Side Projects Podcast

Welcome back to the Subway Series. Across four episodes, we’ll examine the past, present and future of New York subway advertising in conversation with experts from across the city. In Episode 2, we’re speaking with Jodi Shapiro: curator of the New York Transit Museum. We discuss the history of advertising within the subway system and the role that the subway system, and the MTA as a brand, have p...

Welcome to the Subway Series: a four-part series where we’ll examine the past, present and future of New York subway advertising in conversation with experts from across the city. To kick things off Eli and Clara are discussing a few of the obvious questions. Why do a month-long deep-dive into subway advertising? And what can it reveal about broader trends within the marketing world and culture wr...

You Can See Everything, the new documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about the Theranos founder Elizabeth (or “Liz”) Holmes, has proven to be a real cultural moment — the biggest non-music documentary opening since Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004. In this episode, Clara, Trey, and Eli discuss the enduring cultural curiosity surrounding Elizabeth Holmes, her domineering, coke-addled boyfrien...

This week, Eli, Trey, and Clara are talking about what seems to be a growing existential crisis in the ill-defined world of “cultural strategy:” Who is it really for? What does it really mean? And as youth-led protests swell from Marseille to New Delhi, to what extent is “cultural strategy” helping to shape (or better) society in any meaningful, material way? We talk about Matt Klein’s recent “Sta...

What’s one thing bringing high-flying Hollywood directors and regular Americans together en masse? Vilifying tech billionaires. Just as anti-tech populism is simmering to a boil ahead of the midterms, a slate of biopics and documentaries with hubristic tech billionaires—Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elizabeth Holmes—are hitting the theaters. Eli gets Trey’s thoughts on The Social Rec...

Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing a new genre of creators gain prominence. Maybe you've heard them referred to as “knowledge influencers,” “brandsplainers,” or the “alternatively influential.” Their credibility comes less from sales-savvy or attention hacking as it does from a depth of knowledge and expertise across a range of niches—from advertising to AGI. On this episode, Trey and...

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 . IG: @sideprojects__ YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/   Hosted on Acast. See aca...

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. IG: @sidep...

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. IG: @sideprojects__ YouTube: @...

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 artfu...

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. IG: @sideprojects__ YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast Substack: https://sideprojectsco.substack.com/ &nbsp...

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 str...

The creator economy has officially won, and periodic waves of influencer backlash have become a perennial feature of online discourse. Some recent examples include the “ no influencers sign ” in Nantucket, whether “ hating influencers has become a socially acceptable way to hate women ,” and talk of an influencer recession as the landscape becomes more crowded and competitive.  To parse legit...

Is it a fun new beverage? Fast food innovation? Celebrity wedding? A disdain for data centers? An underdog sports story? We’re living through a moment of seemingly calcified cynicism and alienation, but there are palpable signs that people are looking to involve themselves in something bigger than themselves that’s positive.  As America celebrates its Semiquincentennial, we wanted to get a gu...

Phyllis Kao is a senior auctioneer at Sotheby’s. You might’ve recently seen clips of her taking bids for a 67-million-year-old T-Rex named Gus , which sold for a whopping $50.1 million to an unnamed buyer. Being an auctioneer (auctioneering is not a verb) has always sat at the intersection of performance and expertise. And in the attention economy, Kao has displayed a knack for both in a way that’...

Brands have rightly diagnosed a desire for connection and romance, hosting “mixers,” posting personals, and even producing dating shows on social. But what role should they really be playing as matchmakers? We wanted to hear from someone with a real pulse on the dating scene and hit up Amy Rose Spiegel, a senior editor at The Cut and author of the publication's Personals newsletter to come on the...

Eli and Clara discuss the highs and lows of the World Cup, with an eye toward how brands leveraged big-name talent like Madonna, Messi, the Muppets, and David “the Coca-Cola of humans” Beckham. Plus: our thoughts on the FIFA Peace Prize, Hidden Valley Ranch, Erling Haaland’s vlog, and (unexpectedly) Kamala Harris.  IG: @sideprojects__ YouTube: @SideProjectsPodcast Substack: https://sideprojec...

Clara and Trey sat down with Jalil Johnson —fashion professional, writer, and creator of popular Substack ‘ Consider Yourself Cultured ’—to talk about the changing role of fashion in culture and the current obsession with taste. They discuss how social media incentivizes reference curation over developing a point of view, “buying the look” instead of learning the ropes, Covid-era style experimenta...

Hypnotist and hypnosis instructor Désirée Eckert joins Eli and Clara to talk about the trance states we enter every day (scrolling on our phones for one) and why building our awareness of trance is a useful tool for seeing both how our attention is extracted and how we can reclaim it. We discuss the infinite scroll, quitting cigarettes, prescription drug commercials, The Twilight Zone, hate-readin...

As prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket stretch their tentacles across culture, their advertising has become ubiquitous. Ahead of the World Cup, Kalshi has inked partnerships with a slew of high-profile athletes and football personalities, like José Mourinho and Lionel Messi. Polymarket, for its part, was a marquee sponsor for the UFC 250 fight at the White House earlier this mon...

For our second special edition pod, we spoke with Mark Stenberg, Senior Media Reporter at AdWeek, to compare notes on what people are talking about this year: AI FOBO, the proliferation of creators, and the increasingly blurry purpose of the festival itself. We get into why Cannes may be less about new ideas than consensus building, why public panels feel more PR-approved than ever, and data disso...

This is the first of two special edition podcasts this week, recorded on the ground at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity ™️. Today, we’re joined by breakfast aficionado and friend of the show, Ben Dietz. Ben is ½ of the Hip Replacement podcast alongside our friend Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick.  Ben is a longtime Cannes attendee, so we pick his brain about how the festival has evolved for be...

An enduring theme of the Knicks’ historic finals run has been squabbling over who and what constitutes “a real fan,” exacerbated by astronomical ticket prices, the intrusion of Kalshi, and the Side Talkification of New York. But what, exactly, is the role of gatekeeping when you want these moments of mass enthusiasm?  On the pod this week, we talk about New York after the Knicks’ win, why the...

Youth is vanishing. In a material sense, birth rates are plummeting around the globe and older people are staying in positions of power across both the public and private sector for longer periods of time. It’s also vanishing in a cultural sense, too thanks to a steady stream of reboots, remakes, and de-aged celebrities, as studios and execs bet on proven hits vs. net-new creative. Against this os...

Reality TV has shaped the fabric of American society, from the White House to Summer House (sorry, had to). And Bravo-lebrities are some of the hottest tickets in town: racking up brand deals and starting their own companies and media empires which succeed or fail by their on-screen reputations. To better understand the state of play on all things Bravo and brands, we invited Gibson Johns to join...