Best Data Podcasts in 2022: Airbyte Staff Picks

We love podcasts - they offer a hands-free, eyes-free way to keep up to date and learn about all sorts of interests. However, the problems of podcasting are well known: for podcasters, the lack of feedback, and for listeners, the discovery of good podcasts.

We at Airbyte have been keeping tabs on the data podcast market, and decided to pool together our favorites for you to discover.

Here are our picks (5 each) of the Best Data Practitioner, Best Data Thoughtleader Interview, Best Database/Warehouse, and Best New Podcasts of 2022!

Best Data Thoughtleader Interview Podcasts

Interview shows are the most popular format, so this is a competitive field. We kept our picks to a self-imposed limit of 5, but do check out the honorable mentions below!

• The Analytics Engineering Podcast (site, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Julia and Tristan offer fantastic perspectives from their vantage at dbt, but they let their guests shine too.
• ~Highlights: Episode 28 with Aaron Katz of ClickHouse told the full story of how one of the hottest new database companies came into being.
• The Data Engineering Podcast (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Tobias Macey is a one man podcasting army. You can trace much of the recent history of Data Engineering in 316 episodes over the past 5 years.
• ~Highlights: Episode 3 on Defining Data Engineering with Maxime Beauchemin back when Apache Airflow was <2 years old. John and Michel were on Episode 173.
• The Data Stack Show (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Eric and Kostas have a clear love for their subject matter - every episode comes with “The PRQL” - a preview of takeaways from each conversation. The newsletter is another way to stay engaged.
• ~Highlights: Episode 64 with Michel!
• Intricity101 Data Sharks Podcast (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: The unbelievable 12-year backlog of Data podcasts makes this a wealth of information for time traveling through data history, but the show’s modern iteration as Data Sharks is a thoroughly enjoyable interview show.
• ~Highlights: What happened to the ETL Market?
• Drill to Detail with Mark Rittman (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Mark Rittman is both a practitioner and longtime interviewer, with 6 years of data podcasting under his belt.
• ~Highlights: We enjoyed tracing the development of Snowflake with Kent Graziano in 2016 and 2019 before his retirement last year.

Honorable Mentions: Datacast with James Le (Airbyte episode here, we love the extensive show notes), The Analytics Show (Airbyte episode here), The Data Standard, DATAcated, Hashmap on Tap (Airbyte episode here), MAD Data by Databand, Data Stories, The Data Exchange (Airbyte episode here), The Data Life (Airbyte episode here), Data Leadership Lessons (Airbyte episode here), Building the Backend (Airbyte episode here), Dapper Data (Airbyte episode here), Why Wait by Rockset (Airbyte episode here), What's New in Data by Striim!

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Best Data Practitioner Podcasts

Podcasts are often a mix of entertainment and information, and we love when two experienced practitioners just talk about their problems without vendor influence.

• Monday Morning Data Chat (youtube, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Very consistent, casual chats and extensive backlog including introductory content!
• ~Highlights: What’s next after the Modern Data Stack?
• Analytics Power Hour (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: The rapport between Michael, Moe and Tim, and the Conductrics Quizzes (seriously)!
• ~Highlight: Episode 197 with Hilary Mason!
• Catalog & Cocktails (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Their description says it all: “honest, no-BS, non-salesy conversation about enterprise data management and analytics.” Every interview comes with a Takeaways discussion which we find as valuable as the main chat!
• ~Highlight: S3E12 with Bob Muglia and S3E1 with Sarah Catanzaro!
• Not So Standard Deviations (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: The easy rapport between Roger and Hilary while each of them are clearly experts as academics and practitioners in data science!
• ~Highlights: Last year’s discussion and followup on Zillow!
• DataTalks.Club (site, twitter, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Longform, in-depth conversations with a great Slack community!
• ~Highlights: Acronyms and Buzzwords chat with our own Natalie!

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Best Database/Warehouse Podcasts

Many database/warehouse vendors run their own podcasts too, which are often showcasing customers, or interesting, very high-level executives from huge companies. Sometimes not as technical, but useful for understanding specific use cases!

• Data Brew by Databricks (site, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Each season is uniquely curated and stands apart, creating a compelling backlog. Season 1 is the place to understand data lakehouses!
• ~Highlights: David Meyer trying to make the Lakehouse dance a thing!
• The Data Cloud Podcast by Snowflake (site, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Interviews of top big company execs you rarely hear anywhere else
• ~Highlights: Amp it Up! with Frank Slootman, CEO, Snowflake
• The MongoDB Podcast (site, RSS)
• ~What we enjoy: Michael Lynn professionally produces the podcast surveying everyone in the MongoDB ecosystem from interns to customers running at a surprising scale.
• ~Highlights: Episode 115 which introduced us to Kris Jenkins! (below) and Mark Porter!
• Open||Source||Data (site, RSS) by Datastax
• ~What we enjoy: Sam Ramji has great open source experience and reaches across a lot of the data ecosystem.
• ~Highlights: S3E3 with Prukalpa Sankar of Atlan
• Streaming Audio (site, RSS) by Confluent
• ~What we enjoy: Kris Jenkins’ plummy British accent and learning about the many Kafka use cases!
• ~Highlights: Real-time Signal Processing with Jeffrey Needham

Honorable Mentions: Making Data Simple by IBM (Airbyte episode here), HOSS talks FOSS by Percona

Best New Podcasts

Podcasts are extraordinarily difficult to get up off the ground, so we want to showcase the new entrants to get them more numbers and give them encouragement early on, despite the lack of an extensive backlog.

• The Right Track by Stefania Olafsdottir of Avo (site, RSS)
• The Analytics Everywhere Podcast by Max Beauchemin of Preset (site, RSS) - Michel's episode here!
• Data Tea by Hightouch (YouTube)
• Data Creators Club Podcast (YouTube, Twitter, RSS)
• Data Beats Podcast (Site, RSS)
• What's New in Data (site)

Wrapping Up

Did we miss any of your favorite podcasts? Tweet @airbytehq and let us know for next time!

Airbyte has also been featured on the OSS Startups podcast, Code Story, JAMstack Radio, SE Daily, and Secure Talk podcasts.

Note to featured nominees: If you would like to use any of the award images here, please feel free (we'd be happy to send over light background versions as well).

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