I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. ♪
On today's episode, Fast Company staff writer Jess Brzezinski. They're like, well, the lockouts suck, but this is what regulators did to us. And we told them we were going to do this. So like, that's on the government. Sucks to suck. Dr. Sophia Yen, co-founder of Pandia Health. One that irritates me is when people are like, I want less zits, but more libido. And I'm like, it's one or the other. And as always, keeping tabs. A little bit more messy, a little bit more trashy.
We're sick of the like wellness green juice era. But first, here's the download. The news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation.
The aftermath of President Biden's poor debate performance continues. Y'all thought you could get away from this news by listening to our podcast, but too damn bad because it's hitting the business world now, too. Investors are bracing for higher fiscal deficits and inflationary policies under a potential Trump presidency.
probably the least of our worries from a Trump presidency, if you've seen Project 2025. Meanwhile, various business leaders have also joined the chorus of people calling for Biden to withdraw with an open letter that was sent out this past week. Do you ever feel like what we're watching is like, you know, the media circus on like a basketball team before the team manager gets fired? This is kind of the vibe.
You know what I mean? Yeah, it does feel a little bit like the Brooklyn Nets circa 2022 before like Steve Nash got fired and then like KD left and James Harden left and Kyrie left and now the Brooklyn Nets are just a shell of themselves. Yeah.
Our country's the Brooklyn Nets. Our country's the Brooklyn Nets. We're too expensive. Nobody cares about us as much as we care about ourselves. And there's a better country just north of us. I'm talking about the Knicks is Canada. The Knicks is Canada. Two major company acquisitions this week. After long deliberations, Paramount Global accepted an offer to merge with Skydance Media, who will pay $2.4 billion for a controlling share of the company.
And HBC announced that it will acquire Neiman Marcus Group for over $2.5 billion. The deal will establish a new Saks Global that includes Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman.
A lot of billions. Also, I just want Saks to create more avenue-based sellers. So it's like Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Sixth Avenue. Yeah, Saks, the sad place. Sad Saks on Fifth Avenue. It's just gray athleisure. It's sad Saks. Yeah.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified to Congress members that interest rates won't be cut until they hit a goal of 2% inflation. According to the Fed, it was at 2.6 in June compared to the 9% peak we saw in 2022. They promised us interest rate cuts. I was waiting for those. Our man Jay Powell is a cautious king. Yeah, he's cautious. I...
I respect the cautiousness, but also they came out and were like, we're just going to keep cutting, baby. And now they're like, no, pump the brakes. No, no.
The Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is set to build a billion-dollar factory in Turkey, competing with Tesla to be the top electric vehicle manufacturer. Earlier this year, an extra 17.4% tariff was placed on vehicles BYD was importing to the EU. But because Turkey is in a customs union with the EU, vehicles can be shipped from there tariff-free.
I can't wait for the cage fight match between whoever the CEO of BYD is and Elon Musk. Between the Chinese Communist Party and Elon Musk. Xi Jinping, get at Elon in the sub tweets. That's the UFC fight. Enter the octagon.
And finally, recurring guest villain of the newscast, wait for it, it could be so many different people, Boeing has agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud tied to two deadly 737 MAX plane crashes. And although the fines could be up to almost $500 million, the DOJ has asked for a previous fine paid by Boeing to be credited to this sub, cutting the total roughly in half.
Imagine having so many fines and infractions, you're just like, can I get a rollover plan? Listen, at some point, like, how much is several human lives worth? Yeah, the courts routinely do put a price on human life, which is always grim. I know. And that's the news you need to know today.
So Josh, what is your favorite thing to eat when it's sweltering hot outside? My go-to is always like sushi. That's my like easy, warm weather. I want to treat myself with delivery food go-to. Honestly, it's generally speaking my go-to delivery food anyways. But I will also add into this.
Uber eating some Aperol and Prosecco and seltzer water to make myself a nice summer Aperol spritz. That's really my go to warm weather dinner. I think that says a lot about me. What about you? What are what's your go to? So I have this weird paranoia about like if I order sushi and then it's like outside for a while when it's really hot.
I'm like scared of food poisoning. I could eat ice cream for a meal. I did it yesterday. Yeah. I know it's bad, but like that or like gazpacho. Are you ordering gazpacho from the place? Are you going on to Uber Eats and searching gazpacho and ordering that? I just realized that doesn't make much sense. No. So the reason we're talking about food delivery is because today we're talking about delivery workers.
