Stanford Professor Says Podcasts Are Here To Stay

Photo: iHeartMedia

The podcasting industry has successfully attracted millions of listeners for well over 10 years, but has the market reached its peak?

As David Eagleman, professor of Brain Plasticity at Stanford, puts it, not a chance. In the latest episode of Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman, the neuroscientist explains that in his opinion, COVID-19 solidified the need for podcasting.

“You're in this world, I am just watching from a distance,” Eagleman told iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman. “During the pandemic, people realized ‘I want to walk, I want to garden, I want to wash the dishes,’ or whatever. It's so convenient to (pop-in) some EarPods and go.”

But what was a neuroscientist, best-selling author, TV host, and CEO doing on a marketing podcast? Well as Pittman points out at the beginning of the episode, the brain is the underpinning of everything marketers do. Eagleman’s book, Incognito, is one Pittman highly recommends to marketing professionals and he gives it out regularly as a gift. Eagleman brings a unique angle to marketing concepts with his deep understanding of how individuals work.

“We have heard of visual learners and auditory learners, and that’s true people are different places on the spectrum,” said Eagleman. “Some people are going to love podcasts and some people won’t.”

The way podcasts allow listeners to listen in on interesting conversations has a large appeal. Eagleman’s theory is that if there are activities to do, there will be listeners for podcasts.

Podcasting was just one of the topics covered on “Dr. David Eagleman: ‘The conscious mind is like a broom closet in the mansion of the brain.” For example, the unconscious portion of the brain is constantly working through and answering life's problems. We just have to learn how to listen.

Subscribe to Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman to get notified when the latest episode airs. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you want to be sure you’re listening to the podcasts everyone else is checking out, iHeartRadio has you covered. Every Monday, iHeartRadio releases a chart showing the most popular podcasts of the week. Stay up to date on what’s trending by checking out the chart here. There’s even a chart just for radio podcasts featuring all your favorite iHeartRadio personalities like Bobby Bones, Elvis Duran, Steve Harvey, and dozens of others.


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