene in 2022 was David Senra’s Founders podcast, which was previously a private/paid podcast, but opened up to free this year, alongside a media blitz on Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s podcast and other big pods. I binged the Graham, Bezos, and Jobs episodes like a basic techbro but perhaps the interesting lessons are from the biographies you’d normally never read, like the Edwin Land and Estee Lauder bios.

Crypto fell apart this year, and accordingly the mood in all cryptoland was very depressed. The only new Crypto podcast I picked up on was Crypto Critics’ Corner, which had excellent coverage of the Terra/Luna debacle (my clip here).

I don’t remember how I discovered the Invent Like An Owner podcast, but it is an incredible oral history about the early days of Amazon by the people who built it. I made multiple clips on Amazon Prime, Amazon’s Catalog, and the Bias for Action Culture this year.

Two “tech journalist” podcasts caught my eye this year - less valuable because they tend to be a trailing indicator, but still enjoyable because they feature knowledgeable people who do some real talk about the headlines - StrictlyVC (example I enjoyed) and TechCrunch’s Found podcast.

Best New Creator/General Podcasts in 2022

Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole, the Ship30for30 crew, launched the Digital Writing Podcast that shares a lot of their ideas in audio format. The audio quality is sometimes rough (because it is just stripped out from their Zoom sessions with their students) but the content is high quality and motivating even if I don’t always agree with their recommendations.

The Levels Health podcast repeatedly comes up in my founder circles as a great brandbuilding podcast. It is a strange mix of health and meta-companybuilding content, which is great for Levels but is a little hard to repeat. I was quite inspired by the Betsy McLoughlin episode.

Last year I called out Jay Acunzo’s 3 Clips podcast, and his new project Unthinkable has been great as well. I loved his Savannah Bananas, Anthony Bourdain, and New Rockstars episodes.

Lastly I also enjoyed Science communicator Tom Lum and crew’s venture into podcasting with Let’s Learn Everything, and Pushkin’s Hot Money: Who Rules Porn?.

Misc

I called out Stevey’s Tech Talk last year, but it has now gone on hiatus as Steve joined Sourcegraph (announcing on his youtube a littttle bit too early!). The past year was still great though and I’ve clipped a bunch of great stories from him with more still to go (particularly keen on his legendary Platforms Rant).