Podcasts about green mountain coffee

We concluded the World Devon Congress adventure with the State that put these cattle on the map – okay, they're on the flag, anyway.  We had a wonderful tour through the Green Mountain State of Vermont, on our way to meet up with Anson Tebbets, Secretary of Agriculture, Food and Markets.  This lovely man took a walk down the lane on his family farm to talk about the finer things in agricultural life that are represented in Vermont – maple syrup, socks, adult beverages and ice cream, just to name a few.  He believes in those who produce our food and fiber products, and works to support them with legislation, funding and promotion, and, of course, his valuable time.Vermont is a quietly beautiful agricultural state that is definitely worth a visit – even if you don't have time to hit the Ben & Jerry's Factory Tour (though we strongly recommend it).  These hills are alive…with the taste of maple…and cider…and wool…and pickles…and… Links:https://agriculture.vermont.gov/administrationhttps://agriculture.vermont.gov/agency-agriculture-food-markets-news/12-vermont-companies-running-2020-good-food-awardhttps://agriculture.vermont.gov/agency-agriculture-food-markets-news/fifteen-vermont-companies-running-2022-good-food-awardhttps://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/dairy/american-milking-devons-the-perfect-breed-for-this-vermont-homestead/article_aec3cc10-0ef7-11ef-929b-83733b95d1f5.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Vermonthttps://darntough.com/https://www.benjerry.com/https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/https://skinnypancake.com/https://thetipsypickle.com/https://cabotcreamery.com/Well Beyond Medicine: The Nemours Children's Health PodcastExploring people, programs and bold ideas changing children's health for good.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the Show.

Who's Inspiring Impacts today? Pru Sullivan! Pru Sullivan is the former Director of Continuous Learning and Organizational Development at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Tune in as Pru speaks with host Dr. Lindsey Godwin about how to integrate Appreciative Inquiry principles into the core of your company and with employees. Pru sheds light on how Green Mountain Coffee Roasters leveraged Appreciative Inquiry to grow from a small shop to the billion-dollar company it is today. She describes the different ways you can adopt an appreciative approach at a growing organization, from leadership onboarding and project management to accelerating employee and collective performance and beyond. Pru Sullivan is a Founding Partner of The Change Factory and a Practitioner in Residence Emeritus at David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at Champlain College-Stiller School of Business. For over a decade, Pru has been co-creating, designing, and delivering strength-based growth initiatives based on Appreciative Inquiry methodology. Her mission is to be an inspirational catalyst for personal, team, organizational, and community breakthrough growth and strength-based transformation. Episode Highlights: How Bob Stiller's philosophy of strength-based Appreciative Inquiry impacted Green Mountain Coffee's culture. How Appreciative Inquiry creates shared ownership in organizational change. Green Mountain's AI Summit: Where their core principles were born. Tips for onboarding new leaders and ensuring they're aligned with your organization's core values and culture. The critical impact of appreciative training for frontline supervisors. How to use Appreciative Inquiry in employee performance reviews to accelerate individual and collective performance. Building Appreciative Inquiry into project management and product development. Resources Mentioned: The Joy of Appreciative Living by Jackie Kelm: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Appreciative-Living-Happiness-Incredibly/dp/1585426601 Inspiring Quotes: “What's wonderful about Appreciative Inquiry is that when you make that shift, the evidence shows up.” “A performance review cycle often acts as a demotivator and an upsetter that takes months to often recover from. And so, we formed a cross-functional team… to say, our task is to redesign this process and redesign the software that's coming in to reflect how we want performance management to be managed.” “It's not a nice-to-have, it's a must-have if you want to be a high-performance organization that is making a positive difference in the world.” What is Appreciative Inquiry? Appreciative Inquiry, sometimes referred to as “the other AI”, is one of the best kept secrets behind meaningful and lasting change at organizations. The AI approach is strength-based, meaning it focuses on identifying and leveraging successes to solve problems, rather than focusing on trying to fix individual failures. Did this episode inspire or impact you? Want to make an impact on us? If so, SHARE this episode with a friend, leave us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts, and follow Inspiring Impacts wherever you listen to podcasts!

Grab some popcorn and get ready to discuss summer blockbusters! We also offer tips on hosting others well, which brands we are most loyal to, and characteristics of the ultimate themed hotels. Show notes:       Connect with us on Instagram @thevictorycouch, Facebook, victorycouchpodcast@gmail.com, or www.thevictorycouch.com Reviews welcome https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-victory-couch/id1628820081   On the tens Piranha https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078087/, Anaconda https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118615/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 If scheduling and availability were not an issue, which of these summer films would you go see in the theaters (summer 2023)?  Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6791350/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_guardia The Little Mermaid https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5971474/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_the%2520litt%2520e Spiderman Across the Spider-Verse https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9362722/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_spider Transformers: Rise of the Beasts https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5090568/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_transformer Elemental https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15789038/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1, The Flash https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439572/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462764/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_indian Avatar https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_8_nm_0_q_avatar Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9603212/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_8_nm_0_q_mission%2520im Barbie https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1517268/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_4_nm_4_q_barb Oppenheimer https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_6_q_oppenheimer James Bond https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8265849/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_5_nm_3_q_james%2520bond, Star Wars https://www.starwars.com/ Pirates of the Caribbean https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325980/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_pirates%2520 Haunted Mansion https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1695843/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_haunted%2520, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8589698/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_teenage%2520mutant%2520, Blue Beetle https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9362930/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_blue%2520be TMNT w/Ernie Reyes Jr. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103060/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1   Which brands are you most loyal to and why? Jeep https://www.jeep.com/ Roxy https://www.roxy.com/ Sensodyne https://www.sensodyne.com/en-us/ Green Mountain Coffee https://www.gmcr.com/ Nike https://www.nike.com/ Old Navy https://oldnavy.gap.com/ Jif https://www.jif.com/ Chick-Fil-A https://www.chick-fil-a.com/ Disney https://www.disney.com/ Swiss Gear https://www.swissgear.com/ Under Armour https://www.underarmour.com/ Crest https://crest.com/en-us Titleist https://www.titleist.com/ Nantucket Nectars What does it mean to host someone well? Olive Garden https://www.olivegarden.com/ Cracker Barrel https://www.crackerbarrel.com/ Noodles & Co  https://www.noodles.com/ Crumbl https://crumblcookies.com/ The Andy Griffith Show https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053479/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1   Pretend you're building a hotel- if you could build a themed hotel what would the theme be and what would the rooms look like? LEGO https://www.lego.com/en-us IKEA https://www.ikea.com/ Sing https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3470600/   Couch crumbs: Lawson isn't feeling well. (J) Been gone, out of town and out of daily rhythms, missed Lawson's homerun (R). Prop your feet up: House is clean, and laundry is maintained (J). Gave a gift finally and it was amazing (R)!   Shout out to Rick for earning his black belt in Filipino Martial Arts (Kali-Eskrima-Arnis-Silat) https://crocodilemartialarts.com.au/arts/filipino-martial-arts-kali-eskrima-arnis-silat/ To give Rick some congrats remarks please email: victorycouchpodcast@gmail.com   --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thevictorycouch/message

In this episode, CSB Director CB Bhattacharya is joined by CSB Senior Associate Director Chris Gassman to put the spotlight on CB and introduce Chris who will be hosting future episodes of Sustaining Sustainability. CB is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Business here at the University of Pittsburgh and the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business. He has published over 100 articles and has over 41,000 citations per Google Scholar. His latest book, Small Actions Big Difference: Leveraging Corporate Sustainability to Drive Business and Societal Value was published in 2019 accompanied by a TEDx talk by the same title. CB has also conducted research and consulted for many organizations such as Allianz, AT&T, Bosch, ENEL, General Mills, Green Mountain Coffee, Unilever, and many others. In the Episode Chris Gassman and Prof. Bhattacharya discuss - Researching market solutions for buying less - Training the workforce for a just transition - Embedding social and environmental responsibility into the corporate DNA, and more... CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION AT OUR NEXT EVENT Feb. 21, 2023 | Building A Circular Economy in Manufacturing | Decarbonize Middle America Strategy Primer: Learn how the region's industrial legacy can lead to a thriving future for Circular Manufacturing in Appalachia. We will discuss accelerating regulatory structure and interoperation agreements. This event will introduce the concept of Circular Manufacturing and kick off many upcoming events focusing on the subject. FREE and open to the public. Register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/1116736377643/WN_CX8rTPmOTdqM4cSQ-PR0DQ

