For our own mid-week motivation, we asked tech industry insiders, “Which podcasts inspire you personally and professionally?” Here are their answers. Take a look and check some of them out when you need a little mid-week motivation yourself!

Programming Podcasts and Coding Podcasts for Sharpening Your Skills

When it’s time to sharpen your skills, check out these programming podcasts and coding podcasts:

1. Developer on Fire: “They interview different developers every week, and it’s wonderful to see what real developers say about technology. Currently, I am loving this one, as it offers a lot of surprise and lessons about real world.” –Pinal Dave
   

2. RunAsRadio: “IT Ops professionals should definitely be listening to this.” –Paul Cunningham. “This is one of my go-to podcasts. It makes my morning commute far more pleasant. –Gail Shaw
   

3. The Hot Aisle: (Inactive since February 2018, but still a great resource library.) “Where else can you learn about serverless computing one week and then future of drone development the next? This covers all topics in and around the data center. The interviews are great and cover the basics of each topic for the week.” –Thomas Henson
   

4. Hanselminutes: “Scott Hanselman is a great interviewer. He knows when to ask a question and then let the guest answer.” –Jeff Ammons
   

5. CppCast: “It's for C++ developers and it covers an amazingly diverse variety of  topics relevant to C++ developers. Since C++ is the most general purpose language, it's good to have a wide variety of guests. –Kate Gregory
   

6. .NET Rocks!: “Carl and Richard are great and cover many interesting topics (even     beyond .NET).” - Steve Smith. “This is a great resource for .NET, cloud, and mobile developers to gain awareness of new platform features, products, architecture and techniques—it’s been going strong for over a decade. (I've been a guest on it a dozen times, so I'm biased.)” –Brian Noyes
   

7. JavaScript Jabber: “Great for everything JavaScript.” –Samer Buna
   

8. Simple Programmer: “Life coach John Sonmez makes everything interesting—wisdom for health, programming and how to just enjoy life as a developer. Anyone can enjoy the discussions here.” –Pinal Dave
   

9. Hello World: (Inactive since January 2018, but still a great resource library.) “Shawn Wildermuth is good at interviewing people and digging into how great developers got their start.” –Jeff Ammons
   

10. C++ Weekly: “This is an interesting series of YouTube videos.” –Giovanni Dicanio
    

11. Adventures in Angular: “Great for learning about related SPA technologies and how they integrate with Angular, as well as learning about new features in the framework itself while they are in development.” –Brian Noyes
    

12. Voices of VR: “VR is coming—and more quickly than most people think.” –Jon Flanders
    

13. Risky Business: “Perfect for weekly InfoSec news, commentary and interviews.” –John Elliott
    

14. This Agile Life: “I've found I've been most successful in my career when I haven't focused solely on development but other areas, particularly. –Nate Taylor
    

15. The Xamarin Podcast: “Well-produced and moderated by knowledgeable people.” –Jesse Liberty

1. Accidental Tech

2. Daily Tech News Service (DTNS)

3. This Week in Tech (TWiT)

4. Crypto-Gram

5. Hacker Public Radio

6. Software Engineering Radio

7. Linux Action Show (Inactive since June 2017, but still a great resource library.)

8. Elixir Fountain

9. Herding Code

10. Merge Conflict

11. Gone Mobile

12. Away From the Keyboard (Inactive since February 2018, but still a great resource library.)

Pluralsight Authors’ Own Podcasts

Here, our very own authors have gone the DIY route and have produced their own podcasts:

1. Intelligent Technical Conversation by Jesse Liberty

2. The Practical 365 by Paul Cunningham

3. The Dane & the Pain by Lars Klint (Inactive since 2017, but still a great resource library.)

4. IT Ops news & talk podcast by Don Jones (Inactive since 2017, but still a great resource library.)

*Bonus: And don’t forget #9 above, Hello World, by ours truly, Shawn Wildermuth.

Some Not-So-Technical Podcasts 

Our industry insiders also offer these favorite not-so-technical podcasts for when you need a little variety:

1. Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!: “Sometimes we need a break from the tech firehose, and this makes me laugh for 40 straight minutes per episode. Then, I'm ready for more tech!” –Julie Lerman
   

2. RadioLab: “Always fascinating and very well done.” –Steve Smith
   

3. Judge John Hodgman: “I'm a big fan of the podcast. It's not a technical podcast, but Hodgman is smart, nerdy and always funny as he dispenses fake internet justice. He also played PC in those famous Mac vs. PC ads, so that earned him some fake techie cred in my book” –Brice Wilson
   

4. Car Talk: “Technology of a different kind.” –Dorian Salmon
   

5. Success Through Failure with Jim Harshaw: “This is mostly interviews with athletes/ex-athletes and focuses on the need to move beyond hard times/failures to get to true success.” –Mike Erickson
   

6. Stuff You Should Know: “A great exploratory podcast on all kinds of topics.” —Lars Klint
   

7. Retronauts: “A non-programming podcast on retrogaming.” –Giovanni Dicanio
   

8. Hidden Brain –Paul Cunningham
   

9. No Such Thing As A Fish –Damian Brady
   

10. Smart People Podcast –Nate Taylor

What’s Your Secret?

So, what’s your secret to being smarter? Share it with us!

#SmarterThanYesterday