Thinking Is Cool

REMINDER: This episode aired on my YouTube first. Subscribe to my channel to see my content in all its glory: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqkJwR_JacmcQJUrtqv8apQ

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The word "spectacle" can take on plenty of meanings both good and bad, but when it comes to Coachella? No dictionary entry fits better. The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is a spectacle in every sense of the word—from the $8 million artist payouts to Revolve Festival, the annual desert gathering has morphed into a business enterprise beyond compare.

To understand how (if?) Coachella makes money, what the event means for the music industry, and why everything is a GD branding moment, I brought in an expert: Dan Runcie, founder of Trapital, a fantastic newsletter and podcast exploring the business and culture of the music industry.

Today, Dan and I talk about Coachella's prevalence in both music and our economy more broadly. And I only mention Harry Styles like 4 times.

Subscribe to Trapital: https://trapital.co/

Follow Dan: https://twitter.com/RuncieDan

While you're here...

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Thanks for listening :) fingers crossed Harry brings out someone cool this weekend!

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You've seen Logan Paul vs. Floyd Mayweather. You've seen Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. But now, the greatest spectacle of all: Kinsey Grant vs. Josh Kaplan. Two friends, two intellectuals, two dissenting voices in modern capitalism...only one can walk away victorious.

Welcome to the 10-Minute Debate. Today, I (Kinsey Grant, noted reluctant capitalist) take on my friend (Josh Kaplan, noted optimistic capitalist) with one big question in mind: Does power flow the way it should in today's version of late-stage capitalism?

10 minutes for all the glory. Will our friendship survive? Watch to find out.

Hope you love it!! If you did/while you're at it...

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Thank you Josh for being a good sport. And thank you to the orchid for being a paid actor.

THIS IS THE AUDIO VERSION OF A VIDEO THAT AIRED ON MY YOUTUBE :) If you want to see the full audiovisual version, subscribe to my channel here and watch the video here.

Can the ultra-wealthy fight for a wealth tax in earnest? Is it possible to believe in universal pre-k and still send your kids to the best private schools? Or is it all just political fence-sitting?

Let's think about it—the idea of "champagne socialism," or the specific brand of progressive politics popular among the very rich and very famous. Inspired by Emily Ratajkowski's debut essay collection, My Body, this is a video about dismantling perceived hypocrisy...and fighting the system from the inside.

Hope you love it!! If you did/while you're at it...

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REMINDER: This is the audio version of an episode that aired on my YouTube channel last week. To see the episode in its 3D glory, subscribe to my channel right here.

When was the last time you opened your computer and navigated to, say, the home page of the New York Times? When was the last time you read a piece from CNN and thought to yourself, "fantastic—what fair and objective reporting that was!"

It's time to face the music: Mainstream media—the vaunted publications of lore like the Times, the Post, the Journal—have lost their luster. It's in part because we as consumers have gone sour on institutions in general, favoring instead a cohort we feel we can trust much more...individuals.

So what does this shift mean for the future of journalism, media, news, and the innumerable ways we as consumers count on those things to live informed and thoughtful lives?

Let's think about it...with Brian Morrissey, creator of The Rebooting and former president and editor-in-chief of Digiday.

Thank you for listening!! Couple things:

TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT ME TO TALK ABOUT!! CONSIDER THIS EMAIL ADDRESS ([email protected]) AN OPEN LINE FOR IDEAS :)

Find Brian's newsletter, The Rebooting, here.

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*This is the audio version of a YouTube video essay released here*

If anyone with a phone and a WiFi connection can become a journalist these days...what does that mean for the future of journalism?

Consider this: Alex Cooper, Joe Rogan, any garden variety Instagram influencer—they all have platforms, and many of them are using their platforms to participate in and influence the news cycle. But what does that enormous shift mean for the future of media, journalism, information...and even truth itself?

Let's think about it. Because thinking is cool, and so are you :)

And while you're at it...

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L is for the way you listen to me

O is for the only pod you need

V is very, very honest commentary

E is even more episodes that’ll never bore

I’m aware that was mad cheesy, but I started and I couldn’t stop until it was finished. For better or more likely for worse. But what can I say? L-o-v-e is in the air.

This week on Thinking Is Cool, thanks to everyone’s favorite Hallmark holiday, is a week to think about love in all of its richness and its many forms.

But because I can’t help myself…we’re going to do it with a twist. Today, we’re not just talking about love. We’re learning about how it comes to exist. There are scientifically proven ways to create an environment for love, and it involves doing more than just recreating the final scene from the Parent Trap.

So hit play and settle in for a fun little jaunt through what makes love so unimaginably wonderful. You’ll hear from Dr. Arthur Aron, a research professor at SUNY Stony Brook who studies love and piloted a method for creating immediate intimacy and connection between strangers. You’ll also hear from some Thinking Is Cool listeners about their own diverse perspectives on love. And you’ll hear from me! Notorious lover of love and huge sap.

I hope you hit play, let the love wash over you, and enjoy. Sending you a big old hug or high five wherever you are. 

