Brain

Pushkin Industries is revving up a broad slate of shows for the fall as the audio studio looks to capitalize on the “network effect” among its creators and hosts that has been built up since the company’s founding in 2018.

Eric Sandler, chief strategy officer for Pushkin, discusses the company’s business vision, growth drivers and outlook in an interview on the latest episode of “Daily Variety” podcast. Among the highlights of Pushkin’s slate is a look back at “The Big Short” with author Michael Lewis. Pushkin will release the first audiobook edition of Lewis’ book, and Lewis will host a companion podcast to revisit the key events and key players of the 2008 mortgage crisis. The 2010 book led to the 2015 feature adaptation starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt.

“It speaks to the depth of the content that the creators we work with make,” Sandler says. “It’s ten years since the film, but it’s almost like a content pipeline reversal. Fifteen years ago, it was a best selling book. Ten years ago it was an Oscar winning film, and next month it’s going to be a companion podcast with an audiobook,” Sandler says. “It’s still as relevant today as it was when he wrote it.”

Sandler points to another example of what he calls Pushkin’s “network effect” to illustrate how the company uses audio as the content hub from which other media extensions sprout. Gladwell did a “Revisionist History” series “The Bomber Mafia” in 2021. It was then turned into a Pushkin audiobook. “And we did a little bit of a reversal of the pipeline, and we sold the print rights, and then it got optioned by A24 for TV-film,” Sandler says. “And so we want to create more opportunities for more storytellers to use this as a testing ground for content, really drive home really impactful stories, and be able to explore the funnel in a different way.”

Also in the episode, Jem Aswad, Variety‘s executive editor of music, details his recent sit-down with seminal musician David Byrne. As a longtime fan, Aswad brings great perspective to the profile of the former Talking Heads frontman published in Variety‘s Sept. 2 print edition and on Variety.com on Sept. 5. Meeting Byrne at his office was like getting a glimpse inside the psyche of an artist who has forged a sui generis career exploring music and storytelling in many different styles and forms, Aswad says.

Byrne’s “office is downtown New York, as you would expect. Of course, he rides his bike there. He rides his bike everywhere. It’s a loft-like space,” Aswad explains. “Walking in there is this vast floor to ceiling wall of shelves that are just loaded with stuff. And it’s sort of like looking at his brain, because it’s tons of vinyl and tons of CDs and tons of DVDs. There was a Grammy. There was an Oscar. I think there was a VMA Moonman as well. There were a couple of other things in there, but most striking were anatomical models. There were a couple of the human brain, and he actually opened the ‘American Utopia’ Broadway show, holding up a brain and talking about how our brains work.”

(Pictured top: Pushkin co-founder and host Malcolm Gladwell)

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