Linen Suit & Plastic Tie

What is the Creator Economy, and how is it disrupting brand marketing? Why is everybody a media company, and how do you grow yours? This week, we chat with Monica Khan, Founder of Creator Revolution and Senior Advisor for McKinsey & Co on creator economy strategy, helping creators and companies build their brands and products in the age of influencers and content creators.

What do Grammarly, Duolingo, and Chess.com have in common? What has Gorav's obsession with these three things amounted to? How can storytelling make chess fun even for people who are bad at it? This week, we chat with Albert Cheng, Chief Growth Officer at Chess.com.Albert Cheng led Growth for three of the most successful apps in the world: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com.

What are Gorav's biggest storytelling & AI lessons so far from Wharton MBA? How did the World's Greatest Narcissist come to be? For LSPTPod's five-year anniversary, we'd like to give an update on our stories and what's to come. Thank you for staying on our journey together - we miss you dearly.

Rewind Time! This week, we celebrate the graphic novel release of Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson with a rewind of our chat with Craig in Season 3. Pick up the Ginseng Roots graphic novel in your local comic book store!Why is the American agriculture story relevant to you (yes, you)? Is comic book a genre or a medium? Why should you care about where your food comes from? How does the story of an herbal root connect the US-China trade?Kevin stumbled upon an issue in the series and got super curious - what could an American artist possibly say about Northeastern China and an herbal root best known in Chinese medicine? He ended up loving the entire series. Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300-year-long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers.Craig Thompson is a graphic novelist and author of Blankets; Good-bye, Chunky Rice; and Habibi. He grew up in a rural farming community in Marathon, Wisconsin, world capital of ginseng.Follow us on Instagram & TikTok @LSPTPod

Why does saying the wrong thing make you a better communicator? How do we manage stress in any form of talking? How does martial arts make you better at communicating? How do you communicate with a Gen Z audience?This week, we talk to Matt Abrahams, a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB), where he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effective virtual presenting. Matt hosts the award-winning Think Fast, Talk Smart podcast, and is the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot.

What does Gorav think about his first video game in years? How can arts, pre-med, music, and writing backgrounds set you up for a video game career? What do Spider-Man, MLB 2K, and Call of Duty have in common? This week, we learn from the captivating story of Eric Monacelli, Executive Producer at Marvel Games. Before that, Eric has had a decorated career experience across video game studios such as Naughty Dog, 2K Games, Capcom, Infinity Ward, and Atari. He is also a published author in Primary Psychiatry.

What storytelling lens do gen AIs have, and how does ChatGPT think about a book that talks about it? What does ChatGPT itself recommend this episode to you? This week, we chat with Vauhini Vara, author of the genre-bending non-fiction Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age.Vauhini started her career in tech journalism at Wall Street Journal and later contributed to various well-known news platforms. In her subsequent creative writing career, she wrote The Immortal King Rao and This is Salvaged. Gorav discovered Vauhini's work because ChatGPT recommended it to him.

Finally, we're talking about Liquid Death, one of Gorav's favorite brands. How do you bring life into a brand? What makes canned water work? How does being healthy & sustainable become cool? This week, we chat with Andy Pearson, VP of Creative at Liquid Death.After 12+ years as a copywriter and creative director at ad agencies, Andy now creates and leads creative with an incredible team at Liquid Death on its evil mission to make the world healthier and more sustainable.

Why and how should you prepare Topics for every conversation? When are you Asking the right questions? How do you bring Levity? Why does Kindness come from storytelling?Welcome back to your storytelling journey! To kick off Season Five, we're having a great talk with the author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves , Alison Wood Brooks. At Harvard Business School, Alison teaches an award-winning course in the MBA curriculum called “TALK.”

What are some of our favorite lessons from this season? What is the unique storytelling power of animation? For our season finale, we welcome back our dear friend Dr. Drea Letamendi. Drea is a clinical psychologist at UCLA, a psychological consultant for film, TV, graphic novels, and books, and a unique storyteller who draws important connections between pop culture and the story we tell ourselves.

Why do you love being in bookstores? What is the story of bookstores in American history? How did Barnes & Noble switch onto the underdog's team in the bookselling industry? What are the common traits of booksellers? This week, we chat with Evan Friss, author of New York Times Bestseller The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, and Professor of Urban and Public History at James Madison University.

What is the dangerous story about technology in education, and where does the opportunity really lie? How should we revamp our reigning education system's core story and design for the past 200 years? What is Relational Intelligence, and why should we develop it in children? We chatted with Isabelle Hau, the executive director of Stanford Accelerator for Learning, about her own childhood education story and her insights into education tech. Isabelle has dedicated her career to innovating and investing in early childhood education, leveraging the latest science, data, and technology for two decades.

Has four years of exploring the power of storytelling ruined anything for ourselves? How have the lessons from our expert storytellers seeped into our day-to-day lives? What are our stories this year? Here's a special recap for LSPTPod's 4th anniversary. Thank you for joining, and we hope you're learning as much as we are.

How do the sounds we hear affect the story we tell ourselves? Why and how should you curate the sounds in your life? Is silence a sound? In a conversation that felt much too short, we chat with Dallas Taylor - sound aficionado, host and creator of the amazing Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast, and Creative Director of Defacto Sound.

What makes video game a promising educational medium? How does playing a game make you remember the story differently than watching it? What can you learn about religions through a video game? How did a video game teach Kevin about parenting? This week, we chat with Prof Wade Langer (ProfNoctis) at University of Alabama, who teaches Judeo-Christian Kingship using a popular video game Final Fantasy XV. ProfNoctis' dissertation was on Judeo-Christian Kingship through Final Fantasy XV, a video game.

What do Broadway and Silicon Valley have in common? Why is storytelling crucial to navigating an interdisciplinary life? Why should we "expire our stories"? Welcome back to part 2 of our chat with Christina Wallace, a "human Venn diagram". Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where she teaches entrepreneurship and leads HBS Startup Bootcamp. She is author of The Portfolio Life, and a co-producer to multiple Tony-nominated musicals.

What is a "portfolio life", and how does that help us tell the story about ourselves? How do we find our identity and sense of safety in an ever-shifting professional world? Listen to part 1 of 2 of our chat with Christina Wallace, a "human Venn diagram". Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, where she teaches entrepreneurship and leads HBS Startup Bootcamp. She is author of The Portfolio Life, and a co-producer to multiple Tony-nominated musicals.

Why should you read the author's bio of a book? Where do we find the most compelling and powerful story from our lived experiences? How do you protect your own memory when telling a story about your past? This week, we chat with Carrie Sun, author of Private Equity, a memoir from her unique experience working for a Wall Street hedge fund billionaire and her deeply personal self-discovery journey. Carrie Sun was born in China and raised in Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She graduated early from MIT, worked as a quant, dropped out of MBA, worked in one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, and left to become a writer.

Did you know that The New York Times has been one of the hottest gaming companies in the past few years? YA THE NEWSPAPER. So, What are "New York Times games", and why does Wordle fit so perfectly with New York Times' brand? How does The Sims enable storytelling for players? This week, we chatted with Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at The New York Times. Before joining the New York Times, Jonathan worked on some of the best-known IPs and game franchises, including Quake, Wolfenstein, The Sims, Harry Potter, and The Simpsons.

When making life decisions big and small, are you choosing the best option on paper, or the best option for YOU? How can storytelling trick people in their decision making, and how do we see through the trickery? To kick off Season Four, we chat with Nuala Walsh, a behavorial scientist, one of 100 Most Influential Women in Finance, and former Marketing executive at some of the best-known investment banking firms. In her new book Tune in: How to make smarter decisions in a noisy world, Nuala delves into the common traps when we make decisions, and how we can navigate them.

Here's a sneak peek of something new for LSPTPod Season Four ;) We believe that storytelling is the essential skill that makes us human, and we invite you continue this journey with us. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @LSPTPod and LinkedIn.

How do you bring a centuries-old tradition to a modern audience? How did Gorav keep up a 1800+ day (and counting) meditation streak? What do "unexpected" partners add to your brand story? Is there a simple way to cope with our ever-restless minds? For Season 3 Finale, we chat with Morgan Selzer, Chief Content Officer at Headspace, to understand the Headspace story.

How did a TV film save the world from nuclear destruction? What do we miss out on if we dismiss social media? Why do we have so many dystopian sci-fi stories but few in the opposite light? This week, we talk to David Craig, Clinical Professor of Communication at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An expert on Hollywood and social media entertainment, David's new book Apocalypse Television accounts an important period in TV and world history around The Day After: a film that contributed to what historians describe as "Reagan’s Reversal” in the 1980s, which led to the end of the Atomic Arms Race. As Disney CEO Bob Iger wrote in the book's foreword, "those who tell the stories may save the world."

Why is college NOT the best years of your life? Why do people like horror & crime stories? What goes into deciding what to omit from a half-memoir? What do sci-fi and rom-com have in common? What does it mean to "break the story"? For the 3-year anniversary of LSPTPod, we rewind the tape to bring you some bonus content: fun stories where we went off a tangent that didn't make it into our released episodes. We're diving back into some bonus content from our chat this season with Dr. Drea Letamendi, Craig Thompson, and Mark Chavez. We're glad and grateful that you've been with us on this journey of exploring storytelling for so long. Here's to many more!

At this point, you've probably heard so much about ChatGPT and language model AI, but can it actually help write a book? How is an AI-written novel really created? Amid all the craze and myths of the recent "AI boom", we chat with Stephen Marche, a novelist who was tasked to create an "AI-generated novel," Death of an Author, (with Pushkin) to really understand the capabilities and limits of language model AI / linguistic AI, and how we should treat this tool. Stephen Marche is a novelist and essayist. He has written features and essays for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and many others. He has collaborated with artificial intelligence on the first AI-generated novel reviewed in The New York Times, Death of an Author.

How do you create master classes with some of the most influential people in the world? How do "golden moments" shape our lives and stories? How do we decide what to leave out of a story vs. what to keep in? This week, we chat with Davis Carter, former Director of Content at MasterClass. Davis has worked as Director of Content at MasterClass, where he oversaw more than 20 projects including classes with President Bill Clinton, Metallica, Amy Tan, Neil Gaiman, and Chris Voss.

Why is the American agriculture story relevant to you (yes, you)? Is comic book a genre or a medium? Why should you care about where your food comes from? How does the story of an herbal root connect the United States and China? This week, we chat with graphic novelist Craig Thompson about his latest autobiographical comic book series Ginseng Roots. Kevin stumbled upon an issue in the series and got super curious - what could an American artist possibly say about Northeastern China and an herbal root best known in Chinese medicine? He ended up loving the entire series. Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300-year-long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers. Craig Thompson is a cartoonist and the author of the award-winning books Blankets; Good-bye, Chunky Rice; and Habibi. He grew up in a rural farming community in Marathon, Wisconsin, world capital of ginseng.

How do a channel's advertisement and content creation fuel each other to strengthen its story? How does the late night / day time / prime time distinction affect content styles on cable? What is cable TV's legacy to entertainment and storytelling? This week, we finish up our conversation with Doug Herzog, delving into more questions we have about cable as a storytelling medium. Following his illustrious career as President of Viacom (MTV and Comedy Central), Doug now co-host the Basic! podcast, where he documents the history of basic cable TV and its impact on American lives.

What are the stories of MTV and Comedy Central? How has The Daily Show changed through different eras (Craig Kilborn, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah)? What will become of late night TV? This week, we welcome to our show Doug Herzog, former President of Viacom. Following his illustrious career of bringing MTV and Comedy Central to their respective primes, Doug now co-host the Basic! podcast, where he documents the history of basic cable TV and its impact on American lives.

How do American Sign Language and improv comedy make you a better family physician? This week, we sit down and chat with Dr. G (Deborah Gilboa)! Dr. G is a family physician, keynote speaker on stress and resilience, and ASL interpreter. She shares with us her fascinating life journey between theater, ASL interpretation, improv comedy with Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert in their early days, and path to a medical doctor career. We also chat about stress as the innate mechanism through which we respond to bad things and good things, and how to navigate the kaleidoscope of fantastic lives we see on social media.

How does Christie's lead charity auctioneer utilize storytelling in her work? How did a young woman who looked nothing like an auctioneer become Christie's top charity auctioneer? How do you claim your confidence? This week, we chat with Lydia Fenet, Christie’s Ambassador who has led auctions to raise over half a billion dollars total for nonprofits globally, to talk about her fascinating career and her new book, Claim Your Confidence. Lydia is author of The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You and Claim Your Confidence: Unlock Your Superpower and Create the Life You Want. She also hosts the Claim Your Confidence podcast.

For our 50th episode, we welcome back a dear friend and unlock a new character for our show. Together, we reflect on the stories we created since we first met, as well as our notion of being "cool". To our listeners, expert storytellers, and friends, thank you for being a part of this milestone. --- The following music was used for this media project: Music: Hyperfun by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3891-hyperfun License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

How do you produce a children's TV show in post-Soviet Russia? What's the secret to Sesame Street's international success? This we, we chat with Natasha Lance Rogoff, producer of the Russian Sesame Street (Ulitsa Sezam), about her unexpected crazy true story detailed in her book Muppets in Moscow. Natasha Lance Rogoff is an is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist and the TV producer/director who, with her team, brought Sesame Street to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

How do you make a sci-fi or a rom-com? Why do genres and formulas of a story work? How do comedians tell a story? This week, we chat with Mark Chavez, a comedian who made a sci-fi and a rom-com with his co-hosts and made a podcast about the process. Mark Chavez is co-host of CBC's Let's Make a Sci-Fi (Let's Make a Rom-Com) podcast, and part of the comedy duo the Pajama Men.

"What if we did nothing and got nothing out of it?" For this Storytime, we welcome back productivity expert Dr. Sahar Yousef and talk about NOTHING - for all our obsession with productivity, achievements, and outcomes, what if "doing nothing" is exactly what's missing from our lives? This episode is about nothing, for nothing, celebrating nothing. It's re-shaping our perspectives on life (seriously), and you should really listen to it. Visit https://shop.becomingsuperhuman.science/ and use code: “LSPT” for 10% off physical products. All proceeds go to supporting ongoing scientific research. Note: we are NOT sponsored in anyway (nor are we receiving any monetary benefits) by the becoming superhuman lab, we are just fans! Featured in Forbes, Business Insider, and the Headspace App, Dr. Sahar Yousef is a cognitive neuroscientist, a lecturer at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and founder of Becoming Superhuman. Her 10-plus years of research on “making superhumans” sheds light on how to improve focus, memory, and overall human performance.

What stories is the city of Los Angeles brewing? Why do we need better friendship stories? We welcome back good friend of the show Kirthana Ramisetti and talk about the storytelling choices in her new novel, Advika and the Hollywood Wives. Kirthana Ramisetti is author of Dava Shastri’s Last Day, a novel selected a Good Morning America Book Club selection, and is currently in development as a television series for HBO Max. Her second novel, Advika and the Hollywood Wives, comes out in April 2023.

What's unique about game as a storytelling medium? How can games succeed/fail at film / TV adaptations? Is playing games storytelling? This week, we sit down with Joshua Lu to talk about one of the most interactive and immersive form of storytelling. From competitive gaming, to product management, and now as an Investing Partner at a16z Games (Andreessen Horowitz), Josh has journeyed across many roles and genres throughout his career in gaming.

How does storytelling affect the essence of products and brands? What does neuroscience have to do with Marketing? This week, we chat with Dr. Matt Johnson, a marketing professor, a neuroscientist, and author of Branding that Means Business: Building Enduring Bonds between Brands, Consumers & Markets. With a PhD in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton University, Matt's journey is full of interesting intersections: academia x corporate, the U.S. x China, and psychology x neuroscience x marketing.

What makes super villains' stories important? Can you grieve something that didn't actually happen? Are you still a hero if you've never won a single battle? Welcome back to Season Three! To kick off an outstanding season, we welcome back a good friend of our show, Dr. Andrea Letamendi, to chat about The Joker, Loki, WandaVision, and unpacking the "could've been"s during the pandemic. Dr. Drea Letamendi is a licensed psychologist and behavioral health consultant who educates the world on mental health through the lens of pop culture, specializing in trauma work, crisis response, and suicide prevention. She hosts the Arkham Sessions podcast; she helps studios create fictional characters with authentic psyches. She's really cool.

For our final bonus episode of Season Two, we bring out an unreleased part of our conversation with musician Greg Pliska, where we talk about the different storytelling choices a musician has to make when scoring a movie/play. Greg is a composer, conductor and orchestrator whose diverse career  includes award-winning work in theater, film, TV, podcasts, etc. (CBS  Evening News and Face the Nation, IMAX, HBO Feature Presentation, Hulu,  Manhattan Night, Trust).

In the spirit of holiday season, we'd like to take you on a rewind and listen back to our conversation with Dr. Sahar Yousef back in Season One, an important conversation about our stress and internal storytelling. We hope it will help us all understand and cope with our stress and internal voices better.  --- We ALL have racing thoughts and narratives about ourselves that we can't  shut down - our "identity-based beliefs". How do we use that to our  advantage? What is "stress" physiologically speaking? Is "video fatigue"  real, and why are Botox sales through the roof since COVID? This week,  we unpack it all with Dr. Sahar Yousef. Dr. Sahar Yousef is a cognitive  neuroscientist as well as faculty at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of  Business. She has conducted research on brain plasticity, human  performance enhancement, and cognitive training. Outside of the academic  world, Sahar runs “Becoming Superhuman”, a training and consulting firm  which teaches busy professionals who think for a living how to get  their most important work done, in less time, with less stress.  Her  work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and  Business Insider.

What does "AI" really look like in businesses today? What is a Prediction Machine, and what is AI Economics? This week, we chat with Dr. Avi Goldfarb, author of Prediction Machines and Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Through a sequence of fascinating stories, Avi helps us demystify the stigma around artificial intelligence, and he helps us understand how AI has transformed and can transform business and industry the way electricity transformed steam-powered factories. Avi is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab and the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium.

What have happened to Gorav and Kevin in the past year? What was the original idea Gorav and Kevin had about starting a podcast? How would we describe each of our guests in one word? What changes have we made in Season Two, and what's coming in Season Three? As we celebrate LSPTPod's 2-Year anniversary, we sit down, look back, look around, then look forward to this journey we've been on with you, and we're so thankful for it.

We dive deep into more of your random wine questions! Do you really need a decanter for wine? What are you supposed to do when you order a bottle of wine at a restaurant, and your server pours out a sip for you to taste it? Why do some wine labels never tell you what's in the bottle? For this bonus episode with wine journalist Erin Kirschenmann, we find answers to some of our (and probably your) biggest questions about wine drinking.

Storytelling and wine. Don't think they're related? Think again. This week, we chat with Erin Kirschenmann, Managing Editor at Wine Business Monthly and Kevin's wine tasting instructor (Yes, Kevin's now professionally certified in wine tasting). Erin shares with us plenty of stories about the history and culture of wine, why wine tasting is a thing, Prohibition's impact on the wine landscape in the United States, why the wine industry is in dire need of a new story.

Let's tackle the big question: what is love? Better yet, how do the things we love affect our stories and identities? Why do we love something, and what do we actually love about it? This week, we chat with Dr. Aaron Ahuvia, the world's leading academic expert on non-interpersonal love. Dr. Ahuvia is Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn College of Business, who has pioneered the research on love since 1990. He shares with us what it means to love, how the things we love add to our stories and identities, and how products and brands can foster brand love among customers.

How can we create happier memories for ourselves with the power of storytelling? How do we make sure to savor moments of joy and not take them for granted? How many things can we get done within your limited hours in a day, and how many more things could we get done if we learn the happiest way to manage our time? We continue our conversation with Dr. Cassie Holmes, award-winning Professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, researcher of time and happiness, and author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.

What makes us happy, and what will make us happier? How can the story we tell ourselves about time affect our happiness level? In a world that easily makes us feel "time poor", how do we make the most of our limited time? This week, we chat with Dr. Cassie Holmes, award-winning Professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, researcher of time and happiness, and author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.

How did Steve Jobs transform Apple with storytelling, and how did he become a master storyteller? How does Twitter work as a storytelling platform, and how has storytelling turned Formula 1 into the fastest-growing sport in the U.S.? This week, we talk to Nathan Baugh, a storytelling influencer. From Batman to sports, Nathan chats with us about how storytelling transforms businesses and ideas, obvious or not. He shares with us one of the simplest actionable step we can all take to sharpen our storytelling minds, and why it's easier than we'd think.

Why isn't Kevin a sneakerhead? Gorav raises this question as he ponders buying a pair of sneakers. To answer this question, we first visit the stories that designer clothing tells and how those stories make us feel. Then we get sidetracked, as we try to journey into a little history lesson about suits. In a bizarre sequence of events, Gorav sets out on his self-instigated debate on whether he should buy an expensive pair of sneakers, and Sophia jumps in to tell us her take on it. Instead of our usual lessons of the craft of storytelling, we went spontaneous and decided to share some stories of our own.