Halloween meets GLP-1s: Hershey’s candy Super Bowl, with CEO Kirk Tanner

The second a brand like Hershey stops being culturally relevant, says its CEO Kirk Tanner, you should be worried. He joins Rapid Response to explain exactly what he's doing to make sure that never happens. Tanner also reveals why GLP-1 users are actually good for the candy business, how AI is now routing Hershey's sales force in real time through Target and Walmart, and why the Reese's Oreo collaboration (which generated $100 million in its first five months) is the model for how iconic brands find new energy. And with a major Hollywood film about Milton Hershey coming this fall, he talks about whether this is Hershey's Barbie moment. Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  We've all spent money on something that seemed incredible, but didn't live up to the hype. A kitchen gadget, a car. When it doesn't deliver, the disappointment is real. Marketers suffer from this, too. Chasing metrics that look great, but don't translate into revenue. LinkedIn calls that bull spend. Invest in what matters and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. LinkedIn Ads also generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/Scale. That's LinkedIn.com/Scale. Terms and conditions apply.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  The second you're not culturally relevant with your brands like Hershey, then you should be worried. We've become much more efficient with AI tools. Our sales force choosing and deciding, all that's done for them so that it says, hey, Kirk, you've got to head to Target 7575. That's your biggest opportunity today. Your next stop, Walmart. Your next stop, Sam's Club. And then it gives me those activities when I walk in the store of how I build the business. It's much more dynamic and opportunity based.

• 1:30Bob Safian?

  That's Kirk Tanner, CEO of the Hershey Company. As we roll toward Halloween, I wanted to talk to Kirk about how a business can optimize a big moment in today's crowded marketplace, including whether a new Hershey movie will provide Barbie-like attention. We also talk about the impact of GLP-1s on the candy business, how AI is impacting retail, and the lessons he's applying from his leadership years at PepsiCo. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

• 2:07Bob Safian?

  Hi, Bob Safian here with something special at the top of today's episode. Eli Wallen, founder and CEO of Engine. Rapid Response is brought to you with support from Engine. Eli, excited to learn more about you and Engine.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Thanks so much for having me, Bob.

• 2:24Bob Safian?

  So what is the value of business travel?

• 2:27Speaker 03

  For every dollar spent on travel in the SMB space, there's $12 revenue associated with it. There's so much ROI, especially in a world that our internal employees aren't coming together every single day. The amount of value that you start to leak, whether it's focus, prioritization, relationships, motivation, building culture. So I'd say for a remote-first or remote-centric organization, travel and getting your teams together is insanely important.

• 2:54Bob Safian?

  Finance folks will often look at travel as something to cut when budgets tighten, right? So what do you say to a skeptical CFO when they're raising that kind of idea?

• 3:06Speaker 03

  If you're talking about internal travel, bringing your teams together, look at the survey data. Look at the data of the people that are getting together more often. Look at the productivity and the results. It's significant. It's there. You can get so much done on a challenging problem with a team together than you can trying to accomplish that over Zoom. For the corporate side, 64% of C-suite say they would lose customers if they did not travel and see them regularly. And so there's data on both sides of internal and external travel that is just simply irreplaceable.

• 3:39Bob Safian?

  You close more deals, you have better relationships when you get to see people face to face.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  That's right. People buy from people that they trust, that they've shaken their hand and understand a face to a name. When people aren't coming together in the office every day, that was travel. They were traveling five days a week to see each other, and now they're not. And it's very important to bring some of that back.

• 4:00Bob Safian?

  Well, Eli, this has been great. Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Thanks, Bob. It was a pleasure.

• 4:05Bob Safian?

  And now, on to the show.

• 4:11Bob Safian?

  I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Kirk Tanner, CEO of the Hershey Company. Kirk, welcome to the show.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks a lot, Bob. Appreciate you having me on.

• 4:20Bob Safian?

  I'm gonna try to refrain from making too many bad sweet jokes. I know you must get them all the time. But I do love chocolate. This year's been uncommon in the number of news stories I've seen about the price of chocolate. Why is that?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's been a lot of inflationary pressure on cocoa for the last couple of years. And the price of cocoa kind of reached some unprecedented levels. And so that's the main driver. Now, we've seen stability in the cocoa markets come down a little bit. It's still well above the historic norm, but that's the primary inflationary pressure that the industry has seen over the last couple of years.

• 5:05Bob Safian?

