Follow the Rabbit

Igor bought a Fujifilm camera. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is what he built to help himself actually learn photography instead of letting the camera collect dust in a drawer after two months. In this episode, we explore what Igor calls the "AI companion." Not an agent that does things for you, but a system that helps you stay with the things you actually wan...

Your organization has three departments that should be collaborating. Instead, they're locked in a silent battle—one's built a fortress, another's planning a hostile takeover, and the third is caught in the middle. The manager overseeing this chaos spends all day in meetings and has no map of what's actually happening. Sound familiar? Welcome to what our guest Helge Tennø calls &qu...

If you've been on TikTok lately, you've definitely seen La Bubus. Those collectible plushies have replaced Dubai chocolate as the instant cultural reference for micro-trends. But here's the thing—La Bubus, $19 strawberries, $20 smoothies, and $300 Le Creuset pots aren't random phenomena. They're symptoms of something much bigger: what Igor calls the Aspiration Cascade. Remember...

Dancing at dawn isn't rebellion. It's strategy. Igor just wanted his morning coffee. Instead, he walked into a full-blown rave at 10am, complete with turntables and wood dust, desperately clutching his toddler while navigating through impeccably dressed dancers. Welcome to soft clubbing, a trend we first identified in February that has since become delightfully bizarre. What started as qui...

Remember when your doctor knew best? Now TikTok tells you to eat oats instead of buying Ozempic, your Apple Watch judges your sleep, and everyone's either biohacking their way to immortality or drowning in wellness anxiety. Welcome to the great unbundling of medical authority. In this episode, we're joined by Cyril Maury from Stripe Partners, who's spent 15 years studying how people actually behav...

What connects a sea of white men in bucket hats at Oasis concerts to Sam Altman's relentless narrative-building around AGI? More than you might think. This month, we're connecting dots between two very different cultural phenomena that both reveal something fascinating about how authenticity gets manufactured—and why that matters for anyone trying to understand how culture actually moves....

Let's say someone asks you to suggest five global markets for a product launch. You enter it into ChatGPT, receive a response within seconds, and present it during the meeting. Six months later, when it's either a massive success or spectacular failure, someone asks, “Why did we choose these markets?” And you realize... you have no idea. This is what our guest John Willshire calls “cogniti...

When 14-year-olds design autonomous hearses, barber shops launch radio stations, and Formula 1 calls its drivers "the cast," you're witnessing the emergence of new cultural gathering points in a fragmented world. In this June monthly review, we explore three seemingly unrelated phenomena that reveal the same underlying pattern: the post-pandemic hunger for synchronized cultural exper...

The book that taught us “cool hunting” could be a career—and why that still matters in 2025 In this special episode of Follow the Rabbit, we sit down together in the same room (a rare occurrence!) to discuss the book that fundamentally shaped our approach to cultural research: William Gibson's  Pattern Recognition . Published in 2003, this post-9/11 novel introduced us to the concept of profession...

In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes welcome Mike Evans, a strategist who spent years at Red Bull Music figuring out which artists the brand should work with and how to stay connected to culture while scaling globally. Now he consults brands trying to navigate that same challenge—and he's been watching one particular phenomenon closely. We're talking about On running sho...

The sale of a hand sanitizer company for $880 million, despite only capturing 5% of the market, exemplifies how modern challengers achieve success by redefining the rules instead of adhering to them. In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, we're joined by Jan Thede, Senior Director of Strategy at Berlin-based design agency A Color Bright, to explore their newly released challenger brand framework. M...

When a billion-dollar bet on arthouse cinema meets teenagers selling newspapers in the Hamptons, it reveals how radical proximity to your audience might be the only strategy left that works. In this monthly review, Igor and Johannes uncover a pattern hiding in plain sight: while mainstream culture flattens into algorithmic predictability, billion-dollar businesses are being built by doing the exac...

