A repeated theme for me in branded podcast reviews is chronicling ways that brands and production teams at general interest shows are evolving and pushing the boundaries on sponsored content from brands. Today’s review is not of a standalone branded company podcast, but a sponsored episode:

- - - Revisionist History: Exploring Life-Saving AI Tech with T-Mobile for Business - - -

Revisionist History from Malcolm Gladwell is a great show about “overlooked and misunderstood” stories and history. It’s part of Pushkin Industries, which makes a bunch of other shows worth listening to, and they are pretty innovative about experimenting with audiobooks and sponsored content.

This is actually not the first sponsored episode between Pushkin and T-Mobile. They’ve done two previous episodes in the Revisionist History feed about tech at Formula 1 racing, and about tech in retail & healthcare. I appreciate that the show is very clear that the episode is sponsored content. It’s explained at the start and end, and the guests are representing T-Mobile. And it’s still really compelling audio - they’ve chosen topics that will appeal to an overlapping audience with the show, and Malcolm Gladwell’s signature engagement with the topic and probing and unconventional questions make it come to life.