Morgan Stanley Ideas Podcast

At the height of the pandemic, headlines around the world proclaimed an exodus of people from urban centers toward smaller, and possibly safer, communities. The sudden mass shift to remote work—for those who could—helped fuel this rush to more pastoral, or at least less congested, environs. Pundits immediately declared that metropolises like New York City were dead. But are city communities truly at risk of collapse? Or could this moment instead usher in a long awaited renewal for the world’s most populous places?In this inaugural episode of the Now, What's Next? podcast, host Sonari Glinton introduces us to a host of folks all grappling with their relationship to the city. Helen Lummis left San Francisco and moved to a small cabin in Soda Springs, California. Lee Peart lost his job and had to leave London. He moved back in with his parents in a tiny seaside British town. Author Kevin Baker worries that his beloved New York City is being hollowed out for reasons that aren’t Covid-related. Tiffany Smith has lo

The world is changing in ways we never expected. And the Morgan Stanley Ideas podcast is changing alongside it. Our new podcast looks at life AFTER the global pandemic. Sonari Glinton makes sense of how the world continues to evolve in the face of a global crisis and the rare chance it’s given us to rethink our assumptions. This may be a once-in-a-lifetime challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to create real and lasting change.Morgan Stanley Ideas is becoming Now, What’s Next? A new podcast starting November 18th.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. In 1969, Neil Armstrong’s first steps inspired advancements that led to everything from modern kitchen appliances to the Internet. But 50 years later, space exploration isn’t limited to government-funded missions, launches, and astronauts. Now, private companies are leading today’s “space race” and will help us enter a new era of growth—with satellites. In our season finale, we look toward the stars to see how the satellites of the future could help improve life here on Earth. We start in Washington State with Chris and Libie Cain, a husband and wife fishing team, whose albacore tuna business is strained by illegal fishing practices — one of the many problems that may soon be solved by satellites. Then, we talk to Mike Safyan, the V.P. of Launch at Planet Labs, a start-up that’s revolutionizing how satellites scan the Earth. Planet currently has over 150 satellites capturing data that it licenses to scientists and industry leaders who wa

The summer bestseller you read on the way to work, a flower delivery for your sister’s birthday, dinner made fresh from your weekly meal kit— today you can have every part of your day ordered online and delivered to you without ever leaving your home. But what about your favorite shop around the corner or even the malls of your childhood? With the growing convenience and efficiency of online shopping come questions about the future of traditional retail. Are brick-and-mortar stores fated to crumble under the weight of the e-commerce boom? Or will online and traditional stores find ways to coexist?On this episode of the Ideas Podcast, we’re going to one place where the future of retail is already in full swing: Tokyo. Akira Ito, CEO of Itoya, takes us on a tour of the stationery company’s 115 year-old flagship location. As we explore Itoya’s twelve-story playground of paper, we learn how Japan’s oldest stationery company has continued to thrive by curating experiences that keep customers shopping in their stor

On this preview episode of the new Morgan Stanley podcast "Thoughts on the Market", Chief Investment Officer Mike Wilson says markets are typically savvy on how and when to price news events. But are markets overlooking some potential bad news?

In the future, we’ll all still need a place to live. But as rents continue to rise and the housing market changes, we might need to adjust our vision of home. Instead of living in a tiny, expensive apartment or funneling our savings into a down payment for a single-family home, we might choose to live together for the sake of space, money, and, above all else, community. This type of housing model, known as co-living, has existed throughout history, but new iterations of co-living are becoming real housing options for all different types of people across the globe. In this episode of ​Ideas, ​we’re going to explore different versions of co-living to understand why it might help solve some of the housing market’s greatest challenges.We’ll start in London at The Collective: Old Oak, the world’s largest co-living complex, where young, mobile workforce is learning “how to have it all”—community, leisure, and an apartment in one of the world’s most expensive cities—by trading in personal space for communal lu

Have you ever tasted a habanada pepper? An upstate abundance potato? A Robin’s Koginut squash? These new vegetable breeds, all created by Row Seven Seed Company, are bursting with new flavors that come straight from the earth. But what about those wasabi seaweed snacks? Or something like beer chips? Or crazy ice cream flavors that seem to come from natural sources but are most-likely made in a lab? The flavor industry is worth billions of dollars, but with new technology, our changing environment, globalization, and a better understanding of how to invent new types of food, the future of flavor is being pulled in two very different directions. As different players the food industry invent new flavors, consumers will have to make new choices about what flavors they want: flavors from the farm or the lab.In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we explore these two different locations to understand the future of the flavor industry. First, we travel to the Fingerlakes region in upstate New York, where we’ll tag al

