Young women are changing entire categories of retail. Take cosmetics, for example. Gen Z women have decided that beauty is a gesture of self-care, and they’re willing to spend their money on it despite economic headwinds. The smartest person in the room today is Kory Marchisotto, the trailblazing CMO of e.l.f. Beauty — the fastest-growing company on the NYSE for the past five years. Kory and John talked about e.l.f.’s meteoric rise, and how she’s positioned the company at the epicenter of Americ...
Apr 25, 2024•54 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Innovation gets harder the older, larger, and more complex an organization becomes. Government agencies that have been around and expanding for hundreds of years are nearly impossible to evolve. And it doesn’t help that modernizing government services seldom grabs big headlines, leading politicians to focus on the biggest problems — even though it could take years before the solutions are felt by the average American.. On this week’s episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , host John Dick welcom...
Apr 27, 2023•53 min•Season 4Ep. 403
It's no surprise that CivicScience data show that Americans' levels of stress are still running high after the coronavirus pandemic. So, people are taking matters into their own hands. Acts of self-care, "revenge travel," and splurging of all kinds are hallmarks of U.S. consumerism right now. Nowhere has this trend been more evident than in the beauty and cosmetics industry. Through all the ups and downs of quarantines, supply chain disruptions, and inflation, the beauty category keeps growing, ...
Mar 16, 2023•46 min•Season 4Ep. 2
How are we supposed to know what really matters anymore? That used to be what the news was for. Reporters would uncover the things we couldn't see, work diligently to surface the truth, and deliver it to us in a newspaper we read cover to cover. But all that changed with the 24-hour news cycle, the internet, and the competition and fragmentation they created. We used to only read or watch what matters. Now, it only matters what we read or watch. On this week's episode of The Dumbest Guy in the R...
Mar 08, 2023•55 min•Season 4Ep. 401
Our elected leaders used to set the tone of political discourse. Today, politicians take cues from their tribe, gleaning their talking points from whatever's trending on social media that day. And because legislation can't be written in 140 characters, there's a huge disconnect between the soundbites that voters want to hear and the substantive policies the country actually needs. That disconnect is particularly pervasive in technology policy — or the extreme lack thereof. The tech industry move...
Sep 22, 2022•52 min•Season 3Ep. 6
This week on The Dumbest Guy in the Room , host John Dick welcomes Jeff Wilke, who played a major role in building Amazon into the company it is today. After his retirement from Amazon in 2021, Wilke co-founded a company called Re:Build to help revitalize American manufacturing. John and Jeff talk about how short-term, quarterly earnings-driven corporate decision-making in America has created a host of problems that only corporate America can solve. Jeff also shared the origins of Amazon’s famed...
Sep 14, 2022•47 min•Season 3Ep. 5
It's no secret that the pandemic changed everything that businesses knew about their customers overnight. But old habits – and big systems – are hard to break, especially in big corporations where innovation is expensive and "risk" is a swear word. On this week's episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , host John Dick welcomes Shelley Bransten, Microsoft's corporate vice president for global retail and consumer goods. John and Shelley talk about how COVID became the new "chief innovation officer...
Sep 08, 2022•53 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Like many things in our country, media is broken – badly. It's hard to know where to start to fix it. Media outlets who once prided themselves on rigor and objectivity are now forced to pander to the biases of their tribal audiences, lest they lose viewers and advertisers to the countless other things vying for our attention. Algorithms help to promote the most sensational and divisive content possible – all while our private data is collected under murky terms. On this week's episode of The Dum...
Aug 31, 2022•59 min•Season 3Ep. 3
The U.S. economy is absolutely massive. It’s also extremely complex, and that makes it difficult from the political perspective. You can’t thoroughly explain globalization and supply chains in a meme. We need to make economics more approachable and more relatable for the average person, and stop talking about the US economy like it’s one big monolith. In this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , host John Dick welcomes Michelle Meyer, the chief North American economist for Mastercard and one...
Aug 24, 2022•47 min•Season 3Ep. 2
It’s almost impossible to keep up with all the crises in America today. There’s inflation, energy costs, drug prices, mental health, supply chains, inequality, and so much more. Even COVID is raging again. Meanwhile, we’ve just kind of accepted the political animosity. Then there are the existential catastrophes on the horizon: climate change, food shortages, geopolitical crises. But what are we supposed to do about it? Those problems take science, and a boatload of money, and an almost reckless...
Aug 17, 2022•53 min•Season 3Ep. 1
The health implications of the pandemic are staggering. Tens of millions of Americans got COVID, as many as 1 million may die from it, and countless others will deal with its lasting effects – maybe forever. Then there are the indirect consequences: 35% of U.S. adults are heavier than they were before the pandemic, drinking and smoking are on the rise, and exercise and healthy eating are on the decline. And don’t forget about the mental health effects, particularly among women and teens. But a r...
