Crack It In An Hour

What happened to dressing up?

The global athleisure market is on its way to $900 billion. Formal wear? About $4 billion. Comfort won. But at what cost? This week, Romain brings the problem: how do you get people to dress up again? What starts as a data drop (enclothed cognition, productivity hits, one in twelve remote workers in pajamas every single day) turns into a deeper conversation about confidence, identity, and why "formal wear" might just be the worst two words in fashion. Simon's plotting a suit phase. Jesse won't budge (but she has found a jacket with beaded Minions on it). And somewhere between rebranding formal wear as "intelligent wear," the case for fashion-as-rebellion, and a truly compelling argument for wearing a cane in Cannes, the crew lands on something worth cracking: what does formal wear look like when it actually starts a conversation? Check it out!

Don't be tardy for the party!...Or maybe do.

Being late seems like one of those small everyday annoyances, but it turns out there’s a lot more going on under the surface. On this episode Simon brings the topic of lateness to Romain and Biz, and the gang gets into the strange ripple effects of people not showing up on time. When is being late understandable? When is it unacceptable? Why does it bother us so much? And what would it actually take to make people stop doing it? A surprisingly big conversation about a seemingly small problem. Check it out!

3 Problems: Cooking, email and plane boarding.

We're back with only our second-ever lightning round — three hosts, three problems, 20 minutes each. Nobody knows what's coming. Jesse kicks things off asking why we can't get more people to start cooking. Romain admits cooking stresses him out (it's the time pressure, not the talent), Simon reveals a rampant cocaine addiction — which, for the record, is just Romain mishearing "cooking" — and we land on a surprisingly solid framework: ditch the perfectionism, remove the steps you hate, and just make the one-pot meal. Then Romain brings the problem that literally started this whole podcast — the one we've been sitting on since a cold, wet night in Boston in January 2025. Why has nobody solved plane boarding? We go deep on window-to-aisle loading, the overhead bin chaos nobody enforces, why Southwest actually had it right all along, and Jesse's bold pitch to give everyone a boarding score. Simon closes it out with a big one: fixing email. Is it even fixable, or is it just a war of agents vs. agents from here on out? We pitch important.com, mailer.com, and garbage.com as the holy trinity of a better inbox — and somehow that feels like the most reasonable solution we've heard anywhere. Check it out!

Can cable TV make a comeback?

Cable TV peaked at 105 million households in 2010. Today it's in less than 34% of American homes — and yet, somehow, streaming has become the new cable. Complicated bundles, decision fatigue, and the constant pressure to watch the right thing at the right time have made TV genuinely stressful. This week, Simon, Jesse, and Romain are joined by Maria Van Buskirk — newly minted Head of Comms and Go-to-Market at Significant — for her very first episode. Jesse brings the problem: how do you bring cable TV back from the dead? The crew digs into why streaming accidentally recreated everything people hated about cable, why a younger generation with zero nostalgia might actually be cable's best audience, and why the real pitch isn't about channels at all — it's about selling your "chill subscription." Oh, and there's a very strong case made for the return of the kitchen TV. Check it out!

Let's party, people!

House parties are dying. The data is real, the stats are wild, and somehow Romain is the one mad about it. In this episode, Romain tasks Simon and Jesse with figuring out why nobody throws parties anymore — and more importantly, how to bring them back. The gang gets into the liking gap (why we're all secretly waiting for someone else to make the move), why LA kills the vibe by 11pm, whether the dinner party even counts, and the deeply underrated case for the adult sleepover. There's a strong argument that cleaning brands should be sponsoring house parties, that alcohol companies should be running party PSAs, and that the real problem isn't that parties are hard — it's that Instagram made us think they are. It's a conversation about loneliness, lowering the bar, and why all you really need is good people and a couple of pizzas. Check it out!