Temperatures are hitting an all-time high this week. It is miserable outside in New York. Last month marked the hottest June on record, and some cities are seeing temperatures reach up to 25 degrees above average.
Over 1,200 people die from extreme heat every year in the U.S., and in 2022, there were 43 confirmed heat-related workplace fatalities. But researchers think the actual number is in the thousands. Delivery workers are biking or driving around all day in the unbearable heat with very little protections on the job. We've asked Fast Company staff writer Jess Brzezinski to join us and tell us a little more about all this. Welcome back to the show, Jess. Hey, thanks for having me.
So last week, the Biden administration announced a proposed rule that would create heat protections for certain workers, including delivery drivers.
Talk about what that legislation would mean for delivery workers. So it's exciting because this is the first major federal safety standard of its kind. If it's finalized, this is going to protect an estimated 36 million U.S. workers from injuries related to heat exposure on the job. Wow. So that includes farm workers, delivery and construction workers, landscapers, people in warehouses, kitchens. But I think it's important to note that this measure...
I believe protects employees and the delivery companies view workers as independent contractors. I think that there's probably going to be a caveat. There definitely is going to be a caveat knowing these companies. What kind of heat protections do they have in place? Like how are Uber Eats and DoorDash responding? So DoorDash told me that depending on the situation, there's a range of actions that they could take.
So they share alerts during an event itself. I remember talking to them one time about an active shooting. Great. So they sent an alert to stay in place. Okay. Switching to customer pickup only. And then they can suspend operations in an area. So they can literally turn off the app for a few hours or a day or however long it is.
I can't imagine them doing that very often. I don't believe it's used much. Yeah. And I love when these companies are like, we send safety tips, like drink some water. Right, right. This is basically like the alerts that Apple Health like gives you where it's like, you need to move more today. You need to drink water. Have you drank water today? Or like when the TikTok lady pops up and it was like, stop scrolling, get off your phone. It's like when someone at work is like,
No, you should log off at six and enjoy your weekends. But also you have 12 things due on Monday. Yeah, that's it. That's accurate. Yeah. There's the other piece of this where they say people can always accept or decline orders without penalty. And, you know, DoorDash says the same thing of like, oh, you can choose how and when you dash. You can take a break. You can choose what hours of the day you want to work or choose not to work. Yeah.
But that's kind of disingenuous. They don't get paid if they don't work. This sounds a lot like the conversation we had around Lyft and rideshares a few months ago to an extent where it's this is the nature of gig work overall, which and this heat provision is not like the first in the past year or so, not the first like
step towards maybe more equitable work that a government has made. Like here in New York City, we raised the minimum wage on delivery drivers. And I think there's like 60 something thousand delivery drivers in New York. So not a small amount of people. But it was not like a great rollout overall. Yaz, you've been writing about delivery workers as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that and this law going into effect?
Yeah, so I worked on a piece about this in an upcoming issue of FF Company. And friend of the pod, David Salazar, edited it and also did a lot of reporting. So I want to give him credit here, too. I basically took a look at an advocacy group called Los Deliveristas Unidos. It's sort of like a union for delivery workers. And it's really important for them to be able to have some kind of like collective action way to talk to people because they're all contractors. And I think it's really important for them to be able to have some kind of like collective action way to talk to people because they're all contractors.
And it's hard as a contractor to stand up to your employer or ask for better things. Through that piece, I basically learned that these companies are pretty nefarious.
After New York City Council mandated a pay hike, Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub all filed a lawsuit basically claiming that the economics wouldn't work, these companies wouldn't turn a profit. And the thing that they keep saying is basically like, people who order food will not be willing to pay like $2 more. You know what I mean? Genuine question though, are these companies profitable? No.
No, it's only Uber. But the thing is, like, you can't decide not to pay drivers as, like, the way to save money. Your system is broken in that case. You know, so basically, according to the Department of Workplace and Consumer Protections, after this law was passed, delivery workers made...
way more than they did before. Like, overall, this law has been good. But on a sort of individual level, a lot of workers haven't actually seen an improved economic position. And that's because delivery apps don't like NYC's pay hike and started really restricting the amount of hours that
people can book to work in the app. So basically, prior to this law being passed, a lot of the time you could just like log into the app and start working. Yeah. Now you have to reserve your hours in advance. And I talked to like a couple of workers who were like, you know what? I was working literally 12 hour days. And that law would have changed things for me because I would have been paid like quite a bit more for those hours.
