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It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch

by itsneworleans.com

OUT TO LUNCH finds economist and Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti conducting business New Orleans style: over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Olreans. In his 15th year in the host seat, Ricchiuti’s learned but uniquely NOLA informal perspective has established Out to Lunch as the voice of Crescent City business. You can also hear the show on WWNO 89.9FM.

Publisher-supplied feed metadata · PodParley refreshed Oct 11, 2026 · Source feed

Episodes

  1. Hello Goodbye

    No matter how unique your marriage or your domestic partner relationship may be, there are two moments that are common to all of us: The moment we meet somebody special. And the moment we say goodbye to them. The former is typically happy. The latter is typically sad. Although those moments often...

  2. A Post Popeyes Utopia

    Who among us wouldn’t like to do something to make the world a better place? Maybe seeing homeless people on the street breaks your heart. Maybe you’ve got a great idea that would keep at-risk kids in school through graduation… or an idea that could help elderly people who are lonely and...

  3. Indian Milestone

    There’s a question that gets tossed around in the local music business. “What is New Orleans music?” Is it only music that has a distinct New Orleans vibe, like Professor Longhair or Dumpstaphunk? Or is a singer/songwriter like Andrew Duhon or a Latin band like The Iguanas making New Orleans…

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  4. Winning Ways

    If you’ve lived in New Orleans for longer than 12 months, there’s a good chance someone has asked you if you’re going to the track for Thanksgiving. If you’ve never heard that question, well, “The Track” is the Fair Grounds racetrack in Mid City. They’ve been celebrating opening day of the...

  5. Vision

    The English language is tricky. Take the word “vision” for example. By one definition, vision is the ability of the eye to see what it’s looking at. The other definition of vision is about imagination: the ability to conjure up a picture of something beyond everyday reality. In other words…

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  6. News Is Next

    In the past week, podcast listeners to this show have come from across the US, Canada, Austria, the UK, and Spain. If you’re one of our far-flung podcast listeners, "Hello!" If you live in New Orleans, you might hear us on WWNO. In which case you will have probably heard, as part of the local…

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  7. Vacation Tattoo Removal

    If you live in New Orleans, you’ve probably had this happen: A friend gets in touch and says they’re coming to town for something to do with their work. Usually a convention. They’ll be in touch when they get here and know their schedule. The next communication you get is an apology. They’re on…

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  8. Prosperall The Alternative

    There’s a reason you’re familiar with Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie A Few Good Men yelling, “You can’t handle the truth!” Partly it’s because of the intensity of Nicholson’s performance, but mostly it’s because it’s a hard-hitting piece of universal reality: A lot of the time we’d…

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  9. Propeller and Friends

    If you’ve lived in New Orleans for any length of time, you know we love to rebuild. We rebuilt the levees. We rebuilt the schools. We rebuilt the Superdome. After every storm, we rebuild thousands of roofs and hundreds of homes. After Hurricane Katrina, a small group of New Orleanians decided…

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  10. THC Tarps

    There are two things we know a lot about in New Orleans: partying and hurricanes. For a long time those weren't unrelated. The hurricane party was a New Orleans institution — you'd ride out the storm with your neighbors, a case of beer, and a sense of invincibility. These days, after Katrina and...

  11. Kitchen Closet

    Although each of us is free to believe whatever we want, when it comes to our personal finances, we tend to operate with a number of shared beliefs. One of these is the belief in the benefit of ownership. For example, it’s better to own your own business than be an employee. Financially, that...

  12. Visible and Invisible New Orleans

    I want to start out today by running through a few notable New Orleans landmarks: The new terminal at Louis Armstrong Airport. The U.S Custom House. The gold/copper skin on the Superdome. The Civic Theater. The W New Orleans French Quarter Hotel. The Xavier University Dormitories. There are a…

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  13. After The Revolution

    If you’re under 30, and you have any kind of original, innovative ideas, you might not know that before you were born people like you generally left New Orleans and went to places where forward-thinking was appreciated. Then, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina had knocked the city to its knees, the...

  14. The Best Of All Possible Worlds

    In the mid 1700’s, a French author, Voltaire, wrote a biting satire that has remained a classic piece of literature ever since. The novel, Candide, is about a student who is continually beset by all kinds of horrific disasters. It’s basically a buddy comedy in which the kid’s super-upbeat tutor...

  15. The Road Less Traveled

    If you think it feels like things are speeding up and change is coming faster than ever, well, you’re right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to get to a worldwide population of 3 billion. We got there in 1927. From there, it only took about 70 more years – one lifetime – to get to a...

