Dr. Maor Farid, Co-Founder & CEO at Leo AI
Jan 4, 2026
If you've ever wondered what do mechanical engineers make, the answer goes far beyond salary figures. Mechanical engineers design spacecraft components, medical devices, vehicles, prosthetics, consumer electronics, manufacturing equipment, and countless other products that shape daily life. The best way to understand the breadth of mechanical engineering is to hear directly from the people doing the work.
We just launched our own podcast on the intersection of AI and mechanical engineering, and it got us curious: what do engineers actually listen to?
We pulled together a list from real Reddit threads, where working engineers share what’s actually worth a listen (not algorithm-generated listicles). In this first installment, we cover five shows focused on careers, manufacturing, and learning from engineering failures.
1. Being an Engineer
Host: Aaron Moncur (Pipeline Design & Engineering)
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Aaron Moncur has spent nearly 20 years in product development, and his podcast functions as what he calls "a repository for industry knowledge." Each week, he interviews engineers about their career paths, technical challenges, and lessons learned along the way.
What sets Being an Engineer apart is the diversity of guests and the practical focus. Recent episodes have featured Duann Scott discussing computational design and additive manufacturing, Matt Puchalski on robotics and automation in manufacturing, Sam Holland on his journey from MakerBot's pioneering 3D printers to consumer product design, and Tessa Axsom on bridging mechanical engineering with product marketing.
The show covers technical topics like SOLIDWORKS PDM, medical device quality control and regulatory requirements (21 CFR), injection molding, and engineering simulation (FEA, CFD). But it also tackles the softer side of engineering careers: how to handle being laid off, building a freelance consulting business, managing engineering teams, and developing the communication skills that help engineers advance.
One particularly notable episode features Jim Cuseo discussing his experience leading the MacBook Pro development at Apple and managing large engineering teams. Another features Jake Whinnery, who worked at Tesla, Relativity Space, and now Apple, sharing interview preparation strategies for hardware engineering roles.
Episode length: 45-60 minutes
Why engineers recommend it: Practical career advice from people who've actually done the work, plus enough technical depth to learn something new.
2. Within Tolerance
Hosts: Dylan Domaille (Proteum Machining) and Chris "Zap" Zappettini
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Within Tolerance is pure shop talk for machinists and manufacturing engineers. Dylan runs Proteum Machining in Florida, and Zap is a machining consultant who travels the country helping shops optimize their processes. Together they discuss CNC machining, CAD/CAM workflows, tooling, fixturing, and the business side of running a machine shop.
Recent episodes have covered ERP implementation for high-mix, low-volume production (with Juan March from Jax Precision discussing the InFab system and AS9100 certification), Heidenhain controls and TNC 7 features with Joseph Pizzoferrato, and the growth of Hadrian's aerospace manufacturing operation with Jamie Underwood.
The show gets technical. Episodes cover topics like probing macros, tool radius compensation errors, five-axis machining strategies, collision protection, and process monitoring. Dylan recently documented the installation of a new U500 machine and the challenges of integrating it into his workflow. Zap shares stories from his consulting work, including training Amish machinists on advanced CNC equipment.
One standout episode features Denis Basaric of KafaTek, who transitioned from software engineering to manufacturing premium espresso grinders with 5-micron adjustability, implementing robotic automation and sophisticated quality control processes.
The podcast also regularly features Justin Gray from Toolpath Labs discussing CAM automation, constraint-based search space control, and the future of AI-assisted toolpath generation.
Episode length: 1-2.5 hours
Why engineers recommend it: Authentic shop floor perspective. No corporate polish, just real machinists talking about real problems.
3. Well There's Your Problem
Hosts: Justin Roczniak (structural engineer), November Kelly, and Liam McAnderson (systems analyst)
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
Well There's Your Problem describes itself as "a podcast about engineering disasters and systemic failures, from a leftist perspective, with jokes." That undersells it. This is a deeply researched show that examines how engineering failures happen within broader organizational, economic, and political contexts.
