You’d think in the heyday of remote work and with the popularity of podcasts that there would be a huge range of remote work podcasts to listen to. Well, if you did think that, then like us – you were wrong.
In fact, this may be an opportunity for an industrious digital nomad to get into the space because for now, at least, the competition for remote work podcasts is next to none. However, we did find a few and they made our list of the 14 best remote work podcasts.
Table of Contents
The 14 Best Remote Work Podcasts: The List
Before we begin, this list is no particular order and, in fact, mirrors the order in which we listened to some (or all) of the podcasting channel in question:
Remote Work Podcast
Remote Work Podcast is the name of the product here and we had high hopes for it. That was until we discovered they’d released exactly umm… 8 episodes in 2 years. So, don’t go into this with the expectation of huge amounts of data.
However, it’s not terrible. It’s reasonably well produced. The person who runs it is called Job van der Voort. Their Patreon page is dead. But the website works, and the content is free, and it does cover some issues that remote workers will face.
You won’t need to spend more than an afternoon with this material but if you can bear the European accents; it’s a decent enough investment of your time.
Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Matt invented WordPress and he has built a company that employs almost 1,000 people globally without having a single office.
Now, this podcast isn’t ideal for remote workers because it’s really better geared for remote employers. However, we’d say that if you want to know more about the people you might be working for, it’s a decent place to start.
Distributed appears at PlayerFM where it has a shockingly low subscriber count of under 100 people. The content release appears to be fairly sporadic. With about a dozen episodes under their belts, you’re not going to need a long time to work your way through this playlist.
Remote Work, From Trackly.com
This one appears to have been abandoned at the end of a 13-episode run which is a bit of a shame as its audience thought pretty highly of it. However, it’s fair to say that Remote Work (everyone needs to Google a bit before they name their podcast now) is actually pretty decent.
Again, rather like with Distributed, they’ve tended to focus on employers rather than employees but this is still no bad thing. We appreciated the episode with Peldi Guillizzoni (a name we never want to have to type again) the CEO fo Balsamiq because we love the prototyping process he uses.
You can catch Remote Work from Trackly.com on the Apple Podcasts list.
The Remote Show
This one is a collaborative effort between “We Work Remotely” and the rather more prosaically named, Matthew Hollingsworth.
Every 2 weeks or so they release a new episode which delves into all things “remote work” oriented and which features an interview with a major player in the remote work scene.
It’s well-produced, as you’d expect, for “We Work Remotely” (the largest community of remote workers ever, at least according to them). The trouble is we find Matthew’s voice absolutely without energy and it puts us to sleep as often as it entertains or informs us.
There’s a lot of content on The Remote Show, hosted at Player FM, and it’s possibly the best remote work podcast apart from its host.
Virtual Not Distant
This is, possibly, the longest-running remote work podcast on the Internet today. It’s self-hosted and there are hundreds of episodes to wade through that tackle the way people work remotely.
The production qualities are excellent, even better than on The Remote Show. We love the presentation skills from the enthusiastic presenter, but we do find her accent a little grating – that’s a personal taste thing, of course, your mileage may vary.
If you don’t check out Virtual Not Distant, you may be missing one of the biggest podcast resources on the web for remote workers.
Yonder
Yonder is the brainchild of two people, Jeff Robbins and Mindi Rosser. They’re convinced that remote work is the future of the world as we know it and their podcast on the subject runs to around 80 episodes at the moment.
It has very high production quality and while the intro goes on for a bit, there’s no doubt that they’re among the easiest podcast team to listen to. Their guests are interesting and less cliched than the guests on many of the other remote working podcasts.
I think that what I’m trying to say is that Yonder may be our favorite remote work podcast. It’s genuinely insightful and most importantly, it’s actually listenable.
Outside The Valley
Newcomers to the Remote Work podcasting game, Outside the Valley, certainly have a product worth talking about. They clearly have big ambitions to talk to remote work businesses and learn from them.
The production values are decent. However, we find the presenter a little hard to understand at times, it’s like he’s talking with cotton wool in his mouth at times. We are impressed with his guest list though and the fact, that they’re not all American/European.
