"What we take for granted is opportunity. Opportunity is just the door being open. Once it's open, you're going to have challenges. But the door is open."

Meet Norman Randolph, from Randolph's Shoe Care Service in Hightstown, New Jersey, the man who sees your soul through your shoes. From repairing a diabetic woman's shoes in an emergency to navigating racial perceptions in corporate offices, this episode explores the life of a man who built a legacy with his hands.

In this episode:

Why the condition of your heels reveals your personality.

How he turned a 70/30 split with dry cleaners into a passive income empire.

The incredible story of the "Gumball Machine" that proved humanity transcends class.

Why "Old School" responsibility is the only marketing strategy you need.

An episode for anyone who wants to know what it takes to walk through the door when it finally opens.

Recorded live in New York City, this Back in America conversation goes straight at a taboo: employment protection for highly paid engineers. Tech entrepreneur and author Oliver Coste argues that strict dismissal rules in countries like France and Germany make it slow and costly to stop failing projects, which blocks the pivots that fuel disruptive innovation.

Coste contrasts Meta’s rapid post–ChatGPT restructuring with SAP’s constraints, explains why Europe dominates incremental industries but lags in high-failure-rate tech, and lays out a flexicurity fix modeled on Denmark and Switzerland. We dig into profit dynamics, brain drain myths, and what happens to Europe’s economy by 2030 if nothing changes.

If you care about Europe’s next decade, this one is blunt, data-driven, and hard to ignore.

Dr. Jon Edwards, ICCF Grandmaster and the 32nd World Correspondence Chess Champion, lays out how elite players win by working alongside AI. He explains why openings run on massive databases, how seven piece tablebases end many debates, and where humans still outplay engines in long, fixed pawn structures. Edwards walks through a months long plan to shift a single pawn, the kind of patient maneuvering neural nets miss.
He shares the tech behind his home server, training custom neural nets on top correspondence games, and using ChessBase with open databases.
We talk Princeton, Bell Labs, and a Sicilian idea that jumped from correspondence boards to classical prep. Edwards closes with fast learning tactics, why a broad liberal arts education still matters in the AI era, and a clear stance on truth in a noisy world.

Wikipedia
 Teach Yourself Visually Chess