Upticks in tech. Trends in travel. Teens in trouble. If a topic is on your mind, chances are it’s on one of our podcasts. The McKinsey Podcast covers our newest and most provocative research, across our capabilities and industries worldwide. The five-year-old series, averaging 20 interviews a year, was recently awarded two gold medals by the Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts, which is committed to fostering the future of traditional and interactive media.
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The medals were in the Podcast category “General Series—Business and Consulting” and for the single episode “Location, location, location: The impact of place on racial equity.” The McKinsey website was also awarded gold medals in the General Websites—Corporate Communications category.
The McKinsey Podcast is hosted by Lucia Rahilly, global editorial director, and Roberta Fusaro, editorial director, and produced by Laurel Moglen, all of McKinsey Global Publishing.
“The McKinsey Podcast started as an effort to amplify the timeliest and most differentiated research we publish in any given year,” explains Lucia. “Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit and disrupted so many things, and gave us the opportunity to rethink our format to become more innovative.” Evidently it's working: in 2024 alone, it has driven 3 million downloads on audio players like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as an additional 1.2 million transcript reads on McKinsey.com.
A big part of a successful podcast is keeping the conversation relaxed and casual, so that the audience feels almost like they’re eavesdropping. How do the co-hosts put participants at ease? Preparation is one factor, according to Roberta, and they often invite guests to suggest questions and angles. “This builds trust because they help to shape the dialogue,” she says. “With introductions all the way around, including the production crew, and an opening joke or two, we try to make the dynamic as conversational as possible.”
In case you missed them, here are excerpts from three podcasts this year.
Location, location, location: the impact of place on racial equity
JP Julien, a McKinsey partner: When I was nine, we moved maybe a ten-mile drive down the Garden State Parkway to a middle-class suburb…Overnight the quality of my school improved. My mom’s commute to work dropped by an hour. We had a grocery store and a bank just minutes away. That was all made possible by my parents and my aunt and uncle pooling their funds and purchasing a two-family home in the suburbs. As a nine-year-old, I immediately saw the difference that an address could make. It had a huge impact…Place matters in economic mobility.
How to be a better chief of staff
Andrew Goodman, a McKinsey senior partner: The chief of staff (COS)…keeps a finger on the pulse of the organization to help give a bit of a “Spidey sense” or peripheral vision for the CEO to understand what’s going on in the company.
Any COS or CEO should have five to six priorities…two or three being your “tuxedo agenda,” the outward-facing priorities that you have, and two or three being your “pajama agenda,” things that were inward facing and about how the company or organization works. I really liked that idea as a way of thinking about priorities.
A new itinerary for the tourism industry
Margaux Constantin, a McKinsey partner: For travelers from the United Arab Emirates, there is…a strong preference…to visit iconic [bucket list] destinations. But what they’re really after are active, sport-heavy holidays—being outdoors, hiking, and doing some sort of exercise. On the other end, Europeans and North Americans are a lot more homogeneous in their preferences; 40 percent see their vacations as a way to just get away from it all…and the best way…is the traditional beach holiday, which remains the top destination for those markets.