When a pandemic book report becomes a four-year creative practice, it reveals how making something "pointless" by hand might be the most radical act of resistance in our optimized world. Christie George never meant to become an artist. But when she started scribbling quotes from Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing" during lockdown, something unexpected happened: a simple readi...

In a world of polarized perspectives, the path forward isn't choosing one truth but developing empathy for contradictory realities that exist simultaneously. Igor and Johannes explore how we navigate a world where multiple versions of reality exist at once. Through the lens of Igor's recent trip to the United States, they unpack how media narratives, firsthand experiences, and personal enc...

Why a leading brand chooses to tell its story through limited-circulation magazines in the digital age In this follow-up to our indie magazine exploration, we welcome Guillaume "Gee" Schmidt, co-founder of Patta, to discuss how print magazines function within contemporary brand ecosystems. What began as a sneaker boutique in Amsterdam has evolved into a multifaceted cultural force spanni...

In a world obsessed with digital content, why are luxury print magazines not just surviving but thriving? In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, we explore the persistent appeal of print magazines in our hyper-digital world. Sparked by a New York Times article about “the revenge of the niche fashion magazine,” we examine how these physical artifacts create communities, serve as premium spaces for a...

How the former Davos communications chief navigates the tension between algorithmic demands and journalistic integrity in his quest to make sense of a world that resists coherence In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, we explore the changing landscape of cultural impact with Adrian Monck, whose newsletter "Seven Things" has become an intriguing case study in post-institutional thought le...

In this monthly recap episode, Igor and Johannes reflect on cultural phenomena that caught their attention during March 2025, exploring luxury consumption, wellness trends, and the evolving nature of media consumption. From the luxury supermarket Erewhon and its influence on brand perception to the complex social implications of GLP-1 drugs and the fascinating personalization of sound through the...

What happens when 90% of our cultural insights come from just 10 cities?  In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes welcome cultural strategist Amy Daroukakis, who shares her provocative thesis that 90% of trend reports come from just 10 cities in the world—creating a homogenized view of culture that fails to capture global diversity. With 20 years of experience working across 60+ co...

The $19 strawberry isn't ridiculous—it's the perfect artifact for decoding our conflicted relationship with luxury, authenticity, and outrage culture. In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes examine the viral phenomenon of the $19 strawberry sold at Erewhon, the luxury LA supermarket previously featured in their Season 3 discussions. What begins as apparent late-stage capit...

From cynicism to curiosity: How personal taste becomes the ultimate skill in an AI-powered world The topic of AI often appears deceptively binary: those who believe it will transform everything versus those who refuse to acknowledge its real-world benefits despite the hype. In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes are joined by Sari Azout, founder of Sublime, a digital curation tool...

From Trump's scripted reality to tech journalism's new priorities, exploring the connections between seemingly disparate cultural shifts Throughout the episode, a central theme emerges: in a world of increasingly scripted realities and algorithmic experiences, meaningful connection and deep understanding become both more valuable and more challenging to achieve. In this month's review...

The Subculture is dead. Long live the Subculture. Or … does it? What is it even these days? How does Instagram (and other platforms) play a role in this and of course what is even authentic these days? In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes are joined by Jack Stanley, a writer and creative strategist whose research explores how subcultures evolve in our hyper-connected world. Movi...

From Paris AI Action Summit takeaways to practical implementation strategies for SMBs In this follow-up episode to their open source AI discussion, Igor and Axel dive deeper into the European AI landscape following the recent Paris AI Summit. With Johannes out sick, they explore both high-level policy developments and practical implementation strategies, revealing the gap between grand initiatives...

From DeepSeek to local installations, exploring the democratization of AI and Europe's opportunity In this episode of Follow the Rabbit, Igor and Johannes are joined by Axel Quack, who has led the development of AI-driven products and services for large-scale organizations. Drawing from his extensive experience in financial services innovation and technology transformation, Axel brings unique insi...