Rapid Response

When truth is under attack, how do you fight back? Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa has spent years confronting disinformation and political pressure through her news organization, Rappler. In conversation with Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, Ressa explores the crises facing truth, accountability, and democracy, and what we can do to help defend them. Her new book is The Fight Back:...

The AI race between the US and China is the defining competition of our age. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, advisor to the Pentagon, and current CEO of Relativity Space joins Rapid Response live from Masters of Scale Summit to give his most unvarnished assessment yet. He reveals that the gap he once estimated at two years has narrowed to six months. Schmidt also takes on the open source quest...

Jennifer Ferro is the former board chair of NPR and president of Southern California’s iconic public radio organization: KCRW. Ferro talks with Masters of Scale host Jeff Berman about how nearly two decades as the founder’s deputy taught her to lead, why she thinks we deserve a better internet, and how the best defense of getting ignored is simple: Don’t be boring. Subscribe to the Masters of Scal...

Few companies have as much influence over AI’s trajectory as OpenAI. Reid Hoffman sits down with CFO Sarah Friar to understand the precipice of the moment we are in and the decisions that could shape what comes next for each of us. This conversation was recorded live as part of Masters of Scale Summit on October 21, 2026, at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco. Visit the Rapid Response website h...

REI has been around for 88 years. Mary Beth Laughton wants to make sure it’s around for 88 more. The CEO of America’s largest consumer co-op joins Rapid Response to talk about what it actually takes to revive an iconic business — without shareholders, without quarterly earnings calls, and with 26 million members who hold you to a higher standard than any Wall Street analyst ever could. She explain...

Barbara Peng spent years running one of the most recognizable brands in business media. Newly out of the CEO seat at Business Insider, she joins Rapid Response for a candid conversation about the state of journalism, the future of trust, and what leaders in every industry need to understand about operating in an AI world. She reflects on her tenure at Business Insider — the pivot back to the brand...

Renee Wegrzyn spent her career building the future of American science — including ARPA-H, the White House agency created to accelerate health breakthroughs. Then the Trump administration showed her the door. Wegrzyn co-founded Transfyr to tackle what she calls one of the most overlooked issues in science: the magic hands problem. She joins Rapid Response to explain why fixing this unglamorous bot...

This episode of Rapid Response first aired in 2025. Live on stage at Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky explores what role business could and should play in building the future. He shares his candid perspective on politics, creativity, and AI — taking listeners from Airbnb’s humble beginnings to bold plans for the company’s future. Through a designer’s...

Prediction markets incentivize truth. Everything else incentivizes clickbait. That's the core argument Luana Lopes Lara makes for Kalshi — the prediction market platform she co-founded that has gone from $5 billion to $22 billion in valuation in under a year, and is now being sued by New York's attorney general for $36 billion. Luana joins Rapid Response to make the case that Kalshi is fundamental...

What happens when you interview an AI? Bob Safian found out, and while it didn't break out into Cantonese, it was stranger than he expected. This episode is split in two: first, a conversation with Eline van der Velden, the Dutch actress-turned-tech-founder who created Tilly Norwood, the AI "actor" who sent Hollywood into a spiral. Then, Bob sits down with Tilly itself. Eline explains how a person...

The second a brand like Hershey stops being culturally relevant, says its CEO Kirk Tanner, you should be worried. He joins Rapid Response to explain exactly what he's doing to make sure that never happens. Tanner also reveals why GLP-1 users are actually good for the candy business, how AI is now routing Hershey's sales force in real time through Target and Walmart, and why the Reese's Oreo collab...

This episode of Rapid Response first aired in 2025. Live on stage at Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco, Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert and Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya joined the New York Times’ David Gelles to explore the intersection of values and commerce. They reveal their different strategies for dealing with an activist White House, the pressure for what David calls “anticipatory compliance,...

The world has never faced so many humanitarian crises at once, and the systems built to respond to them are fraying. Tjada McKenna, CEO of Prosper Global — the organization long known as Mercy Corps — joins Rapid Response during UN General Assembly week to share what she's seeing firsthand from Syria to Sudan to Ukraine to Gaza, and why she rebranded a 40-year-old institution in the middle of a fu...

