THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast

Jelena Veselinovic is an advisor and fractional CMO at Brand Intelligents.ai. Previously, she was Head of Brand Marketing at Miro. Prior to that, she was VP of Global Brand Marketing Campaigns at Coca-Cola. She has a great substack, “ Rewire Your Mind ,” where she’s dismantling the assumptions of brand theory one essay at a time. So I start all these conversations with the same question, and I act...

Amy Daroukakis is co-founder of Culture Connectors , a global cultural intelligence collective linking brands to 100+ locally embedded experts. Over 20 years across 60+ countries, she has built strategy for Google, LVMH, Airbnb, and Unilever. Her Trend Galaxy Framework challenges the industry’s habit of mistaking ten cities for the world. She helped the Young V&A win Museum of the Year in 2024, an...

Christoph Quarch is a philosopher and author in Germany. He co-founded the New Platonic Academy, teaches ethics and business philosophy at universities including Danube Private University in Krems. He has written or edited more than 50 books. A handful are available in English, including Plato’s Metaphysics of Soul , The Donkey School for Leadership , and Awaken the Spirit of Europe ; his German w...

Chris Danton is Co-Founder and Chief of Ideas at IN GOOD CO , a B-Corp-certified, women-led brand strategy firm whose clients include Nike, Starbucks, Pinterest, Herman Miller, Uniqlo, Zappos, and Psycho Bunny. She is the writer behind GOOD THINKING , a weekly newsletter on culture, trends, and marketing read by more than 17,000 brand executives, and co-host of the GOOD THINKING podcast. She lives...

Nina Beckhardt is the founder of The Naming Group , a brand naming consultancy she has run for 20 years. The agency works with large organizations on naming strategy, architecture, and systems. Clients include Chevrolet, Capital One, Reebok, Kohler, P&G, GM, Target, Puma, Gap, Sony, Nestlé, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. She co-founded The Business of Naming — the first professional co...

Sem Devillart is a cultural analyst at Harmony Labs in New York and co-founder of Popular Operations, her cultural trend practice. She is founding faculty at the School of Visual Arts ’ MPS Branding program. She began her career with Li Edelkoort and later worked for Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve. Fluent in seven languages and trained in semiotics, design, and comparative religion, she has advised...

Igor Kuvychko, PhD is a Principal Data Scientist at INFICON, where he builds ML and optimization systems for semiconductor manufacturing. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from Colorado State University, with over 2,000 academic citations. He was born in the Soviet Far East, grew up in Russia, and came to the US at 21. I encountered him when he posted a piece, “ Gregory Bateson & AI ” on LinkedIn, conne...

Nick Bodor is the founder and owner of Baker Falls , a live music venue and bar at 192 Allen Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He previously created some of the East Village’s most influential independent spots — alt.coffee, Library Bar, and Cake Shop, which booked early shows by MGMT, Vampire Weekend, and the Strokes. A first-generation Hungarian-American from rural Connecticut, he’s sp...

Dr. Jonathan Taee is a social anthropologist and the founder of Rhizome Consulting , a New York digital strategy and brand systems agency. His clients range from Fortune 500 organizations like Target to mission-driven farms, real estate groups, and emerging consumer brands. His focus is on building "living brand systems" — adaptive structures that reflect how meaning is actually created today. He...

John B. Dutton is Head of Creative Services at the National Film Board of Canada. He was previously Chief Creative Officer and Partner at Camden, a Montreal-based international advertising agency. He writes the Discomfort Zone newsletter and is the author of the novel 2084 . I’m not sure if you know this, but you may or may not know this, but I start every one of these conversations with the same...

Indi Young is a researcher, author, and consultant focused on understanding how people think. She developed the mental models method and is the author of Practical Empathy , Mental Models , and Time to Listen . Her work emphasizes listening, qualitative rigor, and designing systems that support different ways of thinking in practice. And, she has a great substack, Indi Young . So I start all these...

Annie Auerbach & Adam Chmielowski are co-founders of Starling Strategy , a cultural insight and futures consultancy now in its tenth year. They help brands step outside category conventions by mapping the cultural and historical forces that shape how people feel and why. Annie is a trained historian, journalist, and author of several books including a forthcoming one on collaboration. Adam is a tr...

