The IBJ Podcast with Mason King

Stocks went up about 25% in 2023, a welcome correction from a lousy 2022. Don’t say we didn’t give you a heads-up: On the IBJ Podcast a year ago, Peter Dunn, aka Pete the Planner, predicted a “bonkers” year for stocks with equities rising 30%. He wasn’t quite as close on some of his other prediction—especially for the housing market—but, you know, nobody ever gets it totally right. Given Pete’s qu...

Indiana lawmakers will return to the Statehouse for their 2024 session on Jan. 8 with plans to talk about water rights, literacy and apprenticeships for students. But House and Senate leaders have said they don't expect to tackle any especially polarizing issues this year. With IBJ Podcast host Mason King off this week, Managing Editor Greg Weaver talks with two Statehouse reporters—IBJ's Peter Bl...

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Noblesville-based Clancy’s Hospitality has been creating and running restaurants in central Indiana—and much of the Midwest—for nearly 60 years. The names are instantly recognizable for folks who have lived in these parts for a while, including Clancy’s Hamburgers, Grindstone Charley’s, Michaelangelo’s Italian Bistro, Red Rock Roadhouse and, most recently, Th...

His last name literally is up in lights on downtown’s biggest stadium, although he probably could wander through a crowd of 60,000 Indianapolis Colts fans in near-complete anonymity. Morgan Lucas is the president of Lucas Oil Products, and quite literally grew up with the company. His parents, Forrest and Charlotte Lucas, founded the firm in 1989, when Morgan was about 7 years old. His youth and t...

Joey Chestnut is the king of competitive eating. You almost certainly have seen video clips of him gulping down dozens of hot dogs, boiled eggs, tacos, wings, burritos, Twinkies and/or spears of deep-fried asparagus. He in fact has more than 50 gastronomic world records, including a vaunted 76 Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, with buns, eaten in 10 minutes. He’s the first to admit that competitive eating...

We’re entering the holiday season, of course, and that critical six-week period in which we are encouraged to indulge in conspicuous consumption. IBJ Podcast host Mason King has it circled on his calendar, since his goal this year is to keep from exceeding his modest budget. His plan for this week’s edition of the podcast was to ask regular contributor Pete Dunn—aka Pete the Planner—how best to av...

Over its first 10 years, The Garrett Co. has been one of the fastest-growing—if not THE fastest-growing—company in the Indianapolis area. Not coincidentally, it also has become one of the largest companies in the state of Indiana. To put it as simply as possible: The Garrett Cos. develops high-end apartment complexes. To flesh it out a bit: The Garrett Cos. has been built to include nearly every e...

You certainly hear a lot of people these days talk about changing careers, especially to start their own business—maybe a restaurant, coffee shop or microbrewery. Juliet Schmalz hears from a lot of people who are impressed that she actually did it. In her mid 40s, she left her career as a medical doctor—an anesthesiologist—to start a company that produces high-end whiskey. That company, called For...

Legendary local newscaster Debby Knox has been on the air in Indianapolis, with the exception of a short break, since 1980 when she joined WISH-TV Channel 8. She worked as a reporter and anchor for 33 years until retiring in late 2013. It didn’t stick. She soon was recruited to help launch the newscasts for CBS4, which had taken over the city’s CBS network affiliation from WISH-TV.  She was paired...

It might not be surprising that the History Channel is planning to air an eight-hour docu-series on the life of President John F. Kennedy next month to mark the 60th anniversary of his assassination. You might be very surprised to learn that the filmmaker who researched, shot, wrote, edited and scored much of the documentary is 23 years old, having been born a year before 9/11. Ashton Gleckman gre...

IBJ columnist Peter Dunn—aka Pete the Planner—joins the podcast this week to talk about the ways in which people relate to money. He describes four money personalities—or "scripts," as they are called by Brad Klontz, a Boulder, Colorado-based psychologist and certified financial planner who first wrote about them. They scripts are money vigilance, money worship, money status and money avoidance. P...

Shawn Fain seemingly came from nowhere to win the United Auto Workers presidential election in March by a razor-thin margin. He ran on a reform platform promising to toss out the status quo and stand up to the Big Three automakers: GM, Ford, and Stellantis. He took a hard line in contract negotiations, and when the automakers didn’t meet the union’s aggressive demands by the Sept. 15 deadline, the...