And if you’re so inclined: Flowers say I’m sorry, chocolate says I love you, and sharing Thinking Is Cool says “I’m an intellectual.” I’d love it if you sent the show to someone special in your life :)

Final note: Thank you to our friends at Massican for making this episode possible. I’ll be uncorking a bottle of Annia tonight to honor all the love in my life. Buy a bottle for yourself here or hit up Whole Foods or your local fine wine shop. You’re gonna love it.

In media as in life, sex sells…but why? And how? And should it? This week on Thinking Is Cool, let’s take a traipse through critically acclaimed movies and television with a very important question in mind: How much sex is too much?

In the age of this HBO-ification of all the media considered “good,” we have to wonder whether graphic onscreen sex is ever a truly indispensable mechanism for moving plot forward. I can (and in this episode will) argue both yes and no—but at the crux of this conversation is an honest assessment of the over-sexualization of the characters on our screens. 

I want to think more about why and how we got to this point (this point, of course, being the Sydney Sweeney of it all).

What are we vouching for, agreeing to, or upholding when we hit play on an episode rife with nudity, graphic sex, and utterly troubling sexual relationships? Perhaps something; perhaps nothing at all. Let’s think about it. 

One important note: This episode speaks pretty explicitly about sex, both healthy and unhealthy, onscreen. If you find conversations like that to be triggering, please sit this one out! I promise I understand. And if you’re looking for more resources, check some out here, here, and here.

I hope you like this episode—if you do, it would be great if you shared it! And even better if you shared this episode and then rated and reviewed the show. And even better than that? Sharing, rating, reviewing, and subscribing to my newsletter. Do that here.

Champagne socialism. The slightly more radicalized cousin of liberal elitism, champagne socialism is increasingly becoming the default position for very wealthy people who also want to be (or be perceived as) good progressives. It’s leftism for people who have personal drivers. It’s political fence-sitting, and it’s so incredibly interesting.

Can we believe in a wealth tax and still want to become wealthy ourselves? Can we espouse the importance of universal pre-k and still send our children to the elite private schools that churn out senators regularly?

These are the questions of champagne socialism, rooted in the eternal battle between capitalism and whatever else is out there. 

It’s the Emily Ratajkowski of it all, and it’s what I’m talking about in this week’s episode of Thinking Is Cool. The absence of ethical consumption, the question of ethical production, the justification of wealth and wanting, and where we fit into the paradigm of late-stage capitalism.

Listen now to confront your own ideas of good, bad, and worse.

Have you checked in on the FBI agent in your phone lately? Winter can be tough, you know. They could probably use a muffin basket or something.

I’m only kind of kidding because there isn’t actually an FBI agent in your phone, but there might as well be given the incredible amount of data that you offer up every time you paw through Instagram to find your high school nemesis or type in “perciatelli vs bucatini” on Google.

This week on Thinking Is Cool, I explore the depths of surveillance capitalism we’ve willingly and unwillingly submitted ourselves to. It’s pretty astounding how much we don’t know about the information we hand over in the form of anonymized data. 

It might not seem like a big deal when you think about it in the context of just yourself—I mean, realistically I’m 1 of about a million carbon copies of girlies in their late 20s who like to read and also like to dress like Claudia Schiffer in the ’90s and also have a fondness for matching sets and also think maybe snail mucus will cure their skin problems. But when you think about the ways the data we may or may not care about can be weaponized en masse to literally shape society…things get kind of scary.

This episode explores those fears. But it also offers solutions and considerations that were entirely new to me, a power internet user, when I heard them first. Listen and send to the friend in your life who’s holding out on Instagram Reels because TikTok is a Chinese-owned entity.

Important deets:

• My guests are Nik Sharma, head of Sharma Brands and Twitter’s go-to DTC Guy, and Robert Reeve, a privacy tech expert whose thread on data-driven ads and surveillance went viral last year. They’re both incredibly intelligent.
• Get your Massican here. My favorites are the Annia and the Sauvignon Blanc.
• It would be great if you shared this episode! And even better if you shared this episode and then rated and reviewed the show. And even better than that? Sharing, rating, reviewing, and subscribing to my newsletter. Do that here.

Bitcoin down? Might want to call your grandma. And your uncle. And your 7th grade math teacher.

At some point over the last couple of years, crypto has evolved from a conversation exclusive to the internet’s deepest depths into a conversation exclusive to nowhere and no one. Today, the mainstreamification of crypto is real.

But this isn’t your dad’s index fund we’re talking about. Crypto, for all its rather sudden mass appeal, remains an unregulated and vividly volatile prospect. So it’s time to check in with the crypto experts to hear what they think is going on.

Today on Thinking Is Cool, hear from three deeply intelligent cryptocurrency and web 3 experts about the future of pricing, the doubts that keep them up at night, and the future direction of the crypto conversation in a post-NFT world.

Annika Lewis of Gitcoin, Jackson Dame of Rainbow, and Bobby Thakkar of posting a lot of web 3 stuff on Twitter all weigh in. Listen now and send to the people in your life who are always asking “what’s going on with bitcoin” because this is what’s going on with bitcoin.