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Eight Podcasts to make you smarter on your commute

If you are like me (my sincere condolences if you are), you are aggravated by all the time you spend in the car. I spend nearly two hours per day commuting, slicing right through the center of Tampa and across the bay to PODS. It sucks. It's a huge drain on time, fuel, money and productivity. To make it suck a little less, I listen to Podcasts that can hopefully make me a bit smarter. (And trust me, the bar is set low in that department.) Here are eight of my favorites, because eight is enough:

  1. The Dave Ramsey Show. The ideal financial guru for our time. Ramsey's brand is built around the elimination of debt and he started preaching this long before the credit meltdown. One of his mantras "The paid-off mortgage has replaced the BMW as the status symbol of choice" is timely to say the least. He offers about 40 minutes of his show for free each day.

  2. Sales Gravy. The cliche is that we're all in sales. It's a cliche because it's true. Jeb Blount provides short (usually under seven minutes) PODcasts with sales tips that work no matter what you are selling - cars, software or a new idea to improve your accounts payable processes.

  3. Clark Howard. Clark is another financial guru in the same vein as Dave Ramsey, but less formulaic. Yes, he's a spend less, save more advocate (is there any other kind of financial guru?) but Clark isn't afraid to wander into some other topics, like technology, travel, etc.

  4. Duct Tape Marketing. John Jantsch gets the heavy-hitters in marketing for his interviews. Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, the list goes on and on. If Podcasts had a salary cap, Duct Tape Marketing's lineup would be over the limit.

  5. WSJ This Morning. They give you an hour of their show free each day. Interesting insight, good tips on money and investing and solid interviews.

6.ESPN Radio: Thundering Herd: Sports? Yes, but not just sports. Host Colin Cowherd mixes in a lot of other valuable things: pop culture observances, thoughts on careers and relationships -- it's fairly heady stuff for sports talk radio. Cowherd talks way too much about the Cowboys, but that's why Jobs put a fast forward button on your iPod. ESPN posts about half an hour of the show each day for free.

  1. Slide to Play. A newcomer, and video based. (Just listen, don't watch while driving. Did your mother teach you anything?) Covers the game scene in the Apple App Store.

  2. The Digital Marketer's Quick and Dirty Tips. Brief, quick-hitting tips to help build business online. Heavy focus on social media.

There's eight that help keep my brain from turning to mush on the daily drive. What are your favorites?