For nearly two decades, Amy Webb's annual Tech Trends Report was required reading for anyone trying to keep up with technology. But this year, Webb killed the report and replaced it with something more applicable for leaders in an AI era. In this episode, CEO of Future Today Strategy Group Amy Webb joins Pioneers of AI host Rana el Kaliouby to unpack her 2026 Convergence Outlook and examines how A...

Own or be owned. That's Codie Sanchez's ultimatum for anyone serious about their financial future. The founder of Contrarian Thinking and author of the new book Own or Be Owned returns to Rapid Response to make her most impassioned case yet for why buying a small business is the most reliable path to wealth that most people are too scared to take. She breaks down what "cowboying" your business is...

AI isn't simplifying your life… Yet. It's mass-producing more options, more decisions, and more noise. Axios CEO Jim VandeHei returns to Rapid Response to make the case that the antidote isn't a better productivity app, it's a ruthless, three-part system he calls Confront, Delete, Amplify. VandeHei shares what he's learned from running Axios by these principles, including calling a leadership meet...

On built a $4 billion sports brand in 16 years with a garden hose, a Roger Federer dinner in Zurich, and a young designer who watched a Halloween YouTube video. Co-founder and co-CEO David Allemann joins Rapid Response to explain why the defining decade for On is still ahead, and why being the most premium brand matters more than being the biggest. He breaks down the leadership shake-up that broug...

The NFL is the world's most valuable sports business, and it keeps growing. But is the growth sustainable? Sports journalist Michele Steele joins Rapid Response to kick off the 2026-2027 NFL season with a clear-eyed look at what's driving record franchise valuations, why quarterback salaries keep exploding, and what the league's dizzying array of streaming platforms means for the fans. She also br...

Jesse Cole loved baseball. He also knew most people thought it was too long and boring. So he disrupted America’s pastime by putting on a yellow tux - and an incredible show. In this episode of Masters of Scale, the founder of the Savannah Bananas welcomed host Jeff Berman to Anaheim Stadium before a show recently to talk about how he’s scaling Fans First Entertainment into a growing league that s...

For decades, e-commerce rewarded the biggest brands that could buy their way to the top of search results. AI is changing that. Shopify COO Jess Hertz joins Rapid Response to share what Shopify's data reveals about the agentic shopping revolution in real time, and how the company is building the infrastructure layer that makes products discoverable and purchasable by AI. Plus, why Shopify's engine...

The economy is strong, prices are still too high, and the job market is sending mixed signals. The Federal Reserve is navigating all of it while fending off the most overt political pressure in its modern history. Austan Goolsbee, President of the Chicago Fed, joins Rapid Response ahead of the Central Bank’s highly-watched meeting in Jackson Hole, to give his most candid read on what's actually go...

This episode originally aired on Rapid Response in April 2026. With the ongoing disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and fuel prices still elevated, few auto executives are feeling the pressure more acutely than Ford Motor Company CEO Jim Farley. He joins Rapid Response to give a candid account of what the turmoil means for the auto industry, and for an iconic American brand navigating one of the mo...

Fencing is one of the oldest sports in Olympic history. It's also one of the least watched domestically. Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing, is on a mission to change that, and with the 2028 Los Angeles Games on the horizon, he's running out of time. Andrews joins Rapid Response to reveal how he's building a sports brand with almost no budget and no marketing playbook, cold-calling CMOs, crashing Co...

Few leaders have a better real-time read on how AI is actually reshaping the workforce than Hayden Brown. As CEO of Upwork, the platform where 18 million freelancers meet the businesses that need them, she sees what the monthly jobs report can't: which skills are surging, which jobs are quietly disappearing, and why 23% of businesses that moved work to AI are already bringing humans back. Brown jo...

Jim Collins is the author of some of the most important business books of all time, like Good to Great and Built to Last. For his latest project, instead of profiling iconic companies, he zoomed in on extraordinary individuals we can learn from. He joined Masters of Scale to reveal how icons like Grace Hopper and John Glenn illustrate lessons on how to navigate the cliffs and fog of life.  Fi...