I’ve decided I can’t stand blog posts that make you wade through a bunch of personal crap before they get to the reason you clicked, so without further ado:

My favourite podcast. Usually the top-ranked business podcast on iTunes, and iTunes’ “Best of 2014” and “Best of 2015.” Tim Ferriss is the author of the Four-Hour Workweek, the Four-Hour Body and the Four-Hour Chef. Despite how gimmicky these sound, they are intensive. A long-form show usually in intimate interview format, with diverse and fascinating guests, sometimes famous and sometimes not, dissecting their high-achieving lifestyles along with Tim Ferriss, who they are usually as impressed by as he is with them. Listen to this if you take self-improvement and learning deadly seriously.

Recent favourites:

Lovely 45-minute interviews that are reliably wide-ranging, humorous and touching. Recent favourites:

• James Rebanks and the shepherd’s life the life of a shepherd, a family and a writer in Wordsworth’s country. A freuently amusing and sometimes elegaic celebration of an unforgiving but meaningful way of life.
• Becoming Jeanette Winterson: a storyteller’s tale the tale of her childhood really has to be heard to be believed. Funny, sad and altogether gobsmacking. Who knew Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was a true story? I didn’t.
• Claire Dunn answered the call of the wild what happens to your brain when you go bush. Like, really bush.
• Sarah Ferguson with the uncut version of The Killing Season fascinating background to the series.
• Publisher Nigel Newton on harnessing the Harry Potter effect You will be gaping at these cloak-and-dagger stories of what it was really like to be the man who published Harry Potter. More like being a high-level spy.
• Elizabeth Gilbert’s keys to a big, creative life an unexpectedly beautiful and inspiring podcast. Gilbert turns out to be a very engaging and amusing speaker with some great stories and ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Chat 10 Looks 3
How could you not already be charmed by a podcast whose title is a quote from A Chorus Line? Annabel Crabb (Kitchen Cabinet host, ABC political writer and author) and Leigh Sales (famously tenacious journalist, host of ABC’s flagship 7.30) get way less serious in this podcast in which they bake for each other, eat the things they bake, name-drop, review books and TV shows and movies, and generally crap on about things they like. They are hilarious when bouncing off each other. If I could get paid to make a show like this I would die happy. Has recently been made into an iView show called When I Get a Minute. It’s completely unstructured, so just dive in at any starting point you like.

The Minimalists Podcast
The Minimalists talk about ‘living a meaningful life with less stuff’. If this topic doesn’t interest you, probably don’t start. If it does, hop into it, because these two are pretty much the faces of modern minimalism.
Inspiring and encouraging for anyone who feels like life is a bit of a rat race at times, and provide a sense of community. They repeat their own stories a shade too often, but I kind of like this, I find it weirdly soothing. They are a good team and bounce off each other well – they’re not preachy or overly serious.
If you’re looking at this for the first time, I’d avoid their more recent guest podcasts and the ones done live from cities,as these are all kind of filler episodes while they’ve been touring their new documentary. Yes, I have preordered the documentary and the six hours of bonus footage. I’m a sad lady.

Enjoy!