  I mean, some folks talk about chocolate as an affordable luxury, which I guess inflation makes it a little bit more difficult. But is that how you look at the candy business? I mean, it's not health food, unfortunately.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  No. Look, if you think about affordability, 75% of our portfolio is still under $4. This is a treat category. Just these small moments, moments of celebration, moments of reward. It is not a meal. It's not a meal replacement. They're just small treats.

• 5:38Bob Safian?

  We are approaching what many people in your industry call the Candy Super Bowl, the run-up to Halloween.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Halloween is such an important event for us. It is our go-to season. It is our Super Bowl. We have market share leadership, and we are always hungry for more. We go to school on what happened last year, what's happening in this year, what consumers are looking for. We have already started to ship Halloween. You already can see it in the stores. Now, that takes you through, of course, the 31st of October, and we don't let our foot off the gas. We want to be there with our sales force, making sure every moment is captured.

• 6:21Bob Safian?

  And those learnings from last year, like, is some of that about sort of that the season starts even earlier every year? I mean, we see that with some other holidays. Is that part of the learnings? What did you take away from last?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  No, it comes down to the mix of what consumers are looking for. It's much more than just the one day trick-or-treater packs the week of. If you're a last-minute shopper and you're scrambling because the kids are coming over, you make it happen on the 30th or 31st, that's a certain pack. But leading up through the seasons, there's different packs that we deliver to our retail partners to bring the whole season to life.

• 7:04Bob Safian?

  So as we're getting closer to Halloween, as a consumer, I might start thinking about

• 7:13Bob Safian?

  your products as a kind of snack choice in a different way than maybe I was in April?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 7:20Bob Safian?

  I talked with the CEO of The Gap not long ago, and he talked about a dashboard that he has of sort of sales data and what he calls brand love. And he says he looks at it like multiple times a day. Are there metrics or information sources that you pay particular attention to? Are you like checking things minute by minute?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Definitely day by day. You think about all those things that connect to our customers and the consumer, and how people are feeling about what we're doing. In retail, you get to see your performance on a daily basis. You see how the transactions went. And then separately, we measure how people are feeling, sentiment. And that's really important, especially in this category. And I find you have to continue to have the consumers fall in love with you over and over and over again.

• 8:19Bob Safian?

  Are there things that you're seeing that someone who's listening to this, who may not be in the same category as you, but could learn from about the way consumers are approaching their habits right now?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Well, we're in about 25% of all snacking occasions in the US with our brands across our salty portfolio and our sweet portfolio. And consumers continue to look for exciting things. They have go-to brands. I'm sure, Bob, you have a go-to brand that always brings you joy. You can count on it. But you're also looking for things that are exciting, that delight you. That's why innovation is so important in this category, because you're looking for experiences. And I call them affordable experiences, little adventures you can take. And that's a driver of the growth in the category. And the speed of that, I would say, is moving faster. The important thing for us is we've got to match

• 9:15Speaker 01

  the speed of the company with the speed of consumers and the speed of the world.

• 9:19Bob Safian?

  And I guess that that requires a different approach than, I mean, the company's been around, what, 132 years? So the speed and the pace of the business has to evolve over that time.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of tools that help us speed the business up. From the consumer insights that we talked about, to the investments we make in R&D to continue to strengthen the pipeline of innovation, not just for this year, but next year and the following year.

• 9:46Bob Safian?

  And so these are new products within existing brands, largely, that you're talking about when you're talking about innovation.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Let me share one with one. We did this last year. I don't know if you've tried Reese's Oreo. I don't want this to be a commercial, but this is, this is an example of taking something really cool like Reese's and Oreo and bring them together. The insight was consumers were already doing some of these behaviors. So we brought this to life. That's something that you hear about and you go, oh, yeah, that'll work. That'll work. That's exciting. But then there's other innovations. I'll give you one more. This is Hershey Creme Bar. We have a couple of varieties. This is off a gato. And this is kind of stepping up.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Um, in that accessible premium space, it's growing that younger people are looking for. But there's also other opportunities to build new brands, et cetera. Um, and you know, we look at that as well.

• 10:47Bob Safian?