As you walk down the street, sit in your office, or even make yourself a cup of coffee, take a look around and consider what everything is made of. ​More often than not, the answer will be: plastic. Our world is made of plastic. It’s one of the most affordable, versatile and indestructible materials we have. But the very properties that make plastic perfect for so much have also made it problematic. Most of that plastic is still here, and it will be for hundreds of years. But in the future, we might be able to replace the plastic we’ve come to rely on with a plant-based material that holds all the promise of plastic, without the environmental costs. We're talking about something called "bioplastics."In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we take you to a laboratory in England to see these bioplastics in action. First, Vincent Andrews, Chemicals and Agriculture Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley helps us understand how traditional plastic has become an integral part of both the economy and our daily live

You many have imagined a future of transit where we all blast off to work strapped into personal jetpacks or shuttle our kids to and from school in flying cars. But the future is now, and the innovative transportation systems of today are surprising in their own right. The best among them are reimagining infrastructure design and project funding to get people moving across town and around the globe. In this second episode of the new season of the Ideas podcast, we head to a place where the future of transportation is already in motion: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. There, we ride a DART bus, one of the most advanced bus rapid transit systems in the world. Steven Higashide, Director of Research for TransitCenter, helps us understand the road blocks between U.S. cities and better public transit, and we learn from Sarah Kaufman, of the Rudin Center Transportation at NYU, about ways to move beyond ride sharing and fill the gaps that existing transportation can’t cover. Finally, Michael Zezas, Managing Director an

Rummaging through your pockets in search of change and crumpled bills to pay for your morning coffee may still feel routine, but in some parts of the world, this familiar scene is just a memory. The cashless economy is already starting to take shape, and as we continue to create innovative ways to exchange money without pulling out our wallets, cash might become a thing of the past. And while some countries struggle with questions of fairness and inclusivity as governments and businesses forgo cash, others have already stepped into a cashless future where digital transactions are the only way to pay.In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we travel to Sweden, a country where cash makes up just one percent of the entire economy. First, we hear from Charlie Warzel, a senior technology reporter at Buzzfeed News, who literally puts skin in the cashless game while on a trip to Stockholm and receives an RFID chip implant that allows him to pay for anything with his hand. We also follow Swedish journalist, A

Ever wonder what your life might be like 5, 10, 20 years from now? This season, we’re taking you around the globe -- everywhere from Tanzania to Sweden to Japan -- to catch a glimpse of what the future might hold. Because the future ​is ​happening somewhere. It’s just a matter of knowing where to find it. New season starts the first week of March.

Season four of the Ideas Podcast will be starting soon, but in the meantime, we’re kicking things off with a bonus episode in honor of Climate Week NYC: an annual summit where scientists, government officials, and CEOs come together to showcase innovations, programs, and policies that are leading the fight against climate change. But for many key players in today’s financial world, the future of climate action isn’t relegated to one week. At Morgan Stanley, there is a whole team of researchers and financial analysts dedicated to helping investors and consumers make environmentally-sustainable, lucrative financial decisions. In this bonus episode, we sit down for an exclusive interview with Jessica Alsford, Managing Director and the head of Morgan Stanley’s Sustainability Research team. Alsford reveals how environmental, social and governance factors -- or ESG -- impact the way businesses in every sector are thinking about the future of investing. But these aren’t just concerns for investors. Alsford expl

The word “sports” may conjure images of athletes barreling down a football field or burying a three-pointer, but the latest stadium-rousing athletes rarely if ever have to leave their chairs. Welcome to the world of professional video-gaming, or eSports. Around the world, eSports is looking more and more like any big-league sport, complete with sponsorships, merchandising, and arenas full of fans. And now, eSports is on track to become a multibillion-dollar industry.In this episode of the Ideas Podcast, we explore how a hobby that may not seem like a “real sport” became a very real market. Jacob Wolf, an ESPN journalist, helps us understand why eSports playoffs are topping the attendance to MLB and NHL games. Then, Brian Nowak, a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, explains how that popularity launched an entire market that may one day include dedicated eSports arenas, fantasy eSports leagues, and team jerseys made of pixels. And along the way, some eSports superfans invite us to a watch-party to feel the ru

After long careers and years of saving, many of today’s retirees have decided not to set sail on an exotic cruise or spend their days on the golf course. They’re changing what it means to retire by re-entering the workforce—and creating an entirely new market in the process.In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we look at the tech startups, nonprofits, and even the baby boomers themselves who are shaping the newly retired market. Steve Records, the Vice President of Field Operations at SCORE, explains how connecting young entrepreneurs with retired mentees has shown him that 70 is the new 40. Dan Hunt, Managing Director and Senior Investment Strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, explains how shifts in financial planning are changing the way we see retirement. And Sam Gerstenzang, the co-founder of Umbrella, a company that hires recent-retirees to help older seniors with odd jobs, introduces us to two of his clients: Cathy and Yariv, who embody why this market has the power to bring both younger and

