It's New Orleans: Out to Lunch
Business & Finance
About
OUT TO LUNCH finds economist and Tulane finance professor Peter Ricchiuti conducting business New Orleans style: over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Olreans. In his 15th year in the host seat, Ricchiuti’s learned but uniquely NOLA informal perspective has established Out to Lunch as the voice of Crescent City business. You can also hear the show on WWNO 89.9FM.
Episodes
- Visible and Invisible New Orleans
I want to start out today by running through a few notable New Orleans landmarks: The new terminal at Louis Armstrong Airport. The U.S Custom House. The gold/copper skin on the Superdome. The Civic Theater. The W New Orleans French Q…
- After The Revolution
If you’re under 30, and you have any kind of original, innovative ideas, you might not know that before you were born people like you generally left New Orleans and went to places where forward-thinking was appreciated. Then, in 2005…
- The Best Of All Possible Worlds
In the mid 1700’s, a French author, Voltaire, wrote a biting satire that has remained a classic piece of literature ever since. The novel, Candide , is about a student who is continually beset by all kinds of horrific disasters. It&r…
- The Road Less Traveled
If you think it feels like things are speeding up and change is coming faster than ever, well, you’re right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to get to a worldwide population of 3 billion. We got there in 1927. From there, i…
- Solutions From The South
In conversations about business, you don’t hear Karl Marx quoted very often. That’s principally because of his enthusiasm for communism, which is kind of the opposite of business… But Marx was an economist back in the mi…
- A Little Help From My Friends
Things don't always work out like you planned. You know, they just don't. Nobody gets married planning to one day get divorced. But, somehow, around 40% of people who get married for the first time find themselves at some point in that pos…
- The Seen and Unseen World
People who try and explain the complexity of human existence sometimes talk about “the seen and unseen world.” The seen world is the world of everyday reality in which we live. The theory of the unseen world attempts to explain…
- Two of Your Favorite People
When you’re the CEO or Executive Director of a company, you’re responsible for, well, everything. If the company does well, you’re a genius. If the company does poorly, you’re fired. Typically, the definition of bus…
- John and John
Most people start a business for the same reason: to make money. John Roberts started a business to give money away. John and his business partner, Mickal Adler, would certainly like to end up making money at some point – that is the…
- Catching Up
When we started out making a show about New Orleans business, people – even in the business community – said, “Well that’s great, but what are you going to do after 6 weeks?” That was 2011. We’ve recorde…
- That Was Then This Is Now
I have three questions for you. One - What are your parents’ names? You can probably answer that easily. Two - What are your grandparents’ names? You can probably answer that as well. Now here's the third question. What are the…
- Minority Nurse
In almost every conversation about healthcare, we hear the term, “provider.” Typically, we assume a healthcare provider is a doctor. But, if you look at insurance company definitions of health care providers, the term includes…
- How Sweet It Is
New Orleans has been around for over 300 years. From almost the very beginning, bar rooms have been an integral part of our social life. There are French works of art depicting bar scenes as early as the mid 1800’s. Starting in the 1…
- Your Brain on ACT
Do you ever use the term “brainiac” to describe someone who’s super smart? We use a term like that because we tend to assume that someone is either highly intelligent, or they’re not. In other words, you’re ei…
- Puppies and Pastries
A lot of business success stories contain familiar scenarios. They include a previous spectacular failure; everybody telling an entrepreneur they’re crazy; and an entrepreneur explaining that what might look like an overnight success…
- Hi How Can I help You
I was very tempted to go fishing today, and leave this show to the machines. If you have any doubt that AI could do my job and conduct a 30 minute interview with local business people, today’s show is going to remove that doubt. In f…
- Words and Pictures
If you’ve ever worked in corporate America, you may have had this experience: you’re having a perfectly normal day when you get an email from HR with the subject line, “Team Building.” Now, you might be the most fab…
- NOLA HALO
There’s a term in psychology that also applies to marketing. It’s called “The Halo Effect.” It refers to how we can make sometimes incorrect assumptions based on a collection of pieces of information. For a business…
- The Upside of AI
When people talk about the place of AI in the workforce, it’s mostly doom and gloom about how AI is going to take your job. I’ve even sounded the alarm myself about podcasts entirely produced and hosted without the contribution…
- More Food 'n Music
Lists used to be the stuff of clickbait. Now even venerable outlets like the New York Times regularly publish lists. Including the Times’ list of the 25 best restaurants in New Orleans . Those of us who live here know there are so ma…
- The Pursuit
Theoretically, we understand the difference between success and happiness. But there’s a big gap between theory and reality. What bridges that gap is often, courage. Suppose you worked hard, have a great job in a competitive fie…
- Cabbage
Generally, by the time someone gets invited on a show like this they’ve figured out how to tell the story of their business in a way that makes their journey seem like a steady climb from humble beginnings to current success. In tell…
- Crypt Flowers Flex
As human beings, we have many shared experiences. Most of us, one way or another, get a haircut. And most of us appreciate the fleeting beauty of flowers. You might think those two mundane observations are devoid of any kind of potential e…
- Neon Sofa
When you walk into a home, a room, or a business, you typically have a single sensation. A place feels a certain way. That specific reaction is actually the culmination of a whole range of perceptions that include observations about dimens…
- Stitches
