SXSW 2025 Podcasts

This year several well-known hosts took the stage to record their podcasts live at SXSW to the delight of Interactive conference goers. The Michelle Obama podcast was by far the most coveted ticket in town. That podcast will be available to the public via the IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson podcast on March 21st. Athletes who hosted podcasts included Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, Cam Heyward and Andy Roddick. 

Other favorites included

• A Touch More: The Podcast hosted by world-renowned athletes Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe
• Not Just Football hosted by Pittsburgh Steelers team captain Cam Heyward and his best friend, Hayden Walsh
• On with Kara Swisher hosted by Kara Swisher including interviews with  Chelsea Handler and Senator Elizabeth  Warren. 
• Pivot – hosted by journalist Kara Swisher and entrepreneur Scott Galloway
• Prof G Markets hosted by Scott Galloway and research analyst Ed Elson
• Served hosted by tennis champion Andy Roddick

My favorite podcast taping was on Sunday morning at SXSW the Audible original podcast The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell, featuring special guest, renowned author and researcher, UT Visiting Professor at McCombs School of Business and Texas native and  Brené Brown. The trio discussed Brené’s personal journey from academic researcher to cultural phenomenon and the pivotal moments that shaped her path. In a candid conversation about curiosity, connection, and showing up in the arena of life, they revealed the person behind the platform. The live-recorded bonus episode will be available to Audible listeners on Thursday, April 3. 

 Live podcast conversation quotes included:

• Brené Brown:
  • On researching shame early in her career: “I think asking me to explain shame when I was in my late 20s and doing my PhD work would be like asking a fish to describe water. I just thought that’s the way the world worked.”
  • On leading in the future and era of AI: “I think paradox, metaphor, poetry, is going to be the way we lead through very complex things. We’re not going to find the solution to leading in AI, in binary data sets… Emotion, connection, empathy, trust building, we’re really not great at those things, because we’ve been taught for the past 30 years that everything that makes us human is not good at work. I think we have some skill building to do around the things that we are. You’re not going to get consciousness and empathy and courage out of machines, but we’re going to have to work on that in ourselves – and that’s going to be tough going because it’s going to push against the things that we probably hate the most, which is discomfort.”
  • On staying curious in the world today: “The foundation of curiosity is vulnerability, and one of the greatest barriers to curiosity today is the level of volatility and uncertainty in the culture that makes a willingness to stay curious difficult. I think we’re pushing against some very hard neurobiology. So just to wake up and get out of bed every morning can feel scary and uncertain today.”
• Kenya Barris:
  • On the power of curiosity: “My relationship to Malcolm is curiosity. I think the people who I tend to get along with best actually do curiosity, because curiosity doesn’t come with judgement. Curiosity comes with an honest desire to understand more about other people.”
• Malcolm Gladwell:
  • On intergenerational learning: “There’s a certain realm of knowledge where there’s clear progression, right? Physics is different today than it was, and we don’t relearn all the old physics before we get to the new physics. But in psychological questions… I feel like we go round and round… For example, why does every new generation of parents have to relearn what it means to be a good parent?… It’s weird to me that in some realms of knowledge, we clearly move ahead, and in others, every new generation of people have to kind of relearn really important lessons about what it means to be a good person, an effective leader, a good parent.”