  16. Solutions From The South

    In conversations about business, you don’t hear Karl Marx quoted very often. That’s principally because of his enthusiasm for communism, which is kind of the opposite of business… But Marx was an economist back in the mid 1800’s and the reason we still know about him is because he had some…

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  17. A Little Help From My Friends

    Things don't always work out like you planned. You know, they just don't. Nobody gets married planning to one day get divorced. But, somehow, around 40% of people who get married for the first time find themselves at some point in that position. For people who get married a second time, 60% of...

  18. The Seen and Unseen World

    People who try and explain the complexity of human existence sometimes talk about “the seen and unseen world.” The seen world is the world of everyday reality in which we live. The theory of the unseen world attempts to explain some events in the real world - like love, happiness, and talent - in...

  19. Two of Your Favorite People

    When you’re the CEO or Executive Director of a company, you’re responsible for, well, everything. If the company does well, you’re a genius. If the company does poorly, you’re fired. Typically, the definition of business success is how much money a company makes. And that can be a function of...

  20. John and John

    Most people start a business for the same reason: to make money. John Roberts started a business to give money away. John and his business partner, Mickal Adler, would certainly like to end up making money at some point – that is the end goal of their company, Boot 64 Ventures. It’s the word...

  21. Catching Up

    When we started out making a show about New Orleans business, people – even in the business community – said, “Well that’s great, but what are you going to do after 6 weeks?” That was 2011. We’ve recorded a new episode of Out to Lunch almost every week since then. And we still haven’t run out of...

  22. That Was Then This Is Now

    I have three questions for you. One - What are your parents’ names? You can probably answer that easily. Two - What are your grandparents’ names? You can probably answer that as well. Now here's the third question. What are the names of your great grandparents? Do you know? Off the top of your...

  23. Minority Nurse

    In almost every conversation about healthcare, we hear the term, “provider.” Typically, we assume a healthcare provider is a doctor. But, if you look at insurance company definitions of health care providers, the term includes almost every branch of medical care - therapists, podiatrists, imaging...

  24. How Sweet It Is

    New Orleans has been around for over 300 years. From almost the very beginning, bar rooms have been an integral part of our social life. There are French works of art depicting bar scenes as early as the mid 1800’s. Starting in the 1970’s, photographers like Mike Smith and Lee Crum started...

  25. Your Brain on ACT

    Do you ever use the term “brainiac” to describe someone who’s super smart? We use a term like that because we tend to assume that someone is either highly intelligent, or they’re not. In other words, you’re either lucky enough to be born with a high-functioning brain that can get you into…

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  26. Puppies and Pastries

    A lot of business success stories contain familiar scenarios. They include a previous spectacular failure; everybody telling an entrepreneur they’re crazy; and an entrepreneur explaining that what might look like an overnight success was anything but. And then there are entrepreneurs like Peter's...

  27. Hi How Can I help You

    I was very tempted to go fishing today, and leave this show to the machines. If you have any doubt that AI could do my job and conduct a 30 minute interview with local business people, today’s show is going to remove that doubt. In fact, it won’t take the whole show, you’ll probably be convinced…

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  28. Words and Pictures

    If you’ve ever worked in corporate America, you may have had this experience: you’re having a perfectly normal day when you get an email from HR with the subject line, “Team Building.” Now, you might be the most fabulous team player in the company, but do you really want to spend a weekend doing…

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  29. NOLA HALO

    There’s a term in psychology that also applies to marketing. It’s called “The Halo Effect.” It refers to how we can make sometimes incorrect assumptions based on a collection of pieces of information. For a business case study let’s take a look at a lighting company that was founded in the UK in...

  30. The Upside of AI

    When people talk about the place of AI in the workforce, it’s mostly doom and gloom about how AI is going to take your job. I’ve even sounded the alarm myself about podcasts entirely produced and hosted without the contribution of a single human being. My lunch guests today are coming at AI from…

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  31. More Food 'n Music

    Lists used to be the stuff of clickbait. Now even venerable outlets like the New York Times regularly publish lists. Including the Times’ list of the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans. Those of us who live here know there are so many good restaurants and so much good music in New Orleans, we…

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  32. The Pursuit

    Theoretically, we understand the difference between success and happiness. But there’s a big gap between theory and reality. What bridges that gap is often, courage. Suppose you worked hard, have a great job in a competitive field, are well paid and highly regarded, but you’re not really happy…...

  33. Cabbage

    Generally, by the time someone gets invited on a show like this they’ve figured out how to tell the story of their business in a way that makes their journey seem like a steady climb from humble beginnings to current success. In telling these histories, entrepreneurs will talk generally about...

  34. Crypt Flowers Flex

    As human beings, we have many shared experiences. Most of us, one way or another, get a haircut. And most of us appreciate the fleeting beauty of flowers. You might think those two mundane observations are devoid of any kind of potential entrepreneurial re-invention. After all, whether your mom...

