Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now,

with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed.

We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time.

So search for rapid response in your podcast player

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I'll see you on the other side.

Chicago in the 80s. It's the middle of the AIDS crisis. House music was kind of just peeking out, but it was a very vibrant period for nightclubs. I discovered that

on the north side of Chicago there was a really interesting vibrant

club scene. That's Joey Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab describing his former life as a

DJ in Chicago in the 1980s.

Our club, it's in the basement,

they used to put sawdust on the floor because it would get pretty grummy.

That vibrant and grimy nightlife scene was very different from where Joey spent his daylight hours.

I was studying physics at University of Chicago, which was, I wouldn't call it a monoculture, but a lot of people

with very similar values, very focused and intent on getting a good education, competing

with each other.

The contrast couldn't have been starker. Despite its intellectual pretensions to

openness, the university felt like a world closed off to new ideas. But the nightclubs felt like a constant vibrant culture clash of people, styles, and values,

an open house that anyone could enter.

And they did.

We had people like Iggy Pop and Run DMC and Madonna.

You had the city alderman, the drug dealers, the mafia,

...