Leadership Next

Fortune's Leadership Next has been around long enough to have evolved through several hosts, and the current incarnation is tighter and more focused than the early episodes. The premise is straightforward: interview sitting CEOs about how they are navigating the current moment, whatever that moment happens to be. In practice, this has meant a lot of conversations about AI adoption, return-to-office battles, supply chain reshuffling, and the generational handoff happening in boardrooms as boomer CEOs retire. Guests are typically running companies you have heard of, and the Fortune brand gets them to say things they probably would not say to a smaller outlet. Episodes run around 30 to 40 minutes, which is short enough that no single conversation overstays its welcome. The hosts are journalists, not cheerleaders, and they push back when a CEO gives the rehearsed answer. That discipline matters in a space crowded with softball interviews. If you read Fortune's coverage anyway, the podcast adds a layer of voice and pacing that the print pieces cannot. If you do not, it is still a useful weekly scan of what the people running large public companies are actually worrying about right now, straight from them.