The Pod Piper

It is finally spring in Indiana! It did snow yesterday, but still...there is no denying it is a great time to be outside listening to podcasts. SOMETHING NEW Companies have endeavored to capture a corner of emerging markets for as long as there have been companines. A prescient move to commodify has often rewarded the business savvy with financial success, and occasionally with the hard-to-attain accolade of reshaping society. Much less common is that these earth-shaking innovators pause to think through the negative ripple effects that might emanate from a nobly conceived idea. But it’s 2019, and as the world spins madly on at a rapidly accelerating clip we need some kind of contemplative device for vetting new products before they hit the marketplace. Cue Should This Exist? , a new podcast produced in collaboration from Wait What? and Quartz. The premise is a winning one right out the gate: each episode, host Caterina Fake guides an entrepreneur through a gauntlet of jud...

SOMETHING NEW For the last several months, I’ve been anticipating a data migration process at work that has us transitioning from a legacy system to a shiny new database. This has been very exciting, but it is also adding a good deal of work to my plate that typically isn’t there. Last week we hit a milestone that ramped things up even more. And so like a good little industrious American, I’ve added another dimension of work to my life by (subconsciously?) selecting two shows with work as their centering idea to profile this week. Without further ado, let’s get into Better Life Lab and Hello Monday . A collaboration between New America and Slate, Better Life Lab seeks to study how work impacts life and how to strike a better balance. Each episode follows the story of an individual, and the personal narrative gives way to some discussion with a professional well versed in the area of focus from the first interview. It reminds me a bit of Hidden Brain but with paired back p...

(The following review coincidentally precedes the NCAA Men’s Final Four, the college basketball tournament which this year counts Auburn among the last quartet of standing teams, set to take place this weekend) SOMETHING NEW Mo Rocca is an enigmatic media personality, someone with a singular witty snark not often found in someone who works for a major news network. He comes off as very well informed and put together while also conveying this kind of eternal sardonic aloofness of a teenager with an old soul, all of which makes for a CV full of enviable roles and positions. To name but a few, Rocca has been or is currently: a panelist on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me , a correspondent on CBS Sunday Morning and The Daily Show , Vice Principal Panch in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on Broadway, a runner-up on Celebrity Jeopardy! , a moderator of the National Geographic Bee , a Daytime Emmy nominee for his work on Innovation Nation , and the host of  My Grandmother's...