THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast

Peter Trachtenberg is an author of memoirs, essays, and literary nonfiction who lives across the river in Catskill. He has taught writing at Bennington and Pitt, and has a newsletter: Not Dark Yet. His books include 7 Tattoos, The Book of Calamities, Another Insane Devotion, and The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York. I start all these conversations with the same question—one I borrowed from a friend of mine here in Hudson. She helps people tell their stories, and I haven’t found a better question to begin a conversation. So I borrow it. It’s a big question, though, and I tend to over-explain it, just like I’m doing now. Before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in total control. You can answer however you want—or not at all. The question is: Where do you come from? Okay. I’ve actually thought about this because I’ve listened to some of your interviews.Nice.I come from what is essentially a vanished world: middle-class New York. I was born in the 1950s and grew up in a neighborhood where almost all the kids went to public schools. My father didn’t own a car until he was probably in his 60s, and he didn’t own property until near the end of his life. That was the norm.It was also Bohemian New York—which still exists, but in a much smaller, vestigial form. People who make art, or whose lives are organized around creative work, can no longer afford to live in many parts of the city.I wanted to ask you about your book, The Twilight of Bohemia. When you say your life is organized around creation, what does that mean to you? I’d love to hear more about that.The popular stereotype of a Bohemian is someone who leads a disorderly life—lots of substance use, romantic and sexual excess, never making the rent, and so on. That image has been reinforced through operas, plays, movies, and television. But the model I look to comes from Tosca, the Puccini opera. There’s an aria called Vissi d’arte, which means “I lived for art.”To me, Bohemians are people whose lives are centered around making art. They might be painters, writers, dancers, performers—whatever the form. Most have had to do other things to earn a living, but art is the central force in their lives.You mentioned coming from a “vanished world.” Can you say more about what you meant by that? What was that world like?Sure. Some people would probably disagree and say there are still middle-class neighborhoods in New York—and there are, particularly in the outer boroughs. But it's not just about material conditions. It’s also about a set of expectations and values.In my case, it was an intellectual world, even though I was the first in my family to attend college. There was tremendous respect for learning. Some of that may have come from Jewish tradition, though neither of my parents were religiously observant.I discovered the arts as a source of excitement very early. I was an only child, and I’d entertain myself by telling elaborate stories. Once I learned how to write, I started putting them on paper. Reading became my main source of entertainment. Then, as a teenager, I found other kids who were similarly interested. My passions expanded to include music—especially jazz and rock and roll—and later, visual art.Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?When I was very young, I wanted to be an anthropologist. I was drawn to the idea of venturing into an unknown, “exotic” world—quote-unquote primitive, as the language went then. And I actually did that, at times, for my first book.What interested me then—and still does—is going somewhere unfamiliar and discovering something new. Sometimes that world is right next to me. In the case of my most recent book, it was a world I lived in but didn’t fully understand. I can explain more about that later.What was your model of an anthropologist? Where did that idea come from?Probably Bomba the Jungle Boy—a guy in a pith helmet making his way through the rainforest. The old colonial image of the anthropologist.Tell me where you are now. What are you up to these days?I live in the Hudson Valley of New York, about two and a half hours north of where I grew up. I write full-time. I still teach privately, but I’ve retired from university positions at the University of Pittsburgh and the Bennington Writing Seminars within the last two years.I just finished a book called The Twilight of Bohemia, which we can talk more about. I’m also returning to a novel called Ruination, which centers on the bankruptcy and death of Ulysses Grant—set around 1874–1875. I also maintain a Substack called Not Dark Yet, where I’m currently working on a long essay titled “Economies of Suffering.”So yes, I’m busy.Let’s talk about the book—The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists of New York. I love that title. It really blows my mind wide open. How did you come up with it? What’s the book about, and where did the story begin for you?The story began when I lived in Westbeth illegally—as an unauthorized subtenant—for about 11 years. I had been spending time in the building since the mid-1970s because my best friend, a guy named Gaye Milius, lived there. When I moved in, I was subletting—illegally—his apartment on the 13th floor.It started as an attempt to make sense of his suicide in 2006. He took his life after the end of his second marriage, under really difficult circumstances. He’d spent a couple of months in jail on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, then moved to Colorado to care for his dying sister. Eventually, he returned to Westbeth. He was broke and deeply traumatized by his time in jail.I think a group of us—his friends—were trying, maybe without fully realizing it, to keep him alive. But it didn’t work. He took his own life.What followed was, in part, absurd—almost comic. In an effort to raise money, Gaye had illegally sold his lease to another friend, who then claimed the apartment. It turned into a kind of slow-motion Keystone Cops routine. This man threatened to sue me if I relinquished the apartment back to the building, which, legally, I was supposed to do.I had written a long essay about it—about the events leading up to Gaye’s death and what came after—but I realized at some point that something essential was missing. The essay was decent, but it lacked context. Specifically, it lacked Gaye’s context.When someone commits suicide, the people around them are devastated—but suicide, unfortunately, is not rare. People die in the most tragic, absurd, and pathetic ways all the time. What gave Gaye’s death a deeper meaning, what made it worth trying to understand, was that he had been an artist. He had pursued the gamble of making art. He had staked everything on it. And when he felt he was losing, he took his life. He felt he had to.To understand that, I realized I needed to write about the building he lived in—Westbeth. Because Westbeth is a building of artists. It's one of only two subsidized housing developments for artists in New York City—possibly in the country. Its 384 apartments, with a few exceptions, are occupied by people who make art in one form or another. That’s how it was designed: as a haven for artists, a place where they could live for a fraction of what the surrounding neighborhood charged. The idea was to give artists a start, help launch their careers, and then—eventually—they’d move out. But the problem was, no one moved out.What was the context that gave birth to Westbeth? How did a place like that come to be?It was a project of the Great Society. The building—or rather, the complex of buildings—was originally constructed between the 1860s and the turn of the 20th century. Eventually, it was consolidated and became the labs and offices of the Bell Telephone Company.Anyone with a background in science or engineering has heard of Bell Labs. This is where the first transatlantic radio broadcast occurred. It’s where the phonograph record and stylus were developed, where radar and a prototype digital computer emerged. Even the first television broadcast happened in those labs.And what’s the relationship between Westbeth and those labs?In the late 1960s, a partnership between the National Foundation for the Arts (which would become the National Endowment for the Arts, or NEA), led by Roger Stevens, and a private foundation—the J.M. Kaplan Fund, led by Joan Davidson—put up the money. I’m not sure if they purchased the building outright, but they had an arrangement with Bell, which had by then moved its headquarters to New Jersey, to repurpose the space as housing.They didn’t have the funds to tear it down and build something new, which would have been the typical approach. So instead, the architect Richard Meier—this was his first major commission, apart from a house he’d designed for his mother—essentially hollowed out the structure. He converted the old labs into 384 apartments, ranging from studios to three-bedroom units. Some of the apartments spanned two floors and were called “triplexes,” though I don’t think any were truly three stories.What was your first experience of Westbeth? When were you living there, and how did you first encounter it?I first encountered Westbeth through my friendship with Gaye, which began in 1976. He came to a New Year’s Eve party that my girlfriend and I were throwing in our tenement apartment on Bleecker Street. He showed up wearing a seersucker suit and a T-shirt he had made himself, appliquéd with two rows of latex dog teats. He was a few years older than me—maybe four or five—and I thought, this is the coolest guy I’ve ever met.Westbeth itself was—and is—a monolith. It occupies an entire square block in the far West Village, what we now call the Meatpacking District. It’s enormous, about three-quarters of a million square feet. The west side of the building faces the West Side Highway and the Hudson River, which at the time had no park. The north side borders Bethune Street, the south side is Bank Street, and the east side is Washington.The hallways were stunningly long and featureless, with doorways facing each other on either side. Each door typically had a black triangle pointing either up or down to indicate the direction of the staircase—important for firefighters, especially in the duplexes. To get to Gaye’s apartment, you’d take an elevator from the ground floor that stopped at floors 3, 6, or 9. Then you’d walk down a long, dizzying hallway to a second bank of elevators that could take you up to the 13th floor. The only way to reach his apartment directly from the street was if you had a key to a side door on West Street.He had a great apartment. He had a commercial lease, which meant he didn’t technically have to be an artist to live there, though he was one. He’d originally moved in as a painter, to a smaller unit. Apartments at Westbeth were assigned based on family size. If you moved in alone, you got a studio—no negotiation. Over time, you might be able to get a slightly larger place, but the only way to qualify for a duplex or triplex—maybe even a three-bedroom—was to have children. Income didn’t help you jump the line. In the early days, there was an income cap; you couldn’t earn more than $11,000 a year. That was in the early ’70s, which made it effectively middle-class housing.In fact, some original residents didn’t want it known they lived at Westbeth, because it was associated with low-income housing. Still, not everyone was poor, but the overall atmosphere was distinctly middle-class. Many people had families. Outside of my own childhood, Westbeth was probably my first real exposure to family life. There were always kids in the courtyard, kids on skateboards—one of the first places I ever saw that. The hallways were perfect for it.I’d always envied Gaye’s apartment. It was about 900 square feet, with 18-foot ceilings. He’d turned it into a triplex of sorts by stacking platforms one on top of the other. It had an incredible view of the Hudson. For a long time, my screensaver was a photo I’d taken from the roof, looking out over the river.Somewhere—maybe in another interview—you said the book was an attempt to pay attention? Can you say more about what that meant?I’d been hanging out at Westbeth throughout the ’70s and ’80s. When Gaye and his first wife traveled—which they did often and for long stretches because she worked in finance and traveled for her job—I would dog-sit.In 1995, after he split from Molly, he married a woman named Karen, and they moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He wanted to keep the apartment, though, and had become a flea market picker—someone who finds things in garages, basements, sheds, and sells them at the 26th Street flea market. He had an amazing eye for that kind of thing—just brilliant.So I sublet from him. I paid him $900 over the rent, which still came out to less than $1,500 a month. The arrangement was that he could come up once or twice a month and stay in the dog room—the small space I’d used when visiting in the past. Every surface in that room was covered in dog hair. You’d have needed two shop vacs to clean it.He was paranoid. He told me not to introduce myself to the neighbors, not to speak to anyone, because, in his mind, everyone hated us. He believed they were jealous of his apartment—which they might have been, had they known about it. So I kept a very low profile.I didn’t recognize most of the artists who lived there as “famous.” They weren’t celebrities in the traditional sense. But within the art world, yes—there were known figures. Hans Haacke, a conceptual artist who I believe is still alive, was there. So was Lorraine O’Grady, the conceptual and performance artist who just passed away in December. Nam June Paik, the video artist and pioneer of using video as a medium, also lived there. I’m not sure how to pronounce his last name, but he was the first to treat video as art.I remember that part of what drew me to this story was the meaning of Westbeth itself. It seems like such a rare, even exotic, thing—a kind of public commitment to making space for artists in a city. That doesn’t feel common anymore. There’s something beautiful in its original promise, and I wonder what you discovered—about art, about the city, about what Westbeth is or was meant to be—as you tried to tell the story of your friend and the building.One of the deepest things I discovered was that Westbeth challenged my notion of what success in art means.Since the 1980s—and I’m speaking across disciplines here: visual art, writing, dance, theater, music—success has largely come to mean celebrity. High profile. Money. The person standing alone in the center of a bright, concentrated beam of achievement.In the '70s and '80s, that might have been someone like Eric Fischl or Julian Schnabel—who, incidentally, has a three- or four-story townhouse just a few blocks from Westbeth that he renovated himself. It might be someone like Pipilotti Rist. Or, among writers, someone like Jay McInerney at the time. I don’t know who the big literary earners are now—maybe Emma Cline, who lives on the West Coast and gets large advances. Or a performer like Mark Morris in dance.The dominant model has been individual recognition—high visibility and financial reward. A naive way to look at Westbeth would be to say, “You’ve never heard of most of these people. Not all the work is good”—and by “good,” I mean work I think is good. But still, those people, that work, are vital to the spirit of the building. And to the spirit of art. Because art isn’t just an individual endeavor. It’s also—and maybe more essentially—a communal one. That’s how it began.If you travel in traditional societies—say, in West Africa or Southeast Asia—you’ll often find that every village has several artists. And when their work is sold, it’s sold together. All the masks are presented side by side. All the bracelets, the cloths, the carvings. It’s not individualized in the way we’ve come to expect. You don’t brand yourself or protect a niche. There’s a gold district. A mask district. A batik district.This ethos aligns more with medieval art than with the art market of today. Think of the cathedrals at Chartres or Reims. No one knows who built them. They were the work of thousands, of generations of architects and artisans. Whole districts participated.So what do we make of that?I’d say there’s an ecosystem for art. And Westbeth is a miniature version of one.First, it’s supported. Residents pay rent that’s a quarter—or even a fifth—of what people pay in the surrounding neighborhood. That alone makes it possible to live there. Most of the residents still have a “B job,” but it can remain secondary to their art. And the building houses a range of people: a few who’ve achieved some degree of recognition—though I wouldn’t say any are wealthy—and many others who aren’t known at all, but who contribute in essential, sometimes mysterious ways to the life of the place.Some contribute materially. Westbeth has committees: a beautification committee that plants flowers along Bethune Street; a visual arts committee that organizes shows of residents’ work and manages the rental of gallery space. There are two large galleries in the building. The Whitney Museum, which is now located just a few blocks away, has even held its annual staff show at Westbeth. So, yes—there’s a whole ecology here. A model of mutual support, collective energy, and shared space. Something beautiful. And rare.It's amazing. One of the people I interviewed was a visual artist, a painter named Jack Dowling, who had essentially stopped painting in the early 70s about the time he moved into the building because his apartment was so small, or at least his first apartment. He became the director of the visual arts committee for 12 years, in which capacity he curated 12 years of art shows.Those art shows are really important in the life of the building, especially the winter holiday show, because it's where these people show who they are to their neighbors. They show their work to their neighbors for the first time. You might invite your neighbor into your studio, but there's no other opportunities for everybody to see what you do.I would say that in a way, West Beth is a compressed version of what the city used to be like, or certain parts of the city. That's what Soho used to be like, for example, in the 1970s.Is this the twilight? When you talk about the last artist, you're talking about a way of being creative or being related to art in the city that's no longer tenable.Exactly. There still are many artists living in the city. They are either very wealthy, they're people who've already been established, or they're people who are living, in their 30s and 40s, they're living with three or four roommates in Ridgewood, in rather remote neighborhoods of Queens and the Bronx or Brooklyn.There's something about this I'm imagining you as an anthropologist in the art culture of New York. What was your experience of researching the book? Is that a fair assessment of what it was like to research this book and to write this book?What was it like?Well, I'm an anthropologist who also has a foothold in that culture. I no longer live in New York. I often had the feeling that I was returning to my roots and looking at an alternate life that I might have led, if I hadn't left the city.As far as I'm concerned, I've always been primarily a creative writer. But I've worked as a teacher, I've worked as a journalist, I've worked as a publishing freelancer. My life has mostly been marginal.Marginal? What do you mean? I mean, financially precarious. I didn't start teaching in a university until I was in my 50s. And I'm actually glad that it worked out that way. But for a long time, I sometimes didn't know if I was going to make my rent. Yeah. I went through periods of my life without insurance, et cetera, et cetera. I was returning to the roots of the art world in the city, but sort of the basement of the art world.You know, the bargain basement, the place where people are not famous.Yeah.Maybe they don't aspire to be famous. Right. Yeah, well, that's what I was curious about. I mean, you paint such a clear... I mean, I love that description that you had a sort of a spotlight of accomplishment on that person, that sort of the individual celebrity as the model of success for the artist.It sort of overwhelms any other picture or any other possibility. It's very much... I mean, it's a model that really... I mean, it's always been around.It's the equivalent of the movie star or the literary star, but it really is a product of the 1980s. It's a product of a time when enormous amounts of money poured into the art world, which is a direct result of the Reagan years and the rearrangement of wealth in the country. Yeah.Some people had huge amounts of money. The critic Donald Cuspitt said it's like that money had to blot something up. Oh, wow.People wanted to do something with it. What they did was buy art. Yeah. Which, you know, catapulted people's reputations, made certain artists collectible, often when they were quite young. You know, traditionally, it took decades to build a reputation as somebody who was a great artist, somebody who people would want to collect. And now this was occurring in a space of years.Right. And it's only accelerated since then.I want to hear you talk about writing. When you think about yourself as a writer or as an artist, what do you love about the work? Like, where's the joy in it for you?The joy is... some of it is because I'm primarily a nonfiction writer. It's always the joy of finding something out, of, you know, and it might be finding out a fact or a story. It might be the joy of discovering the right way to say something. Yeah. You know, and I'm aware that there are all sorts of alternate ways that I could say something.Tell me about the Ulysses Grant book. How did this come to be something that you're that you want to find out about?Well, I've always been interested in him. I mean, it's partly... I'll tell you what interested me about him was that he died broke or thinking that he was broke on the edge of bankruptcy.Wow.Shortly before his death, when he could no longer speak—he had throat cancer, the result of smoking twenty cigars a day for decades—Grant could only communicate by writing notes. One of the last things he wrote to his doctor, and I’ve seen the actual notebook at the Library of Congress, was:“Most men are nouns, but I seem to be a verb.” And then he added: “That is, a word that signifies to be, to do, or to suffer. I signify all three.”My God.I know. One of the great mysteries of Ulysses Grant is that the people around him couldn’t decide if he was deeply profound or deeply oblivious. Not when it came to the conduct of war—there, he was unquestionably sharp—but as president, it was harder to tell.He reminds me of Chauncey Gardiner, in a way.Yes, in some ways, he was like Chauncey Gardiner. Smarter than that, of course, but he had that same enigmatic quality. He was laconic. And I think it was James Garfield—who later became president himself and was assassinated—who made that observation.During Grant’s presidency, he was surrounded by corruption. Yet it seems clear that he himself wasn’t corrupt. He was absolutely straight. But he couldn’t say no to friends. He was overawed by wealth and by wealthy people.It’s amazing. Just free associating a bit—what you said about Grant reminded me of something from my own childhood. I grew up outside Rochester, and George Eastman—of Eastman Kodak—also famously took his own life.Eastman? As in Kodak?Yes, George Eastman of Kodak. Toward the end of his life, he had some sort of spinal fusion. He was in a lot of pain. But he committed suicide. And I’ll never forget his suicide note. You quoting Ulysses Grant brought it back to mind. Eastman’s note said something like, “I have done it all. Why wait?”Wow.Right? I had never encountered that kind of—hubris, maybe? Or just finality. But he was a giant—the Brownie camera, the whole photographic revolution. It left an impression on me. Anyway, I want to come back to The Twilight of Bohemia. You’ve been promoting the book. What has that been like? I think you had a reading at Westbeth itself. What was it like to tell the story there, in that space, to that audience?It was fantastic. Really. The place was packed. And I was reading to the very people I’d written about.I was anxious about it. People generally don’t like being written about. Even when it’s not critical, they often find something to be upset about—something that feels like a betrayal or misrepresentation. I’ve experienced it myself. Every time I read a profile of myself, there’s always at least one thing that feels off. And there’s nothing you can do about that.Surprisingly, the only pushback I received was from someone who asked, “Why didn’t you write more about the vibrant young tenants who’ve moved in recently?” And it’s true—there are younger people living at Westbeth now. But the population is still predominantly folks in their sixties and seventies.Part of that is simply the rate at which apartments turn over. But I had to admit: I began writing this book just before COVID. I signed the contract in 2019. My plan was to come into the city a few times a week, do interviews in shared or semi-public spaces, and hopefully meet people through each other in that way—very organically.Instead, the day I did my first interview, the city went into lockdown. And Westbeth, being home to so many elderly residents, was even stricter than the rest of the city. You couldn’t even deliver food to someone’s door. You had to leave it at the front desk.So the interviews all had to be remote—on Zoom or by phone. Some people didn’t know how to use Zoom. It became a sort of game of telephone. One person would introduce me to another, who’d introduce me to another, and so on. Most of them were older. Not all—but most.What’s the state of Westbeth now? Is it still functioning as a home for artists, or has it become just another apartment building?It’s still a home for artists. You still need to be an artist to get in—unless you’re acquiring a commercial lease, and I’m not sure any new ones are being offered. It’s no longer federally subsidized in the way it once was, though I believe the Kaplan Foundation is still involved.According to the building’s administration, it’s now self-supporting. Though it still receives some assistance. For instance, it gets a tax abatement from the city—because otherwise, the taxes would be astronomical.It also still receives some federal funding. After Hurricane Sandy, the entire basement flooded. And Westbeth got “build-it-back” grants from the Biden administration to help with the repairs.Wow.Yeah.Well, we’ve got just a little bit of time left before we wrap up...It is meaningful to me as a dual phenomenon. First, as a community of artists. It’s not a commune by any means, but those gallery shows really matter—they're enormously important to the spirit and ethos of the building. It’s also an example of middle-class housing. Like the kind I grew up in.And maybe this is just nostalgic or sentimental, but to me, the spirit of New York was always the spirit of a middle-class city. One of the tragedies of New York now is that it’s become a city of the super-rich and, on the other end, a population of people who are marginalized—lower-middle-class, impoverished, or entirely destitute and homeless.And what of Bohemia? How do you think about Bohemia in the Hudson Valley? There’s obviously a relationship.There’s definitely a relationship. Artists here face similar pressures. Not quite as extreme, since housing is still somewhat more affordable—but it’s heading in the same direction.For example, I lived in Tivoli for years. We couldn’t afford to buy a house there. We could’ve continued renting, and maybe that’s what a true Bohemian does—just keeps renting. But my wife and I, now in our sixties, really wanted to own a home. So we moved to Catskill. It’s about ten miles north—maybe half an hour away.And how is it in Catskill?I wouldn’t say I have a real community here. Some of that’s complicated. There’s also just no central gathering place. I mean, there’s Citiot. Which is… okay. I just don’t like the name. Is there a place like that in Hudson? A gathering place where you know you’ll run into people?There are likely several. That’s how I’d put it. There are many places where that might happen, but is there one place that serves that purpose for everyone? Not really. Tivoli was smaller, so there was Tivoli General. For me, back then, it was also our friend John Corcoran’s studio. We’d hang out there, especially when it was still in the garage.Yeah. Or Murray’s, when it was really flourishing.Right. There was definitely a time when I felt like I’d run into everyone from “my” Hudson—though not all of Hudson. You know what I mean? When there were fewer choices.But that was a long time ago. Now there are so many different subcultures. It feels fragmented. If I were going to do another long nonfiction project, I’d consider doing a book about Hudson.Yeah? What’s the appeal? What draws you?Well, I’d organize it around Warren Street and Fairview. Fairview is technically zoned as part of another community, but to me, it’s still Hudson. And it really captures the class divide—the way creativity is tied, or yoked, to class in this town.Can you unpack that a little? What do you mean?Well, for all I know, there may be plenty of artist studios on Fairview or along Columbia or State Street. But the galleries—the ones that are visible, marketable—are all on Warren. That’s upper-middle-class and wealthy Hudson. That’s where the art is seen.Which brings us back to this idea of Bohemia. I loved how you described it earlier—a life organized around art, around making things. What does that mean in 2025?I don’t think we have a complete answer. Unless you’re someone who lightning strikes—someone whose work is recognized and rewarded fairly quickly—it’s harder than ever to cobble together a living as an artist.Yeah. We only have a couple of minutes left, but I want to say—I really feel a connection with your background. You grew up inside the art world, or at least found your way into it early. You dove in, and you found home there.I think about my own suburban childhood—it felt very banal. I loved stories, comic books, sure, but I don’t think I really encountered art. Do you know what I mean? I don’t think I’d ever met someone who truly organized their life around making things. I remember saying this at John’s studio—he was an artist. And it hit me that I hadn’t met many people like that before.Well, for example, what you do—your profession—it’s a kind of anthropology. It involves writing, listening, telling stories. You’re documenting the human world. The closest analog would be a commercial artist. You get paid for it.That’s kind. That’s nice of you to say. I don’t think of myself as someone participating in art.If I were going to make distinctions, I’d call it applied art rather than fine art. Like someone who paints for advertising. I learned that from Milton Glaser, who I once interviewed.Wow—Milton Glaser.Yes. I ❤️ NY—that’s him. A brilliant mind.I once wrote a piece for Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, about people who work in what I called “the desire industry”—advertising, fashion, branding—and how they reconciled that with a more contemplative or spiritual path. They weren’t all practicing Buddhists, but they moved in that sphere.What did you find out from that?One of the most memorable conversations I had was with Robert Thurman. Of course—Uma Thurman’s father. And a major figure in Tibetan Buddhism. His wife had been a fashion model, and he was this towering authority on Tibetan thought. What stuck with me was his clarity around desire. He said, essentially, that desire is everywhere. It animates the world. Our entire economy runs on it—on the exploitation of existing desires and the creation of new ones.But it’s all illusion. And still, people practice. Even under the most hostile circumstances. He talked about the Tibetan people, living under occupation in a country where the dominant regime is actively trying to stamp out Buddhism—and yet, they practice. Either in secret, or in exile. They keep going.That’s beautiful.Yeah.Well—I want to thank you so much. This has been a joy. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and appreciate your time.Thank you. It’s been a real pleasure. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Michelle Mattar is the founder of brand building firm Practice. Prior to founding Practice, she served as Creative Director at Ritual, and worked as a Designer at Red Antler. Her work has been featured in Fast Company's Innovation by Design awards and Monotype's Type Trends.So I start all these conversations with the same question, which is a question I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people tell their story, and I haven't really found a better question to kind of start a conversation sort of out of the blue. But it's a big question, so I over-explain it the way that I'm doing right now. Before I ask, I want you to know that you're in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is: where do you come from? Again, you're in total control.I love this question. Such a good thought starter. I think I might have two answers here.The first is in terms of just background. I come from two really different cultures, a very blended background. My family immigrated to the US, and my mother is Swedish, which is a culture of being quite reserved, very respectful, very organized, a very peaceful country.And my father is Lebanese, which is a chaotic country where they’re very outspoken. They don't necessarily keep opinions to themselves. There's a lot of life and action and disorganization.So I would say I have a very strange background of two very different cultural types of ways of being, which definitely informs my own family's culture and how I grew up.The other thing I would say, which is perhaps a bit less lighthearted, more serious, is that I come from a family that had a big moment of having to survive. And that has definitely informed who I am today.When I was six, my father was diagnosed with cancer. Just out of poor luck, the next year my brother was diagnosed with cancer. Through my whole childhood, we had two very sick people in the household.I think that surviving looks really different to other people through that. For a young child like myself, I found creativity and escapism as a method of survival. And I think that's really, if you ask me where I came from and who I am today from that background, a lot of it came from that experience.Yeah. What was the experience? What was the challenge? Can you tell me a story about being, that word "blended," you know, growing up with two very distinct kinds of cultures?Yeah, I think just in terms of our family, like we were always having these giant get-togethers. We have a huge family. We all love to cook. To me, this is extremely Lebanese, but it's got a lot of rules. It's got a lot of quiet expectations. It's very organized. Everyone silently knows their part. And this is such a Swedish way of being.So I think when I think of our big get-togethers as a family and what that looks like, it feels really unique to me. And I'm actually really proud of it. It's not a negative, but it's certainly a bit unusual when I see it all.And how are your brother and your father doing?My brother survives. My father didn't. He passed away after a struggle of nearly six years, but they thought he was going to last much less than that.I think that's a huge testament to the fact that he really wanted to be there. But my brother is doing great. He has some complications, but he runs a nonprofit that he founded. He was in high school, and it's called Student Movement Against Cancer. I think he's found a lot of personal meaning through that lived experience.Yeah. Do you have a memory of what you, young Michelle, wanted to be when you grew up?Yes. I was maybe seven or eight, and I really wanted to be an animal photographer. My mom would buy me disposable cameras, and they were a mix of stealth shots of squirrels and my dog. She would just get rolls and rolls of the same pictures developed just to allow me to entertain that dream.Yeah. What kind of pictures of squirrels?I would just stealthy-stalk them. Feel like I was out in nature. I was a Nat Geo photographer, but I certainly was an amateur. Definitely a lot in my imagination there, but I knew it was something creative, right? Like I thought photography might be something I wanted to do and something adventurous.And where were you when you were stalking the squirrels? Where did you grow up?We moved to New Jersey, just like 10, 15 minutes outside of Newark.Nice. And where are you now? So to catch us up, where are you now? What are you doing? What's your day to day?Yeah. So I live in Brooklyn. I've been here with one quick West Coast stint since college. I went to Pratt, which is an art school actually in Brooklyn, not even in Manhattan. I run Practice. It's a brand-building firm. We're six people. I started it four years ago in March. Before that, I was an independent doing very similar work.So day to day, I partner with either brand-new ideas, venture funds, or founders and work to bring them to market. If that means research, naming the company, building the brand identity, everything to do with it—the packaging even. Oftentimes we're testing and learning and helping to validate market interest in the product development, and then all the way through to bringing that to launch and marketing.We're doing a lot of this, especially in the last two years, working with established brands that really need to figure out their next chapter, or they're ahead of a big pivot and reentering the market. So major rebrands, even renaming and relaunching of pretty large scale—I would say not massive mega-scale, but maybe 250-plus employee companies.Yeah, well, congratulations on four years and starting your own thing. What's it been like, the first four years of Practice?I would say the first two years felt like getting my sea legs. Like when the boat would rock, I felt it. And the last two years have been really different, and I'm really glad that in those first two years I buckled myself up. I certainly didn't do things perfectly, but I made a point to learn every time because I've really had a lot of fun these last two years.And then in terms of just what it looks like, I guess quantitatively, we were four people steadily. We've grown in the last two years to six. Initially, I just hired two people. So every year, we've kind of stepped change. It is intentional to be small. I don't really want to scale it. I actually have had opportunities to make it bigger and decided to go the opposite way.When did you first discover that you could do this for a living?Kind of accidentally. Well, I guess not really. I went to design school. The whole reason I discovered design as something that I wanted to do was because of what I said earlier about escapism and imagination.We couldn't travel anywhere having two really sick people in the household. So I kind of traveled by going online, and I got into coding at a very young age. I bought my first domain name with my mom's permission and credit card at 11 years old. I was creating WordPress sites all through middle school and high school.What was the domain though? What did you get?I owned Juicebox as my moniker because I wasn't allowed to use my name, which then was purchased. So it was my first investment. Later, I moved on to something—I think it was like Adorkable or something really nerdy and embarrassing, like what your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) screen name would have been. Yeah. And I had a blog. I had design resources. I would publish digital art or drawings I was making.But so you sold the Juicebox? You made money off of that?Yeah, yeah, I did.How long did you have that?I think it was maybe like seven or eight years. And then I got this email to my WHOIS domain information. And I was like, "Mom, what do I do about this?"I wasn't actually using it a ton at the time. I had changed to this new moniker. My mom—she was kind of watching what I was doing and making sure I was being careful. I always knew that she was aware of it. I don't think I knew to the degree that now, as I've gotten older, I realize she read everything I was posting.Which I probably would have too if it was my daughter. But I think I just decided I wanted a different moniker online because I couldn't use my name.Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, was it a... it sounds like a, like a... I mean, not exactly rags to riches, but an 11-year-old domain—you cashed out on an amazing URL.Yeah, I mean, it felt good. I had like a little budget going to college that was meaningful to me at the time. I felt rich at the time.What do you remember about choosing Juicebox? How did Juicebox come to be your first domain?I was making digital art. This is a weird backstory, but I couldn't afford—or at least I hadn't proven to my family that I was going to be good enough at this stuff—to get Adobe products because they were really expensive. So I had this thing called PaintShop Pro, and it was like a much cheaper, free version. It had the pen tool, but the pen tool, when you saved the file, didn’t save as a vector. You would draw as a vector, but it would save at whatever resolution it was.I found out that I was not the only person doing this, and that there was a small community of people making the same art I was making. We called it Vexel art—vector and pixel. I had created a bunch of that art, and one of my favorite pieces I made was this illustration of a lunch box that was a little funky and weird and different colors. I really liked this Juicebox and the label I had made on it. So I took that little icon from it and was like, oh, I'll just use this. I think it just came from a drawing of mine.Yeah, it's amazing.Yeah, very online.What's that?I've said I've been very online my whole life. Yeah. I think that Juicebox came in the middle of answering the story of how you discovered this work. When did you first discover you could make a living, I guess, building brands?Yeah, okay. So I went to college for design and I knew how to code, so I had good internships. By default—not really asking what do I want to do, but rather, what am I capable of—I thought I was going to become a web designer.I applied to an agency, Red Antler, as a web designer, and I got an interview there. The creative director, who’s also one of the co-founders, Simon Andres, looked at my portfolio and told me that I could have a job there, but that he didn't think I was a web designer. He thought I was a brand designer.I had applied for an open role, and I was just given a different job that I had not applied for. And I said yes. I think there was a piece of my portfolio where, for a very long time—six months, I think—I had kept a diary, making a logo a day for each day. I think that was probably why. He saw that project and wanted to see me do more of that and less of the websites.Were those logos—sorry to interrupt you—were those logos for imaginary companies or for companies that already existed? What was that project?It was ways to just describe things that happened in my day. So I kept a diary of what was going on, and I remember one of them that comes to mind was a day I had a final project. I was in college, and it was a bound book. I had spent all day printing and formatting and perfecting these prints, and there were errors, and it took twice as long.So I made this logo that said "print," and it had those sketchy lines that you get when your printer is running out of ink. It was just like whatever memento of the day, and I translated it into a phrase or symbol to create a memory. I made a big poster with a grid of all the logos for the final.And what was your time at Red Antler like? I mean, they seem to... I mean, I know them to be kind of the poster child of a particular moment in brand building and identity design, right?Yeah, it was the best big first job ever. I definitely came in at a time where, when I would say Red Antler, people kind of knew who they were, and by the time I left, it felt like everyone knew who they were.One of the very first projects I was put on and saw launch was the mattress company, Casper. I think there was just a lot of... it was a time where I remember the meetings would be like, "We signed this new client, and it's the Warby Parker of blank."There was so much of this: get things online, get things with money-back guarantees. But I learned a lot because they had a high volume of work in all different categories. So one week you're designing a fashion brand, the next week you're working on a new Silicon Valley bank idea, the next week you're working on the rebrand of—this is a real project—Foursquare.As a designer, I could not use the same devices over and over. It didn't apply. It was like learning a whole new thing each time, and I had to really build a very robust creative palette for myself.Also, it was there where I started writing into my work. When there wasn’t enough copy for something, I would just write it. Leadership there pointed out that I was a really good writer.It was there where I got the inkling that I would be able to do a lot of the work that I'm doing today. I didn't actually do it in my role there; I just got enough feedback where people were like, "Oh, let's use that," or "That's good," or "That's a great idea," to know that I had enough of a baseline skill to really develop it.Yeah. You describe Practice as a brand-building firm. I'm always curious about the language we choose about ourselves. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to... yeah, came to what Practice is and how you talk about it?Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a great segue. Since I left Red Antler, I was pretty young—I was 23 when I left—and I have been self-employed ever since, which is a decade now. It really has two distinct chapters.The first chapter was just as an independent, working on a freelance basis. The way I was working and how I got my first round of clients was that I didn't have a great network as a designer, but I had a pretty good one when it came to early-stage funding and founders.People were referring me on. I would help people create investor materials with temporary brands at a time when they really needed to convince investors that they could create this glossy millennial brand—that they were going to be able to just "sex up" a category. Creative was a differentiator for a lot of these companies, and they needed someone like me.So I was building these decks while I was figuring out what to do next. Honestly, I was just a bit burnt out. I had a lot going on, but also by fault of myself. I burnt out because I was so young that I just didn't know you could say no. I would just do it all. Everything that came my way—I had no idea it was an option to say, "That's too much."Eventually, I really needed a break. As I was just trying to figure out what that was and get a hold on what my burnout was actually doing to me, those people went out, used those materials, raised funding, and came back. They were like, "We've got investment. We have to build a brand. Do you want to do it?"That's how I landed my first set of clients. It wasn't totally intentional. I never left saying, "I'm going freelance" or "I'm going independent," but that's how that chapter started.For six and a half years, I was like a one-woman show making brands. Every project, I had a different seat at the table that a design background wouldn't have traditionally gotten me because I was so early-stage. I was the only person that was joining after a founder, oftentimes for six months until they made their first hire.I was with them solving all sorts of details. They were delegating things to me that typically weren't delegated. For me to be able to design packaging, we had to figure out the form factor. We had to source the materials. I had to work through the supply chain with them. I had to look at the COGS (cost of goods sold) and the margin.Ultimately, each level that I went more, every brand that I launched, I gained a new skill set, a new understanding, and a fundamental empathy for what it means to build a brand.I stayed in touch with all these people, saw them scale, saw the pain points, and created a full second set of empathy for what it means to run a brand. Through the course of that, I would look at how I was delivering work, and I felt like it was kind of broken.My big, depressing, pessimistic moment in my career was when I realized: I'm a PDF designer. I'm not a brand designer. These things don't actually look like what I'm making or all this stuff. And I thought, well, what if that wasn't the case? How could I fix that? So I developed my brand-building practice—that's what I was calling it when I was independent.As I got more intentional about that and kept doing it, the more successful the brands were getting. Eventually, I had all this new business in my inbox—so much more than a one-woman show could ever execute on. I realized I was saying no to things because I was scared of scaling. Ultimately, I spent, I think, like six or eight months—I can't remember exactly—but I spent a lot of time thinking about, if I started a company, what would it be?To me, it felt like a natural progression. I had built this brand-building practice. I had really kind of created my own recipe for how to build a brand. So calling it Practice felt like a really natural progression.Why it is a brand-building firm is because, in the time when I was iterating and developing how to build brands, I realized that brand identity—which is often what people still come to us for; they recognize that and see value in that—but they need a lot more than that.And I help them identify it. Brand identity is just one Swiss army toolkit part of what it actually takes to build a successful brand. Brand building requires a fundamental amount of research and understanding of the market so that you can successfully position it. You have to be really, really well aware and really, really well informed—not just from a business perspective, but also emotionally.How are you going to resonate with people? Where are they? How do you meet them where they are? It means distilling that into the right message. Then design is a tool that helps communicate that message.It also means making it the right experience. It means considering the big details and the small details and how a brand system can flex from a big brand moment to something transactional, to something more serious, and still have the same DNA—but not feel like step-and-repeat.And it means building more than a brand, more than a product, actually. We expect a lot from brands today—to do more than just be the product they sell. A lot of that shows up in how brands drive community or different conversations.That means having the right values they can show up with. How is the team going to scale with that? How do they know what's on-brand and what's not? What they're working towards? What's their North Star?So brand building to me is a very complex thing that we offer. Brand identity is just one part of it. It wouldn't be right to call ourselves a design studio because design is just one thing we do. It wouldn't be right to call ourselves a strategy studio because we do much more than that.What do you love about the work? Like, where's the joy in it for you?There's a lot. I think for me as a person, it's maybe different from me career-wise or creatively. For me as a person, I love that I get to really make a change and a difference.When we come into these organizations—let's say in a rebrand—we're listening first. Before we ever touch anything, we have this whole audit process where we are interviewing people, doing a lot of research and qualitative work, and making sure we're getting a lot of feedback in so that we're really hearing them.We're designing this next evolution not just to make a brand perform better, but actually inside-out—to make everyone's connection to it and their work involved in it more meaningful. So I feel a lot of purpose in what I'm doing. Part of why Practice is small is because, as someone who makes brands, I don't think the world needs more brands. I think the opposite. We just need brands to do better. So I find purpose in helping brands do better. But, you know, like career-wise or creatively, I love that I get to become like a secondhand expert in a new thing every three to six months. I find it really fun. I have a lot of random knowledge. I don't know what to do with it all the time, but I learn from super smart people.We have a client right now, and they have a chief medical officer, and they have their own facility that cost $5 million to do product development. Just learning from these people who have such rigor for what they do and trying to distill that down to a consumer—I learn so much. So it's always fun. Creativity or inspiration is never lacking when you're challenged with something like that. Every time.Yeah, I want to hear more about—I mean, I love, you said so many things just there that I really want to follow up on. But the first one is this idea that, as somebody who builds brands, I don't think the world needs more brands. We just need brands to do better. Can you tell me more about what that means or what are the implications of that? What does that ask of you?Yeah. Well, certainly something it asks of me is, if someone comes to us and they say, "We need a rebrand," I have this really strong filter of: we are not some blow-up or last-ditch effort. If you are going to really examine your business and rethink what it is and put it back out there, what is that purpose? What's driving that?What I get really inspired by—when we land these projects where we’re totally aligned philosophically—is that oftentimes what's happening is we have an opportunity to challenge a category. That means, by creating a category leader, we're telling all the dinosaurs that are doing a bad job, "You've got to catch up now."We're kind of cleaning up the category by making competition. So I feel like there's definitely a lot that you can do when you thoughtfully put a brand to market that means other people need to follow suit.Yeah, can you—I mean, that's super exciting. I can feel the competitive will in what you've just said. Can you tell me a story about that, about the importance of having a competitive vision like that, and that it is a leadership position to build a brand in a way? Maybe that's what I'm hearing you say, that when you take responsibility for a brand, you're taking responsibility for a category.Yeah, and that's in part because we're filtering for people who have great products that have a great purpose behind what they're doing, right? Like, I wouldn't sign on someone where we have to craft up some fake narrative to help sell something through that's awful.I wish I could talk about this one we have right now in detail, but they are certainly creating a better product, and there's nothing like it on the market. This is a product in the medical and nutrition space.I can't share everything, but they did a study that showed how it impacts people who are really, really sick. This is a product that, yes, you can get it through insurance, but also you can buy it as a consumer.There's a huge change in people's health outcomes with this. And what's happened is a lot of these companies have cut corners. So when people need nutrition the most, they're putting a bunch of junk in it.There's just such an opportunity to make that better. What does it mean if nutrition can be better? What does it mean for healing? What does it mean for how people feel?I think there's definitely a lot of drive to say, why are we doing this? What do we want to accomplish? Yes, there's what the companies that hire us need to accomplish, but then there's also: what is Practice accomplishing?For me, a lot of it is really wanting to create category leaders. I want to create brands that work—not brands that are beautiful, not just nice packaging. If we can do that, then I think, category by category, we can get people to see that you're going to have to have a lot of intent to hold space. Yeah. Yeah, I dug around a little bit in some things that you've written, and you've talked about how sort of modern design is beautifully considered, emotionally aware, but trying very hard, being too effortful. It's an assessment I think you've made about some design. To your point about what you just said, does Practice have a purpose? How do you think about the purpose of Practice?Yeah, we have a pretty robust culture manual. I don't know how many pages it is. I want to say it's like 45 or 50.Our mission is that we build category-defining brands that raise the bar for ethical commerce. Ethical commerce is that filter. I really want to look at who we are bringing on in the first place and whether we think they're ethically selling a product or a service. Whatever they might be, raising the bar is just what I talked about. And category-defining brands is what I do.I love too, you said you enjoyed being a secondhand expert—that was the phrase you used to describe the benefit of the learning curve of diving into a category through a client. I like how secondhand becomes vintage in a way too. It's sort of funny, but for me anyway, because I identify with that experience.And then you talked about listening being the first thing you do. As somebody who's a qualitative researcher, what's the proper role for qualitative and listening in your practice? And how do you go about it?Yeah. I will say we started off doing quite a bit of this, and we are now doing a lot of it. And the reason is because it works—it really genuinely informs the work and builds mutual understanding. It builds really great goals and criteria for success.We have basically two—actually, I would say three—major types of qualitative research that we're doing. The first is when we work on a rebrand, we require this auditing process. That is threefold:One, to robustly onboard us to what this company is across the entire ecosystem: the business goals, the roadmap, how the internal systems work, who the major stakeholders are, what their challenges are, and what they see.Two, to establish what's unsuccessful in the brand and why, and to help lay that out for them and create the goalposts: what has to evolve, why, and what's the evidence we can give to support it so they feel confident in why we need to do it. There is not a quantitative way to measure if a brand is successful. We have to ask a lot of questions and come at it from a few different angles to generate a report that feels really well-informed. One of the best things is to talk to multiple perspectives and put that against what we're seeing as outcomes—and then find the story in between.Three, to identify what is working. We don't want to rebrand something and take out all the equity they've built. So we'll talk to existing customers or future customers and understand what they're taking away from the brand, what they're resonating with, and what's really sticking and working. We're establishing what we need to retain so that we’re not risking anything in the next chapter. That's a big part.Another type of qualitative research we do is for really unique types of projects—typically with venture funds. Venture funds will come to us with an idea of a category they want to pursue. They know they're going to want to build a brand with Practice in this space, but they don't quite have a founder yet. They just see an opportunity.We'll work with them to explore what that opportunity is. Then they will shop a founder back into it—find someone to lead it and join us. So we're already 10% through the process when that person joins.That looks really interesting. One that sticks in my mind was in the sexual health space. We were talking to sex workers, we were talking to consumers, understanding how taboos exist in sex work.We even talked to retailers like Target and Walmart. We asked, "What would it take to have an endcap or a display on a sexual wellness brand?" And we learned there were a lot of challenges— that we wouldn't be able to actually have the same criteria for a brand because of the American mindset around sex.So that's a big one. And then the last is after we launch, we do a lot to inform any big investments. For example, we have a client where—it was nice—they chose the most expensive packaging we proposed. It's eating into their margin, and it was their decision. We evaluated all the criteria, and they said, "No, we want to do this one."Now they're getting some pressure from investors to reconsider that. So we said, "Okay, before you do that, let's talk to the people and understand what's going to be effective if you're going to change the packaging." And that was hard to quantify. We had to really talk to people, get a lot of different types of opinions and perspectives to net out what the best path forward was.Yeah, yeah. How do you articulate the value? On a couple of occasions, you said you can't really quantify—we're talking about things you can't really quantify. You can't quantify the efficacy of a brand. You can't quantify that.What is the value? In qualitative, what do you love about what it delivers? Or what does it deliver that you can't get anywhere else that helps you do what you need to do?I think it's the ultimate brief. There's still so much work to do once you complete that, but it's not just a shot in the dark at what we need to accomplish, or what the criteria for success is, or the things that are going to create successful work, or give us the lens to see something clearly in terms of the goal and the outcome.I think if we were to do a rebrand without one of these audits, I would probably make a few mistakes. I would steer us in the wrong direction because I wasn't informed to understand certain things.One comes to mind—we're actually working on a case study for this, and I'm excited to share it—but we worked on a really big rebrand of a stationery company. They're based in Australia and they had a lot of retail stores.It's just a hard time to be a stationery brand with the iPhone and smartphones. We have so many tools now to replace notebooks, agendas, and calendars. So we had to think about how we evolve them into more of a lifestyle brand through this next chapter.We saw that it was an ultra-feminine brand. We saw that they weren't performing well. They were actually bought out of bankruptcy. We thought that maybe they were too specific and needed to widen up—to be less extremely feminine. Even for myself, I found it too feminine. But then we went and we talked to customers and realized that the feminine identity of the brand was actually one of the main things that was working.I think I would have taken us toward making it slightly more gender-neutral—and that would have been the wrong move. It would have been because that's what we're seeing in culture, that's what we're seeing in design. It wouldn't have been an unresearched opinion by any means—it would have been a very well-informed opinion—but it would not have been correct. And it would have lost them their core customer base.Yeah, that's amazing. Something about that story—the case study about being a stationery company in the age of digital notes—reminded me of an old story. When I started out, the guy I worked for described this phenomenon. He called it unconsumption, I think, or non-consumption. His examples were buying seeds in winter, or he also talked about Old Navy, where the value is in the purchase of the experience, not in the use of the product.I'm looking at... I have all these adorable journals right here, these wonderful notepads that my daughter has gotten me. I don't know that I have enough use for them, but the ownership of them is all the value—having this precious little journal—as opposed to actually having any use. I'll just use my phone to actually keep notes, but it feels good to have a notebook around.That reminds me of that Japanese word—and I might butcher the pronunciation—but I think it's tsundoku, and it's the act of buying books and not reading them. I also have that problem. If we consider that a problem, I have that.Yeah, I mean, we're in such an era of self-actualization and people defining who they are. I think there's a negative side to that, where people are buying things because it helps them cosplay as something, rather than it being an authentic "this is who I am."I look at all the books on my shelves, and they feel like friends, or they keep me company. There's something personal, in the same way a photograph might be. But I think there's probably a good and a bad side to that these days. Yeah, I think that's true.I'm curious. I usually ask these two things together. I'm not sure why, but: do you have mentors or touchstones? Mentors who have played a big part in your coming up? And then touchstones—concepts or ideas that you constantly come back to or return to, to orient yourself in a project or in your work?Yes, mentors. Actively, I speak with a venture capitalist, Lisa Wu. She's out in San Francisco. I admire so much of what she's doing. I talk to her monthly, and we just talk about spaces we're interested in and where we see things going. But she has such a wildly different perspective than me, and she's been really empowering where I might have a little bit of imposter syndrome—as someone who doesn't have a business degree and still feels very much like a creative.She's really been one to have my back and put me in front of the right people, and ultimately tell me, "You could start a brand, you could do all this stuff," and help me see past the wall I built around what designers classify themselves as.We've built multiple successful projects together—Ritual, a vitamin brand, and Remedy, a skincare brand. So it's very meaningful because she's actually seen me in action. She's informed—it's not just a by-the-wayside friend kind of being nice opinion. So that's one person.Simon Andres and I kept in touch after Red Antler. After he left, I asked him for some great advice, and he's been really helpful. And then, as a single... what's the right word for this... like a sole business owner. I don't have partners. I have people that I bring in on a consulting basis to just hash ideas.There's this ops consultant I have, Nicole, who really challenges me in a fun way. For example, we have a bunch of clients that really want us to run their marketing after we launch them. There are these huge contracts on the table—big retainers—and if I wanted, I could take them. But I have no creative interest in doing that. Just as a creative, I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I don't want to do that.And she really came at me when that was happening, to help me really understand what that was and why that was. Ultimately, I still kept the same decision, but she made me do the due diligence and not just go off the gut feeling. Just having people in my corner that challenge me is really important.I have tried, to the very best of my ability, to create a culture at Practice where everyone knows that their feedback is really important, and I take it really seriously—to action it, to document it. We have this giant culture manual that sets a lot of expectations and processes, and there's a whole process for how you can submit a request and change that, how you could bring any changes to the organization forward.I think that culture, to me, of being able to get feedback is so important because ultimately it makes us better. I really don't want a company where everyone just says, "Yeah, okay, we'll do whatever you say." That's not at all what I'm looking to do.Cornerstones—what was that?Touchstones.Touchstones! How would you define that?Well, I was just thinking for myself, I know that part of the real joy I get out of my work is metaphor and language and imagination. I feel like every project I'm spending time with things and ideas that I really love—this idea that the mind thinks in images, and that language is access to an image. That's something I constantly remind myself of and am fascinated by.Yeah. Oh, I could go on forever about these. I think I have so many.I think that's like the creative spirit, also—just going down a rabbit hole and seeing where it takes you. One thing I have that’s just led to so much—and it seems so hard to sort of say that, but looking back—is that I take every conversation that comes into our inbox. And I have, for years and years and years.If someone wants to work with us and I don't think it's the right fit, I still talk to them. I meet with everyone, and I never close the door. Those meetings might be quick, they might be brief, but it's been actually kind of incredible.Some of our biggest projects came from people I spoke to six years previously—people who went and built an awesome career and then came back and said, "Okay, cool, now I can actually work with you."They weren't ready at the time, and they weren't the right fit, but it creates such a more meaningful relationship when you get to catch up and be like, "Oh, wow, you went and did that. You did all of that," right?That philosophy has led to a really incredible, diverse network and has made me more diverse in my thinking. So that's something I always come back to. When I start to feel overwhelmed and have too much in my calendar and I have one of those meetings, I remind myself: no, you have gotten so much out of these random conversations. You've gotten so much from being this open-door policy kind of person. And I think reminding myself of that, and always coming back to what I gleaned from that, has been a big part of how I've operated, who I am, and honestly, my success.Yeah, where did that come from? What did you call it? I love that—you take every conversation that comes to you. Where did that come from?Honestly, this is like a funny answer. I think it might come from being from an immigrant family.Really?I think so. Definitely, we never had some baked-in sense of security. And honestly, being self-employed for six and a half years, you don't either. But I don't think I was raised with a mentality of "you pick what you want" or "you do whatever." It was always like, no, you do what you gotta do, and it's not always going to be fun or whatever it is, but that's how it works.So I think I kind of had a bit of that mentality going in from how my family works. I mean, we moved to the US so that my father, who was in banking, could start a candy factory. He had no prior experience with that or entrepreneurship. And my mom worked for him, and that's what they did.I watched them. I spent a lot of time in the warehouse—it was right outside of Newark in Elizabeth, New Jersey—and I would just play in the office all the time. I watched them take every single call, go to every single fair or expo. That was the culture of how I saw people work before I even started working.Yeah. So we have a little bit of time left, and I think I'm going to step back into a big, big, fat question about brand. You've been... I mean, Ritual was a beautiful brand. You've built very modern brands in a very modern way. And I'm wondering: what is a brand to you? When did you first encounter the idea of brand, and what do you think a brand is? And what makes a good one? That's super big and meaty.Yeah. I think a brand is an expression of an organization. And organizations can be good or bad—like cults are organizations. So we really want to make sure we're expressing an organization, but that what the organization is at its core is very important—that it has a strong set of values and a strong sense of what it can be.Ultimately, I think it's how we perceive what's there, but there are still things that are deeper than brand that are informing what that is. What was your second part of the question? What do we think they should be?I don't remember. I feel like I have so many thoughts. I'm like, oh, where do we even go? I mean, I have it. Sometimes I get excited and I throw eight questions into one—one question comes out of me in eight different ways. But you just said there are things that are deeper than brand that inform the brand. Can you talk about that? What were you pointing at?Yeah, like, we built a brand for ALLKINDS. This was an example of looking at a category and learning all about it. We learned what parents want for their kids' self-care and cosmetic products—like shampoo, not cosmetics, but the products they use. We learned how kids relate to fragrance. We learned what kinds of products they were looking at, what their parents were worried about, and that really informed the values of the brand. But deeper than that are things like: what is in those products, and can they still be effectively formulated with those guardrails?ALLKINDS is based in Australia, and they care about reef safety. They were careful not to include triclosan, a common cosmetic ingredient that harms reefs. They had all of these things they were making sure they could do. Because you could say, "Okay, we're going to be free of it," but that doesn't mean you're going to have a great product. They invested a lot in developing products with this massive list of things they would not include. Me, as a brand builder, I looked at that and thought, oh, this is for kids and tweens. So we made that the "No Gross Stuff" list, and we had to express that.But that was an organizational effort. That was a huge thing with formulators, a huge amount of investment, a lot of people working on it and thinking about it—scientists and labs. And that's not brand. That's really at an organizational level.Yeah, beautiful. Well, listen, I want to thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure. I appreciate you accepting my invitation. And it's been fun talking with you.Yeah, this has been wonderful. I appreciate being on here and just such thoughtful questions—and always love to nerd out. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Chris Lindland is a creative founder and entrepreneur. He built Betabrand, a crowdsourced fashion company that grew to $300M, launching products like Dress Pant Yoga Pants. Now, he leads OWOW.ai, an AI-driven entertainment platform. An Adweek Top 100 Creative, he focuses on technology, storytelling, and social engagement to drive business success​.So, I start all of these conversations the same way, which I also do in my practice. I borrowed this question from a friend of mine who helps people tell their stories. It’s a beautiful question—big, though—so I tend to over-explain it. But before I ask it, just know you’re in total control. You can answer or not answer however you like, and it’s impossible to make a mistake. The question is: Where do you come from?This is exciting. It's like a game. Where do I come from? I’d say I come from California, from my formative years as a kid. And as an adult, at some point, you just have to own up to where you’re from—and it’s California. What was it like to own up to being from California? What are the challenges associated with that?It was an interesting thing. I lived in San Francisco for about 20 years, and at some point, I became convinced that’s where I’m from—because it was the place I’d spent the most time. It was my entire adult life. I grew up in San Diego, spent childhood around L.A. and the Bay Area, but I ultimately spent the bulk of my adult life in San Francisco.So, in many ways, I think that’s where I’m from. But because I’ve spent time broadly across the state, and I love it so much, that’s where I’m from. I don’t live there now, but that’s still where I’m from.What does it mean to you to be from San Francisco? What happened to you there?There was this gravitational pull in 1995, mostly through friends from high school who had moved there. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I didn’t feel like my future was in Carolina at age 21. So, I moved to San Francisco, thinking, "Oh, my friends are here, and they’re smart—we’ll figure it out."And I did. I stayed there a long, long time.Growing up in San Diego—what did you want to be when you were a kid?Oh, you know, I never really thought about that. That’s probably part of why it took me a while to figure out what to do in my 20s. I was really interested in my friends, in getting away and doing stuff. I didn’t spend much time imagining what I’d be—I just enjoyed the people I was with.And tell me, where are you now? What are you up to these days? Catch us up on where you are and what you’re doing.Right now, I’m sitting in Chicago visiting my family. But generally, I’ve been living in Europe for the last year and a half—mostly in Paris, which is magnificent.When I first encountered you—I can’t remember how it happened—but I was a huge fan of Cordarounds. Can you tell me the story of Cordarounds and how it came to be?Yes. I was one of those people who, like you—and probably your listeners—had a creative need that needed to be satisfied as an adult. At the time, I was working in a business that felt very much like... a business. I wasn’t being as creative as I wanted to be.So, I invented corduroy pants with horizontal cords, just on a lark. There's a long, complicated backstory I won’t get into, but basically, I knew people who talked a lot about fashion. I thought I’d make a pair for fun. Then I had a pair. Then I found myself single.And women would commonly grab my leg at the bar and go, “Oh! They go in the other direction!” And I thought, this is marketing gold. I just wanted to—because I had done—well, I’d sold a TV show when I was younger…I had co-founded an internet startup. I’d always been doing creative stuff, but I wanted to do something that felt like a great portfolio piece. I expected to use that project to land a job in advertising or marketing. I assumed it wouldn’t go on very long—maybe three to six months. But it did.I made corduroy pants that went in the other direction. I made a few hundred pairs and created a website I thought was funny. It was meant to be a portfolio piece, but that journey ended up lasting about 20 years. Technically, it was 17, but it just became the funny story that never ended. That project got me into the clothing industry for a long time.You mentioned all these various creative projects—I wasn’t aware of the TV show or the startup—but how do you describe what you do? Or even just when you think about yourself, how do you talk about it?I’d say that the thing that defined my career—particularly the clothing company chapter, but really before that as well—is that I was the person who had the big dumb idea, or fun idea, and it would stick in my head long enough that I’d feel impatient to bring it to life. Big or small.When I was running Betabrand, that gave me the perfect outlet to do that on a weekly basis. I love sitting around batting ideas back and forth, then figuring out which one we can actually go make. That’s probably the thing I’m best at. I don’t know if I’m world-class at it, but I’ve spent a lot of cycles doing just that.From Cordarounds—I was really a superfan—they always had entertainment baked in. They were fun, playful, novel, and totally unique. Betabrand ended up being a real pioneer. How do you think about the role Betabrand played? And of course, I want to talk about what you’re doing with AI, because it seems like you're once again at the front edge of tech or media. Is that how you think about it?Let me go back to Cordarounds, because there are some values that came out of that which might help explain how I think or give your listeners some insight. When I started it, my intent was to create a website I knew was funny—mainly for my friends, people I thought were funny, so we could all have a laugh.The site focused on the pseudoscience of horizontal corduroy: how it could improve your aerodynamics, reduce your crotch heat index by lowering leg friction. The motto of the company was, “An evil multinational corporation has to start somewhere. For now, pants.”The whole thing was a joke. It had the attitude of Halliburton while being as small as a mom-and-pop store. The thought was: all these giant companies we see on skylines started small. Why not us?“We” was me and my friend Enrique Landa—an incredible thinker and a blast to work with. He was also on board with the idea of going all-in with bombast and glory, fully expecting it would just be a website nobody visited. That would be that.But because of the intentional stupidity of that site—and this was in 2005, mind you, when there really weren’t any digital-native brands—we were either the first or among the first to create an interesting web experience and sell directly to people. Like a catalog. We’d find people online, they’d shop, and we’d ship.The whole idea was to create stories that lived in the pants. I gave people jokes to tell when someone asked about them. I’d already come up with every dumb line you could say about those pants, so I felt like I was feeding people small talk. That became the core thesis of the company: make products with charm that spark conversation, and give customers a little backstory, some lore, or a silly factoid they could share. It turned out to be a great word-of-mouth marketing strategy. And because we put so much thought into each product, they ended up getting a lot of press.I think you found it because New York Times Sunday Styles did a story on it. Peter, I think it was three months in when we struck PR gold—really quickly. That led to more and more stories.To keep up with that momentum, I kept inventing new products. It proved to be incredibly fortunate—either very lucky or maybe very good—that we kept it going. That eventually grew into the company Betabrand, which became a kind of product-generation experience for people. We were creating and launching new products every day.Unbelievable. Thinking back to that time—just to put it in context—a lot of my listeners or newsletter subscribers work in consumer research. We help companies, big and small, understand what’s happening in culture so they can stay relevant and resonate with people. We think about brands and culture in big, abstract ways. But you were effortlessly creating conversational, culturally relevant products back in 2005. I seem to remember the executive hoodie—wasn’t that one of them? It arrived just as Zuckerberg was getting attention for wearing hoodies. What were some of your other PR hits? How conscious were you of building products for culture, for conversation? Was it intentional? Where did that come from?No, that was the whole point. We would start by figuring out whether there was a hook to a concept. Then we’d build a story around that idea and shape a product to match it. The products themselves were pants, jackets, shirts, sweaters, bags, shoes—ultimately, Betabrand made around 2,000 products. So it ended up being a lot.But in the beginning, it was really about coming up with enough small talk for a product, or creating an experience that could carry a conversation—and then building the product to meet that moment.Here’s an example I think came up when we talked the other day. I figured, if we’re going to have a holiday product, well—there’s a black sheep in every family. So why not make sweaters out of black wool only?We figured out how to source only the black wool from black sheep, so the black sheep in the family could wear sweaters made from black sheep’s wool. It was a perfect gift idea. Everyone either is the black sheep, thinks they are, or knows who it is.At the time, I was running the clothing company out of my basement. But once again, I had come up with a product people loved to write about and share. Amazingly, through Betabrand, I became the largest importer of black sheep’s wool from New Zealand. I was the largest consumer of black sheep wool in the world. That became one of those strange but fun achievements.And again, it worked because there was an elaborate story. If there’s a black sheep in every family, now there’s something tailor-made for them. We repeated that process over and over with many different products. We loved it. We created small cults around each one. We were also very conscious about getting people to participate in the story behind an article of clothing.That brings us back to the Zuckerberg hoodie, which was a good example. I saw that news story coming. I knew Facebook was going to have an IPO, and I figured, if we made a hoodie out of suit cloth and released it at the right time, we could ride the wave. The result was what PR people call newsjacking—inserting yourself into a bigger news story. And we did. We successfully made the official fashion story of the Facebook IPO. Our executive hoodies were covered all over the world leading up to the event.All the venture capitalists who were about to profit immensely from the IPO were banging down our door to get one to give to Mark Zuckerberg. There were something like 30 unique requests to send it to him as a gift. We knew the IPO was going to be a generational event, and we found a way to insert ourselves into it.I got really good at that. We would look ahead, see what news stories were coming, and then shape products around them. At the time, we referred to Betabrand as fashion’s first responder. We’d be the first business to respond to something that had just hit the internet—and we’d make a product around it.Unbelievable. That’s so amazing. When you say “build,” can you say more about building a cult around a product? What lessons did you learn? I guess the underlying question is: does that playbook still resonate? I know you’ve moved on, and we’ll talk about that in a bit, but at what point does this playbook still apply? I mean, the principles seem like they would hold up, but I’m curious what you learned, and how things may have changed—if at all. Well, I remain convinced that it still works. You can see examples of people who’ve done it even better since then.Take Gymshark, for instance. They were incredibly smart. They found Instagram addicts who were also doing what you could call death-defying stunts in gyms. They had those people help define what it meant to be a Gymshark. As a result, the brand became this perfect cult, where the users got to define the rules and shape the identity—and an entire culture formed around that.So yes, absolutely, I’d love the opportunity to find a cult and build something around it again. The way Betabrand worked, we didn’t always know which cults would find their way into our clothing. But we made a point to tell their stories as well as we could when they did. The origins of these ideas are often strange. I’m sure you’ve experienced that, and your listeners too. In one case, my friend Enrique and I went down to L.A. to check out a fabric shop we’d heard was huge.We were just browsing, as usual—we’d often make funny samples for ourselves since we had access to manufacturing and could make custom clothes whenever we wanted. He found this fabric—silver lamé tiles that reflected light like a disco ball.When we brought it back to our shop in San Francisco, it was the end of the day and light was beaming through the windows. They held up the pants made from this fabric, and the light bounced off them just like a disco ball. It cast light all around the sewing shop. It was beautiful.We were laughing out loud when we saw them because we knew he had just created a masterpiece. As he wore the pants around, it had that same effect—people stopping him, saying, “Oh my God, where on earth did you get those? Please, where can I get some?”But the funny part was, we only found about eight yards of the fabric. So we held a little contest. We made a few pairs for people who sent in the best pictures of themselves wearing Cordarounds. Then it got down to just three square feet of that fabric.We treated it like cavemen carrying around an ember—clinging to the hope that one day we’d find more. It took years—three or four—before we finally found a supplier who could reproduce it.When we did, we created the fabric and launched Disco Pants. And what was wonderful about them was that the cults found us. There were groups of people who really claimed those pants as part of their identity. One of them was BASE jumpers. I became, somehow, the Ralph Lauren of the BASE jumping community.These folks were already filming everything with GoPro headsets, so they sent us the most unbelievable action sports footage. We’d cut it all together into these beautiful, crowdsourced videos. That insight—that the product worked because the customers were already filming themselves—was key. We asked ourselves, “Who else wears GoPros?” Then we got the disco fabric on them, too.We found all sorts of lesser-known extreme sports folks—people who would never imagine having a sponsor—and we gave them disco by the thousands. For years, we received this endless stream of incredible footage. Another group that found us was Burning Man. I’ve never been to Burning Man, but every August, people started coming into the Betabrand store in droves as they passed through San Francisco on their way.At one point, my friends started telling me, “You really need to go to Burning Man, Chris—because everywhere you look, people are wearing your clothing.” Thousands of people were incorporating our disco pieces into their costumes. When a cult finds you, that’s the best thing that can happen. Then you can sit back and tell their story.Anyway, long-winded—but I loved that. I really did. Just this week, I found out that one of our BASE jumpers passed away. It hit me. I didn’t know him personally, but I’d seen this video—he says something right before he jumps off a cliff. It became a sort of tagline for the whole group.It was sad, because you admire that kind of bravery. People who throw themselves off cliffs all over the world often form really tight bonds with each other.In a way, I felt grateful that he’d gone this long, continuing in that life. He probably spent 15 years in that sport. The amount of adrenaline he experienced in that time is legendary. That’s amazing. I wasn’t aware of that story.What do you love about that work? Where does the joy come from in all of it?You know, I think I was telling you the other day—early on, when I was running Cordarounds, people would reach out to me. Names I started to recognize. They became repeat customers.To me, that was magic. When we made those first products and I started seeing names on the orders that I didn’t recognize—names that weren’t relatives or old friends—there was this moment. That feeling when your creative experiment connects with people out in the world, with other creative people you’ve never met, it’s just really, really special.I remembered your name. I remembered so many of the names of people who were into it. It was truly exciting. When you’re a creative person and you invent something, and then someone connects with it—it’s a thrill. Suddenly, you’re the kind of person who gets lit up by the idea that people out in the world are into what you make.It’s a really beautiful experience to know that there are talented people out there, and somehow, you’ve made it into their wardrobe, into their imagination. And that feels great—because then you get to meet them, and you get to learn from them.If you’re ever lucky enough to create something that builds a fan base—which you’ve done with your podcast—the reward often feels even bigger for the creator. Because what you launched, you now get to understand more deeply through the eyes of others. Anyway, long-winded.No, not at all. We talked the other day, and I was living in Hudson. It was genuinely thrilling to talk to you, because my relationship with those pants and that sweater—it meant something. I had at least two pairs of Cordarounds, and I loved the black sheep sweater.I didn’t realize there was a family insight built into it, which makes it even richer. But those were the kinds of pieces that hit you—and you just had to have them. What I love is that your product development felt deeply cultural and deeply social. And yet, small talk was like the litmus test. That’s what you used to know whether a product was good. I think that’s unbelievable.It’s just so wonderful. And beyond all that—they made me feel good. I loved walking around in them. I was dying for someone to ask me about my pants, or to tell them it was a black sheep sweater.It was really fun. Everyone in the creative field knows that feeling—when you’ve got a good one on your hands. We’re always trying things, and they don’t always work. But when something resonates, it’s so exciting. Another good example: we made yoga pants that women could wear to the office. When we launched our women’s line, that product took off. We sold millions of pairs.But the idea that really took hold was how we presented it. My concept was that we’d only use models who had PhDs—or were in the process of earning one. That became our thing: the models must have or be pursuing PhDs to appear in our campaigns. It became a global news story. People loved that we were using models who were there for their brains—not just their bodies.It was incredibly fun. The idea that, if you have a product that resonates with the smartest women in America—and those women are obviously smarter than I am—then their word-of-mouth is going to be more interesting, more thoughtful, more powerful. So we started with the word-of-mouth power of a tight, intelligent community. And because of that, it became a great news story.We went on to sell millions of pairs. I mentioned that before, but it became the biggest product we ever released. And what made it even better was that it was rooted in something like intelligence—it just happened to be. That gave it this extra dimension, and I really liked that.What would you say is the legacy of Betabrand? I know you’ve moved on, and we’ll talk about OWOW.ai and your take on generative AI, but how did Betabrand end? Or—did it end? What’s its legacy?No, no—Betabrand lives on.I sold it. It’s kind of a funny story. A long, bloody story. The company had grown to be quite large and was growing at a blinding rate in 2019. But by that point, let’s say our top 30 products were all yoga pants you could wear to the office.And when the world of office workers left the office, well... you can imagine what happened.Yeah.It was like trying to sell surfboards when the ocean had frozen over. Extremely difficult. On top of that, we had a unique warehousing and shipping setup based in Hong Kong, which relied on air travel. And when something like 90% of Cathay Pacific flights were canceled, well—it was a perfect storm of collapsed supply and demand.Eventually, I sold the business. But it still sells dress pant yoga pants by the zillions. That product became so absurdly popular that it overshadowed everything else we made.I imagine people listening to this have experienced something similar—when one product works so well that all the other stuff that connects more to the soul of the company ends up getting pushed aside. At some point, I had to build a whole new brand identity around that single product.So yeah, a lot of the fun, quirky products that brought you there—those had to go. Because when one thing is outselling everything else by a factor of 10,000 to 1, there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in claiming you’re a freaky, Burning Man–inspired, base-jumper experimental clothing lab… and also the go-to source for professional women's officewear.So we cut that stuff out. And now the company continues as that—the yoga pant company. But what’s sweet is that people still reach out to me—honestly, probably every three weeks—asking if they can get Cordarounds, or Disco Pants, or the Black Sheep Sweater, or one of our old jackets.Part of me wishes I ran it like a weird, once-a-year clothing drop. Just one day a year where people could get their Cordarounds, and that would be it. I wouldn’t be in the daily grind of the clothing business—just one day of joy.Amazing. I mean, in hindsight—and maybe this does it a disservice—but it felt like you were running a public lab. You had all these novel products, smaller hits, and then this one massive hit that just swallowed them all.Yeah, I would say that’s fair. It’s interesting to reflect on this now, 15 years after that original concept was hatched. A lot has happened since then. Some of the claims to fame for Betabrand: Cordarounds was probably the first direct-to-consumer clothing line. Then Betabrand created a huge voting platform. We would post thousands of theoretical clothing designs, and we’d crowdsource the winners. Consumers would vote on which products we should make.It was this wonderful system that gave our fans something to do—daily, even hourly. If you wanted to help us figure out tomorrow’s product line, you could vote, comment, give feedback. It made you part of the process.We were trying to think of ways to make a clothing company into something people could visit daily and be part of. The whole idea was: can you create community through clothing? It really was like running an R&D lab.Another claim to fame—we were the first business to do user-generated content. For years, we encouraged our fans to be the photographers of our clothing. What we did differently was that, instead of just adding customer photos to the bottom of the webpage as a tech add-on, we flipped the script. Customer photos came first.The message was clear: this is about the community. Get involved. Help create things. Be part of the culture. If you’re really into it, you’ll meet people you like. That was the point.Betabrand was meant to be exactly that. The name itself was intentional—it stood for a brand of products and people that are always in development. Where did that idea come from? It was kind of in the air at the time. This was late 2000s, early 2010s. You had Kickstarter starting to take off. Crowdsourced and crowd-oriented platforms were just beginning to gain momentum.Our goal was to become the crowdsourced clothing company—a place where creative people could find an audience and bring their clothing ideas to life. Betabrand would serve as the manufacturer and the storefront.Honestly, I probably took the first 10,000 photos of Cordarounds and Betabrand pieces myself. So I loved when other people started doing it, partly because it meant I didn’t have to anymore—but also because, by then, we had sold hundreds of thousands of articles of clothing.With that many customers, chances are you’ll have some incredibly talented photographers and videographers in the mix. And if they want to put their work up, God bless them. Most of the time, they were better than I was. That became part of the culture: fans turning into creators. That was a real thrill for me. I got to sit back and watch creative people do their thing.Some of our most popular products were invented by customers. Some of the biggest news stories came from ideas that originated with our customers. It was amazing—we let them do the job, and it worked.I want to tell you a story about that—about the power of letting your customers create. One time, I was sitting at Pepsi. They had invited me to give a speech. I was checking my phone, and I got a message: Good Morning America wants the exclusive on the Suitsy.My response was, “What’s the Suitsy?” A very creative guy had submitted a concept to our website—a zip-up onesie version of a suit, which he called the Suitsy. He had actually made a sample himself. It was just a post on our site, but within 24 to 48 hours, it went viral. All of a sudden, someone’s idea—just a photo, not even a manufactured garment—was getting global news coverage.The same thing happened with another concept submitted by a DJ who opens for Paul McCartney. So he knows what it’s like to be famous, right? He wanted to create a retroreflective hoodie using the same kind of material that cyclists wear—fabric that glows brightly in iPhone photos. The idea was that the hoodie would make your face disappear in flash photography, making it perfect for famous people who want to go incognito.He called it the Anti-Paparazzi Hoodie. That idea became such a popular news story, it was even featured as a question on Jeopardy! I loved being able to attract creative people—people far more inventive than I am—and then fan the flames and help promote their ideas. That was really the big idea behind Betabrand: attract brilliant people to the brand, and then give them a place to bring their ideas to life.Amazing. So tell me about OWOW.ai. This is still really new, and I’ve had so much fun with it. What’s the story there—what are you up to?Well, I think we all have our own AI epiphany origin stories at this point. At some moment in the last few years, everyone has created something with AI that made their jaw drop—something that made them go, Oh my God, I need to rewire my brain.For me, after I sold Betabrand, I needed a full unplugging. I just wanted to zone out and stare at the Pacific Ocean for a while. Try to reset. So I went down to Costa Rica. The plan was to relax, surf, and just enjoy the sun for a few months. I figured that, at some point, I’d reemerge with a big new idea. What I didn’t know was that I had timed it perfectly… for the biggest rainy season in decades.I’d been there before during rainy seasons, but this was next-level. Literally from day one, torrential storms hit every afternoon—starting around 11:30 a.m. and lasting until 5:00 p.m.So for four or five days a week, the entire middle of the day was just an absolute deluge. I was stuck inside, which was the last thing I wanted. That was spring 2022—right when Midjourney launched. That’s also when DALL·E came out, and this thing called LION, which I thought was really cool at the time. There was also early stable diffusion stuff starting to emerge.And because I was bored, I decided to take the deep dive. At first, it was just making me laugh. I was generating these crude, ridiculous images. Back then it was like, “Oh my God, this kind of looks like Bigfoot! It has twelve fingers and a cowboy hat!” And that was funny.It only took me a minute to generate it. I was just completely charmed. Over those three months, I watched the tools improve—from day one to day ninety—and it really stuck with me.There was this small, fun community starting to form on Instagram, people posting their creations. I began sharing images with them and learning from their creative process. You could actually see how people were getting better at prompting, how their techniques were evolving.Then Stable Diffusion came out, and it allowed for these elaborate, recipe-like instructions to generate images. I just kept getting more and more interested. Fast forward a year, and suddenly you’re creating photorealistic images. That’s when I got into face-swapping technology and thought—why not create tomorrow’s entertainment starring us?I started sharing the idea with a few friends who are investors. They were excited. They said, “We’d love to invest in you if you want to build this.” So we started working on it last November and created a company called OWOW.ai.The real mission is to explore what’s now possible when you can stitch together all these technologies to let someone experience something that feels completely immersive—like, say, what it’s like to travel to Tuscany, without actually going.You could see a version of yourself in Tuscany, experiencing it as if it were real. And it’s funny, and weird, and kind of inspiring. Commercially, sure—maybe it makes you want to book a flight. But more importantly, it’s about creating unique experiences that people can inhabit and shape with their own personality. Right now, it’s basically fun, highly curated deepfakes. We’ve built vast libraries of visual experiences that people can drop their faces into.But the backend is what’s really exciting. We’ve figured out how to piece these systems together to create live experiences. You can broadcast them onto a wall, a TV, anything—and then let people add their faces, in real time. Suddenly they’re whisked into this imaginative world where they get to see themselves inside the story.And mark my words—whether it’s us or twenty other companies—within a few years, we’re all going to be watching ourselves perform on Netflix. It’ll start with cameos—some charming little novelty. But eventually, it’ll grow into actual entertainment involving us. I’m not saying we’re all going to replace Harrison Ford and play Indiana Jones, but we’ll absolutely be able to be the sidekick—or the comic relief, or the random background character.There’s going to be an entirely new kind of media when you can generate content that fast. And just for context, for people who aren’t deep into diffusion models like I am—that’s about two and a half years away. Once we hit real-time live video generation, we’ll be there. You’ll be able to create stunning, believable video starring yourself, your friends, your family—even your pets. And it will be affordable.For me, I just want to work on this now, because it’s amazing to spend full-time playing with these capabilities and bringing them to life every week. It’s magic. Without a doubt, of all the creative things I’ve done, this is the fastest, most mind-blowing creative experience I’ve ever had.It’s just so much fun. I’ve done a couple of batches myself, and I’m fascinated by the origin story. