Category Report
Which titles are driving leadership and workplace conversations this month, based on mentions across leading business podcasts.
Biggest mover: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell #6, rising 206 places.
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin was the top newcomer at #2. In total 91 books had their debut mentions.
How to Be Awesome at Your Job drove the most book chatter, with 17% of this months book mentions.
Across Business & Work podcasts in October 2025, conversation clustered around two concerns: how leaders show up in turbulent times, and how to interpret economic and technological disruption. Brené Brown’s Strong Ground stands out as a clear focal point, with hosts framing it as “the book for our time” on courageous, vulnerable leadership—signaling ongoing anxiety about culture, trust, and human-centered management. In parallel, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 and Too Big to Fail are invoked explicitly to draw historical parallels to today’s markets, reflecting a desire to stress-test current decisions against past crises. Several titles, from Leadership Unblocked to Read Your Mind and The Running Ground, emphasize mindset, habits, and personal resilience as levers for performance. Classic references like Outliers, 1984, and Freakonomics underscore enduring interest in how systems, incentives, and narratives shape business outcomes and professional agency.
Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit
Brené Brown
3
mentions
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation
Andrew Ross Sorkin
3
mentions
Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential
Muriel M. Wilkins
2
mentions
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves
Andrew Ross Sorkin
2
mentions
The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports
Nicholas Thompson
2
mentions
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
2
mentions
Read Your Mind: Proven Habits for Success from the World's Greatest Mentalist
Oz Pearlman
2
mentions
1984
George Orwell
2
mentions
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
2
mentions
Disrupt Everything-and Win: Take Control of Your Future
James Patterson, Patrick Leddin PhD
2
mentions
Significant outlier with 2.8x as many mentions as the average book.
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--and How It Shattered a Nation to #2.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
Leadership Unblocked: Break Through the Beliefs That Limit Your Potential to #3.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
1984 to #8.
Down from #1 last month
No mentions after ranking #2 last month.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It to #170.
No mentions after ranking #3 last month.
The shows that surfaced the most book mentions this month.
Mentions recorded per 30-day window (past 8 months)
How many of the mentions were for the top 10 books.
The entrepreneurship podcasts included in this report are curated by MavenSignal to represent the voices founders and operators trust most for playbooks, launches, and long-term strategy.
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.
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