Side Projects Podcast

Our resident cat owners Trey and Clara discussed the white space for luxury pet care with Alexandra Pauly. She’s the founder of Biche: a pet grooming brand bringing beauty industry standards to the category. We look at how pet care products fit within the larger trend towards “premiumized” household staples (ex. Graza and Fishwife) plus the ins and outs of developing a dog shampoo, DINKWADs, and t...

They’ve poached the CMO of Loewe, have a compelling social presence, and recently tapped Charli XCX as a shareholder and global ambassador. In doing so, Nothing, the nascent UK-based tech startup, seems to be aspiring to bring a measure of intrigue and cultural cachet to an industry otherwise highly deficient in cool: tech. On the pod this week, we go Marques Brownlee mode to discuss what the last...

The World Cup is less than one month away. The lead up has been marred by craven opportunism, flagrant price gouging, and worst of them all—a Jelly Roll theme song. It’s the most potent symbol of where global football is headed—endlessly mediated, ultra-exclusive, and heavily commercialized—and what it’s leaving behind: the fans. Our guest this week is Thomas Gorton, the co-founder of unk Studio ....

They’ve got Hollywood ambitions , buzzy merch drops, and swarms of loyal fans (and drones). Why is Palantir, a shadowy data analytics company that many view as emblematic of America’s slide into an unaccountable surveillance state, building a brand universe? This week, our guest is Daysia Tolentino . She’s a freelance writer covering internet culture, with bylines in GQ , Teen Vogue , Vulture , an...

Eli, Clara, and Trey are back together again and talking about what the proliferation of reading clubs reveals about how brands and savvy entrepreneurs are trying to literally capitalize on the analog bandwagon. We cover $1,000 reading retreats, friendship as KPI, and what makes attempts to scale and/or market “analog” succeed or fall flat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...

Lauren McCarthy is the Editor-in-Chief of NYLON and the newly-relaunched NYLON GUYS. We asked her about the opportunity she identified to speak to young men at a moment in which the culture around what it means to be a man is often controversial (and a bit American Psycho -coded). We also discuss nightlife coverage, where and how Nylon finds rising talent, and the value proposition of a magazine p...

Max Tani is the Media Editor at Semafor and co-host of the Mixed Signals podcast. He also writes the must-read Semafor Media newsletter every Sunday evening. Max is a longtime friend of the pod (and in real life) and we’re honored to have him on as our first guest. We wanted to get Max's take on some of the puzzling and contradictory phenomenons we're noticing in media. We discuss how long of a ru...

Day One FM is now part of Side Projects: a strategy studio and creative outlet helping brands, marketers, and everyday people think critically about how advertising shapes the cultural landscape.  Eli and Clara share some context about what Side Projects is and what this transition will look like for the pod: what’s new (our theme song, a studio revamp, and YouTube Channel ) and what’s stayin...

We’re going on a break for a few weeks! But before we do, we talk about how the most sauceless couple you know are doing Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr. cosplay, the viral Interview magazine piece about the “ Finest Boys in Finance ,” and why fashion was better when it was about the clothes, not the business.   Recommended this week: JFK (Dir. Oliver Stone) Angel's Egg (Dir. Mamoru Oshii) T...

Nilay Patel is the editor-in-chief of The Verge and host of Decoder with Nilay Patel . The Verge is “about technology and how it makes us feel,” and Nilay knows people don’t feel so hot right now. We speak with him about how founders have never been more transparent about the negative impacts of their product, how AI products are actually bad, the poison that is prediction markets on our informati...

We dive into Greg Ip’s article in the Wall Street Journal talking about how people aged 65 and older are healthier, wealthier, and, essentially, propping up the entire American economy. We also discuss if brands are going to shift their attention towards the “silver economy,” stretched adolescence, rotisserie chicken, books as cultural signals, and the death/end of the mass-market paperback. ...

Ian Michna is the founder of Jenkem Magazine . We talk with him about bringing an outside perspective to skateboarding, being a good beginner, why a combination of fear and shame keeps skateboarding alive, cold plunges with “Andy” Huberman, how Jenkem works with brands as a boutique agency, and why most things that turned out well also could’ve been terrible. Recommended this week: Be a beginner G...