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it seems like with Betabrand, the big insight was: we want to talk about the things we wear. If you build community around a product, it means making the product something people want to talk about.There’s something similar going on here with generative AI or deepfakes. Like you said—with real confidence—we’re going to be watching ourselves. So I’m curious: what makes you so sure of that? What’s the insight? How did you arrive at that conclusion?Sure. Well, first off, I can’t tell you the exact size of the audience that’s going to enjoy this. But let’s go back to the technology itself. Right now, we can generate a photorealistic image of you—Peter Spear—once per second. And we can drop that image into any creative environment we can dream up. They look real. They feel real. They’re funny, and meaningful, and emotional, depending on the context.By the end of this year, we’ll be able to generate about three images per second. That’s already happening in labs, and even faster in high-end setups. But for most end-user experiences, it’ll be somewhere between two to five images per second.By the end of next year, we’ll be pushing thirty images per second. Anyone in video knows that thirty frames per second is the standard for smooth, real-time video. So by 2028, we’re going to be looking at real-time, live video generation—fully photorealistic, and affordable.You’ll be able to create a thirty-second video for five cents. Maybe it’s fifteen cents, maybe it’s fifty—but it’ll be cheap. So if all of that is possible—and it is—then I believe we’re going to see some incredibly interesting new forms of media emerge from it.I think it’s going to be interactive. It’s going to involve us. Now, I can’t promise that everyone’s going to prefer seeing themselves in The Godfather over the original actors. But if media can be generated specifically to entertain you—to make you laugh or you buy something based on your interests and identity—that’s going to be a much more compelling experience.Obviously, we’re building a business around this vision, so we’re hoping that this is the future we’re staring at. But the capability is already here. Right now, if we were plugged into Facebook, we could pump out custom static image ads featuring anyone who ever engaged with an ad. That’s already possible. But our approach is to enter this space through entertainment. We want to make stuff that’s truly fun. That’s how we’re finding our way in.We’ve done this at big tech trade shows. We entertain people daily with this kind of stuff—but really, that’s just the first step. The first capability we focused on was simple: can we make Peter laugh at a picture of himself in a scenario we’ve cooked up?For anyone listening, last year that meant three of us generating thousands—probably hundreds of thousands—of images just to find the ones where Peter didn’t have seven fingers. Or where people didn’t have a third arm sticking out of their chest. It was raw. We had to be very selective.But now, the tech has progressed to a point where we can reliably prompt images with a high success rate. We're talking high 90s—in terms of accuracy—for generating an image that includes Peter’s face and looks good. That’s huge. It took just a year to get there.So if you project forward another year, we’ll be generating images that include the exact glasses you’re wearing. You’ll be able to see the pores on your nose. That’s the level of photorealism we’re heading toward.With that capability—and if brands are genuinely interested in creating experiences that people inhabit—then logically, they’ll want people to inhabit their brands using this new technology.And the holy grail of personalization? It’s you.So I do think some percentage of marketing will go in this direction. We’d be a stupendously successful company if just 10% of marketing became this personalized. If we owned even 1% of that space—with experiences that are truly immersive and compelling—we’d have a very strong business.But beyond that, from a creative perspective, this is exactly what I want to be working on right now. The change ahead is going to be bananas, and it’s incredibly fun to be in it.There are a couple of things bouncing around in my brain. You started out talking about people taking pictures of themselves—and it reminded me of something. Years ago, I was traveling abroad, a bit naively, and I visited some major tourist sites. I went to Egypt, saw the pyramids and the Sphinx.I was excited to take a good picture of the monuments—but what I didn’t expect was how overrun it was with tourists. You had to wait in line to take your photo, and people were obsessed with getting a picture of themselves in front of these landmarks.It got me thinking: this need for visual proof that you were there. I ended up taking an entire series of photos of people taking pictures of themselves—because I became fascinated by it. And so hearing what you’re saying, it just resonates. Of course we’d want to see ourselves—especially if given the opportunity to see ourselves in places other than where we are. That instinct is already there.There’s definitely a powerful force of vanity behind it. But what we’ve found is that the most popular use of what we’re doing right now isn’t people making pictures of themselves—it’s making pictures of their friends or family and sending them.Even better: dropping them into group texts. That’s where a lot of the magic happens. It becomes a fun icebreaker. People can be self-critical about how they look in photos, but when the image is being shared among close friends, in a playful way, they’re far less self-conscious. It becomes a shared laugh. It’s light, it’s personal, and it’s fun.There’s definitely been this weird value shift—especially through Instagram—where people must officially see themselves in certain places. They’ll wait in long lines just to do that.And I get it. It’s a moment in your life you want to capture and share. That’s perfectly fine. I don’t look down on people who do it—I just think it’s a fascinating commentary on how visual media works now. What matters most isn't necessarily the masterpiece; it’s the likes you’ll get on a photo of yourself standing 50 feet in front of the clock face. That’s the image that matters.It’s nuts.Yeah, it is nuts. But also amazing. I always like to be careful with this kind of thing. I don’t think it’s “crazy” as in something’s wrong with people. I know some people might see it that way, and they’re entitled to that opinion. But I just find it more amazing than anything else—that there’s this completely different experience that matters a lot to people. And there’s a lot to be learned from that.I really appreciate that corrective, because I’m often that person—marveling at what we do as a species out in the world. My experience in Cairo was a lot like that. I was a solo traveler immersed in group tourist culture. I did a cruise down the Nile, and at every stop, people were lining up, waiting to have their picture taken in front of some ancient relic. Sometimes leaning on it It was such a funny phenomenon. I’m glad to know that even back in the '90s, it was kind of like that. I hitchhiked from Cairo to Germany—that’s a longer story for another time—but down in Luxor, my friend and I were goofing around, and I wrapped him in toilet paper like a mummy.He became the unofficial mascot for about 50 tourists who all wanted photos with “the mummy.” Stuff like that would’ve been Instagram gold today. But back then, it was just 35mm film, shared with a few friends: “Hey, here’s me with a guy dressed as a mummy in Luxor.” Anyway. It would’ve been perfect for the internet—if the internet had worked the way it does now.We’re almost out of time, but I’d love to hear some final thoughts from you. What are your observations or lessons from working with generative AI? You’ve described OWOW.ai as your way into it—maybe not even the final form of what you’ll do. What are you looking forward to?There’s no doubt about it: this is God’s supercomputer, and now we all get to play with it. That’s how I think of it. Some of my thoughts lately come from conversations with close friends I’ve known for years—people who are also entrepreneurs or deeply engaged in creative work.One of my friends is a doctor, and she’s working on a concept around patient education. Each of us is focused really narrowly on the projects we’re building, so we’re becoming experts in specific slices of this world. In my case, it’s face morphing, generative speed, and how to use those tools to help people feel experiences. And that’s wonderful—but it’s limited.There’s kind of a shared consensus among all of us: we should be practicing new skills every single Friday. Period. It’s the only way to even begin to grasp the full scope of what this technology can do. That’s how big of a deal this is.And this isn’t hype. It’s not overblown. It’s real. I mean, if I can make my friends laugh with a high-quality video that would have taken nine months to make just a few years ago—and now I can do it in nine seconds? Come on. That’s not just faster—that’s a fundamentally different way of creating and communicating. Okay, nine seconds is a bit of an exaggeration, but my friend Tyler is a perfect example. He’s a super creative guy, great at video production. Now he makes hilarious AI-generated videos while he’s sitting on the can.And they’re excellent. As a filmmaker in his previous life, he would’ve had to spend a ton of money and time to make those same things. But now we can all create music, videos, whatever—and sure, it might not have the laser focus of a trained artisan, but that’s okay. You might find that your love of music translates into fun little songs that entertain your friends and family. And if that’s what you use it for, you’re not a thief—you’re a creator. You’re just performing for a small audience.I still can’t believe what we can do now. That sense of awe—it gets reinforced for me every week. And I’d really encourage anyone who hasn’t already guzzled the Kool-Aid to consider pouring themselves a little more. Because quarter by quarter, this stuff gets faster, better, cooler, more fun. And it’s going to completely reshape marketing, creativity, and entertainment in a very, very short amount of time.Where would you suggest someone start? Like, I hear you talking about experimenting—but what’s a good first step?Honestly, most people already have access to ChatGPT. I’d say: start there. Begin by uploading a photo of yourself. Start playing around. Ask it to be iterative. “Put a top hat on me.” “Add a parrot to my shoulder.” You’ll be surprised at how responsive it is.Right now, those images take about 10 to 15 seconds to generate. It’s not instant—but just wait. In a couple years, it will be lightning-fast. That’s an easy way in. A fun way in. ChatGPT—especially with image generation—can blow your mind, even as a beginner.And if you don’t know what to ask, there are great videos and forums out there where people share tricks, tips, and cool things you can do. It’s really fun to explore other people’s ideas. You get to see how they think—and how the machine responds. It helps spark your own ideas.It’s one of those classic things: the more you play with it, the more ideas you get when you aren’t using it. Then suddenly, you’re racing back to it with something new to try. I’d just say: make sure you’re playing with it. Because play is absolutely the fastest path to the important insights.Go be immature with it. Go be stupid. Do stuff that makes your friends laugh. That’s how you start to learn how to use it in smart ways.Awesome. Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. It’s been really great to connect with you—and thank you for Cordarounds, the Black Sheep Sweater, everything you created with Betabrand… and now OWOW.ai too. It’s just so great to see someone so clearly having fun while doing fascinating work. For the benefit of the listeners, it’s OWOW.ai—that’s O-W-O-W dot A-I. Go check it out. And if you have any questions, you can reach Chris directly at chris@owow.ai. We work with companies, events, developers—anyone doing creative things. So if it interests you, drop me a line.Beautiful. Thank you so much, Chris.Great talking to you today, Peter. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Niobe Way is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity, co-founder of agapi.teens, and the principal investigator on the Listening with Curiosity Project. She is a leading researcher on adolescent development, with a particular focus on boys' social and emotional lives. Her groundbreaking books include "Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection" (2011), which inspired the Oscar-nominated film "Close," “The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences & Solutions,” and "Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture" (2024).I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine who helps people tell their stories. It's a beautiful question, which is why I use it, but it's pretty big, so I tend to over-explain it—like I'm doing right now. Before I ask it, I want you to know you're in total control and can answer however you want.You're doing what a good interviewer does.Nice. So, the question is: Where do you come from? Again, you’re in total control.I love questions like that. It’s what I spend my life asking other people, but I rarely get asked myself. Where do I come from? Okay, I have lots of things to say, but I need to figure out how to tell the story.I would say an important part of me is that I was born in Paris, France, to hippie parents. My parents had my older sister and me when they were teenagers. My mother came from a very fancy family in Greenwich, Connecticut, and my dad was from the wrong side of the tracks. They got pregnant with my sister the first time they had sex, at seventeen. Then they escaped—he went to Oberlin College, she followed him with my sister, and then they traveled to Greece for a year, then Paris for a year, and that's where they had me.They worked at an American diner in Paris. That’s how my life began—with parents who lived outside the box. My mother is a modern dance choreographer and runs ODC San Francisco, a world-renowned dance company. My dad was a classics professor who specialized in Eastern and Western traditions. He lived in China for ten years, and I lived with him there for part of the 1980s.My life started in Paris. Then we moved to Oberlin, Ohio; then to New York; and then back to Oberlin. Oberlin is where I really feel my roots are.If I had to sum it up. I wasn’t born in the U.S. I grew up with creative, unconventional parents. I came of age in Oberlin, Ohio, during the 1970s. It's important to say: I was born in 1963. That means my adolescence was very much shaped by the 1970s—a distinctive period. I don't know how old you are, Peter, but the 1970s were very particular. And then I went to college in the 1980s.I noticed you used the word escape at least twice to describe your parents going to Paris. What were they escaping?They were escaping very oppressive family situations, especially on my mother’s side.My grandfather was the vice president of Tampax Corporation. They came from a very wealthy, exclusive community in Greenwich, Connecticut—part of a country club that didn’t allow Black or Jewish members.My mom married someone from a working- to middle-class background, which was scandalous to her family. When she got pregnant at 17, they wanted her to go to Mexico for an abortion. She refused.So, when she and my dad moved to Oberlin, she was essentially cut off from her family.Oberlin College had never had a married couple with a child before. They didn’t know what to do with them, so they gave them a house because they couldn’t put them in a dorm. I’ve seen a photo of them: two teenage kids, standing in front of a house, holding a baby. It's so surreal.They left Oberlin because it was too hard for my dad to be a student and raise a family at the same time. That’s when they decided to escape again, this time to Europe.My dad was studying the classics and felt this romantic pull to go live in Greece, the birthplace of so much of that tradition.They tried to live "off the land"—though I think, in reality, it meant my mom was trying to make a living while my dad read a lot of books. They lived for a while on a Greek island called Skiathos, and when they couldn’t find enough work there, they moved to Paris and became managers of an American diner. That’s how I came into the world: the child of two people who chose a life of creativity, defiance, and independence. And then my mom got pregnant with me. About a year after I was born, they moved back to New York because, you know, now they had two kids and they were just 20 years old. So, they returned to Oberlin. My dad graduated, and my mom started dancing. Eventually, she became a professor of dance at Oberlin College—one of the first women faculty members there. I mean, there were a bunch of women, but still.All of that is part of who I am. I was born in the sixties, and I definitely situate myself in that time—with hippie parents, always having a very global perspective. I come from multiple cultures. I’ve lived in China; I’ve lived all over the world. It definitely shapes how I do my work, how I think, how I take on the world, and how I see the world.This is my biggest superpower, I would say. I love this phrase now—I used to hate it. My biggest superpower is that I am very good at what we call in developmental psychology theory of mind: I can take other people's perspectives very easily.And the reason I think I can is because I’ve lived in different places, outside of my own culture. I’ve been an outsider many, many times in my life—not part of the mainstream at all, even in the American context, because my parents were serious hippies.I mean, my mother wore mini skirts and all kinds of crazy stuff that embarrassed me. She was gorgeous—still is gorgeous—but it was hard having a mom wearing mini-mini hot skirts over in Ohio, you know what I mean?I do. I mean, I love the idea of a serious hippie, number one. And number two: what about moving around, about being an outsider, develops theory of mind?Oh, Peter, this is such a great interview. Thank you. It’s a gift for me to be interviewed in the way I try to interview other people. I would say that when you're an outsider—racially, ethnically, class-wise, culturally, in any way—it forces you to take the other person's perspective because you're out, right? You're in the minority.And to me, what's interesting about women and people of color in this country—and men too, especially working-class men—is that when you're not at the top of the heap, you're forced to take other people's perspectives, whether you like it or not. In fact, women have said this to me, and people of color too, across all ethnicities and races: You have to, because if you don't, you won't get your foot in the door. So you learn to take the other person's perspective literally as a way to survive.Yeah.Literally, to get into the house, you have to take another person's perspective. So you learn. I think that's partly why—I'm going to make a gross generalization, but I think it's true—people on the fringes of power tend to have better theory of mind. Of course, there's variation among all groups. Some people might be a person of color or a woman and still not have great theory of mind. So I'm not generalizing completely.But generally, I do think people on the margins are more likely to develop it, because when you're in the center of power, it's not demanded of you. You assume everyone will think like you—because why wouldn't they? It could also be a religious identity—Jewish, Muslim, Hindu. I'm not trying to limit it to non-religious differences; I'm just very American in that way. But being an outsider in any form helps develop that skill.And I do think it’s a positive skill.I have to share a story because it was really interesting to me. In 2007, after getting divorced from my husband of 20 years, I wanted to do something adventurous. So I moved with my two young kids to Shanghai to teach at NYU Shanghai. They were three and five at the time. We all learned Chinese—we went to Saturday school to study before moving—and I enrolled them in local Chinese schools.I was terrified to bring my little kids alone, but we didn't live in an expat neighborhood. I wanted to live among local families, not foreigners. We lived in a Chinese alley, where at that time (this was 2007), there were still joint kitchens and bathrooms. Our home was a bit unusual—it was built during the 1920s French concession, so we had our own bathroom and kitchen—but most families in our alley shared. Because of that, and because we were foreigners, we stood out a lot. We were definitely seen as more "upper class" in the neighborhood. I remember taking my daughter to school. Her best friend in New York had been Mei Mei, which means "little sister" in Chinese. After her first day, she came home—she was just three—and said, "Mommy, they all look like Mei Mei!"At first, I did this sort of white liberal thing—I got nervous and corrected her, saying, "No, no, they’re not all Mei Mei. They're just Chinese. They don't all look the same. But she insisted, "No, no, Mommy, they do look like Mei Mei!" I eventually realized: she's three. I let it go.Then something beautiful happened. About a month later, she came home and said, "Mommy, I want black hair. Black hair is the most beautiful hair in the whole world. I don’t like my hair." At the time, she had long, blondish hair. I told her, "Yes, black hair is really beautiful," and I also affirmed that her hair was beautiful too.But it was a gorgeous realization: when you’re the minority, your perspective shifts fast. At first, she was simply seeing the world through her own lens. But after a month of being the only one different, she began to value what the majority in her class valued—long black hair.And so I just thought that was really deep and profound for me. Because that is why you want to raise your children where they're not always in the majority.You put your child in a safe space, in a supportive space, in a loving space—I'm not saying put them in toxic places—but I'm saying, where you're not in the majority.I think when you're always in the majority, you suffer in terms of your ability to take another person's perspective.That's beautiful. I want to return—when you were young in Oberlin, what did you want to be when you grew up? Do you have a recollection?Yeah. Oh God, are you kidding me? I had lots of things. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was ten because I thought the most— I still think this actually—I would still love to be an astronaut. To go out, outside of the earth. I've always been super curious, Peter, just like you. I've always been super curious about it. And then somehow the magic of going outside of the earth and looking back and stuff. So I wanted to be an astronaut.Then I think I ended up being interested in theater. I was a theater major in the first two years of college, but I think it was really because I was surrounded by the arts. My mom was a modern dance choreographer. She started a modern dance company. We traveled across the country on a yellow school bus with her Oberlin students to start ODC San Francisco in 1975. We were a bus of ten Oberlin students moving from Oberlin to San Francisco to start a modern dance company with my mother. My brother, sister, and I were all on this bus, traveling for two weeks across the country on a yellow school bus. I mean, Peter, I meant it when I said we were serious hippies.Yeah, I mean, it's all right there.You can't get more hippie than that. There's pictures of me on the bus—I'm ten—and I just looked like a total hippie child. I'm wearing this star shirt, and my hair is kind of—well, my mother always cut my hair. She would actually cut it very coiffed. But I'm just such a hippie child.I think when I was surrounded by so many dancers and artists— Bill Irwin, do you know Bill Irwin?Yeah.He was a part of that clan.Oh, wow.His wife, Kimi Okada, at the time—Kimi Okada was one of the founders of my mom’s dance company. She was a student of my mother's. So Bill Irwin was a babysitter. He babysat me.Wow.Yeah. It was a bunch of really amazing 1970s artists. If I probably named a bunch of other names, you would know who they are. Many of them became very successful, along with my mom and her company.Because I grew up in that climate, I thought arts and theater would be really interesting. But then I went to college, and I realized it wasn't interesting enough for me to turn into characters and act out plays.I wanted to do something. I had, in some ways, bigger ambitions—to make the world a more caring place. And I thought I wouldn't be able to do that as an actor. So I switched majors into psychology.But psychology in college, including at Berkeley where I was, is taught in a very boring way. It's often taught through textbooks, in big classes. You have to memorize stuff. It’s the most boring form of psychology.So I was bored with it. I majored in it, but I was bored with it.Then I got a great job after college working with teenage drug abusers in a family therapy clinic, and I became fascinated by family therapy and by the notion of working with teenagers.After that, I ended up getting my doctorate at Harvard, initially in counseling psychology. Then I switched from counseling to human development because—and this relates to my work right now—I realized I wasn't interested in helping individuals. I was interested in changing the story, right? I was interested in changing the story of how we understood ourselves, and adolescents in particular.That's what I've literally been doing since 1988: trying to change how we understand what it means to be a teenager.And in the last ten years, what it means to be a boy and a young man—and even more broadly, what it means to be human, and what's getting in the way of our capacity to act like human beings.But it really came from seeing the larger picture. I would say, Peter, it goes back to my background. The larger picture came from being exposed to all sorts of cultures.My dad lived in China in the 1980s, when there were virtually no foreigners in Nanjing.And he was apparently there at the same time Kanye West and his mom were there, which is really funny.Oh, wow.Isn't that funny? But there were no foreigners there when I was a teenager and living in Nanjing. Anyway, I think that sort of big-picture thinking came from that experience—having to, as I say in my classes, pull the microscope in to see a person, and pull it out to see them in context. I started doing it with myself—seeing myself in the particulars, then pulling back to see the larger context. And that, to me, is my biggest skill as a researcher. I'm constantly pulling the microscope in and pulling it out: to understand the individual, but also to understand the individual within a cultural context.How do you introduce yourself now? Sort of catch us up. We've gotten your life story from the beginning—where are you now? What's the work you're doing?Yeah, thank you. No, Peter, I just have to say: this is such a gorgeous way of being interviewed. I've never been interviewed like this. It's such a pleasure. It really is such a pleasure. And I have always believed that who I am is part of what I do. So if you don't know who I am, you can't really understand what I do. Thank you for that gift. It really is a gift.So—I am a professor of developmental psychology at NYU. I've been there since 1995. And I have been focused, since 1987 when I started my doctoral program at Harvard, on understanding adolescent development, particularly the social and emotional aspects of development. By that, I mean relationships, identities—all sorts of things.My question, even back in the '80s, was: What shifts during adolescence? Because what I started to hear was a story we weren't telling—and honestly, we're still not telling it. In the late '80s, I started hearing from boys and young men about their desire for friendships and for close, emotionally intimate friendships. This came out during sessions I was doing while informally counseling at a high school. It kept surfacing as a major theme.Since then, I have spent my career doing large-scale studies of teenagers of all identities—following them over time. That's the biggest skill I'm most proud of, because that's how you hear the real story. You follow the same kids—starting from when they're 12 or 13 years old—all the way until they're 17 or 18.And because I follow kids longitudinally, using mixed methods—qualitative and quantitative: surveys, observation, interviews—with huge samples, I’m able to capture that shifting story over time.So hundreds of kids that we follow over time with a large research team—you start to hear a pattern of what it means to grow up in the United States. And now we're doing work in China. We've been doing a 20-year study of Chinese families. We're just about to do the 20-year follow-up of 1,200 Chinese families—1,200 Chinese families. And we ask the same question. The kids in our sample in China were born in 2005.So anyway, you start to hear this change. And this is the big finding. The big finding is that there are four themes that the boys have revealed in their data. And the reason I pick on the boys is not because they're more interesting—as I was challenged by my daughter (I have a daughter and a son, by the way)— it's because they tell a story that we're not listening to, Peter.They just are telling us a story—and not just about them. That's the part we're not listening to. They're not just telling a story about themselves; they're telling a story about us and what's getting in the way, and how we can solve our own problems.So this is what they teach us. And this is what they've been teaching us since 1987 when I started listening. And now it's thousands of boys and kids and girls and non-gender-conforming kids. But again, I think it's important to understand why I pick on the boys and young men—because that's a particular story.So, the story we learn is: First, boys—like all humans, like all girls, like everybody—want emotionally intimate friendships with other guys. They want that. And we've found that around the world. There really is no gender difference in the desire for emotionally intimate friendships.And for boys, for many boys, that means: Not being laughed at when they feel vulnerable. Not making everything into a joke. Being able to talk about things called "deep secrets" (which are almost always family-related issues). Wanting someone to process it with. Wanting someone to recognize their pain if their parents are going through a divorce, for example.They very much want those friendships. Do all boys want the same thing? No, there's obviously variation. But definitely over half of the boys in our studies have expressed that desire. And that's now true in China and in all the different countries where we've done this work.The second part—or rather, a nuance to the first finding—and this is the part we're really not listening to: they have the same relational and emotional skills needed to have those friendships.This whole notion that somehow boys don't have the skills to have the relationships that they want—that's all just garbage. Because if you listen to 12, 13, 14, 15-year-olds, their relational and emotional intelligence is extraordinary.You can see it in my book, Rebels with a Cause. You can see it in my previous book, Deep Secrets—which was made into an Oscar-nominated movie, a feature film, Oscar-nominated in 2023. And you hear the narratives of the boys—hundreds of boys at this point—saying the same thing: this desire for close, connected relationships, particularly same-sex friendships.And then you see their amazing emotional nuance—their ability to understand relational nuance. Knowing about covering over feelings. Knowing what happens when you cover over your feelings. Knowing how much damage it does internally. This is what 13-year-old boys will talk about.And no, they won't necessarily talk about it with their parents. If you're thinking, "Well, they never say that to me"— they don't want to talk about it with their parents.No, no, I'm serious. I want parents to stop wanting their kids to speak intimately with them.For the most part, they don't want to do that, especially many boys. It's not a problem. As long as they have the skills and confidence to do it with friends when they want to—that's what matters, for kids of all genders.And so I want us to get off this ego-focused idea: "I want them to share it with me." Because it's getting in the way. Why should they share it with you? You're their parent—and you're likely going to judge them anyway.And besides, often they want to talk about what's happening at home—not necessarily to you. So the whole point is: They want emotionally intimate friendships, and they have the skills to have them.That's theme number one. Theme number two, which we find very clearly in early adolescence and middle adolescence, is this. This is my biggest finding and nobody's listened to this - I finally got some traction in California where the governor's starting to listen. I'll tell you why at the end of the conversation.Boys' linking of social health is a predictor of mental health. They'd say things like, "If I didn't have a friend, if I didn't have someone to talk to, I would want to commit suicide. I would die by suicide. I'd want to kill myself. I'd be all alone."I mean, they say that. This is before they actually feel that way. They say, "I need friends to basically function in the world. I need close, intimate friendships." They say that directly. "And if I don't have them, I will want to kill myself. I will feel all alone."Then, as they go into middle adolescence—remember, it's longitudinal studies—as they go into middle and late adolescence, they start to what I call "go underground" with their feelings. They start to say things that sound like stereotypes:"It's all good." "I don't have any friends; I've given up on my search, but it's all good. It's all good."You know, that repeated, sort of obsessive "It's all good," which is definitely covering over a sense of frustration and sadness—and at times, anger too—in their narratives.The frustration of finding someone you can trust. The frustration—or just totally checking out, the what I call the "whatever" response."Whatever, whatever.""Do you have any close friends this year?""No. Whatever."You know, just that defensive thing. So that's what I call the social health linking to the mental health. The third finding is what I just said: the crisis of connection that boys and young men go through as they feel pressures to "man up." I'll get to that theme—why they have a crisis of connection—in a second.They experience a crisis of connection where they start to disconnect from themselves and from each other. Because it's—well, I'll tell you why. Just give me a second. What we know—hold on, I'm jumping because I don't want to jump. What we understand—I want your audience to understand this because I'm being misinterpreted constantly— I'm not saying only boys and young men experience a crisis of connection.I am saying, we actually learned first about the crisis of connection from girls and young women. As they reach adolescence, they start to go underground with what they know.So girls start to go underground with what they know and claim they don't know things: "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." And boys start to go underground with what they feel, right? And say, "I don't care," "I don't feel," etc., etc.So girls start to go underground with thinking, and boys start to go underground with feeling. So what does that suggest about the reasons for the crisis of connection? It suggests a cultural ideology, right? Here it comes: A cultural ideology that has masculinized thinking and feminized feeling.And Peter, if you want the blunt answer of why we have Trump and why we're in hell right now, it's because we have given a gender identity to thinking and feeling. We have literally made it—given it—a gender identity.Thinking and feeling. It's like if a sister came from another planet and said, "Wait a minute, you gave a gender identity to thinking and feeling?" Like, what? That is at the root of our—no, seriously, it's at the root of our hell. Not only do we give it a gender identity, but we privilege everything we've deemed masculine, and we demean and mock everything we deem feminine.So it's not just that we give it a gender identity, but that we actually privilege what we consider masculine. It's not masculine—it's human. And we demean and mock what is so-called feminine. It's not feminine—it's just human. And what boys reveal—they reveal this hierarchy of human qualities in humans: male over female, masculine over feminine. Because they literally say things.This is how they reveal the cultural ideology, which is the fourth theme—the fourth and final theme—which is the cultural ideology of masculinity. The cultural ideology of how we define maturity, which is about self-sufficiency, not having close, healthy relationships. That should be a core part of all definitions of maturity.It's only about self-sufficiency and independence. So our privileging of the so-called masculine over the so-called feminine is privileging thinking over feeling, the me over the we, autonomy over connectedness, stoicism over vulnerability.And what boys reveal—and I'm going to say this slowly so your listeners can really hear this— what boys reveal is not that they somehow have the soft over the hard, or the hard over the soft. They are equally both. They think and they feel. They want autonomy and they want connection. They are able to be stoic and they're able to be vulnerable.And boys have been shouting that to us for decades, Peter. "Stop making me half-human by assuming that I am only capable of doing one thing and not the other."And girls—if they had more power in the world—would be doing the same thing:"Stop making me just a feeler and not a thinker." That's why I think a lot of girls are attracted to STEM, by the way—because it's their way to prove that they are thinkers too, not just feelers. And the idea is that if we actually recognized humans in a yin-yang way—right?—we would value both our masculine and our feminine sides as simply what makes us human. All of us. I'm going to be very dramatic because I've been doing this for 40 years. If we actually recognized that we have two sides to our humanity—a so-called hard and a so-called soft—and that both are equally important for survival,we wouldn't be experiencing what we're experiencing now.If we actually valued what we deem masculine and what we deem feminine—both—not feminine more than masculine, not masculine more than feminine—both,and recognized that it's simply part of what it means to be human...It’s part of the human condition that we have the capacity to think and feel. And we don't do it separately. I don't think, and then feel. I'm doing it right now. I'm thinking and feeling at the same time. And so the idea is if we actually raised our children starting from a place—what I would call an Eastern philosophical perspective—that comes from my experience in China, an Eastern philosophical perspective: the yin-yang perspective. I wear a yin-yang on my wrist—I can't show it because it's an audio show.But the idea is: the opposites are always in. If you look at a yin-yang symbol, you see the half white, half black—and the opposites are inside each side.You always have feeling and thinking, and thinking and feeling. You always have—you can't have connection without autonomy. You can't have autonomy without connection. It doesn't exist. Developmental psychologists show you that too. In order to explore the environment, you need to have the confidence of connection. So yeah, go ahead.Can you help me understand? Because I love everything you're saying and it resonates with my own experience. And I'm wondering: when you say that they've been telling the story but nobody's listening—what would it mean if we listened? What would it look like? What does hearing the story ask of us?Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have me hooked as an interviewee. I'm going to have to interview you! This is how I feel—that we're not listening because we keep on blaming the other group. We keep on not seeing ourselves. We keep on not seeing it. What I say very bluntly: we are experiencing a culture and nature clash. We're naturally social, emotional, relational. That's natural. We're born that way—you see that in the early childhood studies. We naturally are curious about each other.But we grow up in an antisocial culture, right? We're naturally social, but we grow up in an antisocial culture that doesn't value actually thinking about another person's thoughts and feelings—or even tells children, "Don't worry about what other people's thoughts and feelings are."A fifth grader—just the other day, on the street, who I randomly ran into (because I always ask questions of everybody)— I asked her about her school, and the first thing she said, fifth grader, she said, "My teacher teaches me how to be selfish and not care about other people." That's literally the first thing she said. And so, my point is we are raising our children in an antisocial culture.And so, we should not be surprised—if we are social animals and we are being raised in an antisocial culture, right? Money over people, money over people, Peter—that we're going to have massive psychological, behavioral, everything problems.And so, to me, how I know they're not listening is, we have Trump. That's how I know. We have an administration that is probably the most brutal in my generation—born in 1963—probably the most brutal administration we've ever had. And it just feels like, as everybody's talked about, like 1930s Germany.And I think the real reason is because—and I'll tell you why. One of the things mass shooters teach us (I didn't get to this, but I want to mention it)—mass shooters teach us. Don't flip the hierarchy. Don't take the group that you hate and put it on the bottom.Because if you do—and we have access to weapons—we may try to kill you. Because nobody wants to be on the bottom of a hierarchy of humanness. And that's exactly what the left has done and exactly what the right has done. I'm not going to—neither party gets a pass on this. We flip the hierarchy. Men and women are doing it with each other. Even though I'm definitely a hardcore feminist. Yeah, my feminism is not rooted in putting men on the bottom. Because quite frankly, even if I can get mad at men—my sister was raped, I have lots of negative stories about men—I know it's not going to solve the problem.Nobody wants to be on the bottom. So you put men on the bottom, then they get angry, then they hate women. Then they try to put women even more on the bottom.We have to stop the madness. And to me, the voices of young people—if we were listening—we would understand that our culture is embedded in a hierarchy of humanness, where we think some people are more human and deserving of healthcare and food and housing than others, right? That's an antisocial culture: if we think some humans are more valuable than other humans.And then, a culture that values only one half of our humanity over the other—masculine over the feminine. So if we live in such a culture—which the boys expose—that culture, mass shooters literally say, Peter, it's stunning, "I don't want to be on the bottom of the hierarchy."They say the word hierarchy. It's not like an academic term. They say it. They don't want to be. So if we flip it, and we try to put them on the bottom—which is what we've done—and now I'm speaking as a Democrat— what many Democrats have done is put the needs of the white working class, poor working class people, on the bottom.Of course they're angry. Are they saying racist, horrible, horrible things? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm not forgiving it. And I'm not saying it's okay. It's hateful. It's like 1930s Germany, right? But the idea is—the solution can't be "Let's put them on the bottom and say you're s**t, and I don't give a s**t about you because you're racist and sexist and all that kind of thing."Because I get the anger of— if you felt like you were put on the bottom, and someone said, "Well, we're going to continue to put you on the bottom because you say ugly things about us."You know, just the—I get the anger. Even though what Trump and his colleagues are doing with our country is so revolting I can barely stand it, I get the anger of those who voted for Trump. I get it.So to me, the boys and young men—even though I'm mostly talking in my samples about boys of color from working class communities—they get it too. They get it too. They don't say directly what I'm saying, but they say, "Hey, I have a hard and a soft side. My story should be as important as your story. Listen to what we have to say, because if you don't listen, we get angry. We get angry."And so to me, what it would look like if we were listening to young people— and the other thing is—one thing, since my book has come out since July, Peter... I mean, I've had some good interviews, so I don't want to critique people who have interviewed me, for the most part. But I'm amazed at how much I will tell the story, Peter, and then the summary of it will be "Boys have a crisis of connection and we need to be nicer to boys."YeahAnd I'll be like, oh, you know—and then it looks like I'm flipping the hierarchy and putting girls on the bottom. You know what I mean? It looks like I'm only valuing boys and I'm not caring about girls. And so—and I'm like—I will even say to interviewers, "Don't do that."Yeah, yeah.Don't say that my work is about boys. It's what boys teach us about us and how to solve our own problems—not just about boys. Although my Deep Secrets previous book was just about boys. But the point is that people are only hearing what they want to hear, Peter. They're only hearing what confirms their assumption of what I'm going to say.Yeah.And so, to me, if they listened—to finally answer your question after 10 minutes— it would be to create, honestly, a politics, a creative politics, and homes and schools that made, as their starting point, that all humans are equally human.And I know that sounds like lefty kind of garbage. It's not. Just: all human lives are equally valuable. And so whether you're poor white working class—you know, white, let's even put them in the, you know, racist category—or you're a lefty person... Actually, I'm going to make this extreme to make a point. A rich white guy living in Beverly Hills or wherever—that both lives are equally valuable.Yeah.Both lives are equally valuable. And by the way, equal also means the rich guy too. Not just saying that the poor guy matters and the rich guy doesn't matter because he's rich. We have to understand that Donald Trump is making us suffer—meaning, it's the rich guys that are making us suffer. So we can't ignore the rich guys.Right.You know what I'm saying?Yes, I do.They're a reflection of their own suffering. I mean, what I want to say to Trump—and it doesn't sound aggressive enough, so, you know, whatever—but I do want to say: "I'm sorry that you're so lonely."Yeah.You know, because at some level, I truly believe—listening to boys my whole career—that his anger comes from a deep, deep and profound loneliness, right? Where he's trying to get people to like him. He's constantly trying to get people to like him because he feels empty. And I would never say that publicly, but I'll say it in your interview because you understand the context in which I'm saying that.Yeah, yeah.You know what I mean? So we have to care about everybody—not just our group.Yes. I want to get to the idea because I feel very—I always tell the story—I feel very lucky. I applied to what I thought was an ad agency, and it turned into, like, a research firm. So I didn't look to become a researcher, but they kind of put me in front of people and told me to ask them questions. You know what I mean? And I really feel grateful that I became—you know what I mean? You've been complimenting my questions and my interview.Yeah.I feel so lucky that I was given that opportunity to become an interviewer. And I'm just—everything—and so you and I, I think, are alike in that we talk to people, we listen to people, we ask questions in order to occupy their perspective for moments.Exactly.Can you tell me more about, I guess, a little bit about your methodology? About how do you listen to young people, and what does it mean to listen to people? Because so much—I agree with you—so much of, I mean, maybe this is just what it's like to be a researcher in a very divided—No, no, no.Environment, you know?Yeah, yeah. No, basically, because I'm not just a researcher—that's the answer.Yeah.So about 10 years ago, I started to do a project called the Listening with Curiosity Project in public schools. We now have been in public schools across New York City, and also I've taught it at university—at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU New York. And we created basically a framework and a method of teaching this—our practices. There are nine practices of listening with curiosity. I write about it in my Rebels with a Cause book.And we've integrated it into a curriculum where the framework is that we are experiencing a crisis of connection due to our cultural-nature clash. A cultural-nature clash leads us to disconnect from ourselves and each other, right?So I want people to understand that. Living, growing up, being social animals, growing up in an antisocial culture makes you disconnect from your own self, what you know about yourself, and what you know about others, what you know about your own humanity and other people's humanity.So the crisis of connection is the outcome of the cultural-nature clash. And the consequences of the crisis of connection are depression, anxiety, suicide, violence, domestic violence, mass shooters, drug abuse, right?Because once you disconnect from yourself, guess what happens? You disconnect from others. And once you can't see somebody else's humanity—that's it. You can't see your own, you can't see others. And the solution is—right?—so it's the cultural-nature clash leading to the crisis of connection. The solution is to go back to the first part of the story: our natural social selves.So the Listening with Curiosity practice is really fundamentally to tap into our five-year-old sense of wonder with each other. And I've been spending the last semester hanging out in a pre-K classroom of three-year-olds, four-year-olds. And Peter, I just have to say this because it's been so shocking to me:You go into a four-year-old classroom—it is bubbling not only with questions about each other. I get questions—when I first walked in, the questions were:"What's your mother's first name?""Why am I wearing this necklace?""Why do I seem to like the necklace?"