Nick Liddell is a brand strategist, author, and founder of Baron Sauvage , an independent consultancy based in London. Previously Director of Consulting at The Clearing, he has over 25 years of experience working with brands including Google, Prada, McLaren, and Samsung. His most recent books are You Are a Fish: The Truth About Brands and The Brand Architecture Book , which argues for understandin...

Matt Klein is Head of Global Foresight & Research Methods at Reddit and the creator of ZINE , a Webby Award-winning cultural intelligence newsletter with 26K+ subscribers across 150+ countries. He calls himself a “digital anthropologist, cultural theorist, strategist, and writer.” Douglas Rushkoff called him “a brilliant cultural analyst.” Someone else called him “the closest thing to Gen Z’s Mars...

Katarina Graffman is a cultural anthropologist and founder of Inculture , a cultural analysis consultancy. She holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and is a researcher at Uppsala University. Her clients include IKEA, Volvo, Bloomberg, Björn Borg, Skanska, Swedish Radio, and the BBC. She co-authored *We Are What We Buy* (2018) and *In Search of the Time to Come* (2020). Her TED Talk “ The focus on...

Alexi Gunner is an independent cultural researcher and strategist based in Melbourne. He is the founder of idle gaze , a consulting practice and newsletter exploring the hidden undercurrents of culture. He previously held strategy roles at We Are Social, AKQA, and Zalando, and served as cultural futurist and Berlin chapter lead for RADAR. In our conversation, we talked about his recent essay, “ Re...

Carissa Justice is a copywriter, creative director in Atlanta. She is the founder of Nimble Creative , a brand studio focused on voice, naming, and storytelling. Her clients have included Google, Strava, Figma, and ThirdLove. She previously served as Verbal Lead at CharacterSF. In 2023 she founded The Subtext , an online publication and community dedicated to elevating the craft of brand language....

Nazy Farkhondeh is a Brooklyn-based writer and brand strategist working freelance. She previously held positions at Reed Words, Trollbäck+Company, and VICE Media, where her work earned two Clio Awards. She has also worked with Interbrand, served as a D&AD Writing for Design judge, and holds a BA in Communications from the University of Michigan. So I start all these conversations, and I’m not sure...

Lucy Neiland is a Business Anthropologist at Ipsos UK and a founding member of the Ipsos Ethnography Centre of Excellence. She previously led ethnographic research at Serco ExperienceLab and worked at Ethnographic Research, Inc. in Kansas City. She holds an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. Her published work includes " Hysterical Health: Unpicking the cultural belief's...

Katie Dreke is founder of DRKE , a Portland-based strategy consultancy. At Nike (2014-2021), she relocated to Tokyo to launch the company's first membership program outside North America, led concept development for Nike Women including the maternity collection launch, and designed global media strategy for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Previously, she led strategy at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, Droga5 Syd...

Darrel Rhea is a design strategist and innovation leader who served as CEO of Cheskin, where he expanded its global research and innovation practice. He is coauthor of Making Meaning , a foundational book on meaning-driven innovation, and founder of Rhea Insight, advising Fortune 1000 leaders on strategy, design, and customer-led innovation. So, as you may or may not know, I start all these conver...

Sam Ford is a founding partner of InnoEngine , an innovation strategy firm based in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He serves as Fractional Chief Partnership Officer for the Metals Innovation Initiative, a nonprofit supporting Kentucky's metals industry, and as Innovation and Culture Fellow at Western Kentucky University's Innovation Campus. He sits on the boards of Canopy and Employward through Accelera...

Yuliya Grinberg is a digital anthropologist and qualitative researcher with a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Columbia University. She is currently Research and Insights Manager at Mastercard. Her book, Ethnography of an Interface: Self-Tracking, Quantified Self, and the Work of Digital Connections , was published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. A note for readers: Yuliya has offered...

Chuck Welch is the founder and chief strategy officer of Rupture Studio , a culture-led brand consultancy. He brings deep cultural insight, strategic imagination, and brand experience with Nike, PepsiCo, Dove, LVMH and others to help organizations connect authentically with fast-moving audiences. I start all these conversations with the same question, which is a question that I borrowed from a fri...

Tess Posner is a musician and the creator of Resonance , a platform helping communities shape the technologies that shape them. Former founding CEO of AI4ALL and a Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics, she bridges responsible AI with human agency—ensuring people have voice in an era of accelerating technological change. So, I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I borrowe...