Don't Call 'Em Grandma's Join The Official Seenagers, never too late, and listen to this hysterical episode about Debbie Nigro and https://luzmichelleinc.com/ (standup comic), Luz Michelle puttin on ahttps://www.vogue.com/article/new-york-fashion-week-spring-2023-beauty-trends ( girls fashion )show for Charlie. Debbie considers herself a fashion icon, while Luz only wears https://www.amazon.com/s?k=spanxs&ref=nb_sb_noss (spanxs). All inspired by https://www.vogue.com/article/the-enduring-appeal-of-the-senior-fashion-icon (Vogue's latest Don't call 'em grandma). Debbie gets Luz out of her comfort zone. It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers (baby boomers )teaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X (gen x) how to do it all with belts, jackets, glasses and you freaking name it. Charlie had a few eye rolls while wonder is this what they do at home? How many times do they change outfits before they leave the house? How many times do women ask, "how do I look in this? Umm, you gonna go out like that? Come on let's go, we are already late! Now whadda about https://www.yahoo.com/video/martha-stewart-drinks-coffee-only-202729957.html (Martha Stewart) , https://parade.com/598087/solanahawkenson/martha-stewart-and-snoop-dogg-recreate-iconic-scene-from-ghost/ (Snoop dogs best friend), just in an apron, endorsing Green Mountain Coffee? Hilarious! Wait till you see our video just go to our website www.theofficialseenagers.com https://www.niaf.org/ (National Italian American Foundation)

After months of speculation that the Palace was soft-launching the Queen's death, Brittany and Ej break the news, Newsroom-style, that Queen Elizabeth II passed away at the tender age of 96….only to be replaced by her son, a boiled lunchroom carrot who secretly dreams of becoming a Horse Girl's tampon. This week on DLTF, we talk Queen group threads and death memes (including one featuring a famously very pregnant influencer), the surprisingly inspiring (if not gross) love story of Charles and Camilla, racists pants-shitting over Halle Bailey's casting in The Little Mermaid, and Martha Stewart's incredibly horny Green Mountain Coffee sponcon. Feat. Sweaty Oracle, the Broadway DeuxMoi, to spill the tea on Lea Michele's Funny Girl debut (why were there so many cameras in the audience on opening night???) and the real divas in the FG cast. Links referenced in this episode: :https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge https://twitter.com/b1odeuwedd/status/1567938479983673348 https://www.vulture.com/2022/09/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-twitter-memes-brands.html https://www.tiktok.com/@timelineworldhistory/video/7032320527561755909?_r=1&_t=8VbNQ6v8uBK&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7032320527561755909 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wPm99PF9U&t=74s https://www.tiktok.com/@preciousavery/video/7142147380329057579 https://www.instagram.com/p/CiQADs6Akhq/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Todays Episode of Clicks and Bricks Podcast, Ken interviews Joel Klein from Fizyx. They discuss a wide range of topics from Mindset to the stock market. Items Featured In Todays Episode: Beyond Entrepreneurship -- https://amzn.to/3NioIY3 Think and Grow Rich -- https://amzn.to/3tWptPG About Joel: Joel Klein is an award-winning stock portfolio manager who has earned a career equity track record of 48% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) (May 2003 - March 2020). Mr. Klein has three decades of experience in business and two decades of experience as a professional money manager. From 1999, he was managing money professionally using his interpretation of William O'Neil's CAN SLIM® methodology. Early in his career, Mr. Klein benefited from direct, personal access to Mr. O'Neil and was able to learn this investment method at a level that few others had. Mr. Klein has identified and bought many leading stocks before they began major uptrends: Apple, Google, Netflix, Green Mountain Coffee, Blackberry, Intuitive Surgical, Baidu, Alibaba, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tesla, Nvidia, and First Solar, among many others. Mr. Klein has made original stock market and economic research one of the core themes of his career, dedicating thousands of hours to research. He believes that this has become a unique competitive edge that continues to expand with ongoing research. He has developed and refined every aspect of his original methodology, which has resulted in numerous refinements to the FIZYX investment process, which is known as Exponential Pattern Recognition or XPR. From 2007 until 2013, Mr. Klein authored the “Klein Market Summary,” (KMS) which was a weekly commentary on market trends and leading stocks. From July 2019 to September 2020, Mr. Klein authored "The FIZYX Forecast", a weekly synopsis of the trend of the U.S. stock markets Contact Fizyx: https://fizyx.com info@fizyx.com Contact Ken: https://inlink.com/ken hello@kencox.com Text: (314) 370-2871 #GetToWork Mentions:  @Tony Robbins   @GaryVee  Jump Ahead: 00:00 Intro 00:46 Who is Joel? 03:48 Study the Roots Not Just Pick the Fruit 06:37 Joel Growing Up in a Small Business house 08:25 Mindset Shift 10:37 You Cant Make Employees Come To Work 11:19 Best Size for A Team 14:40 What is Fizyx? 16:41 is Fizyx a stock broker? 17:52 Market Timing 18:22 Current State of the Stock Market 22:14 How did Fizyx Fare in 2020 24:48 Mindset 25:27 Think and Grow Rich 28:41 Leveling Up 31:17 mentors in Joel's Life 33:26 Managing Through Adversity 34:42 Tips to Get Through Adversity 40:45 Inspiration vs Desperation 43:52 Planting Seeds and Dealing With Seeds That Don't Boom 46:14 Meeting Bill O'Neill 48:05 Failure is an Illusion 48:19 How to Work With Joel 48:56 Current Books Joel is Reading 50:03 Joel's Final Thoughts 50:29 How to Contact Ken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Todays Episode of Clicks and Bricks Podcast, Ken interviews Joel Klein from Fizyx. They discuss a wide range of topics from Mindset to the stock market. Items Featured In Todays Episode: Beyond Entrepreneurship -- https://amzn.to/3NioIY3 Think and Grow Rich -- https://amzn.to/3tWptPG About Joel: Joel Klein is an award-winning stock portfolio manager who has earned a career equity track record of 48% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) (May 2003 - March 2020). Mr. Klein has three decades of experience in business and two decades of experience as a professional money manager. From 1999, he was managing money professionally using his interpretation of William O'Neil's CAN SLIM® methodology. Early in his career, Mr. Klein benefited from direct, personal access to Mr. O'Neil and was able to learn this investment method at a level that few others had. Mr. Klein has identified and bought many leading stocks before they began major uptrends: Apple, Google, Netflix, Green Mountain Coffee, Blackberry, Intuitive Surgical, Baidu, Alibaba, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tesla, Nvidia, and First Solar, among many others. Mr. Klein has made original stock market and economic research one of the core themes of his career, dedicating thousands of hours to research. He believes that this has become a unique competitive edge that continues to expand with ongoing research. He has developed and refined every aspect of his original methodology, which has resulted in numerous refinements to the FIZYX investment process, which is known as Exponential Pattern Recognition or XPR. From 2007 until 2013, Mr. Klein authored the “Klein Market Summary,” (KMS) which was a weekly commentary on market trends and leading stocks. From July 2019 to September 2020, Mr. Klein authored "The FIZYX Forecast", a weekly synopsis of the trend of the U.S. stock markets Contact Fizyx: https://fizyx.com info@fizyx.com Contact Ken: https://inlink.com/ken hello@kencox.com Text: (314) 370-2871 #GetToWork Mentions:  @Tony Robbins   @GaryVee  Jump Ahead: 00:00 Intro 00:46 Who is Joel? 03:48 Study the Roots Not Just Pick the Fruit 06:37 Joel Growing Up in a Small Business house 08:25 Mindset Shift 10:37 You Cant Make Employees Come To Work 11:19 Best Size for A Team 14:40 What is Fizyx? 16:41 is Fizyx a stock broker? 17:52 Market Timing 18:22 Current State of the Stock Market 22:14 How did Fizyx Fare in 2020 24:48 Mindset 25:27 Think and Grow Rich 28:41 Leveling Up 31:17 mentors in Joel's Life 33:26 Managing Through Adversity 34:42 Tips to Get Through Adversity 40:45 Inspiration vs Desperation 43:52 Planting Seeds and Dealing With Seeds That Don't Boom 46:14 Meeting Bill O'Neill 48:05 Failure is an Illusion 48:19 How to Work With Joel 48:56 Current Books Joel is Reading 50:03 Joel's Final Thoughts 50:29 How to Contact Ken Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on T&J we review Green Mountain Coffee's K-Cup, learn about each others erotic pen names, and dive into our first interview. Please join us as we talk with Jacob Comer about growing up a preacher's kid, being called into ministry, and trends with today's youth.