—because it was the second day I'd been watching them. A million questions—they're asking each other questions. "Where is Harrison?"—because Harrison's supposed to be in the class—and "Is he sick?" I mean, basically all these questions about each other—interpersonal curiosity. We don't even study that topic in developmental psychology, Peter. It's not even a topic we investigate—interpersonal curiosity.What?We don't even study it. We don't think it's a thing—because we feminized it. We feminized it. And thus, we don't think it's a real thing. We study intellectual curiosity—curiosity about the world—but not the natural curiosity of each other. If you want to know the answer to why we're having a crisis of connection, it's that. It's that we don't nurture our natural interpersonal curiosity in other people's thoughts and feelings. It's all about me. What can I tell you about me? It's not about, actually, what can I learn from you?So what children are doing—showing—four-year-olds are showing that if you don't have that, if you're not nurturing that sense of "Who are you?" and "What can I learn about you?"—and then ideally, it goes both ways—that's what creates connection. That's what creates connection.So not only are they engaging with questions, but it is the most social, moral context I have ever been in, in my last 20 years. They are taking care of each other—even when they fight, because there's obviously some bad behavior going on (they're four years old).But even when they fight, it's hilarious. I mean, it's funny, almost—because they will start to hit, and then you'll come over, and one kid will be mad at the other kid, and he's sort of hitting him on the arm. And you'll say, "Oh, come on, you can't do that. You can't hit." And then you'll walk away, and you'll see him sort of do it again, and then the other kid will sort of do it again.And before you know it—I promise you, it's happened many times—there's a group hug going on. A group hug. Like, the two boys will start hugging, and then all the other boys will jump in, they'll start hugging each other, and then they're starting to laugh. I mean, it's just amazing.Yes, do some kids act out and act poorly? Sure, of course. But what's amazing to me is how social and moral it is. They're paying attention.We had a little story—I have two quick stories to tell you, because I'll tell you why I'm telling the story: because it's directly answering your question—How do we fix it?We fix it through remembering that we were naturally like this. So they're reading a book about a boy who wants to step on an ant. It's a fantastic children's story—I don't remember the name of it—but it's fantastic. And so the teacher turned it into a discussion about whether the boy should step on the ant or not. And it was amazing to hear the kids arguing about why the boy should not step on the ant. And it did not feel like it was just, "Oh, that comes from the parents," you know what I mean? It came from them. They were like, "The ant has a family, and he would lose his family, and his family would be very sad." You know, all the kids—all the kids.And one kid—which I loved, one of the most delicious young kids in the classroom—he said, "Well, I think the boy should step on the ant."And I said, "Why do you think that? Why do you think that?"And he goes, "Because it's a little bit fun."And I just loved it—you know, that's a four-year-old—the honesty, the honesty.He wasn't just saying what he thought he was supposed to say. He looked at me with this lovely devious smile and said, "But it's a little bit fun."And so, anyway. Then the other thing. One little boy showed a video of the way he gets to work—well, school—to school. And the teacher then opens this up and says, "What questions do you have for him about the video?" It’s a two-minute video. All of them raised their hands—all of them. And they asked real questions.It's not just raising their hand to raise their hand. They're asking questions like:"Who videotaped it?""Where was your dad?""We could hear your dad's voice—what was he doing?""Where are you?""Why are you scrooching down on your video?"I'm just saying—you get what I'm saying. And in my NYU classroom or my Yale classroom—or wherever I've taught (I've taught in lots of places around the world)—you ask a question or you ask what their questions are:Nothing.Nothing.Nothing.I want to slow-motion this idea that there's no study of interpersonal curiosity.Can you please just sort of—Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.I don't quite believe it.Yeah, I know, I know. Okay, so first of all—I'm exaggerating a little bit. There are a couple studies. There's a beautiful book called Hungry Minds that came out a couple of years ago, and she talks about social curiosity. She—and probably, I would say, maybe four or five other people in the history of developmental psychology that I am aware of—have looked at social curiosity. So it's definitely been looked at in a sort of small group of studies that you can find. And everybody cites the same person. The person who wrote Hungry Minds is Susan Engel. Everybody cites her because she's the one that actually looked at what's called social curiosity.However—right—so that's... but it's still a tiny group. It's a tiny group compared to looking at intellectual curiosity, or self-regulation, or all the other things we look at in childhood.But what has not been done—we're hoping to do the first study ever—is a developmental study where you look at how interpersonal curiosity changes over time and how that is shaped by the context. That's never been done. And I'm just saying that because in developmental psychology, that's what we do. We look at things over time. We don't look at one-shot deals.And so the whole point is: there's probably, out there—because you never say never in anything—there's probably a study out there that's done it over a few years that I've never heard of. But the point is: given the importance of human connection to interpersonal curiosity, it is stunning to me that we don't have decades and decades of developmental research over time, looking at the development of that sense of wonder in each other.How the context matters—because you know context matters. The home context, the school context, the peer context. If it's not happening with your peers or at your home, it's not going to be happening. It's going to be diminishing. And then—why is it that we start off at four or five—this is the big question, Peter—this is what I want to ask your audience. Why at four and five is everybody raising their hand to ask questions of the little boy about how he got to school—meaning not about the moon, not about the stars, not about anything abstract—but just how that boy got to school, you know, in his little video?And then you ask a question—or you ask if they have questions—very simple questions, not testing questions, very simple questions or asking for their questions about very fundamental issues... And nobody raises their hand, except the three students who always raise their hand, right? And you end up calling on them. And when I told that to my kids, who are 22 and 24, they said, "Well, because everybody's afraid." And I said, exactly—that's my point. I don't think that my students are idiots—obviously not. I know that they have that five-year-old in them. But they become afraid.What's made them so afraid? It's the anti-social culture that basically judges your curiosity. It makes a judgment about whether your curiosity is sophisticated, whether it reflects intelligence. And they think that asking, "What's your mother's name?" is a stupid question. It's not a stupid question—because actually, your mother's name— I love that the child asked it.You know what my daughter said? This was so interesting. She's 22, and I was telling her about that story. And I was sort of thinking it was so sweet that the little girl wanted to know my mother's name.And she said, "Well, Mom, you know why?"And I was like, "No, I don't know why."And she goes, "She's probably just realizing that her mom has a name.You know, it's not just 'Mom.' And so because she is just recognizing that her mom has a name, she realizes that you probably have a mom with a name.And so she wants to know what that name is." And I said, "Chiara"—that's my daughter’s name—"Chiara, that is just so effing great." I said, "I think you got it spot on."And I said, "You got it." And I would have never thought of that, because I still have an adult head. I was thinking it was like a way to connect to me—I mean, you know, whatever.I wasn't thinking what she was thinking about it—worse from the four-year-old perspective. She was channeling the four-year-old and saying, "You just learned that 'Mom' is not a name." And so—don't you love that response? I mean, it's beautiful. But I'm just saying—what happens to us? I think—honestly—I think we get traumatized by the culture. I think we're traumatized. We're fearful, we're traumatized. We don't want to ask questions. We're afraid of being judged. We don't share with our parents because we're afraid of being judged. We don't share anything because we're afraid of being judged in an anti-social culture that hates people. No, no, I'm serious.I mean, you know.I know, I know, I know. Think about how much we hate people.Well, I'm also thinking—to the degree to which you have access to these insights into boys and into us—because you're having the conversations. But where are those conversations happening, in the absence of the research that gets done to create the conditions for it?Yeah, on this podcast. I'm just saying—it doesn't happen. And that's the other thing we get from young people. I get this all the time—you must get this all the time. People get teary-eyed after I interview them. People get emotional. And so—I mean, I get it from little kids, from teenagers, from young adults, from grownups. I even asked—I remember asking an African-American man, probably in his late 40s—what he wants in his life most, and why. And he got all teary-eyed.He said, "Nobody asks Black men that." He said, "Nobody. I've never been asked that in my entire life—what do I want, and why?" He said, "I've never been asked that." And he started to get all teary-eyed.And I thought, that's the tragedy of an antisocial culture. We don't think what you want is relevant. We don't think what you want is relevant unless it's about money and unless it's helping us get what we want.There's so much. I mean, I feel like the gendered aspect of questions and listening—So I've been a researcher and I've operated in the commercial sphere. And very often I'm interacting with what feels like sort of the feminine part of a corporation—the part that does research and listens to people. Somebody called me—they described me as the most masculine researcher they'd met. And I found it so—it's like, it gives me vertigo. I don't know what to do with that description because it sort of turns expectations. What does that mean exactly? I don't quite understand it.Yeah, yeah, neither do I.But there was another thought that I had about—oh, that answers—we prioritize answers. The hierarchy, right?Oh, totally.To have a question is a complete weakness. It's a complete failure.I'm going to make it more blunt. We privilege knowing over not knowing. And so ultimately, that is our ultimate hierarchy. That—what you know. What do you know. And not, "What do you not know?""What are your questions?" And I want to create a revolution. I really—I'm serious about this. I want to—we've been trying to do this in middle and high schools for the last decade. I want to create a revolution to celebrate our capacity to not know, and to know what we don't know, and to ask questions. Right? And I just—I remember, that's so obvious to me. It hit me about two years ago. That's what it is. We privilege knowing over not knowing.And so everybody wants to share what they know, rather than—"What's your question? What's your question?" And they're like, "Well, I don't have any questions." Like—how can you have no questions? You know? Yeah, well—yeah, we are. We're traumatized.Like you say—you can't generate a question when you're terrified.Exactly. I literally think we are traumatized. There's a beautiful concept—which we don't have time to talk about—but at some point, I want to recommend a book, Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, talks about a concept called moral injury.And he talks about essentially living—he's talking about the military—but it's applied to our culture. When people in authority do things that you know is not right, but you are forced to do it anyway. And I think we are all experiencing moral injury, right?We know this anti-social culture is toxic.Right. We know it. We know it in our bodies. And yet we produce it. We continually produce it. And I think it's causing a serious trauma—more trauma for certain people than other people. But the point is—that's why we're getting the mass shooters, the rising suicides. I mean, it's causing serious, serious problems.And I do have to say—because people forget—it's not natural to kill ourselves and to kill each other. That's not a natural thing. We may have done it throughout our history, but I'm just saying—it's not natural to our species. It's just something that happens. Why does it happen so much? Why is it happening more in terms of suicide? (Not in terms of homicide, but in terms of suicide.)Anyway.Last question. What do you love about your work? Like, where's the joy in it for you?You know what? To live a life—you’re going to relate to this— to live a life where I get to have questions and then pursue the answers to them— you can't get better than that.I mean, I live a life of purpose, of passion, of asking my own questions, and then going out into the world and trying to answer it sitting in pre-K classrooms, interviewing teenagers, doing studies with amazing college students, teaching classes on topics that I love.I mean, I am the most lucky person in the whole world. I'm the most lucky person in the whole world. I mean, think about it. You must feel the same way. That's what I do. That's what I do for a living. I get paid for it. I get paid.I'm right there with you. I feel like it's amazing. To be given the permission to ask questions and then listen and explore is just an unbelievable gift.Exactly. And we need to use a beautiful phrase—which I'm going to repeat back because it's important. I think it's important for the two of us also to really encourage that: giving permission to ask. You know, like creating structures—I try to do it in my classrooms—giving the permission to ask.Yes.Oftentimes people think asking is rude—and it's the opposite of rude.Well, I'm really landing in this. It feels a little bit too academic or too explicit for some reason, but you've used this term over and over again. that if we are in agreement that we live in an anti-social culture, then we need to create pro-social— A pro-social culture.Yeah.And that is in the book I'm working on now for Harvard, called Our Social Nature in an Anti-Social Culture: A Five-Part Story. And the last chapter is all about how to create a pro-social culture. And what I'm arguing here is the importance of interpersonal curiosity.Yeah, it's amazing. Why is that word—I feel like this is a phrase, pro-social, that I hadn't really—I've only encountered it in the last, I don't know, couple of years. I heard it once three years ago, and it was around deliberative democracy and a wonkish kind of way of bringing people together and community engagement and civic engagement.And it was like—if we're fragmenting in all these different ways, and all of our spaces that we have for coming together around community decisions or interpersonal decisions aren't working—then what do we do? We have to model new forms of behavior, right? And this idea of pro-social is all over for me now.Yeah, no, but also—I would just want to remind you as a developmental psychologist—because there's not enough developmental psychologists in these conversations, by the way. They always get social psychologists. It's like—social psychologists don't listen to children.Developmental psychology—no, I'm serious. I mean, if we listened to children, we wouldn't be so obsessed with social psychology. So developmentals remind us that we already have the skills within us. We're born with it. It's natural. It's not—we don't have to teach it. We don't have to, right? We just have to nurture it.And so to me, that's the radical optimistic message I'm saying. I'm deeply optimistic because we are born with these skills. Young people reveal them all the time. It's just a matter of nurturing them rather than shutting them down. So the solution is not to teach it. The solution is to nurture it. That's a much easier thing to do, right?And so the idea is that if we listened to young people—which nobody's doing—and nobody's listening to developmental psychologists—we would understand. See, we don't think we can learn something from young people, Peter. We really don't.We think we know, and they don't know. And we don't value not knowing.So they're not going to teach us anything. We have to reverse that whole hierarchy of adults over children. We actually should see them equally. We all have—I always say this—we all have something to teach and something to learn. Everybody, regardless of your age. You have something to teach and something to learn.If we understood that naturally—and we understood we have the capacity to answer our own questions, right, through investigating it with other people—we would just be inherently a pro-social culture.Because it's about looking at you, Peter, and saying, What can I learn from you, not just about you, but about me, through you, right? And then once that happens—Toni Morrison talks about that—once that happens, that's when a connection happens. When we do it both ways. That we see ourselves in the other, and then we're connected.I feel like we're slipping into the geeking out phase, which I'm enjoying very much. One last thought. Did you ever encounter Ursula Le Guin's Listening and Telling?Do you know that essay?I think I do, because the name is super familiar.But she describes—she uses these analogies for communication. The conventional idea is like boxes transmitting units of information through a tube, but anybody who has actually had a conversation knows that's not true. And she uses the analogy of amoeba sex as being the metaphor for communication—because it's intersubjective and it's reciprocal, and they become one. They come together in conversation.Yeah, but it has to have curiosity in it. Because what I would say—in a neoliberal, crazy environment—where our conversation is just parallel play, it's actually not doing that, because there's no curiosity in it. So it's just parallel play, where each person is talking but nobody's listening.I love it.And so to me, you have to have the curiosity in there, right? To be like an amoeba, right? I mean, it has to—Yeah, you have to want, right?You have to want it. You have to be curious. You have to wonder about the other person. And if you don't have that, you get this isolating, horrible parallel play—where we think just by revealing my private information, we're going to create a relationship. And that doesn't create a relationship—to just reveal vulnerable stuff.I know we're over time, but I'm amazed at how many people will think that the key to closeness is being vulnerable. Right. Like, no, no, no, no, no. The key to closeness is curiosity.Yeah.You know—be curious about the person you're talking to. Who are they?You have to be curious. The vulnerability is so overrated to me.Yeah. I remember somebody saying that the key to a good interview is love.What do you make of that?I mean, if love is curiosity. But I would say again—it's like, if you're not curious—as so many people know, especially when it goes one way, you're curious about the person and they're not curious about you, it leads to deep alienation when someone's not curious about you. You know, when you're talking and they're blabbing on and blabbing on and blabbing on—and then, you know, for a lot of people, it leads to real anger. You know—how can you not be curious in me, and I'm curious in you?We have come to the end of our time. Thank you so much!Thank you, thank you.All right.Take care.Bye-bye. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Russell Davies is a writer and strategist. He's worked on communications and digital strategies for organizations like Honda, Nike, Microsoft, Apple, the Government Digital Service and the Co-op. He's currently Marketing and Product Director for The Modern House. He is the author of Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Powerpoint, DO Interestingness, among others. All right, Russell, thank you so much for accepting my invitation. I start all my conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend who helps people tell their stories. It’s a big question, which is why I love it—but because it’s so big, I tend to over-explain it, like I’m doing now. Before I ask it, I want you to know you’re in total control. You can answer however you want—or not at all. The question is: Where do you come from? Oh, you made me nervous then. I come from a small city in the East Midlands of England called Derby.And what was it like growing up in Derby?It was fine.Do you have any recollections? What did you want to be when you grew up—young Russell in Derby?I wanted to be a musician, but not enough to actually become one. I also wanted to be Clive James, the Australian critic—a very clever man who was one of the first people to take television seriously in writing. He wrote a funny and clever column about popular TV as if it were art. That seemed like the best job there could be.Do you remember what kind of television he was writing about that made you feel that way?Everything—arts, news, sitcoms. At the time, he wrote a lot about shows like Dallas and Dynasty. He was a critic but also a poet. He could really write. He was part of that generation of Australians who came to the UK in the ’50s and ’60s and saw Britain with an outsider’s eye—but sometimes they were more inside than the British themselves because of the colonial relationship. I thought, what a great way to make a living.Where are you now, and what do you do? What’s keeping you busy these days?I'm not Clive James, sadly. I now live in London, and I work in marketing.What does it mean to be from the Midlands? I lived in San Francisco for a while and played soccer for a pub team run by a guy from Birmingham. That’s Midlands, right? Yes—West Midlands.Okay, so what’s the important distinction? I might fumble here—it’s delicate territory.It’s like being from the North but without any of the advantages. Only people from the Midlands think the Midlands exists. People from the South just think in terms of North and South. Same with people from the North. I’m not a fan of geographical specialness. Every country thinks it has a unique sense of humor or music culture—but usually, they don’t. The Midlands is like everywhere else. Actually, the East Midlands is special in that it doesn’t think it’s special.Beautiful. I seem to remember—and correct me if I’m wrong—that you had a slogan or motto on one of your blogs: "I’m as disappointed as you are." Does that ring a bell?Yeah, yeah, yeah. That probably used to be on the blog. Maybe it’s not anymore.Where did that come from?That came from when I was working at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, on the Microsoft business. At the time, Wieden had two big accounts: Nike and Microsoft. All the cool kids worked on Nike. The nerdy kids, like me, worked on Microsoft. They did great ads—we didn’t. Microsoft was clearly unhappy with us. We kept trying to make good ads, and they kept saying, "We don’t need these."Then Microsoft got sued by the Department of Justice in the late ’90s. They were lining up to fire us, but firing your agency during an antitrust suit looks bad. So they kept paying us—$20 million a year—even though we weren’t doing much.There were basically two of us on the account: me and the account director, a fantastic woman named Trish. We’d fly to Seattle every week just to hold meetings because they were paying us. At one point, Bob Herbold, then CEO of Microsoft and famously the highest-salaried person in America, decided he wanted a new tagline.We had previously come up with "Where do you want to go today?"—Jim Riswold wrote that, arguably one of the best taglines ever, after "Just Do It." But no one was working on it anymore. It was just Trish and me. We’d brainstorm taglines on the plane to Seattle. One day, we realized the perfect tagline was: "We’re as disappointed as you are." And yeah, it stuck. It stuck with me. I felt a strong connection to it.Imagine how brilliant that company would be if they’d actually used it.So, your answer earlier about what you’re doing now was a bit reluctant—an ambivalent “marketing.” When did you first realize you could make a living doing... whatever this is that you do?When I was forced to, I suppose. I left Derby for university and, of course, couldn’t go back. So I moved to London and needed a job. This was the late ’80s. If you wanted to do something vaguely creative and make a decent living—and your parents weren’t already in the industry—you went into advertising or design. It was a way into creative work. My view of advertising came from watching Bewitched and Thirtysomething. I thought, "That looks good—I’ll do that."Wait—Bewitched? I didn’t realize that was what he did.Yeah. Darren, Samantha’s husband—he was in advertising. He was constantly trying to come up with slogans and would write them on an easel.Oh, amazing.Yeah. That’s what I thought advertising was: the client comes in with a bottle of something and says, “I need a slogan,” and you come up with one.What do you love about the work? You’ve done so many different things—where’s the joy in it, if any?If any. I mean, I wouldn’t do it if they didn’t pay me.So, not exactly joyful?Well, yeah. I think enjoy is different from joy. There are aspects that are interesting, even satisfying. But I think it can be dangerous to talk about work using words like joy, love, and passion. It sets unrealistic expectations—like Instagram. You're only seeing the highlights. So yes, it can be fascinating and engaging, and it’s definitely better than many other jobs. But at the end of the day, it’s still a job. Mostly, it’s about passing the time.I’m curious—what are you enjoying these days? You mentioned something about semi-retirement. Is that actually the case?Oh, that was a joke. It’s just been the header on my blog for probably ten years. But people see it and assume I’ve retired. I haven’t.What I am doing now is getting more comfortable with being older. You know, the happiness researchers say that happiness declines from your mid-30s to your mid-50s, and then starts rising again—basically when you realize you’re never going to achieve what you thought you were, and you get comfortable with that. I’m enjoying being in that phase. I’m very lucky in a lot of ways.Over the past 10 to 15 years, I’ve mostly worked with people who are much younger than me. I find that really rewarding. It’s energizing—not in the creepy, "youth is energy" way—but because it clarifies what I’m there to do, and what I’m not there to do. I’m there to offer pattern recognition and experience—not energy and ideas. And I quite like that. I enjoy it.Tell me more—when you say pattern recognition, what does that look like?Well, when you’ve been doing this work long enough, you realize there are no new problems. You’ve seen the same challenges dozens of times. So someone comes to you and says, “Should we do A or B?” And you just say, “Do A.”And they ask, “How do you know?” And you say, “Because I’ve seen this before.” Sometimes, that makes you stop and reflect—why do I think A is better than B? That’s interesting to unpack. But most of the time, you’re just helping people resolve Friedkin’s Paradox.Friedkin’s Paradox?It goes something like: If you're choosing between two equally attractive options, it’s a very difficult decision—because they’re equally attractive. The paradox is that it doesn’t matter which you choose.Most branding, marketing, advertising, and communications decisions are like that. You’re rarely in a room with a brilliant idea and a terrible idea. You’re almost always deciding between a few pretty good ones.And yet, companies will spend six months agonizing over which to choose—when it really doesn’t matter. Having an old guy in the room who can say, “Just do that one,” saves everyone a lot of time.Deeply liberating, it seems.Yeah. I once spent about six months working with Coca-Cola in Atlanta, helping them decide whether the fifth brand value for Diet Coke should be fun or funny. And it didn’t matter.Did you know that at the time?Yeah. I knew. Partly because this was going on a creative brief, and I knew, A. the creatives wouldn’t read it. B, it wouldn’t change anything anyone did, and C, when it came time to evaluate the work against the brief, we’d spend another six months asking, “Is that fun? Or is that funny?”But we’ve built an industry and a profession where people are really well-equipped to argue about whether something is fun or funny. We hire people with English degrees—people who understand semantics and who can debate trivial, pointless minutiae for months. And it feels like work.And honestly, it’s quite fun work. I talk about this in presentations sometimes. I’ll ask, “Who thinks it should be fun? Who thinks it should be funny?” Then I give people a few minutes to think it through, and they come up with very committed points of view.They’re determined. They’ll say, “It should definitely be fun,” and then give me their rationale. And it still doesn’t matter. So being in rooms and helping people navigate that—that’s valuable. The organizational version of that is called bike shedding. Are you familiar with it?I think I came across it via Farnam Street—Shane Parrish’s work. It feels like a British expression.It kind of is. The original idea came from a British columnist named C. Northcote Parkinson in the 1930s. He wrote for the Straits Times, a paper in Hong Kong, and his columns were often humorous.He coined Parkinson’s Law—“Work expands to fill the time available.” But he also introduced something now called the law of triviality, which became known as bike shedding. He tells the story of a planning committee reviewing whether to build a nuclear power station. They spend about 20 minutes on the nuclear plans—because none of them really understand nuclear energy—so they just say, “Sure, that seems fine.”Then, the next agenda item is: What color should the bike shed be next to the nuclear plant? They spend six hours debating it—because everyone has an opinion on colors, and everyone has seen a bike shed.Originally, it was just a little joke column. But sometime in the ’70s or ’80s, maybe later, the idea was picked up in the software development world—because it’s a very common issue in programming and tech.I first encountered it when I was working at the Government Digital Service. I was in a meeting—and the meeting descended into talking about trivial stuff. But I felt completely comfortable—like, this is what I’ve been doing my whole life. I can talk about trivial stuff for days. I’m good at this. It’s basically what I get paid to do. Then someone said, “Oh, we’re bike shedding.” And everyone else went, “Oh, yes, you’re right. Let’s stop.” And they just moved on.It was amazing. A tremendous organizational hack. Just by naming the phenomenon, everyone recognized it. “Yes, we are talking about something trivial. Let’s move on.” It was genius. And now, I think that’s one of the things I do—I help people recognize when they’re bike shedding. Like we are now.When people reach out to you, what kind of questions do they ask? What kinds of projects do you like to take on?I do a fair bit of traditional brand consultancy work. I also ghostwrite a lot of presentations. People often come to me because they’re trying to express something, and they just can’t quite figure out how to say it. It’s less about consumer-level messaging these days, and more at the organizational level.Most of what I do is just take what they have and make it shorter. That’s really it—I delete stuff. Because people find that impossible. For whatever reason, people just cannot delete things. So they come to me with all this material and say, “Can you clean this up?” And I do. And I enjoy it. It’s fun. I’ve developed this instinct—whatever I’m looking at, I’m immediately thinking, How can we make this shorter?My team at the Government Digital Service once joked that I could be replaced by a Slack bot with three automated responses: No, Tea? and Make it shorter.I wanted to ask you about the Government Digital Service. I know the bike shedding idea from attending small-town planning meetings, but I didn’t realize it could be applied as a kind of corrective—as a hack. I feel like I’ve got a whole new purpose in life now—like bike shedding as a form of intervention. That’s amazing.How did the Government Digital Service come about for you? The design principles are kind of legendary. I’ve spent time with civic innovators here in the U.S. who are trying to replicate some of that. It’s such a beautiful story, and what you did was so impressive. How did you end up being part of it?I was very lucky. This would have been around 2011 or 2012. At the time, I was doing a terrible job in some vague strategic planning role—something like “EMEA Strategy Director” at R/GA. We were still feeling the effects of the financial crash, and a lot of the interesting, independent digital businesses in the UK were struggling or shutting down.We had a coalition government, which is quite rare in the UK, and there had just been a massive IT scandal involving the NHS. They had wasted an enormous amount of money. For the previous 10 or 15 years, a small group of people had been lobbying government—saying, “We should do the internet better. We can do this better.”Eventually, all these forces aligned. The government needed a project that was non-controversial—because of the coalition—and they needed to save a lot of money. At the same time, this group of smart people, both inside and outside government, suddenly had influence. And that led to the creation of the Government Digital Service (GDS), which was positioned at the center of government and given a rare amount of authority over digital work.It was a fragmented system. Every department had its own website, its own vendors, its own way of doing things. Everything was outsourced, expensive, and broken. I didn’t know any of this at the time. I was completely oblivious.Then a friend of mine, Ben Terrett—a designer and frequent blogger—was approached to become Head of Design at GDS. Back then, the blogging community was pretty small, and people across design, tech, and comms kind of knew each other.We met for breakfast, and he said, “I’ve been offered this job. It sounds terrible. Why would I do this?” Designing government websites wasn’t anyone’s dream gig.But we talked about it and realized, actually, this was a really interesting problem. It might be the last great web problem. We’d missed out on Web 2.0 and the startup boom. But digital transformation in government? That felt like one of the big things. So Ben took the job.And I did something I’ve probably never done before or since—I went and asked, “Can I have a job too, please?” I said, “I don’t know exactly what I can do for you, but this seems really interesting. I’d love to be part of it.”They basically made a role for me. It was essentially Head of PowerPoint. The idea was, “We’re going to need someone to explain what we’re doing—to the rest of government and to the world.” So I handled presentations and blogging.Ben and I ended up being, in a way, creative directors for GDS. He led design; I led communication and storytelling. I had a small team focused on explanation—making sense of what we were doing. And that’s when I realized that being in charge of presentations is, in part, being in charge of strategy. You back your way into figuring out what to say by figuring out how to say it.Can you say more about that?Sure. It ties into what I was saying earlier about the kind of work I do now. There’s that truism: writing is thinking. To write well, you have to think clearly. And I’d extend that—writing presentations is deciding. To make a good presentation, you have to make choices. You have to say, “I’m going to include this and not that.” You have to commit.When I was creating presentations at the Government Digital Service, I made up some rules—like, don’t use too many words, make the type big, that kind of thing. And that forced clarity. You had to actually decide what you were going to say. A lot of presentations—especially in government—are filled with hedging and ambiguity. You can tell no one has really committed to a point of view, so the presentation becomes this vague, shapeless thing.A good example: one of our jobs was to tell government departments they were no longer going to have their own websites. Someone drafted a presentation slide that said something like, “Department websites under review,” or “Ongoing consultation process.” I asked, “Are we saying we’re going to close their websites?” They said yes.So I said, “Well, we should put that on the slide, then.”And there’d be pushback—“We can’t say that,” or “It’s too blunt.” But we’d debate it and, ultimately, agree: if that’s what we mean, that’s what we need to say. It forced the team to clarify the message before going into the room, instead of presenting a vague message and being unsure how to respond when someone asks, “What exactly are you saying?” So yeah, in a way, 30-point type became a tool for strategic clarity.Is that where your PowerPoint book came from?Yeah. That was the origin. But also, the book came about halfway through my lifelong relationship with PowerPoint. Again, I was just very lucky. I started using it right around the time it was becoming the standard presentation tool. And it just... suited me.In what way?Partly just circumstance. For a long time, my career—such as it was—succeeded because I knew how to put images into PowerPoint before most other people did.Seriously?Yeah. At the time, it was surprisingly hard. No one knew how to do it. I’d be a junior planner giving a client presentation, and afterward they’d say, “Yeah, that was good... but how did you get the images in there?”That one skill made me employable. And it’s not much of a stretch to say that’s how I ended up getting the job at Wieden+Kennedy. But also, there’s just something satisfying to me about the combination of words and images and talking. I almost want to say storytelling—though not in the grand, sweeping sense. More like: words, in a linear order, paired with visuals. That process—constructing a narrative slide by slide—is something I genuinely enjoy. Yeah. You know, I like it.Yeah.But it’s increasingly irrelevant.How do you mean?Well, that kind of work—the set-piece moment—it just doesn’t happen as much anymore in hybrid environments. The pitch, or even the small, micro-pitches throughout the week—presenting work, sharing a plan—that kind of formal moment is becoming rarer.And PowerPoint, as a tool, is used less and less. It feels a bit like the harpsichord being replaced by the piano. I struggled with that a bit during the pandemic.People started using Miro—a lot. And I’d be working with someone and say, “Can you show me the strategy stuff?” And they’d share a board. And I’d look at it and say, “OK, I can see you’ve got all the pieces—but what’s the order? Which bit is first? Which is most important?”And that’s the thing about PowerPoint, whatever else you say about it: it forces you to decide what order things go in. That’s actually quite a big deal. If you’re just presenting a cluster of ideas, that’s a different kind of value. It’s still valuable—but it’s different. It doesn’t force that same kind of decision-making.Yeah. I want to follow a thread here—maybe circle around it a bit before going right at it. I’m thinking about research. I mean, the GDS design principles famously start with “Start with user needs.” We’ve talked about bike shedding, decision-making, communication. So, how do you feel about research—about user needs—and the role that plays either in your own work or in good brand work more broadly?There are a few ways to come at that question. What we meant by “user needs” at that moment in time—and in that environment—was actually quite radical. In those early days of web services, for the first time at scale, you could watch what people did rather than ask them what they thought.After spending 10 or 15 years with both qualitative and quantitative research—and often finding very little value in either—it was revelatory to simply observe behavior. You could say, “OK, people are doing this thing—let’s make it easier for them to do it.” Then you’d move a button slightly to the left, and more people would click it. That kind of feedback loop was powerful.Now, of course, that approach has since been weaponized in all kinds of problematic ways. But if your goal is to help someone renew a driving license or apply for benefits, it’s an incredible tool.And at the time, it was also a reaction against how digital services—especially within organizations and government—had been built. They were almost always designed to serve the needs of the organization, not the user.Take the driving license example. I think it was that. Basically, the transaction required you to answer about five essential questions. But the form had ballooned to 60 questions, because people in government realized that everyone needed a driving license—and that made it a convenient opportunity to ask for all sorts of other information.So they’d say, “Can we just add this question?” or “Let’s collect data for this department, too.” Over time, the service became more about internal convenience than user need. That happens everywhere. It’s not unique to government.So being in a position where we had the authority to say, “No, we’re building this for the users,” was meaningful. And, like I said, after spending 20 years fighting against bad market research, it was refreshing to say, “I don’t care what they say—I can see what they’re doing.”Yeah. And I’d forgotten the context—this was 2011. That kind of behavioral data at scale wasn’t widely accessible yet.Exactly. Not unheard of, but within the context we were in—government, public service—it was still pretty new. And it was a big part of the shift. So how did the design principles come to exist? I’m thinking about how I first encountered them—it’s kind of amazing that I ever did. It feels unlikely. Had anyone really articulated what you guys were trying to say before? Or was it new?It all happened kind of accidentally. The product manager—I think it was him—mentioned something like, "They’ve asked us for a roadmap." Or maybe it was more like, "They’ve asked us for something." We were, in a sense, a substitute for something else that was supposed to happen. It was one of those, “We need a big, long something-or-other,” situations. But there wasn’t time. So the question became: can we just do something?A group of us started writing. And what we ended up doing—and this has become a key lesson for me—was simply to listen to what people were already saying. We’d hear something good, something interesting, and we’d say, “Yes, let’s use that.” Maybe tidy it up a bit, but essentially we just appropriated the language that was already circulating. It felt new and interesting. No one had really done design principles in that way before. People had written manifestos and so on, but not quite this.It wasn’t even my idea—someone else suggested we call them "principles." More specifically, “design principles.” And just like the concept of the "bikeshed" as a framing tool, naming them that way gave them weight. It made them feel more concrete, which was especially powerful in an organization that respected things that seemed solid. That gave them real power.I think the tenth principle was: Make things open; it makes them better. We’d just refer to it as “the tenth principle,” and people would say, “Right, we should share this.” That kind of framing gave it momentum. Looking back, they seem a bit banal now—somewhat self-serving and very much a product of their time. Back then, we thought we were cool and revolutionary… but we weren’t, really.Still, when I first encountered them, they felt incredibly powerful. And I think part of that power came from who was saying it. This was the British government, after all. It was surprising to hear them talk about openness and agile practices. If Nike had said it, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But coming from government? That was exciting.And honestly, a lot of what I did back then was just cover—creating space while others got on with the real work. Once that work started to take shape—like when we could say, “Look, you can now order your driving license in three minutes instead of thirty”—they didn’t need me anymore. But it was fun. Almost joyful, really.How have things changed in your industry since you started—whether in advertising, marketing, or branding? You mentioned working with a lot of young people now and being a kind of pattern recognizer. What do you notice is different for them? What do you learn about the field through their eyes?I think young people have it a lot harder than I did. I came into the industry with a huge amount of privilege. I’m a tall-ish, white, straight man. I had a solid education, fully funded by the state. And I entered advertising at a time when the industry was fat, wealthy, happy—even indulgent. It could afford to let someone like me spend five years figuring out how to be useful.Then I got very lucky. I spent ten years at Wieden+Kennedy, and they basically wanted exactly what I had to offer. In a 30-year career, I’d say ten of those years were genuinely good and successful—which, honestly, are pretty decent odds. But the landscape has changed. It’s just tougher now. The industry is more fragmented, there's less money, and it doesn’t feel as special.What do you mean by “less special”?I mean it’s less good—because it doesn’t need to be. When I was starting out, advertising was a compelling field. It was one of the most creative corners of commercial life. It stood shoulder to shoulder with film, design, and music. That’s not the case anymore.And I think, on some level, that’s actually a good thing for society. The kind of people who might’ve gone into advertising 20 years ago? They're YouTubers now. They’re creating independently. They don’t need advertising anymore.In the UK especially—though I think to some extent this is true in the US too—advertising was once where bright, creative, working-class people ended up. They couldn’t get into publishing, museums, or journalism because of structural barriers like the Oxbridge system. So instead, they funneled their creativity into commercial industries like advertising, music, and design. That led to a real flourishing of talent—people like Tony and Ridley Scott, or the Hegartys and Saatchis.But now, if you’re one of those people, and you can break into the creative industries (which is harder than ever), you’re not going to choose a network ad agency. You’re going to do it on your own terms—on TikTok, YouTube, or wherever you can build your own audience and your own life. So maybe it’s not harder—it’s just different now. And I know you mentioned offering advice about how to run a meeting, but not so much about how to get a job.Exactly. I have no idea how someone gets a job now. It’s very different. I’m happy to give advice on things like how to run a good meeting, but career paths today feel unrecognizable to me.And in some ways, things are better now. I remember someone once saying that in the 1960s, British culture was essentially run by ten white men: the heads of the two TV stations, editors of five national newspapers, the directors of the British Museum and Library, and maybe Charles Saatchi. The accepted mainstream culture was this very singular, mono-everything structure. That’s no longer the case—and that’s undoubtedly a good thing. It’s different now. But different isn’t always worse.You mentioned having ten “good” years out of a 30-year career. Were there mentors who made a big impact on you? Or certain lessons or touchstones you come back to in your work?I don’t have an immediate answer to that—which probably means... no, not really. I’ve become more and more aware of just how lucky and privileged I’ve been. So when I talk about mentors or guiding principles, it starts to sound like I had agency in my career, like I planned it all. But honestly, I didn’t. I made a lot of bad decisions and a few good ones.And the strange thing about history—or about telling your story in hindsight—is that people only talk about the things you did well. So the narrative becomes, “Oh, you did this, and then you did that, and then you did this other brilliant thing.” And I’m sitting there thinking, “Yeah, but I also spent five years doing something that went nowhere and made me miserable.”That said, while I might not have had formal mentors, I did make a lot of really good friends. And I’ve always wanted to impress them. A lot of the things I’ve done were motivated by admiration—by trying to do something smart enough, good enough, or interesting enough that it would earn their respect. And I think that’s made me better. I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by wise people, and even luckier to be motivated by wanting to impress them.In the early days of blogging, there was this guy—Chris Heathcote—who ran a blog called Anti Mega. He’s a friend now, I think. If you asked him, I hope he’d say he’s one of my friends. But back then, he was someone I admired from afar.His blog was intimidating in that very particular way blogs could be—written by someone you’d never met, but who clearly knew everything. Chris wrote about design, food, molecular gastronomy, museums. He worked at Nokia when Nokia was the coolest company on earth. I was completely in awe. I just wanted Chris to like me. I’d write blog posts like, “Chris said this clever thing,” and then riff off it. He was a touchstone, even if he didn’t know it.Eventually, I wanted to ask him to speak at my own conference. At the time, I was working at Nike, and they paid for me to attend TED in 2005. This was before TED talks were everywhere online—you had to be there. And the talks were amazing. It was the first time I’d seen the 20-minute talk as a kind of performance art. But I hated the networking bits—the mingling before and after. The talks, though, were electric.After I left Nike and started freelancing, I realized I had saved enough to attend TED again. But then it occurred to me: what if, instead of flying to Monterey and spending all that money on TED, I used that budget to put on my own conference? So I did. I created a small event called Interesting. And, yes—part of the reason was so I could ask Chris to speak. He said yes. He spoke. I met him. And he turned out to be a lovely, generous man. Not intimidating at all.That moment captures a lot of how I’ve moved through the industry. Back when I was working in advertising, I often felt envious of the early digital crowd—the Web 2.0 people. I admired them immensely, but they were suspicious of me. I worked in advertising, and that made me... suspect.Brian Eno talks about scenius instead of genius—the idea that it’s not about the lone brilliant mind, but about a whole scene of people elevating one another. That’s what that blogging era felt like. If I had mentors, they came from that community—this loosely connected, mostly white, mostly male group in London, San Francisco, and New York who found each other through blogging. It had its flaws—self-satisfaction, insularity—but it was also generous and creatively nourishing. I was lucky to be a part of it.How would you describe scenius?Eno probably has a better definition than I could offer, but I always come back to two models—two kinds of groups that really work, whether for organizations or communities.One is like The Magnificent Seven—a group of experts, each with their own skill, coming together with a clear mission. The other is like The Scooby Gang—a group of friends going on an adventure. For me, it’s always been the second. I prefer a group of friends figuring it out together.You’ve spent a lot of time with the word interesting—naming events around it, exploring it. What does that word mean to you? What is interestingness?It really began during the Wieden+Kennedy and Microsoft days. There were two of us—myself and a planner named Jeffrey Jackson—working closely on the Microsoft account. He had previously worked at Goodby Silverstein in San Francisco and introduced me to the work of Howard Gossage, a 1960s ad man who once said something like, “People don’t read advertising. People read what’s interesting. Sometimes that’s advertising.”That stuck with us. At the time, we were trying to decode what the Nike team at Wieden was doing. They had this intuitive, almost instinctive creative process. For years, there wasn’t much formal strategy or planning on Nike. It was just, well, Just Do It. And our job was to take that unspoken brilliance and somehow translate it into something Microsoft could use. And we kept coming back to one simple thing: just make stuff that’s interesting.We started asking ourselves that all the time: What’s interesting to us? How do you do interesting? Around that time, there was also this idea floating around the web—Flickr had an “interestingness” algorithm. There was this early, geeky optimism that maybe interestingness could be quantified, maybe even engineered. Of course, now TikTok has turned that idea into a global business. But back then, it was a kind of curiosity we kept returning to.So when I decided to put on a conference, I needed a name—and I called it Interesting. I ran it for a few years. It was a chance to gather people together and simply share things they found compelling.Eventually, I had to stop. It started to feel like a thing, and I didn’t want to scale it. And then this group—New—picked up the idea and launched their own event called Boring, which was a brilliant name, actually. It had that ironic twist: these are things you think are boring but are actually fascinating. It was clever. But what I loved about Interesting was its sincerity. There was no irony in it. We just earnestly wanted to share things that sparked wonder.It wasn’t geeky or meta or trying to be clever. It was pure. Just people talking about stuff they cared about. And, oddly enough, Interesting became part of my identity. I even owned the @interesting handle on Twitter for a while. For a brief moment in time, that was actually worth something—and of course, I didn’t sell it when I should have.Earlier you mentioned scenius. Do you think the community you were part of was a kind of scenius?Yeah, I think scenius was exactly what it was—people loosely gathered around a shared idea, or a set of values, or just a common curiosity. You know, Brian Eno and Steven Johnson write about these cultural clusters: the Enlightenment salons, Paris cafés, London coffee shops, San Francisco in the ’60s, New York in the ’80s. We were none of those. But there was a small group in London in the early 2000s—connected to similar groups in New York and San Francisco—who were doing interesting work and sharing ideas online.I made a lot of very close friends in that world—many of whom I’ve never met in person. But they shaped me. I’ve always liked that Eno distinction between genius and scenius. My mentors weren’t singular figures. It was the community. And it wasn’t always perfect—mostly white, mostly male, and often very self-satisfied. But it was also generous and nourishing.Do you have a metaphor for what those communities are like?Yeah, I’ve always said there are two good models for how groups or organizations work. There’s The Magnificent Seven model: a team of experts, each with a specialty, coming together for a mission. And then there’s The Scooby Gang model: a group of friends going on an adventure. I’ve always preferred the Scooby Gang.I think scenius is a version of that idea—a collective intelligence that forms around a shared curiosity or vision. You know, people like Steven Johnson and Brian Eno talk about the Enlightenment, or the cafés of Paris, the coffee shops of 18th-century London, San Francisco in the ’60s, or New York in the ’80s. We weren’t that. But in the early 2000s, there was a small group of us in London doing interesting work—connected, in loose but meaningful ways, to people in New York and San Francisco.And I made a lot of very close friends—many of whom I’ve never actually met.Yeah. Well, it also feels like—I feel like I’ve followed your work. I feel like I’ve been a subscriber for a very long time to your various newsletters, and I’m inescapable! Yeah. But you’re also very—I don’t know what the right word is. It all feels a little arbitrary and very sincere. Right? Doesn’t it? I mean, I feel like—I’ll be like, “Oh, here’s an email from Russell.” I can’t remember the last time it came, but look—this is what he’s stumbled upon. It’s sort of beautiful. It’s sort of wonderful in that way. Does that not sound familiar?Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. “Arbitrary” would be a much better name for a conference. That would be very good. Yeah. Someone asked me the other day, “How do you do all these different things?” And I realized, thinking about it, that a lot of it is—I’m willing to abandon stuff. I’m not a completer-finisher, and I know that. I’m just very happy to go, “Yeah, I’m going to try this,” and if it doesn’t work, I’ll stop. I won’t beat myself up about it. And I’ve gotten good at framing things so I’m not overpromising. Interesting, for instance, is really cheap—because I’d rather not make money and also not stress about whether people thought it was worth it.Yeah. At the end of every Interesting, I always say, “I’m not interested in your feedback. It’s only 30 quid.”You said earlier that your skill is in letting things go—whereas other people can’t. They won’t cut words, they can’t let go of words. There's this theme you’re expressing, that you’re sort of like a ninja at letting go. What is it about you that’s made that your superpower?Yeah. Don’t ask my wife. I’m clearly against commitment. I mean, I have been married a long time—but yeah, I think you can’t keep adding things if you’re not willing to lose some.Yeah.I’ve given up on a lot of things.Yeah, beautiful. Well, listen—I kind of came out of the blue and invited you into this conversation, so I really appreciate you accepting the invitation. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.Yeah, that was great. Those were really great questions.Oh, nice. Thank you. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Carina Bhavnani is a brand strategist and marketing leader, currently Director of Brand & Marketing at Sonder Inc. She previously held roles at Uber, TripActions, and Exposure Therapy. With expertise in brand, strategy, and operations, she holds a finance and accounting degree from Western University.So I start all my conversations with the same question, which I borrow steal stole from a friend of mine who helps people tell their story. It's a big, beautiful question, which is why I use it. But because it's big, I kind of over explain it like I'm doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you're in total control. You can answer and not answer any way that you want to. It is impossible to make a mistake. It's the biggest lead up ever. But the question is, where do you come from? And again, you are in total control.So the question where are you from is one of the most stressful and triggering questions that anyone can ever ask me. Just as a precursor.Yeah.I think the reason is because I'm always trying to understand what the question is actually asking me, where am I from physically? Where is my family from? Where did I grow up?Where do I live? And then I get in my head and I go down some rabbit holes. So where do I come from?Yeah.I mean, where does anyone come from?It's true. It's true. It's impossible to make a mistake and you can answer.It's impossible. You're right. I grew up in Australia and that's where I was born. My family is from India. I live in Canada. I used to live and work in the United States. I did a stint in Singapore for a while. So I'm I'm from everywhere. I think if you come from everywhere, you can simultaneously belong everywhere and nowhere all the time. And that's kind of nice.Yeah. What was it like growing up in Australia? What does it mean to be kind of from Australia?It means we have a better sense of humor than everyone else. Strong, very funny people. Growing up in Australia is a very interesting was a very interesting experience, I think, because you grow up literally and figuratively on an island.And in so it's a Western democracy, you know, in so many people's heads, it's the same as everywhere else. But the isolation has forced the country and culture to evolve in a pretty unique way. And I'm glad I got not just a two week vacation there, but like a 16 year upbringing and got to go deep.So now it's definitely part of my my background story in that sense.Yes. When do you feel particularly Australian?When I'm drinking.Really?Sure. Yeah, I would say that my love of drinking probably comes from my cultural heritage there. But I also think that like Australians are very straightforward. They're like very direct people, especially in the workplace. And as someone who's worked in multiple countries, I find that Americans can some Canadians especially can sometimes be a little bit. They find it very jarring, the directness of Australians and Australians are frustrated with how soft and gentle Americans can try and be. So that's that's that's been an interesting part, I think. Yeah, my work life.And do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?I want to be a flight attendant. I think I always just wanted to get out and on a plane and go somewhere.Right.And I love to travel the the walkway from the terminal to the airplane was like a highlight of my life as a child.Can you tell me more about that?You know that like I forget what they're called. They're like the funny moving gates and they connected and they're full of ads. And they usually like HSBC and like global companies that want to show you the world and how you're connected to everything.And my little six year old seven year old brain like really dialed into those moments. And it was always like you were going somewhere exciting.Yeah. Nice.Yeah.And where are you now? And what keeps you busy?Well, I work in travel. So that that worked out for me. I now I live in Toronto. So I have moved to the other side of the world and work for a company called Sonder. And I run our brand and marketing practice for all things related to brand and marketing, which has been fun for me and a new adventure because not my not my technical expertise or background, but something I found myself to in the last few years.Yeah. And tell me about Toronto. What do you love about where you are?I love the seasons. I think I really like change. I think that is a common theme in my life. I like novelty. I like change. I don't like things get too static. And everyone complains about winter. But I'll tell you, having lived in so many places, there's a sucky season no matter where you go. Like it's too hot or it's too rainy. So here it's cold. And I don't mind it. But it's a really ugly city.Like, yeah, it's it's pretty hideous. But when you it's one of those cities where there isn't a lot to see necessarily. It's not like New York or London or anything like that. But it's very dynamic, very international. And I would say has one of the best food scenes in the world. And that is a good reason to be here.All right. And tell me a little bit about what you love about the work you're doing? Where's the joy in it for you?Um, where's the joy? The joy comes from building something new. I think I joined the brand and marketing function before it was called brand and marketing was called design and experience. And it was we know we had this opportunity to rebuild the brand from scratch. And I'd never ever done a project like that. I'd never built a brand. I didn't understand what went into it. I could hardly explain the difference between brand and marketing at the time. And so it was just it was a whole new adventure. What I love about it is it's strategic and based in research and insight and science. But there's a huge creative layer. And it's it's one of the only disciplines that I've worked in where there is such an equal role for creative and quantitative or scientific. And I really like the interplay that that offers.Yeah. I want to follow up on that, that the balance you're saying between sort of the qualitative and the quantitative. But maybe first, can you tell me a little bit about Sonder and like how you how did you get just what is Sonder? What do you what is it about?Sonder is a hotel brand that offers both apartments and boutique hotels in 40 cities around the world. We traded more traditional high touch formal hospitality services for an app so you can request housekeeping or items that you forgot or look up a neighborhood guide all through the Sonder app. And it has a digital concierge built in. So 24 seven anything you need. Sonder is there for you. And it's really cool. It's a we focus on urban environments. We put you in locations you wouldn't normally get to be in. Our model lets us build smaller hotels in networks. So lots of tiny neighborhood spots, but always where you want to stay.Yeah. I've had great experiences with Sonder. What's it been like working? I mean, where was the brand when you joined and what's it been like being part of something new?I joined a really interesting time. I joined. We just we infused ourselves with funding. We're like heading towards that unicorn mark that we all used to chase. I would say back in day and then COVID hit and suddenly no one was traveling and no one was going anywhere. And we had this massive real estate portfolio. We're like, how are we going to generate demand for something like this? And so it was a lot of quick pivots to find new audiences. And new ways to basically help people travel and stay safe.And then as sort of that dissipated, we were able to move back into growth mode. And it's really been trying to be one part tech company and build our whole in-house stack. And then also abit of a real estate company and trying to get these like great real estate deals and also be a guest facing company. And offer services that feel like someone is taking care of you digitally has been a really interesting and very different from my previous work. I started my career as like a CPA working at Deloitte, like super, super different. And then I spent a long time at Uber scaling up business. So it was just new challenge. And I love to travel. So it was something I could really like evangelize and get behind.And what would you say? When did you first sort of discover the sort of the concept of brand? I mean, what brand is and all that stuff? It's a giant mushy world.It’s a giant, mushy world, and I didn’t know what it was. You know, like, brand people always seemed like cool people in my head. When someone said, "I work in brand," I thought, "Oh, you must know everything about culture and have your pulse on everything." It sounded so cool and felt so out of reach for my own background and experience.I got really lucky with the role I was in at Sonder. They brought in a new person to manage a new team, and he just needed someone who already knew the business. So, I got matched with this exec and landed on a brand project. That’s when I really started to learn—by watching someone who built their career in brand—what it could be, what it should be, and what it has the power to do for a business.I think brand is very soft and squishy and often poorly understood, but there is a way to think about brand as the backbone of everything a business does. When you do that, it can really supercharge the business over the long term.Can you tell me a story about that? I mean, that sounds like an awakening of sorts, if I may be so bold.Yeah.You described being a CPA at Deloitte, and then discovering the "squishy magic" of brand as the backbone of a business. Was there a particular moment when you recognized what was going on, or something that stood out to you?I think it was when we were working on the brand DNA—the values, the mission statement, and all those components that everyone hears about as the building blocks of brand. We went through a ton of interviews with other execs, working with an agency that was brilliant. It was like a little door opened, and I thought, "Oh, what happens in these rooms? What happens in these conversations?"I discovered the power of copy and the weight of every word you put down on paper. When a brand pitch becomes a three-minute film—or even a two-minute film—you realize how few words you actually have to tell a cohesive, coherent story that also has ambition, is future-proof, and is inspiring. You put so much weight on this tiny bit of content, and you start to appreciate what each word, letter, and punctuation mark can do. You start to see what each image does.That completely sold me. I thought, "Wow, you can get so dialed into something that seems so... optional." There's this sense that brand can be seen as optional, just a piece of pretty creative work. But it has the power to change minds. It has the power to change behavior. It has the power to inspire. And you know what it is? I like power. I saw brand as being incredibly powerful, and I thought, "I want that."Oh yeah. What is that power?It’s the power to influence. It’s the power to take culture to a tipping point and push it over the edge. You can take any idea and, if you’re good at what you do, you can make it mainstream. You can change the world.Is there a brand in particular that embodies that, someone you think is doing it really well?I think there are lots of brands, but often it’s brands with strong agendas. Patagonia is an easy example because of how well they've dialed in their brand. But getting to the platform that Patagonia now has—that’s the interesting part. Disney can do things. Nike can do things. Apple can do things. But I don’t know who the next generation of those companies is right now. It's hard to say.Yes, true. What I'm trying to think. Do you have any mentors or touchstones that you other mentors that really sort of brought you up in that way and then or touchstones ideas that you return to over and over again in your work?Yeah, I would say the exec I worked with was a guy named Matt Judge, who’s now at Airbnb. He was definitely instrumental in my discovery of brand. I’d also say Jasmine Bina and the Exposure Therapy crew played a huge role. Once I discovered that brand was something I wanted to do, I just wanted to learn as much as I could. I was very fortunate to stumble across Jasmine’s writing through Concept Bureau, and then I joined Exposure Therapy as one of the original members—along with you—and I’ve never looked back.Yeah. How’s that been for you? How do you describe the Exposure Therapy experience?I think I’ve always struggled to explain what it is to my friends. Every time I’ve tried, it ends with them telling me I’ve basically joined a cult—which, honestly, feels very on-brand for me. They're happy for me, but it’s funny. I think we even studied cults at one point last year, and one thing we learned is that a cult is a community where there's a very high emotional cost to leaving. The more time I spend with you all at Exposure Therapy, the more I realize that emotional cost is definitely going up. So yeah, maybe this is a cult.That's awesome. I'm curious about your work at Sonder. What role, if any, does research play in your work there?You know, Sonder is an atypical company—or maybe it's typical? I don’t really know, because I’ve never worked in brand at a different company before, so it’s hard to say. But we are a scale-up. We’re rapidly expanding what we do and how we do it. It's very much "building the airplane while flying it."There’s very little bandwidth for long-term thinking or strategizing. We don’t always have the gift of time. One thing I’ve learned about brand is that you are the team thinking 20 years out while everyone else is thinking 20 days out. You’re constantly traversing the gap between immediate problems—like emails that have to go live and social media posts—and the longer-term vision for the business.You’re operating in a very 24-hour content cycle, but your job is to make sure you’re steering the business toward something people are going to care about—and that will still be relevant—in the future. That kind of oscillation is one of the biggest challenges of brand work, but it’s also what makes it so interesting.Yeah. So how do you manage that?Sometimes you don’t manage. You just rush. But really, it’s about time management. When you’re working on two different timelines, it’s about carving out space to think longer-term, and sometimes negotiating with leadership—because they’re so caught up in near-term problems.You mentioned earlier that brand work is both qualitative and quantitative. Can you say more about that?Yeah. Some people say brand is a vibe, and vibes are hard to quantify—which is true. Brand isn't just data. Sometimes it’s just goosebumps or a feeling you get from a piece of creative or copy.But when you look closer—and especially because the media landscape is changing—there are more and more quantitative data points available. You can quick-test things. You can build in marketing tie-ins. You can start measuring brand equity and brand momentum.There are ways to put numbers and dollars behind brand work, especially longer-term work, to get leadership's attention when you’re advocating for the future instead of just the next 24 hours. For me, it’s about learning how to quantify and translate the power of brand into near-term, concrete things that demand attention.Can you tell me a story about that? (I know that’s a hard ask.)I’m trying to think of a successful story... I can definitely tell you failed ones.There were lots of swings at bat. Lots of swings—and misses.What’s the struggle of being the brand person in an organization with all these constraints and pressures?I think the biggest struggle is that sometimes you’ll be in a meeting, and someone will say, "I love your meetings because you get to pick out colors!"And you're like, "Yes, I get that your brain thinks the purpose of our team is to pick out logos, colors, and clever words."But there’s sometimes a real disconnect—a lack of understanding—about the staying power of those logos, colors, and words. I once tried to explain it like this: brand teams make a dollar-a-day deposit into the account that is the brand.Every day, we’re trying to make a small, incremental improvement, because one day the brand is going to mess up. We're going to have a misstep. And when that happens, we’ll need to draw down on that capital. That’s what we’re building—a reserve—so that we don't go bankrupt with our audience or our community.Sometimes, when you're only making dollar deposits, people don’t realize they add up to something. They look at other teams who are putting in a million dollars at a time and think, "That’s where the action is."But I'm just over here in the background, doing my thing. Because one day, they’ll see what I see.Yeah, that's beautiful. I was taught that the metaphor that was given to me is that the brands are like buckets and they're meant to capture, you know, accumulate sort of credit and blame, you know what I mean? And brands, a well-constructed brand actually collects it. A poor, constructed brand has like a leaky bucket. No credit accumulates. You know what I mean? The dollar just falls right through the bottle.They just fall right through. Yeah. It's like having pockets of holes in them.Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I'm trying to think what else I want to ask you about. Tell me more about exposure therapy and your experience there.Exposure therapy was like meeting a hundred people I wanted to be best friends with all at once. It was very overwhelming. I think curating communities is so, so hard to do well.Yeah.It's, you know, we're at a point in culture when it's something everybody wants no matter what stage of life they're in. People want more friends. People want to feel more connected to things.And we're all trying. We're all, you know, joining run clubs. I'm not joining a run club.People are joining run clubs. People are on apps. People are, you know, in co-working spaces in the hopes that they are connecting with people, you know, personally and professionally.And so when exposure therapy came along, I was like, oh, it's like a, it's a Slack community. I don't know what, I had low expectations, you know? I was like, I'll try it.Whatever. I have never met so many curious people who are so generous with their brains and like the same things I like. And it's, it's, it's every week is so stressful because the number of unreads goes up and I don't want to close any of them because the next best idea I might have might be buried in there somewhere. And so it's just a massive influx of great minds, great thinking and just wonderful human beings.Yeah, it's true. It's true. Yeah, I had low expectations and I was, you know, in a sort of a grumpy way, reluctant to join a Slack community.Yeah.But yeah, it's really great.What's been your favorite part about it?Oh, I mean, like you say, like the, there's so much effort put into, there's just always something going on. There's always an idea or a thought or a point of view that's worthwhile that's there. So it's like, it's just the potential of a new idea, really. But it's, they're so smart and the conversations are so structured at least that there's, it's always shifting. And yeah, so it's sort of constantly changing. And I think to your point about just like the potential, like new ideas, the other beautiful thing that they've done with the community is that there are opposing ideas in there and there are things. There are things that I wouldn't necessarily gravitate towards on my own or found on my own, but they've gone out of their way to put these ideas in front of us that they know won't naturally resonate or we won't naturally agree with. And that's the most expansive part. And I think it's really hard today to find ways to introduce ideas that are not part of your algorithm. I mean, we've just, we just kind of have given the wheel to these platforms, been like, you just tell me what I like.Yeah, I'm fine. That's fine.Yeah, exactly. I'll just agree.So I want to go back to the, to the, maybe is it, how do you apply this stuff to your own work? I mean, the observation you just made about this hunger we have for connection and, you know, the sea of sameness that's out in culture. How do you, how does that inform the work you do at Sonder? How does a hospitality brand like Sonder respond or behave differently based on this stuff, if at all?I'm not sure that I can, I don't know that I've, there's been anything that has truly made me set the brand on a different course, but what it has helped me do is re-examine the way I manage the team. So we have like an eight person org, and it's been interesting to see what kind of ideas I can put in front of them that are different or a new way of thinking or, and try and make them sort of think slightly differently, approach problems with different ways, share frameworks that I've learned, because really what you want to do is you want to raise the bar on the whole team. And then as individuals, they will bring in their own lens and their own ideas and help to drive everything forward. The heart of the Sonder brand is this really beautiful idea of like, we just want to be better. Every day we want to do a little bit better. We never want to be the best. We never want to say we're done. And so that's what we try and, that's how we try and act and think as a team, which is like, is it slightly better and incrementally better than the last thing we did? Great. It's a step forward. It never has to be perfect.It's amazing. And how long have you been with Sonder?Almost six years.And how has it changed? How has the business changed or the industry changed?I would say we've been very lucky that we've outlived a lot of our competitors in the alternative accommodations phase. When COVID hit the market, it destroyed a lot of young brands because they just didn't, they didn't have the capital and resources to survive what was an incredibly challenging period in a low margin business. And now I think alternative accommodations are some of the hottest products in travel.So you've got the Airbnb, which I think people are starting to be a bit more polarized on. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. Some people love it, some people hate it. But you've also got like tiny cabins and you've got a lot more apartment brands and you've got glamping and air streams and it's become such a huge part of the hospitality and accommodation space that we've seen changes on major player platforms. So Booking.com, Expedia.com, they've gone from being hotels only to expanding the products that they make available, changing the filters that they offer people because they know this is where people are coming in. And then on the flip side, you've got major brands like families like the Maria Bonvoy family and the Hilton's and the Hyatt's trying to snap up alternative accommodation brands so that they can also be players.And instead of it being like, oh, it's a hotel or an Airbnb, we're seeing this spectrum of options, which is, I don't wanna say leveling the playing field, but expanding the field. Pretty dramatically, and that's been fun to watch.Yeah. And presumably that's very good for Sonder. How does Sonder fall out in that mix?I think we're in a really good space. I think this is something that we had hoped to see when we were very young. We wanted to offer more different types of spaces, but still with hotel level services. So we wanted first brands to bring that sort of apartment style accommodation, but with housekeeping attached to it, with onsite staff attached, all the amenities. You don't just get the space with us, you get the whole experience. And that was a good bet to make. And now everyone's trying to play catch up. And of course, you're constantly iterating with the technology and the real estate, but it set us up for a longer term success. Yeah, it's cool. And I feel like I was one of those people who Airbnb is sort of a novelty and it's sort of fun every once in a while, but I really have kind of a hotel set of expectations and I'm uncomfortable in other people's spaces. Sonder is sort of the nice balance between those two things, right? Yeah, it's really, Airbnb is, when you think about it, it's wild how they made us so comfortable staying in strangers' homes. These weren't professionally managed races, they were other people's homes. And it's one thing to get into someone else's car for an Uber X ride. It's another thing to bet your whole expensive vacation on this random person.Yeah.And they did it. And now we all do it.It's true. It's true. It's true.Yeah, it makes me wonder when we think about, everyone talks about AI all day, every day, but what are these major behavioral shifts that this is going to trigger for us and how's that going to change our lives? What seems insane today that will become commonplace five years from now? Will we all just have best friends?Yeah, probably.Or digital?Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I feel like this isn't the way that I generally think about things, but certainly when approached with the question, it does feel like, well, I was taught that we consume what we're afraid we're losing. And so if we can agree that we're kind of losing connection, then we're going to definitely, we're going to create connection with AI. And we're going to further isolate ourselves from each other.And they're making it easier, whether that's their intention or not, like it's getting better.I always think of this as a little bit of a, it's like a, I don't know that this was the moral of the story, but it always strikes me as like an Edward Scissorhands phenomenon where I like that character. Do you remember Edward Scissorhands? You've never seen it. All right. You went quiet there, so I figured that was the case. So anyway, it's Tim Burton movie. Johnny Depp plays, I guess he's a little bit like a toy, like a To Frankenstein toy, like he's made up and he comes to life, but he's got like scissors for fingers. His fingers are blades. And so of course he's this creature that just wants love and affection, but his hands are knives. So I always think about that as this, this paradox, right? So, and I feel like AI is a little bit like that too, like, oh, we just, I don't need people. This AI, it converses just as good as a human person that likes me. And that makes me feel the same. So, so much better, easier.And I think it's, I think it's what it makes us feel. Like if two humans talking to each other feels one way and then you talking to an AI feels the same way, what's different?It's true. And it's just a continuation too. I'm just thinking about how, I mean, I grew up playing video games and the world of video games is so much easier than the real world, just for all the, just because it's orderly and it has rules. And if something goes bad, you just start over and the graphics have gotten, I mean, there's no wonder. I mean, so many people spend so much time within these worlds. It's so much easier than real life.We talk about it as escapism. Oh my God, I was thinking about this last night. We call it escapism, but often we’re escaping into much more violent and crazy places. Still, those places feel more soothing than our actual reality—because reality has become so unpredictable.Yes. And confusing. Messy.And hard. I think the more alone people feel—and the harder life gets—the more those effects compound. You just want to remove yourself from it.Yeah. Yeah. Following this thread... These are old ideas, but they're connected. I know I've probably shared this before: Peter Kahn studies human-nature interaction, and he talks about something called "generational environmental amnesia."He tells a story to illustrate it: imagine three generations at a playground—a child, their father, and their grandfather. The child points to the woods next to the playground and asks, "Is that the forest?"The father says, "Yes, but when I was a kid, this playground wasn’t here. It was all forest." The grandfather adds, "When I was young, there weren’t any developments at all—there was forest for miles."Each generation is born into a more degraded version of nature and accepts it as normal. It’s like one step forward, three steps back. And socially, I think it’s happening too. Young people spend more time in digital spaces, and...No, you’re right.It’s like if a child pointed to a chatbot and said, "Is this my friend?" and the dad said, "Yes, back in my day, my friends were real people, but we still chatted on AOL."And the grandmother would say, "Back in my day, if you wanted to talk to someone, you had to see them face-to-face."Yeah, and my phone was connected to the wall! You had to dial like this.Exactly. It’s a constant evolution toward a degraded normal.Joyful stuff for a Monday!Perfect Monday conversation. Okay, let's take a break from the bleak talk.What’s been exciting you lately? Any rabbit holes you’re diving into? I’m really into history. I love diving deep into different periods. I recently got into a podcast called Empire. Each season focuses on a different historical empire. They’re flexible in how they define it—not just the Roman Empire.One season was about powerful women who had emperor-like powers. One fascinating thing I learned is that historians can measure how much power a woman had based on whether her image was stamped on currency.Usually, only male leaders were stamped on coins, so finding a woman on currency was a sign she had risen above and beyond. And it’s crazy to think about because nowadays, like in the Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth was on all the currency. That’s a big deal.That’s amazing.Yeah.I'm picking up a theme here, Carina...Power. Girl power.Definitely girl power.I’m also on the "Romantasy" train. If you’ve heard about that.What’s the state of Romantasy right now?There are lots of names for the genre, but basically, it’s another form of escapism.You escape into these stories—often violent, but still more orderly than real life—and you always know you’ll get closure. No matter how crazy the heroine’s journey, it will end well. She'll get what she wants. There’s something really comforting about that. You get to go on a wild ride but still find resolution, which might not happen day-to-day.It sounds like the heroine’s journey.Very much. There’s a lot going on in these books, but at their core, they’re about women finding their power. And everything gets resolved. That’s very attractive right now.You said that in a particular way. What were you thinking about?I think it gives you hope. You read a story that ends well, and you think, "Maybe my story will end well, too." Maybe the thing you're worried about will work out.There’s a book called The Storytelling Animal—I can't remember the author’s name—but he talks about how stories allow us to rehearse life experiences without actually living them. Exactly. That’s what myths and folktales were for: learning lessons without having to live through harrowing journeys yourself.You mentioned Jasmine might have more thoughts on why this genre is having a moment. What were you thinking about?Another narrative I've been thinking about lately is how our modern world wasn’t designed for women—or at least not with women at the center of it. For example, in women's health, there's a lot of talk about how women were excluded from clinical studies because our biology is less "consistent." It made the studies simpler to focus on men. No shade, but it left us with a culture—and a world—not designed for women. Now, products and ideas are emerging that are made for women, by women. Whether it’s femtech or Romantasy books, these things center women’s needs and experiences. And I think there’s a gravitational pull toward that. Toward spaces where women feel like something was actually made for them.It’s shocking, really—the decisions men made. I remember learning that most medical knowledge is based on male biology because it was "inconvenient" to study female bodies.Yeah, and there's also the fact that women are the only species, basically, to outlive reproductive years. There’s something called the "grandmother hypothesis"—the idea that humans survive longer and better because older generations of women help care for the younger ones. That shared workload and wisdom is a unique evolutionary advantage. It’s amazing. And it begs the question: what can we do to supercharge that?That’s so cool. And it reminds me of Chip Conley’s work—he had an elder program at Airbnb, focused on preserving and transferring generational wisdom.Exactly. One thing we’ve lost—because of remote work and other things—is multigenerational relationships. We’re so stuck within our own age groups now, but there's so much value in friendships that span generations. And as people live longer, you’re seeing figures like Martha Stewart, who’s 83, still crushing it—being influential, staying connected across generations. If we can foster that, it’s going to make us all stronger.Totally. I was reading that because of the affordability crisis, we’re seeing a rise in intergenerational roommates.It makes so much sense. You’re seeing it in the travel industry, too: multi-generational trips—grandparents, parents, grandkids traveling together. It's interesting.One last thought. A friend of mine, Dawn Breeze, once suggested starting an "intergenerational detective agency" in Hudson. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?Let’s do that.Right? It’s so good.I love that.Carina, thank you so much for accepting my invitation. This has been so much fun.Always a pleasure. It’s always good to hang with you, Peter. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Jesse Caesar is a qualitative market research expert and brand strategist in Brooklyn. He previously worked at Open Mind Strategy, Firefly Millward Brown, and boutique branding agencies. With a psychology and anthropology background from UC Berkeley, his approach emphasizes storytelling, empathy, and creativity to uncover consumer motivations.I first discovered Jesse through this great article, “Why Qualitative Market Research Belongs in Your Startup Toolkit — and How to Wield it Effectively.”I start all my conversations with the same question—one I borrowed from a friend who helps people tell their stories. It’s a big, beautiful question, which is why I use it. But because it’s so big, I tend to over-explain it—like I’m doing right now. Before I ask it, I just want you to know that you’re in total control. You can answer in any way you want—or not at all. The question is: Where do you come from?I’d be remiss as a researcher if I hadn’t listened to some of your previous podcasts before asking that. I like the question, and I’m going to answer it in a few different ways. I come from good people. I was raised in a very loving home—encouraged, supported. There were big expectations, but always a lot of love. And I think that foundation was a great springboard for me to explore the world, figure out who I was, and how I fit into it. The journey continues.I come from L.A. Born and raised an Angeleno, but I probably identify more as a New Yorker now. I’ve been here for quite some time. And I come from a place of fun. I’m a real fun seeker. Part of that is creativity, part of it is curiosity, part of it is just a need for variety. I like bursting bubbles—especially my own.What do you mean by ‘bursting bubbles’?It’s about stepping out of the zone. Whether that’s going too deep into industry webinars and project work and needing to snap out of it—or just getting outside, interacting with people, going to MoMA, watching a movie, reading a book. I like to change things up. It’s not always just nonfiction, either. Fiction is important—a little sorbet, a palate cleanser in between. I’m constantly looking for ways to shake things up.Do you remember, as a kid, what you wanted to be when you grew up?Yeah. My eighth birthday was actually at a focus facility. I had no idea at the time how fitting that would turn out to be. My career path has definitely been a zigzag—a circuitous route. But I think what’s been constant is this desire to perform, to entertain, to make sense of things, and to have fun.I still think that someday I’ll be an artist. Someday I’ll be a writer. I came to New York with dreams of being an ad man.Oh, is that right?Yeah. I don’t know if it was a lack of gumption or grit to pursue being a proper artist or writer, but I felt like I could do copywriting. Maybe art direction would be my thing. So I started out as a media planner at MediaCom, which was part of the same agency network as Grey Advertising. My plan was to work my way laterally—build up my portfolio, learn the ropes from the media planning side, and eventually shift into creative.That makes sense. So then, catch me up—what do you do now? And when did you first discover qualitative research?Yeah, no, qualitative wasn’t even on my radar until years later. I was working at MediaCom in my early New York days, having a lot of fun outside of work—but doing a job that wasn’t fun. Being in that big corporate agency world, I fell out of love with advertising. It felt disconnected. I kept seeing the same formula applied, quarter after quarter. Then the client would do a review, fire the whole team, retool the formula, rinse and repeat. There was a disconnect from the work itself, from the brand, and from the consumer we were supposed to be reaching.From there, I moved to a very boutique branding shop. And when I say boutique, I mean three of us were full-time staff. But what drew me to it was the chance to work with brands when the clay was still wet—when things were still just the seed of an idea. Some were new brands getting off the ground, others were more established but looking to solve a problem or do something different. I got to wear a lot of hats there, and one of them was research.It wasn’t a formal introduction to research, but it was eye-opening. I had come from ad land with this attitude that market research was just a way to water down great creative thinking. But being exposed to research in a branding context changed that for me. From there, I went to what was then Greenfield Consulting Group, which later became Firefly and Millward Brown. That was the first time I ever felt at home. Even in the interview process, I remember meeting all these moderators—fun personalities, super sharp, deeply curious people. And I thought, These could be my mentors. I could see myself doing this. I like this vibe.What was the attraction? You said you moved to New York to be an ad man—what did that mean to you then? What drew you to it?I think part of it came from where I saw my strengths in creative work. But part of it was definitely influenced by movies and TV. This was before Mad Men, but even then, advertising still had this sheen of glamour. I don’t think that’s quite the case anymore, but at the time, it seemed like an exciting, dynamic lifestyle.Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure. Even back in school, I was figuring things out as I went. I remember being pulled into an advisor’s office my junior year and being told I had to declare a major. That’s how I started as an anthropology major—then I took enough psych classes to make psychology my primary major.It was all a bit of experimentation, a lot of playing around, seeing what worked and what didn’t. I came to New York without a clear vision of exactly what I was going to do—just that it would be something very different.My whole family is from New York, but my only real experience with the city had been visiting relatives. It was intimidating—fast, loud, crowded. I wasn’t used to all that. It felt overwhelming.But the summer before I graduated, I came to New York for an editorial internship at Mad Magazine. At the time, I was still very much a California boy—I had been at Berkeley, soaking in that West Coast mentality. But that summer in New York was a watershed moment for me. Just a few months of living here made me realize I needed a place that was going to kick me in the ass a little. And New York was a good fit for that.Tell me a little about the work you do now. How do you describe what you do? And you also mentioned performance as part of what drew you in—how does that connect?Yeah, I’ll start with the performance side and how it ties back. I grew up in LA, where the siren call of Hollywood was never far away. I did act as a kid—the way most kids do, meaning I went on a lot of auditions and didn’t book much. But I did get one role. Ironically, that was the end of my acting career. I landed a featured role in a movie, and my parents just said, Nah, we don’t want you missingWhat was the movie?Camp Nowhere.Did this movie actually happen?It happened.Do you want to talk about it?It’s too painful. No, I just… I’ve never really watched it. It was a Christopher Lloyd movie—seemed like a gas. But yeah, I probably should watch it at some point.Oh my God.What trajectory my life could have taken…I’m feeling a lot of pain for young Jesse. Maybe because I shared that—I was also glued to TV and movies, wanting to be in that space.Oh yeah.So the idea that you had the opportunity to be there, and it went away—that would be a big deal. How old were you?Twelve. That was another factor—hitting that wall. Every weekend was a bar mitzvah, and I was starting to study for my own. So there was no more time for acting class. Between school, extracurriculars, and everything else, it just became impossible to go to auditions. That was kind of the end of it.So now, tell me about the work you do. And what’s the connection to performance?One of the things I love about moderating is that I do get to flex that muscle a bit. There’s an element of commanding a room, putting your energy out there, keeping the momentum up, and presenting ideas in a way that engages people.And then, of course, there’s listening—not just hearing, but really being present, aware, responsive. Actors talk about being in the moment, responding authentically. Moderating has some of that, too. You have to be able to shift modes quickly—moving from interviewing participants to debriefing with clients, to synthesizing all those insights into a compelling story.And that storytelling piece is crucial. Even if the final deliverable is just a PowerPoint, how do you infuse it with a sense of drama? How do you pull people in from the start? I like that part—taking all the pieces, making connections, and bringing it to life.You know, as you’ve probably felt, things flipped during COVID. What was maybe 40% of our interviews happening remotely suddenly became 80% or more. And that shift has largely stuck.It’s tough not to be sharing air. I find I have to work harder in this little square. I can’t take up space in the same way. I don’t have all those nonverbal cues or the full context of a room—just whatever I can see over your shoulder. Earlier, you asked how I describe what I do. And I think that’s part of it—performance, presence. But ultimately, it’s about solving problems.If I had to give it a logline—back to Hollywood—I’d say: I solve problems for companies by talking to their customers.I could keep spinning on this, but at its core, it’s about forming connections. It’s about me connecting deeply with another person so that I can help my clients connect with them too.Yeah. I mean, the first time I ever came across you was through that piece in First Round. It was such a beautifully articulated argument for the benefits of qualitative research—especially for an audience that so often just doesn’t get it. As a researcher, I’ve definitely hit that wall of miscomprehension before. And I remember reading that and thinking, I need to talk to this guy. This is fantastic. So I’m curious—how do you think about the proper role of qualitative? How do you make the case for it to someone who just doesn’t see the value? If a client calls and says, Hey, I hear you’re great—tell me what you do and why talking to people matters at all—what do you say?Yeah, first, I just want to correct the record—I didn’t write that piece for First Round. Their editorial team did an excellent job profiling me, but it wasn’t my byline. That said, a lot of my thinking was in there. And I really appreciate the work you’re doing in this space—advocating for qualitative, pushing for it in ways I haven’t been as active about lately. A rising tide lifts all boats, and I think that’s especially true in this field.As for making the case for qual? Sometimes I start with truth. That truth shows up in the first conversation with a client—or a prospective client—and sometimes it leads me to saying, Qual isn’t the right approach for you here. Either because it’s not the right solution for the problem they’re trying to solve, or because they don’t have the time and resources to do it well. And if you can’t do it well, don’t do it poorly—because this is a directional science.But broadly, making the case for qual comes down to this: Most people today accept the reality that we are not fully rational creatures. We need narrative, we need storytelling, we need emotional appeal. That’s what motivates a lot of our behavior—including consumption.And you can’t unearth those deeper motivations without qualitative research. You need dialogue. A survey won’t give you that, because a survey starts with built-in assumptions: These are the metrics that matter. This is how people talk about them. And when you structure research that way, so much gets lost.So much is missed when you can’t follow up on someone’s first response. One of my first real mentors in moderating, Andy Greenfield, talked about triangulating on the truth—asking questions in different ways to get at the deeper answer. That means using different approaches—not just qual, but maybe layering in quant, observation, interrogation. Even within a discussion guide, you build in exercises that help uncover what’s really driving behavior. All of that—those layered, human-centered methods—that’s how we surface the most meaningful insights for our clients.It’s tough to make the case for qual because it’s squishy—it’s hard to point to ROI, especially for the kind of research I love, which is much more foundational and brand-driven rather than tactical UX questions like “A or B?” So I try to establish trust early on. I use my skills as a moderator in those initial client conversations—really listening, understanding their problem, and figuring out whether I am actually the right solution.And then, the work itself has to prove its value. When I’m in the field, I like to bring my clients along as much as possible. I want the process to be collaborative, for them to have ownership of the work. That way, they feel confident socializing it within their own teams—they aren’t just passively receiving insights; they understand them, they believe in them.I also lean into being a proud generalist. I need my clients to be my insiders—to give me the context, the “inside baseball,” whether it’s industry-specific or just company culture. That helps me make sharper, more relevant leaps in my implications. And then, doing the work itself—after the first few interviews, I always build in a debrief. We talk about what we’re hearing, make adjustments, focus on what’s actually yielding depth, and move away from areas where we’re hitting diminishing returns. It’s an iterative process.At the end of the day, it’s about meaning. You put all these conversations together, extract the insights, and ask: What does this mean for you? Does it solve the problem? That’s the real proof point.What do you love about the work? Where’s the joy in it for you?I love the exploration. Even in a sector like HVAC, there’s fun to be had. There are cool things to discover, and creative ways to get at those discoveries. I love using both sides of my brain—being creative in methodology and presentation, but also analytical in identifying patterns and drawing connections to implications. It’s fulfilling to be engaged that way. It’s exciting. Even just designing the right methodology gets me worked up in a positive way.For people who might not have experience in research—can you tell a story? How do you approach something like HVAC? How do you make it exciting? I completely agree—anything is interesting if you approach it with curiosity, dig in creatively, and make the right connections. So with HVAC—what’s the thrill?I mean, everybody has their treasure.There’s no such thing as a bad respondent. Sure, you need to screen for relevance—make sure they’re the right person for the conversation—but everyone has something to express, an experience to share. Sometimes, people struggle to write it out. Sometimes, they struggle to talk it out. That’s when you need to shift methods—maybe a little show-and-tell, maybe something more interactive. That’s why I love ethnographic methodologies.Take HVAC, for example. Go on a ride-along. Watch an install. See if you can get on your belly and crawl into those crazy tight spaces. Because for a lot of these guys, their scars are badges of honor—proof of how hard they’ve worked to get into those impossible spaces, to install and maintain equipment. There’s no one-size-fits-all method for getting insights. Ideally, you’re triangulating—layering multiple approaches together.Some people love to poo-poo focus groups, but I think they’re an incredible tool. When a group of people comes together and starts sharing, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. You can feel the insights laddering up in real-time. There’s something almost therapeutic about it. Honestly, one of the hardest parts of this work? Getting people to leave at the end of an interview. Because when do you ever have someone listening to you that intently? Actively, curiously? Outside of therapy—or maybe when you’re buying drinks from a bartender?You mentioned one already, but I’m curious—who were your mentors? And beyond people, are there any ideas or concepts you consistently return to?That’s an interesting question. The other side of bursting bubbles is—what are the foundations I hold dear? For me, I always come back to the fundamentals I learned as a baby mod—the core skills I had to develop when I was starting out.What were those fundamentals for you?It’s the basics, really—how to ask questions. And there is a right and wrong way to do that. Some of it’s been debated endlessly—like don’t ask why. And sure, qual is ultimately about the why—but “why?” isn’t actually a great way to get there.Let’s stay with that—because it makes intuitive sense to people to just ask “why?” So how do you explain the danger of it?