Community Corner: Podcast—Mic Check

By Eric Van Johnson

If you follow me on Twitter (@shocm), then you already knew what was coming this month. I asked the interTubes, “What are the PHP and PHP adjacent Podcasts you enjoy?”

With it being so difficult to hang out with friends or go to a meetup, podcasts are a great solution to stay plugged in and current on what is going on in the development world. There is a wide range of subject matters for podcasts, but I focused on PHP podcasts and some other general Development podcasts for this article.

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In my tweet, I added a couple of requirements for a podcast to be considered for this article. I want to highlight active shows that have “stuck with it” for lack of a better phrase.

The podcast must have been publishing for at least a year.

The podcast must have at least 12 shows posted.

The podcast must have published a show in the past three months.

As a participant in a couple of podcasts on the list, I didn’t want to inject my bias, so I will not “rank” the podcasts in any way. I listen to most of these and will try to provide some insight, but I don’t listen to all of them. You can find most of these podcasts on several platforms such as iTunes, Spotify, or Amazon Music. I am only linking to the main URL the podcast has defined, but it shouldn’t be hard to find them on whatever platform you use.

PHP Podcasts

With what said, we start off the list with the clear leader and best podcast every PHP developer should be tuning into. (OK, I feel there might have been a little bias in that lead up )

php

This one is the official podcast of php[architect] magazine. If you subscribe to the magazine, this is an awesome supplemental to the monthly publication. If you don’t subscribe, it’s a podcast chock-full of great discussion topics. Currently, we are releasing three episodes a month.

One is the “Editors Corner,” where Oscar gives his editorial of the current month’s magazine. We also release an Interview every month, not always an interview with a contributor to the magazine but always someone interesting in the PHP Community. Finally, we have a general podcast where all three of the hosts review that month’s issue and add real-world feedback and experience.

Stats:

Frequency: Releases 3 shows a month

Host: Eric Van Johnson (@shocm), John Congdon (@johncongdon), and Oscar Merida (@omerida)

Link: https://www.phparch.com/podcast/

Twitter: @phparch

PHPUgly

PHPUgly is the other podcast Eric Van Johnson, and John Congdon record along with their friend, Tom Rideout. It’s more of a mixed bag of discussion points. They get together every week and talk about their lives as PHP Developers, running a development business, and any other interesting tech topics that catch their eye.

PHPUgly is sort of like grabbing lunch with some of your developer friends and the random topics that come up. It’s very free-flowing and has participation from listeners on their live stream via Discord and streaming chat.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly

Host: Eric Van Johnson (@shocm), John Congdon (@johncongdon), and Tom Rideout (@realrideout)

Link: http://www.phpugly.com

Twitter: @phpugly

PHP Internal News

This show provides a peek behind the curtain of the development of the PHP language. Derick Rethans has interviews with many developers working on the core PHP language. They discuss things like what is being worked on for new releases and conversations around open RFCs.

If you’ve ever wondered why or how the PHP Core team was making decisions, this is the podcast for you.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly(ish)

Host: Derick Rethans (@derickr)

Link: https://phpinternals.news

Twitter: @PHPIntNews

Voices of the elePHPant

“Voices of the elePHPant” is one of the longest-running and well-established podcasts on the list. It is an interview podcast where Cal Evans talks to different people in the PHP community, from community organizers to conference speakers.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly(ish)

Host: Cal Evans (@CalEvans)

Link: https://voicesoftheelephpant.com

Twitter: @elephpant

PHP Townhall

“PHP Townhall” is another freeform and casual Podcast hosted by Ben Edmunds and Matt Trask. They have many guests on the show, so you are never really sure what you will get, only that it will be informative.

Stats:

Frequency: Umm, every couple of months?!?! No regular schedule here.

Host: Ben Edmunds (@benedmunds) and Matt Trask (@matthewtrask)

Link: https://phptownhall.com

Twitter: @PHPTownHall

These next few have a pretty specific lean towards Laravel Development. Not that if you don’t work with Laravel, you won’t enjoy them. A lot of the patterns, methods, and approaches are used in the Laravel ecosystem and are focused on development using the Laravel framework.

Laravel News Podcast

The Laravel News website is the de-facto place to learn about things going on in the Laravel ecosystem. This is the podcast that complements the website.

Stats:

Frequency: Every other week

Host: Jacob Bennett (@JacobBennett) and Michael Dyrynda (@michaeldyrynda)

Link: https://laravel-news.com/category/podcast

Twitter: @laravelnews

The Laravel Podcast

“The Laravel Podcast” is an interview podcast from Matt Stauffer, where he talks with people about Laravel topics along with general PHP news.

Stats:

Frequency: Every other week

Host: Matt Stauffer (@stauffermatt)

Link: https://laravelpodcast.com

Twitter: @LaravelPodcast

North Meets South

When Jacob Bennett and Michael Dyrynda aren’t doing the “Laravel News Podcast,” they have this one where they talk about projects they are working on and from time to time will have guests.

