It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

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...

Each year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants hundreds of thousands of patents to people who embody what we sometimes refer to as “American ingenuity”. These are folks who are creative problem-solvers, capable of out-of-the box thinking that leads to innovation.   From Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, American ingenuity has resulted in a host of innovations and invention...

Recent brides and their fathers who paid for the wedding won’t be surprised to learn that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is between $30,000 and $36,000, depending on the couple's choices, incuding the wedding location and number of guests. One of the major costs of any wedding is photography. In an image-driven society where pics of the most mundane activities are posted online fo...

There are a lot of things to plan for when moving to a new city: renting a UHaul, forwarding personal mail, driving the most efficient route to a new job. But few people plan for or even consider what perhaps is the most important aspect to a successful transition to a new city: making friends. Making new friends is hard in any city but especially so in small towns and cities where friends have kn...

Would you be surprised to learn that the top five degrees in demand in the US are in healthcare, technology, engineering, business, and mathematics? Probably not.  But as AI is introduced into nearly every facet of the workplace, college admission managers and HR directors are increasingly pointing to the importance of soft skills, the personal attributes and interpersonal abilities that defi...

Imagine if you had a few thousand dollars to spend however you wanted? What would you do? A few of my friends might put a down payment on a house. Others would take a long-dreamed about vacation. Or buy an expensive piece of art.  Most would give some money to their favorite charity.  Yes, Americans certainly are generous with their money. In 2023, individuals gave $374 billion dollars,...

You've probably heard that public radio currently exists in an environment of less than zero public funding. "Less than zero" because when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was disbanded, monies that had already been promised to public radio stations like WRKF were clawed back. Today, the only reason you're able to hear this conversation on Out to Lunch is because of the the actions of good...

In years past, formal dining rooms were used for Sunday dinner or holiday get-togethers, opportunities to cook a traditional meal, served on fine china, leisurely eaten among family or friends over a glass of wine. Today, estate sales are jam-packed with barely-used china no one wants because in most modern households meals are often fast-food or grabbed from the to-go counter and holiday meals ar...

By all accounts, it’s difficult to land a job or even an interview right now. There’s all kinds of reasons for that, including a stagnant labor market and sluggish hiring by cautious employers. Recent college graduates are bearing the brunt of what is one of the most challenging markets in years, with entry-level white-collar jobs being especially hard to secure. If you are unemployed...

Since Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle in 1971, coffee shops have become a staple in nearly every city. In Berkeley, California there are approximately 59 coffee shops, resulting in one coffee shop for every 2,000+ residents, which is a higher ratio than Seattle. New York City has more coffee shops per capita than any other American city. When I read those numbers, I naturally thought t...