If you can't be creative for ten years, listen to a podcast for ten years
This could have changed my life by now
I want to tell you something that bothers me about my own life.
In late 2015, I discovered Tim Ferriss. His podcast had already been running for over a year at that point, interviewing some of the most interesting people alive: investors, authors, athletes, scientists, and military commanders.
To date, his podcast remains roughly styled the same way. Invite an interesting person over, have a long, detailed conversation (usually about two hours), and publish it for the world to listen, for free.
Darren Shearer started his Theology of Business Podcast (now the Christian Business Leader Podcast) in 2016, publishing bi-monthly one-hour conversations with Christian business leaders. Still, I didn’t learn about it until about 2020.
I was equally excited about both podcasts when I discovered them, yet failed to cultivate an active listening habit. I’m convinced, though, that there are people who’ve been consistently listening to these conversations for over ten years, and their lives are better for it.
I see many of these podcast fans doing interesting things like starting their podcasts, YouTube channels, businesses and so on, and I can’t help but recognise that I had a similar chance as many of them. In fact, I wanted to start a podcast with a friend as far back as 2019.
Then I wanted to do so again in 2020 with another friend, when the Google Podcast Fellowship took off, and I remember recording some episodes for a newsletter titled “Coper Spotlight.” I interviewed other interesting members of the National Youth Service Corps for my podcast. It took off on LinkedIn, then it went down. Somewhere in 2023, I started again (see the podcast section of my website), but when it got tough, I didn’t get going; I just closed shop. In hindsight, I couldn’t sustain my creative commitments because I had never been a consistent podcast listener.
I can’t help but imagine the transformative impact Darren Shearer’s podcast would have had in my life if I had been following him for a decade. Who would I be today if I had listened to his guest episodes every two weeks since 2015? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it would have changed things.
I took this question personally, because as we say in Nigeria, "follow who know road."
Since I haven’t been following actively, I wanted to catch up on some of what I had missed. By my latest count, Darren has produced over 250 guest interviews. That is roughly about 200 hours of concentrated thinking from kingdom operators across various business domains available for free.
And to show you just how serious my assumptions about the transformative power of consistent podcast listening are, I looked up some research, and it’s just as I suspected.
An often-cited study on the educational value of transformative podcast listening is Simon Hieleson’s, who concluded that students use podcasts "rationally as a supplement to their study activities." So you have a transformation in education, at least through the way we learn.
You also get improvements in attitudes, as some podcasts can lead listeners to change their behaviour and become more socially aware.
Moreso, especially among female listeners, what scholars call parasocial relationships (cultivating something like a mentoring relationship) with educational content creators (and I would add podcasters) can increase people’s desire to learn.
I wouldn’t say that these benefits apply to all podcasts, though. These benefits are more likely to be acquired through what I call legacy podcasts. Yes, "legacy" because people who commit themselves to becoming masters in a craft eventually get there and find the most effective ways to derive value from that work than beginners in the same field, and their work often paves the way for innovation. I have written previously about why we should make reading seminal works a habit, and it is a corollary of this.
To me, a legacy podcast is one that has been publishing consistently for at least 10 years, with more than half of its episodes featuring guest interviews with practitioners in relevant domains.
Tim Ferriss started his podcast in 2014. Darren Shearer started the Christian Business Leader podcast in 2015. Both are still active and have published hundreds of guest interviews with people who have the very things that many others, even in their domains, are still dreaming about.
That consistency over time is the key thing. Anyone can produce great content for six months, but very few people show up every two weeks like Darren Shearer for ten years.
By implication, these legacy podcasters create a unique body of work that would have cost a lot more otherwise.
Over the past few weeks, I have been transcribing Darren Shearer’s 280+ guest interview episodes, reading through what guests said about pricing, leadership, failure, faith, integrity in the marketplace, and building companies while raising families. The breadth of personal experience shared is positively overwhelming.
These topics would have taken a university business school years to develop into curriculum materials, but Darren Shearer produced them across simple conversations, at no cost to listeners.
Tim Ferriss has done a similar thing, so his podcast archive is now one of the most comprehensive informal resources on peak performance, entrepreneurship, and education available today.
Watching recent seasons of Shark Tank alone has taught me more about valuation, market sizing, and what investors actually care about, and it’s fun. I enjoy it. I learn new things in each episode because knowledge is embedded in the stories the entrepreneurs share and the conversations they have with the ‘sharks.’
Listening to smart people talk consistently for years will transform your life. So don’t miss out like me.
Find one legacy podcast in a domain that interests you, that interviews practitioners on every episode and tune in at least once every week. Or find one show like Shark Tank and continue following for as long as possible.
Follow who know road.