This is Part 2 of my interview with Sunil Bhatt, CEO of Genuine Hospitality Group, the corporate entity representing the award-winning chef, Michael Swartz. Today we covered the challenges of running a restaurant chain during COVID - among other things. Enjoy!TranscriptEdward: This is part two of my interview with Sunil Bhatt. Today, we're going to dive into his experience as CEO of Genuine Hospitality Group. Sunil, can you start by explaining what Genuine Hospitality Group is.Sunil: We are a group of restaurants—mostly in South Florida, including one in Cleveland, Ohio—that we're trying to bring residents here in South Florida the best possible food and hospitality that we possibly can. The reason we use the word genuine is because when you come to Miami, a lot of times, people associate Miami with pretension or more glossy surface, superficial kinds of experiences in people. There are plenty of people in Miami who are not interested in that at all. That's perfectly fine for TV and for travelers, maybe, who are looking to get that sort of Vegas.There are so many people here who really want to have an experience where they are treated intelligently and not gouged, and not given crappy products put on a plate with a bunch of gold leaf on it and charged $200. Instead, they want natural wines, local products, simple preparation, great jazz, and service that is attentive while not being cloying. The word genuine was really important when Michael founded Michael's Genuine Food and Drink because it was really a little bit of off-brand for Miami. There wasn't a lot of farm to table, ingredient-driven, authentic, genuine kinds of restaurants here.It absolutely found a niche here in Miami with locals, then eventually tourists too, and eventually got him national acclaim because we have a bounty of products here. We have amazing fruits and vegetables growing here, an entire ocean full of fish, and incredible meat and poultry growing right here—at least in the Southeast. We focus really on giving people an honest product at a price that they can afford. We have people come six, seven times a week to eat at our restaurant because it's affordable and it's that good.We fuss over it. We spend a lot of time using the lens genuine. That's very important when you're trying to scale something or do something to have a lens to look through that can inform decisions you make. Whether it be in hiring or training, decor, landscaping, buying the right product, or product development in general. Even in your finances. It genuinely matters to us what's the lens we look through. On the business side, we really think about doing the right thing. What's the right thing to do? That to us is how we translate genuine. Whether it be on the legal side. There are plenty of opportunities every day for people to cut corners, trick someone, or mislead. Many illegal negotiations and how you treat your people and how you train them are lens of genuine, honest, pure—those things are in our logo. They are part of our values, and everybody knows that.For us, the devil is in the details. That's what makes Michael a great chef. He obsesses over the little things. Because he believes that the addition of a hundred little things together that you, as a guest, may not even know. For example, if I may, we have radishes in our bar. You could ask me why, but that's the thing, Michael always loves radishes, and he thinks it's a great thing to have on the bar. Those radishes—on a regular basis—get water down. We have a spray bottle behind the bar. Part of the steps of service of the bartender knows that every so often, he's going to take that water bottle and polish up those radishes so that they look good.It's a little thing and there are hundreds of them in the restaurants, especially in the kitchen, in terms of the hygiene of the kitchen, the recipes, the commitment to integrity back there that add up to something that the sum of the parts is much bigger than any individual parts. We try to translate that into how we run the business as well. Whether it's in contract negotiations, legal, or finance. That's very important for us. That word—genuine—means a lot to us.Edward: Michael Schwartz's most famous restaurant is Michael's Genuine. That's the flagship, but it's not the most profitable restaurant for you. Is that correct?Sunil: It's not. No, it is not. It is very profitable, however, relatively, our margins are nothing like software merchants, for example. This is in the SaaS company. When I say very profitable, for a restaurant, that restaurant does just fine. But we won't hit a 20% net margin with that restaurant. But we can consistently execute because we're rigorous about our cost structure, and we're rigorous about how we meet every week to review day to day, week to week spending within the restaurant—COGS, personnel, OpEx. We have safety nets underneath the team—the operations team in the restaurant—so that if for whatever reason costs get out of line, off the road, we'll catch it before it goes too far. We put in that kind of discipline, which is very unusual with restaurant businesses. Edward: Which restaurants are the most profitable? Why are they more profitable than the flagship?Sunil: We run pizzerias. In the pizzeria world, your margins are going to be higher because the costs of the products are significantly lower than you would get in a fine dining restaurant. You also don't need to spend nearly as much on your personnel in a pizzeria as you do in a fine dining restaurant, as you can probably imagine. Take us, people, to make the food, menus are smaller, service doesn't have to be the kind of service you would expect to Jean-Georges—or in your case—Canlis up in Seattle.Your personal costs are lower, your cost of goods is lower. Pizza is flour and water, and that's pretty cheap. The cost for us to make a ball of dough is not even a dollar. But we can charge $14 for pizza easily and people are happy to pay it because pizza is hard to make at home. You can, some people do, but the doughs are science experiments. To get great pizza, you got to work really hard on it. People are more than willing. The elasticity in people's willingness to pay allows us to charge enough so that our cost of goods and our personal costs are much lower. Our margins in the pizzerias are significantly higher than they would be in fine dining.Edward: How do you leverage Michael's name and reputation of genuine across the rest of the footprint, and how is that different from say, Wolfgang Puck?Sunil: That's a great question. Wolfgang Puck, obviously, is a national figure—not just national, international. Wolfgang Puck created the celebrity chef. Before Wolfgang Puck, there wasn't anything like Wolfgang Puck. Michael happened to work for Wolfgang Puck at a restaurant called Chinois in Los Angeles. Wolfgang happened to write the preface for our pizzeria cookbook, which you can buy on Amazon if you want. Anyway, he is a good friend of Michael's, and he is a legend. There will never be another Wolfgang Puck. There are Bobby Flays and there are folks like that, but Michael is not built that way. For me, when I think of Michael, I think of him as an asset. I obviously think of him as my great friend, my business partner, the father to three wonderful kids, and all of the other things that he is. But when I put my CEO hat on, I just think of him as an asset.Michael is great at understanding various aspects of operations. He's certainly very, very good when it comes to innovation and mentoring in terms of teaching and cooking. He is just a savant when it comes to cooking. I've cooked with him for 15 years, believe me, he is a savant. He has the same ingredients as you and me, and he will cook something that you're like, what? You do that? And he's like, I don't know, I've been doing this since I was 16 years old, so I better [...] that. Anyway, he's a gifted world-class artist. Artists have certain skills, and it's important for me, as the CEO of the company, to put him in a position where he can add the most value to us in succeeding as a business. Not just in terms of putting great food on the table, but also in terms of us actually being not just viable but successful and stable as a company. It's also important to put him in a position he wants to be in. He's a valuable asset.Where he makes the most difference for us is in his coaching, mentoring, innovation, and operations. What he doesn't love to do—even if he's quite good at it—is be a shill. I'm not calling Wolfgang Puck a shill, but that's not a core desire in him to be on TV all the time, to be going on the Food Network, or doing those kinds of things. I don't try to put a square peg into a round hole. I thought about it for a few years. We do leverage Michael as a celebrity, especially in social media. But we've also tried to focus on the Genuine Hospitality Group as an entity. Sort of like Unions Square Hospitality Group in New York. We've also tried to build the brands of the individual restaurants where they stand in the room without Michael. Because Michael doesn't cook there, and in fact, Michael never cooks there. We have amazing chefs to cuisines at our different restaurants. One of the things Michael has done incredibly well is seed some of his control to others. Very difficult for founders in any industry, especially when you're a founder and you created something from scratch and you're used to doing everything yourself. Being able to give over some of that accountability and responsibility without second-guessing, letting people fail forward, and do it differently than you would is a really tough task for a founder—especially a chef. Michael's done an amazing job of that. Not always been easy for him.But just even giving me authority over every aspect of the company, then giving the chefs authority over their individual restaurants, and the GM's authority over their steps in the service front of the house, and on and on. He's done an amazing job while being involved. He's had to find a balance of where he can be useful but empowering at the same time. I don't think we could've scaled if he didn't have that ability. We couldn't have. There's only one Michael. He can only be in so many places at one time. He's done a great job of letting go of control to me and to all the restaurant executive team and our management team.Edward: I want to dive to some of your marketing channels. How do you grow a restaurant business beyond simply having a good product and a good location?Sunil: Those things help. I'm not going to lie. We have not always succeeded. In spite of the fact that Michael's brand—our brand—here in Miami is extremely powerful, and I don't think it's arrogant or overconfident to say that. Anybody would say that we are probably the most well-known—if not one of the two most known restaurant groups in Florida.Edward: How did that brand come about? Was it primarily because you had such a good product?Sunil: Yeah. He changed the game here. Anybody will tell you that. He was a game-changer for Miami in the way that I tried to tell you before. There just weren't a lot of restaurants that cater to locals.Edward: What do you do as a CEO to grow beyond the fact that Michael's a savant chef that can create amazing products, and you can choose good real estate? But now, what? How do you excel above that baseline?Sunil: What we try to do was we've tried to open restaurants that built on Michael as the foundation. But then eventually, developed a legacy of their own without the lying on constantly Michael Schwartz, Michael Schwartz, Michael Schwartz because it's a little bit disingenuous in some ways. Articulating to guests that Michael's back there cooking your steak every day is absolutely ridiculous. We've tried not to be disingenuous. We set our ethics. Our values exist everywhere. They go through hiring, menu development, pricing, and servings.We have this playbook for how we like to run our restaurant. Whether it's Latin cuisine at Amara, a pizza at our pizzerias, café food in our café, or whatever it is. Even through our events where we do weddings, bar mitzvahs, and rehearsal dinners. Any of that is fundamentally genuine. We've established the word genuine and taken ownership of that. The zeitgeist here, that you're going to get a genuine, authentic experience where you're not going to get b******t quality of the product, pricing, some crappy server who doesn't pay attention to what we need, or some hostess at the door that's got a red velvet rope that tells you you can't have a table even though there are 25 empty tables in the restaurant just so it looks exclusive. There's a lot of that in Miami.We just don't do that. It's not our style. We don't cater to celebrities. They rarely come to our restaurant—sometimes, not often. They go to other restaurants in Miami that are (I would say) less focused on locals. We decided we wanted to focus on locals, and we wanted to establish the nature of the word genuine across everything we do. We've marketed the word genuine. We aggressively market our restaurants. We do a lot of product marketing where we basically say, hey, we have a special pastrami pizza today. We get people to come for the food, for the individual restaurant brands, for chefs in those restaurants, and for the genuine over the Michael Schwartz. Michael Schwartz is a Trojan horse for us in marketing.Edward: And you say you market it and you push it out. Where are you pushing it out? What are the marketing channels you're using?Sunil: Mostly social media. Almost exclusively social media. And we've done a little bit paid search, a little bit of performance marketing in the past. Mostly for our catering business. A lot easy like lead gen. It's easy. It's very difficult to track in the restaurant space. If I were to buy keywords in Google or if I were to buy Yelp, it's just difficult for us to track through to conversion.From my perspective, we have one person in our marketing. He is terrific. His name is Joel White. He used to work in Green Mountain Coffee, Red Lobster, and Pepsi. But he's in charge of everything. He's in charge of all aspects of our marketing. We have the great social marketing firm we work with called Gather & Grow, and they do a terrific job. But I'm used to working in companies where I can track down to the penny what we're spending, conversion rate, and lifetime value of the customer. In our case, we're doing almost all social media and email marketing. That's pretty much what we do. PR and events, but it's really hard to track. I don't know from one day to next how many people sitting in our dining room saw an ad, looked at a post, or even [...].Edward: You say social media and email, are these all organic social and organic emails? You're sending it to people who have already subscribed to you or people who have already fanned your Facebook page?Sunil: Almost all of our marketing comes through Instagram. We have bought some ads and we've paid for placements on Instagram in the past. But most of what we do is all organic. Whether it be on our website, through email, or through social.Edward: How do you optimize that? How do you know how many times you should be posting, or what images are working, which ones aren't, which ones are driving revenue, and which ones are just vanity metrics?Sunil: Hard to know. We go off of engagement scores—how many people viewed, liked, and engaged with it through a comment. We try to use some of those metrics to understand what works and what doesn't at that level. We're just not sophisticated enough yet to connect revenue to Instagram posts. We just don't. What I'm told is, hey, look, you can connect the two. There's a little bit of a stretch. I'm sure other people do much better jobs in much bigger, much more evolved (I would say) online marketing companies probably doing much better jobs than we do. We're just a small group of 10 restaurants with 2 people in marketing, 1 ½ people in marketing, and 10 people in our headquarters total.We basically hope that the fact that people are engaging—by commenting or liking—will indicate that people are going to come to the restaurant.Edward: Many years ago, I tried to run a marketing business for restaurants. It didn't go very well. You must be approached all the time by companies who offer, hey, do these coupons, we'll do a paper performance and get people into your restaurants. Have you ever considered that? And if not, why not?Sunil: Generally, the only marketing channel that we use that is anything like that is UberEats and DoorDash. That's probably a whole another podcast, but it's a fantastic subject to discuss. Because for you and me, having come from Expedia, it's not very different in a lot of ways, especially with the pandemic and how reliant people are on take out delivery these days. It's not very different from what hotels.com, Expedia, and Travelocity did years and years ago where they sat down right in between supply and demand and charged a very healthy fee for that service.Delivery is very impractical to do on your own for all kinds of reasons—insurance, managing schedules, and hiring. These guys have a big billboard—UberEats, DoorDash, and Postmates. We're paying some of the billboard [...] for sure, but I would say that is one channel that we do spend a fair amount of money in for marketing. I spend a lot of time trying to understand how incremental that business is, how cannibalistic it is versus coming to the restaurant. Because we're going to pay 25%–30% of our revenue for every delivery order we get from these guys.When you think about our margins, which are pretty narrow as it is—depending on how much you burden your P&L for that and depending on how incremental you think it is—you've got to be pretty smarter than how you use those services for sure.Edward: You have 10 restaurants. Have you done, like phased in AB test to determine what that incrementality looks like?Sunil: We have. We've done AB tests. It's funny, AB testing is not something people are thinking about in the restaurant industry. When I first started talking about it, people were like, AB what? But we did an AB test here. Basically, we just turned it off, and we compared it to historical data. We compared it to another one of our pizzerias. What we found was not surprising to me. A lot of that business was incremental. We did see a significant downturn when we turned it off.That's because I don't believe people are thinking, well, should we order in tonight or go out? They've made the decision at the top of the funnel that we're ordering in. We're not going out tonight. We're on our pajamas watching Netflix. It's just a question of where I'm ordering from. If you think about burdening the P&L, staff are already there. We don't have to add much more staff to create a delivery order. The rent's paid for, the lights are already on. Depending on how you burden that income statement, really, just with COGS, a little bit of personnel, if you feel like you must—depending on how much delivery you do. And then the delivery fees, the OpEx—there's a little bit of supply cost, but you can convince yourself that that business is profitable. Especially if you consider it to be 80% or 90% incremental.Edward: Sunil, this has been fantastic. Thank you for being on the show. Before we go, I like to end with your quake book. Do you want to tell us what your quake book is and how it changed your thinking?Sunil: Yeah. I read it a long time ago, haven't read it since. I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Twain's problematic in a lot of ways, for obvious reasons. I always think about just how grateful we should be for the tools and the life that we have. Especially given the privileged life that we lead here in the United States and specifically, at least my world. If I went back in time, and they said, hey, tell us about this thing called electricity, airplanes, or anything. I'm not sure I could add any value to people 200 years ago or 150 years. Running water is a mystery. I have no idea how the lights come on every day or how television works. You probably know 10 times more than I do [...] predicting the weather.If they said, hey, why don't you just know that there's going to be a hurricane in five days and you should probably take shelter? How do you know that? No, no, I turn on the TV, and then there's a radar. What radar? What's a radar? That's the thing I think about is how we should never take too much for granted the wonderful blessings that we have. It would be a damn shame to waste this incredible luck that we have to be born at this time and not be very appreciative and grateful for it. That's why it was my quake book.Edward: Thank you, Sunil. That's a great way to wrap up. Really appreciate your time today. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingbs.substack.com

