A reporter’s instincts, a producer’s toolkit, and a strategist’s vantage point—Joshua Altman brings all three as he walks us through his path from the newsroom to leading as a fractional chief communications officer. We dive into the real work of shaping perception and building trust, and why the best comms leaders think in systems, not silos.

Joshua shares how a decade of hands-on content and video production evolved into guiding growth-stage companies and government teams through complex messaging challenges. We compare government’s layered approvals with private-sector speed, explore why internal emails must align with public posts, and show how a fractional CCO orchestrates agencies, sales, and product timelines so promises match delivery. Along the way, we unpack the PESO model, practical review-response tactics that actually protect revenue, and the mantra that keeps brands out of trouble: be the signal, not the noise.

AI takes center stage as a force multiplier when handled with rigor. Joshua explains how to use AI for research, outlines, and style consistency—always with verification, sources, and a “pause for confirmation” step. We talk persona-building that goes beyond demographics into behavior and context, and why micro and nano influencers often move the needle more than celebrity accounts. Platform strategy gets specific too: when Pinterest drives outsized results, how LinkedIn anchors B2B credibility, and what to do when economic uncertainty makes full-time hiring risky.

If you’re a founder juggling PR, a marketer drowning in channels, or a student plotting a career in a shifting media landscape, this conversation offers a clear framework for integrated communication that compounds trust over time. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs a comms reset, and leave a quick review to tell us what you want us to tackle next.

This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.

Booking a movie ticket used to mean opening a browser, clicking through tabs, and hoping checkout didn’t break. Now a voice agent can do it while you grab your coat. We explore what that shift means for design, marketing, and growth: when customers are people and robots, how do we build flows that serve both without losing our human edge?

Nick Cawthon joins to map the journey from drafting tables to 640x480 “new media,” then to today’s LLM-driven search and autonomous browsers. We unpack why on-page SEO still matters, how standardized patterns help agents transact, and where many brands still fail at the basics—clarity, speed, and trust at the moment of decision. Nick argues that authentic language is the new moat: transcripts, stories, and thoughtful explanations that search can cite and people can believe. Shortcuts produce lookalike sites; research and insight produce signal that converts.

We dive into adoption reality: enterprise copilots without context, tasks that actually benefit from AI, and the importance of setting psychological safety so teams can experiment in the open. The role of “translator” emerges as critical—leaders who turn strategy into prompts engineers can ship. With PMs, designers, and developers now creating in the same prompt-driven tools, coordination becomes the craft. Nick shares a direct-to-prototype approach using production stacks to validate faster, plus a free assessment for UX and product teams at retrain.gauge.io to benchmark readiness and close gaps.

Along the way, a global study on skate culture shows why human research still beats the sea of sameness: details like scuffed shoes and counterculture norms shape real buying behavior. We close with a simple playbook for the fourth wave—after web, mobile, and cloud—where generative AI rewards specificity, consistency, and humane design. If you care about customer experience, growth, or building teams that learn fast, this one will sharpen your roadmap. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review with your biggest AI adoption win or challenge.

https://gauge.io/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.

Start with a guitar, pass through psychology, and land inside enterprise cloud and AI—our conversation with Andy Sitison maps a creative life that never had to choose between art and engineering. We dig into how narrative data and human-centered design can uncover what dashboards miss, and why empathy is not a “nice to have” but a strategic advantage when you need to make decisions that actually work for people.

Andy breaks down how his team collects long-form stories from employees, customers, and communities, then analyzes them with transformer-based models to score emotions like anxiety, joy, stability, and self-transcendence. That mix of qualitative depth and quantitative clarity surfaces the “personality” of a community and exposes blind spots that surveys routinely miss. We talk through real-world signals—like rising anxiety during a leadership shakeup—and how quotes and thematic maps help leaders act quickly without guessing. You’ll also hear a candid look at the shifting craft of AI work: less model tinkering, more agent design and prompting chops, and a renewed focus on trust, privacy, and consent.

The conversation widens to the big picture: energy use, data centers, global talent, and the social costs of automation. Are we building caretaker systems that augment us, or cold logic that optimizes past human needs? Can intelligence learn compassion, or must we teach it by example? While the future remains open, we land on practical moves anyone can make now—critical thinking, local connection, and using AI to listen before you decide.

If you care about AI ethics, narrative intelligence, employee experience, customer insight, and the future of creative work, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who leads teams or research, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. What’s one question you wish your data could answer but never does?

Learn more about SEEQ-APP: https://sharemorestories.com/seeq-app-how-to/

This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.