The global athleisure market is on its way to $900 billion. Formal wear? About $4 billion. Comfort won. But at what cost?

This week, Romain brings the problem: how do you get people to dress up again? What starts as a data drop (enclothed cognition, productivity hits, one in twelve remote workers in pajamas every single day) turns into a deeper conversation about confidence, identity, and why "formal wear" might just be the worst two words in fashion.

Simon's plotting a suit phase. Jesse won't budge (but she has found a jacket with beaded Minions on it). And somewhere between rebranding formal wear as "intelligent wear," the case for fashion-as-rebellion, and a truly compelling argument for wearing a cane in Cannes, the crew lands on something worth cracking: what does formal wear look like when it actually starts a conversation?
Check it out!

Being late seems like one of those small everyday annoyances, but it turns out there’s a lot more going on under the surface. On this episode Simon brings the topic of lateness to Romain and Biz, and the gang gets into the strange ripple effects of people not showing up on time. When is being late understandable? When is it unacceptable? Why does it bother us so much? And what would it actually take to make people stop doing it? A surprisingly big conversation about a seemingly small problem. Check it out!

We're back with only our second-ever lightning round — three hosts, three problems, 20 minutes each. Nobody knows what's coming.
Jesse kicks things off asking why we can't get more people to start cooking. Romain admits cooking stresses him out (it's the time pressure, not the talent), Simon reveals a rampant cocaine addiction — which, for the record, is just Romain mishearing "cooking" — and we land on a surprisingly solid framework: ditch the perfectionism, remove the steps you hate, and just make the one-pot meal.
Then Romain brings the problem that literally started this whole podcast — the one we've been sitting on since a cold, wet night in Boston in January 2025. Why has nobody solved plane boarding? We go deep on window-to-aisle loading, the overhead bin chaos nobody enforces, why Southwest actually had it right all along, and Jesse's bold pitch to give everyone a boarding score.
Simon closes it out with a big one: fixing email. Is it even fixable, or is it just a war of agents vs. agents from here on out? We pitch important.com, mailer.com, and garbage.com as the holy trinity of a better inbox — and somehow that feels like the most reasonable solution we've heard anywhere.
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Cable TV peaked at 105 million households in 2010. Today it's in less than 34% of American homes — and yet, somehow, streaming has become the new cable. Complicated bundles, decision fatigue, and the constant pressure to watch the right thing at the right time have made TV genuinely stressful.
This week, Simon, Jesse, and Romain are joined by Maria Van Buskirk — newly minted Head of Comms and Go-to-Market at Significant — for her very first episode. Jesse brings the problem: how do you bring cable TV back from the dead?
The crew digs into why streaming accidentally recreated everything people hated about cable, why a younger generation with zero nostalgia might actually be cable's best audience, and why the real pitch isn't about channels at all — it's about selling your "chill subscription." Oh, and there's a very strong case made for the return of the kitchen TV.
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House parties are dying. The data is real, the stats are wild, and somehow Romain is the one mad about it. In this episode, Romain tasks Simon and Jesse with figuring out why nobody throws parties anymore — and more importantly, how to bring them back. The gang gets into the liking gap (why we're all secretly waiting for someone else to make the move), why LA kills the vibe by 11pm, whether the dinner party even counts, and the deeply underrated case for the adult sleepover. There's a strong argument that cleaning brands should be sponsoring house parties, that alcohol companies should be running party PSAs, and that the real problem isn't that parties are hard — it's that Instagram made us think they are. It's a conversation about loneliness, lowering the bar, and why all you really need is good people and a couple of pizzas. Check it out!

When did everything get so serious? In this episode Simon tasks Jesse and Romain with trying to get the world to laugh more. In a time when people are feeling more lonely, isolated and anxious than ever, laughter feels like it might be more than entertainment, it might be medicine. The gang gets into how comedy has been sapped from corporate life, what it would take to bring it back, who stands to gain the most from a funnier world and, naturally, some deeply ridiculous solutions along the way. It’s a conversation about confidence, vulnerability and the weird power of not taking everything so damn seriously! Check it out!

On this episode of Crack It, we try something new baby!!!!! Instead of spending the whole episode on one problem, Jesse, Simon and Romain each bring their own and give themselves 20 minutes to solve it. Jesse wants to know how the heck we stop public bathrooms from inevitably becoming disgusting and whether it’s possible to inspire a little more societal decency. Simon takes on airport security and the challenge of making it both quicker and less miserable while getting people to respect the process a bit more. Then Romain dives into one of the great modern restaurant tensions: no substitutions. Is that actually a problem or are we all being babies about it? It’s a fun one with three very different problems and a whole lot of opinions. Check it out!

“Everyone agrees learning a second language is valuable. Almost no one actually does it.”

In this episode of Crack It In An Hour, Romain speaks with Jesse and Biz to unpack a question that feels obvious on the surface and surprisingly broken underneath: why aren’t more people learning another language?
They get into the real barriers: the illusion that it’s too late, the dominance of English, the way education systems strip the joy out of language, and the lack of real-world necessity. But they also challenge the premise: what if the benefits go far beyond utility? Identity, empathy, access to culture, even how you think.
At some point, the conversation turns inward with a personal “taste audit”: what languages do we wish we spoke, and what’s actually stopping us?
From there, it shifts into solutions. Not the usual apps and streaks but more radical ideas. What would it take to force people into learning? Should we design more friction, not less? What would a product or system look like that actually changes behavior?

This one goes beyond language and into how we choose to stay comfortable vs. expand our world.

Did they crack it? Listen and find out.

What makes great TV… great? Is it art? Is it comfort food? Is it something in between? In this episode, Jesse brings a deceptively simple question to Simon and Biz: how do we make great TV today? What follows is a wide-ranging, nuanced conversation about the current state of television, the pressures of the modern landscape, and whether “greatness” is even something we can all agree on anymore. From prestige dramas to easy rewatches, the gang digs into what audiences actually want, what creators are up against, and what it might take to truly stand out. It’s a big one with no easy answers. Did they crack it? Give it a listen.

Most of us are stuck. Stuck in the same playlist, the same three artists, the same songs we discovered in high school. And the algorithm isn't helping, 70% of music consumption comes from titles older than 18 months. So Romain brings the question to the table: how do you actually get people to leave their taste bubble? Joined by friend and digital creator Luke Yun, the crew digs into why taste is so hard to shake — comfort, identity, social pressure, and the three-second skip culture that's rewiring how we even listen. They get into mood-based playlists, listening rooms, "normal people" music reviews, and whether the sociology of taste formation is the real thing nobody's cracking. Spoiler: they don't crack it. But they get close enough to make you want to go listen to something you've never heard before.