If you love audio books, there's a really good chance that you'll like podcasts. Or at least that's what I'm told. I went the other direction. I started with podcasts and loved them so much that I never made it to audio books. I started listening to podcasts when I had an average total daily commute time of two and a half hours a day, so my current listening lineup tends towards long-form offerings.

My list:

##Jocko Podcast

Weekly. Normal duration of 2 hours, but occasionally longer.

Jocko Willink is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL who wrote a book on leadership and practices what he preaches with a leadership consulting company called Eschalon Front. His podcast predominantly addresses leadership with examples and principles drawn from military books covering a wide span of history and in-studio guests that to date have included several Congressional Medal of Honor recipients. Some of the material gets dark and gritty, not in a gratuitous way, but in a "that's the way that the world really is" kind of way. Thankfully his engineer, Echo, balances him out and the podcast usually ends on an upbeat tone.

##Security Now

Weekly. Normal duration 2 hours.

Steve Gibson is a computer hardware designer and machine code programmer who is both the author of the disk recovery tool Spinrite and a student of computer security. Each episode covers a mix of security news and interesting teaching about aspects of computer operation.

##Hardcore History

Two or three a year. Duration varies anywhere from 3 to 5 hours.

Dan Carlin takes long-form and well researched history podcasting and turns the dial up to eleven. While there is often a multiple month gap between episodes, they are all highly anticipated and eagerly digested. Whether he's explaining the First World War, the Cuban Missile Crisis or the hordes of Genghis Khan, Dan Carlin delivers first rate storytelling. For someone who periodically reminds his audience that he's not a real historian, he sure does have a knack for bringing history alive in the retelling. (He has a number of other podcasts, but if you like Hardcore History, you should also consider "Hardcore History Addendum" which is shorter thought pieces or interviews.)

##The Way I Heard It

Weekly during a season. Duration is normally 10 minutes.

Mike Rowe is perhaps best known as a narrator, voice-over artist and host of the shows Dirty Jobs and Somebody's Got To Do It. He's also a tireless advocate of trade jobs and apprenticeships. This podcast was an experiment initially, but so well received that it now has over 100 episodes. Each episode is approximately 10 minutes long and tells a story about someone you've likely heard of, but from a deliberately obscure angle to keep you guessing as long as possible.

##True Life Church Podcast

Varies.

A pastor friend of mine. He started out with short leadership episodes, but lately has been using the podcast medium to share selected sermons. Recommended.

##The History Of Rome

All episodes are available now, so it's effectively on-demand. Duration is anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.

There are 179 episodes in this podcast and it covers the start, rise, expansion, more expansion and decline of the Roman Empire, specifically the Western half of the empire. The episodes are fairly self-contained and each addresses either a specific event or notable figure from the empire. I found them very interesting and highly bingeworthy.

I'll save other podcasts that I occasionally listen to for next time.