But now I can only book two hours a day. And yes, I get paid a little more for those two hours. But like it doesn't really map out to a better economic position at all. And it's really frustrating to not be able to forecast your income anymore. That's not great.
I remember I worked at restaurants throughout college and then like my early years in New York City. I mean, this is a constant thing where when things get more expensive, they just start cracking down on hours and slash your hours and you don't have control over that. The delivery companies acknowledge that this is a bad situation. They're like, well, the lockouts suck, which is what they call when you can only use the app.
at certain times. But this is what regulators did to us and we told them we were going to do this. So like, that's on the government. Sucks to suck. They know it's bad. Do you know the hot dog sketch from Tim Robinson's You Wanna Leave? That's what this feels like. Someone drove a hot dog
- Hot dog shaped car through the window. - We all wanna know who did this. - It could literally be any one of us. - No, it couldn't. You're dressed like a hot dog. - This is what it feels like, the company's being like, "Man, this is so unfair." But like, you're the hot dog.
And also, you know, there's a couple of things they've done. I don't know if you've ordered on DoorDash recently. I noticed this when I ordered on DoorDash and it's in the piece, but like there was a pop up that was like, because of New York state law, we have to add a $2 fee to every delivery. And like, that's the government fucking you over. And it was kind of like.
This is a little silly, guys. And also, you know, speaking to some delivery workers, they were saying these companies have been sending them emails being like, the reason you can't book more hours is New York State. And it's a way for them not to kind of have solidarity with each other. You know what I mean? Like these companies want them to kind of turn against each other or not organize together.
I guess to me for a while, I was like, these companies are just trying to make things work. I don't know. And then I saw some of those emails and I was like, that is so nefarious to me. Or like, you know, it's just, it's really kind of terrible. A lot of companies have also been screwing workers over by changing the way people tip. Tips traditionally, like the entirety of the tip will go to a worker. So the company is not losing money when people like tip less. This is like pure retaliation.
But what a lot of companies have done, DoorDash is one of them, I think, is they give people now a tipping option after the order has been delivered rather than prior to the order being delivered. And what that means is a lot of people don't check their phones afterwards. You're like, my food's here, like, whatever.
And workers have seen their tips dramatically lowered. And I think that's also pretty terrible. That's awful. So, Jess, has anything come up beyond this heat provision from the federal government, beyond New York City's minimum wage increase? Like, what's the next step here?
for worker rights. Since these workers aren't employees, they really can't do much, so they need people to advocate on their behalf. Our advocates are saying that they need further measures like ensuring a weekly number of hours of work. And New York State Senator Jessica Ramos introduced a bill that would require delivery apps to offer the opportunity to tip at checkout, whereas, as Yass mentioned, right now in New York, it's
It's after your food is delivered. And these labor organizations, they're going to keep working for delivery drivers and continuing the fight for more benefits and protections. And it's definitely not an easy road, but I can't imagine it ending anytime soon. Yeah.
So workers have limited recourse. They need advocates. So what can I do next time I order way too much food on Grubhub to support these delivery workers? Tip. Tip. Well, yeah. Yeah. And tip a lot. For a while, I was I'm guilty of this. You know, if it rained a lot or if it was this hot, I'd be like, maybe the solution is not to order because like I don't want to put
Somebody threw that. But the thing is, like, they want to make money. They want these jobs. They want more hours. So the best thing you can do is compensate them fairly. And by that, I mean, leave them a fat tip. Jess.
The final serious question I'll ask you. What's the last thing you ordered from Grubhub? I've been on a pizza kick. Nice. Aren't you in San Francisco? Yeah, I'm in San Francisco. It's not a pizza town, is it? It's not. It's Domino's. And it's also low-key pretty cold here right now. So I'm like recording this in a sweatshirt and you guys are talking about extreme heat. Yeah, I'm jealous. Yeah, it's different.
We'll be back with Jess for Keeping Tabs, but first, quick break followed by my interview with Dr. Sophia Yan from Pandia Health. Pandia Health is a telemedicine company that specializes in birth control, menopause medication, and acne prescriptions.
I spoke to the founder, Dr. Sophia Yen, about changing how people get essential health care, using algorithms in telemedicine, and how our political climate impacts Pandya's business. Sophia says that part of the motivation for founding Pandya came from the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and the cost of birth control being covered by insurance. But even though that improved access, she knew from personal experience and talking with other women that just having birth control on hand could be an obstacle.