For the past 40 years, Major League Baseball’s off-season has been dominated by a frenzied bidding war to sign available free agents. But this year, everything changed—the free-agent market froze. For months, almost none of the 200 free agents were signed. So what happened? And what does the market shift mean for the future of America’s pastime?This season on the Ideas Podcast, we’ve been exploring unexpected markets. In this episode, we’ll look at what happens when a seemingly healthy market unexpectedly collapses. We talk to Ben Reiter, a journalist at Sports Illustrated who made a crazy prediction in 2014—that the Houston Astros, the then-worst team in baseball, would win the 2017 World Series. That Ben’s call came true wasn’t just a fluke—but reflected how teams now approach hiring players, particularly free agents. Then, J.C. Bradbury, a professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, takes us deep into the economics of baseball to explain why it suddenly has become good business to field a

Virtual reality is popping up in almost every industry, doing things that were once unimaginable. How did it grow from the stuff of Sci-Fi into a real world revolution? As with so many things, it began with a language. In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we explore the virtual future by looking at one of the earliest VR worlds. Bryan Carter, a professor at the University of Arizona, guides us on a tour of Virtual Harlem, an early VR world that allowed his students to walk the streets of the Harlem Renaissance. Then, Alexis Macklin, an analyst for Greenlight Insights, takes us to the future—one filled with virtual coffee dates, schools, and vacations. Along the way, we explore the coding language at the root of the VR explosion: C++. Morgan Stanley Managing Director Bjarne Stroustrup, who created the C++ programming language more than 30 years ago, tells us what it took to build a near-universal coding language that took on a life of its own, and has become the source code for everything from web browse

Tech promised us more productivity and better lives via perpetual connectivity. Now, it seems impossible to stop looking at our screens. Can we disrupt distraction? In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we’re diving deep into the solutions-to-digital-distraction market. We talk to Suze Yalof-Schwartz, the founder of Unplug, a meditation app that helps people, well, unplug from technology by plugging in. Manoush Zomorodi, a technology journalist, shows us that the way we interact with our screens now might change how our kids will interact with each other. And Louella San Juan, a Managing Director and the Global Head of Client Technologies at Morgan Stanley, takes us to what she believes is the root of our unending dependence on technology: the ubiquity of the smartphone.For more, visit http://morganstanley.com/ideas.The host Ashley Milne-Tyte is an employee of Pineapple Street Media. The guest speakers are neither employees nor affiliated with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. (“Morgan Stanley”). Th

As our lives become more digital, our money is becoming increasingly digital too. There are more than a thousand cryptocurrencies floating around and new ones seem to launch every day. But is this new form of money, one that only exists online, even a currency? What exactly gives cryptocurrencies value?In this episode of the Ideas podcast, we head to the Berkshires to see what a local currency, the BerkShare, can teach us about the value of alternative currencies. We speak with the creator of BerkShares, Susan Witt, about creating a brand new currency, and we turn to local business owners to see that currency in action. How did BerkShares go from a crazy idea to a real form of money? And will the same ever happen for cryptocurrency? James Faucette, a Morgan Stanley Senior Research Analyst, looks at the similarities between cryptocurrency and BerkShares to question whether cryptocurrencies will ever be the new normal.For more, visit http://morganstanley.com/ideas.The host Ashley Milne-Tyte is an employee of P

Get ready, the new season of the Morgan Stanley Ideas Podcast is almost here! This time around we’re making sense of a slew of surprising markets: cryptocurrency, virtual reality, baseball free agency, and many more. New episodes start in June!

On this special episode of the podcast we visit an exciting new exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Along the way we talk with Art Historian Diana Gisolfi of the Pratt Institute, and with Morgan Stanley’s Ferdousi Islam, an employee guide for company clients and employees at the exhibition, to look at the value of art in all its aspects, not only the monetary.Eight years in the making, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer is sponsored by Morgan Stanley and open to the public at The Met in New York City through February 12th.For more, visit morganstanley.com/ideas.The host Ashley Milne-Tyte is a contractor of Pineapple Street Media. The guest speakers are neither employees nor affiliated with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. (“Morgan Stanley”). The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Morgan Stanley. The information and figures contained herein has been obtained from sources outside of Morgan Stanley and Morgan Stanley makes no representations or gu