Category Report
Which titles are driving leadership and workplace conversations this year, based on mentions across leading business podcasts.
Biggest mover: Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment by Daniel Coyle #6, rising 568 places.
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan was the top newcomer at #1. In total 202 books had their debut mentions.
The Next Big Idea Daily drove the most book chatter, with 25% of this years book mentions.
Across podcasts this year, the most discussed books cluster around how minds work, how systems shape behavior, and how people adapt under pressure. Michael Pollan’s forthcoming A World Appears stands out as a clear outlier, driven by coordinated promotion as a season pick and signaling strong interest in consciousness, psychedelics, and the science–spirituality interface. Behavioral science and influence are a second major thread, from Hacking the Human Mind to Maya Shankar’s focus on identity through change, reflecting demand for evidence-based tools to navigate personal and societal volatility. Daniel Coyle’s trio of titles underscores a practical concern with cultivating talent, culture, and flourishing communities at work. At the same time, recurring references to 1984, Autonomy, and Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification highlight anxiety about technology, surveillance, and platform decay, suggesting professionals are seeking both strategic advantage and safeguards in an increasingly unstable digital environment.
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Michael Pollan
8
mentions
Hacking the Human Mind: The behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world's best brands
MichaelAaron Flicker, Richard Shotton
3
mentions
The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans
Maya Shankar
3
mentions
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
Daniel Coyle
3
mentions
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Daniel Coyle
3
mentions
Flourish: The Art of Building Meaning, Joy, and Fulfillment
Daniel Coyle
3
mentions
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown
3
mentions
1984
George Orwell
3
mentions
Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car-And How It Will Reshape Our World
Lawrence D. Burns, Christopher Shulgan
3
mentions
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
Cory Doctorow
2
mentions
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness to #1.
Significant outlier with 6.6x as many mentions as the average book.
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness to #1.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
Hacking the Human Mind: The behavioral science secrets behind 17 of the world's best brands to #2.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy to #15.
Down from #1 last year
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail to #330.
No mentions after ranking #4 last year.
Think and Grow Rich to #364.
No mentions after ranking #5 last year.
The shows that surfaced the most book mentions this year.
Mentions recorded per 30-day window (past 8 months)
How many of the mentions were for the top 10 books.
The podcasts included in this report are curated by MavenSignal to represent the trusted voices in this category.
We ingest public RSS feeds, analyze each episode, extract book mentions with AI, and validate with humans. The resulting data is normalized and deduplicated, building the canonical signal for the MavenSignal platform. Every insight and ranking is drawn from that verified layer.
Ready for recommendations shaped by your favorite podcasts? Sign up and get your personalized feed.