I was giving a talk to a bunch of doctors. Why don't women take birth control? Why aren't they taking their birth control? And the number one reason was didn't have it in their hand. Didn't have time to run to the pharmacy every single month. And I actually coined the phrase, I love hashtags, hashtag congenital.
pill anxiety. So if you imagine three weeks of seven and then that last week, and if you don't get to the pharmacy, you will put hair on fire moment, right? You are going to end up pregnant. You're going to bleed when you don't want to bleed. You can't have sex. It's all sorts of badness. And then insurance companies are the dark side. So if most of us run out our birth control pill on Sunday, and so being good people, we go the Sunday before and we're like, please fill my birth control.
Then the pharmacist pumps it in the insurance and the insurance goes, "We only fill this seven days before, come back tomorrow." You're like, "What? I have work tomorrow. I have meetings, I have conferences, I have time tomorrow." Hashtag better things to do than to come back tomorrow.
And so that was the whole point of Pandia Health. Set it and forget it. Let us worry so you don't have to. No one runs out of birth control on our watch. And I made the company for me because I was sick of running to the pharmacy and I wanted someone to automate this. And I knew the computer could do it and that we could do it proactively in a pro-female way.
If you have a prescription and you have insurance, you pay us nothing. And our whole goal is to ship you birth control until you tell us to stop and make sure you never run out. And we poke the insurance. Can we fill it yet? Can we fill it yet? Can we fill it yet? And then we try to fill as much as possible. Three months, six months. Know that in 20 states, you can get a year supply at a time.
But I can tell you from owning a pharmacy, not many insurances are following that. But legally, they're supposed to do that. And then if you need a prescription, it's only $30 once a year to use our expert doctors with unlimited follow-up questions for a year about anything birth control, but only birth control because you only paid $30.
And then we do a 10-week follow-up for people who are newbies or new to hashtag periods optional to be like, you haven't been breathing or bleeding? You haven't zits. You haven't munchies. And if so, our doctors have an algorithm that I built from personally prescribing 3,000 birth control patients in two years looking at the side effects. And they can bump this up, bump this down according to your side effects. And with that, 82% of our people love the first birth control pill that we put them on.
So I want to talk about the algorithm that you just mentioned. When you say bump this up, bump this down, like what are the things you're prescribing with birth control here? So it's actually the birth control pill itself. It's so important that people with uteruses and just educated people know that there are 40 different types of birth control pill, eight different progesterones, two different doses of the progesterone, two different doses of the estrogen.
And so it's mainly the progesterone causing a lot of these side effects. And so when you say I'm having munchies or I'm having breakthrough bleeding, then this progesterone is better at treating breakthrough bleeding. This progesterone will give you more libido, but more zits. So that's one that irritates me is when people like I have zits, but yet I
I want less zits, but more libido. And I'm like, it's one or the other. They're like opposite sides of a coin. And for younger people, they have enough libido that they can take a little hit on their libido in exchange for really good skin. When you say algorithm, is it like a computer algorithm or how does that work?
Yes. So when I say algorithm, it's asking what is their BMI? What is their age? What are the side effects that they're concerned about? And then the doctor looks at this list of drugs and we rank it from most likely give you zits, least likely give you zits, most likely to break their bleed, least likely. And that's the balance.
the concerns of the patient between breakthrough bleeding and acne, usually in libido, those kinds of things. So it's not an automated computer situation, but in the future, we are going to ask people if they want to provide us their genetics because a lot of people have 23.
3andMe or DNA Ancestry. And so if you're willing to upload your genetics, then we can run it into our system and say, based on the 30,000 patients that we've served to date and the follow-ups we've seen, this is generally what works. And if you have this gene, then this is the best birth control for you. This is the best menopause treatment for you. I want to talk a little bit about how the company is structured. So, you know, the people who are making prescriptions on the platform,
You know, and I don't know if you use doctors or nurse practitioners. We're 100% doctors. Are they full-time on staff? Are they contractors? Do they do this part-time? What does that look like? Yes. So our doctors are compensated, I think, different from other physicians. One, they go through an extensive training for the birth control, according to our algorithm. And two, they get training for menopause as well. And then
They're contractors and they bill by the minute. Some other platforms allow the doctors to bill by patient seen, bill by prescriptions written. We don't have any quotas. As long as you are bringing in more patients and it's costing to cover you, then we're good. Certainly, if you run extra slow, then we may consider...
terminating that. But we want every doctor to feel safe and comfortable when they sign their name to that medical record that because that goes legally in there and we're liable and they're technically liable as well. And we've got them covered from the insurance point of view. Now, I know that regulations around prescribing differ by state.