  35. Neon Sofa

    When you walk into a home, a room, or a business, you typically have a single sensation. A place feels a certain way. That specific reaction is actually the culmination of a whole range of perceptions that include observations about dimensions, light, color, furniture shapes and sizes, painting…

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  36. Stitches

    Fewer than 400,000 people live in Orleans Parish. Every year we also have around 19 million temporary residents. Also known as “tourists.” New Orleanians tend to think of these two populations as distinct – even at odds with each other. But in fact, our local economy is entwined with our tourist...

  37. College Paper

    As a society, we’re generally focused on achievement. We celebrate when a person gets into college. And we celebrate when they graduate. In between, when it comes to winning monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily battles - like structuring your day to attend classes and study for tests; and how to...

  38. Hot Sauna Cold Plunge

    There’s a difference between an unintentional and an intentional experience. For example, you could be wandering down Oak Street at night and unintentionally hear music coming out of The Maple Leaf. It might sound great, but it sounds a whole lot better if you intentionally go into the club and...

  39. Safety First

    People who own or run factories and refineries love to complain about how onerous it is to comply with the rules and regulations laid out by OSHA – the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. On the other hand, these same businesses brag about their safety record to attract and...

  40. Lucy NOCCA

    If you’ve got a high school kid in public school in New Orleans and your kid is interested in pursuing anything in the arts – like music, dance, theater, film, even creative writing – you find out pretty quickly, the school doesn’t have a budget for that. To put on a play, publish a newspaper,...

  41. General Admission

    I’m sitting at a table with two people: Patrick and Conway. In front of me, there’s a knife. I could use the knife to cut the food on my plate. Or I could lunge across the table and stab Conway with it. If I did that, what would you say Patrick is supposed to do? He could do nothing. He could…

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  42. Affordable Storyville

    New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 73 of them. Each one of these neighborhoods has its own flavor, its unique characteristics, and residents who can tell you about people who were brought up there and went on to do something notable. Claus Sadlier grew up in Old Metairie. It’s possible you...

  43. Seeds of Change

    You may have heard people who started up businesses talking about how they found investors. Typically, they’ll say something like, “We pitched our idea and raised X amount.” It sounds simple. But when you dig a little deeper, delivering a successful pitch to investors is not quite as...

  44. Tipitina Bienville

    There are countless myths and reports throughout human history of places where spirits come down to earth. Where the intangible meets the material world. In the US, there are few places that better demonstrate this crossroads than New Orleans. People have tried to explain how the joy of living…

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  45. Inspiration Perspiration

    In the 1800’s Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the light bulb, the record player, and the first motion picture capture device which paved the way for the birth of movies. Was Thomas Edison a genius? In response to that question Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99%...

  46. Mezcal Glitter

    Maybe this has happened to you. You stumble onto a great new show on Netflix - and when you tell your friends about it, everybody seems to know about it already. But for some reason you never got the memo. Peter's lunch guests today don’t have shows on Netflix, but they both have unique stories…

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  47. NOLA Girl Power

    I’m going to hit you with some statistics. About women. Here’s the first one: Around 50% of the population in the US are women. You probably knew that one. Here’s another one. Women-owned businesses. According to the National Association of Women Business Owners, 42% of existing US businesses are...

  48. Escapist Success Stories

    People typically get invited onto shows like this because they’re successful. So, it will come as no surprise to you that my two guests on Out to Lunch today have success stories. What might surprise you, is the magnitude of their success. Cathy Deano is the founder of Painting With a Twist. It’s…

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  49. You Can't Have One

    If you’re a visual artist and you have an idea for something you want to create, there’s not much standing between you and making your vision a reality. Maybe just a piece of paper and a pencil. However, if your idea for a new creation is a business, well, things are a bit more complex. If you…

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  50. Roll The Dice

    You can do a lot with money. After you’ve spent it on necessities like food, housing, and education, if you’ve got money to spare you can buy stuff. Or, you can use your excess money to make more money. There are fundamentally two ways of doing this. Investing. And gambling. There are people who...

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ABOUT THIS SHOW

OUT TO LUNCH finds economist and Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti conducting business New Orleans style: over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Olreans. In his 15th year in the host seat, Ricchiuti’s learned but uniquely NOLA informal perspective has established Out to Lunch as the voice of Crescent City business. You can also hear the show on WWNO 89.9FM.

HOSTED BY

itsneworleans.com

Produced by Grant Morris

CATEGORIES

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch have?

It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch currently has 568 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch about?

OUT TO LUNCH finds economist and Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti conducting business New Orleans style: over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Olreans. In his 15th year in the host seat, Ricchiuti’s learned but uniquely NOLA informal perspective has established Out to Lunch as the voice of...

How often does It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch release new episodes?

It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 568 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.

Where can I listen to It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch?

You can listen to It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch?

It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch is created and hosted by itsneworleans.com.
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