Join me as I review my first tea and my first k-cup review --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Don Rheem is an Author, TEDx Speaker, and CEO of E3 Solutions, a provider of employee workplace metrics which allows organizations to build engaged, high-performance cultures. Rheem focuses on using science-backed research to consult with leaders at all levels within an organization. His passion for delivering truly outstanding improvements in business performance conveys quickly to the CEOs and key executives he works with. A LEADING EXPERT ON LEADERSHIP SCIENCE A former science advisor to both Congress and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rheem shares with clients a grounded and empirically validated methodology to get employees more engaged and better positioned for success targeted at the bottom-line. Rheem and his team at E3 Solutions show business leaders how to create the workplace conditions that trigger hard-wired motivators that improve employee performance. These intrinsic drivers of human behavior increase engagement in ways that improve productivity, team alignment, morale, and retention. A popular speaker, author, and thought-leader, Rheem lectures on employee engagement throughout North America and Europe helping thousands of CEOs understand the key drivers of exceptional workplace behavior. His recently released ForbesBooks publication, Thrive By Design: The Neuroscience That Drives High-Performance Cultures lays out the neurological underpinnings of human behavior that distinguish Don's company from conventional leadership consulting. As a featured TEDx speaker, Don recently presented some of his most popular content in Can Work Save Our Relationships? at TEDxBYU A TRACK RECORD OF SUCCESS He has more than 30 years of experience helping organizations derive more value and impact every day. Don's clients have included Honeywell, The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Jiffy Lube, Major League Baseball, Bank of America, The Discovery Channel, and Green Mountain Coffee. He has coached more than 30 U.S. Senators, royalty, as well as hundreds of CEOs and senior executives in the private and nonprofit sectors in a variety of industries. A former White House correspondent, Rheem is also an award-winning journalist and public affairs executive. He served as a technical consultant to the Committee on Science, Space & Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives, advising members on public policy issues and basic scientific research. A Family Man Don comes from a long line of entrepreneurs; his great grandfather was president of Standard Oil and his grandfather was the founder of Rheem Manufacturing, one of the largest suppliers of water heaters and air conditioning equipment in the world. Rheem lives just outside of Washington, D.C. with his wife, Dr. Kathryn Rheem, and enjoys spending time with his family and writing in his free time. For more information, please visit ABOUT DON RHEEM

