Tasteland

This week on Tasteland, Francis and Daisy go guest-free and dive into everything from small farms and soybeans to the future of media and paywalls. Is media all media marketing now? Life is good.

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Timestamps

00:00 Sourdough fatherhood

01:43 Venture agriculturalism

05:34 Soybean political own goal

10:06 All media is marketing

15:40 Not all media is marketing

22:37 Retiring the op-ed

27:46 The future of micropayments and paywalls

35:27 Distasteland

38:11 Nostalgic scent of manure

39:33 AGI is coming, go to party school

42:04 Life is good; drip

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week Daisy and Francis are joined by Casey Lewis, founder of the After School newsletter and Gen Z consumer trends expert. Casey has been an editor at Teen Vogue, MTV, and New York Magazine, and in 2016, she started a media company for Gen Z, which was acquired by another media company for Gen Z.

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Casey

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Links & References

• A Taste of Thomas Bernhard

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Timestamps

00:00 Thomas Bernhard renaissance

05:25 Double dogs and doubled subs

08:00 Gen alpha are the marketing generation

10:11 Denim is back

18:51 Individuality vs. conformity in youth culture

26:46 Brand loyalty in gen z and gen alpha

30:45 Mom's influence on tween shopping

34:00 The uncanny valley of fashion

38:09 Refragmentation of youth culture

44:03 You stole my brainrot

51:30 The ethics of child influencers

58:27 I wanna be your billboard

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week on Tasteland we're joined by Dani Loftus. Dani is a founder, writer and investor focused on the digital evolution of culture. After founding content platform This Outfit Does Not Exist in 2021, she became a leading voice in the digital fashion space working with brands like Chanel, Dion Lee, and Google and writing for publications such as HUNGER, DIRT and Jing Daily.

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Dani

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Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Dani

01:00 Gimmicky martini epidemic

05:10 The return the hipsterdom

17:27 Happy victims

20:28 Fashion is fine art

28:18 Pandemic shopping habits

31:22 The Doji problem

38:58 The commodification of taste in fashion

46:52 Putting a watermark on humanity

51:22 Class structure in the UK vs US

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week Daisy and Francis are joined by Andy Hunter, the founder and CEO of bookshop.org, an online bookshop with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.

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Bookshop

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Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Andy and Bookshop

02:08 Press Publish NYC

06:26 Introducing e-books on Bookshop

08:00 Aligning against big tech

11:36 Best performing genres on Bookshop

14:12 The catalyst for Bookshop's impressive growth

15:52 Rejecting investment to maintain the company's mission

19:51 Support bookstores, not billionaires

28:03 Innovating the e-reader

35:00 Bookshop's impact on local book stores

37:25 AI vs human book recommendations

46:42 Taking the Bookshop model beyond books

53:40 The value of physical books

57:40 Current reads

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week Daisy and Francis are joined by Ben Dietz, a long-time media/entertainment business guy.

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Ben

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Timstamps

00:00 Do not disturb

05:12 No new luxury brands

11:11 Cybertruck: a future classic

16:20 Can software be luxury?

23:23 AI email summaries, with emotion

30:34 Brand safety is dead

34:56 Podcasting for the generations

38:31 Job tenure trends

47:39 Well-mannered, socialized and curious

51:13 Psychological foot binding

54:00 A month of sobriety

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week on Tasteland we're joined by W. David Marx, an American fashion and culture writer who works and lives in Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style and Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change.

Preorder Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century

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W. David Marx

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Timestamps

00:00:00 Subway tastes

00:02:26 There's no song of the summer

00:09:05 Skinny pants are never coming back

00:12:10 Only Fads

00:17:10 Fad consumerism culture, US vs Asia

00:21:27 The age of the double sellout

00:24:00 The 21st century crisis

00:35:49 Rich enough to not have a smartphone

00:41:25 Cultural roots of contemporary politics

00:51:04 Everyone is a marketer

00:56:37 You can't be unfamous

01:01:04 Capitalism without morality

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week Daisy and Francis are joined by Greta Rainbow. Greta is an editor at the Creative Independent, arts columnist for the New York Review of Architecture, and she's the anchor contributor for Dirt's books newsletter, Blank.

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Greta

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Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Greta

04:33 Genre + scene = literary movement

08:37 Disney adults of alt-lit

11:03 In defense of perfection

16:44 An audatious literary sandwich

24:22 Literary gnats

31:09 Unfulfiled references come as great surprise

34:51 Books that we hate

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week Daisy and Francis are joined Sam Valenti IV. Sam is the founder and leader of Ghostly International, a 25-year-old collective that has grown from a dorm room-based record label to a recognized platform for the work of great artists, designers, technologists, and musicians. The New York Times says Ghostly “transcends its record label roots to sell and ethos.” Ghostly International is the first label alongside upstart drink sum wtr in All Flowers Group, a label unit formed as an affiliate of Secretly Group. An inveterate collector, Valenti also writes the weekly newsletter Herb Sundays, which features a personal playlist by a noted artist or enthusiast.

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Sam

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Timestamps

00:00:00 Igno-fiction

00:05:45 Cultural beatdowns

00:11:18 The knowledge requirement of fandoms

00:18:15 Sycophancy vs. fandom

00:21:50 Community in record labels

00:27:45 Archiving culture

00:33:29 Nostalgia and new media engagement

00:36:52 Preserving artists legacies

00:42:36 New media monetization strategies

00:50:00 AI and the future of media consumption

00:57:31 The best music journalism right now

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week on Tasteland we're joined by Reggie James, a writer, product architect and investor.

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Reggie

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00:00

02:09 Best hardware of 2024

06:11 Interviewing Jasper of Teenage Engineering

08:06 The most contemporary city in America

12:07 Secular tech vs spiritual tech

17:25 Heriticon loses its edge

22:30 The tech right and religious right cannot coexist

28:41 Faith and doubt in startup tech

35:31 Private vs public capital in innovation

42:26 Having a startup is a lifestyle choice

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.

This week on Tasteland we're joined by Rax King, a James Beard Award-nominated writer and host of the podcast Low Culture Boil. Rax is the author of the 2021 book Tacky, and her new release Sloppy is out now.

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Rax

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Timestamps

00:00 Introducing Rax

02:37 Write sober, edit sober

07:26 The goal of personal writing

13:20 Reframing past experiences

20:25 Service industry draft

29:11 Banjos in the sky

31:27 Drink the Kool-Aid but know your dosage

35:21 Reverse abundance mindset

38:00 Nobody does bread anymore

42:59 Didn't make the cut

45:55 Sex tourism and calamari

48:40 Noble savage reply guys

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Our intro song, Night Life, is written by Nakisso Peralta and performed by Chillers.