Last updated on July 22nd, 2026 at 10:22 am
I didn’t learn IT in a classroom. I learned a huge chunk of it standing in a warehouse at 3am with one earbud in, or on the drive home while the rest of the world was waking up. Ten years of shift work meant my study time was whatever time my hands were busy but my brain wasn’t — and podcasts filled every minute of it.
These five shows did the heavy lifting when I was a complete newbie. If you’re working a job you want out of and IT is the plan, this is free mentorship sitting in your pocket.
https://youtu.be/wc7QVRe6bfw?si=rXtidLXz6bINYhyE
Why podcasts, when YouTube exists?
You can’t watch a video while you’re driving a forklift. That’s the whole pitch. Podcasts are the only learning format that works when your eyes and hands are already taken — which, if you’re changing careers while working full time, is most of your day. They also do something courses don’t: they let you absorb how IT people talk. Vocabulary, war stories, what a ticket queue actually feels like. By the time I sat my first interview, the industry didn’t feel foreign.
The countdown
#5 — Darknet Diaries
The gateway drug. Jack Rhysider tells true stories of hackers, breaches, and the people who clean up after them, and he tells them like a thriller. This one isn’t going to teach you subnetting — it’s going to keep you wanting to learn on the nights when motivation is gone. Best for: keeping the fire lit.
#4 — IT Career Energizer
Hundreds of interviews with working IT professionals about how they got in, what they’d do differently, and what actually matters early on. When you don’t know a single person in the industry, this show is the network you don’t have yet. Best for: career changers with zero IT contacts.
https://itcareerenergizer.com/
#3 — The Bearded I.T. Dad
Dakota Snow went from help desk to Director of Network Operations in three years, and his show — The I.T. Career Podcast — is about making sure you don’t stall at level one. Episodes on escaping the entry-level trap, resumes and interviews that actually land, and day-in-the-life interviews that show you what jobs like IAM admin really involve before you chase them. Best for: seeing the career past the ticket queue.
#2 — RunAs Radio
Weekly interviews for IT pros working with the Microsoft stack — Windows Server, Active Directory, Intune, cloud, all of it. If you’ve watched anything on this channel, you know that’s my world. This show connected the cert material to what real environments actually run. Best for: anyone heading toward Windows/Microsoft sysadmin work.
#1 — Professor Messer’s Study Groups
The one that got me the job. Messer’s monthly study group sessions for A+, Network+, and Security+ are live Q&A walkthroughs of real exam-style questions — and they’re free. I ran these on repeat during my cert grind, and hearing the questions explained instead of just reading answers is what made the material stick. Best for: the cert grind itself. Nothing else on this list directly converts to a pay rise like this one.
The gotchas
Podcasts alone won’t get you hired — I have to say it. Passive listening feels productive while teaching you nothing, so treat these as the supplement, not the workout. The lab is the workout. And skip the shows that are just two hosts reading press releases; if you’re not hearing reasoning or stories, your commute deserves better.
Is it worth it?
Yes. It cost me nothing, used hours I was already losing to a warehouse floor, and by interview day I sounded like someone who’d been around IT for years. If you’re grinding toward a career change, this is the highest-return zero-dollar habit you can build.
What’s next
The full countdown — with why each show earned its spot — is on the channel now. And once the podcasts get you to interview day, I’ve got a video walking through the help desk interview itself: the questions you’ll actually get asked and how to answer them.
What podcast carried you through your study grind? Drop it in the comments — I’m always looking for the next show.
— Trev | I broke it. Fixed it.
