216: Let's talk about listening
And why these are the three most potent podcast episodes from 2025
I’ve tried making podcast listening a habit while mowing, cleaning, exercising and it just doesn’t stick.
But driving.
If I am in a car, alone, for anything longer than five minutes I will cue up a pod. And I tend to like the long ones, episodes that last hours, that dive deep into some esoteric thing; that might take days to finish.
As idea people, a great deal of our value comes from an ability to listen
But it’s more than sitting politely.
Or taking notes.
We get paid to hear what others miss, to discern a truth amidst noise, and curate actionable value from unexpected places.
If Kareem ever asked me for my truth, the default answer will be: “Every dwelling needs a drum set.” But second place would be: “Traffic is such a joyful environment for consuming ideas.”
Podcasts have become a reliable stream of my creative fuel; oddly predicated on driving. I can’t listen to podcasts at work or while writing. Also, audible books? Not my thing! If it’s a book, I have to hold it and turn the pages. And to clarify, music is something completely different. I wrote this post while listening to Best Tracks of 2025 - New Bands for Old Heads. 🎶 But the commute! Sitting in traffic is the best because then I might stumble onto a novel notion, an insight, something that compels me to find an exit, park safely, hit rewind, make sure I heard what I thought I heard, mull on it, then write an Apple Note to myself.
We all have our quirks.
2025 appears to be the year podcasts went mainstream
55% of the US population (12+) now listens monthly, according to The Podcast Host and Xcelcast. Edison Research says podcasting’s weekly reach among 18-34 year olds (52%) now equals TV; and female monthly reach surged 16% in 2025, via WestwoodOne. “Super listeners” are averaging 9 hours and 24 minutes per week, according to Riverside. But the change is broader than who’s listening - it’s also how. “YouTube is capturing one-third of weekly podcast listeners in the US,” claims RSS.com and DemandSage. In other words, the medium has evolved considerably since 2009 when Marc Maron began talking in his garage. And he had a hell of a run at it. I wrote:
“Marc proved you don’t have to have a sonorous, perfect voice and highly-tuned script writing to command attention. You didn’t have to mimic the prevailing media of the day. You could just be you; warts and all. You could talk about your sobriety, for example. And people would listen. I certainly did. Because he tried, episode after episode after episode.”
Here are the three most potent podcast episodes from 2025
“10 Years of Acquired (with Michael Lewis)” by Acquired
Website | Apple | Spotify | YouTube
A podcast that claims “every company has a story” finally got around to telling their own. Originally, I was going to cite the Acquired podcast’s Indian Premier League Cricket episode for this list. I knew absolutely nothing about cricket beforehand, and could not stop listening to an episode that was four hours and 25 minutes. The story of cricket is the story of weirdos, luck, bravado, passion, and occasionally skill—which now dominates global sport.
Hosts Ben and David have a special ability to reveal the truth behind people creating, struggling, evolving and sustaining businesses.
🚨 Here’s why you have to listen to this particulate episode:
It’s actually the best conversation I’ve heard about creativity in 2025. I should have just stayed parked. This episode explains how Ben and David explicitly nurture lasting distinction.
“We used to share Google Docs and there was no surprise in the recording. Now, separate research and big doses of improvisation keep episodes dynamic.”
Guest host and Moneyball author Michael Lewis helps extract the mechanisms, the process of figuring out why and how a high-quality niche is way more valuable than trying to appeal to the mass-market.
“Maybe if we just admit we are heavily constrained and try to just lean into that constraint in the way that Hermès leans into every single Birkin bag... every episode is going to be entirely handcrafted.”
Acquired was not a sure thing. It took years to find its footing. This is a story of friendship, trust, and a keen interest in refining and getting to a truth no other brand could deliver as effectively.
“This is Spinal Tap” by What Went Wrong
Billed as, “your favorite podcast - full stop - that just so happens to be about movies, and how it’s nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one,” What Went Wrong has a unique ability to tell you a story you didn’t know, about a story you thought you did.
“I just love that story about Rob Reiner going in and so passionately pitching this thing, screaming at all the executives... Norman Lear just being like, ‘I’m not gonna tell him he can’t make this, are you?’”
Hosts Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer are both filmmakers, enthusiasts specifically about the culture and personalities which lead to ideas either prevailing, or not, in the madcap realm of Hollywood. They empathize with the people and the struggle to bring an idea into the world through the peculiarities of filmmaking.
🚨 Here’s why you have to listen to this particulate episode:
Luck and persistence are maddeningly critical to the creative process. This episode illuminates moviemaking not by explaining it, but by showing us the accumulation of decisions, accidents, and stubbornness that made the thing exist. And they are consistent. Episodes on Toy Story, The African Queen, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and Donnie Darko are equally inspiring.
“Song 181: “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival” by A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs
Art is so often its context.
No one knows this better than Andrew Hickey.
And no one tells the story of the foggy, meandering artistic journey better.
“They needed to make a decision. They had now been performing together as a quartet for nearly seven years and they’d gone nowhere, and this was because even though they thought of themselves as serious, they weren’t committed. They needed to treat the band as a full-time job.”
I was not a fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival. But I had no idea. No idea of the brotherly conflict. No idea of the lonely and arrogant path John Fogarty took to realize his creative vision. No idea of how far life in El Cerrito, California was - figuratively - from the big city just 20 minutes away, or why that mattered.
🚨 Here’s why you have to listen to this particulate episode:
You’ll learn why ideas which change the world are so often predicated on the circumstances which surround and provoke them. Hickey’s genius is in illuminating the color and shape of a time and place, bringing deft exposure to - in this case - the work ethic and the madness which enabled CCR to land five separate songs at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 between March 1969 and October 1970. And yet,
“At eighty years old [Fogarty] finally has most of what he spent the vast majority of his adult life fighting for, valuing his integrity more than his relationship with his brother or his bandmates.”
Andrew Hickey is that guy who reads everything, cross references everything, and brings the listener into the detailed fabric of the world which birthed a song you might know by heart. He’s a historian of the creative process. (I considered suggesting his four-part history of “Never Learn Not to Love” by the Beach Boys - if only because you can’t imagine the central character. But the series started in 2024 and like I said, it’s four episodes and each is at least an hour plus.)
I am no “super listener.” I listen broadly, sporadically, sometimes deeply. My Apple podcast app says I tuned in at least once this year to: Go with Elmo Lovano, What Went Wrong, Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin, The Working Drummer Podcast, Acquired, Hey Good Game, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs, Let’s Make This More Interesting by EatBigFish, Stuff About Advertising, The Third Story with Leo Sidran, Rarely Familiar, Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out, Team Deakins, The Cave Project, the Bob Lefsetz Show and WTF (RIP).
Earlier this week I acknowledged Year One of the Curiosity+Courage podcast. But did you know I produce another? For the last eight years I’ve periodically shipped an episode of an ongoing conversation with my father, Philip, about his take on the world of music. We talked about the business of starting up an opera company in Minneapolis/St. Paul in the late 1960s, and the practice of improvisation in church music, among others.
What pricks up your ears?