Items12The creator’s order
- 1
13 Minutes to the MoonThe best first listen for anyone who prefers a gripping story to a lecture. Kevin Fong's BBC World Service series spends its first season on the final descent of Apollo 11 and its second on Apollo 13, told through interviews with the people involved, including Jim Lovell and Fred Haise.
Start with…0 - 2
50 Things That Made the Modern EconomyTim Harford takes one invention per episode and explains how it changed the way people live and work. Most episodes run about nine minutes, which makes this the easiest show on the list to fit into a short drive or a coffee break.
Begin with barbed wire, a neat example of how a simple fence…0 - 3
The Engines of Our IngenuityShort essays on the people and machines behind modern life, founded by John Lienhard at the University of Houston and broadcast since 1988. Each episode lasts about three and a half minutes and the archive runs to thousands, so this is a show to sample rather than complete.
The quiet, reflective…0 - 4
American InnovationsSteven Johnson, author of How We Got to Now, hosts dramatised stories of the scientists and engineers behind major discoveries, arranged in multi-episode arcs. The early arcs cover DNA research, nuclear energy and thinking machines, and that last one is the most direct fit for a computing…0 - 5
Command Line HeroesRed Hat's series, hosted by Saron Yitbarek, tells the history of software, hardware and open source through the people who built them. Each season has a theme and episodes stand alone, so it is easy to pick a subject and go.
Season four, about the people and teams who changed the rules of…0 - 6
Land of the GiantsEach season takes one company and tells how it grew, how it works and what it changed, beginning with Amazon and moving on to Netflix, Twitter and Disney among others. Start with the Amazon season, hosted by Jason Del Rey, which set the format.
This is closer to recent history than the…0 - 7
AcquiredBen Gilbert and David Rosenthal tell the whole story of a single company in each main episode, and the depth of research shows in the detail. Main episodes are long, which rewards a road trip but tests anyone short on patience.
Not every subject is technology: 2026 episodes have covered Ferrari,…0 - 8
Internet History PodcastBrian McCullough's interview archive covers the web era from Netscape onwards, and much of it comes straight from the people who were there. For the 20th anniversary of Netscape's founding in 2014 he recorded oral histories with its founding engineers, and those early episodes are the place to…0 - 9
Advent of ComputingSean Haas researches one piece of computing history per episode, often a machine or idea that broader histories skip, such as Olivetti's Programma 101 or RAYDAC, the computer Raytheon contracted to build in 1947. The research is careful and the tone conversational, with enough context for a…0 - 10
Decoding TechThe Computer History Museum's podcast brings its CHM Live stage events to audio: conversations with computing pioneers and present-day experts, recorded at the museum in Mountain View, California. Hearing history from the people who made it is the draw.
It looks forward as well as back, so pick…0