And you provide health care in quite a few of them. I'm curious how things differ for you by state or what kind of regulations you've had to get around. What's been amazing about COVID is it expanded the use of telemedicine. What's not cool is that some medical boards in some states have defined telemedicine as has to be a video or a phone.
And so we do asynchronous telemedicine. And asynchronous telemedicine, I think, is particularly good for confidential stuff. The research has shown that if I do a video, a phone, and I ask you, how many sexual partners have you had? When was your last period? You may feel judged.
So our listeners understand asynchronous means they enter information into a form that could be reviewed at a different time by a doctor. Is that fair? Exactly. So the patient enters a form 24-7 and a doctor then reviews it 24-7, but they're not directly connected live at the same exact time. There have been...
Obviously, a lot of abortion restrictions lately. I'm curious whether that's changed the climate for any of the services you provide and whether it's affected the company in any way. Yes. With the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs decision, we saw a 3x increase in our birth control services. And I thought it was just going to be a temporary blip, but those of us with uteri really woke up and
and said, if I can't access abortion, I really need to get my birth control under control. And we expected only a bump in like Texas or, you know, the more conservative states, but we also saw it in New York when there are pharmacies on every corner. But again, hashtag better things to do than worry and run to the pharmacy, automate your birth control, get it delivered, you know, set it and forget it. Let someone else worry, not you.
You know, menopause has really emerged as a big field, I would say, over the past couple of years. What are the treatments that you offer? Is it just treatments to treat the symptoms or what does that look like? Certainly everybody should be on a multivitamin. Everybody should be getting in a vitamin D and calcium and
And fish oil is a great thing as well. But our value is that we can prescribe you and deliver to your door, again, so you don't have to run every single month to the pharmacy, estrogen and progesterone options. And we also have non-estrogen and progesterone options. We have bioidentical estrogen and progesterone is our preferred. But if for some reason your insurance doesn't cover it or you don't like the options there, then there are non-bioidentical
And then if you can't do estrogen, there's a little antidepressants, not for antidepressant, but it has been shown to work for hot flashes. And then there's alternative selective estrogen receptor modulator drugs that are more expensive, usually not covered by insurance. So that's the gamut. But in general, most people's symptoms will be treated with estrogen and the progesterone will help with sleep and the progesterone will also prevent uterine cancer and
Because you can't just do estrogen. If you have a uterus, you need progesterone to block endometrial cancer. What are some of the biggest misconceptions when you see or that you see in people using your platform? Yes.
The biggest scare for estrogen is that it causes breast cancer. And so the research has shown that at the levels of transdermal estrogen, there's very little risk, if any, of breast cancer from hormonal replacement therapy.
not from birth control levels, but from hormonal replacement therapy. And that the risk is actually from the progesterone of breast cancer and not so much estrogen. So don't be afraid of estrogen. And then the other is the Women's Health Initiative was the largest HRT study. And it's really important for people to realize the average age of the woman starting HRT in that study was 63%.
And now we know that you need to start your hormones before 10 years after your last period. And so 63 is two years too far. And the way I look at it is at age 50, your body takes away your estrogen and says, "Thank you for your service. Go ahead and die." And so I say, "They took away the estrogen. Put the estrogen back." Because you need it for your brain. You need it for your heart. You need it for your bones.
Technically, the guidelines say we can only provide hormonal replacement therapy for hot flashes, night sweats, genital urinary symptoms. So as I like to call it, sandpaper vagina or painful sex or recurrent urinary tract infections. A lot of people don't know that one. And then
if there's a family history of osteopenia or if you're at risk of osteopenia and it's for all those people of color who are lactose intolerant like me, that is you. If you aren't getting your calcium and you have a risk of osteopenia, you qualify for hormone replacement therapy. But for weight gain, depression, that kind of stuff is not an indication currently to write for hormonal therapy. But if you have the other stuff,
and we give you estrogen, probably going to help you. And I think we're going to see in the future a little touch of metformin will help for the metabolism thing that we're seeing with a lot of women in menopause. You're a C-stage company, right? So you fundraised for this. Yes.
I'd love to hear how you've thought about capitalizing your company and how you plan on doing it going forward. Yes. So we are raising another round right now because I went to MIT, because I've done my family's accounting since fourth grade, because I've been the treasurer of every organization. I know how to make a spreadsheet. I know how to make a budget. I know how to bring in more income than I expend.