  Hmm. You spent a lot of your career at PepsiCo and I, I've always thought about whether, whether it's, you know, Hershey's or whether it's Pepsi-Cola, like a, a lot of it is you're, you're selling the same product year after year. I mean, there is a core product that in some ways you don't want to change because that's what people are after it. And so you have to think about selling it or engaging in a different way, even if the product is remaining the same.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to be culturally relevant. I think that's really important. The second you're not culturally relevant with your brands like Hershey, then you should be worried. When you are watching the Olympics this year, the Winter Games, we had these moments of celebration and recognition from parents with their, their, uh, child athlete. It was just this connection with what's happening today and cultural relevance is happening all around it. So you have to keep the pace with where culture is moving and keep your big brands in that space.

• 11:44Bob Safian?

  There is a, a movie coming this fall about the inventor of Hershey's Milton Hershey. How much is this your Barbie moment, like this chance to extend Hershey beyond a food brand to something with sort of broader cultural meaning? Do you think about it that way?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. I'm not sure everyone understands the history behind the Hershey company and Milton Hershey. And it's way beyond just the chocolate that we sell and the company that we have. He started a school, Milton Hershey School in 1909, and it still thrives today. There's very few companies like that today that have that level of purpose. So that gives us a little oomph. The movie is going to tell that story to the world. It's going to tell the story of an inventor, someone that would never settle. Milton started with caramels and he thought, well, that, that, that won't be enough. I've got to get into the chocolate world. I got to make chocolate accessible.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Cause most chocolate then was imported from Europe and it was kind of out of touch for most consumers. And so you get to kind of see that entrepreneurial spirit come to life in the movie.

• 12:52Bob Safian?

  I mentioned Hershey's 132 year old company and that sort of iconic status gives you history and nostalgia. But Hershey hit some criticism this year over recipe changes in some Reese's products. Brad Reese, grandson of H B Reese, went, went public with some complaints. Did that surprise you? Are there any lessons from that experience?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  There's always critics, Bob. I think that the most important thing to do is to listen to consumers and stay engaged with what they have to say. The Reese's brand is, um, an exceptional kind of brand that is playing now worldwide. We're taking it to places like the UK. We're taking it to, you know, to Mexico, Brazil, all these places to give consumers an experience. And look, we've, we've done a lot of research around our brands and, and how people feel about them, how we can make them better always. Reese's deliver something unique and different, and that's what I'm excited about.

• 13:58Bob Safian?

  Hmm. I'm curious how your plans at Hershey are informed by your time at, at PepsiCo. Some of that time you worked under Indra Nui, who parsed the portfolio into what she called good for you products and fun for you products. Hershey acquired lesser evil organic snacks last year. You already owned Skinny Pop. Is that part of the, the framework that, that you use?

• 14:24Speaker 01

  So Skinny Pop, Dots Pretzels, Lesser Evil, those are permissible snacks that consumers are looking for. And that's where the growth is in salty. So we're building a business of permissible snacking. I would say that the 32 years that I spent at PepsiCo, um, really just taught me how to listen to the consumer. Some of my hobbies is just going into the store. When I leave on the weekend, I do the shopping. And sometimes I come back in two hours, three hours, you know, I'll just spend time in the stores, listening to customers, asking customers, why they buy certain things.

• 15:00Bob Safian?

  Are there any things that people have told you on your visits to the supermarket that, that have impacted or reinforced? Or, you know, the way you think about the company and where it should go?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm asking consumers that are on GLP one, what do they prefer? How do you think about the category? I'm always asking customers, what, what is missing? Cause I'm always thinking about, you know, is there something that we can be working on for the future?

• 15:27Bob Safian?

  How much are GLP ones changing the marketplace right now, whether a threat or otherwise? How, how much are snacking habits shifting?

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, a couple of things that I've found, you know, directly from some consumers and a lot of the research that we've done is the category has been very resilient with GLP one users. They're not wanting to compromise the things that they love and they know they have control. It's almost a bit of freedom, which means they're not looking to move away from the favorite things that they enjoy. Now they will enjoy less of them, but the important thing is we offer a lot of choice. And I'd say portion control, you know, over 30% of our portfolio is in portion control.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  So that they can really have what they want and the size and quantities that they need.

• 16:25Bob Safian?

  I mean, I've, I've seen these predictions, which don't seem to be showing up necessarily in the numbers, but that like, yes, if I'm a GLP one user, I, I might still enjoy my snacks. I might be having less of them. And maybe I'm going to be still spending as much, but sort of moving up the food chain, so to speak. Spending more on a smaller amount of treat. Is that anything you're seeing? Is that something you feel like shifts your portfolio?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Premium is still pretty small in the category, but it's growing three times faster than the category. So consumers are looking for experiences like that. We are innovating in that premium space to capture that opportunity and to capture that growth. The Hershey Creme Bars, Cadbury as well, our Brookside business. Again, premium is relatively small in the scale of things, but it's important for the growth.