“Why?” puts people on the defensive. It tightens the butthole a bit. It demands a rationale. And as we’ve touched on before, people aren’t driven by rationale. We construct rationales after the fact to explain our behavior, but the real drivers come from deeper places. Asking “why?” too early cuts you off from those depths. It forces people to plant a flag—“this is why I do this”—and suddenly, the conversation narrows. It becomes rigid, harder to explore, harder to go deeper. It’s boring.It’s also lazy. It’s not fun. And look—even if you’re talking to someone about antiemetic medication for cancer treatment, even in serious conversations, there’s no reason why the discussion itself can’t be engaging. You can uncover real trauma, real depth, and still make it approachable. That’s part of what makes a great conversation—keeping it from feeling transactional. It’s not Give me an answer to this question. It’s Let’s explore this together. So yeah, fundamentally—it’s got to be fun.There’s this one clip I always go back to—it’s a therapist, oh my god, I’m totally spacing on her name—but she talks about a therapeutic practice she calls conversational questions. You just reminded me of it, because she says that why questions are transactional. They create distance between you and the person you’re asking, and they actually cut off the relationship. Instead, she describes these conversational questions as a way of participating in a conversation, rather than just trying to extract an answer. And that always stuck with me.I think that’s part of what I hear in what I do—what I identify with. It’s about asking questions that keep things alive, that keep things moving rather than shutting them down. “Why” is a shut down question. Like you said, it forces people to plant a flag and stops exploration.And honestly, it’s just nice talking to a fellow researcher who gets it—who experiences the terrain in the same way. But yeah, I love the way she framed it—that questions are ways of participating in a conversation, rather than just seeking answers. And I wonder—what does that spark in you?Because so much of research today feels so answer-seeking. It turns people into answer-generating machines, and then we take those answers at face value. I think there’s an overconfidence in what gets produced when you approach a person that way.Yeah, I think that’s spot on—the idea that conversation is about showing you’re listening. If people don’t feel that, if they don’t trust that you’re engaged, they check out. They go into auto-pilot mode—just trying to get through the transaction. And the moment it stops being a conversation, you lose the chance to get anything real.The challenge, of course, is not leading them too much. There’s a balance. I think it’s good to recap what you’ve covered, put a bow on it, and offer it back: Did I hear that right? Does that feel accurate? That way, I’m not telling their story in a way that doesn’t fit.But it’s also about pushing deeper. And you can only do that if you’re willing to wander a little. Not aimlessly—you still have your objectives, your discussion guide—but you have to be willing to let go of your agenda to get something richer in return.And honestly? If you’ve done a good job of building trust—if you’re likable, easy to talk to—you also earn the permission to wrestle with them a little. To call them out on contradictions, push them where it makes sense. It’s not about judgment. The space has to feel safe. But when you lean into friction, that’s often where the real insights are hiding.You talked about not leading—what are some of the other fundamental things you’ve learned?Because in a lot of ways, what we do is invisible. It just looks like a natural, interesting conversation. But in the background, there’s a lot happening.When you say you don’t want to ask leading questions, how do you actually do that? What’s going through your mind?Sometimes, it’s not about asking a question directly—it’s about giving the person something to do that helps them answer it. I want my questions to feel natural—relevant to the conversation we’ve been having. But I never want to impose my own values or assumptions. As a generalist, I feel like I have an advantage when stepping into a new space. I don’t carry the same sacred cows that might weigh on others in that industry. That gives me the ability to leave room—to let the other person fill in the blanks. Sometimes, I’ll frame a question as a straw man argument—like, I’ve heard other people say this. What do you think is going on there? What are they missing? But as much as possible, I want to create space for them to do the talking. Yes, it should feel like a conversation. But they should be talking more than I am.Are there any other mentors or touchstones that come to mind?Yeah, well, I mentioned Andy Greenfield and some of my fellow moderators from those early days. There wasn’t a formal program for someone who didn’t come from the moderating world or from the other side of the glass, so my early days were a lot of shadowing. I spent a lot of time observing moderators I thought were best in class. That school—those people—I’m still close with, like Olumobile Ade. I think she’s brilliant.I also find a lot of inspiration—not necessarily mentorship—from other places, parallel industries, and even through art. For me, it’s about bringing that generalist mindset to the wider world, being a sponge, and taking in influences from all different places.How have things changed for you? How has your method, your practice, or what you do evolved as we’ve shifted more into remote work? And how do you think about remote versus in-person? I don’t know why I’m labeling it that way in this conversation, but how do you operate now, and how is it different from before? Because we were in a “before,” and now we’re in an “after.”Honestly, the “after” was actually a boom to my bottom line. I was able to do a lot more fieldwork than I had before because, yeah, you don’t have to factor in travel time. It’s a lot more efficient. But, as with many efficiencies, you lose some quality.I try to avoid online groups—certainly anything more than four people at a time. Once you go full Brady Bunch mode, it just doesn’t work.Talk to me about that experience, because I feel the same way. Groups online are extremely challenging and best avoided. But what’s the rationale? What makes it difficult or not worth doing?Without that immediacy, I think you lose accountability. It’s easy for people to shrink away from the conversation, and there are a lot more distractions—people checking their phones or even answering emails right in front of you. You can see it happening. I don’t like being the kind of moderator who calls people out by name. I want everyone participating because they’re engaged, because the conversation is fun, because I’ve made them feel empowered to share their perspective. But it’s tough without that shared air.I can’t just lean in, make eye contact, or hold up a hand to subtly steer the conversation. It loses a lot of that natural energy. I miss in-person work, and it’s starting to come back. I don’t know what your experience has been recently. You reached out looking for a creative loft space—did that end up going through?More and more, I’m looking for opportunities to do in-person work. And for me, it’s also about ethnographic research—those in-situ interviews. You just can’t replicate that on a screen. You can’t do a shop-along or step into someone’s home. I love going into people’s homes because that’s where their freak flag flies—where you really see how they organize their lives, what they value. It’s all being expressed around them before you even start the conversation. That rich context is invaluable. And then, of course, the other big industry shift happening right now is AI. I’ve even done some work advising an AI company that was developing an AI-moderated conversation tool. It’s exciting.It’s exciting, but of course, all that excitement comes with a little bit of terror. Ultimately, though, it’s been clarifying for me. AI is probably going to take some of the bread out of my mouth, but mostly for the kinds of projects I don’t really want to be doing anyway.I want to focus on projects that are more foundational, more strategic, more exploratory—the kinds of work that fit a more ethnographic approach. And until they upload an AI into a body that’s born, feels things, and dies, I think I’ve still got an advantage.I want to hear more about that. I feel like some of this conversation starts out very simply but gets complicated quickly. How do you imagine AI impacting the kinds of projects or research where someone like you is still needed?Yeah, I think AI is going to be used in ways it probably shouldn’t and provide answers that aren’t complete. That’s part of our job as champions of qualitative research—not just to advocate for qual but to also help define AI’s role. It’s not helpful to dismiss it entirely. It’s just another tool in the toolkit, right? Just like Zoom.There’s probably a good place for AI in UX research—things like button placement and basic interface testing. You don’t need deep human insight for that. AI can also make survey research more meaningful, adding a qualitative layer where none might exist otherwise. Instead of relying solely on open-ended survey responses, you could create a kind of dialogue—even if it’s with artificial intelligence.And then, even in our own workflows, I can see AI being useful—like uploading transcripts to surface insights we might have missed. But the role of the qualitative market researcher is safe, at least for now. Because what we do is human. What we do demands empathy. And you can’t get that from a robot.Yeah Is that true though?I think you can have something that approximates empathy—something that looks like it—but a machine can’t truly understand it. And if there’s no real understanding, then there’s no real insight.If AI can’t break down human experiences in a meaningful way, then how can it translate them into something useful? It might collect the data, but it can’t fully grasp its implications or draw the kinds of connections that help a client understand what it means. That’s a fundamental limitation.These machines are going to get smarter. They’ll get better at pattern recognition, at drawing certain kinds of connections. But at the end of the day, they aren’t human—so they can’t understand human. They can analyze, process, and categorize, but there’s still that deeper why—the underlying human motivation—that remains elusive for AI.And right now, the technology as it exists—these AI chat models—they don’t ask questions very well. That’s a limitation of LLMs at this stage. But we’ll see.Have you had any experience with them?Yeah, I mean, I’ve been experimenting as much as possible. I’ve definitely benefited from uploading transcripts, interrogating the data, and playing around with different ways of extracting insights. That’s been useful. I’ve also explored synthetic users—interviewing AI-generated personas just to see what that looks like. I’ve tried to stay open and experimental in every way.But at the same time, I’ve had moments where it triggered a kind of existential crisis. Maybe clarifying, maybe not. It’s strange. It’s just… strange, you know? I think we’re all still trying to wrap our heads around it.Convince me—why should I consider synthetic respondents? Because that’s one area where I just can’t see myself being open to it.Oh yeah, I mean, I was just curious. It ties back to that bigger question: What do we actually do? What do I actually deliver to my client? If it’s just answers—data presented in a way that gives it context—then sure, a machine-learning rationale might make it seem valid. And some clients, honestly, they just want answers. They don’t care where they come from. I don’t see AI going away. It’s here, and we have to figure out how to engage with it. But in my experience, I haven’t had that wow moment where I thought, This changes everything. It’s more like, Holy s**t, this is weird. I’ve run tests, and I think this is what you were talking about—when I read AI-generated responses, they never felt real. They weren’t wrong necessarily, but they lacked something. It was deeply subjective, but I just kept thinking, This isn’t actually qualitative data. It’s… something else. I don’t know what this is. This is synthetic. It’s a different form of data. We need a whole new set of expectations: What is it? What can it do? What can it not do? It looks like real human qualitative data, but it’s not. It’s something else entirely. That’s the uncanny valley of it—it’s totally passable, yet it lacks any of the vitality or humanity that we, as researchers, traffic in. The squishiest of squish…Emotions, memories, lived experiences, real-world touchpoints. Now, I could see a future where we’re interviewing AI agents designed for specific consumers—because in some cases, they are going to be the binary consumer. But yeah—sorry, go ahead.Oh, no, that’s fine. I feel like I’m getting lost in my own thoughts. This stuff just…And, you know, I keep thinking about the typical PowerPoint deliverable. That’s actually an exciting space for AI—the ability for deliverables to become more of a living product. Imagine feeding in all your insights, uploading the transcript, and then letting any stakeholder interrogate the research—talk to a bot about it in real time. That’s cool.Jesse, we’re out of time, but I just want to say thank you. This has been such a fun conversation with a fellow researcher, and I really appreciate you sharing your time and experience.Peter, my brother-in-arms. Thank you—I appreciate this time. Yeah, let’s team up sometime soon. Let’s double-mod.That’d be great.Take care.Bye. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Sam McNerney is a survey designer and researcher in Brooklyn. We met ages ago because, to me, he was an odd quant guy with a qualitative soul. (And, it turns out, he’d written some articles I’d referred to over and over about embodied cognition.) He’s designed surveys for Fortune 500 companies like Walmart, P&G, and Citibank, conducted over 400 studies with 100k+ respondents, published in Scientific American and TechCrunch, and teaches consumer behavior at CUNY’s BIC program.Sam’s WritingsA Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your BrainThe Science of Asking What People WantBias the Participant: Designing Surveys That Elicit a Deeper Emotional ResponseI’m not sure if you know this, but I start all of my conversations with the same question. I borrowed it from a friend of mine who helps people tell their stories. I use it because it's a big, beautiful question—but because it's so big and beautiful, I tend to over-explain it, like I’m doing now. Before I ask it, I want you to know that you're in complete control, and you can answer—or not answer—in any way you want. The question is: Where do you come from?I was expecting something like that. It's a good, full-circle kind of question. It reminds me of a distinction I picked up early on when I started learning how to do market research—the difference between "Where are you from?" and "Where do you currently reside?" Or "Where's home?" versus "What's your address?" One is about things that can be tracked or scraped, and the other isn’t.So, let me take a shot at answering in a way that captures the stuff that can’t really be tracked. I was essentially born and raised outside of Minneapolis. Born just north of Chicago, but I’m from Minnesota.My mind always defaults to that when people ask a question like this. I live in Brooklyn now, as you know, so mentioning Minnesota feels even more important—as if to signal, “Hey, I’m not one of these freak New Yorkers. I’m from over there.” That’s probably the pithiest way to answer such a meaty question.What was it like growing up in Minneapolis? What do I remember? It was a really great place to grow up. A quintessential suburban upbringing, but with the twist that Minnesota winters are long, cold, and snowy. Unlike the East Coast—especially upstate New York or Buffalo—the winters in Minnesota are sunnier, or at least they feel sunnier. I went to school in upstate New York, so I’ve kind of run the A/B test on winters.Yeah, it only took one iteration to wrap up the experiment. There are a lot of outdoor activities: cross-country skiing, skating, ice fishing. A lot of people spend time outside—that’s the big difference. We were lucky. We had a pond in our backyard that froze over in the winter, so we spent a lot of time skating. I was outside a lot, which was just really good.Another thing worth mentioning: I have three older brothers. They were quite a bit older than me—the oldest is about 12 or 13 years older. So, unlike a lot of my friends, I feel like I had a firmer grasp on where all of this was headed.And by “all of this,” I mean life itself. Like, oh yeah—you go to college, then you move to a city, and you get a job. But yeah, Minnesota—I’m a huge homer. I cheer for all the sports teams. I loved it. And I miss it. You don’t move to Brooklyn for the environment or the outdoors.Why do you move to Brooklyn?I think—this might be romanticizing a bit—but it’s kind of like what JFK said about going to the moon: you do it because it's hard. That strikes me. I'm married and have two kids, five and two, so it's definitely difficult. The amount of space you get per dollar is terrible. And then there are just all the annoying things about living in a city. I'm fairly neurotic—I get annoyed by small noises and things like that pretty easily.But there's an upside to all of that annoying stuff. You can't be passive or settle in or get too comfortable. You have to stay creative, stay productive. You're forced to come up with good ideas in a way you wouldn't be if you were in the suburbs, where your money goes further and life might be more comfortable.That’s the romantic answer. The short answer is I graduated college, followed a girl—now my wife. All my friends moved to New York, so socially, it just felt like the natural thing to do.I want to go back—when you were a kid, do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?For sure. From about age four or five through twelve or thirteen, I really liked sports. I grew up playing hockey. I was always curious about the world, so while I don’t think I ever said I wanted to be a scientist, I loved learning about cool stuff—about Earth, nature, that kind of thing.Then, around age fourteen or fifteen, I became a little more inward. I liked reading a lot more. I ended up majoring in philosophy. I loved learning about the history of science, the history of ideas. That interest gradually pushed me into the work I do now. So to me, there's a kind of fault line—obviously marked by biological changes—around twelve or thirteen. Nothing too interesting before that, but things started taking shape after.You're in Brooklyn now—tell me a bit about the work you do. What keeps you busy these days?To riff off the last part, when I got into philosophy, I also got really into the behavioral sciences. Not in an academic sense—I didn’t go to grad school—but I just enjoyed learning about judgment and decision-making. My timing was lucky, because the field was really starting to be popularized in a way that even people outside the space were noticing.I’m talking about books like Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and others. That interest pushed me into advertising, but specifically into roles that focused on research and insights. I ended up spending five or six years at Publicis in that kind of capacity.Something interesting happened during that time. I entered the field with a strong behavioral science worldview—this idea that people don’t have fixed preferences, that they’re prone to decision-making errors they’re not even aware of. You’re not supposed to ask people what they like, because they don’t really know. The metaphor I liked was that the mind is like a press secretary, and the brain is the Oval Office—what the press secretary says isn’t necessarily trustworthy.But then, ironically, I taught myself how to do surveys—to add value to existing clients and help with new business. Which, according to that worldview, was kind of a sin, since surveys usually involve asking people what they like. What I found, though, was that the behavioral science perspective was a bit exaggerated. And the so-called replication crisis kind of confirmed that.You may not be attuned to this, but over the years, a lot of the major findings in judgment and decision-making—and in other parts of cognitive psychology and moral psychology—haven’t been replicable. Researchers haven’t been able to replicate them. In hindsight, it’s sort of obvious why: the incentive was to land a big TED Talk or a book deal. So the incentive was to spin these so-called counterintuitive narratives that were interesting and surprising to readers or audience members.But what I’ve found is that people will share the information you’re seeking through a survey—if you ask a good question. And by the way, we can get into what that means. I don’t mean a philosophically deep question, like something out of the Platonic dialogues. I just mean a clear question, without jargon, that’s easy to read. Your opening actually illustrated this nicely.I want to return to your reaction to my opening question—and the way it resonated with something you’ve learned about survey design or behavioral psychology. Is that what you're saying?Yeah. What I’m saying is that I discovered people do have access to their preferences. They have concrete opinions they can share, but it’s up to the surveyor to extract those responses by asking simple, clear, pithy questions.So an example—I think I might’ve shared this with you—I was helping a client, a brand, with their post-purchase surveys. These are the surveys you get after you buy something. And one of the questions was phrased as: “What were the primary benefits you were seeking with your purchase?”An easy edit is to just change that to: “Why’d you buy?” There are two reasons to make that change. One, it's easier for people to read, so they’re less likely to skip it and more likely to stick with the survey. Two, you’ll get better data. “Primary benefits” is already a mouthful, and typically, people just have one reason they buy something—the reason they bought it.So when you ask a question like that, you’re expecting people to do all this mental work—as if they’re supposed to distinguish between primary and secondary reasons, retrieve them, and then match them to your list of response options. But if you ask, “Why’d you buy?”—everyone gets that.What makes that more effective? I feel like there’s so much baked into the story you just told between those two questions. It’s really about what makes a good question.But part of me wants to go back to the replication crisis and this idea of how well people can answer questions to begin with. There was a moment when we were all kind of in love with the idea that you shouldn’t ever talk to your customers. I can’t tell you how many stupid think pieces I had to read with headlines telling people not to ask or listen to their customers—giving tons of reasons not to engage in meaningful conversations. But you’re saying you learned something different.And it’s funny—I’m rambling at this point—but it occurred to me, as I was prepping for this and digging through old links, that I don’t know if you and I ever talked about this: you wrote something for Scientific American on embodied cognition. I remember what you wrote. I bookmarked it and kept it. You were an early source for me on that topic, especially as I was figuring out—almost post-rationally—why I was so drawn to free association and projective techniques. Why I felt like I had found a more imaginative way to access good data from people—because it was kind of doing an end run around the press secretary. Do you know what I mean? So I thought it was funny that you had written about that.So I guess what I’m asking is: where are we now? Where are you now in terms of how you think about what people can answer? And why is a shift into something like “Why did you buy that?” valid and more effective when we’ve all been told that surveys should have a form—that you’re supposed to ask clear, rational, formal questions?Yeah. So the short answer is—well, actually, let me go back to the embodied cognition piece. I didn’t know you’d read that, by the way. It’s been years since I’ve thought about it.The short answer is: when people have a concrete, accessible preference, just ask about that. There are certainly times when you shouldn’t trust what people say—and that’s when they don’t care about the topic you’re asking about. In that case, you shouldn’t trust their feedback.As for embodied cognition—I haven’t thought about that in years—but let me try to steelman that worldview. And by the way, if anyone listening is interested, Jesse Singal has a really great book on this called The Quick Fix. He does a great job explaining what happened—the incentives, the oversimplifications, all of it. The embodied cognition stuff is really interesting. One thing I remember from an experiment—and I might get the details wrong—but the insight, I think, was that they had two groups of people evaluate the importance of something.The manipulation was that the clipboard used to fill out the questionnaire, for one of the groups, was a lot heavier. And they found that people in that group evaluated the item—which I can’t remember—as being more important. The conclusion was that the weight of the clipboard was used to infer importance.You see examples of this in the real world, like how the really premium American Express cards are heavier. That metaphor is very real. Like in Back to the Future, when Marty McFly would always describe things as being “heavy”—like, “Oh, this is so heavy.” And Doc Brown would say, “Is there something wrong with gravity in the future? Why do you keep saying that?” He didn’t get the metaphor.The insights into metaphors are really interesting, too. There's a famous book called Metaphors We Live By—lots of great insights in there. But the point is, when you read about all these results from the embodied cognition literature, you get the idea that we're just not in control—that we’re strangers to ourselves. That we're being manipulated by the environment, not necessarily in a way that hurts us, but in a way that's outside our awareness. The embodiment stuff is especially interesting because it challenges the idea that you are your brain and that the brain is separate from the world.Like I said, the full story is told in Jesse Singal's book The Quick Fix. A lot of these insights weren’t replicated—across embodied cognition, judgment and decision-making, moral psychology, and so on. So around the same time, this shift happened. You asked about this shift. What I realized is that it doesn’t make sense to say surveys are unhelpful or unreliable. That’s like saying pencils are unhelpful or unreliable, or blaming a bad novel on the pencil instead of the writer.In other words, you have to learn how to use the tool—use it in a way that works with our nature, or the nature of the mind. That’s a little grandiose, but you get the idea. Obviously, people are going to b******t if you ask them a question about shampoo or soap. Sure, there are some people who really care about that stuff, but most people don’t. So what do you expect?You have to focus on asking about things that are real to people. And by real, I mean things they can easily reflect on, draw from, and share—whatever is in the contents of their consciousness. A big part of enabling that is just removing jargon. Being clear and pithy.Now, I can pause here, but another direction this goes is that a lot of the quantitative market research world almost takes pride in adding jargon. They sort of disguise that in the form of good methodological practices—being rigorous in question design—and sure, there’s value in that. But you can still ask methodologically sound questions—no double-barreled questions or whatever—without all the jargon and b******t.There are two villains in this story: behavioral science and the quant establishment. Both, I think, miss the obvious model for doing surveys and market research, which is just to be pithy, clear, and ask questions people can actually answer.How would you describe the best practices of the quantitative research field?Another good thing to read on this, if people are interested, is the origin of surveys and polls—namely, what George Gallup did in the 1930s. He became famous for correctly forecasting the 1936 U.S. presidential election, much like Nate Silver in 2008 and the years after. And he did it by applying what was then a relatively new science: sampling—specifically, quota-based sampling.He figured out that you can’t just ask newspaper or magazine subscribers who they’re going to vote for. You have to get a sample that matches the base population—the actual population of voters.That’s how he got famous, but he spent much of his career in market research. He was actually partners with David Ogilvy. When Ogilvy came over from England, one of his first jobs was with Gallup as a researcher. Ogilvy has a few lines about this—something like, “I’m a researcher first and a copywriter second,” or “A good copywriter should be a researcher.” When I learned about that, I realized he was drawing on his own experience there.The point is, Gallup was very, very thorough. He would test questions for months to make sure people understood what was being asked. He’d get real detailed—like trying to figure out if “Prohibited” versus “Not Allowed” made a difference. He essentially birthed what we now call the quantitative market research world.He was meticulous in the way that Gordon Ramsay is meticulous—or David Blaine. He wasn’t just following a handbook. He was trying to optimize the consumer experience, so to speak. It really was about the person being interviewed—their experience. Yes, accuracy was a big part of it, but he’s got this great line where he says something like, “I care less about whether a question is leading or advising someone than whether it's intelligible.”So there's a real craft to this. And I mean craft in the sense that a chef or a magician has a craft.Over the years, with the arrival of the telephone—and then the internet—designing surveys got really cheap. Now you can go on SurveyMonkey, whip together a survey, and use a vendor to buy a panel of 200 people to answer it. So the cost of screwing things up is a lot lower.But what happens is there's now a flood of just... crap. Questionnaires and surveys everywhere. People pay lip service to the rules Gallup and his contemporaries developed, but I don’t think they understand what those people really did—which was to become masters of their craft.So that’s kind of how I would describe the quant world now.And now, it’s a lot more about whether you’ve got experience using Excel or R or another data analysis platform. There’s a kind of filtering mechanism where, if you’re someone from the humanities or see yourself as a creative person, you’re less likely to use those tools. And then you’re less likely to think of yourself as a “quant.” And so, you don’t get hired into those roles. So over time, that world—the quant world—sort of filtered out people like Gallup, ironically.And you're describing Gallup as a humanities guy—not belaboring things, but focused on the craft of questions.Yeah. I mean, to be clear, what he did for the science of polling—I wouldn’t put that in the humanities category at all. But I don’t think that’s the reason we still know him. It is a big part of it—he was on the cover of Time magazine in the ’30s for forecasting that election. But his influence, I think, came from the extent to which he turned surveying into a craft.In what way did he do that? I mean, his legacy is all about the polling side, which makes him sound like a quantitative genius. But what was it in particular that he brought? How did his creativity—or his qualitative instincts, his attention to intelligibility—show up?He put a huge premium on the user experience—what we would now call user experience. And this was no joke. He would hire hundreds of people to go out into the streets of America with clipboards, find people in specific demographics, and ask them to answer questions.It was painstaking work. And he would always pretest all his surveys. So, for the first few batches of any survey, the interviewer was trained to notice if people looked confused or seemed to struggle with a question. He would literally spend months making sure each question was clear and intelligible—his word.Now, jumping to today—another source of inspiration for me is Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things. You're probably familiar with his basic thesis, which is that objects afford certain actions. A monkey bar affords being gripped and hung from. A bar on a door affords being pushed.It’s up to the designer to make interactions with objects intuitive and easy—by using what he calls “signifiers” or “signals” that help people know what to do. That idea had a strong influence on the field of user experience—like how digital forms are designed, how people check out on Amazon, or register for something online. And obviously, in product design too—like your iPhone.The reason it was inspiring to me was really about the extent to which it encouraged people to think about making online forms intuitive and easy. A survey is an online form. I’m not going around the country with clipboards asking people questions. So, yeah—in other words, to optimize for ease and make a survey intuitive is to optimize for better insights.And it also just saves you time and money, because your survey will be shorter and more to the point. That’s another big piece of this—worth mentioning aside from just approaching it as a craft, not merely a hard science.What do you love about the work? Where’s the joy in it for you?Getting things right. When I’m designing a survey for a client, I’ll field a draft to, say, 20 people. Then I look at the results—you can kind of tell what’s working and what’s not. I’ll also just take the survey myself several times to spot what’s confusing. I’ll go through those early drafts six, seven, eight, nine times. And usually, if things go well, you land on something better. It just works.It’s similar to what a good user experience person does. They start with an early version of a digital interface—a form or a checkout page—and realize people aren’t completing it. Drop-off rates are high. So they make a series of changes, and eventually the drop-off rates go down to zero. And they know: “Okay, we fixed this interface.” That feeling—getting it right—is rewarding.There are other parts too. Once you have the data, there’s the analysis, creating a narrative from it—or often, in my case, helping a client support their narrative. We can definitely talk about that. But yeah, optimizing a survey for ease and intuitiveness is deeply satisfying.Let’s talk about questions. You’ve clearly thought a lot about this. I mean, I think we met years ago—probably through LinkedIn—and I remember having coffee with you. I connected with you as, in my mind, a very qualitative person working in quantitative surveys. That’s a reductive way of saying it, but I’m a qualitative person too, and everything you’ve described points to that sensibility. As a qualitative researcher, I probably think more than the average bear about the words I use in a question. And you clearly do too. So, what is a good question?I hope this resonates with you—but to me, a good question is a spotlight, not a floodlight.A floodlight question is like: “What’s your favorite toothpaste?” or “What do you think of the United States’ position on tariffs and foreign alliances?” Or even, “How would you evaluate the last six months of your life?” It’s like... I don’t know! I’m just trying to get through the end of the day.So, another example—I was thinking about this for my newsletter this week. Imagine you’re doing a survey for a cold and flu over-the-counter brand. I riffed on something similar about a year ago.You could ask: “Have you experienced any sleep disruptions that you would attribute to a respiratory tract infection?” Or you could just ask: “Did a cold or flu keep you up last night?”That second one—that’s the spotlight. It points to a very specific thing: a time, a place, a situation. Last night. Cold or flu. Did it keep you up? Yes or no. The phrase “Did you experience any sleep disruptions…” is just—it’s vague, abstract, clinical. It doesn’t land. Those words are like... what even is that?What is one trying to achieve with that kind of language? There’s something happening there, right? The first question in your example—the more jargon-heavy one. What is that jargon meant to accomplish? People use it because they love it or because they feel like they’re doing the right thing. It’s meant to do something. What does it do?Yeah, absolutely. And it speaks to the example you gave. I mean, the formal question—and I totally appreciate this—the primary purpose, or one of the primary purposes, of that kind of language is to signal credibility to coworkers or within the organization. You're performing as a “professional” person.And I think there’s another layer to it. I always think about when I started as a qualitative researcher—in the focus group setting, you’re called the moderator, and there’s this weird expectation of objectivity and distance. There's this “view from nowhere” that's associated with science—like you’re suddenly more scientific if you’ve extracted any kind of humanity from the process. That kind of language is intentionally neutral or “objective,” but in a way that just makes it... I mean, I guess it’s also speaking to the idea of the mask—but not the consumer’s mask.It invites the consumer to wear one. Like, “Oh, I know what I’m supposed to do here. I’m supposed to follow this script. This is the dance we do in surveys. We pretend we’re all very, very rational all the time about everything we do. And these are the words I’m supposed to use to describe my body and my experience.” It’s so alienated from actual experience. It’s amazing.And this is why I’ve always been intrigued by your work. I think of you as being a bit outside that world. But do you feel at home in the survey world? Do you feel welcomed by it? Or have things changed? Or am I exaggerating the extent to which quant is kind of inhuman?I don’t think you’re exaggerating—not just because of the historical context I mentioned earlier. In the quant world, there’s really very little middle ground between standardized questions that scale and what you might call “custom” questions.What I mean by questions that scale are the ones like, “Would you recommend our product or service to a friend or family member?” “Do you recognize this brand?” “How satisfied are you?” You can apply those anywhere. The problem is, they aren’t intuitive. But the upside is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.A custom question—by which I mean what I’ve been talking about: something intuitive, specific, pithy, tailored to what the client actually wants to learn—that takes a lot more work. So I think it’s always going to be this way. There’s a trade-off between those two approaches.I feel most at home, I think, in advertising. That’s kind of where I came up. When I was at Publicis, I spent almost all my time with strategists and planners, and I learned a lot from them. I was always trying to impress them—and the copywriters.Ideally, I’d deliver research results, and they’d take one of my survey questions and use it as a headline in their deck. Or a copywriter would say, “Oh, we don’t actually need to do any work—that question is the copy.” And they wouldn’t even need to see the results—they’d just get it.So I think I feel closest to that world—creatives and strategists within agencies. That’s mostly who I work with these days. But yeah, I always feel a little bit like a fish out of water.Yeah. And I’m exaggerating a bit for effect, just so everybody knows I’m not totally ignorant to the value of quant. I do get excited about quant. I hype it up over qual sometimes—but I know they’re both valuable. That’s my diplomatic caveat.Are there other practices that bother you, or that you’ve made a point to address in your work? Like, how do you talk about what you do? You've told me before, but when someone asks, “Sam, what do you do?”—what do you say?A lot of my clients are agencies—mid-sized ones. The people I work with are usually heads of planning, heads of strategy, CMOs, CSOs. One of the things that really annoys them, in terms of quant solutions—and it annoys me too—is when they hire a vendor, get the results back, and it’s in 30 slides that are totally unusable.So they have to redesign all the slides and force-fit them into their deck. It takes a ton of time.They also have access to all these social listening tools, subscriptions, big databases—which can be helpful—but they don’t really help you understand the shopper, or what that experience is actually like.That’s the world I feel most comfortable in. And that’s how I describe what I do: I provide quant solutions to mid-sized agencies. But the difference is, I try to correct for all those annoying things they’ve come to expect from quant vendors and subscriptions.And not just remove the pain points—but make the work more fun. More interesting. As I said before, when you really get a survey right, it feels good. Because it’s not just that you’ve optimized it for the respondent—you’ve also gotten the strategy and thinking right.I think it signals thoroughness—internally, within an organization, or to another employee. It’s certainly not optimized for the person answering the question. But I don’t think you’d ever get fired for asking something like, “Did you experience any sleep disruptions that you would attribute to a respiratory tract infection?”Right. It’s like—look how thorough I am. Look at all these long words.Exactly. And yeah, there are some pockets where this isn’t acceptable, but for the most part, it’s totally fine. I mean, just go look at SurveyMonkey’s templates, or Typeform, or any of those platforms. What will you find? You’ll find language that you won’t hear anywhere else except in a corporate survey. I mean, the question “Would you recommend this to a friend or family member?”—it’s a fine question. It has value.But it’s also a bit of a floodlight question. People don’t often recommend things to friends and family. One way I’ve tried to improve that is by asking: “If a friend or family member mentioned this in conversation, would you recommend our service or product?”And another thing that could be improved is the response options. Usually, it’s just 0 through 10. I prefer three options:* Yes, I’d recommend.* No, I wouldn’t recommend.* Yes, I’d recommend, but I’d mention a few things I don’t like or that are annoying.And the times I’ve used that, most people select the third one. There’s something psychological going on there. It gives people space to say, “Hey, I like you... but.” It’s like arguing with a friend or a spouse: “Okay, I like you—but...”So again, that model I rely on: is this a flashlight? Meaning—are you asking about something specific that people can easily grasp? “Oh yeah, I know what you’re asking.” If you can do that, their answer comes easily. They don’t have to think. They just answer.How do you mean?What I mean is: I’m not trying to get at hidden motives or deep-seated unconscious sentiments. I’m not interested in getting psychological in that way. That strikes me as really hard—and not that valuable. What I want to know is what’s on the surface—but still concealed. Another model for this—and I was just watching Squid Game—there’s a scene that kind of hit me as a good metaphor. There’s a young woman working at a carnival, wearing this giant cartoon costume—like a huge Mickey Mouse-style character. Then you follow her into the break room, and she takes off the headpiece, and she’s drenched in sweat. Earlier, there had been a scene with all these happy kids. So as a parent, I thought—great scene. Like, I have to put on a smile every day, and underneath, I’m drenched.But as a researcher, I saw something else—it captured the fundamental difference between the public and private self. And by private, I don’t mean your id or subconscious. I just mean things you carry with you all the time—but don’t show. So to ask the person under the mask, so to speak—to get an answer from the actual person—you simply need to speak to that person. And they will respond if they feel spoken to.Again, take the question: “Did you experience any sleep disruptions that you would attribute to a respiratory tract infection?” vs. “Did a cold or flu keep you up last night?” The latter speaks more directly to the person under the mask. And it’s not psychologically deep or philosophical in a Platonic dialogue sense. It’s just a simple, clear question that speaks to them.And from there, it’s easier to ask a good follow-up. Like: “What did you do about it?”Because in this case, if you’re the brand, you don’t want to just treat the symptom—you want to understand what the person is going through. So yeah, the mask—that scene was a decent model. I know the image of the mask has been used in literature and film a million times, so I’m not pretending it’s original. But it is useful.Yeah, absolutely. And it speaks to the example you gave. I mean, the formal question—and I totally appreciate this—the primary purpose, or one of the primary purposes, of that kind of language is to signal credibility to coworkers or within the organization. You're performing as a “professional” person.And I think there’s another layer to it. I always think about when I started as a qualitative researcher—in the focus group setting, you’re called the moderator, and there’s this weird expectation of objectivity and distance. There's this “view from nowhere” that's associated with science—like you’re suddenly more scientific if you’ve extracted any kind of humanity from the process. That kind of language is intentionally neutral or “objective,” but in a way that just makes it... I mean, I guess it’s also speaking to the idea of the mask—but not the consumer’s mask.It invites the consumer to wear one. Like, “Oh, I know what I’m supposed to do here. I’m supposed to follow this script. This is the dance we do in surveys. We pretend we’re all very, very rational all the time about everything we do. And these are the words I’m supposed to use to describe my body and my experience.” It’s so alienated from actual experience. It’s amazing.And this is why I’ve always been intrigued by your work. I think of you as being a bit outside that world. But do you feel at home in the survey world? Do you feel welcomed by it? Or have things changed? Or am I exaggerating the extent to which quant is kind of inhuman?I don’t think you’re exaggerating—not just because of the historical context I mentioned earlier. In the quant world, there’s really very little middle ground between standardized questions that scale and what you might call “custom” questions.What I mean by questions that scale are the ones like, “Would you recommend our product or service to a friend or family member?” “Do you recognize this brand?” “How satisfied are you?” You can apply those anywhere. The problem is, they aren’t intuitive. But the upside is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.A custom question—by which I mean what I’ve been talking about: something intuitive, specific, pithy, tailored to what the client actually wants to learn—that takes a lot more work. So I think it’s always going to be this way. There’s a trade-off between those two approaches.I feel most at home, I think, in advertising. That’s kind of where I came up. When I was at Publicis, I spent almost all my time with strategists and planners, and I learned a lot from them. I was always trying to impress them—and the copywriters.Ideally, I’d deliver research results, and they’d take one of my survey questions and use it as a headline in their deck. Or a copywriter would say, “Oh, we don’t actually need to do any work—that question is the copy.” And they wouldn’t even need to see the results—they’d just get it.So I think I feel closest to that world—creatives and strategists within agencies. That’s mostly who I work with these days. But yeah, I always feel a little bit like a fish out of water.Yeah. And I’m exaggerating a bit for effect, just so everybody knows I’m not totally ignorant to the value of quant. I do get excited about quant. I hype it up over qual sometimes—but I know they’re both valuable. That’s my diplomatic caveat. Are there other practices that bother you, or that you’ve made a point to address in your work? Like, how do you talk about what you do? You've told me before, but when someone asks, “Sam, what do you do?”