Failure - the Podcast Failure - the Podcast

Election fever. With all the news, who can avoid it?

Not a news ticker scrolls by without a mention of Biden's age, Trump's trials and RFK's betrayals. If you didn't know better, you'd wonder whether the press was just stirring things up. You know, to sell papers, get clicks, or what have you.

Nah. The press is too ethical for that. They wouldn't rerun stories just to attract eyeballs. In fact, we're sure that editors at the major news organizations are oblivious to the expected $12+ billion in political ad spend in 2024. Yep.

We're not immune to it. Even in Boston, where you can hardly throw a stone without hitting a scientist or engineer. Innovation hums 24 hours a day. Still, it's not loud enough to drown out the political din.

So we succumbed. It didn't help that our guest, a serial entrepreneur hot on the trail of a multibillion dollar market went AWOL. With a recording session in the calendar and an anxious listenership waiting, we charged forward. No topic? No problem. We figured we'd talk about the first thing that came to mind.

Join us in today's episode of Innovation Blab. Without giving away too much, suffice it to say that MAGA conservatives aren't the only ones who hang out in echo chambers.

Climb down the rabbit hole of web browsing and you’ll realize that teaching innovation is all the rage. Not innovation in teaching, but teaching about innovation. Google it. Clearly, this is a topic that breeds opinions like … well, you know. Click through the first dozen hits, or so. Now, you know why JFK once said that “too often …. we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Who doesn’t have an opinion about innovation? Haven’t you daydreamed about making a fortune from chance discovery — you know, like curing cancer with the mold from your shower stall? (That’s no excuse for not cleaning, by the way. It wasn’t last year nor the year before, either.) What a dream: a disappearing wart on your big toe leads to a call from Pfizer and $93 million for exclusive rights. After you drifted through that a few times, you embellished it with a corner office at HBS and a permanent appointment as entrepreneur in residence.

Dreams do not experts make, though, even if the local school board didn’t see right through you. After all, they were probably too busy with book bans. So, now you’re heading up development of an innovation curriculum for the high school. Woo hoo!

For the teens, it’ll be like car privileges without chores. (You know, that shower really does need work, and there’s a bottle of Clorox right next to the pile of clean towels). Why drudge through grammar, civics and science classes, when you can get right to learning how to make billions. The kids’ll tell you that’s how Mark did it: he skipped his classes, spent a little time with the Winkelvoss twins and, voila, Facebook.

Easy peasy? Some of us think not. Dig past the urban myths, and you’ll find that Zuckerberg’s academic creds include Phillips Exeter Academy. Perhaps he skipped all of his classes there, too, but we doubt it. His getting into Harvard speaks otherwise.

Are reading, writing and arithmetic passé? Do students really need the basics, or can they get right to classes on innovation — knowledge be damned? Join us in a discussion with Diane Bouis, director of MedTech Innovator, the world’s largest life science startup accelerator program, and judge for yourself.

The genesis of the hat is shrouded in mystery. It’s safe to say that dinosaurs didn’t sport them, though a triceratops with three beers dangling from her spiky crown would’ve been the life of any prehistoric party. Fast forward about 63 million years, and the tallest ape ever to exist was likely too preoccupied with the looming threat of extinction to fuss over a fedora. One might pardon Gigantopithecus, the ape, but what about the hominid Australopithecus or the ever trendy Neanderthal? Surely, they would have valued a bit of protection from the weather, not to mention a fashionable accessory to attract a mate.

A short hop and skip through time and space bring us to Ötzie, the intrepid traveller of the Bronze Age who was just recently found -- petrified, of course -- en route through the Alps hat in hand, and to Babe Ruth and his legendary home run in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. By then, the baseball cap had become emblematic of America’s favorite pastime. Half a century later, it became firmly entrenched among the up-and-coming with the emergence of the health club. What better way to flaunt and extend your leisure-time than by rocking a baseball cap while perusing Camemberts at the cheese shop?

Our guess is that the baseball cap didn’t make its way to the political big leagues, so to speak, until the late 1980s. Jesse Jackson often donned one on the campaign trail in his 1988 presidential bid. The Donald kicked it up a notch (thanks, Emiril!) in 2016 when he championed a bright red cap, a matching tie, and a new twist on the Tea Party movement (no thanks, Sarah!). Who but the Australopithecines could have possibly guessed that evolution might occasionally take a step backward?

We wouldn’t propose that the Democrats go that route, but they might find a key to success in the four iconic letters emblazoned on The Donald's headwear. Not that we have a vested interest, but we’d suggest that the Dark Brandon make a go at it with “MIGA.” You know, Make Innovation Great Again. It would pair perfectly in blue, and who could have predicted it better than the Gershwin brothers in the refrain of their 1937 musical hit “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”:

You like potato and I like potatoe;
You like MAGA and I like MIGA;
Potato, potatoe, MAGA, MIGA!
Let's call the Mayorkas impeachment off!