• 17:20Bob Safian?

  Your, your team, I understand, goes into the homes of GLP one users, part of what you call empathy visits.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Bob Safian?

  What is that about? What happens in those visits?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have a real down to earth, heart to heart conversation about choices consumers make. And they have the opportunity to show what they have in their pantry, what they have in their refrigerator, their daily habits, their behaviors. Now they don't know you're the Hershey company. Obviously confidentiality, privacy is critically important. But your understanding and learning about real time behaviors, not just survey results, getting to connect with the human that's making the choices in an authentic way.

• 18:09Bob Safian?

  And, and so these are not just GLP one users?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's multiple demographics.

• 18:15Bob Safian?

  But you don't necessarily see a dramatic difference between what you hear from the GLP one users versus the, the rest of the population?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think the thing that I was surprised about, not surprised, but educated on is just this level of confidence that GLP one gives consumers, um, with the choices they make in their diet. You know, when you talk to somebody or talk to multiple people about it, it really hits differently than when you read it. Or you've seen a research report or you're listening to the news. When you hear it directly over and over again from a consumer, it impacts you differently.

• 18:58Bob Safian?

  Maybe this is old fashioned, but I like that face to face info has a deeper impact at Hershey than just data and numbers. So how is it that AI is creeping into the candy business? And is that made easier or harder by Hershey's unusual ownership structure? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but don't let payroll, compliance, or onboarding slow you down. Companies like 11 Labs and Mistral are scaling globally and effortlessly with Deal. 11 Labs quadrupled their headcount in 2025 and Mistral pays 364 employees across 15 countries, all from one system. Build your global team with Deal. Visit deal.com/mos and start expanding your business today. That's D E E L dot com slash M O S.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  We all know the disappointment that comes when a grand gesture falls flat, something that seemed impressive in the moment, but didn't deliver the results you expected. Marketing budgets too often fall into that trap, aiming for big impressions, big reach, but without the revenue to back it. LinkedIn has a name for it, Bull Spend. LinkedIn Ads generate the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. They target by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/Scale. That's LinkedIn.com/Scale. Terms and conditions apply.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious. Creative Planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity, when to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Learn more at creativeplanning.com/mastersofscale.

• 21:14Bob Safian?

  Before the break, Hershey CEO Kirk Tanner talked about the Super Bowl of the candy business, AKA Halloween, and how GLP-1s are shifting consumer habits. Now we talk about Hershey's unusual shareholder structure and how AI is helping sell more sweets. Let's jump back in.

• 21:36Bob Safian?

  Hershey has this sort of unique company structure. Voting control is held by a trust, which supports charitable pools, including the Milton Hershey School. Author Eric Ries, who was on this show this spring, praised Hershey as sort of an exemplar of good corporate practice because of that. But I can imagine for a CEO, there can be some complications between straddling public market investors and the priorities of a century-old trust.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Bob Safian?

  How does it compare to other corporate structures you've been in?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I think about it like this. One, you've got a large shareholder in the trust, our largest shareholder, our most important shareholder in the trust, and the relationships are critically important. And I have been positively surprised of how engaged, how supportive and interested the trust is in the Hershey company. I mean, all of our investors are critically important. I'm not saying that, but instead of having an activist come into your business and those kinds of things, that is, I think, not a great thing for CEOs. Having a partnership as a CEO with the trust and the Hershey board is a powerful tool for me to build the business, have the freedom.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And then you have someone that's in it for the long haul, right? They're not in it for the moment. They are a committed shareholder that has all the intention of long-term value creation.

• 23:09Bob Safian?

  Well, and that must allow you to make choices that are maybe more far sighted. You maybe don't have to worry about what your numbers are going to be every quarter in the same way. I mean, I'm sure you still worry about what they are.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Well, come on, Bob, I still worry about that.

• 23:28Bob Safian?

  But is the pressure any less because of that relationship? Not necessarily.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  No, I think there's a couple of things you think about. You think about, one, you want to perform to support the school as well. You want to perform because we're a performance company. You know, we're in a daily competition for consumers, like you talked about with the Gap experience. There's a scorecard, and anytime there's a scorecard and you get a group of competitive people together, you want to do well, you know? And what we're trying to win is we're trying to win over consumers with their choices. I've found that people in this industry and this space, the really good ones, care about performance every day, and they measure it every day.