Fewer than 400,000 people live in Orleans Parish. Every year we also have around 19 million temporary residents. Also known as “tourists.” New Orleanians tend to think of these two populations as distinct – even at…
- College Paper
As a society, we’re generally focused on achievement. We celebrate when a person gets into college. And we celebrate when they graduate. In between, when it comes to winning monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily battles - like structu…
- Hot Sauna Cold Plunge
There’s a difference between an unintentional and an intentional experience. For example, you could be wandering down Oak Street at night and unintentionally hear music coming out of The Maple Leaf. It might sound great, but it sound…
- Safety First
People who own or run factories and refineries love to complain about how onerous it is to comply with the rules and regulations laid out by OSHA – the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration . On the other hand, these…
- Lucy NOCCA
If you’ve got a high school kid in public school in New Orleans and your kid is interested in pursuing anything in the arts – like music, dance, theater, film, even creative writing – you find out pretty quickly, the scho…
- General Admission
I’m sitting at a table with two people: Patrick and Conway. In front of me, there’s a knife. I could use the knife to cut the food on my plate. Or I could lunge across the table and stab Conway with it. If I did that, what woul…
- Affordable Storyville
New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods. 73 of them. Each one of these neighborhoods has its own flavor, its unique characteristics, and residents who can tell you about people who were brought up there and went on to do something notable.…
- Seeds of Change
You may have heard people who started up businesses talking about how they found investors. Typically, they’ll say something like, “We pitched our idea and raised X amount.” It sounds simple. But when you dig a little dee…
- Tipitina Bienville
There are countless myths and reports throughout human history of places where spirits come down to earth. Where the intangible meets the material world. In the US, there are few places that better demonstrate this crossroads than New Orle…
- Inspiration Perspiration
In the 1800’s Thomas Edison invented, among other things, the light bulb, the record player, and the first motion picture capture device which paved the way for the birth of movies. Was Thomas Edison a genius? In response to that que…
- Mezcal Glitter
Maybe this has happened to you. You stumble onto a great new show on Netflix - and when you tell your friends about it, everybody seems to know about it already. But for some reason you never got the memo. Peter's lunch guests today don&rs…
- NOLA Girl Power
I’m going to hit you with some statistics. About women. Here’s the first one: Around 50% of the population in the US are women. You probably knew that one. Here’s another one. Women-owned businesses. According to th…
- Escapist Success Stories
People typically get invited onto shows like this because they’re successful. So, it will come as no surprise to you that my two guests on Out to Lunch today have success stories. What might surprise you, is the magnitude of their su…
- You Can't Have One
If you’re a visual artist and you have an idea for something you want to create, there’s not much standing between you and making your vision a reality. Maybe just a piece of paper and a pencil. However, if your idea for a new…
- Roll The Dice
You can do a lot with money. After you’ve spent it on necessities like food, housing, and education, if you’ve got money to spare you can buy stuff. Or, you can use your excess money to make more money. There are fundamentally…
- Twenty Five
We use numbers to measure all kinds of things. Inches, pounds, degrees, birthdays… Numbers that denote height, weight, and temperature, are culturally neutral. Numbers that measure years are not. We give select numbers of years spec…
- Rent A Desk
Not too long ago, people who had an office job talked about “being chained to a desk.” Today, a desk job is the most liberating of all employment options. Your desk can be at your house, in a coffee shop, in your van, or at wha…
- Happy Mardi Gras
In most cities in the US, after you’ve blown it out on New Year’s Eve, if you want another socially approved excuse to party you have to wait a bit. Memorial Day is 5 months away. At best you might be able to get away with Spri…
- Swinging Hammers
We’ve long known, in the US, that our global economic advantage rests on an educated workforce. To that end, a couple of generations ago, America was virtually alone in providing free, readily available high school education. As know…
- Biz On Wheels
New Orleans has given the world all kinds of music. We refer to ourselves as the birthplace of jazz. We’re one of the principal breeding grounds of funk, bounce, and brass band music. And then there’s a style of piano playing t…
- Vivid Beatles
If you’re not a musician, you might occasionally think how great it would be to be a musician. If you are a musician, you might occasionally think how great it must have been to be in The Beatles. New Orleanian Bruce Spizer is not a…
- You Look Fabulous
Hi, it's Peter Ricchiuti. I’ve got a scenario I want to run by you, and I want your opinion. Here’s the situation: It’s morning. I get ready to leave the house. I pick out an outfit, get dressed, I look great. Then my wif…
- Profit People Purpose
When you’re talking with someone and they want to know what final conclusion you want them to draw from your conversation, they might ask you, “What’s the bottom line?” The origin of the term, “the bottom line,” is business accounting. It…
- IRL
When we text each other we use acronyms and abbreviations like OMG and LOL to convey meaning and emotion. And then there’s IRL – In Real Life. We use that to signal that we know the difference between the digital universe and reality. Onli…
- Algiers Art
The common wisdom we’re taught when starting up a business is, “Solve a problem that needs solving.” But the truly exceptional success stories of our time have not followed this advice. When Coca Cola came along, nobody who was enjoying a…
- That's Funny
What is fear? Fear is a natural response to a perception of danger. All creatures on earth have it. We use fear to spur us into action - to run or take other steps to save our lives. There are many studies listing specific fears of differe…