Which brings us, in the usual roundabout way, to today’s episode. Our guest is John Daniels, a tinkerer turned entrepreneur who is daring fate by joining the Innovation Blab in a discussion of his latest venture. It’s developing a rapid diagnostic kit to test for Covid and whatever else ails mankind. With a bit of luck, he’ll launch the product before Kari Lake returns to Arizona politics following a two-year break. (Bribe? What bribe?)

Welcome to Innovation Blab, a new series of podcasts (…keep fingers crossed…) offering the B-side to Failure - the Podcast. Yes, Mark will be back, and we hope to put up both Innovation and Failure posts in the coming days (months, more likely), but as they say about the alleged clandestine romantic relationship surrounding appointment of the special prosecutor in the Georgia election interference cases, we shall see...

Can’t say that much has been made of the B-side of late. Baby boomers are probably the last to have given it much thought, but in its heyday, the B-side was pretty much the tomalley of 45 RPM, 7-inch vinyl records. (Don’t know tomalley? Ask a lobster.) Aficionados looked forward to it. Everybody else, not so much.

The B-side could grow on you, though. Take Elvis’s “Hound Dog,” the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus,” the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The list goes on. So does the beat.

To the armchair intellectual, the A-side and the B-side are like yin and yang. There’s no need to drag Eastern philosophy into an LA marketing gimmick, though. Two sides of the same coin is more like it. The only philosophy here is KISS: keep it simple stupid.

Speaking of innovation and failure (were we?), maybe they’re like yin and yang. We asked ChatGPT, and we got a qualified “sort of.” It felt a little like the prize every kid gets at soccer, win or lose. Yes, the AI said, innovation and failure can be complementary forces, but no, they are not interconnected and interdependent opposites. Just to check that, we asked the electric savant the same of Donald Trump and the news media. We pretty much got the same answer. Consistency doesn’t prove correctness, but it’s a start.

So what does any of that have to do with today’s podcast? Have a listen and judge for yourself. Our guest is Stefan Koehler, director of therapeutics licensing at the University of Michigan. We didn’t ask him about yin and yang, nor about failure — though, he did give some insights into licensing that would make Jim Harbaugh proud. (Sorry, Stefan, wrong department, but you catch our drift).

It's not often the team from Failure - the Podcast gets serious. There was the time Mark stole an air mask from Jet Blue and hooked it to a canister of helium while impersonating Marjorie Taylor Green. Oops, no oxygen. Thankfully, the EMTs had a spare pig's brain for the transplant. And, how about when Mic hired Rudy Giuliani to defend that pesky trademark infringement suit.

It's times like these you realize that some things are serious. Mark turning blue while impersonating Greene. Serious. Handing over your defense to Rudy. Serious (mistake). Just ask Donald.

Speaking of Donald, the mind wonders from yellow on the sheets in Moscow to yellow and blue flags flapping in a nuclear breeze. Now, we are at serious. Ukraine serious. Which brings us to the topic of today's podcast: Putin in Ukraine. A bull in a china shop, but add enmity and cluster bombs.

So, how did we get here? Join the team from Failure - the Podcast in a conversation with Sam Bendett, an expert on the Russian military with the Washington D.C.-based think tanks CNA and CNAS.

No, it's not the ice cream. It's the podcast. This one, and you can be sure it's in bad taste. But, hey, don't be too disappointed. Before reality sunk in, we did offer you the briefest glimmer of hope. That's more than a certain congressperson from Georgia has done for you.

What is today's podcast, other than the usual meaningless banter? There is that, of course. But, there is more, too. Coffee. Yep, you guessed it, and what a genius you are! The coffee business, to be more precise. And, because we failed, yet again, in finding a guest who didn't, it's about a coffee business that's prospering. Go figure.

How much do you know about coffee — we mean really know? The Team from Failure - The Podcast has been imbibing for nearly 100 years, collectively. (Get your mind out of the gutter. We mean coffee.) And, that's only two of us. Add, Mic and ... well, you'd need to go to scientific notation. So, we thought we knew a thing or two about coffee. Just like many of you think you know a thing or two about wine, beer, or you name it. But, how much do you really know, other than where to buy them and what salesperson has you wrapped around his/her finger?

So we brought in a coffee pro. We would say he was a pro from Dover, but unless you saw M*A*S*H, the movie (starring Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland), you really wouldn't get it. But we did bring in a pro. He was the seventh hire at one of the region's largest full-service coffee distributors. And what a success story he was. He rose from janitor to CEO in a matter of years. Many of them. And, in reality, he didn't quite come in as a janitor nor did he exit as a CEO, but you get the point.

Anyway, you want to learn about coffee? Listen to this podcast. Erik Modahl, coffee curator and founder of BeanTrust Coffeebar, has something to say, even if it means talking over the knuckleheads that are Failure — the Podcast.