LISTEN TO THIS | Focus Groups

I’m a pod­cast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tid­bits, sound­bites and short bursts of bril­liance that I have to share with every­one who will lis­ten. After digest­ing hours and hours of pod­casts, here’s the best 9 min­utes from this week.

I LIKE TALKING TO PEOPLE AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SOMETHING

HERE’S THE THING | David Letterman

BIAS ONE: I love Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing. He inter­views fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple, and his inter­view style is sin­cere, engag­ing, insight­ful, and witty. I get an instant smile when­ever I check my sub­scrip­tion list and see a new episode has downloaded.

BIAS TWO: I’m a huge David Let­ter­man fan. His show started just as I was old enough to start stay­ing up that late. Car­son was awe­some, truly the best, but I grew up with Let­ter­man. So here’s the thing, Let­ter­man rarely gives inter­views which made his detailed career log fas­ci­nat­ing to hear. If you’re not as enam­ored with these two icons as I am, at least catch Dave’s story of his mother com­plain­ing about Ed Sul­li­van at 6:40 in the podcast.

A COMPLETE NARCISSISTIC ACT

SIX PIXELS OF SEPARATION #310 | The Startup of You with Ben Casnocha

Six book­marks. In 44 min­utes! That’s a book­mark every 7 min­utes. Mitch Joel and Ben Cas­nocha chal­lenged each other and me in the process with plenty of prac­ti­cal career prac­tices for pro­fes­sion­als. Top­ics cov­ered: devel­op­ing an entre­pre­neur mind­set, tak­ing risks, using tech­nol­ogy to make you smarter, ways to learn, and invest­ing in your­self. You’ve heard some of these tips before, but the way Mitch and Ben tackle them bring new life and energy to actu­ally tak­ing steps for­ward. The cli­max of the con­ver­sa­tion comes at 32:20 when Mitch asks about Ben’s use of the word “Hus­tle.” Check it out.

THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS

ON THE MEDIA | Pub­lic Rela­tions for Dic­ta­tors, Pho­tograph­ing Death, and More

My favorite part in this pod­cast is actu­ally an excerpt from another pod­cast Lex­i­con Val­ley, but I decided to call out where I heard it first. Jump in at 38:33 in the On the Media pod­cast or at 14:56 in the orig­i­nal Lex­i­con Val­ley where Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo dis­cuss the work of grad stu­dent Ben Schmidt who com­pared Mad Men scripts to other writ­ings from the six­ties to iden­tify anachro­nis­tic phrases. For exam­ple, focus groups existed in the six­ties, but the phrase “focus groups” did not. You NEED TO lis­ten to it.

Pod­cast Test Drives:

Slate Presents Lex­i­con Val­ley — clever, nerdy (not geeky), and absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing. It’s an audio ver­sion of a weekly lan­guage obser­va­tion paper.

Unsub­scrib­ing from:

Sales Guy Quick and Dirty Tips — hon­estly, I took the easy way out this week. He hasn’t pro­duced a new episode since April 20. NPR Top­ics: Busi­ness Story of the Day has racked up 10 unplayed episodes, but they are daily and so short that I keep hope alive think­ing I can scan for the right top­ics or marathon lis­ten to them and catch up.

OTHER PODCAST POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

• Work­flow of a PODCAST JUNKIE
• LISTEN TO THIS | Bro Call

What about you? What pod­casts did you enjoy this week and what do you rec­om­mend? Leave your favorites in the com­ments below.