CB Bhattacharya is the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. He is a world renowned expert in business strategy innovation aimed at increasing both business and social value. His research and teaching focuses specifically on how companies can use underleveraged “intangible assets” such as corporate identity, reputation, corporate social responsibility and sustainability to strengthen stakeholder relationships and drive firm market value. Prof. Bhattacharya has published over 100 articles and has over 28,000 citations per Google Scholar. His latest book entitled Small Actions Big Difference: Leveraging Corporate Sustainability to Drive Business and Societal Value was published by Routledge in 2019. He is co-author of the book Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value and co-editor of the book Global Challenges in Responsible Business, both published by Cambridge University Press. He has served on the Editorial Review Boards and served as Editor of special issues of many leading international publications. Prof. Bhattacharya is the founder of the Center for Sustainable Business as well as the ESMT Sustainable Business Roundtable, a forum with more than 25 multinational members, aimed at discussing opportunities and challenges in mainstreaming sustainability practices within organizations. In 2007 he started the Stakeholder Marketing Consortium with support from the Aspen Institute. Prof. Bhattacharya is part of a select group of faculty that has been named twice to Business Week’s Outstanding Faculty list. He has been recognized by both Thomson Reuters and Google Scholar as one of the top cited scholars in his field. He has won several best paper awards, teaching awards and research prizes. He was also a finalist for the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award in 2007. In addition, he received the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995, the highest teaching award at Emory University. Prof. Bhattacharya has conducted research and consulted for many organizations such as Allianz, AT&T, Bosch, Eli Lilly, E.ON, General Mills, Green Mountain Coffee, High Museum of Art, Hitachi Corporation, Procter & Gamble Company, Prudential Bank, Timberland and Unilever. As an expert in corporate responsibility and sustainability, he is often interviewed and quoted in publications such as Business Week, BBC, Forbes, Financial Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and The Economist and on TV stations such as Times Now, CBS and PBS. He frequently delivers keynote speeches or brings in his insights as a panelist at company, industry, and academic conferences and conventions. Book - Small Actions, Big Difference by Dr. CB

In segment 1: I reveal my biggest holding, and what I believe to be the most intriguing deal situation on the board. Segment 2: Lehman Brothers. Allied Capital. Green Mountain Coffee. There was a moment in time where if David Einhorn shorted a stock, it was regarded as a possible death sentence for the shares. However, for both Einhorn and contemporary Bill Ackman, the last few years have proven to be difficult. In part II of my interview with Whitney Tilson, we discuss these two legendary hedge fund managers, and Whitney describes who he believes is the best hedge fund that no one's ever heard of .

Felix Salmon of Fusion, emerging-markets expert Anna Szymanski, and Huffington Post senior reporter Emily Peck, discuss:Sheryl Sandberg’s new book on grief, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.Former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s mostly ineffective data project, USA Facts.How CEO Marissa Mayer will earn $186 million through Yahoo’s sale to Verizon. Check out other Panoply podcasts at panoply.fm. Email: slatemoney@slate.com Twitter: @felixsalmon,@Three_Guineas, @EmilyRPeck Production by Zachary Dinerstein. Slate Money is brought to you by Boll and Branch. Get 50 dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping by going to BollandBranch.com and using promo code money. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods when you buy two select boxes at Keurig.com… and use promo code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Felix Salmon of Fusion, emerging-markets expert Anna Szymanski, and Huffington Post senior reporter Emily Peck, discuss:Sheryl Sandberg’s new book on grief, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.Former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer’s mostly ineffective data project, USA Facts.How CEO Marissa Mayer will earn $186 million through Yahoo’s sale to Verizon. Check out other Panoply podcasts at panoply.fm. Email: slatemoney@slate.com Twitter: @felixsalmon,@Three_Guineas, @EmilyRPeck Production by Zachary Dinerstein. Slate Money is brought to you by Boll and Branch. Get 50 dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping by going to BollandBranch.com and using promo code money. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods when you buy two select boxes at Keurig.com… and use promo code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf are joined at the Hamilton Theater in Washington D.C. by Face the Nation's John Dickerson and Slate's Jamelle Bouie to talk Fate of the Furious, Bob Dylan's singing voice, and their favorite Washington D.C. movies. The Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Boll and Branch. Right now, get 50 dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping by going to BollandBranch.com and using promo code culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf are joined at the Hamilton Theater in Washington D.C. by Face the Nation's John Dickerson and Slate's Jamelle Bouie to talk Fate of the Furious, Bob Dylan's singing voice, and their favorite Washington D.C. movies. The Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Boll and Branch. Right now, get 50 dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping by going to BollandBranch.com and using promo code culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Turner, Dana Stevens, and Stephen Metcalf are joined at the Hamilton Theater in Washington D.C. by Face the Nation's John Dickerson and Slate's Jamelle Bouie to talk Fate of the Furious, Bob Dylan's singing voice, and their favorite Washington D.C. movies. The Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Boll and Branch. Right now, get 50 dollars off your first set of sheets plus free shipping by going to BollandBranch.com and using promo code culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC.

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss the new documentary Five Came Back with creator Mark Harris, the end of the show Girls with The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino, and the United Airlines fiasco with Laura Miller. The Slate Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Rocket Mortgage from Quicken Loans. When it comes to the big decision of choosing a mortgage lender, work with one that has your best interests in mind. Use Rocket Mortgage for a transparent, trustworthy home loan process that’s completely online at QuickenLoans.com/Culture And by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss the new documentary Five Came Back with creator Mark Harris, the end of the show Girls with The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino, and the United Airlines fiasco with Laura Miller. The Slate Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Rocket Mortgage from Quicken Loans. When it comes to the big decision of choosing a mortgage lender, work with one that has your best interests in mind. Use Rocket Mortgage for a transparent, trustworthy home loan process that’s completely online at QuickenLoans.com/Culture And by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Metcalf, Julia Turner, and Dana Stevens discuss the new documentary Five Came Back with creator Mark Harris, the end of the show Girls with The New Yorker's Jia Tolentino, and the United Airlines fiasco with Laura Miller. The Slate Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Rocket Mortgage from Quicken Loans. When it comes to the big decision of choosing a mortgage lender, work with one that has your best interests in mind. Use Rocket Mortgage for a transparent, trustworthy home loan process that’s completely online at QuickenLoans.com/Culture And by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC.

