Rapid Response

TV host, producer, author, and UN Goodwill Ambassador Padma Lakshmi joins Rapid Response with candid advice for business leaders on speaking out, showing courage, and staying true to themselves, particularly amid the Trump Administration’s violent immigration crackdown. A passionate voice at the intersection of food, culture, and identity, Lakshmi shares how she’s shaking up food media with her ne...

As Super Bowl LX nears, sports betting has become inseparable from the modern fan experience, even as scandals ripple through the NBA, MLB, and NCAA. Journalist Danny Funt joins Rapid Response to explore his new book, Everybody Loses , and explain how legalized gambling is transforming leagues, media, and the economics of fandom. From the dominance of FanDuel and DraftKings to the rise of predicti...

As global leaders disperse from the World Economic Forum, LinkedIn co-founder and tech investor Reid Hoffman joins Rapid Response to break down the biggest challenges and opportunities facing business today, from political headwinds tied to immigration and geopolitics to AI’s real-time impact on industries like music and healthcare. Hoffman also explains why fears of a tech bubble aren’t shaping h...

The Grammy Awards return next week at a pivotal moment for the music industry, one shaped by surging Latin artists, resurgent rock legends, and even charting AI acts. To unpack what will make this year’s broadcast distinctive, The Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. joins Rapid Response to share how Grammy winners are chosen, how the show navigates social action and potential boycotts, and how...

Mayors are unique leaders in America, often more loved and less polarized than state or federal politicians, with a different mandate and metric for success. Mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt, is also the current president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and he joins Rapid Response to discuss how cities deliver for their residents, navigate macroeconomic forces and federal policy, and improve p...

From new vaccine guidance to nutrition policy to AI, the health care industry is already navigating massive change in 2026. New York Times health care reporter Sarah Kliff joins Rapid Response to break down major shifts reshaping American health — including new vaccine recommendations, an updated food pyramid, the continued rise of GLP-1 drugs, and OpenAI’s Health GPT. Kliff explains why these cha...

What did the latest holiday shopping season reveal about consumer confidence as the year begins? Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach joins Rapid Response to unpack the signals he’s seeing across global spending — from shifting consumer sentiment to AI’s growing role in financial security. Miebach also explores how credit cards fit into a future shaped by crypto, digital wallets, and agent-driven commer...

One year on from the catastrophic LA wildfires, journalist, author, and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff joins Rapid Response to examine what the fires reveal about America’s growing age of disaster. Drawing from his new book Firestorm , Soboroff shares hard lessons from the aftermath, exposing systemic failures, unlikely heroics, and what today’s recovery efforts tell us about how the U.S. will...

As we turn from reflection to what’s ahead for a new year, Rapid Response presents host Bob Safian’s predictions for the most pressing issues business leaders could face in 2026. Join Bob and producer Alex Morris for a surprisingly hopeful conversation about what’s next – from an AI reality check to energy prices, immigration, and even the World Cup. Safian walks us through what might happen, and...

The promise of fusion is enormous: clean, reliable energy at a scale that could change everything from climate outcomes to global prosperity. But how close are we? And what’s still standing between today’s breakthroughs and tomorrow’s power plants? Bob Mumgaard, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, joins Rapid Response to explain why fusion is different from fission, what recent adva...

Mark Cuban has spent decades as a serial entrepreneur and investor, with one of the best track records on the planet (including celebrity status on ABC’s Shark Tank). In this episode of Pioneers of AI, Cuban joins host Rana El Kaliouby for a wide-ranging conversation about whether we are in an AI bubble, how he’s applying his investment philosophy to AI, and why the AI world is tending to excite h...

Is the stock market in an AI bubble? What happens if it bursts? To understand our current economic moment, it’s essential to understand history. In this episode of Masters of Scale, host Jeff Berman is joined by journalist and author Andrew Ross Sorkin onstage at the Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. His new book is 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattere...

In this encore episode of Rapid Response, we revisit a scientific breakthrough that set the internet ablaze: The ‘de-extinction’ of the dire wolf. While many celebrated Colossal Biosciences’ announcement, the experiment also sparked controversy throughout the scientific community — namely the ethics of birthing and re-wilding extinct animals, and whether Colossal’s dire wolf puppies are the real t...

