Going on holiday is a chance for a much-needed screen-break, so feast your ears on these podcasts instead
Just admit it, we are totally dependent on our digital devices.
People in the UK now check their smartphones, on average, every 12 minutes of the waking day, according to a worrying 2018 report from media watchdog Ofcom.
This is likely to be even worse for business people, with a deluge of emails tiring our eyes throughout the morning, noon and night.
But for those City types looking for some audio-driven insight and relaxation over the summer, the good news is that the podcast boom has given us so many incredible listens.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman has gifted us with Masters of Scale, for instance. This podcast concentrates on business theory – yes, that sounds rather dull, but not when the interviewees are the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Spotify’s Daniel Ek, and Instagram’s Kevin Systrom. The discussions are remarkably frank and provide some excellent actionable tips.
If you are a chief executive, leader, HR director or anyone interested in the “people side” of business (the most important part, in my opinion), you need to download Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast.
From “How To Fix Your Hiring Process” to “Avoiding Miscommunication In A Digital World”, typically a leading academic will effectively tell you – free of charge – how to improve your business. The podcast is US-focused, but after around half an hour of listening, IdeaCast always leaves you with some high-quality food for thought.
Business Wars pitches two competing businesses against each other – Nike versus Adidas, Blockbuster versus Netflix, McDonalds versus Burger King. The case studies analyse the game-changing steps that helped create the dominant brands, as well as the conflicts between them.
If you have always wished you could commit a whole speech to memory or remember the name of every employee, Joshua Foer’s podcast is the one for you. In it, he explains how anyone can become a memory virtuoso, and tells the story of his yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top “mental athletes”.
In a similar vein of self improvement and reflection, in the NPR podcast Hidden Brain, host Shankar Vedanta combines storytelling and science to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behaviour, shape our choices, and direct our relationships.
For those wanting to understand key current affairs issues, the New York Times journalists are among the best. Through the In The Argument series, columnists David Leonhardt, Michelle Goldberg, and Ross Douthat explain the debates from across the political spectrum, so that both sides of the argument can be understood.
And finally, although it would have been first up if the focus of this piece had not been business, everyone deserves a little treat – Revisionist
History. This podcast series from Malcolm Gladwell and Pushkin Industries starts with a random piece of information, which is then developed into a fascinating story about something overlooked or that needs revisiting and reinterpreting. It is storytelling at its best, and without a doubt my favourite podcast.
Happy listening.