I'm listening.

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One of the four advantages I offer all of my clients is curation. I listen, I read, I watch… not so they don’t have to, but so they have instant access to a valuable resource instead of having to find it. I probably picked up this habit by osmosis when I was a younger person, and older relatives would cut out newspaper articles and mail them to me. Later on, as a communications staffer and then leader, I’d send out a daily news email to the entire agency or organization where I worked.

I like podcasts because I can put them on when I’m running, exercising, pulling weeds or working on a puzzle. Because the human mind can absorb spoken information faster than written information, I listen to podcasts at 1.7x the recorded speed. Yes, my family makes fun of me for this. And yes, if I happen to pick up the same show on the car radio, it sounds very, very sloooow.

So, here is my regular podcast listening list in no particular order.

Leadership and coaching

  • Ladies Leading Professor Ava Thompson Greenwell (who taught me broadcast journalism) has expanded her media activities to include a book about Black women in leadership and a podcast of the same name. 

  • HBR Women at Work A trio of hosts bring forward workplace issues that affect women and everyone else.

  • Coaching Real Leaders Fellow Georgetown alum Muriel Wilkins has a real coaching conversation in every episode.

  • The Look and Sound of Leadership Tom Henschel hosts a long-running, occasional series of brief chats about communication and coaching.

  • Leading the Emergence The Nebo Company’s founder and head Kate Ebner hosts this series looking ahead to the future.

  • How I Built This Guy Raz tells the origin stories of some of the best-known companies and organizations.

  • Hidden Brain Former NPR journalist Shankar Vedantam probes the complexities of the human mind.

  • How To Slate’s Amanda Ripley interviews experts who give helpful advice about life.

  • Anxious Achiever This one’s about the intersection of leadership and mental health, a topic that comes up a lot in coaching.

  • The Vulnerable Man Coach colleague Christopher Veal brings out the subtle and unexpected in his guests.

Storytelling (general)

  • Snap Judgment I have yet to find a theme that unites all of the stories on this show, but they’re endlessly fascinating.

  • The Moth This live, recorded storytelling series has been on the radio for 25 years.

  • Radiolab Mostly science, laced with wit and curiosity from multiple hosts.

Race, Equity, Current Events

Podcasts I’ve joined as a guest

All of these podcasts are readily available on any listening platform. I tend to avoid shows that are exclusively available on one platform or another. This is why I was an early and enthusiastic Brene Brown listener when she launched her podcast, but stopped following when she moved to Spotify.

So… what’s on your playlist?

Image: Anker

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