How should leaders prepare for AI’s accelerating impact on work and everyday life? AI scientist, entrepreneur, and Pioneers of AI host Dr. Rana El Kaliouby returns to Rapid Response to share her predictions for the year ahead — from physical AI entering the real world to what it means to onboard AI into your org chart. El Kaliouby also cuts through today’s biggest AI headlines, including the chatb...

This year delivered whiplash: geopolitics, tariffs, and technology all shifting at once. And heading into 2026, the disruption isn’t easing up. In this special episode, host Bob Safian distills five hard-won lessons from Rapid Response this year on how to lead when the ground won’t stop moving. You’ll hear standout moments from Brian Chesky, Clara Shih, Marc Lore, José Andrés, and more, with pract...

When the U.S. government cut funding for local news stations, the Knight Foundation moved quickly to help stabilize a rapidly eroding industry. President and CEO Maribel Pérez Wadsworth joins Rapid Response to unpack the evolving roles of philanthropy and government, and why philanthropic organizations must learn to move at the speed of the news cycle. Wadsworth also explores what traditional jour...

Can ChatGPT dethrone Gemini? Is Tim Cook capable of leading Apple into the next wave of AI? As 2025 winds down, journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher joins Rapid Response to cut through the noise and decode what’s really happening across OpenAI, Meta, Google, and more. Swisher also sizes up the state of Disney, Netflix, and the escalating bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. And in classic S...

Is Hollywood truly prepared for the existential threat AI poses? The Ankler CEO Janice Min returns to Rapid Response to dissect AI’s seismic impact on the entertainment industry — from “synthetic performances” and collapsing production jobs to the buzz around OpenAI’s animated film, Critterz. Min also weighs in on the brewing Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war, Netflix’s expansion into video podca...

A recent New York Times headline — “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?”  sparked a firestorm across social media. Bob Safian welcomes a leader pushing back on this notion with data and nuance: Alison Moore, CEO of Chief, the prestigious network for senior women executives. Drawing from an exclusive nationwide survey of women leaders, Moore unpacks how evolving career paths are being misread, why w...

While digital live shopping has been popular for years in Asia, the phenomenon has only recently begun to take off in the U.S., thanks in large part to the rise of retail disruptor Whatnot. The platform’s co-founder and CEO, Grant LaFontaine, joins Rapid Response to share how his team has managed to evoke the feel of in-person shopping inside an online experience, why he weighs “fun” versus FOMO a...

This Thursday marks the 99th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Macy’s Inc. chairman and CEO Tony Spring joins Rapid Response with a behind-the-scenes preview of what to expect. It’s been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between “wartime” and “peacetime” leadership. Spring shares why his team is now on “versio...

What does it mean to be a courageous leader in 2025? Former U.S. General Stanley McChrystal joins futurist and culture critic Baratunde Thurston on stage at Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco to discuss the responsibility of leaders today, the importance of character, and the weight of being an active citizen in democracy. Considering President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, McChr...

In recent weeks, OpenAI faced seven lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT contributed to suicides or mental health breakdowns. To spotlight the controversial relationship between AI and mental health, host Bob Safian is joined on stage at Innovation@Brown Showcase by Brown University's Ellie Pavlick, director of a new institute dedicated to exploring AI and mental health, and Soraya Darabi of VC firm TMV...

As Sesame Street’s 56th season gets underway, Elmo, Big Bird, and the Sesame organization are navigating a volatile chapter in the show’s history — marked by government funding cuts, evolving new media habits, and AI’s impact on education. Sesame Workshop’s CEO Sherrie Westin joins Rapid Response to discuss balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix and with Google, and why em...

Reid Hoffman, Stacy Brown-Philpot, and  Aileen Lee are three of the most successful, legendary leaders and investors in Silicon Valley. (The term “unicorn” for a startup valued at a billion dollars? Well, Aileen coined that.) This power trio sat down with journalist Van Jones live onstage at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit, October 8 in San Francisco, to share candid snapshots of the investor’s m...