With only 5 episodes, so far at the time of writing, it’s hard to say whether Outside The Valley will live up to its promise but it’s definitely worth following.
Freelance (by Robert Williams)
The first time we heard Freelance by Robert Williams, we were blown away. This is a really high-quality production with a very clear presenter (which matters enormously on an audio-format).
This channel aims to examine the way you can be effective at remote work with larger companies. We were really pleased to see them work through case studies rather than just go for generic interviews with executives from remote work companies.
There’s more than a year’s worth of top-notch content on Freelance’s PlayerFM channel and it’s very much worth digging into.
Digital Nomad Café Podcast
Adam Finan’s put a lot of work into the Digital Nomad Café Podcast. He’s a warm sounding host that develops decent relationships with his guests. His accent was fine by us but we do know that some people will struggle with it.
We really don’t like the intro sequence which sounds like it was trapped in a 1980s radio station and it nearly caused us to abandon the show without giving it a real chance. That would have been a mistake – if you want case studies of smaller businesses and individual remote workers, there’s a lot of decent content here.
We’d recommend that you check out Digital Nomad Café’s Podcast on PlayerFM today.
Remote Work Champions
This was a podcast going in the right direction, but it is clearly quite defunct now. The last episode was published back in June 2018.
It’s probably best left dead and buried too. It seemed focused on selling scams, get rich quick and pipe dream stuff rather than anything of value to a remote worker.
If you really must, you can find Remote Work Champions’ old material on the Apple Podcasts store but please, don’t buy anything that it recommends. You’re only going to regret it.
Going Remote (By Nomad Charles)
This is pretty much the same as Remote Work Champions. Except it died a year earlier and made it to 19 episodes before someone, mercifully, put this lame dog down.
While there were some high-quality guests in amongst the dross, it’s always hard to remove the taint of the worst of the digital nomad community from your efforts.
You can check out Going Remote on the Apple Podcasts store but do remember that a lot of the material is out of date and some of it is completely dodgy.
The Collaboration Superpowers
Lisette Sutherland’s podcast is a welcome return to decent podcasts after the last 2 entries on our list. She has put together 242 episodes to date of top-notch content on remote working.
As you’d expect from a well-established podcast, the production values are great, Lisette is pretty easy to listen to as well.
However, we do find that there’s a lot of needless jargon in these episodes and a tendency to treat each guest like some sort of a miracle worker and that there’s not enough critical edge to the interviews.
On balance, though, there’s still plenty of value to be found on The Collaboration Superpowers’ PlayerFM channel.
Remote Works
Remote Works is another abandoned podcast with the last episode coming out back in July of 2017. Fortunately, there’s still some value in the channel and it’s worth seeking out – particularly if you’re looking for inspiration for unusual jobs in the field of remote work.
The production quality is good and the host, Jonathan Sharp, is perfectly listenable. It’s a shame that this is now defunct because otherwise, it would be one of our top picks.
Modern Work
Katherine Conaway had a brief flirtation with podcasting and what resulted was Modern Work which can still be found on Apple iTunes, all 10 episodes of it.
We found her style to be a touch robotic, but the episodes are quite good, and they are a better insight into digital nomad remote work than many of the other podcasts out there.
Process
We wanted to end on a high note and Process by Justin DiRose of Effective Remote Work is a high note. These are short simple podcasts that take a hard look at different aspects of remote work. We really like the approach they take on this.
What don’t we like? The endless begging for you to sponsor the Patreon channel. We know why it’s necessary and we don’t blame Justin for wanting to get paid but it’s really tedious and distracts from an otherwise excellent product.
At around 15 minutes an episode, the 35 episodes won’t take too long to work through, and we think you’ll be glad that you did. Check out Process on PlayerFM, today.
Conclusion
That’s 14 remote working podcasts in total. Yet, Upwork estimates that there are 50+ million remote workers in the United States alone! That seems like there’s still an opportunity to make it big in podcasting in this space.
If you know of any other awesome remote work podcasts, we’d love to hear about them. This list could use being much longer, right?