—what do you say?A lot of my clients are agencies—mid-sized ones. The people I work with are usually heads of planning, heads of strategy, CMOs, CSOs. One of the things that really annoys them, in terms of quant solutions—and it annoys me too—is when they hire a vendor, get the results back, and it’s in 30 slides that are totally unusable. So they have to redesign all the slides and force-fit them into their deck. It takes a ton of time.They also have access to all these social listening tools, subscriptions, big databases—which can be helpful—but they don’t really help you understand the shopper, or what that experience is actually like.That’s the world I feel most comfortable in. And that’s how I describe what I do: I provide quant solutions to mid-sized agencies. But the difference is, I try to correct for all those annoying things they’ve come to expect from quant vendors and subscriptions. And not just remove the pain points—but make the work more fun. More interesting. As I said before, when you really get a survey right, it feels good. Because it’s not just that you’ve optimized it for the respondent—you’ve also gotten the strategy and thinking right.So yeah, I probably could’ve answered that in a more to-the-point, sales-letter-y kind of way.Well, let’s try it again. I’m curious—because I feel like we’ve had this conversation before—how do you describe it? What’s the version?Yeah. The short version is, I’d say: I provide quant solutions to agencies. A lot of these agencies—another pain point or annoying thing for them—is that they need, and often benefit from, quant solutions. But they don’t want to hire a full-time employee. And they definitely don’t need a whole department of insights people.So it’s a good fit. A good market-service fit. I don’t need to be hired full-time. The projects themselves are usually short. If I’m helping with a new business pitch, that might be just a few days. If it’s part of a larger initiative, it might last a month or two, maybe more. But yeah—I’d just say I provide quant solutions to agencies and brands, mostly agencies.What I was fishing for, I think, is the survey design part of it. You bring a level of creativity—and you’ve done work for me—creativity to the design of the survey experience that transforms it. It still gives a quantitative output, sure, but it’s a very different kind of survey.Yeah. So when I’m establishing relationships with these people, I don’t talk about any of this—the details or the theory—like we’re getting into here. I like this stuff, but most people don’t care. And they shouldn’t. They’re just trying to add value for their clients or win new business.So the thing I talk about is what I just mentioned: I can provide quant solutions that aren’t annoying. You don’t have to deal with templated surveys that aren’t insightful, or expensive subscriptions. You don’t need to hire me full time. I won’t be on your payroll. You’ll get the insights you need.And then—if people are interested (and some of them really are—there are a lot of interesting people out there)—then we can have a conversation about survey design, strategy, consumers, shoppers, all of it. But Lord, I would never lead with theory or my personal philosophy of survey design when I’m just starting a relationship. My assumption is always that they wouldn’t care.That’s probably right.Awesome.Well, Sam, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing your time with me.Yeah—great questions. And again, the way you opened this was great. Short questions that are easy for people to grab onto are almost always better than long ones that are hard to hold. And off we went. So yeah—thanks for the good questions. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Angie Meltsner is a mixed methods researcher and founder of Tomato Baby, where she helps brands decode shifting cultural narratives and consumer behaviors. She has held roles at Blink UX, DraftKings, The Wall Street Journal, Digitas, and Comscore, blending qualitative and quantitative methods to uncover strategic insights.I feel like I’ve been doing this long enough that people might anticipate this question, but I always start my conversations with the same one. It’s a big question that I borrowed from a friend who helps people tell their stories. Because it’s so big, I tend to over-explain it, but just know that you’re in complete control of your answer. The question is: Where do you come from?I listen to a lot of these conversations, and I’ve always wondered how I would answer this if it ever came up. I come from the Midwest, and I’ve noticed that a lot of your recent guests also have roots in the Midwest. I wonder if there’s something there.I was born and raised in Michigan, in a northern suburb of Detroit. My family is very Midwestern—both of my parents were raised in Michigan. My grandparents came from different places, but my grandmother was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, so my roots run deep there. I went to college at Michigan State, but I’ve lived in Boston for most of the past 15 years. Still, I definitely identify as a Midwesterner at heart.When do you feel most Midwestern, or what does it mean to be from the Midwest?I feel it in two ways. When I’m in Boston, people sometimes notice my accent, which I don’t even realize I have until I say certain words with long “A’s.” But when I go back to Michigan after a long time away, that’s when I really feel it—I slip right back into that Midwestern mindset.When my family visits me in Boston, I have to remind my mom that she can’t just talk to everybody here. In Michigan, people are naturally chatty; we’ll strike up conversations with anyone. In Boston, it’s different—you keep to yourself more. That difference always makes me feel distinctly Midwestern.I have this image of your mother just saying hello to strangers in Boston. How do New Englanders react to that?They’ll say hello back, but you usually have to be the one to start the conversation. In my early career, I worked on national projects and got to see how distinct regional cultures are—the Midwest, New England, and the West Coast all have their own particular social norms. Boston has much less small talk than Michigan, but most of my friends here are transplants, too. It makes me wonder if that changes my experience of the city.I think you have to do the talking first—you need to be the one to jump in.Early in my career, we worked on national projects, but we also did regional explorations. You really get a sense of how distinct the cultures are in different parts of the country—New England, the Midwest, the West Coast. Each region has its own particular character.Yeah, definitely.I remember doing free association exercises in Boston, and people were just very reluctant to participate.Yeah, there's a lot less small talk. But a lot of my friends aren’t actually from Boston. In fact, I don’t think I have that many friends who are even from Massachusetts. Most of us are transplants—many from New Hampshire or Maine. My husband’s from New Jersey. So my network here is mostly made up of people who moved to the area. I wonder if that makes a difference.What was it like growing up in Michigan? Do you remember what you wanted to be when you were a kid?I really enjoyed growing up in Michigan. It was all I knew because my grandparents lived there—some in the Upper Peninsula, some in Central Michigan, in the Lower Peninsula. But even as a kid, I knew I didn’t want to stay in Michigan. I wanted to live in a city.I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I was drawn to cities, probably because I grew up in a very stereotypical suburb. Detroit wasn’t a place my parents were comfortable letting me explore on my own, and there wasn’t really public transportation in Michigan—largely because of the auto industry’s influence. So I just dreamed of living in a city, and that became my goal. I think that’s ultimately what led me to where I am now.So how did you make that dream happen?Well, in high school, we had an elective marketing class. If you took the first year and got selected for the second year, you had the chance to go on a class trip to New York City. That’s honestly the only reason I signed up for marketing—I wanted the opportunity to go to New York because I had never been before.And did you get to go?Yeah! I made it into the second-year class and got to go to New York. That experience really stuck with me. My dad, who had a business degree, encouraged me to go into business, so I ended up at Michigan State. I think one of your recent guests—Maggie, maybe?—had a similar experience. She went into a business program right from the start of college. For me, marketing started as just a way to get to New York, but I stuck with it because it seemed like a practical choice. My parents supported it, and it made good business sense as a career path.And I felt like it was business, but creative at the same time. I was really into art and creativity when I was younger—media, design, all of that. Marketing felt like a way to bring those interests together while still feeling responsible and practical. Liberal arts wasn’t really a thing in my family when it came to education, so this path just seemed to make the most sense.Nice. And now you’re in Boston—tell me a little bit about what you’re doing now.Yeah. So I’ve been working for myself for the past two and a half years. But when I first moved here, I didn’t have a job. I just kind of took the leap, moved, and figured it out. I worked as a hostess at a seafood restaurant and at Anthropologie for a while. After that, I started working in ad agencies, moving around a bit to figure out what I actually liked about work. That eventually led me to research—consumer insights, cultural insights. I moved around a bit within that field too, and now I have my own one-person practice. I work with agencies, brands, and all kinds of research projects.What’s the name of your company?It’s called Tomato Baby.What’s the story behind that name?When I decided to go out on my own, I knew I didn’t want to use my own name. I’ve spent my whole life with people mispronouncing or misspelling it, so I didn’t want to make that part of my business. I wanted something fun, creative, and memorable—something that felt like a personal project. I also really love the red and pink color combination, so I was trying to think of something that could incorporate that. Then I remembered this little figurine I have—a Sunny Angel doll. Do you know what those are? They’re these tiny, winged, naked baby dolls, and each one has a different head.I got one a few years ago with a skincare order from an Asian beauty store in New York. I just added it on as a little extra, and the one I got had a tomato head. It’s been sitting around our house ever since, and we always called it the "Tomato Baby." One day, I saw it, and I thought, "Well, it’s red, it’s fun, it’s easy to say and spell—why not?" And that’s how Tomato Baby was born.What’s your relationship with the name now? Did you second-guess it at any point? Because it’s definitely a bold name.Oh, for sure. And honestly, I still do sometimes. In the beginning, I worried—was I going to feel embarrassed saying this out loud when people asked me about my business? But it’s turned out to be super memorable. I once met someone who couldn’t remember my actual name, but they remembered "Tomato Baby"—and that’s all that really matters! If we’re going to work together, that’s what they need to know.I have had people say it doesn’t sound "serious" for a research business, but that’s kind of the point. Research doesn’t have to be dry and boring, even quantitative research, which I do a lot of. Most people love the name, or at least they get it. And if they want to work with me, it gives them an immediate sense of who I am.I think it’s fantastic. It’s such a great name.Thanks!I'm curious about your experience with people misspelling your name. What kinds of mistakes do they make?Yeah, I think it’s because there are four consonants right in the middle—Meltsner, M-E-L-T-S-N-E-R. That combination of L-T-S-N really seems to trip people up. A lot of times, they’ll replace the S with a Z, or they’ll drop one of the consonants. I get Meltzer a lot. It’s been like that my whole life. I’m really proud of my last name—I didn’t change it when I got married because it’s part of who I am. But I also know it’s not the easiest for people to spell or pronounce.That must be frustrating. My last name is unbelievably simple—Spear, like the weapon. My dad used to joke, "Spear as in javelin," and that was enough for people to get it right. I’ve never had to deal with people constantly messing it up. I imagine that would be aggravating.Honestly, it doesn’t really bother me. Well, sometimes—especially when my name is clearly written in front of them and they still get it wrong. But it’s funny, my mom actually changed her last name to Meltsner when she got married, and her maiden name was way more complicated. I won’t share it—for security reasons—but it was long and kind of ridiculous.And then my brother’s wife also changed her last name to Meltsner, and her original last name was this massive 15-letter German name. When they got married, my dad joked that the only people choosing to take on Meltsner were coming from even more complicated names.At this point, I’ve just adapted. I got really good at spelling it out: "M as in Mary, E-L-T as in Tom, S as in Sam, N as in Nancy, E-R." I literally had to do this earlier today. It’s just part of life. My husband, on the other hand, has a super simple last name, and we gave that to our daughter to make things easier for her. But I’m sticking with Meltsner.And how do you help people spell it correctly?I just go into autopilot: "M as in Mary, E-L-T as in Tom, S as in Sam, N as in Nancy, E-R." Works every time.That’s amazing. So, tell me about your work. How do you describe what you do, and what do you love about it?I do all kinds of research, mostly related to consumer insights and cultural insights. And honestly, I’m just so naturally nosy that I can’t believe being nosy is my actual job. That’s how I realized that all these little superpowers and interests I had could be a career.I do a lot of quantitative research—I have a background in survey research—so I make sure that if a survey is being conducted, it’s done properly and for the right reasons. I care a lot about methodology and making sure the approach is actually useful. But I also do qualitative research, especially interviews. And then there’s my semiotics work, which is more about cultural insight and semiotic analysis.That’s actually been the biggest focus of my work since going independent, which I never would have expected when I first struck out on my own. But I love it—I love learning about anything and everything, especially people.Where’s the joy in it for you?Definitely going down rabbit holes. That’s something I’ve done since I was a kid. I grew up with the internet—we got it at my house when I was about 12 or 13—and I spent so much time exploring online subcultures, LiveJournal, weird internet communities. Now, I get paid to do that, which feels kind of unbelievable.And beyond that, I love that I actually get to apply what I learn in my personal life. I used to work a lot with personal finance and financial services clients, and through that, I picked up so much useful knowledge about investing and managing money. It’s like every project expands my perspective in ways I never expected.When did you first realize that this was something you could actually make a living doing? You were in marketing and business—when did research become a real career option?Even in high school, my marketing class included research as part of the curriculum. In college, I took market research and stats-based classes, and I did a lot of quantitative work using statistics. But the class that really stuck with me was consumer behavior. One of the projects involved going into a store, talking to people, and observing them in the space. It wasn’t the main focus of the course, but it planted a seed.Still, when I was looking for my first professional job, I wasn’t specifically thinking about research. I knew I liked it, but at that point, I just needed a job. I ended up at a media buying agency as a receptionist, then moved into media strategy. As I advanced, I realized that the part of my job I loved most was the research aspect.The higher I moved up, the more I was losing that hands-on research work, and that’s when I knew I wanted to pivot. At the time, I was living overseas in London. I made the decision to move back to Boston and focus on finding a research job—something that would let me really dig into the kind of work I knew I loved.What was your first job in research?My first job strictly focused on research was at Comscore, which is a syndicated data company. Before that, I had used Comscore in media strategy as a media measurement tool—it helped with planning media campaigns and assessing audience size and demographics for publishers.At Comscore, I worked on a custom research team. The Boston office came from an acquisition, so it operated a little differently from the rest of the company. Instead of working on their syndicated products, our team focused entirely on custom research. They took a chance on me because of my media experience and the range of clients I had worked with. Once I got into it, I knew—this is where I was supposed to be.And tell me about semiotics. When did you first come across it?At some point in my second career in research, I stumbled upon EPIC. Do you know it?Yeah.Someone had mentioned EPIC to me, and when I checked it out, I found a semiotics course taught by Cato Hunt from Space Doctors. I had probably heard the word "semiotics" before, but it had never really stuck with me. And honestly, I think it’s a shame that I never encountered it in my formal education. Maybe that’s because I was on a business track rather than a communications or humanities track.But when I read that course description, I had this moment of recognition—like, "Oh my gosh, I already think this way. I just need to learn how to do it professionally, with structure." At first, I tried to self-teach. I bought some books and dove in, but I got lost trying to piece it all together on my own. Then I found Chris Arnig’s course, How to Do Semiotics in Seven Weeks, and signed up. The course was designed for UK time zones, and even though they didn’t offer a US-friendly version, I woke up at 3 AM once a week just to take it. That’s how badly I wanted that structured learning. Then, when I went freelance, I happened to meet someone who recognized my interests and potential and started hiring me for semiotics-related projects. From there, it just took off. In fact, for 2024, almost all of my work has been in semiotics or cultural insight.When a client comes to you for semiotics, what kinds of questions are they asking? And how do you explain semiotics to someone who’s unfamiliar with it?A lot of people don’t know exactly what semiotics is or how to explain it, and I’m probably not the best at it either! But at its core, it’s about analyzing the signs, symbols, visual cues, and verbal cues in culture—decoding the layers of meaning that people might not consciously articulate but that still shape their perceptions.A great example: My husband was watching The Founder, the movie about McDonald's and Ray Kroc. There’s a scene where Kroc says something like, "Don’t you understand these golden arches? It’s not just McDonald’s—it’s America. It’s family. It’s tradition." And I turned to my husband and said, "That’s basically what I do."It’s about understanding what these cultural elements mean on a deeper level—beyond just their functional or surface-level associations. A lot of my semiotics work comes through agencies. Their clients have already bought into the idea of semiotics, so I don’t always have to sell them on it directly. But I think that’s one of the biggest challenges—getting companies to understand the value of semiotics in the first place. It’s often seen as a “nice to have” rather than a core research approach, which makes it an easy thing to cut from a larger study if budget pressures come into play. But for the people who get it, it’s incredibly powerful.When I do semiotics work, I typically collaborate with agencies that already have buy-in for the methodology. My role is often to examine how certain cultural questions play out specifically in the U.S. market. It’s so important to understand the cultural context of the market you’re working in.A lot of times, I’ll be representing the U.S. perspective while working alongside colleagues who specialize in markets like China, Italy, Mexico, or India. Together, we analyze advertisements, packaging, retail environments, media, and pop culture—anything from news articles to TV shows and movies. The goal is to spot patterns in the visuals and language being used and understand what deeper meanings they carry.For example, going back to that McDonald’s reference—if we were analyzing a McDonald's ad, we’d ask: What are the visual and verbal codes that represent American culture? How is the "American Dream" being portrayed? We’d gather multiple examples of this idea—maybe ten different representations of the American Dream—and then assess: Which ones are outdated and no longer resonate? Which ones are dominant in culture right now? Which emerging ideas are likely to become dominant in the next few years?By mapping this cultural trajectory, we help clients make strategic decisions about branding, packaging, messaging, and overall brand identity. If they’re rebranding or launching something new, they can align with the most relevant and meaningful cultural cues—or even tap into where culture is headed next.That sounds like a lot of fun.It is! I feel so lucky to do this work. It’s incredibly rewarding.What’s your process like? How do you actually go about doing this?Honestly, it can feel a little chaotic at the start. The first phase is all about collecting. I have a habit of saving things constantly—on Pinterest, in Notion, in random folders. I probably need a better system to centralize everything, but for now, it works.Whenever I see an interesting package, I take a picture. My phone is full of random product photos. I also tag and categorize them, especially in my main focus areas—beauty, personal care, skincare, food, and beverage—since those are the categories I naturally pay the most attention to.When I start a project, I first look at what I already have. Then, I start a deeper dive. I have a huge media list—I subscribe to so many Substacks, though I don’t get any in my inbox. Instead, I keep a list of what I follow and what type of content they cover. If I’m researching food trends, for example, I’ll check Snack Shot to see what Andrea Hernandez has written.I also dig into mainstream media—The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times. At any given time, I have a subscription to at least one of them. I use Feedly to track publications and search by keyword to see what’s come up across multiple sources.Once I have a wide range of material, I start looking for patterns. The first few days are intense—it’s exhausting and feels messy. I hate sharing my work at this stage because it looks so scattered and chaotic. But then, things start clicking. Patterns emerge, themes become clear, and I can start clustering insights together. And over time, across multiple projects, you develop a sense of where things are going next.Are there broad cultural observations you can make? Since you're working across so many categories, do you see larger patterns—dominant, emergent, or recessive cultural codes?Yeah, definitely. Sometimes that’s actually part of the work—starting with category-specific codes, then zooming out to see the bigger cultural shifts. It’s about identifying what’s residual (fading but still present), what’s dominant (shaping culture right now), and what’s emergent (early signals of where things are headed). From there, we can piece together how these shifts inform the broader cultural landscape.Are there any observations you could share?Oh yeah, for sure. Though I don’t always know what would be surprising or new to people. It probably depends on what else someone is reading. I don’t publish much of my own thinking outside of client work—I have a Substack, but I barely use it.One clear shift I’ve noticed, which others have written about really well, is the broader political realignment happening across culture. Someone I really like is Anu—her Substack, What’s Anu, is excellent. She articulates a lot of these shifts in ways that resonate with what I’ve seen in my own work.Another big theme I keep coming back to is food as a status signifier. Snacks, protein, functional foods, and even things like Zyn and nicotine consumption—all these choices communicate identity, status, and values in ways that feel really interesting. There’s also a growing blur between food and personal care, which keeps showing up in my work.But I totally get what you mean about feeling paralyzed when asked to just share an observation on the spot. It’s like, when you’re deep in it all the time, it can be hard to zoom out and pick the one thing that stands out.I’m curious—how has Zyn specifically shown up in your work?Zyn is fascinating because it’s emerged as a marker of masculinity, but in a really specific way. It’s often seen as a replacement for smoking, but I think it’s more than that—it’s a new way of engaging with nicotine that attracts people who may never have smoked in the first place.What’s interesting is that Zyn actually started in Sweden, where it was initially more popular with women. But in the U.S., it’s overwhelmingly masculine. And not just in the stereotypical “Tucker Carlson/tech bro” way—it’s also really prevalent among firefighters, police officers, and other blue-collar workers.It’s one of those things where, if you track its usage across different groups, you start to see how something as small as a nicotine pouch can become a cultural marker, carrying all these different layers of meaning depending on the context.I remember reading a list of donation requests during the LA fires, and one of the things firefighters specifically asked for was Zyn. That really stuck with me. It’s fascinating to see who’s actually using it—it’s not just the stereotype we often hear in media, the young, right-wing tech guy.Yeah, that’s so interesting. What do you make of that? Why do you think Zyn is showing up this way? Is it about nicotine itself? A replacement for smoking?I think it’s about the nicotine buzz as a substitute for something like Adderall. For people who don’t have access to prescription stimulants, or just don’t want to go through the process of getting them, nicotine offers a similar focus-enhancing effect. It’s accessible, and maybe it feels like a “healthier” alternative to smoking—though I don’t know how much that perception holds up. I’ve never been a smoker and don’t use nicotine products, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I think accessibility is a big part of it. I have no idea how much it costs, but I imagine that plays a role too.Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve read enough to be dangerous about masculinity and risk, and nicotine carries an inherent sense of risk—or at least, that’s my association. But what about the political shifts you mentioned? Obviously, we’ve all felt this massive change—how has it shown up in your work? Yeah. And just to say—when I talk about “politics,” we’re also talking about something much bigger. I think a lot of people struggle with the word “culture” because it can feel abstract, but I always say this: the Wednesday after an election, the air feels different. That’s culture. It’s something you can’t quite articulate, but you feel it all around you. So when I say politics, I really mean these larger cultural undercurrents. Over the past year, I’ve seen it emerge in so many different ways—things like the rise of trad wives, the resurgence of full-fat or raw milk, all these small choices that, when you put them together, signal something bigger. Is it just a passing trend? Or does it reflect a deeper, more structural shift?I’d love to not talk about politics so much, but it’s impossible to ignore. Anu from What’s Anu wrote a great piece recently on regressive nostalgia, which captures a lot of what I’ve been seeing. I highly recommend her writing—she articulates these shifts so well.Tell me a little about your approach to qualitative research. You’re a triple threat—semiotics, quant, and qual. How do you think about qual?I love being called a triple threat—it’s as close as I’ll get to being Beyoncé!For me, there’s no substitute for understanding the why behind things. A few years ago, I spoke at a conference about mixed-methods research—how using multiple approaches leads to richer, more meaningful insights. Someone in the audience asked me about big data, since a lot of the talks that day had been about machine learning and large-scale analytics.And I said, look, you can infer and assume all you want from data models, but you’ll never really know why something is happening unless you hear people talk about it in their own words. The language they use, the stories they tell—those are the pieces that give meaning to the numbers.That’s what I love about qualitative research. It’s an honor to sit across from someone and hear them talk about their lives—whether it’s something as simple as what they eat, what they drink, what makeup they use, or something as complex as how they run their business. Everything has a story, a reason behind it. And you just can’t get that by looking at numbers alone.I was talking to a college student recently, and she mentioned a class she’s taking on historical imagination. She said they’ve been learning about something called micro-histories, which I think is such a great term. It really just means anecdotes—small, individual stories that tell us something larger about the world.That’s so cool.Right? I love that framing. It’s basically what qualitative research is—micro-histories that help us understand the bigger picture. I’m curious about mixed methods. I always feel like a fraud because I never formally trained in research—I never went to school for it. But “mixed methods” is a real term, right? It’s not just a common noun—it’s more like a proper noun?Yeah, I guess so. To me, it just means using more than one research method in a study. Most people think of it as using both quantitative and qualitative methods, but technically, any combination of methods counts. If you’re doing a diary study followed by in-depth interviews, for example, that’s a mixed-methods approach.In most of my work, a mixed-methods study usually means combining qualitative research with a survey. Sometimes we start with qualitative and then run a survey to quantify the findings, making sure we understand how widespread certain insights are. Other times, we start with a survey, identify surprising or interesting data points, and then use qualitative research to dig deeper. It’s about layering different approaches to get a fuller picture.Do you have any mentors?Yeah, I do.What mentors have you had, if any?My very first boss comes to mind. When I was a receptionist at a media agency, I eventually moved over to the account team, where I first started doing some research using syndicated tools for media strategy. My boss there, Mary McCarthy, really shaped my career early on. I’m still in touch with her, and that job was 15 years ago. She runs her own media planning business now—if anyone needs media work done, she’s amazing.She gave me a lot of independence, a lot of great advice. I still remember word for word some of the conversations we had. She’s the first person I think of when I think of a mentor. But beyond that, I’ve had so many people in my professional circles that I can turn to, and I’m really grateful for that—especially as an independent researcher.I’m sure you feel the same way. When you don’t have colleagues in the traditional sense, you have to actively seek out other people and develop those relationships. That’s been huge for me—not just for my success, but for my sanity.And the second part of this question, which I don’t know why it feels connected, is about touchstones. Are there concepts or ideas you return to again and again?Yeah… well, what do you mean exactly?I guess I think of it like a security blanket. There are times when I get into a project and feel lost or disconnected from my work, and I need something to anchor me. So I go back to certain ideas—maybe metaphor, or motivation theory, or even just re-examining what a brand actually means. Something that reorients me.That’s really interesting. I wouldn’t say I have a theoretical touchstone in that way, but for me, getting out of the house is the thing that resets me. Walking, going to the grocery store, going to the movies—being out in the world. That’s when I think most clearly.I send a lot of voice notes to myself or to people I’m working with while I’m walking. It’s like my brain switches on the moment I step outside. If I try to capture those thoughts in a text, it’s too much—I’d be typing forever—so I just record voice memos. I have tons of them.I love that. I feel like there are all these rabbit holes around the connection between walking and thinking. There’s so much historical precedent for it—monasteries have walking paths for contemplation, and perambulation has always been linked to intellectual exploration.I remember reading a list of requested donations during the LA fires, and one of the things firefighters specifically asked for was Zyn. That really stuck with me. It’s fascinating to see who’s actually using it—not just the stereotype of the young, right-wing tech guy that the media tends to focus on.Yeah, that’s so interesting. What do you make of that? Why do you think Zyn is showing up this way? Is it about nicotine itself? A replacement for smoking?I think it’s about the nicotine buzz as a substitute for something like Adderall. For people who don’t have access to prescription stimulants, or just don’t want to go through the process of getting them, nicotine offers a similar focus-enhancing effect. It’s accessible, and maybe it feels like a “healthier” alternative to smoking—though I don’t know how much that perception holds up. I’ve never been a smoker and don’t use nicotine products, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I think accessibility is a big part of it. I have no idea how much it costs, but I imagine that plays a role too.Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve read enough to be dangerous about masculinity and risk, and nicotine carries an inherent sense of risk—or at least, that’s my association. But what about the political shifts you mentioned? Obviously, we’ve all felt this massive change—how has it shown up in your work? Did you see it coming?Yeah. And just to say—when we talk about “politics,” we’re also talking about something much bigger. I think a lot of people struggle with the word “culture” because it can feel abstract, but I always say this: the Wednesday after an election, the air feels different. That’s culture. It’s something you can’t quite articulate, but you feel it all around you.So when I say politics, I really mean these larger cultural undercurrents. Over the past year, I’ve seen it emerge in so many different ways—things like the rise of trad wives, the resurgence of full-fat or raw milk, all these small choices that, when you put them together, signal something bigger. Is it just a passing trend? Or does it reflect a deeper, more structural shift?I’d love to not talk about politics so much, but it’s impossible to ignore. Anu from What’s Anu wrote a great piece recently on regressive nostalgia, which captures a lot of what I’ve been seeing. I highly recommend her writing—she articulates these shifts so well.Tell me a little about your approach to qualitative research. You’re a triple threat—semiotics, quant, and qual. How do you think about qual?I love being called a triple threat—it’s as close as I’ll get to being Beyoncé!For me, there’s no substitute for understanding the why behind things. A few years ago, I spoke at a conference about mixed-methods research—how using multiple approaches leads to richer, more meaningful insights. Someone in the audience asked me about big data, since a lot of the talks that day had been about machine learning and large-scale analytics.And I said, look, you can infer and assume all you want from data models, but you’ll never really know why something is happening unless you hear people talk about it in their own words. The language they use, the stories they tell—those are the pieces that give meaning to the numbers.That’s what I love about qualitative research. It’s an honor to sit across from someone and hear them talk about their lives—whether it’s something as simple as what they eat, what they drink, what makeup they use, or something as complex as how they run their business. Everything has a story, a reason behind it. And you just can’t get that by looking at numbers alone.I was talking to a college student recently, and she mentioned a class she’s taking on historical imagination. She said they’ve been learning about something called micro-histories, which I think is such a great term. It really just means anecdotes—small, individual stories that tell us something larger about the world.That’s so cool.Right? I love that framing. It’s basically what qualitative research is—micro-histories that help us understand the bigger picture.Yeah, totally. There’s something about the rhythm of walking that makes ideas flow.And it reminds me of this weird fact about English gardens—some of those labyrinths they designed were actually a form of entertainment. They would include “whoopsies,” which were little bumps meant to trip you up, keeping you alert as you navigated the space.That’s fascinating. I’d love to dig into the history of the garden labyrinth. I actually came across a book recently called Walking as a Form of Research. I haven’t read it yet, but I was immediately like, yes, that makes total sense. Walking is such a big part of my research process. I see things when I’m out in the world that spark connections to whatever project I’m working on. And if I ever feel stuck—or even when I don’t—I try to make time to step outside.Where do you go? Can you walk right out of your house?Yeah, I live in a city—technically Somerville, which isn’t municipally part of Boston, but it’s right next to it. It’s small, just four square miles, and I don’t have a car, so I’m always either walking, taking the bus, or hopping on the T.When my daughter was in preschool, I had a routine where I’d take the bus with her across town and then walk back—a 45-minute walk. If I picked her up, I’d walk one way and we’d take public transit home together. Now we have a much shorter commute, but my general rule is: if it’s under an hour and the weather isn’t awful, I walk.I’ve lived in the same two-square-mile town for over 20 years, and I never tire of walking the alleys and streets. It blows my mind that it still feels fresh.Yeah, I relate to that. Growing up in the suburbs of Michigan, there wasn’t much to walk to. The big destinations were the video store, an ice cream shop, and—if I was up for a long walk—the public library. But most places required a car.Now, living somewhere walkable, I don’t take it for granted. I can walk or take the T anywhere—to Fenway Park, to amazing museums, shops, parks. It’s not as cool as New York, but it has a lot going for it. And being able to walk home from a baseball game? That’s pretty special.I love that. Before we wrap up, I’m curious about your approach to interviewing. How did you learn to do it? What do you enjoy about it?I started in quantitative research, but I knew I needed to incorporate qualitative—it just fits my nature.Why do you think that is?Maybe it’s the Midwesterner in me—wanting to talk to people. There’s no substitute for that kind of connection. And maybe living in Boston for so long, I started to miss it! So I started adding qual to my research work, reading everything I could find. Steve Portigal’s Interviewing Users is a great book. I also listen to a lot of podcasts and just tried to absorb as much as possible while working on lower-stakes qualitative projects. Then, at my last job before I went independent, I took on a project that involved 30 interviews. I had a partner, so I didn’t do them all, but I did about 20—and that was the moment where I was like, okay, this is it.You learn so much just by doing it. I also make a habit of listening back to my interviews. It’s cringey, but it helps me notice things—like how often I say, Oh, that’s so cool, or, Awesome, thanks! You don’t want to insert too much leading feedback, so I try to be more conscious of that.One of my favorite resources is The Turnaround podcast with Jesse Thorne. It’s all about how great interviewers approach their craft. He interviews Larry King, Jerry Springer, Werner Herzog—just incredible people. Highly recommend it.That sounds amazing.Yeah, it’s so good.Well, this has been a blast. I really appreciate your time.Thank you, Peter. It was a pleasure. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm is Professor of Religion and Chair of Science & Technology Studies at Williams College, and the author of “Metamodernism: The Future of Theory.” This is the first time I’ve done a second interview - and it is because I want desperately to understand what he means when he say Metamodern.This is the second of two interviews. The first is “Myth & Metamodernism” All right, Jason, thank you so much for accepting my invitation to come back and talk about metamodernism.Yeah, it’s an honor to not only be on your program once, but twice.It’s true. Just to catch people up, I first encountered you through your book The Myth of Disenchantment—which I really enjoyed. Then I discovered you had written a book on metamodernism, a concept that pops up here and there in my world of brand and cultural strategy. I was really keen to talk to you about it last time, and I’m excited to dive deeper today. The idea keeps resurfacing, and I find myself wanting to better understand it. So, let’s start at the beginning. When did you first encounter the term "metamodernism"? And what did it seem to mean to you at that time?Sure. In a way, despite the title of my book, I actually came to the term “metamodernism” fairly late. The manuscript initially went out for peer review under the title Absolute Disruption: The Future of Theory After Postmodernism.That was the original full title. And the peer reviewers kept saying, “Okay, we get that you're critiquing postmodernism—but what is the name of your positive project?” They wanted something I could identify with, or at least a shorthand for it.I realized that made sense. I also wanted to avoid any egotism, like having it referred to as “Storm’s theory” or something. So I started looking at other movements and thinkers who were also trying to move beyond postmodernism.And for me, when I was brainstorming during the revision process—thinking through what to focus on—I was reminded of some work I’d read decades earlier by the Nigerian art historian Moyo Okediji. He wrote an essay in a book about diasporic art, specifically focusing on both African and Jewish diasporas. I had picked it up while preparing to teach a course on diaspora, which, in the end, never got greenlit.In that piece, Okediji used the term metamodern to describe certain artists he saw as working through—not just past—modernism and postmodernism. He used some really evocative imagery, talking about processes like fracturing and reappropriating elements of both the modern and the postmodern. And I remember thinking, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do.With that in mind, I started looking around to see how else the term had been used. There were scattered instances—a volume here, a mention there—but overall, I wasn’t aiming to describe a fully established movement called metamodernism. I was more interested in trying to intervene in the current moment.What I noticed among others using the term—and I’ve mentioned this before—is a shared sense that postmodernism needs to be worked through in order to be transcended. Where I diverge from most of the prior work on metamodernism is in the approach: a lot of people were focused on categorizing cultural works as modern, postmodern, or metamodern.That’s not a game I’m against, but it’s not really the game I’m playing. I think there’s room for debate about how useful that kind of cataloging is, but it wasn’t my primary aim. I wasn’t trying to describe a shift—I was trying to trigger one.And since the book came out, I’ve been really pleased to connect with others in the broader metamodernism space—people like Brendan Dempsey and others who are exploring the philosophical, political, and cultural shifts happening right now. What we all seem to share is this belief that postmodernism—however we each define it, and I do offer a specific definition in my book—is no longer the dominant framework. And that what’s needed isn’t a return to what came before, but the creation of a new mode entirely.There’s definitely been a lot of conservative backlash against postmodernism. But what’s striking to me is that these metamodern movements aren’t part of that reactionary trend. Instead, they’re trying to forge a different—and often more optimistic—path forward. I can go into more or less specificity, but that’s the broad picture.Yeah, yeah. That’s wonderful. I’m curious about drawing a distinction that I think is where you and I connect—the difference between describing a paradigm shift and triggering one. What’s your sense of the people who are trying to describe metamodernism as a paradigm shift? What does that look like to you? And then, what do you mean when you say you’re trying to trigger one? That feels bold and ambitious.Yeah—yes, to both of those things.So, on the first point: there are folks out there trying to describe this shift. One key figure is Timothy Vermeulen. I’ve met him briefly—he seems like an interesting guy. He and a group of colleagues contributed to an edited volume where they tried to understand why contemporary art movements feel so different now compared to the height of postmodernism in art and literature.They landed on two main insights. One, which I think is genuinely useful, is that there’s been a kind of retreat or backlash against the cynical, ironic distance typically associated with postmodernism. I think that’s a valid observation.Where I find their approach less helpful is in their definition of metamodern art as a kind of oscillation between modern and postmodern sensibilities. That framing is really hard to falsify. Once you define something as an oscillation, you can essentially include anything—because nearly anything can be read as oscillating between sincerity and irony, or whatever poles you’re working with. It becomes too inclusive to be analytically useful.That said, I do think they were onto something in noting a tonal shift. I just interpret it differently. I don’t subscribe to the idea of a singular zeitgeist in the way some of them do. I think the picture is more complex than that.I don’t believe we’ve moved neatly from modernity to postmodernity and now into metamodernity. That linear framing doesn’t really hold up for me. But I do think there were dominant, idealized artistic and academic models that gained traction in the 1970s and 1980s—models often labeled as postmodern—and those are no longer driving the conversation today.For example, much of the discourse around postmodern literature focused on figures like Alain Robbe-Grillet, who essentially no one reads anymore. It would’ve been a mistake to assume, as some did back then, that that was the future direction of literature.Similarly, when thinkers like Jean-François Lyotard were arguing that there were “no more grand narratives,” that may have described a narrow slice of cultural production at the time—especially in certain philosophical and literary circles—but it absolutely doesn’t apply today. In our current moment, we are awash in grand narratives. They’re everywhere, in all sorts of competing and overlapping forms.So, while I may be critical of some efforts to define metamodernism as a kind of fixed era, I do think those thinkers accurately captured a tonal shift—a change in what Raymond Williams might call the “structure of feeling.” And I don’t want to downplay that. I think they were right to notice that something had changed.Yeah. How would you describe that tonal shift? What do you mean by “structure of feeling”? What does that look like to you?In the realm of art, I think we saw a kind of clutch—a moment of holding on, maybe even a panic—when postmodernism had reached a kind of saturation point. And to me, the most perceptive analyst of that moment is the late literary historian Fredric Jameson.In his influential book on postmodernism, Jameson described it as a kind of cultural consciousness that emerged out of late-stage capitalism—one that had effectively flattened depth. He focused on figures like Robbe-Grillet, but also artists like Andy Warhol, who exemplified a kind of ironic collapse between high and low culture.It was pop culture masquerading as high art, or maybe high art cloaked in pop aesthetics. Either way, the distinction between the two began to blur. You had this ironic detachment, a lack of affect, and a celebration of surface over substance—that was central to what postmodernism felt like at the time.Against Jameson, thinkers like Cornel West rightly pointed out that he was only capturing a thin veneer of what was actually happening in the arts and culture at that moment. His analysis often excluded the experiences of artists from marginalized communities and overlooked working-class or everyday forms of artistic expression, which were just as vital, even then. He was focusing on a very elite stratum—arguably even within that historical moment.Moreover, the economic conditions Jameson associated with late-stage capitalism were very specific to the 1970s and ’80s. He was interested, for example, in television as a dominant cultural force that shaped a unified sense of value, and in people being trapped in jobs they didn’t love but felt stuck in. But that’s not our world anymore.Today, we live in a much more precarious economic moment. Employment is often unstable or gig-based. Television is no longer the dominant medium—social media and the internet have taken its place, fragmenting cultural consumption and identity in new ways.Even Jameson’s analysis of the aesthetic collapse between pop and high art—what was considered “cool” at the time—is no longer applicable. What counted as cool in 1980s fine art or pop culture is very different from what’s happening now in either space.There was a specific cultural moment at the start of the 1980s when things got dark and gritty—ironic, bleak, and self-aware. You could see it in Frank Miller’s superhero comics, or in films like Sin City.Exactly—that’s what I was thinking. Exactly. Good. We have similar cultural touchstones, but that's not what's happening now. So the next question becomes: what is happening now?One thing to emphasize is that we’ve always lived in a more pluralistic cultural landscape than early critics of postmodernism acknowledged. There was never just one single postmodernism. Some cultural forms have remained consistent for decades, largely untouched by these sweeping theoretical frameworks.Take mystery fiction, for example—one of the two biggest literary genres in the world. While there have been subtle shifts since the ’80s and ’90s, the genre’s core structure remains intact. Agatha Christie and Louise Penny might be separated by generations, but their narrative frameworks are strikingly similar. Some traditions simply persist.I mean, they’ve diversified slightly, but not by much. The shifts are there, but they tend to be minor. So certain forms—like mystery fiction, for example—never fit neatly into postmodernism, and they don’t necessarily fit cleanly into whatever this new mode is either.We can also see, in the aesthetic realm, a kind of backlash against some of the darker, grittier versions of pop culture. There have been tentative efforts to explore more emotively sincere, less ironic, and sometimes less dark forms of popular storytelling. Think of shows like For All Mankind or Ted Lasso—these don't align with the high-postmodern sensibility.And we could dig further into the economic backdrop here. It seems likely that in an age of precarity, we’re craving more aesthetic reassurance than in previous eras. Television, too, is less dominant now—partly due to the pluralization and fracturing of the collective conversation, a trend that’s only been intensified by the siloed nature of social media.All that to say: yes, I do see significant shifts over the past 20 years. I’m not claiming that things don’t change. But I do want us to be more precise in how we identify those changes—and also to recognize that cultural eras were never monolithic. Modernity didn’t apply evenly across the globe. Postmodernism didn’t dominate all artistic forms. And metamodernism, I don’t think, defines all art being made today.Still, I do believe it’s useful to talk about particular developments in art, popular culture, and other cultural expressions through that lens.And in terms of my own project—sorry, you were going to jump in.Yeah, I was going to ask, because I think this is where I’m really curious—at a broad level, what are we actually talking about when we say paradigm versus zeitgeist? I feel you pushing back on the idea of a zeitgeist, but at the same time acknowledging that there are real shifts happening. You’re rubbing away a lot of boundaries, but also marking a few clearly. So, in your view, what’s the right way to talk about change? How do you approach it?So, I do think in terms of paradigms—but I think of them in a much more Kuhnian sense, and even more so through the lens of Larry Laudan, a later interpreter of Kuhn. That is, I see paradigms as concrete models.People may or may not be familiar with Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a groundbreaking text. Even those who’ve read it might not realize that the word paradigm was already in circulation before Kuhn used it. The term originally came from linguistics and pedagogy—a paradigm was a set of rote conjugations you memorized. Like: Ich bin, du bist, er/sie/es ist, and so on.What Kuhn was interested in was how certain scientific works—including, notably, textbooks—came to function as paradigmatic frameworks that helped disciplines organize themselves. These texts provided a shared language, reference points, and a way of seeing the field.One of the things people often underappreciate, which Kuhn says quite explicitly, is that it’s usually textbooks, not the original thinkers, that solidify a paradigm. For instance, Newtonianism as we know it lives on in a condensed, second-order way that goes beyond—and in some ways diminishes—Isaac Newton’s actual writings. It was later figures like Euler who helped codify Newton’s math, and much of Newton’s broader work—like his alchemical writings—was ignored. So what persists is a particular Newtonianism, which functions as a paradigm even after Newton himself.Now, here’s where I diverge from Kuhn. He tended to treat scientific fields as if there were always a single, dominant paradigm at any given time. But thinkers like Larry Laudan have pointed out that fields often contain competing paradigms. You can have, for example, Lamarckian evolution, Darwinian evolution, and anti-evolutionist perspectives all in play within biology at the same historical moment.Paradigms can be fuzzy around the edges, and sometimes fluid—but even so, certain models do come to predominate. They shape the terms of debate and the way people structure knowledge.When I talk about postmodernism as an academic paradigm, what I’m really interested in is the process of anthologization—how certain kinds of textbooks and readers, like Postmodernism: A Reader or Postmodern History: The Reader, excerpted works from a range of thinkers and packaged them together as if they represented a single, unified movement.These anthologies were almost always translated into English, primarily for a U.S. context. And yet, the U.S.