Poets & Thinkers

About Poets & Thinkers

Poets & Thinkers explores the humanistic future of business leadership through deep, unscripted conversations with visionary minds – from best-selling authors and inspiring artists to leading academic experts and seasoned executives. Hosted by tech executive, advisor, and Princeton entrepreneurship & design fellow Ben Lehnert, this podcast challenges conventional MBA wisdom, blending creative leadership, liberal arts, and innovation to reimagine what it means to lead in the AI era. If you believe leadership is both an art and a responsibility, this is your space to listen, reflect, and evolve.

Publisher

Benedikt Lehnert

Category

business · education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Mar 2025

Latest episode

3 Jun 2026

Latest episodes

24 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   3 Jun 2026

   The Future is Feminine: On who gets to imagine the future with Graça Fonseca

   What if we gave ordinary citizens the power to decide how public money is spent? Graça Fonseca did just that. With her pioneering vision, she built the world’s first national participatory budget, helped transform a crisis-era Lisbon into Europe’s entrepreneurial city of the year, and served as Portugal’s Minister of Culture through COVID. Now she’s asking an even bigger question: who gets to imagine the future? In this episode, Ben sits down with Graça Fonseca to trace a throughline fr...

2. 

   20 May 2026

   Human Conservationism: On improv, creative play and developing negative capability as leadership practices with Gabriella White

   What if the most important thing a leader can (re)learn now is to be silly and playful? In a world obsessed with optimization and yearning for certainty, Gabriella White makes the case for a radically different kind of readiness and skill building in the age of AI: one rooted in play, presence, and the courage to be ordinary. Gabriella is a trained actor turned interdisciplinary creative leader who calls herself a “human conservationist”. A deliberately playful provocation that names somethin...

3. 

   22 Apr 2026

   Hollow Echoes: Why AI art will never have a soul with Sean Wolcott

   What happens to art when the systems designed to replicate it at mass can’t actually feel anything? In this conversation, Ben sits down with designer-turned-composer Sean Wolcott who draws a sharp lines between technology, knowledge and lived human experience – and makes the case that no amount of computation can bridge the gap. Sean has lived at the intersection of visual art, design, and music for over three decades. From early days making cassette tape artwork in high school to shaping Mic...

Who has been a guest on Poets & Thinkers

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• João Sevilhano
• Arvind Narayanan
• Jaxson Khan
• Danielle McClune
• Matthew Bennett

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,391

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

85

Social presence

0

YouTube

68

Engagement

51

Contact Poets & Thinkers

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.