7 Ways To Find A Life-Changing Podcast

And how to discover one that provides true value.

A podcast episode can change your life.

But only if you discover it.

Following are seven ways to discover podcasts that match your interests, align with your goals, and provide you with information you’ll truly value.

(Not counting subscribing to For The Interested where I share great podcasts all the time.)

1. Search Apple podcasts for the names of smart people you admire.

You know that brilliant person whose work you admire?

Go type their name into the search bar in Apple’s podcasts app.

What it spits back out at you will be a list of podcast episodes in which they appeared as a guest or were a main topic of conversation (assuming they’re mentioned in the podcast title/description).

This will tip you off to valuable podcasts in two ways:

  1. It’s a way to discover interviews with the person you searched for and dive deeper into the wisdom they’ve shared.
  2. If they were interviewed or discussed on a podcast, chances are other episodes of that same podcast will feature people or topics you’ll also find helpful.

You can also use this approach to search for topics instead of people or try it on other podcast platforms.

2. Search Twitter for “[Topic] podcast.”

Twitter search is such a powerful and overlooked tool when it comes to podcast discovery.

Search for a topic you’re interested in along with the word “podcast” (you can also try including the word “episode”), and you’ll discover a list of tweets from people who used that phrase.

Most of those tweets will promote a specific podcast episode that person either produces or (more likely) shared because they thought it was good.

Some recommendations will be better than others so you may have to filter through some junk to get to the good stuff, but it’s a simple way to find podcasts about a topic you’re interested in.

3. Use Twitter advanced search to find podcasts people you admire have shared.

This is a different spin on the Twitter search concept that’s more focused on quality than quantity.

Use Twitter’s advanced search functionality to find tweets posted by an individual user that mention any words you want. 

Pick a smart person (or several) whose opinions you trust and do individual searches for any tweet they posted with the word “podcast” in it.

Depending on the person, this will likely surface a few episodes they’ve recommended in tweets over the years and is a great way to see what has influenced the people who influence you.

For example, a search for Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s tweets that include the word podcast surfaced everything from a Bruce Lee podcast he recommended in 2016 to his appearance on Andrew Yang’s podcast a couple months ago.

One thing to note: If you search for tweets from a person who has a podcast of their own, the results may be cluttered with tweets promoting their own podcast episodes so it may take some time to sift through the results.

4. Explore the “You Might Also Like” recommendations in Apple’s podcast app.

You know how when you shop on Amazon they give you recommendations of similar products other people bought?

Well, Apple does the same thing with podcasts.

If you look up your favorite podcasts in the Apple podcasts app, you can scroll down to the “You Might Also Like” section and see a bunch of recommendations of similar shows.

That’s a helpful list, but you can dig deeper by clicking into one of their recommended podcasts and see what’s in the “You Might Also Like” section on that podcast page as well. 

Do it again on that page and down the rabbit hole you go…

(Speaking of things you might also like, you should check out This Is How I Do It.)

5. Search Google for “Best” lists related to your interests.

This one is as simple as it gets.

Google “[Topic] podcasts” or “Best [Topic] podcasts” and the top results will likely contain links to articles where someone has compiled a list of the best podcasts on that topic.

6. Subscribe to a podcast recommendation newsletter.

I’m a huge fan of newsletters (as you know if you read my 30 newsletter recommendations for creators), and there are a bunch designed to help you find great podcasts.

Not everything they recommend will fit for your interests, but it’s a great way to discover curated recommendations you wouldn’t otherwise know.

A good place to start when it comes to podcast recommendation newsletters is with Find That Pod.

7. Try one of these suggestions…

I’m not the only one who’s figured out how to discover valuable podcasts. 

Here are a few suggestions I got on Twitter that caught my eye:

Read the rest of the suggestions and add your own here.

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