—along with the broader Anglophone world, particularly Britain—had an outsized influence on shaping the very notion of postmodernism, despite the fact that most of the intellectual material was being imported from France, Germany, and elsewhere.What also happened in this process was the extraction of select pieces of work from thinkers who were often in tension with one another, or even directly hostile to each other’s ideas—and who came from different disciplines entirely. Take, for example, Foucault and Derrida: for much of their professional lives, they didn’t get along, didn’t see themselves as part of the same intellectual project, and neither embraced the label of postmodernism. And yet, you open up a postmodernism anthology, and there they are—side by side. You get a snippet of Derrida, a snippet of Foucault, often stripped of the context or the parts of their thought that didn’t neatly fit the postmodern paradigm.In this way, those anthologies created an illusion of coherence that didn’t really exist. The result was a version of “postmodernism” that looked far more unified—especially in the Anglophone academy—than it ever was in France or elsewhere.In my book, I identify five key philosophical features that defined that postmodern paradigm. We can go into that if you want, depending on how granular we want to get. But the main point is that this was a paradigm—one that was actively taught, often across multiple humanistic and social science disciplines. That said, it wasn’t all-encompassing. There were fields where other paradigms prevailed.Take economics, for instance. I’m literally looking out the window at the economics department right now, and it’s safe to say postmodernism never really reached those offices. Neoclassical economics, in many ways, was the furthest thing from postmodernism—or at least that’s one common reading. It came from a very different intellectual lineage, with its own blind spots and issues.So, stepping back to your broader question about how we talk about change: I’m more than willing to grant that there have been large-scale shifts—concrete, structural shifts—whether in the dominant modes of capitalist production, or in social transformations like industrialization, urbanization, rising literacy, or the emergence of the internet. All of these have had clear, demonstrable impacts on both local and global forms of cultural and intellectual production.But even so, those shifts don’t cleanly map onto something like a zeitgeist. They’re messier, more underdetermined. And what they tend to produce is not a singular mode of thought or feeling, but rather a pluralization—a diversification—of modes.And so, the key point in my reading of paradigms—what sets it apart from the standard Kuhnian formulation—is that I think paradigms often generate multiple and sometimes competing models. We can still call them paradigms, or if we want to step outside of strictly academic language, we could think of them as exemplars, genres, or clusters of works that serve as reference points.One more point I’ll add—mainly for the extra geeky readers—is another area where I depart from Kuhn, something I also argue in the Metamodernism book. Kuhn believed that you couldn’t translate between paradigms. He argued for what he called their “incommensurability”—that the terms and assumptions of one paradigm couldn’t be directly translated into those of another.But here’s the thing: Kuhn made that case by comparing paradigms—by showing us how they differed—which means he was, in practice, rendering them commensurable. He was creating a framework to compare things he claimed were incomparable.Now, that’s not to say there aren’t mistranslations, gaps, or aspects that get lost in the shift from one paradigm to another. Kuhn’s famous example was how the meaning of “motion” changes from Aristotle to Newton. And yes, that shift is significant. But even so, you can compare them. You can encapsulate the ideas of one paradigm within another.It’s not that there’s ever a truly neutral vantage point where you’re totally paradigm-free. But we can say that Newtonian physics still works perfectly well within an Einsteinian world—as long as you stay within a certain scale. That’s important. The paradigms can overlap functionally, even if their foundational assumptions differ.Yeah, that’s amazing. There’s so much in what you’ve just said. I love the idea that the term paradigm itself began as a metaphor—pulled from grammar, of all places. Kuhn used grammar to describe the evolution of thought in science.Exactly—grammatical patterns.And teaching. He was deeply interested in how language shapes thought. He was part of that broader intellectual moment we associate with the linguistic turn. Kuhn really saw scientific language as a language in its own right. That comes through not just in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, but in his later essays as well. When he revisited the topic, he consistently returned to the role of language.So cool. And something else came to mind as you were talking—it might be a bit of a tangent, but I’m thinking about the idea of simultaneity in paradigms. Are you familiar with semiotics?Yeah, of course.Studying the dominant, recessive, and emerging—that whole framework—is a useful way to identify different layers of meaning or significance that are unfolding within a culture or category.Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that framework can be helpful when we’re talking about paradigms, too. I’d agree with you there.Is that right? I wasn’t sure—does that feel like a fair overlap?I think so. Yeah, I think it's fair—at least at a certain level of generalization. Totally.And so, just to circle back—because you asked earlier, and I want to make sure I return to it—what I was trying to do in my book Metamodernism: The Future of Theory was to take the paradigm of postmodernism that had been taught to a certain generation of us and work through it.I learned that paradigm in grad school, and I went out of my way—made pilgrimages to Palo Alto, to Paris, and other places—places where people like Rorty and Derrida were active and doing their thing. I tried to absorb as much as I could.And let me just check—can I cuss on your show, or should I avoid that?Go for it.Okay, cool. So, I don’t think postmodernism was b******t. I don’t think it was junk. I think it was valuable. But I also think that by the time I encountered it, it was delivering diminishing returns.And what I wanted to do—really, as a way of working through my own intellectual heritage and training—was to figure out what parts of it were worth holding on to, what parts needed to be left behind or radically reworked, and how to grapple with a set of fundamental philosophical problems. Because postmodernism did help surface those problems, but it didn’t invent them—and often didn’t resolve them either.So in the Metamodernism book, I took the postmodern paradigm as a kind of springboard—not as proof of my conclusions—and tried to work through what I see as five core areas. I think any serious scholar, or really any deeply engaged thinker, has to confront those areas and come up with their own responses.And I should add: I believe in doing a kind of no-b******t philosophy. A lot of what gets called “theory”—especially in the hands of second-order thinkers, not necessarily people like Derrida or Foucault, who had deep commitments—is just rhetorical sleight of hand. It's people saying things that sound cool, without really caring whether it makes sense or leads anywhere.A lot of that work felt indifferent to actual clarity or substance—just buzzwords stacked on buzzwords. Someone might invent a phrase like “epistemological ontotheogenesis,” drop it into a chapter, and wrap it in some grandiose language. But when you try to unpack what it actually means, there’s not much there.And then, if you pushed some of those thinkers on their claims, the ideas would often just evaporate. They’d either turn out to be truisms or vague, messy assertions that didn’t really hold up under scrutiny.In The Metamodernism book, I’m committed to doing what I call a no-b******t philosophy. That means making my arguments clear. It’s a deliberate break from the stylistic aesthetics of postmodernism. Again, I don’t think people like Derrida or Foucault were trying to b******t anyone—but they were doing a lot of play. And Derrida especially, as time went on, kind of leaned too far into the free jazz of his own language. He started riffing in ways that, to me, became less helpful for doing actual philosophical work.Maybe I’m just less of a poet than some of those guys—but what I want is for readers to be able to actually see what I’m arguing. I want my positions to be intelligible and, importantly, contestable. If I’m wrong, I want someone to be able to show that I’m wrong. There’s no value in producing a formulation that’s unfalsifiable, especially if it’s not helping us think better or more clearly.Take Derrida’s point, for example, about writing preceding speech. That’s interesting—until he redefines “writing” so broadly that it includes any trace or mark on the world. At that point, the claim becomes either trivial or obscured. There is insight in there, I think—but it gets buried beneath the rhetorical flourish.I also don’t think we should base arguments solely on authority. And ironically, many so-called postmodern theorists who were vocally anti-canon just went ahead and canonized a different set of dudes. Then they treated those figures as if they had privileged access to meaning or truth. If you wanted to understand how meaning works, they’d quote a line from Derrida instead of consulting linguistics or asking a diagnostic question about whether Derrida’s framework actually holds up.It reminds me a bit of the medieval scholastics—at least, the way we’re taught to think about them. When they wanted to know how many teeth a horse had, the story goes, they’d check the Bible, then Aristotle, and only then would they consider looking at a horse.Some scholars got caught in a similar trap—where philosophy became an exercise in commentary and interpretation rather than inquiry. It turned into an interpretive game around a newly canonized set of thinkers. I’m not saying everyone did that—props to those who didn’t—but it became a real institutional pattern. And in some ways, it still is.You see it, for instance, when someone dares to critique Foucault. A Foucault scholar might respond not by engaging the critique, but by saying, “Well, if you’re criticizing Foucault, you must not understand him.” The idea that disagreement implies ignorance—that's a problem.But I’m like—no, no—I respect Foucault. He’s one of the thinkers who’s had the biggest influence on my own thought. But he was wrong about certain things. And that’s okay. We can provide evidence for that. We can say, “Here’s some independent data. Here’s why this particular claim doesn’t hold up.” That doesn’t mean we throw him out completely—it means we acknowledge that he was a fallible person, like all of us.And for me, that sense of fallibility is built into what I call metamodernism. I recognize that I’m going to make mistakes too. I think it’s crucial to admit that, to avoid some of the intellectual sins that led to the turn toward postmodernism in the first place—things like the universalizing tendencies of certain strands of Enlightenment thought, where a small subset of thinkers were treated as if they had infallible authority.So all of this is to say: yes, I’m trying to recognize my own limits. But that said, I also set out to change scholarship by offering a concrete, no-b******t model for how we might do things better. I wanted to provide a set of practical, usable tools that could help us move forward—across epistemology, theories of meaning, and ethics.That’s what I was trying to do in the Metamodernism book.And honestly, I’ve been really delighted by the response. I think people recognized the need. There was enough of a zeitgeist shift that folks were ready for something that wasn’t just reheated postmodernism—or works that were supposedly critical of postmodernism but ended up replicating it in slightly different language, without really grappling with its problems.Take something like new materialism. I found that school of thought inspiring for a time—but eventually I came to see that, in many cases, it was just transposing everything postmodernism had said about literature onto the physical world. So it felt like more of the same, dressed up differently. I’ll bracket that for now, but that’s part of the broader issue.Anyway, the book came out, and it won a major book award—which was a really lovely surprise. It’s just been translated into Spanish, and a contemporary Spanish philosopher even described it as the most important philosophical work of the last decade, which is incredibly humbling.I’ve also got Turkish, Vietnamese, and Chinese translations in the works. Though we’ll see if the Chinese edition makes it through—I have a footnote to the Dalai Lama, and that alone might be enough to sink it once they notice.So what’s the footnote? How does the Dalai Lama figure into metamodernism?Well, I have a long section in the book on ethics, and part of what I’m doing there is grappling with something I see as one of the enduring puzzles of postmodernism—specifically, postmodernism as a scholarly paradigm, not the artistic movement. Let’s bracket off all the art and focus strictly on postmodernism in the academic sense.One of the things that seemed puzzling about it—at least to many observers—was the way postmodernist scholars often held, on one hand, to a stance of value neutrality or value relativism (sometimes labeled “cultural relativism”), and on the other hand, spent a lot of time calling out things like racism, sexism, and colonialism.That struck many as a contradiction—but within the paradigm, it wasn’t necessarily seen that way. The prevailing logic was that criticism or deconstruction of values wasn’t the same as proposing values. You could call things out—expose the ideological, colonial, patriarchal underpinnings of a text or institution—while still claiming to be value-neutral, because you weren’t offering a positive normative project.I think that was a mistake.But this was the rationale: being a critic was seen as a kind of safeguard against complicity. If you didn’t commit to values, you couldn’t be co-opted. And so what emerged was a scholarly culture that became incredibly skilled at critique—we got very good at tearing things down, exposing power structures, identifying implicit biases, and so on.Now, just to be clear, I do think that work is important. I’m not at all opposed to calling out racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, and the rest. But I also want to suggest that this is not a value-neutral activity. It’s a value-laden one. And failing to acknowledge that made it harder for people to feel like they could take a stand for something. We stopped proposing solutions because we were trained to believe that any kind of proposal was inherently suspect.And that’s what I push back on in the ethics chapter of the book. I argue that we need to reclaim the ability to build positive projects—that there are legitimate, philosophically rigorous ways to bridge fact and value. I try to offer some concrete thinking about that, including how values don’t necessarily contaminate scholarship if we’re explicit about them, and if we embrace a more modest, pluralistic understanding of academic inquiry.I'm part of what you might call the tolerant left. I believe in allowing opponents into the conversation—because I think good arguments are stronger than bad ones. And when we try to silence dissenting views instead of engaging them, we often end up giving those views a kind of rebellious credibility they don’t deserve.Now, how does the Dalai Lama figure into this? Well, I cite him briefly in a footnote as an example of someone who’s tried to articulate a kind of secular ethics—an ethics not rooted in religious doctrine but in shared human values. That idea was part of a broader point I was making about the possibility of articulating a value system that isn't absolutist, but still meaningful. And that, apparently, might be enough to raise a red flag in China.Let me just say, for the record: I’m not saying we should be letting actual Nazis into the conversation. We may have to draw a hard line there. But bracketing that out for a moment, I do think we can—and should—argue about values. The idea that values are somehow untouchable or entirely extrinsic to the domain of scholarship is, I think, a mistake.In reality, values are often deeply entangled with factual claims. Or to put it more strongly: values often depend on factual claims. Questions like, “How many children are being fed by USAID?” or “Is global warming actually a human-made phenomenon?”—these are factual inquiries that shape our moral stances. Our values emerge from our understanding of the evidence. So scholarship can’t pretend to be value-free if it’s engaging with real-world consequences.That said, I want to reaffirm the importance of calling out harmful structures—racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism. That work matters. But if that’s all we do—if critique is the endpoint—we risk building a culture of pessimism, one where problems are seen as intractable, and solutions are never imagined.So the question becomes: what is the positive flip side of critique? What’s the mirror image of that critical impulse?In the book, I talk about this in terms of what I call revolutionary happiness. And here, I’m drawing from two pre-existing philosophical traditions. In some ways, this might be the least “original” part of the book—but I’m completely fine with that, because what I think is fresh is how I bring these traditions together.On one side, I draw from critical theory—that is, the tradition of scholarship devoted to diagnosing structures of domination, oppression, and victimization. I’m thinking here of the Frankfurt School, but also of more contemporary forms like critical race theory, gender theory, and related work. That tradition is essential.But I want to flip it. I want to ask: what would a reconstructive version of that look like? What would it mean not only to critique racism, for example, but to seriously imagine what a post-racist society might be? I’m not saying we’re already there, far from it—but I think it’s vital to hold onto the idea that racism is a hard but solvable problem. And that opens space to ask: what concrete steps can we take toward being better anti-racist actors? What would a just society actually look like?That’s one part of it.The second part draws on a different tradition—perhaps more surprising: virtue ethics. The name is a little misleading, but what I’m talking about goes all the way back to the origins of the academic project itself—ancient Greece—where one of philosophy’s core purposes was to help people figure out how to live a good life.And it turns out that this is actually a fundamental and important thing. When I talk to my students, for example, many of them don’t really know why they’re in school—other than some vague sense that it might lead to a job someday. Whether those jobs will exist or not is anyone’s guess.But what I do think we can offer—whether our students end up wealthy or struggling—is a space to reflect on what it means to live a life worth having lived. What does it mean to live a good life?That’s where I start connecting things to an Aristotelian discourse—specifically, Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, which can be translated variously as “well-souledness,” “well-spiritedness,” or more accessibly, as flourishing. What does it mean to flourish?And from there, I want to explore what happens when we bring together critical theory and virtue ethics. For example: What does a flourishing, post-racial society look like?Now, I should note that I want to revise virtue ethics a bit. It’s often presented as a highly individualistic project—about cultivating one’s own inner virtues in isolation. But that’s not how Aristotle originally envisioned it, and I don’t think that’s how it should function today. Because if you’re living in an unjust society, then flourishing can’t just be a private achievement. People need to be able to make demands on the social order—to call for real, systemic change.That’s crucial. Another important distinction I make in the book is between what Aristotle called eudaimonia and what he called euphoria. I translate that distinction into what I call lowercase “h” happiness and capital “H” Happiness. Lowercase happiness is passing, surface-level—it’s the feeling you get from eating a great bag of chips or having a nice bike ride. And that’s fine! But what I’m calling for is something deeper: capital H Happiness. A kind of foundational flourishing.This lets me connect to other thinkers too—people like Hannah Arendt, who wrote about the relationship between happiness and political freedom. And it lets us revisit values that still matter, even if they’ve been misused or hollowed out—like the revolutionary American ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If we interpret that last one as capital H Happiness, I think we can recover something genuinely meaningful—without needing to idealize the Founders or slip into nostalgia.All of this is to say: I want to call for a kind of revolutionary human flourishing. And this is where I depart from many others—finally—and where the Dalai Lama comes into the picture.I don’t see virtue ethics or the question of the good life as something that only happened in ancient Greece. That conversation took place in other parts of the world as well. In early Confucian thought, for instance, there was a serious inquiry into what flourishing means. Similarly, in early Indian Buddhist contexts, there was deep reflection on what it means to live well, to live ethically, and to live meaningfully.And here’s where I try to tie the pieces together: what I take from figures like the Dalai Lama—especially in his commentary on the Indian thinker Shantideva, which I cite in the book—is the idea that compassion is central to what it means to live a happy life. So if there’s one virtue I’m really standing up for in the book, it’s that: compassion.That’s because we’re not atomized individuals, despite what some philosophical or economic models might suggest. We’re not isolated units floating through the world on our own. That was one of the central errors, I think, of neoclassical economics and of methodological individualism more broadly—both of which I critique elsewhere in the book. In truth, we’re entangled. We’re enmeshed in each other’s lives.And that means my flourishing is inevitably tied to the flourishing of the people around me—of the community I’m a part of. That community might be as small as your family or your neighborhood, or it might scale up to larger networks or even the global context. There are pros and cons to widening that scope, of course. But whatever scale you're working at, the core insight holds: flourishing is relational.And there's good evidence for this in contemporary psychology and in what’s sometimes called “happiness studies.” That research consistently shows that people report greater happiness and life satisfaction when they dedicate part of their lives to helping others. You can see this play out in simple, tangible ways. If I eat a bag of chips, there’s only so much joy I get from that. But if I give that bag of chips to someone who’s hungry—say, a homeless person who might be starving—I feel a deeper and longer-lasting sense of satisfaction.Now, of course, we need to be careful. This isn’t a call for self-martyrdom. We need to understand boundaries and avoid turning compassion into self-erasure. But I do think there’s a lot we can tease out and develop to deepen our understanding of what compassion really means—and why it matters so much.And I try to do more work than some other thinkers in terms of figuring out the texture of that compassion—what it looks like, how it operates, what it actually feels like in human terms. But anyway, that’s where the gesture to the Dalai Lama’s interpretation of Shantideva comes in, and his argument that compassion is central to human happiness. That’s the footnote—the one that might cause issues with the Chinese translation.Right. Yeah. They don’t exactly love the Dalai Lama.No, they really don’t. And if that footnote does anything, it gets us right to the heart of what excites me about metamodernism—both in its diagnosis of postmodernism and in its reconstruction of something beyond it.I mean, I’ve been thinking about this for years. I went to a liberal arts school and took a literary criticism class, and I remember learning what it meant to be a critic. It was powerful. Seductive, even. There was something thrilling about being able to pull things apart like that.But until hearing you frame it the way you do, I hadn’t really thought about it as being grounded in a kind of value neutrality—this sense that I wasn’t making claims or proposing anything, I was just revealing truths. Just being an agent of destruction, as you put it.And it does feel like we’re at the end of a long era where that mode of critique shaped so much—our social life, our cultural habits, even our politics. Maybe I’m being melodramatic, but I also feel like something is shifting. And the way you describe it—especially the emphasis on flourishing and compassion—it resonates deeply.I remember, last time we talked, you mentioned becoming a father. And you spoke about how the absence of any constructive instinct in the work that came before really hit you, and how that helped drive some of your thinking around metamodernism and flourishing. So I guess I’d love to hear you respond to any of this—but also speak to the practicality of it. I’m a father too, in a small town. I feel this drive to help my community have the kinds of conversations we just don’t seem capable of having. And to go back to grammar for a moment—maybe we don’t even know how to be constructive anymore. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to disagree productively. Is that part of the same thread for you?Yeah. Let me underscore three things you just said, because I fully agree with you. First, this idea of critique run amok—criticism that becomes oddly dogmatic, and often incapable of turning its lens on itself—has absolutely taken root, both in intellectual circles and in broader public discourse.And it’s had a corrosive effect. I think it’s contributed to a kind of cultural and political exhaustion. I say this as someone on the left—I identify as a leftist—but I also believe that, in recent decades, much of the left has focused almost exclusively on calling out the negative, without articulating a positive vision to work toward.That imbalance breeds cynicism. It leaves people disempowered, feeling like nothing can be done. If the only narrative around climate change, for example, is one of inevitable extinction—no escape, no alternatives—then of course people are going to feel helpless. But in doing that, we overlook the things that can be done to improve our lived environment.That kind of fatalism drives disengagement. It lowers voter turnout, suppresses civic participation, and feeds a sense of collective paralysis.Second point: I do believe in critique. Deeply. It has its place, and it matters. But I see it as the first step, not the last. We should absolutely begin with a rigorous, even relentless critique of what exists. But after that comes the harder, more vulnerable work: sticking up for something. Saying, “Here’s what we believe in,” and then doing the work to imagine and articulate a better world.That’s where I differ slightly from the “post-critique” crowd. I’m a fellow traveler, but I don’t think we’ll ever be done with critique. I just think we can’t end there.And this connects directly to what you said about learning to have hard conversations. We need to recover the ability to engage disagreement—not just to point out what's wrong, but to do so with the goal of building something better. The weight, the responsibility, lies in taking that next step. Even if it's a long, difficult road, the work is to imagine and work toward a better future.And finally, yes—this perspective came into sharper focus for me through parenthood. I was writing the Metamodernism book during the process of becoming a father. My daughter’s six now—it’s wild how quickly time passes—but that transition really clarified something for me.I realized that the postmodern, deconstructive approach often terminates in a kind of cynical nihilism. And that ends up disempowering both individuals and communities. So I started asking: how do we move forward, without pretending the world isn't complex or difficult? How do we struggle—positively, and with clarity—to make it better?That’s what I wanted to figure out. Not as a naive gesture, but as an honest and hopeful one.With metamodernism, I’ve tried to offer some resources for moving forward—not just within philosophy, epistemology, ethics, language, and the social sciences, but also in terms of how we might rethink political engagement and our relationships with those around us.We need positive projects. But we also need to be mindful of the traps we can fall into while pursuing them. One trap is ignoring suffering—turning away from injustice or pain for the sake of optimism. That’s not what I’m advocating. Another trap is trying to produce an overly homogenous vision of the future, where everyone’s supposed to think or feel the same. I’m deeply committed to pluralism, and to preserving space for difference.That said, I also believe that working together—across those differences—is one of the most powerful ways to transcend the very divisions that challenge us.Let me give you something concrete. In the sociological literature, there’s compelling evidence about how to meaningfully fight racism. As someone who considers himself an anti-racist activist—and that goes back into my personal history, which I’ll bracket for now—I want to be honest about what’s effective.Calling people out for racism is sometimes necessary. But it often puts people on the defensive. Nudging, or gently challenging, can work—but the most powerful tool seems to be collaborative engagement. When people from different backgrounds work together on a shared project—especially something that matters to their local community—it opens up space for transformation.There’s a great example involving community playgrounds. You have folks who may hold racist views, but when they join a project to build a playground alongside people from different racial or ethnic groups, those day-to-day interactions, that shared investment, begin to chip away at prejudice. That’s far more effective than confrontation alone.And beyond just addressing bias, having a shared positive project helps knit communities together. It gives people ways to interact, to iterate together, and to develop mutual trust.Now, that doesn’t mean everything’s always harmonious. I come from a family that loves to argue—it’s part of my heritage. But we argue with love. And that’s key. There’s a difference between agonism and antagonism. Agonism is a kind of productive disagreement, a passionate engagement rooted in mutual respect. You see this all the time in small-town town halls—especially in New England—where people stand up, argue loudly, and disagree fiercely. But they’re still participating in a shared civic life. That’s the kind of engagement I want to support—one that makes space for difference, disagreement, and collective striving toward something better.But we don’t pick up guns and shoot each other over it—and that’s a very fundamental line. That line matters.All of this is to say: there are different ways we can work to improve relations across boundaries and divisions. And one of the most effective ways is through shared, collective projects. Unfortunately, the left—where I see myself—has often struggled to articulate positive projects. There have been exceptions, and some of them have been powerful and inspiring. But in a lot of the dominant discourse space, we’ve defaulted to the negative. We just call people out. We identify what's wrong, and then we stop there.Not only that, but we’ve developed a habit of calling out rather than calling in. I’m borrowing that language from some feminist activists, who’ve articulated this beautifully. Too often, the left operates as an exclusionary force. We identify a problem with someone—a thinker, a writer, an activist—and then we kick them out of the fold.Now, I’ll be clear: sometimes that’s warranted. Again, say no to Nazis. There are lines. But if we’re genuinely committed to values like restorative justice or reparative justice—and I am—then we need to think seriously about what it looks like to provide people a way back in.If someone says something harmful or offensive—especially to a particular community—then yes, we should name that. But then we need to have mechanisms through which they can engage in a process of reflection, repair, and maybe even reconciliation. It can’t just end in exile. There should be a path forward.Of course, that process has to be led and shaped by the communities affected. I can only speak to the groups and identities I’m personally located in, and even then, I don’t speak for them. But the fact that we rarely even have conversations about what reentry might look like—that’s a real problem. It’s contributed to declining margins in voting, lower engagement, and less ability to build coalitions.We’re fast to boot people out. And while I’m not saying we should make excuses for bad behavior, I am saying we need to distinguish between behavior and the human being. We can call out the bad behavior and still ask what it would take to invite that person back in.The lack of that kind of thinking—of that kind of structure—has led to a version of left discourse that, at times, becomes counterproductive. We’ve seen that in some of the slogans we’ve embraced. My fellow lefties… we’re not always great at slogans. And sometimes, our slogans end up doing real damage.Take Defund the Police, for example. It was a deeply unpopular slogan. And I say that as someone who was involved in justice reform circles. I know what we meant—or at least what I thought we meant—but that wasn’t what most people heard.I think what we really wanted—and what many of us were actually calling for—was more social workers, a demilitarized police force, and stronger, more trusting relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve. Often, that meant recruiting more officers from within Black communities, for example. It meant reducing the disproportionate violence against people of color.We didn’t need to defund the police. That slogan, unfortunately, discredited much of the justice reform work we were deeply committed to. So we have to be careful with the language we use. Words matter. Slogans can either open doors or slam them shut.And beyond that, we often fail to offer pathways out—especially to those we’ve positioned as ideological or political enemies. That’s a missed opportunity.Right now, I believe we’re headed toward an economic crash. There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting we’re not far from serious financial disruption. When that happens, many of the people who voted for Trump—especially those in economically vulnerable regions—are going to see their livelihoods collapse.And here’s the thing: we need to figure out, without condoning racism, homophobia, transphobia, or other forms of bigotry, how to bring people back in. That doesn’t mean there’s no need for change. People will need to reflect and grow. But we also need a discourse—especially on the left—about how to build bridges again. How to create collective projects that aren't only for "our side."And maybe it’s not even about bringing people into the left. Maybe what we need are new, shared efforts that cut across traditional political lines—projects rooted in common concerns, not filtered through the endless polarization that defines so much of American politics today.That doesn't mean embracing triangulated centrism. There was this old idea—especially during the Clinton years—that if you just split the difference between left and right, you’d reach some stable middle ground. I think the Harris campaign, to some extent, inherited that logic. But I don’t think it works.People don’t make political decisions that way. They’re not parsing out policy positions on a neat ideological spectrum. People are moved by stories. They’re dissuaded by anecdotes. They’re persuaded by a vision—by a call to build something better, something they can believe in.And you can make compelling cases for justice and equity without leaning on polarizing buzzwords. If you approach people with care and clarity, you can build coalitions that create the conditions for different kinds of politics to emerge—politics that aren’t stuck in the same old binaries.The assumption on the left that “demography is destiny”—that demographic shifts alone would inevitably deliver progressive victories—has turned out to be wrong. And we’ve seen the cost of that miscalculation in recent national elections.I think that regardless of whether we identify as left, right, or somewhere else on the political spectrum, we need to start identifying issues of shared, common concern. And I genuinely believe that a lot of people—not just in the U.S., but around the world—are persuadable. They’re open to investing in projects that strengthen communities, protect public health, and clean up our air and water.Take something like toxic sludge being dumped into rivers. Sure, there may be members of Republican leadership who’ve supported deregulation measures that allow for that—but most everyday Republicans don’t want that either. Environmental stewardship used to be a conservative issue, after all. It wasn’t always the domain of the political left. There's no reason we can't build local initiatives in a way that invites broader buy-in across political lines.Personally, I believe the climate crisis is one of the defining challenges of our global society. And I also believe that dreaming big—hoping, working toward ambitious goals—is a far more effective path to change than defaulting to cynicism. Yes, it's a struggle. And yes, political change is often frustratingly slow. But if we commit to it—patiently, deliberately—I think we can create real transformation.One of the mistakes I think we on the left have made is not having a strong long game. The right has been playing that game for decades. Institutions like the Heritage Foundation have spent years building infrastructure, shaping narratives, and strategically working to reach this current political moment.Meanwhile, on the left, there’s sometimes this sense—especially in popular discourse—that if racism wasn’t solved by electing Obama, then it’s simply unsolvable. Of course, many activists know that’s not true. But in wider public sentiment, there’s often a feeling of discouragement: If it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to happen.That kind of disillusionment is dangerous. We can’t afford it—especially on issues like climate justice and racial justice, which are deeply interwoven. We need to embrace the idea of long-term struggle. That means investing in community-building. It means shifting focus away from the obsession with top-of-the-ticket races—because while presidential elections matter, they’re not the only space where change happens. And yes, it’s troubling how much power has been consolidated in the presidency, especially with recent Supreme Court rulings. But we can’t let that distract us from the real power that exists at the local level. There is so much we can do through grassroots organizing. And I, for one, am a big advocate of starting there.Yeah, it’s beautiful. And we’ve run out of time, but we’ve ended right where I was hoping we would. I’m curious what you’d want to leave people with—something about metamodernism as a way of being in the world. How do we move through the day with this idea of revolutionary happiness? Maybe you’ve already said it, but as a final thought: what does it mean to live in this new paradigm?Yeah. So first, I’d say this: we need to resist the imposition of what economists and political theorists have called homo economicus—the idea that human beings are primarily motivated by self-interest, especially economic self-interest.That idea is not only flawed—it’s harmful. When people internalize it, when they start to see themselves through that lens, they end up miserable. Just look at some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world today. Many are deeply unhappy, emotionally stunted, even destructive. The model doesn’t work—not for them, and not for the rest of us.So instead of chasing that vision, we need to start asking: What are the real conditions for human flourishing?Of course, that can include economic stability. Absolute poverty is devastating, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. But wealth alone isn’t enough. Flourishing isn’t just about security—it’s about meaning. It’s about living a life worth having lived.And in politics, we often fall into the trap of appealing only to economic self-interest. We try to persuade people with numbers: "Here’s a policy that will save you 2% on taxes," or, "This reform will slightly reduce inflation." Those things matter, but they rarely inspire. They’re not the language of purpose.What people really want—across the political spectrum—is to feel like their life means something. Many want to live ethically. They want to be part of something larger. The language of solidarity, of collective action, of shared moral striving—we can reclaim that. We need to reclaim that. It’s part of what I mean by revolutionary happiness.And here’s another key point. We are living through dark times. And dark times don’t make utopian visions irrelevant—they make them essential.There’s been a strong critique, especially in the wake of postmodernism, of utopian thinking—a suspicion that it’s naive, dangerous, even totalitarian. And there’s some truth in that critique: utopias can become authoritarian when they’re treated as blueprints. But that’s not the kind of utopianism I’m advocating.What I’m calling for is something open, something aspirational—a vision of the future that we move toward together, knowing we may never fully reach it. But the point isn’t perfection. The point is to orient ourselves toward something better. To cultivate a politics—and a daily practice—of hope, of ethics, of compassion, and of shared flourishing.That’s what metamodernism is about. It’s not a finished doctrine. It’s an invitation.Marx critiqued the utopian socialists, and figures like Margaret Thatcher famously dismissed alternative futures altogether—claiming “there is no alternative.” The word utopian often gets used as a slur, as if imagining a better world is naïve or dangerous.But bracketing out utopian or better-world thinking only traps us in a kind of hopeless present—a morass that feels inescapable. And I think we need to imagine our way out of that.I'm a bit of a sci-fi geek, so I say this with love: we need to think science fictionally about possible futures. We need to embrace utopian thinking—not as a rigid blueprint, but as an open invitation to imagine a good future. In fact, we could even play with the spelling—e-utopia, as in eu (good) from eudaimonia, meaning flourishing. A good place.Now, to be clear, I’m fudging the spelling a bit. Traditionally, utopia comes from the Greek ou-topos, meaning “no place.” But I'm intentionally reframing it: eu-topia, a “good place.” Though I admit, if I say the good place, people might just think of the TV show—where, spoiler alert, the good place isn't actually that good.But you get the idea. We need visions to struggle toward. Future dreaming isn’t a luxury—it’s a political necessity. And yes, I have very specific ideas about democratic reforms and concrete policy strategies, but we probably don’t have time to dive into all that here. What I can say is that acting locally is a powerful and essential first step.I wish we had more time—I’ve got another twenty minutes, but I know you need to run.Yeah, I do. I’m sorry to say. But I could keep talking to you for hours. If you’re open to it, I’d love to do a follow-up sometime—especially to dig into governance and policy. That part’s fascinating too. Connecting the philosophical dots to real-world structure—that’s where it all comes alive.Absolutely. Always happy to talk, and always happy to try. So, to tie it back to metamodernism as a final thought: there are a lot of us out here—friends, allies, thinkers, artists, organizers—struggling together to figure out what tools we need to meet this moment. For those in the academy, I’ve tried to offer some philosophical resources. Others are working on concrete political strategies, artistic expressions, or interventions at the level of culture and zeitgeist. We’re still figuring it out. We haven’t gotten all the way there yet. But we’re trying.Postmodernism gave us some valuable insights—but it didn’t get us far enough. We still have a long way to go. And as we work through that journey, especially in times that feel dark or uncertain, we need to lean on community. On solidarity. On mutual aid in all its forms.Because when we do that, we can begin to build better and brighter futures.That's beautiful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation—and especially the reminder that utopian ideas aren’t outdated. They’re essential, especially in dark times. I take that to heart.Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to chat.Bye, Jason.Bye. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe