The Best AI Podcasts for Staying Informed
ZarifA useful podcast queue needs a few different jobs: explain a technical idea, show how a team built something, and put a news story in context. These 19 shows cover those jobs. Start with a few that match your work; importing the whole list does not mean you need to listen to everything.
Checked September 17, 2026: show identities, feed XML and publisher-supplied audio dates. The notes distinguish current activity from an archive that still works.
Last verified September 17, 2026. Recheck target: monthly. Download OPML (19 available feeds from 19 listed sources). Entries without a verified feed URL are excluded from the import.
Three filters: does the host understand the topic? Are the guests doing the work, or recycling a circuit? Does the show waste five minutes on intro and ads?
Start with five
One long interview, two builder shows, a news brief and an applied-ML show. Sample an episode from each, then keep the ones that answer questions you actually have.
- Dwarkesh Podcast · Weekly-ish
Long interviews with researchers and founders, with transcripts for following the technical argument. Start with a guest whose work you already want to understand.
- Latent Space Podcast · Weekly
Builder interviews on agents, models and engineering infrastructure. Useful for finding the implementation questions behind a product announcement.
- The Cognitive Revolution · Two to three times a week
Nathan Labenz interviews builders and researchers about how AI systems work and where they are being deployed. A useful companion to implementation-focused reading.
- The AI Daily Brief · Daily, Monday–Friday
Nathaniel Whittemore discusses AI news and its business implications. Use it to identify a story worth investigating, then open the original announcement or reporting.
- Practical AI · Weekly
Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson discuss applied AI systems and engineering decisions. Pick an episode connected to a problem you can test in your own project.
The directory
Skip non-AI episodes on Lex, Lenny, All-In, and Acquired. Treat investor roundtables as a mood check, not as evidence.
Scroll horizontally to compare the columns.
| Name | Role | Why it is here | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dwarkesh Podcast | Long-form interviews | Long interviews with researchers and founders, with transcripts for following the technical argument. Start with a guest whose work you already want to understand. The official site advertises this mixed feed: 15 of its 20 checked items have audio enclosures. Text-only entries may appear differently across podcast clients. Activity uses the latest audio item. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekly-ish |
| Latent Space Podcast | Builder interviews | Builder interviews on agents, models and engineering infrastructure. Useful for finding the implementation questions behind a product announcement. The official podcast page advertises this dedicated audio feed. All 223 checked entries have audio enclosures; the 13.6 MB feed required a larger audit limit. Activity is publisher supplied. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 16, 2026. | Weekly |
| No Priors | Business interviews | Sarah Guo and Elad Gil interview founders and researchers about AI companies, products and distribution. Read the commercial perspective alongside technical sources. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 10, 2026. | Weekly |
| Lex Fridman Podcast | Long-form interviews | Choose the AI and programming interviews from a much broader show. Long conversations give room for technical detail, but the full feed is not an AI news brief. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Two to four times a month |
| The AI Daily Brief | Daily brief | Nathaniel Whittemore discusses AI news and its business implications. Use it to identify a story worth investigating, then open the original announcement or reporting. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 16, 2026. | Daily, Monday–Friday |
| This Day in AI | Weekly discussion | Michael and Chris Sharkey discuss AI releases and practical experiments. Useful for a conversational weekly review. The feed and Apple catalog identify Michael and Chris Sharkey. The latest audio timestamp is May 8, 2026; the checked feed does not support a claim of current weekly publishing. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity May 8, 2026. | Archive; latest checked audio May 8, 2026 |
| Marketplace Tech | Business news | AI segments inside a broader tech show. Useful for the market layer, not architecture. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekdays |
| The Cognitive Revolution | Builder interviews | Nathan Labenz interviews builders and researchers about how AI systems work and where they are being deployed. A useful companion to implementation-focused reading. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Two to three times a week |
| Practical AI | Applied ML | Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson discuss applied AI systems and engineering decisions. Pick an episode connected to a problem you can test in your own project. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekly |
| AI in Business | Enterprise | Enterprise interviews about adoption, operations and business value. Useful for customer-discovery questions; guest results are not evidence that the same outcome will transfer to your project. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Several episodes per week in the checked feed; varies |
| The TWIML AI Podcast | Research interviews | Sam Charrington has been doing technical ML interviews longer than most AI podcasts have existed. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekly |
| Eye on AI | Research interviews | Craig S. Smith interviews AI researchers, founders and operators. Choose the guest and topic deliberately; the archive covers both technical work and company perspectives. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 14, 2026. | Weekly |
| Hard Fork | Culture and business | Kevin Roose and Casey Newton cover technology as a reported beat. Useful for the wider business and cultural context around AI releases. The NYT show identity matches the Apple catalog and feed. The public feed exposed only three audio entries when checked, so this import does not provide the full archive. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 11, 2026. | Weekly |
| Lenny's Podcast | Product | Product and growth interviews, including AI product teams. Select the relevant episodes rather than expecting the whole feed to cover AI engineering. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 8, 2026. | Weekly |
| All-In Podcast | Markets | AI episodes only, and even then as a mood check on investor consensus, not as evidence. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekly |
| Acquired | Company history | Company histories that help explain distribution, business models and infrastructure. Select relevant technology episodes; this is not a weekly AI news source. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 14, 2026. | A few times a year on AI |
| Machine Learning Street Talk | Technical debate | Long, argumentative conversations with researchers. Not a commute show unless you want the argument. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 15, 2026. | Weekly-ish |
| Last Week in AI Podcast | Weekly recap | Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris discuss recent AI news, research and policy. This is the Skynet Today show connected to lastweekin.ai, not the different AI Weekly show with the same name. Matched the Skynet Today feed to Apple show 1502782720 and the episode credits for Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris. Excluded the different same-name AI Weekly show. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 8, 2026. | Weekly format; gaps occur |
| 80,000 Hours Podcast | Careers and risk | AI episodes on careers, catastrophic risk, and what to do with a working life. Use when the question is not a model. The public feed parsed successfully; its title and publisher match this show. The activity date is the latest audio item timestamp supplied by the publisher. Source checked September 17, 2026; recorded activity September 17, 2026. | Weekly-ish |
Pair a weekly interview with the newsletter directory so you are not getting the same five headlines in two formats. When a guest points at a paper, open the blog and news stack.
Import the feeds, then choose what to keep
Download the OPML above and use your podcast app's OPML import option, if it has one. The file includes a public feed for all 19 listed shows. Check the resulting subscriptions before enabling automatic episode downloads. Apps differ in how they handle mixed feeds and partial archives.
Three details matter when using this list:
- Dwarkesh: the official mixed feed contains audio and text posts. The check found 15 audio-bearing entries among its 20 returned items.
- Hard Fork: the public feed returned three audio entries. A successful import does not unlock the full archive.
- This Day in AI: the checked feed's newest audio item is dated May 8, 2026. Keep it for its archive; do not rely on it for a current weekly recap.
The date beside an entry comes from the publisher's feed. It establishes a dated item, not that every episode has been listened to or that its claims have been verified. Feed identity and XML parsing were checked; audio playback and imports in individual apps were not tested.
Use the change log below to see what changed in the directory.
Change log
Expanded OPML from 3 to 19 verified audio-bearing feeds. Updated moved show links, distinguished same-name podcasts, and recorded feed activity and archive limitations. XML parsing and identity checks do not establish playback in every client.
Rechecked exported feeds and show links. Corrected This Day in AI to a weekly cadence and replaced the unavailable No Priors website with its official show links.
Moved onto the directory template with start-with-five, per-entry cadence, and an OPML download of show feeds.