• 24:15Bob Safian?

  In the year you've been there operationally, you've integrated pieces of the business into what you call One Hershey. Is this like a reset that sort of over time, companies' parts have become kind of too siloed and you've drawn them back together? Or is there something systematic that you're responding to?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  When you think about a supplier customer relationship, so our relationship with Walmart, Target, Costco, Sam's, 7-Eleven, we want to be a growth driver and easy to do business with. And so when we're showing up with leaders over Salty and leaders over our confection business or leaders over our functional business separately versus showing up as One Hershey, we can bring the portfolio together and then it's in our control. I think it's really important to control what you can control. Execution is one of those things.

• 25:15Bob Safian?

  I mean, I can imagine it was structured the other way previously because the risk may be of it being sort of too complicated or incentives not being as clear when you put things together, right? These are sort of the cycles that businesses go through sometimes. Put them together, take them apart.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Well, a couple of things had already been underway. So the supply chain operations was already One Hershey. How we interfaced with the customer was not One Hershey. So the foundation and the groundwork for One Hershey had already been done. I took it to the next level and said, look, let's integrate at the customer. I went and talked to our customers about how we show up, how we could be better suppliers, how we could be better growth partners. And a One Hershey approach is the feedback that I got and that we got, that we could bring our best. So as we build our Salty portfolio, it needed more attention. It needs more attention. Our skilled sales force, highly skilled in executing our confection business,

• 26:16Speaker 01

  now has the opportunity to execute our Salty business right alongside of it.

• 26:21Bob Safian?

  Having it be One Hershey allows you to integrate all the data, which I guess is so important across those different customers and those different brands.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  That ability to gather that data, collect it in one place, have that at the fingertips of all of our people is another one of the reasons that we were, you know, ready to go for One Hershey right now. We've become much more efficient with AI tools, our sales force. There's a list of the biggest opportunities that are in front of them versus them choosing and deciding and spending a lot of time collecting data. All that's done for them so that it says, hey, Kirk, you've got to head to Target 7575. That's your biggest opportunity today. Your next stop, Walmart, your next stop, Sam's Club. And then it gives me those activities when I walk in the store

• 27:15Speaker 01

  of how I build the business. It's much more dynamic and opportunity-based.

• 27:21Bob Safian?

  You're the ninth CEO in Hershey's history, a year into the role. What have been your biggest takeaways as you look back at the year? There are lessons about what's at stake right now for a company if it's going to last another 132 years?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, the future is so important and focusing our energy. I talk about the speed of the business, matching the speed of the world outside the business, matching those things up so that we stay relevant, relevant in innovation, relevant in how we culturally talk about our brands, relevant in how we coach and train and develop our colleagues, relevant in how we talk to our customers and bring them growth solutions. I always go back to two things. The health of your core brands. You cannot have a leaky bucket with your core brands. And then you think about innovation and expanding into the categories that have the highest return of growth. It's the combination of both that delivers sustainable, long-term growth.

• 28:22Bob Safian?

  Well, Kirk, I really appreciate you having this conversation with me. Thanks so much for doing it.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Bob. Appreciate it.

• 28:33Bob Safian?

  Relevance, speed, customer focus. It's instructive that modern priorities apply even to 130-year-old candy company. No business is destined to last forever, even one with products as alluring as Reese's. So we have to stay at it, day after day, season after season. There's no trick to get around the work, even when your goal is to share more treats. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Every business hits the same wall the moment your business outgrows the systems that got you here. Spreadsheets everywhere, five different law gains, data scattered across entities that don't even talk to each other. If your finance team spends more time finding data than using it, that's when you need the Intuit ERP. Intuit Enterprise Suite is the AI-native ERP solution that's powerful, painless, and proven, built for businesses scaling fast without the complexity that usually comes with it. From the makers of QuickBooks, learn more at intuit.com/ERP.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.

• 30:01Speaker 06

  How do we build a future that is human-centered?

• 30:06Speaker 07

  I'm Rana Elkhayubi, and on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future, and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in.

• 30:35Bob Safian?

  Hey, listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday, we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely, from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find. Just search Rapid Response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.

• 31:13Bob Safian?

  Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our senior producer is Alex Morris, and our associate producer is Masha Makutonina. Mixing and mastering by Aaron Bastinelli and Brian Pugh. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday. For more, visit rapidresponseshow.com.