Crack It In An Hour

Crack It heads to the Croisette in Cannes for a fast 20 minutes at the PayPal Ads Studio — and this time the challenge comes from guest Kirsten Rutherford, Executive Creative Director at DoorDash and self-described 47-year-old rave bunny who's usually the oldest person on the dance floor by about 25 years. Her question: how do we stop people aging out of the things they love?

What follows is part tactical, part philosophical. Kirsten makes the case that clubs are leaving money on the table — literally — by only offering $5,000 bottle service when all she wants is a seat and a place to spend on drinks. Jesse goes after the sneaky vocabulary of "I'm too old for that" (and the mysterious groan everyone starts doing when they stand up), Simon confesses he's over-curated himself down to one or two shows a year, and Romain owns up to saying "I'm too old for this" way too often. Plus: French boulangerie morning raves, no-phone clubs, 30-and-up pizza parties, and a callback to the very first Crack It episode about bringing back aerobics.

Did they crack it? Let's call it "ish" — possibly to be continued. Check it out!

In a society where we’re not having enough fun, birthdays feel like a layup. They come around every year, they’re personal, they’re a reason to get together and celebrate someone you care about. So why do so many of us act like they’re no big deal? In this episode Simon, Maria Van Buskirk and Biz Anderson dig into why birthdays can make people uncomfortable, why we don’t like talking about ourselves and why we still secretly want people to make a fuss. From the pressure of planning to the fear of seeming self-involved, the group tries to crack what’s getting in the way of bigger, better birthdays. Give it a listen!

Networking is responsible for countless jobs, partnerships, friendships, and business opportunities. It’s also one of the most universally disliked activities in professional life. Why does something so valuable feel so terrible? Ahead of their first trip to Cannes Lions, Jesse, Simon, and Romain attempt to redesign networking from the ground up: from debate-club panels and no-phoned allowed hot-take sessions to banning the question “What do you do?” Can they crack networking in an hour?

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?
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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.
Check it out!

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!