Podcasts Every Product Manager Should Follow

Podcasts offer a genuinely time-efficient way for product managers to stay current with real practitioner thinking — often through direct interviews with people actively doing the work, which can surface more current, applied perspective than a book written years earlier. Below are widely followed shows covering different aspects of product management.

Quick facts

• Podcasts are especially useful for hearing current, practitioner-level perspective rather than more formalized, textbook-style frameworks.
• Interview-format shows let you hear directly from a wide range of real practitioners, not just a single author's perspective.
• See related: Books Every Product Manager Should Read for a complementary, deeper-dive learning format.

General product management and strategy

Lenny's Podcast (Lenny Rachitsky) — Widely followed interviews with experienced product leaders and founders, covering a broad range of topics from growth to product strategy to career development, drawing on Lenny's own background and widely-read newsletter.

This Is Product Management (Product School) — Interview-format episodes featuring a range of practicing product managers discussing real, practical challenges and approaches from their own current work.

Discovery and customer-centered product work

Product Thinking (Melissa Perri) — Hosted by the author of "Escaping the Build Trap," focusing on product strategy, leadership, and the outcome-over-output thinking central to her broader work.

Broader business and growth perspective

Masters of Scale (Reid Hoffman) — While not exclusively PM-focused, offers broader insight into company growth and scaling from founders and business leaders, relevant context for PMs thinking about how their product work connects to broader company growth strategy.

How to build a genuinely useful podcast listening habit

Rather than passively listening to every episode of every show, focus on podcasts and specific episodes genuinely relevant to your current challenges or growth areas — a PM working heavily on discovery benefits more from discovery-focused episodes than growth-focused ones, at least in the near term. Taking brief notes on genuinely useful ideas, and actively looking for opportunities to apply them to real work, produces more durable learning than passive listening alone.

Why podcasts complement books well for PM learning

Books often provide deeper, more structured frameworks built and refined over time; podcasts, especially interview formats, provide more current, varied, and sometimes more nuanced practitioner perspective — hearing how a real product leader is thinking about a challenge right now offers something books, with their longer publication cycles, sometimes can't match as directly. Combining both formats — deeper structured reading alongside more frequent, current practitioner conversation — tends to build a more complete, well-rounded understanding than relying on either format alone.

Common mistakes when using podcasts for PM learning

• Listening passively without any follow-up reflection or application, missing the deeper learning that comes from genuinely engaging with the ideas discussed.
• Trying to follow too many shows simultaneously, diluting attention rather than genuinely absorbing and applying insights from a more focused, manageable set.
• Treating podcast content as universally applicable without considering how well a specific guest's context and experience actually maps to your own situation.
• Not taking any notes or follow-up action, letting genuinely useful ideas be forgotten shortly after listening.

FAQ

Should a new PM start with a specific podcast first? Lenny's Podcast is commonly recommended as a strong, broad starting point given its wide range of guests and topics, though the best fit depends on your specific current interests and challenges.

Are these podcasts relevant for BAs and project managers too? Many episodes cover broadly applicable topics — stakeholder management, prioritization, strategic thinking — that are genuinely useful beyond a strictly product management audience.

How much time should a PM spend on podcast listening for professional development? There's no fixed amount — many PMs listen during commutes or other otherwise passive time, making it a genuinely time-efficient way to layer in ongoing learning without requiring dedicated, separate study time.

Do podcast recommendations change over time? Yes — the podcast landscape evolves, with new shows emerging and others going less active, so periodically checking for current, actively-updated recommendations is worthwhile beyond any single list.