Linen Suit & Plastic Tie

How do you take that leap of faith to make a change in your career? How does humor cultivate leadership? This week, "World's Greatest Narcissist" welcomes Professor Michael Parke at the Wharton Business School to catch up on some valuable lessons learned inside and outside the classroom.

What is the Creator Economy, and how is it disrupting brand marketing? Why is everybody a media company, and how do you grow yours? This week, we chat with Monica Khan, Founder of Creator Revolution and Senior Advisor for McKinsey & Co on creator economy strategy, helping creators and companies build their brands and products in the age of influencers and content creators.

What do Grammarly, Duolingo, and Chess.com have in common? What has Gorav's obsession with these three things amounted to? How can storytelling make chess fun even for people who are bad at it? This week, we chat with Albert Cheng, Chief Growth Officer at Chess.com. Albert Cheng led Growth for three of the most successful apps in the world: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com.

What are Gorav's biggest storytelling & AI lessons so far from Wharton MBA? How did the World's Greatest Narcissist come to be? For LSPTPod's five-year anniversary, we'd like to give an update on our stories and what's to come. Thank you for staying on our journey together - we miss you dearly.

Rewind Time! This week, we celebrate the graphic novel release of Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson with a rewind of our chat with Craig in Season 3. Pick up the Ginseng Roots graphic novel in your local comic book store! Why is the American agriculture story relevant to you (yes, you)? Is comic book a genre or a medium? Why should you care about where your food comes from? How does the story of an...

Why does saying the wrong thing make you a better communicator? How do we manage stress in any form of talking? How does martial arts make you better at communicating? How do you communicate with a Gen Z audience? This week, we talk to Matt Abrahams, a lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB), where he teaches popular classes in strategic communication and effec...

What does Gorav think about his first video game in years? How can arts, pre-med, music, and writing backgrounds set you up for a video game career? What do Spider-Man, MLB 2K, and Call of Duty have in common? This week, we learn from the captivating story of Eric Monacelli, Executive Producer at Marvel Games. Before that, Eric has had a decorated career experience across video game studios such a...

What storytelling lens do gen AIs have, and how does ChatGPT think about a book that talks about it? What does ChatGPT itself recommend this episode to you? This week, we chat with Vauhini Vara, author of the genre-bending non-fiction Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age . Vauhini started her career in tech journalism at Wall Street Journal and later contributed to various well-known news platfor...

Finally, we're talking about Liquid Death, one of Gorav's favorite brands. How do you bring life into a brand? What makes canned water work? How does being healthy & sustainable become cool? This week, we chat with Andy Pearson, VP of Creative at Liquid Death. After 12+ years as a copywriter and creative director at ad agencies, Andy now creates and leads creative with an incredible team at Li...

Why and how should you prepare Topics for every conversation? When are you Asking the right questions? How do you bring Levity? Why does Kindness come from storytelling? Welcome back to your storytelling journey! To kick off Season Five, we're having a great talk with the author of TALK: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves  , Alison Wood Brooks. At Harvard Business School, A...

What are some of our favorite lessons from this season? What is the unique storytelling power of animation? For our season finale, we welcome back our dear friend Dr. Drea Letamendi. Drea is a clinical psychologist at UCLA, a psychological consultant for film, TV, graphic novels, and books, and a unique storyteller who draws important connections between pop culture and the story we tell ourselves...

Why do you love being in bookstores? What is the story of bookstores in American history? How did Barnes & Noble switch onto the underdog's team in the bookselling industry? What are the common traits of booksellers? This week, we chat with Evan Friss, author of New York Times Bestseller The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore , and Professor of Urban and Public History at James Madi...

What is the dangerous story about technology in education, and where does the opportunity really lie? How should we revamp our reigning education system's core story and design for the past 200 years? What is Relational Intelligence, and why should we develop it in children? We chatted with Isabelle Hau, the executive director of Stanford Accelerator for Learning, about her own childhood education...

Has four years of exploring the power of storytelling ruined anything for ourselves? How have the lessons from our expert storytellers seeped into our day-to-day lives? What are our stories this year? Here's a special recap for LSPTPod's 4th anniversary. Thank you for joining, and we hope you're learning as much as we are.

How do the sounds we hear affect the story we tell ourselves? Why and how should you curate the sounds in your life? Is silence a sound? In a conversation that felt much too short, we chat with Dallas Taylor - sound aficionado, host and creator of the amazing  Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast, and Creative Director of  Defacto Sound .

What makes video game a promising educational medium? How does playing a game make you remember the story differently than watching it? What can you learn about religions through a video game? How did a video game teach Kevin about parenting? This week, we chat with Prof Wade Langer (ProfNoctis) at University of Alabama, who teaches Judeo-Christian Kingship using a popular video game Final Fantasy...

What do Broadway and Silicon Valley have in common? Why is storytelling crucial to navigating an interdisciplinary life? Why should we "expire our stories"? Welcome back to part 2 of our chat with Christina Wallace, a "human Venn diagram". Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School,...

What is a "portfolio life", and how does that help us tell the story about ourselves? How do we find our identity and sense of safety in an ever-shifting professional world? Listen to part 1 of 2 of our chat with Christina Wallace, a "human Venn diagram". Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard...

Why should you read the author's bio of a book? Where do we find the most compelling and powerful story from our lived experiences? How do you protect your own memory when telling a story about your past? This week, we chat with Carrie Sun, author of Private Equity, a memoir from her unique experience working for a Wall Street hedge fund billionaire and her deeply personal self-discovery journey....

Did you know that The New York Times has been one of the hottest gaming companies in the past few years? YA THE NEWSPAPER. So, What are "New York Times games", and why does Wordle fit so perfectly with New York Times' brand? How does The Sims enable storytelling for players? This week, we chatted with Jonathan Knight, Head of Games at The New York Times. Before joining the New York Times, Jonathan...

When making life decisions big and small, are you choosing the best option on paper, or the best option for YOU? How can storytelling trick people in their decision making, and how do we see through the trickery? To kick off Season Four, we chat with Nuala Walsh, a behavorial scientist, one of 100 Most Influential Women in Finance, and former Marketing executive at some of the best-known investmen...

Here's a sneak peek of something new for LSPTPod Season Four ;) We believe that storytelling is the essential skill that makes us human, and we invite you continue this journey with us. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @LSPTPod and LinkedIn.

How do you bring a centuries-old tradition to a modern audience? How did Gorav keep up a 1800+ day (and counting) meditation streak? What do "unexpected" partners add to your brand story? Is there a simple way to cope with our ever-restless minds? For Season 3 Finale, we chat with Morgan Selzer, Chief Content Officer at Headspace, to understand the Headspace story.

How did a TV film save the world from nuclear destruction? What do we miss out on if we dismiss social media? Why do we have so many dystopian sci-fi stories but few in the opposite light? This week, we talk to David Craig, Clinical Professor of Communication at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An expert on Hollywood and social media entertainment, David's new book Apocal...

Why is college NOT the best years of your life? Why do people like horror & crime stories? What goes into deciding what to omit from a half-memoir? What do sci-fi and rom-com have in common? What does it mean to "break the story"? For the 3-year anniversary of LSPTPod, we rewind the tape to bring you some bonus content: fun stories where we went off a tangent that didn't make it into our released...