I’ve listened to each of these episodes at least four times. I listen to a lot of podcasts—Overcast has me averaging 12 hours a week in 2025. But I very rarely listen to an episode more than twice. If I have, it’s because the information, rapport, and storytelling have been especially good.
After almost 10 years of listening to podcasts about software and programming, this is my current top 10.
1
Slack Data Platform with Josh Wills
Software Engineering Daily
Published January 10, 2020
This first pick is so good because Josh does inside baseball on other big companies data stacks (FB, Google, AirBnB, Slack) and is generally so much more candid than other software engineers are on podcasts. He doesn't care about getting in trouble with his boss, because he already quit.
2
Jeff Rothschild
On The Metal
Published December 2, 2019
Jeff had a remarkable 20th century in the booming software industry—and then joined early Facebook and became a billionaire. There's enthralling industry history here, spanning a 40+ year career, and the passion in the room (hosts and guest) is infectious.
3
What is an Operating System? with Anil Madhavapeddy
Signals & Threads
Published November 3, 2021
Signals and Threads, hosted by the CTO of Jane Street, is, for me, the podcast best at managing complex technical topics. This episode on unikernels and other fun systems things is a great example.
4
Writing, Technically with James Somers
Signals & Threads
Published September 1, 2021
Software engineers with a writing position at The New Yorker are very rare. James Somers is such a person, and does an excellent job explaining why programmers should care about writing—for documentation, persuasion, or pleasure.
5
10 Years of Data Science with Josh Wills and Oscar Boykin
Into the Hopper
Published February 19, 2020
Josh Wills again! He's back with another couple of guys to reminisce on the 2010-2020 decade of data science. For someone who started working around data scientists in 2016, this episode felt like being invited to a bar table with the seniors, where they yarned with the filter off.
6
The complete history and strategy of TSMC
Acquired
Published September 6, 2021
Before I listened to this I couldn't tell you what TSMC and ASML were. After listening, they became unforgettable. If you are not astonished by the achievements of the computing industry, listen to this episode. If you are not gobsmacked at how hard it is to make a CPU, listen. Unlike others in this list, this isn't a podcast by engineers. But it is Acquired at its best, before they became unfortunately like hagiographers of big tech.
7
The Birth of UNIX with Brian Kernighan
CoRecursive
Published November 1, 2020
You might have gathered I love software history. This is an episode with Brian Kernighan, who wrote 'the C book' and worked alongside Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. This episode is a love letter to Bell Labs and the birth of UNIX.
8
Sholto Douglas & Trenton Bricken — How LLMs actually think
Dwarkesh Podcast
Published March 28, 2024
This is another episode which feels like you're eavesdropping on a great chat between some really smart friends. Which makes sense, because Dwarkesh is friends with his guests here, and even lives with Sholto. This 3-hour episode has a bunch of interesting technical content, but what I like about this episode is that you can sponge off the optimism and excitement of some young people right in the center of the LLM boom.
9
The Untold Story of SQLite with Richard Hipp
CoRecursive
Published July 2, 2021
If open source doesn't already fill you with awe, listen to this episode with the creator of SQLite.
10
The Future of ML and Data Platforms
MLOps.community
Published October 1, 2021
My clear bias for data & ML is obvious by now. This episode was influential in me taking my current job, at modal.com. At the time of listening, I was a lead of Canva's data & ML platform, so this episode doing an interrogation of my own little corner of the software world became something I re-listened to.
This is a post that is updated over time. Each episode is listed with the date it aired.