In marketing, as in business generally, it can be easy to focus all of our attempts at professional development or learning strictly within our industry. We subscribe to all the latest, hottest industry news – the newsletters, books and podcasts. We attend training and conferences and earn Google certificates. We focus our attention on conquering algorithms, tracking data and predicting the next consumer trends. 

But is that really the best way to grow? In David Epstien’s book, Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, he writes “everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines.” What he is advocating for is what is often referred to as being “well-rounded,” but he takes it a step further. His argument is that by exposing ourselves to more facets of life, we will get better at those we seek to master.

What it means to have range

Epstein writes, “the challenge we all face is how to maintain the benefits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasingly incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.” It’s a challenge for sure, when we have this societal or maybe even company pressure to spend all our working (and off the clock) hours on “relevant” development and task completion. 

Still, taking a step outside of the marketing and business world and engaging in content and dialogue that explores other ideas or falls into other categories (like fiction, even) might be the best thing a marketer (or any professional) can do. 

Top 5 non-marketing podcasts for marketers

In that spirit, here’s some inspiration to start expanding your range. Five commute-friendly,  non-marketing podcasts for marketers:

1. Decoder Ring, with Willa Paskin, from Slate

What it’s about: Trends, fads, cultural moments and pop culture explained. 

Why it’s relevant to marketing: Pop culture informs and influences consumerism, communication and business. Beyond that, trends can reveal a lot about what is going on in society or what people value. This podcast invites you to become more observant, more curious about the present by digging deeper into moments past — both traits that are stellar in a marketing professional.

2. Hidden Brain, with Shankar Vedantam, from Hidden Brain Media

What it’s about: the psychology of human behavior and unconscious workings of our brains.

Why it’s relevant to marketing: Besides just being fascinating, learning about how the human brain works can be crucial for anyone working with people. Period. In a communications-dependent field like marketing, it can help unlock clues to motivation, emotion and resistance to messages. Learning more about the brain can also make us more empathetic as we discover the ways in which we are scientifically similar. And empathy is a “trend” in marketing that is not going away anytime soon (or shouldn’t.) 

3. Code Switch, with Gene Demby, from NPR

What it’s about: conversations about race and its impact on society, culture, history and politics. 

Why it’s relevant to marketing: Race impacts nearly everything in our society and culture, and understanding the intersections at play is critical for anyone hoping to engage a diverse audience. Marketing conferences spend time on topics like representation, tokenism, bias and accessibility — relating these things to how to approach photography, design, messaging and audience segmentation. That’s all fine. But engaging in conversations and actively seeking education about the intersection of race and society, culture, communications, technology, etc. outside of how it impacts or influences the bottom line for marketers, can invite a new and perhaps more lasting perspective-shift that will lead to a more genuine approach. 

4. TED Radio Hour, with Manoush Zomorodi, from NPR

What it’s about: threading together big ideas and big thinkers in fairly bite-sized interviews

Why it’s relevant to marketing: The topics on this podcast range greatly, but the guiding thread might be scale. TED radio hour explores big ideas, big picture thinking, concepts with the potential to have a big impact. Marketers often spend time in the weeds — obsessing over conversion rates, quarterly goals, optimization scores and A/B test results. Taking a step back and examining the larger picture is not only refreshing, it’s essential for sparking creativity and innovation.

5. Dolly Parton’s America, with Jad Abumrad and Shima Oliaee, from WNYC Studios

What it’s about: The history and influence of Dolly Parton, a cultural icon.

Why it’s relevant to marketing: There’s just something about Dolly. She’s loved by people across the spectrum of American life, on all sides of the “cultural war.” And she’s endured and reinvented herself countless times over the last 5(!) decades. What can we learn from Dolly? A whole lot about what kinds of messages resonate, what people value and what it means to transcend to icon status. To be a brand (or a person) that is almost unanimously adored.