Women's health and menopause is a hot field, and there are people understanding the need for expert care in menopause. When we raise this round, we will have enough funding to take us to profitability, and then we won't have to raise again. So I'm very excited about that, and we'll have a $1 billion valuation by 2026, 2027. Right. Thank you so much, Dr. Yen, for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
Okay, we are back with Jess and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where we take a look at millions of open tabs clogging up our computer memory space and pick something to share.
And this week, we're also joined by one of our interns who's been helping us out with production on the podcast, Henry Chandonnet. Welcome to the show, Henry. Say hi so everyone can hear your voice. Hey, Josh. Thanks for having me. So, Josh, since you're our guest, let's start with you. What are you keeping tabs on? Okay, so quite literally, I have, I checked, I have 294 tabs open on my phone right now, which is... That is so stressful. Horrific. Hell yeah. But I, the thing I'm most excited about, and I have repeated tabs open...
is getting tickets for the Long Legs movie that comes out this week. Oh, I'm so excited to see that. So excited. What is Long Legs? I've missed this somehow. It's a new horror movie. Nicolas Cage is a serial killer who goes by Long Legs. Nice. And they've been really quiet with...
giving away anything else aside from that like you don't know what he looks like as the serial killer there's this whole thing about the reveal in the movie that he looks so horrific that the actress's heart rate shot up like a hundred points uh when she saw him for the first time i hope the reveal is that it's just nicholas cage yeah in like family he looks like he's in family man people
He puts some extra shoe polish on his hair and tip X on his teeth. I mean, he is terrifying. I don't know how I missed knowing that this was coming out. I'm such a horror movie junkie and I miss this. Yeah, watch the trailer. It's supposed to be like Silence of the Lambs-esque. Okay, I'm into that. That's a scary movie. Yeah. Henry, what are you keeping tabs on? Yeah, so do y'all know what Brat Summer is? No shit, Henry. No. Oh.
Oh. You know what that is? How do I miss everything? My cultural lexicon is shitty. Yeah.
So this is based off of the new incredible Charli XCX album, Brat. Right? It's this amazing... Oh, yeah. Like, kind of rave techno pop album. And all of these fans have now been empowered to have their Brat summer, right? It's being a little bit more messy, a little bit more trashy. We're sick of the, like, wellness green juice era. Now it's time to just have a little bit of mess. I'm loving it. I'm loving the album. It's a Brat summer.
What's the messiest thing you've done since the album came out? Henry, you don't need to answer that. You are an intern here. I'm trying to get you in trouble. I saw a tweet that was like, you thought you were having a brat summer and now you're on antibiotics.
That's terrific. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? Not anything nearly as fun. This is going back to my theater roots. I got to bring that back up again. But my computer right now is populated by so many tabs.
on basically the state of regional theater in the country. So I've just been diving into some data on the numbers around regional theater, and I don't think people completely understand how big of an industry professional theater is nationwide. There are roughly 1,800 theaters
professional regional theaters across the United States. For context, there are 1,897 targets in the United States. So this is a huge employer of not just actors, but stage managers, carpenters, tech crew, front of house staff, not to mention is really like the lifeblood of a lot of communities. And it's like,
It's not great out there right now for these theaters, for these businesses across the country. I think art as a public good is a good thing to talk about, but art as a driver of local economies is something that needs to be explored. More people go see theater than go to NFL games in the country. But, yes, hopefully something that's less of a downer overall, maybe? Maybe.
What's your keeping tabs? So like everybody, I've been trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Democratic Party. Honestly, shame on them. It's a fucking gerontocracy. So I obviously have been reading a lot about Kamala Harris, who is a ridiculous woman. And to be like, I think we can say like good or bad. At least we can say she's ridiculous.
And I have to mention, I mean, Kamala has so many good clips from the, did you just fall out of a coconut tree clip? But my, my all time favorite remains the Venn diagram clip. Cause I have constructed a Venn diagram on this. Remember those three circles, how they overlap. I love Venn diagrams. So I just do whenever you're dealing with conflict, pull out a Venn diagram. Right. And so, you know, the three circles, I just love them. Yeah.
Then she like laughs a month and then she points at someone. She's like, you get it.
That's me in pitch meetings. Yeah, exactly. Same here, but I'm not running the country. I'm running a podcast with some listeners. That's it for Most Innovative Companies. Thank you all for listening. And Jess, thank you for joining us. Thank you. And Henry, too. Thanks so much for coming on. Thank you.
Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom. Editing by Julia Xu. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. And our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review. And we'll see you next week.