How Podcasts Changed My Life

I’m Dyslexic. Growing up I hated reading. You know when the teacher would ask everyone to read a section out loud to the entire class? That anxiety killed me, furiously memorizing my part so that I didn't have to read it on the spot.

That trend continued through university. I thought, by choosing a science degree (biology) I could avoid reading as much as possible.

I always wished I was able to read for fun/continuing education. I was envious of others. Then after university I went on a trip abroad to work in Australia and backpack through Asia.

With the long plane, train, and bus rides I developed a habit of listening to podcasts. (including the indie hackers podcast).

I started eating up information like crazy. Crushing audiobooks and podcasts in as little time as possible. But I was drawn to marketing and startup culture since my podcast listening seemed to lean in this direction.

When I got back to Canada, I was able to get a marketing internship for a Canadian licensed cannabis producer, convincing them that my knowledge of plants (from my university days studying biology) was sufficient .

The pandemic only accelerated this. Once there was nothing else to do, I would go for 2-3 hour walks every evening and I was going through an audiobook a week. I even got a little crazy on Saturdays and would crush two coffees and walk for 7 hours and finish an audiobook at 1.5x speed (lol).

I’ve now worked my way up to a marketing manager for a software company in two years and I can honestly say that podcasts have been a big reason for my quick success.

I’m not an expert on many things, but I can confidently say that I know podcasts pretty well. So here are my favourites:

Marketing:
-Everybody Hates Marketers with Louis Grenier
-Nudge with Phil Agnew
-The Growth TL;DR with Kieran Flanagan and Scott Tousley

Psychology:
-Choiceology with Katy Milkman
-No Stupid Questions with Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth
-You Are Not So Smart with David McRaney

Tech/Startups:
-How I Built This with Guy Raz
-Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman
-Startups for the Rest of Us with Matt Wensing
-Indie Hackers with Courtland Allen

General Entertainment:
-Stuff You Should Know by How Stuff Works
-Freakonomics with Stephen Dubner
-North Star Podcast with David Perell
-The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

If you’ve never listened to a podcast here’s the first one id recommend:
It's about the ripple effect from a pool designer in Finland that sparked the Skateboarding craze in California in the 90s.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-pool-and-the-stream/