We begin with a very brief Super Bowl recap, where Eli was one lazy holding call away from a handful of benjamins. Then, we put some respect on some of the American athletes sweeping, skating, and skiing in Milano Cortina. Nothing cooler than being extremely good at one specific thing. And finally, Clara and Trey dive into a lively debate centered around Joshua Rothman’s latest piece in The New Yo...

Ahead of the Super Bowl, we caught up with Adweek ’s Senior Media Reporter Mark Stenberg to help us contextualize the trends we’re seeing in this year’s crop of commercials and identify what you should look out for as you watch on Sunday.  We cover the rise of the multi-week attention ecosystem, why we’ll see more health-focused ads, and more. Plus, we get Mark’s thoughts on the integration o...

Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick writes The Trend Report™️ on Substack and co-hosts the HIP REPLACEMENT podcast alongside friend of the pod, Ben Dietz. We talk about Kyle’s early trend reports while at Nickelodeon, working in broadcast news, why America isn’t so bad actually, Barcelona internet vs. American internet, why advertisers often don’t talk to real people, how people are pouring themselves into “...

We talk about Alex Honnold’s Taipei 101 climb on Netflix, the return of David Blaine-style spectacle, greasy poles, construction YouTube, and more.  Recommended this week:  The B1M Prehistoric Planet, Season 3 Wigwam socks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Lindsay is the author of internet culture substack, “Embedded,” and host of Slate’s ICYMI podcast. She joins us to unpack social media’s cause of death in 2026, analog bags, how we got too addicted to stay addicted, brain rot as political resistance, and what happens when social platforms become places of entertainment instead of places to connect. Plus, stay tuned until the end for the revea...

Welcome back! To kick off the year, we’re talking about a new exposé in the Financial Times, which found that OnlyFans creators and influencers are now increasingly dominating requests for O-1B visas, a speciality visa reserved for “exceptional” creatives with “extraordinary ability or achievement.”  Recommended this week:  "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know" - E.D. Hi...

Welcome to Tum Town. Long time listeners will know that we often center our distaste for marketing slop and feral commercialism around a few brands, namely Crumbl, Blank Street, and MrBeast. So in our final episode of the year, we decided to actually try the stuff for ourselves and review it live. Stay until the end for a small crumb of analysis on brands trying to “tap into culture.” Here’s what...

We talk about how Saudi Arabia has renewed Dakota Johnson’s faith in film and Clara eavesdropping on Gen Alpha sleepover semantics. We also dive into the broader implications of younger consumers’ preference for Buy Now, Pay Later, Gary Vee evangelizing livestream shopping, and how frictionless access to credit has allowed the creator economy and the trend ecosystem to rise at scale.  Hosted...

Amy Francombe is a contributing editor at Vogue Business and writer of the amy_coded newsletter on Substack. We talk about why news is out and gossip is in, moving from a post-truth society to a post-meaning one, how unplugging became luxury’s most valuable currency, entertainment vs. conversion, why engagement metrics are junk, whether or not it cheapens a brand to have TikTokers sitting front ro...

We talk about Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s desire to “go back to an era where we didn’t wear our pajamas to the airport,” real bread lines at Meadow Lane, only doing charity if it’s a good content opportunity, and being “ghosted” by brands. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Annie Rauwerda is a comedian, long-time Wikipedian, and founder of the must-follow @depthsofwikipedia Instagram. In this special live episode, we ask her about the current right-wing attacks on Wikipedia, the Wikimedia awards, what it takes to be a Wikipedia editor, “ Corn ” being such a controversial entry page, muffins, why she’s optimistic about the next generation of internet users, and a wond...

The crew unpacks Zohran Mamdani’s electoral victory and what it says about a younger generation of New Yorkers who are looking to claw back a sense of agency, power, purpose, and connection beyond the “brand universe.”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anu Lingala is a trend strategist and founder of the must-read Substack, WHAT’S ANU . We get a crash course in trend forecasting methodology, and then move on to who killed cool , the collapse of the irony/sincerity cycle, why people are trying to escape being seen by brands, Anu’s new theory on “ trend bipolarity ,” why we need to return to the basics of brand strategy, Anthony Bourdain, sharehol...