It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase, “win-win.” People often use it to try and convince you that something that’s good for them is actually good for you too. In business, it’s rare to find a true win-win business model, where everybody in the supply chain, from manufacturer to distributor to customer, actually wins. But there is one business in America that...

There’s a lot of talk about staying healthy these days. Mostly, it breaks down into two areas: eating and exercise. Okay, I can already hear you groaning. But the good news is, we’re not going to talk about eating healthy today. And the even better news is, we’re not going to talk about working out, or running, or biking, or any of that. There are other ways you can keep fit, hea...

The self-help industry is a multi-billion-dollar global market encompassing books, digital courses, personal coaching, seminars, and wellness apps aimed at personal optimization. Scottish author Samuel Smiles introduced the concept in 1859 with his publication Self Help , which emphasized thrift, discipline, and individual perseverance over societal change. Today, we can turn to Oprah Winfrey&rsqu...

There are an estimated 31 - 34 million entrepreneurs and small businesses in the United States, and we’ve interviewed more than a few over the years here on Out to Lunch.  If you’ve been listening or are an entrepreneur or small business owner yourself, then you know there are numerous routes to entrepreneurship. Many entrepreneurs purchase an existing operation, take over a famil...

In recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion in the art world about accessibility. Not physical accessibility — though smaller or historic facilities often fall short on ADA compliance – but cultural accessibility, creating welcoming spaces for everyone in a community. Both of my Out to Lunch guests have spent much of their careers ensuring that art in Baton Rouge is free, i...

Baton Rouge, like other cities, deals with what demographers call “Net migration loss.” Here, we use the term loosely. It’s not that the number of people leaving Baton Rouge is greater than the number of people moving here. What net migration loss means  here is - there are more people leaving than staying. Why do people leave Baton Rouge? Typically, they’ll tell you,...

"Dearly beloved, We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life." You might recognize those lines as the opening of Prince’s 1984 song, “Let’s Go Crazy.” In this classic pop song, Prince is making the point  that life is short and we should make the most of it. Prince encourages us to celebrate the joy of living with the chorus, “Let’s go...

Laura Nichols never expected aesthetics to become her career. Originally from Lake Charles, Laura came to Baton Rouge to attend LSU and then spent the next decade working as an emergency room nurse before returning to school to become a nurse practitioner. Her first job as a nurse practitioner required a lengthy commute and 12-hour shifts, an arrangement Laura quickly realized wasn’t sustain...

It's no secret that Amazon and e-commerce in general has been eating retial stores' lunch. You've probably thought to yourself one time this week already - "Do I really have to go to a store to buy that? Couldn't I just order it online?" Well, yes, of course, you can order just about everything online, but it's just not the same as going into a store. Is it? So, if we agree on that, what exactly i...

The media industry is having a rough decade. Newspapers are closing and local TV stations are being consolidated by distant owners. The advertising dollars that used to fund local journalism have mostly migrated to platforms that have no particular interest in what’s happening in your neighborhood. But, along with a number of other trends you can probably name, Baton Rouge isn’t follow...

When was the last time you started a new job? Do you remember what the onboarding was like? The paperwork, the benefits forms, the direct deposit setup, the login credentials that didn’t work yet?  Today there’s a whole industry built around making that whole process way less painful — and my first guest today runs one of those companies, right here in Baton Rouge. Craig Bro...

Here’s a number that I keep coming back to. American restaurants throw away somewhere between 22 and 33 billion pounds of food every year. To put a price tag on it, that’s about $162 billion in food costs that just disappear. That’s before the restaurant makes a single dime. I’ve been thinking about that number since I started putting today’s show together, because bo...

Miranda Albarez hosts this edition of Out to Lunch. If there’s one thing that has consistently evolved as society has progressed over the millennia, it’s the speed we do things. Every year, people’s patience grows thinner and attention spans, smaller. And with the invention of these tiny computers that we keep in our pockets 24/7, we no longer take in life without first viewing i...

There’s a particular kind of business story that you can really only tell about Louisiana. It usually starts with somebody who barely had two nickels to rub together, an idea that almost nobody else took seriously, and a lot of stubbornness. It almost never starts in a glass tower in a major metropolis. It starts in places like a front yard near LSU. Or in a small office somewhere on the way...

How many companies do you think are involved in building a single house? Take a guess. Five? Ten? Maybe twenty? Fifty-three. On average, fifty-three different companies touch a single home before anyone moves in — foundation crews, electricians, plumbers, pest control, lighting specialists, insurers.  Karen Profita represents all of them. She runs the Home Builders Association of Greate...

In Hollywood, power couples from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, icons like  Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, exemplified glamour both on and off the screen. At the pinnacle of their careers, these romantic couples were closely followed and adored by movie-goers, capturing the public’s imagination during a Golden Age of f...

There’s a line I keep hearing from people who run small businesses in Baton Rouge. It goes something like: I didn’t plan this. I was doing something else, I saw a gap, and I walked through it. Norisha Kirts Glover has a degree in mass communication and an MPA. She spent years in nonprofit fundraising in Washington, D.C. and California. In 2015 she walked through a door marked “co...

Think about the last time you showed your ID. Maybe at the airport, maybe at a bar, maybe somewhere you had to prove you were who you said you were. You pulled out a card. A piece of plastic. Maybe it was a little beat up. Maybe the photo was from ten years ago. There’s a decent chance that if you live in Louisiana, you’ve also used a phone to do that. That digital driver’s licen...

I’m Amy Irvin, host of Out to Lunch in Baton Rouge. I was a college student once. A long time ago. And like a lot of college students, I picked some of my classes based on the professor. Word of mouth, mostly. What my friends said. Whether the 8 a.m. course section was worth getting out of bed for or not. These days, there’s a website that tries to do that systematically. You’ve...

Think about the last time you visited a city you’d never been to before. Not for business — just to go. What made you decide to stay somewhere? What made you feel like the place wanted you there? Most of the time, we don’t give a lot of credit to the people who set that stage. The campground owner who keeps a shuttle running at midnight so you can get back safely from the French...

Today’s edition of Out to Lunch sits at the intersection of two big ideas: immersion and reach.  One guest is building virtual worlds for the world’s largest energy companies and the U.S. Air Force — right here in Baton Rouge. The other is shaping how millions of people around the globe experience the NFL — from a home office in Baton Rouge.  Both guests grew up i...

A little wartime history: In 1940, at the start of World War II, approximately 12 million women were working outside the household in the United States, comprising about 25% of the female population. That number rose significantly during the war to over 18 million by 1945, as the U.S. government encouraged women in posters and commercial advertising to volunteer for wartime service in factories. I...

If you listen to this show you’ve heard at the end of every episode the credits “today’s show was engineered by J T O’Neal” and “photos were taken by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez.” But do you know what that actually means? What is an audio engineer? What do photographers actually do that’s different from what you do with your phone? On today's Out to...

The disco era of the Seventies is characterized by a danceable "four-on-the-floor" beat, lush orchestration, synthesizers, and glamorous fashion, ultimately exploding into mainstream pop culture with hits, iconic clubs like Studio 54, and films like Saturday Night Fever , before fading by 1980. Filmed in 1977 , Saturday Night Fever was a critical and commercial success, helping to popularize disco...

Louisiana cuisine is famous for its bold, flavorful dishes like gumbo, jambalaya, and crawfish étouffée. Stemming from rich French, Spanish, African, and Native American influences, our world famous fare is illuminated primarily through Cajun and Creole traditions, using local seafood, smoked meats, rice, and spices for iconic meals. Take my favorite Louisiana dish, gumbo, for instan...