I always hear new things when I listen to these mixes, and the choices are always achingly beautiful. Just the thing for focusing the brain waves to a bit of serious writing, or complete relaxation. Sign up and enjoy.

One podcast I have been listening to for over a year now which shrinks journeys and has me laughing out loud is a podcast from Absolute Radio. It’s produced twice a week – the Saturday download is the spoken pieces from the radio show featuring Frank Skinner with Emily Dean and Gareth Richards. It’s about an hour long. Then, mid-week the same team produce a download only 30 minute show. Both of them are incredibly funny. It’s difficult to tell to what extent they are improvising. The whole thing sounds incredibly spontaneous.

The itunes feed is here.

I love it!

Now, I’ve chosen ‘Desert Island Discs’ because it fits the format really well. It is a radio programme that you can listen to in its entirety. The podcast only has short fragments of the 8 pieces of music chosen by each guest because of licensing rules. So, it may seem a bit odd to listen to the podcast version, but this programme really isn’t about the music. It’s about the guests. It’s been running since 1942, and in that time has had only 4 hosts.

It works on the premise that the guest has been stranded on a desert island and has managed to keep 8 discs to amuse themselves, plus a luxury and a book. But that is just the framework which the current host, Kirsty Young, uses to dig into the lives of the guests and get them speaking frankly about their lives. She is a brilliant interviewer, who can get her guests to open up and answer the most direct of questions.

You can find the podcast here.

I have written about TED Talks before. For some time now (maybe 3 years?) I have been watching videos on the TED website. TED (Technology Entertainment Design) has the motto “ideas worth spreading”. It began as an annual conference bringing together people from those three fields to hear great presentations about cutting edge ideas. Over the years it has grown, so that there are now many events throughout the world in addition to the 2 ’official’ events.

Getting to attend TED is really difficult, and very expensive. The demand is immense. The podcast solves all of that. It is free and can be subscribed to in all the usual way (including the ubiquitous iTunes). Five days a week a new video appears – ranging from 5 minutes to 20 minutes with a small advert at the end to cover costs.

If you are at all interested, go to the site and look at a couple of the videos. I am sure you will be hooked, and find yourself being inspired on topics of an incredibly diverse nature. I’m constantly drawing on things from TED videos to stretch my creativity, and extend the ideas that I have. Strongly recommended.

The first one I wanted to mention is called ‘Great Work Interviews’ . This podcast is an interview series put together by Executive Coach, Michael Bungay Stanier. He is Australian and lives in Canada, having also spent some time in the UK in the past as a Rhodes Scholar. He interviews really interesting people, and the focus of the interview is getting them to identify how they do ‘great work’. There are many insights and useful ideas in the interviews.

I’m also reading his book at the moment. Called ‘Do More Great Work‘, it’s a really practical guide which explains the difference between busy work, good work, and great work. There are plenty of exercises to do in it.

The benefit of the podcast is that it brings a lot of the thoughts in the book to life. Each interview is about 30 – 40 minutes long. Michael is a great interviewer and has chosen some fascinating guests to speak to. Give it a try here.

Over the next few weeks I will recommend other podcasts which are worth listening to. Watch this space, as they say.