The format is unique: it's a video podcast with slides. Each episode walks through a specific disaster, from the immediate technical failures to the systemic factors that allowed them to happen. They've covered the Bhopal chemical disaster, the Rana Plaza collapse, Three Mile Island, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse, the FIU pedestrian bridge collapse, the MS Estonia sinking, and the Grenfell Tower fire.
Justin brings structural engineering expertise, but the show's real strength is connecting technical failures to human and organizational factors. When they covered the Pike River Mine disaster, they didn't just explain the methane explosion. They traced how safety systems degraded over time, how warnings were ignored, and how economic pressures shaped decisions.
The show includes a "Safety Third" segment where listeners submit stories of near-disasters from their own workplaces, often illustrating how systemic issues manifest in everyday engineering work.
Episode length: 1.5-4 hours (they don't hold back)
Why engineers recommend it: Technical depth combined with systems thinking. You'll understand not just what failed, but why the conditions existed for failure.
4. Brady Heywood Podcast
Host: Sean Brady (forensic engineer, Brady Heywood)
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Sean Brady is a forensic engineer based in Australia, and his podcast takes a methodical, professional approach to analyzing engineering failures. Where Well There's Your Problem brings humor and political analysis, Brady Heywood brings the rigorous perspective of someone who investigates failures professionally.
One of the show's crown jewels is the "Saving Apollo 13" series, a five-part deep dive into the Apollo 13 mission told from an engineering perspective. Brady walks through the explosion, the improvised solutions developed by Mission Control, and the technical challenges of getting three astronauts home in a crippled spacecraft. The series includes original NASA audio and examines problems like keeping the lunar module functioning, maintaining trajectory with a dead main engine, and the famous CO2 scrubber improvisation.
Other episodes cover the Pike River Mine disaster in New Zealand (a three-part series examining the 2010 methane explosion that killed 29 miners), Boston's Big Dig cost overruns and construction problems, and the 1976 Montreal Olympics financial disaster.
Brady also produced "The Brady Review," examining fatalities in Queensland's mining and quarrying industry from 2000 to 2019. The episode explores what's actually causing mining deaths and whether bad luck, human error, or systemic hazards are to blame.
Note: The podcast is no longer producing new episodes, but the archive remains excellent.
Episode length: 30-60 minutes per episode, longer for multi-part series
Why engineers recommend it: Professional forensic engineering perspective without sensationalism. Brady explains technical material clearly while examining human and organizational factors.
5. The Engineered Mind
Host: Jousef Murad
Listen: Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Jousef Murad is a mechanical engineer who specialized in computational mechanics and fluid dynamics, then wrote his master's thesis using deep learning on 3D geometry data. He now works at Monolith AI (an AI for engineers company) and runs a YouTube channel with over 200,000 subscribers alongside this podcast.
The Engineered Mind focuses on CFD, FEA, AI, and the intersection of simulation with machine learning. Jousef interviews researchers, scientists, and engineers working at the cutting edge of computational engineering.
Recent guests have included Stephan Groß from Siemens, discussing CFD visualization, race car aerodynamics, and the future of AI in rendering and VR for making simulations more accessible. Kelly Senecal, co-founder of Convergent Science, talked about predictive CFD, genetic algorithms for engine optimization, and his work on spray breakup modeling. Roland Jones from Altair discussed AI adoption in engineering, from data preparation to predictive maintenance and generative AI applications.
One particularly interesting episode features Mohamed Aly Sayed, who holds a PhD in particle tracking and turbulent flow modeling, worked for Aston Martin's F1 team, and now works as a CFD development engineer at WIN-GD while running his own CFD tools company, Simulitica.
The show also covers career topics: Jousef frequently asks guests about their paths into engineering, what they wish they'd known earlier, and advice for students and early-career engineers.
Episode length: 45-60 minutes
Why engineers recommend it: Technical depth on simulation and AI topics that's hard to find elsewhere, plus a host who understands both the engineering and the AI sides.
What's Next
In Part 2, we'll cover five more podcasts that Reddit's mechanical engineering community recommends: These shows cover aerospace history, CAD engineering, F1 aerodynamics, CFD, AI in product development, high-performance computing, and the broader world of mechanical engineering innovation.
