Side Projects

Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss everything becoming TV, New York morphing into one big content backdrop, navigating Washington Square Park like it’s ABC’s Wipeout, and whether or not there are too many branded social series. Plus, Aliens, DraftKings VIP list, and Unzipped.

This week on the pod, Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss the Grey Lady’s campaign celebrating 175 years of print advertising, and the quote “advertising reflects the moments that shape our world,” really means in its current context. Plus, Bumble cribbing (to put it lightly) friend of the show Amy Rose Spiegel’s “Most Eligible New Yorkers” piece, and an exploration of novelty popcorn buckets.

Georgia Jaffe is the founder of Indie Hourzz: an online music, media, and culture platform which hosts intimate live sessions, concerts, and more. We spoke with her about hosting shows in her college apartment, cold-calling the Coca-Cola hotline, whether there are still regional differences in music scenes, and how to build an audience that trusts your point of view.

When you think about space exploration today, it’s easy to scoff at the profligate spending of billionaires drunk on ambition, the vanity trips laced with an impressive lack of self-awareness (best characterized by Gayle King’s “have you been?”), or even Space Force uniforms “inspired by the discipline of the Starship Trooper uniform.” But there are actually good, insightful, and even artful things happening. One of them is the launch of SPACE JUNK, a new print publication “examining the intersection of the culture of space travel and humanity’s relationship with the cosmos.” We spoke with Jack Mills about why space is both a “red herring” and an “excuse to think about the future and ways that we might rebuild,” an impending NASA partnership butt-dialling astronauts, and how he got Bottega Veneta to foot some of the bill.

It’s been a while since we’ve had the full gang together, and there’s much to discuss. Trey gives the run down on Corgi Cafe—and makes the case for Capitol One Café. Clara rants about how “special drink” culture has gone too far. Eli closes us out on a positive and optimistic high: Flock Cameras.

Recently, there’s been a lot of anxiety around the health of subcultures: “Subcultures aren’t dead, they’re just not where you’re looking,” “Teen Subcultures Are Fading. Pity the Poor Kids,” “Alt Erasure: Has TikTok Killed Alternative Subcultures?.” Brands like to think of themselves as conduits to subcultures, or, if you’ve spent time in the hefty, vertigo-inducing haze of a brand strategy deck, what we now call “niche communities.” But in practice—thanks to the need for immediately legible ROI—they tend to strip mine and erode what actually helps interesting ideas and people flourish. So what role if any do brands have to play in helping to build and cultivate subcultures?We spoke with Elliot Aronow, the founder of Minor Genius, about living in an “aggressively legible world,” why he thinks Ralph Lauren is the greatest marketer of all time, a “hot MILF” theory of brand strategy, and why brands should start thinking of themselves as cultural patrons.