Felix Salmon of Fusion, Slate Moneybox columnist Jordan Weissmann, and emerging-markets expert Anna Szymanski, discuss:South Africa’s credit rating downgrade to junk status.How markets aren’t responding predictably to recent economic events.Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari’s beef with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over how to prevent another banking crisis. Check out other Panoply podcasts at panoply.fm. Email: slatemoney@slate.com Twitter: @felixsalmon, @JHWeissmann, @Three_Guineas Production by Zachary Dinerstein. Slate Money is brought to you by Orkin. Every home is unique, that’s why Orkin creates customized treatment plans based in science from the nation’s leading entomologists. Get 50 dollars off your first pest control service by signing up at orkin.com/MONEY And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com, with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Felix Salmon of Fusion, Slate Moneybox columnist Jordan Weissmann, and emerging-markets expert Anna Szymanski, discuss:South Africa’s credit rating downgrade to junk status.How markets aren’t responding predictably to recent economic events.Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari’s beef with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over how to prevent another banking crisis. Check out other Panoply podcasts at panoply.fm. Email: slatemoney@slate.com Twitter: @felixsalmon, @JHWeissmann, @Three_Guineas Production by Zachary Dinerstein. Slate Money is brought to you by Orkin. Every home is unique, that’s why Orkin creates customized treatment plans based in science from the nation’s leading entomologists. Get 50 dollars off your first pest control service by signing up at orkin.com/MONEY And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com, with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June Thomas, Willa Paskin, and Laura Miller discuss Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast and To Walk Invisible, the new drama about the Brontë sister, plus an interview with Alison Wright of The Americans, Feud, and her recent Broadway debut, Sweat. Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. and by Squarespace. Start building your website today! Go to Squarespace.com and use offer code culture to get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our resident debunker of nonsense, Maria Konnikova, returns to take on the billion-dollar homeopathy industry. Why aren’t homeopathic remedies regulated in the United States? And what can their dubious history tell us about their effectiveness? Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer at the New Yorkerand the author of The Confidence Game.  In the Spiel, watching CNN go haywire for a pretty banal accident on Capitol Hill. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer. Get a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale when you go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the top of the home page, and type in THEGIST. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June Thomas, Willa Paskin, and Laura Miller discuss Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast and To Walk Invisible, the new drama about the Brontë sister, plus an interview with Alison Wright of The Americans, Feud, and her recent Broadway debut, Sweat. Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. and by Squarespace. Start building your website today! Go to Squarespace.com and use offer code culture to get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our resident debunker of nonsense, Maria Konnikova, returns to take on the billion-dollar homeopathy industry. Why aren’t homeopathic remedies regulated in the United States? And what can their dubious history tell us about their effectiveness? Maria Konnikova is a contributing writer at the New Yorkerand the author of The Confidence Game.  In the Spiel, watching CNN go haywire for a pretty banal accident on Capitol Hill. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer. Get a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale when you go to Stamps.com, click on the Microphone at the top of the home page, and type in THEGIST. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June Thomas, Willa Paskin, and Laura Miller discuss Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast and To Walk Invisible, the new drama about the Brontë sister, plus an interview with Alison Wright of The Americans, Feud, and her recent Broadway debut, Sweat. Culture Gabfest is brought to you by Texture. Texture lets you stay up to date with your favorite magazines...all in one place. Right now, get a 14-day FREE TRIAL when you sign up by going to Texture.com/culture. And by Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. and by Squarespace. Start building your website today! Go to Squarespace.com and use offer code culture to get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Two Whig presidents were elected by the American people—Zachary Taylor and William Henry Harrison. They lasted a grand total of one year and five months. The Whigs cracked up in the 1850s over intense policy divisions. Now, many historians are drawing parallels between the Whigs then and the Republicans now. Philip Wallach recently penned an essay for the Brookings Institution about what can be learned by the last major political party death in America. Plus, a visit to Vexillology Corner with Ted Kaye, who explains why you can’t cheat in your flag design by trimming the ends off. Kaye is the author of the book Good Flag, Bad Flag. In the Spiel, the greatest presidential broken promise in history. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Harry’s. Get the close, comfortable shave you deserve. Sign up at Harrys.com/Gist, and you’ll receive the company’s most popular trial set for free, you just cover the shipping. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alyssa Mastromonaco served as White House deputy chief of staff under Barack Obama. Her job was expansive—covering everything from interviewing James Comey to making sure the White House driveway was re-paved[AM1] . Now, she’s written a memoir, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House. In the Spiel, Republicans weren’t able to come up with a better plan than “Obamacare bad.” Failure was inevitable. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at Keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Policy Genius. Shop and compare all the top-rated life insurance companies in one place. Go to PolicyGenius.com today to save more than 40 percent off other prices for life insurance. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alyssa Mastromonaco served as White House deputy chief of staff under Barack Obama. Her job was expansive—covering everything from interviewing James Comey to making sure the White House driveway was re-paved[AM1] . Now, she’s written a memoir, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House. In the Spiel, Republicans weren’t able to come up with a better plan than “Obamacare bad.” Failure was inevitable. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at Keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Policy Genius. Shop and compare all the top-rated life insurance companies in one place. Go to PolicyGenius.com today to save more than 40 percent off other prices for life insurance. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alyssa Mastromonaco served as White House deputy chief of staff under Barack Obama. Her job was expansive—covering everything from interviewing James Comey to making sure the White House driveway was re-paved[AM1] . Now, she’s written a memoir, Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Work in the White House. In the Spiel, Republicans weren’t able to come up with a better plan than “Obamacare bad.” Failure was inevitable. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at Keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Policy Genius. Shop and compare all the top-rated life insurance companies in one place. Go to PolicyGenius.com today to save more than 40 percent off other prices for life insurance. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does it feel like our political debate was brought to us by the National Lampoon? Sonny Bunch applies his powers of cultural analysis to the changing face of political conservativism. Bunch is executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon, where he also writes film criticism.  In the Spiel, Devin Nunes really messed this thing up, huh? Today’s sponsors: Control GX gray-reducing shampoo is the FIRST shampoo that gradually reduces gray. It reduces gray a little with each shampoo. It’s easy to use and provides subtle, natural-looking results. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did we learn from Monday’s public testimony of FBI Director James Comey? National security ace Ben Wittes says Comey’s statements were intriguingly “gentle,” though they should still distress the president. Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. For the Spiel, Neil Gorsuch talks about a pointless race he once did and quotes David Foster Wallace, but doesn’t talk about his judicial philosophy. Today’s sponsors: ZipRecruiter. Post your job listing to all the top job sites with a single click. Try it for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What did we learn from Monday’s public testimony of FBI Director James Comey? National security ace Ben Wittes says Comey’s statements were intriguingly “gentle,” though they should still distress the president. Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. For the Spiel, Neil Gorsuch talks about a pointless race he once did and quotes David Foster Wallace, but doesn’t talk about his judicial philosophy. Today’s sponsors: ZipRecruiter. Post your job listing to all the top job sites with a single click. Try it for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate senior legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick walks us through the next steps for Donald Trump’s revised travel ban. Some judges may not use Trump’s campaign rhetoric in their rulings; however, “Every time Trump opens his mouth, he makes it harder,” says Lithwick. She also discusses next week's confirmation hearings of Neil Gorsuch. Besides covering the courts for Slate, Lithwick is the host of the Amicus podcast. In the Spiel, it’s Lobstar time. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with codeTRYGMC. Unpacked, a new Spotify original podcast that explores some of the planet’s hottest events. First up? Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest. Listen to Unpacked and all your favorite music on the Spotify mobile app for free now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Slate senior legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick walks us through the next steps for Donald Trump’s revised travel ban. Some judges may not use Trump’s campaign rhetoric in their rulings; however, “Every time Trump opens his mouth, he makes it harder,” says Lithwick. She also discusses next week's confirmation hearings of Neil Gorsuch. Besides covering the courts for Slate, Lithwick is the host of the Amicus podcast. In the Spiel, it’s Lobstar time. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with codeTRYGMC. Unpacked, a new Spotify original podcast that explores some of the planet’s hottest events. First up? Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest. Listen to Unpacked and all your favorite music on the Spotify mobile app for free now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Kelly McEvers landed in her current role as host of NPR’s All Things Considered, she was a world-weary conflict-zone reporter. But McEvers says she wasn’t bored upon returning to the states: “I came back to America, and I was like, Whoa, America, kind of messed up.” McEvers’ reporting podcast, Embedded, has just released new episodes. She talked to Mike Pesca last year at the Now Hear This Podcast Festival in Anaheim, California. In the Spiel, not so much with the Dutch populism.    Today’s sponsors: Tripping.com gives you access to millions of vacation properties all in one place. Visit Tripping.com/gist to find your perfect vacation rental today. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before Kelly McEvers landed in her current role as host of NPR’s All Things Considered, she was a world-weary conflict-zone reporter. But McEvers says she wasn’t bored upon returning to the states: “I came back to America, and I was like, Whoa, America, kind of messed up.” McEvers’ reporting podcast, Embedded, has just released new episodes. She talked to Mike Pesca last year at the Now Hear This Podcast Festival in Anaheim, California. In the Spiel, not so much with the Dutch populism.    Today’s sponsors: Tripping.com gives you access to millions of vacation properties all in one place. Visit Tripping.com/gist to find your perfect vacation rental today. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like so many dubious health claims, stretching before exercise has its roots in yoga culture. Maria Konnikova explains that stretching is exercise in-and-of itself and shouldn’t be treated like a warm-up. Then why do so many trainers and health nuts preach stretching as gospel? Konnikova is a regular guest on The Gist, a New Yorker staff writer, and the author of The Confidence Game.  In the Spiel, Rachel Maddow’s report on President Donald Trump’s taxes was fine news but bad showmanship.  Today’s sponsors: Control GX gray-reducing shampoo. It is the first shampoo that gradually reduces gray. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todd Barry’s stand-up comedy falls along the lower end of the register: in volume, in speed, in tone. So maybe it makes sense that he’s happiest onstage when he doesn’t have to talk at all. Fans may wonder how Barry translates his dry delivery to the page. The answer: by making liberal use of italics. His new book is Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg: One Comedian’s Tour of Not-Quite-the-Biggest Cities in the World. In the Spiel, joining forces with the News 4 Storm Tracker, it’s the most precise name in climate science: Wayne Tracker. Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a Free Trial when you sign up by going toTheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Todd Barry’s stand-up comedy falls along the lower end of the register: in volume, in speed, in tone. So maybe it makes sense that he’s happiest onstage when he doesn’t have to talk at all. Fans may wonder how Barry translates his dry delivery to the page. The answer: by making liberal use of italics. His new book is Thank You for Coming to Hattiesburg: One Comedian’s Tour of Not-Quite-the-Biggest Cities in the World. In the Spiel, joining forces with the News 4 Storm Tracker, it’s the most precise name in climate science: Wayne Tracker. Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a Free Trial when you sign up by going toTheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist.Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Donald Trump has overseen many shady deals, but New Yorker staff writer Adam Davidson thinks he may have found the most questionable one. Davidson says a Trump Organization hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, links the president to some shady oligarchs as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, a shadow-government ideological group. Read Davidson’s piece, “Donald Trump’s Worst Deal.” Maria Konnikova has today’s Spiel on the theory of trickle-down hate-speech. Today’s sponsor: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has promised lower costs, broader coverage, and better premiums in his health care plan. Well, the new bill is out, and it’s uniting liberals and conservatives in outright disdain. “I’ve only heard from two outside groups who like this bill,” says Vox health care correspondent Sarah Kliff. Everybody else hates it. Kliff walks us through the implications of “Trumpcare” and whether it has any chance of passing through Congress. For the Spiel, how your smart TV became a sleeper agent for the intelligence community. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. And Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer. Sign up for Stamps.com and get a four-week trial, plus postage and a digital scale, when you use promo code THEGIST. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has promised lower costs, broader coverage, and better premiums in his health care plan. Well, the new bill is out, and it’s uniting liberals and conservatives in outright disdain. “I’ve only heard from two outside groups who like this bill,” says Vox health care correspondent Sarah Kliff. Everybody else hates it. Kliff walks us through the implications of “Trumpcare” and whether it has any chance of passing through Congress. For the Spiel, how your smart TV became a sleeper agent for the intelligence community. Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. And Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer. Sign up for Stamps.com and get a four-week trial, plus postage and a digital scale, when you use promo code THEGIST. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gist’s Billboard charts Sherpa Chris Molanphy returns to hearken back to more recent musical history: the hits of 2012. We learn why Psy’s ubiquitous “Gangnam Style” isn’t technically on the list and how a Swedish stable of songwriters dominated the charts with “turbo pop.” Molanphy writes the Why Is This Song No. 1? column for Slate. In the Spiel, chasing down a lesser-known lie.    Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Blue Apron. Create delicious, home-cooked meals with fresh ingredients delivered right to your door. Get your first three meals free when you go to BlueApron.com/thegist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gist’s Billboard charts Sherpa Chris Molanphy returns to hearken back to more recent musical history: the hits of 2012. We learn why Psy’s ubiquitous “Gangnam Style” isn’t technically on the list and how a Swedish stable of songwriters dominated the charts with “turbo pop.” Molanphy writes the Why Is This Song No. 1? column for Slate. In the Spiel, chasing down a lesser-known lie.    Today’s sponsors: Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Blue Apron. Create delicious, home-cooked meals with fresh ingredients delivered right to your door. Get your first three meals free when you go to BlueApron.com/thegist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three years ago, Maeve Higgins left a successful career as an author comedian in Ireland to try her hand at New York City. Since then, she’s been obsessed with fellow immigrants, people who have chosen to make their life in the USA, often against formidable odds. In her podcast, Maeve in America, Higgins tells these stories, from Syrian refugees to Korean academics to English comedians.  For the Spiel, a fable that explains everything you know about Trump’s speech to Congress. Today’s sponsors: Control GX gray-reducing shampoo. It is the first shampoo that gradually reduces gray. It reduces gray a little with each shampoo. It’s easy to use and provides subtle, natural-looking results. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three years ago, Maeve Higgins left a successful career as an author comedian in Ireland to try her hand at New York City. Since then, she’s been obsessed with fellow immigrants, people who have chosen to make their life in the USA, often against formidable odds. In her podcast, Maeve in America, Higgins tells these stories, from Syrian refugees to Korean academics to English comedians.  For the Spiel, a fable that explains everything you know about Trump’s speech to Congress. Today’s sponsors: Control GX gray-reducing shampoo. It is the first shampoo that gradually reduces gray. It reduces gray a little with each shampoo. It’s easy to use and provides subtle, natural-looking results. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today $4 off, when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with code TRYGMC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is a bit of a head trip. Half of it takes place in the liminal phase between life and death. It’s about Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie, who died at the age of 11, but we almost never hear from him. And it takes about four to five chapters to understand what’s going on. “My goal is the early difficulty pays off later,” says Saunders. “Once the book teaches you how to read it, it takes you to places you couldn’t have gone otherwise.” Saunders talks to Mike about Lincoln, research, and his recent nonfiction work for the New Yorker. In the Spiel, why CPAC has come around on Trump. (Hint: It’s because he’s the president.)  Today’s sponsors: Tripping.com. Tripping.com gives you access to millions of vacation properties all in one place. Visit Tripping.com/gist to find your perfect vacation rental today. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

George Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is a bit of a head trip. Half of it takes place in the liminal phase between life and death. It’s about Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie, who died at the age of 11, but we almost never hear from him. And it takes about four to five chapters to understand what’s going on. “My goal is the early difficulty pays off later,” says Saunders. “Once the book teaches you how to read it, it takes you to places you couldn’t have gone otherwise.” Saunders talks to Mike about Lincoln, research, and his recent nonfiction work for the New Yorker. In the Spiel, why CPAC has come around on Trump. (Hint: It’s because he’s the president.)  Today’s sponsors: Tripping.com. Tripping.com gives you access to millions of vacation properties all in one place. Visit Tripping.com/gist to find your perfect vacation rental today. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jon Ralston has decades of experience covering politics in Nevada, as a columnist for both major Las Vegas newspapers and a host on local TV. But as the major news outlets have cut their politics coverage, Ralston has launched an experiment to save local political news: a nonprofit site called The Nevada Independent. Ralston is also a contributing editor to Politico. In the Spiel: Republican lawmakers face their constituents. It’s not going well for the lawmakers.  Today’s sponsors: Goldman Sachs. To learn about developments currently shaping markets, industries, and the global economy, subscribe to the firm’s podcast, Exchanges at Goldman Sachs, available on iTunes. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Nixon was the lead CIA analyst tasked with studying Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It fell to Nixon to identify Hussein when he was captured, interrogate him while in U.S. custody, and present what he learned to the Bush White House. Nixon’s book is Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein. In the Spiel: Don’t blame the provocateur, blame his followers. Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a free trial when you sign up by going to TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Nixon was the lead CIA analyst tasked with studying Saddam Hussein during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It fell to Nixon to identify Hussein when he was captured, interrogate him while in U.S. custody, and present what he learned to the Bush White House. Nixon’s book is Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein. In the Spiel: Don’t blame the provocateur, blame his followers. Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a free trial when you sign up by going to TheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a term in poker called tilt—when players become overwhelmed by bad news and it starts clouding their decision-making. Poker star Annie Duke talks to guest host Maria Konnikova about the psychological tricks that pro card players use to get through rough patches and how it applies to our political climate today. Duke has written several books about poker and sits on the board of How I Decide, a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged young people make better decisions.     For the Spiel, Maria breaks down what Donald Trump is doing to our brains.    Today’s sponsor: Indochino, the company that’s reinventing men’s fashion. Go to Indochino.com to get any premium Indochino suit for just $389, plus free shipping, when you use promo code gist at checkout. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with$4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods atKeurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a term in poker called tilt—when players become overwhelmed by bad news and it starts clouding their decision-making. Poker star Annie Duke talks to guest host Maria Konnikova about the psychological tricks that pro card players use to get through rough patches and how it applies to our political climate today. Duke has written several books about poker and sits on the board of How I Decide, a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged young people make better decisions.     For the Spiel, Maria breaks down what Donald Trump is doing to our brains.    Today’s sponsor: Indochino, the company that’s reinventing men’s fashion. Go to Indochino.com to get any premium Indochino suit for just $389, plus free shipping, when you use promo code gist at checkout. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. Try it today with$4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods atKeurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver took on the powers that be in their influential podcast The Bugle. But the show went on hiatus in 2014 when Oliver became the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight. Now, Zaltzman is rebooting the show at a most opportune moment for satire. “It’s like throwing the javelin of truth into the swamp of corruption,” says Zaltzman. “But javelins in swamps don’t always work out.” For the Spiel, a Lobstar of the Antentwig. Today’s sponsors: Wunder Capital. Earn up to 8.5 percent annually while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution, and combating global climate change. Create an account for free at WunderCapital.com/gist. Wunder Capital: Do well and do good. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver took on the powers that be in their influential podcast The Bugle. But the show went on hiatus in 2014 when Oliver became the host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight. Now, Zaltzman is rebooting the show at a most opportune moment for satire. “It’s like throwing the javelin of truth into the swamp of corruption,” says Zaltzman. “But javelins in swamps don’t always work out.” For the Spiel, a Lobstar of the Antentwig. Today’s sponsors: Wunder Capital. Earn up to 8.5 percent annually while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution, and combating global climate change. Create an account for free at WunderCapital.com/gist. Wunder Capital: Do well and do good. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jedediah Purdy understands President Trump’s supporters better than most champions of the left, having grown up in rural West Virginia (he has the greased-pig award to prove it). But he’s still befuddled by the prospect of peeling away voters from the president’s camp. Purdy’s recent piece in theNew Republic is titled “America’s New Opposition.” For the Spiel, an annotated history of one of the Trump administration’s favorite lies. Today’s sponsors: Dunkin’ Donuts. Upgrade your day with DD Perks. Earn a free Dunkin’ Donuts beverage when you enroll by using promo code DDPODCAST, and speed past the line in store with on-the-go ordering. Download the Dunkin’ app and enroll today. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jedediah Purdy understands President Trump’s supporters better than most champions of the left, having grown up in rural West Virginia (he has the greased-pig award to prove it). But he’s still befuddled by the prospect of peeling away voters from the president’s camp. Purdy’s recent piece in theNew Republic is titled “America’s New Opposition.” For the Spiel, an annotated history of one of the Trump administration’s favorite lies. Today’s sponsors: Dunkin’ Donuts. Upgrade your day with DD Perks. Earn a free Dunkin’ Donuts beverage when you enroll by using promo code DDPODCAST, and speed past the line in store with on-the-go ordering. Download the Dunkin’ app and enroll today. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Darnielle has always had a facility with words. As singer and songwriter behind the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has made pop poetry about lonely outsiders and cultural marginalia. Now, in his second novel, Universal Harvester, he explores the lives of desperate people in a small Iowa town. He also talks about a song title so good that no singer could ever do it justice.  In the Spiel, how competent people are quietly undoing Trump. Today’s sponsors: ZipRecruiter.Post your job listing to all the top job sites with a single click. Try it for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with$4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods atKeurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Darnielle has always had a facility with words. As singer and songwriter behind the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has made pop poetry about lonely outsiders and cultural marginalia. Now, in his second novel, Universal Harvester, he explores the lives of desperate people in a small Iowa town. He also talks about a song title so good that no singer could ever do it justice.  In the Spiel, how competent people are quietly undoing Trump. Today’s sponsors: ZipRecruiter.Post your job listing to all the top job sites with a single click. Try it for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/gist. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with$4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods atKeurig.comwith code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On The Gist, guest host Julia Ioffe of the Atlantic talks about the similarities and surprising differences between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin with Miriam Elder, world editor at BuzzFeed. Elder shares her idea of how the two leaders fit into a global story unfolding right now. Plus, Ioffe and Elder explain “whataboutism” and other vocabulary lessons from their time reporting in Moscow. In the Spiel: The Trump presidency is quickly putting the lie to an old Russian saw. Today’s sponsors: Dunkin’ Donuts. Upgrade your day with DD Perks. Earn a free Dunkin’ Donuts beverage when you enroll by using promo code DDPODCAST, and speed past the line in store with on-the-go ordering. Download the Dunkin’ app and enroll today. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On The Gist, guest host Julia Ioffe of the Atlantic talks about the similarities and surprising differences between President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin with Miriam Elder, world editor at BuzzFeed. Elder shares her idea of how the two leaders fit into a global story unfolding right now. Plus, Ioffe and Elder explain “whataboutism” and other vocabulary lessons from their time reporting in Moscow. In the Spiel: The Trump presidency is quickly putting the lie to an old Russian saw. Today’s sponsors: Dunkin’ Donuts. Upgrade your day with DD Perks. Earn a free Dunkin’ Donuts beverage when you enroll by using promo code DDPODCAST, and speed past the line in store with on-the-go ordering. Download the Dunkin’ app and enroll today. Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother tasting cup. Try it today with code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elvis Costello is one of the most accomplished songwriters of his generation. In his memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, he details his songwriting process, his encounters with everyone from Paul McCartney to Joe Strummer, and his place in a rapidly changing music industry. Costello is up for a Grammy this week for the audiobook version of Unfaithful.  For the Spiel, a fairly pointless history lesson from Ted Cruz.  Today’s sponsors: Dunkin’ Donuts. Upgrade your day with DD Perks. Earn a free Dunkin’ Donuts beverage when you enroll by using promo code DDPODCAST, and speed past the line in store with on-the-go ordering. Download the Dunkin’ app and enroll today. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. And now, as a special listener promotion, get $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with the code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With elections coming up in France and Germany, Facebook is working with media organizations across Europe to avoid the fake news pox that struck the United States last year. Slate’s senior technology writer Will Ormeus joins us to discuss the strides being made against political hoaxes online.  Also, we answer the question: Does office coffee make us more productive? What does it accomplish as a work perk? Does it taste any better because it’s free? The Sporkful’s Dan Pashman investigates as his employer, WNYC, looks for a new workplace brew. For the Spiel, on the silencing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  Today’s sponsors: Policy Genius. Shop and compare all the top-rated life insurance companies in one place. Go to PolicyGenius.com today to save over 70 percent off other prices for life insurance. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. And now, as a special listener promotion, get $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with the code TRYGMC.  Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With elections coming up in France and Germany, Facebook is working with media organizations across Europe to avoid the fake news pox that struck the United States last year. Slate’s senior technology writer Will Ormeus joins us to discuss the strides being made against political hoaxes online.  Also, we answer the question: Does office coffee make us more productive? What does it accomplish as a work perk? Does it taste any better because it’s free? The Sporkful’s Dan Pashman investigates as his employer, WNYC, looks for a new workplace brew. For the Spiel, on the silencing of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  Today’s sponsors: Policy Genius. Shop and compare all the top-rated life insurance companies in one place. Go to PolicyGenius.com today to save over 70 percent off other prices for life insurance. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. And now, as a special listener promotion, get $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with the code TRYGMC.  Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before she was the governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius ran the state’s high-risk health care pool, where citizens with serious health problems could get coverage despite their pre-existing conditions. High-risk pools are a favorite idea of the GOP, including many in Congress trying to cook up a replacement for Obamacare. Sebelius says the high-risk plan doesn’t work: “Every day we heard stories of people who couldn’t afford coverage.” Sebelius helped create the Affordable Care Act while she was in President Obama’s Cabinet from 2009 to 2014. For the Spiel, legislative antics at home and abroad!  Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a free trial when you sign up by going toTheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. And now, as a special listener promotion, get $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with the code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before she was the governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius ran the state’s high-risk health care pool, where citizens with serious health problems could get coverage despite their pre-existing conditions. High-risk pools are a favorite idea of the GOP, including many in Congress trying to cook up a replacement for Obamacare. Sebelius says the high-risk plan doesn’t work: “Every day we heard stories of people who couldn’t afford coverage.” Sebelius helped create the Affordable Care Act while she was in President Obama’s Cabinet from 2009 to 2014. For the Spiel, legislative antics at home and abroad!  Today’s sponsors: The Great Courses Plus, a video learning service that offers lectures on all kinds of topics. Get a free trial when you sign up by going toTheGreatCoursesPlus.com/gist. And Green Mountain Coffee. Green Mountain Coffee is passionate about making a smoother-tasting cup. And now, as a special listener promotion, get $4 off when you buy two boxes of most Green Mountain Coffee K-Cup pods at keurig.com with the code TRYGMC. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at slate.com/gistplus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rangeley Capital's Portfolio Managers, Chris DeMuth and Andrew Walker, discuss the basics of Merger Arbitrage using a current example (Green Mountain Coffee (GMCR)).

GM reports a big loss in Europe.   Abercrombie & Fitch reports unfashionable earnings.   Green Mountain Coffee serves up weaker-than-expected sales and lowers guidance.  And Beam serves up strong sales.

Disney reports big earnings.  And the founder of Green Mountain Coffee is forced to sell a big stake. 

The government reports weaker-than-expected jobs growth.  Yahoo! deals with a leadership controversy.  Whole Foods serves up big earnings. Green Mountain Coffee serves up some bitter earnings.  And Microsoft bets on the Nook. Our analysts discuss those stories and share three stocks on their radar.  Plus,  Motley Fool co-founder Tom Gardner talks about his approach to investing.

TRADING BLOCK: Italian borrowing costs spooked the market.  May we actually see some countries abandon the Euro? Groupon options finally went live, not surprisingly, with 100+ vols in the downside skew, puts were bid! A lot of selling in the 1 and 500 lot July 15's, the highest activity strike next to the Dec 20 puts. ODD BLOCK: Unusual activity in: Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE) Home Depot Inc. (HD) International Business Machines, Inc. (IBM)  XPRESS BLOCK Jon Gregius is in the OX hot-seat for this Xpress Block and discusses RJO. Also, on Thursday of last week, FAS did a 1 for 5 reverse split, which lit up the help line at OX. Crude oil is up 30% in the last 5 weeks, which also brings in the calls.   STRATEGY BLOCK: Andrew Giovianazzi talks in depth about conversions/reversals and ratio call spreads for GRPN options traders.  AROUND THE BLOCK: Thursday will be an active day with both Jobless Claims and Housing Starts on 11/17. Moving forward, the market may need to purge itself whatever is making it sick. Might it be the end of an era for Apple at KYO? Green Mountain Coffee, Can it hold its volatility? Read more: http://www.theoptionsinsider.com/radio/?id=313#ixzz1doNcYK59 The Options Insider: Your Inside Source For Options Information

Option Block 105: A Pod of Sissy girls Trading Block: How to use SPX movement in the downside skew to gauge the sentiment of a particular rally. An uncharacteristic sell-off in Apple -- will they finally lose their grip on the 400 handle? Green Mountain Coffee closed at nearly $41 today, down a whopping 40%. Odd Block: Unusual activity in eBay Inc. (EBAY): A Bullish option strategist appears in online marketplace provider EBAY this morning with the purchase of the January 30-34 call spread for $2.04 on 5,600 by 8,400 ratio and the simultaneous sale of 8,400 January 27 Puts at $1.03. EBAY is slated to release their Q4 earnings on January 18th, two days before these contracts expire. Computer Science Corp. (CSC): A provider of information technology services to government and industry, saw its shares trading lower again today after yesterday's disappointing 2012 profit forecast. The shares lost 15% yesterday and have drifted down so far this morning. Investors positioning for the stock to continue to decline picked up deep out-of-the-money November and December expiry puts that look for the price of the underlying to suffer additional double-digit declines in the near future. Bears populating the front month picked up more than 700 puts at the Nov. $25 strike for an average premium of $0.58 each, and purchased some 400 put options at the lower Nov. $22.5 strike at an average premium of $0.15 a-pop. The stock was cut to ‘Underweight' from ‘Neutral' at JPMorgan today. Xpress Block: Tim Navabi takes the reins at discusses the reverse split of FAS at OX today and talks adjusted options. Around the Block: Disney earnings after the bell - Things are looking good in the house of Mouse, it closed at 34.60, trading about $1 higher in the after-hours. NVDIA after the bell - closed at about 14.5, trading about $0.70 higher. Under Armor, Mastercard, Red Hat and Ulta Salon all had nice small pops before earnings. Oil and TLT have both been on a significant rally.