Consider this your mid-week motivation—here we'll be sharing a new smarter secret from our authors, the people who you learn from and who inspire you to push the limits of your potential. So, we asked: Which podcasts inspire you personally and professionally?

When you need to sharpen your skills, look here:

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. RunAs Radio: “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. Hot Aisle: “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: “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 

Some other favorites from our authors: 

16. Accidental Tech
17. Daily Tech News Service (DTNS)
18. This Week in Tech (TWiT)
19. Crypto-Gram
20. Hacker Public Radio
21. Software Engineering Radio
22. Linux Action Show
23. Elixir Fountain
24. Herding Code
25. Merge Conflict
26. Gone Mobile
27. Away From the Keyboard
    
    

    A few of our authors have taken the DIY route. Tune into their podcasts:

28. Intelligent Technical Conversation by Jesse Liberty
29. Exchange Server Pro Podcast by Paul Cunningham
30. The Dane & the Pain by Lars Klint
    
    *Bonus: And don’t forget #9 above, Hello World, by ours truly, Shawn Wildermuth. Or tune into Don Jones' new IT Ops news & talk podcast. 
    
    

    When you need a little variety, try these. Some not so technical podcasts to add to your listening list:

31. 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
32. RadioLab: “Always fascinating and very well done.” –Steve Smith
33. 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
34. Car Talk: “Technology of a different kind.” –Dorian Salmon
35. 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
36. Stuff You Should Know: “A great exploratory podcast on all kinds of topics.” —Lars Klint
37. Retronauts: “A non-programming podcast on retrogaming.” –Giovanni Dicanio
38. Hidden Brain –Paul Cunningham
39. No such thing as a fish –Damian Brady
40. Smart People Podcast –Nate Taylor

So, what’s your secret to being smarter? 

Share it with us: #SmarterThanYesterday.