Benjamin Wagner is a consultant, creative and founder of Essential Industries, a boutique consulting firm specializing in individual and organizational strategy, transformation, communication and collaboration.
From his half-decade helping launch Facebook’s Journalism Project globally and his tenure transforming MTV News, to his award-winning PBS documentary, Mister Rogers & Me, Friends & Neighbors podcast, or recent album, Constellations, Benjamin's focus is the essential nature of our shared human experience.
Paul Cheung: Promises & Pitfalls
Paul Cheung’s parents moved from Hong Kong to the United States when he was a baby. He met his father just once prior to being put on a Pan Am flight from Hong Kong to JFK all by his nine-year-old self. From a Lower East Side tenement to suburban New Jersey, Paul witnessed firsthand the “promise and…
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Watch “Finding The Secret Song”
Relocated from New York City, untethered from his globe-trotting day job at a major tech company, and approaching a certain age and suffering from anxiety and depression, singer/songwriter Benjamin Wagner initiates a road trip to write and record his groundbreaking tenth album, Constellations. Somewhere between Nashville and Muscle Shoals, a waitress from Texas, tailor from…
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David Smydra: Fast Break
It was one hell of a Q4 for my friend, former Twitter Curation Lead, David Smydra. David has been at the forefront of assuring that tech platforms deliver personalized, high quality news by leading “humans in the loop,” journalists who bridge the gaps between editorial quality, product and audience development, and algorithmic design for more…
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Listening To 2022
2022 has been an outstanding and occasionally excruciating year. Through it all, I’ve found an abundance of hope and healing in my community of friends and neighbors. I began the year committed to publishing our show once a week to crowdsource and share life wisdom from my vast network of actual friends and neighbors across…
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Finding The Secret Song
In Finding The Secret Song, Wilmington filmmaker Ismail Abdus-Salaam explores a very specific moment in singer/songwriter Benjamin Wagner’s, life and career. Relocated from New York City, untethered from his globe-trotting day job at a major tech company, and approaching a certain age, Wagner initiates a road trip to write and record his groundbreaking tenth album…
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What Do You Remember?
You may not know it, but a lifetime of memories may be stuck in your cells. I’ve written dozens songs in which severe weather or dramatic accidents play proxy for the significant, unexpected and overwhelming experiences in our lives. “Natural Disaster” (from 1994’s Bloom) is about a rock slide that buries a town. “California” (from 2002’s Almost…
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