Dec 16, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 5
It’s hard to imagine TV shows or movies captivating our nation the way they used to, which is a shame, because we’ve never needed something to bring us together like we do today. Sure, there are shows like Squid Game and Ted Lasso , but a third of Americans don’t have Netflix and many more don’t have Apple TV+. It makes you wonder if entertainment does more to divide us — both because of how fragmented it is and how it’s deliberately engineered to appeal to specific segments of the population. S...
Dec 08, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Of all the questions we ask at CivicScience, the rising value of time over money has been evident in spades during the pandemic. Why? Because we finally learned what it was like to have time. This week on The Dumbest Guy in the Room , Amazon VP of Global Marketing Claudine Cheever joins CivicScience CEO John Dick to discuss how companies can deliver on promises of speed and convenience, and how Amazon is hoping to become the world's best employer at a time when employee expectations are changing...
Dec 01, 2021•43 min•Season 2Ep. 3
As political tribalism rages across America, supporting brands on social media has gotten more complicated. The brands we align with have to align with our values – because supporting the wrong ones could alienate us from our political tribes. This week, McDonald’s Global Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley joins CivicScience CEO John Dick to discuss how brands can navigate the minefield of politics and cancel culture, and whether it’s possible for a brand to appeal to everyone – or even most...
Nov 17, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Politics used to take a backseat to economics, but at some point that all changed. The average American today is better off financially than they were before the pandemic, but consumer confidence – our economic outlook – is in the tank. Why? It's politics, of course. In this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , Tony Fratto, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and current partner at Hamilton Place Strategies, joins host John Dick to discuss the friction between political tribalism ...
Nov 11, 2021•42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
CivicScience data tell us that Hispanics today are a mind-blowing one-and-a-half times more likely than non-Hispanics to believe they can achieve the “American Dream.” Non-Hispanics are 20% less likely to believe the American Dream exists at all. In our final episode of the season, CivicScience CEO and host John Dick talks with Roberto Ruiz, the head of Research, Insights, and Analytics for Univision, the largest Hispanic-audience media company in the U.S. The two discuss the growing and evolvin...
Apr 22, 2021•53 min
Research tells us that the way math is taught in elementary schools is better suited for boys, while the majority of high school math and science teachers are men. Play that out over a few hundred years and it’s not hard to understand why the odds are stacked against women in STEM. But the ripple effects don’t end there. In addition to – or perhaps even because of – the foundational gender biases in math, girls are also less likely to learn about financial management and investing at a young age...
Apr 15, 2021•44 min
To say the COVID crisis has been harder on women is an egregious understatement. The disproportionate mental, emotional, physical, and financial toll on women since last March will be one of the lasting – and saddest – legacies of the pandemic. Yet, according to Civic Science data, U.S. women continue to take on a greater share of household responsibilities in areas like finance, insurance, and major purchases like houses and cars. Most men are barely taking on a couple extra grocery runs. To ta...
Apr 15, 2021•48 min
By now, everyone knows about how the pandemic sent millions of (former) office workers scrambling to outfit their homes with new tech for the onset of a year of remote work. What isn't so intuitive is how much people have -liked- working from home: More than 40% of U.S. adults now say they'd be willing to take a pay cut to be able to work remotely from anywhere they choose. On this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, Logitech CEO (and this week's smart guest) Bracken Darrell joins host John ...
Apr 08, 2021•46 min
Live music has been, without a doubt, one of the industries hit hardest by the pandemic. According to the latest CivicScience data, just 37% of Americans would be comfortable attending a concert right now. In this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , Zac Brown Band bassist Matt Mangano will share an artist’s perspective on the music industry, how professional musicians were uniquely equipped to weather the pandemic, and what music will look like when everything opens up again. Subscribe to t...
Apr 01, 2021•1 hr
CivicScience data show that Americans’ passion for music has been on a steady decline since 2016 — especially among Gen Z. In this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room, legendary music critic Bob Lefsetz joins host John Dick to talk about the state of the music biz mid-pandemic, the effect of streaming, and how the music industry can turn things around.
Mar 25, 2021•1 hr 9 min
In this episode of The Dumbest Guy in the Room , host John Dick explores the existential crisis facing the polling industry and why it needs to be saved, with smart guest, John Anzalone, the lead pollster for President Joe Biden and many others. The Johns will also talk about how political research evolved during the 2020 election, why Democrats were easier to reach at home during the pandemic, and why America might not be nearly as divided as it seems. Subscribe to the CivicScience newsletter a...
Mar 18, 2021•50 min
Mark Cuban (the smart guy in the room this week) is a legendary entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. In this episode, Mark and CivicScience CEO John Dick discuss the economic climate, the growth of non-fungible tokens, and the future of sports and media. They also discuss the potential for Gen Z and breakdown some of the insights we’ve gleaned from CivicScience polling data. Subscribe to the CivicScience newsletter at civicscience.com ....
Mar 11, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Welcome to 'The Dumbest Guy in the Room' In Season 1, CivicScience founder and CEO John Dick will interview some of the most gifted visionaries in business, technology, media, entertainment, and politics. You’ll meet people who are changing entire industries thanks to the most unexpected insights. Please subscribe!
Dec 24, 2020•2 min
