Podcasts for Marketing Leaders: May 2021

Hear from inspiring entrepreneurs, Barak Obama (on Conan!), Spike Lee, analysis on AT&T's failed Streaming Wars campaign, the Gates' divorce, and more

Welcome to our monthly list of recommended podcast episodes that we think people in marketing should listen to. This month’s list is so full of brilliant speakers, interviewees, and analysis, that it was really hard to narrow it down to 10 episodes.

Again, as always – this is not your regular list of marketing podcasts, but rather 10 recent episodes that listening to will make you a better marketer in more round, deep, less-obvious ways.

Enjoy.

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Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of TripActions, on Digging In and Problem Solving (57 mins)
Legends of Sales and Marketing, May 18
Meagen has built great teams and success at numerous global enterprise and SaaS tech companies. Now 20+ years into her career, she’s held executive marketing positions at MongoDB, DocuSign, IBM, and HP, among others.

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AT&T Abandons Its Hollywood Dreams (17 mins)
The Journal, May 18
When AT&T bought Time Warner and DirecTV, it set out to build a media empire that could take on companies like Netflix and Disney. But after three years and a $100 billion price tag, AT&T is giving up on that dream. WSJ’s Marcelo Prince says without media assets, AT&T is back to being the utility it once was.

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Mother’s Day Special with Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code and leader, the Marshall Plan for Moms (32 mins)
Skimm’d from the Couch, May 5
Welcome to our special Mother’s Day episode. Skimm’d from the Couch is a career podcast…and we can’t talk about work and career without talking about how that changes when you become a parent. This past year has also created new challenges for working moms while exacerbating existing ones. Which, PS: often go unrecognized.

So we wanted to know: what can we do about it? To get some answers, we invited Reshma Saujani back on the show. She’s the founder of Girls Who Code, the leader of the Marshall Plan for moms, and a mom herself. We talk to her about parenthood, entrepreneurship, and how to fix a system that undervalues the invisible work of women.

In this episode, Reshma shares how the past year has been for her, what policy changes could benefit working parents, and her advice for taking action in your own workplace.

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Brown Box (29 mins)
Radiolab, May 14
You order some stuff on the Internet and it shows up three hours later. How could all the things that need to happen to make it happen, happen so fast?

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President Barack Obama (64 mins)
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, May 31
President Barack Obama feels ambivalent about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.

The 44th President of the United States sits down with Conan to discuss making the decision to enter public service, his lifelong love of writing and latest book A Promised Land, why it’s not as hard as it looks to be funny as the president, and persevering with optimism in the 21st century.

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WeWork’s CEO on the Future of Work (18 mins)
The Journal, May 11
WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani took charge of the office space company just as the pandemic hit. He’s now on the brink of bringing WeWork public. We speak to Mathrani about his time at WeWork, his relationship with co-founder Adam Neumann, and the future of office work.

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A Year Of Protest After George Floyd’s Death (59 mins)
FiveThirtyEight Politics, May 25
History professor Yohuru Williams speaks with Galen Druke about how the protest movement sparked by George Floyd’s murder compares with past social justice movements. Micah Cohen and Kaleigh Rogers also join to talk about why Republicans are not backing a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Ctrl+Alt+Divorce (28 mins)
Today, Explained, May 21
For decades, Bill Gates exemplified the “good billionaire.” His reputation — tarnished almost overnight — highlights the danger of relying too much on billionaire philanthropists.

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TBD | The Hackers Who Took Down the Colonial Pipeline (2 mins)
What Next, May 21
Last week, a hacker group called DarkSide shut down the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the East Coast. Gas prices skyrocketed, people started hoarding gas, and DarkSide walked away with over $4 million in Bitcoin. How did they do it? And what makes this hack different from those we’ve seen before?

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Spike Lee on the Knicks’ Resurgence (35 mins)
The New Yorker Radio Hour, May 28
Spike Lee is one of the most passionate and committed fans of the New York Knicks—not to mention one of the most celebrated filmmakers of our time. Underdogs for many years, the Knicks are enjoying a renaissance, and Lee is in his glory. David Remnick and Vinson Cunningham called Lee to talk about a life of fandom, the politics of activism in the N.B.A. and the N.F.L., and Lee’s multipart documentary about life in New York since September 11th, which will be released to mark the twentieth anniversary of the attacks.