You could say Scott Moorehead, the 45-year-old owner and CEO of Fishers-based Round Room, is in the connections business. Round Room is the holding company for TCC, which is one of the largest Verizon retailers in the United States, and Wireless Zone, one of the nation’s largest wireless retail franchise systems in the U.S and also a Verizon authorized dealer. Together they count about 1,260 store...

A sudden leap forward in the evolution of artificial intelligence has brought the technology’s benefits and risks into much sharper relief and into everyday conversations. Businesses hear warnings that they need to take advantage of AI or else drift into irrelevancy. But when cheerleaders say AI can make businesses more productive, what does that look like exactly? As with the advent of any major...

Founded in 1997, Indianapolis-based Cunningham Restaurant Group now counts 17 distinctive dining concepts spread over a total of about 40 establishments in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio. A sampling: Mesh, Rize, Provision, Bru Burger Bar, Modita, Union 50, Nesso, Stonecreek Dining Company and the nationally rated Vida and Livery. And the stovetop at CRG’s development kitchen in downtown Indianapolis i...

Chad Peterman and his younger brother Tyler grew up with their dad’s business, Peterman Heating Cooling & Plumbing. Pete Peterman received at least one offer for the Greenwood-based business, but he kept it in the family and handed over day-to-day operations to his boys in 2015. He couldn’t have imagined how much and how fast the company would grow under the new generation, which had a strategy th...

Darrian and Devyn Mikell grew up in central Indiana, played sports, went to college, tried a few things to get their careers started and ultimately launched a tech firm together. They have some juicy stories from their early days of griding that would resonate with other tech founders: starting with the wrong sales strategy, struggling for months without revenue and slowly building a base of inves...

The process for designing and upgrading interstates in Indiana hasn’t exactly been a two-way street. Typically, the Indiana Department of Transportation draws up plans for its projects and then the public has an opportunity to provide feedback. You’ll recall the uproar in 2017 when INDOT presented its plans for reconstructing the North Split, where I-70 and I-65 meet in the northeast corner of dow...

For 25 years, Sam Schmidt has been a beloved figure in the IndyCar Series, first as a driver, then as a team owner and a champion of innovation, persistence and the human spirit. During a practice session in Florida in 2000, he lost control of his car and smashed into a concrete barrier at around 180 miles per hour. Doctors saved his life, but he has been paralyzed from the shoulders down ever sin...

When people say Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour could have a seismic impact on Indianapolis during its three-show gig next year, that’s not just a figure of speech. When Swift performed in July at Seattle’s Lumen Field, the show generated seismic activity similar to that of a magnitude 2.3 earthquake, thanks to a combination of the sound system and the dancing and cheering of fans. When t...

In 2018, a raft of Purdue University researchers published a report on the impact of climate change on Indiana agriculture. It looked at the ways increasing temperatures and rainfall could affect the growing season for crops, the types of crops that could be planted, the health of farm animals, and the prevalence of weeds, pests, and disease. Even for Hoosiers who spend most of their time in air-c...

IBJ personal finance columnist Pete the Planner has a teen and a tween at home. Pete has been helping people with family finances for decades, and even he admits now to being humbled in this new season of his financial life by numerous large or unusual obligations. As he puts it in an upcoming column for IBJ, Pete is bracing for many years of “financial chaos.” He also finds himself in the uncomfo...

Last July, IBJ Media unveiled the inaugural issue of the Indiana 250—a compendium of the state’s 250 most influential and impactful business and community leaders. The definitions of “influence” and “impact” were intentionally broad, and the list included C-suite executives, not-for-profit leaders, civic bigwigs, lawyers, bankers, board chairs, artists, promoters, judges, philanthropists, and seri...

It’s not hard to find the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum if you’re a fan of the track: It’s tucked on the inside of the short chute between turns 1 and 2. The ironic thing is that while the Speedway was originally built as a testing ground for new technology and the IndyCar Series has always made a habit of adopting racing innovations, the museum has seemed increasingly mired in the past. Its...

Two years ago, Sajjad Shah entered the Indianapolis coffee shop market with his eyes wide open and a hook that could help differentiate his locations from the herd of java joints. His coffee shops would have a built-in audience through a very popular Instagram account that he founded in 2014, and they would be tied to the account’s overarching mission: promoting the Muslim community and raising mi...