Stats:

Frequency: Every other week

Host: Jacob Bennett (@JacobBennett) and Michael Dyrynda (@michaeldyrynda)

Link: https://www.northmeetssouth.audio

Twitter: @northsouthaudio

The BaseCode Podcast

Jason McCreary and Jess Archer discuss practices for writing less complicated, more readable code, testing, and building products.

Stats:

Frequency: weekly(ish)

Host: Jason McCreary (@gonedark) and Jess Archer (@jessarchercodes)

Link: https://basecodefieldguide.com/podcast/

Foreign Devs Podcast

I don’t think “Foreign Devs Podcast” gets enough attention and is one of the podcasts I look forward to listening to. Victor Gonzalez and Jani Gyllenberg get together and talk about development with the Laravel framework. It’s always good to hear what they have to say.

Stats:

Frequency: Sporadic

Host: Victor Gonzalez (@vicgonvt) and Jani Gyllenberg (@jani_gyllenberg)

Link: https://foreign-devs.transistor.fm

Twitter: @foreigndevs

Non-PHP Specific Podcasts

These podcasts are not PHP focused, but some good overall development podcasts I enjoy listening to that you should check out.

Ladybug Podcast

Kelly Vaughn, Ali Spittel, and Emma Bostian get together and talk careers, code, and tech. They cover general development as well as web development and also have a book club.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly(ish)

Host: Kelly Vaughn (@kvlly), Ali Spittel (@aspittel), and Emma Bostian (@emmabostian)

Link: https://www.ladybug.dev

Twitter: @LadybugPodcast

Coder Radio

One of my favorite non-PHP coding podcasts, “Coder Radio” is a long-running podcast. At the time of writing this article, they had released episode 384. Beware, one of the hosts isn’t a fan of PHP, and there is some PHP slamming that occurs on the show from time to time. That aside, it has some great discussion around coding.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly

Host: Chris Fisher (@chrislas) and Michael Dominick (@dominucco)

Link: https://coder.show

Twitter: @CoderRadioShow

Code[ish]

A podcast brought to you by the developer advocate team at Heroku, exploring code, technology, tools, tips, and the life of the developer. Code[ish] touches on a genuine mix of subjects and topics that we deal with in our professional life as developers. The shows I’ve listened to have been higher-level discussions on things like scaling, mental health, and business requirements. It also has a varied mix of host and guest speakers with great insight and talking points.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly

Host: Chris Castle (@crc) and Julián Duque (@julian_duque)

Link: https://www.heroku.com/podcasts/codeish

Full Stack Radio

“Full Stack Radio” is a podcast for developers interested in building great software products. In every episode, Adam Wathan is joined by a guest to talk about everything from product design and user experience to unit testing and system administration.

Stats:

Frequency: Sporadic

Host: Adam Wathan (@adamwathan)

Link: https://fullstackradio.com

Twitter: @fullstackradio

The Changelog: Software Dev & Open Source

“The Changelog: Software Dev & Open Source” has Conversations with the hackers, leaders, and innovators of software development.

Stats:

Frequency: Weekly

Host: Adam Stacoviak (@adamstac) and Jerod Santo (@jerodsanto)

Link: https://changelog.com/podcast

Twitter: @Changelog

Honorable Mentions

Finally, here is a list of not individual podcasts but networks and aggregators of multiple shows. Many of the podcasts I listed here can be found on one of these networks.

PHP Podcasts (https://www.phppodcasts.com) A one-stop shop for all your PHP Podcasts. With a healthy list of PHP based podcasts, subscribing to this feed will make sure you get any of the latest PHP podcast episodes.

Heroku Podcast (https://www.heroku.com/podcasts/all) A good variety of languages and development topics

Jupiter Broadcasting (https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com) The place I go to for coding and open-source podcasts.

That should give you an ample amount of things to listen to. Beyond listening to each one, you can support them by giving the hosts feedback, leaving reviews, and telling others to listen. Most hosts appreciate constructive feedback and like hearing from their audience.

By no means is this a complete list. There are so many more out there, and new ones are created all the time. A few podcasts didn’t make this list for various reasons– such as they are no longer active. However, they still have their archives available, including “The PHPRoundTable” and “The Development Hell Podcast”. Also, “By The Campfire Listeners” responded to my tweet about them, so I wanted to make sure I gave them some ink even if they’re not about programming. It’s always worth going through a podcast’s archives to see if any topics jump out at you.

Biography

Eric Van Johnson is the CTO of DiegoDev Group, LLC. A group of passionate and talented frontend, backend, and mobile developers that strive to provide outstanding services. He is also one of the organizers of San Diego PHP (SDPHP), his local user group, and a podcaster. In the early ’80s while Eric’s friends were getting Atari 2600 or Intellivision gaming consoles, his Dad bought him a TRS-80 Coco with BASIC. Eric started teaching himself coding and never looked back. A husband, father, and enjoyer of scotch and baseball. He had to give up playing baseball because he kept spilling his scotch while trying to run the bases. @shocm