Name: Performance Art: Exclusive Interview with Artist Liz Lamanche by You Are Here From WERS
Duration: 10 min 28 s
Description: This week's show takes a look at the wide range of performance art in Boston, from street performers, painters, drag queens, to story tellers and beyond.

This week's show takes a look at the wide range of performance art in Boston, from street performers, painters, drag queens, to story tellers and beyond. 

Performance Art: Exclusive Interview with Artist Liz Lamanche

Although every company is becoming a fintech now, Wix didn’t set out to do so – the firm’s entry into financial services started from observing what millions of small business owners actually needed when building their online presence. 

For Amit Sagiv and Volodymyr Tsukur, co-heads of payments at Wix, the path to serving these SMB customers well was paved through financial products: Wix had to take the payment infrastructure it had built for itself and transform it into tools that could help merchants manage their businesses. 

The foundation was already there. Wix had developed sophisticated billing systems to support its freemium model, accumulating deep expertise in payment routing, risk management, and global processing. "We built tremendous payment capabilities," Sagiv explained. "The billing manager of Wix wanted to take that offering and build a service for our users."

What started as a small project evolved into a comprehensive financial platform serving businesses across the globe. The company now processes over $3 billion per quarter with a team of 160 people, covering payments, checking accounts, and capital lending. 
Listen to the podcast to hear how a chance collaboration between Wix's billing team and gateway developers turned into a fintech operation processing billions quarterly. 

Sagiv and Tsukur discuss why they deliberately avoided becoming a full-fledged bank, and how website data reveals creditworthiness before transaction history does. It’s a conversation that dives deep into what it means to be serving SMB customers digitally and how firms can do embedded finance right. 


How Wix built payments, checking, and capital for 293 million users

In August 2025, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held its 25th annual summit in Tianjin, China, with the country’s leader Xi Jinping, hosting representatives from more than 20 countries including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and India’s Narendra Modi. The absence of the United States in this gathering of global leaders may tell us about how China is competing with the US and building its own global order.

To discuss China’s strategic competition with the US, and how it is evolving under the Trump administration, in September 2025, the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Evan Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies and the Cling Family Senior Fellow in US-China Relations at Georgetown University.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Avan Fata.  

Further reading and resources

•	“China and Russia Will Not Be Split”, Michael McFaul and Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 4 April 2025
•	Medeiros, E. S., & Polk, A. (2025). China’s New Economic Weapons. The Washington Quarterly, 48(1), 99–123. 
•	“U.S.-China Relations for the 2030s: Toward a Realistic Scenario for Coexistence”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace”, 17 October 2024
•	“The Delusion of Peak China”, Evan S. Medeiros, Foreign Affairs, 24 April 2024

Take the Ballpark Listener survey and enter the prize draw for £250 in vouchers!

The Ballpark will be ten years old in 2026, and we want to hear from you to make the podcast even better, so we’re running a listener survey until 1 November 2025. 

•	Fill in our listener survey – it only takes 15 minutes – here: https://forms.office.com/e/Vcj8V8uGM1 
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LSE: The Ballpark | US-China strategic competition with Professor Evan Medeiros

With a shutdown at home, President Trump looks overseas for a political win. Alexander Ward from the Wall Street Journal takes us behind the headline.

Trump pivots 2nd term to foreign policy

On today's Mike Drop, the Los Angeles Dodgers are gettin' jiggy wit it. 

The Other Will Smith

Will artificial intelligence cause huge unemployment? Will it free us from working? Will it replace us? In this special edition of LSE iQ, Sophie Mallett sits down with Professor Judy Wajcman, LSE’s Emeritus Professor of Sociology and one of the world’s leading voices on technology and society. Together, they explore one of the biggest questions of our time: what does artificial intelligence really mean for the future of work? 
 
In this wide-ranging conversation, Judy shares what really saves people time, talks about the fear of job replacement, and warns of the dangers of letting the most powerful tech companies design the future 
From Silicon Valley boardrooms to everyday lives, Judy challenges us to think differently about progress, productivity, and what we truly value as work. 
Contributors: Judy Wacjman  
Research links:  
From connection to optimisation 
How Silicon Valley sets time 
Feminism confronts AI: the gender relations of digitalisation 
LSE iQ is a university podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. 


Will AI free us from work?

For the first time in the US government shutdown, hints of progress toward reopening, its election day in parts of the country, and walking a few thousand steps a day may reduce Alzheimer’s risk.
Surf Shark - www.Incogni.com/Gordon

This Morning with Gordon Deal November 04, 2025

Ken Alltucker from USA Today joined America's First News breaks down what Idaho's healthcare costs can show the rest of the country. 

Rising rates, dropped coverage. Idaho's lesson for the rest of America

Democrats win hotly-contested races, California voters approve new US House map to boost Democrats in 2026, and the best places to retire.
Surf Shark - www.Incogni.com/Gordon

This Morning with Gordon Deal November 05, 2025

AP-Award winning, public affairs program broadcasting from Emerson College in Boston, MA. Listen live every Sunday from 6-7 a.m.

Performance Art: Exclusive Interview with Artist Liz Lamanche

You Are Here From WERS

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