The best AI podcasts in 2026 are Built This Week, Hard Fork, Latent Space, Dwarkesh Podcast, Lex Fridman Podcast, The AI Daily Brief, No Priors, The Cognitive Revolution, Lenny's Podcast and Practical AI. Together they cover daily news, research interviews, engineering detail and hands-on building, so most listeners will want two or three of them rather than one.
Built This Week is our show, so we put it first; here's how we picked the rest.
Built This Week is hosted by Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler, co-founders of Ryz Labs, and has come out weekly since June 2025, with 53 episodes so far. Each episode we build something with AI on air, test new AI tools, interview a founder or operator, and cover the AI news that matters; episodes typically run 21-28 minutes. It is for builders, founders and product people who want to see what these tools do on real projects, including the parts that break.
Some examples of what that looks like: a Kalshi prediction market trading bot shown with its real-money results, ScreenEval, a recruiting tool Sam built with Claude Code, and our running Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex comparison.
Start with: Episode 51: It Ships While You Sleep (September 2026), with former Google engineer David Petrou on his agentic development operating system. See all episodes.
Hard Fork is The New York Times' weekly tech news show, launched in 2022, with heavy AI coverage. It was hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton from 2022 until both left the show in 2026; per the show's October 2026 feed, guest host Max Read and Times reporters are hosting for the next few months. The panel format makes it an easy, accessible weekly read on the biggest tech and AI stories, and it is rated 4.3 out of 5 from 5.5K ratings on Apple Podcasts, as of October 2026.
Start with: Bing’s Revenge + Google’s AI Faceplant (February 2023). Read our full profile of Hard Fork.
Latent Space describes itself as a podcast "by and for AI engineers." It is led by swyx with co-hosts Alessio and Vibhu, publishes one to two episodes a week, and mixes builder interviews with news and paper discussion on foundation models, code generation, agents and GPU infrastructure. Episodes typically run 69-101 minutes. It is the pick for software engineers who build with LLMs and want technical depth.
Start with: Claude Code’s Next Era — Thariq Shihipar, Anthropic (September 2026). Read our full profile of Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast.
Dwarkesh Patel's show is built on deeply researched, long-form interviews about AI, science and history, including many frontier-lab leaders and researchers. It publishes roughly weekly to every few weeks, and episodes typically run 76-133 minutes. It suits listeners who want detailed conversations about where AI progress is heading and why; it is rated 4.5 out of 5 from 615 ratings on Apple Podcasts, as of October 2026.
Start with: Ilya Sutskever — We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research (November 2025). Read our full profile of Dwarkesh Podcast.
Lex Fridman has run his independent interview show since 2018. Conversations span AI, programming, science, history and politics, and they are long: typical episodes run 174-280 minutes, released about every two to three weeks recently. It is for listeners who want multi-hour conversations with prominent AI researchers, founders and public figures, and it is rated 4.7 out of 5 from 12.2K ratings on Apple Podcasts, as of October 2026.
Start with: #452 – Dario Amodei: Anthropic CEO on Claude, AGI & the Future of AI & Humanity (November 2024). Read our full profile of Lex Fridman Podcast.
Nathaniel Whittemore (NLW) hosts this independent daily show, launched in 2023; its first episode was titled "Introducing The AI Breakdown." Each episode covers new tools, industry moves, AI's impact on work and bigger questions about advanced AI, in about 26-31 minutes. It is a quick way to stay current every day, and it is rated 4.7 out of 5 from 864 ratings on Apple Podcasts, as of October 2026.
Start with: The Most Important New AI Tools from OpenAI DevDay (September 2026). Read our full profile of The AI Daily Brief.
Investors Sarah Guo and Elad Gil host No Priors, produced by Conviction since 2023. Each week they interview leading AI engineers, researchers and founders about AGI timelines, market disruption and state-of-the-art research, in episodes of about 36-45 minutes. It suits founders, investors and operators who track AI startups and research.
Start with: Andrej Karpathy on Code Agents, AutoResearch, and the Loopy Era of AI (March 2026). Read our full profile of No Priors.
Nathan Labenz interviews AI builders and researchers about twice a week and also publishes "AI Scouting Reports" and news discussion segments on AI's near-term impact. Episodes are long, typically 102-141 minutes, and go deep on capabilities, safety and policy. It is a good fit for AI-curious professionals and researchers who like detail.
Start with: Calm AI for Crazy Days: Inside Granola's Design Philosophy, with co-founder Sam Stephenson (April 2026). Read our full profile of The Cognitive Revolution.
Lenny Rachitsky's weekly interview show focuses on concrete, tactical advice for building, launching and growing products, and recent guests come heavily from AI labs and AI-native companies. Episodes typically run 80-97 minutes. Product managers, founders and growth-minded operators get the most from it; it is rated 4.9 out of 5 from 1.4K ratings on Apple Podcasts, as of October 2026.
Start with: Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny (February 2026). Read our full profile of Lenny's Podcast.
Daniel Whitenack and Chris Benson have hosted Practical AI weekly since 2018, mixing their own discussions with guest interviews about making AI practical, productive and accessible. The emphasis is on real-world implementations across ML, MLOps and LLMs, in episodes of about 45-50 minutes. It suits practitioners and technical professionals who want grounded, implementation-focused discussion.
Start with: Hermes Agent: Agents that grow with you (May 2026). Read our full profile of Practical AI.
Looking for something narrower? See our lists of the best AI podcasts for developers, the best AI news podcasts and the best AI podcasts for beginners.
It depends on what you want. For a short daily news briefing, The AI Daily Brief; for long research interviews, Dwarkesh Podcast or Lex Fridman Podcast; for engineering depth, Latent Space; for watching AI tools get used on real projects each week, Built This Week.
The AI Daily Brief publishes daily episodes of about 26-31 minutes, and Hard Fork from The New York Times covers tech and AI news weekly. Both are on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Dwarkesh Podcast, Lex Fridman Podcast and No Priors regularly host frontier-lab leaders; their feeds include long conversations with Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever and Andrej Karpathy.
Yes. On Built This Week, Jordan Metzner and Sam Nadler build something with AI on air every week, test new AI tools, interview a founder or operator and cover the week's AI news.
