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 o…

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 …

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 bea…

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 th…

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 pol…

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 corp…

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, Micr…

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 pro…

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 monoli…

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…

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 r…

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 d…

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…

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 di…

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 …

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 he…

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…

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 respons…

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 …

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, ho…

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 …

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 wer…

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 glean…

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!…