THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast

Peter Spear

A weekly conversation between Peter Spear and people he finds fascinating working in and with THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    Jelena Veselinović on Truth & Brokenness

    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 actually use it in my research, too. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, and she helps people tell their story. And it’s such a big question. I use it, but it’s so big, I over-explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want to make sure that you’re in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? Okay. It is a big question, yes. Well, obviously, I can answer that question on many different levels. So I will start for a smaller, lower level, and then I’ll try to explain how that connects to a real place where I’m coming from. So originally, I come in terms of where I was born. I was born in Serbia, in Belgrade, which is a little country in Balkans or Eastern Europe. And I spent there, well, most of my young adulthood. And then when I got married, when I got my first child, I left with work and I never came back. Now, why is all this important? It is important for many different reasons, because it truly made me into who I am. So firstly, when I’m saying that I’m coming from Balkans, what is important in there that I am carrying in my DNA a certain way, a certain history, a certain set of beliefs, a certain baggage, I would say. And that really makes me who I am. And there are a couple of things that I believe are important to know about me. The first one is that I don’t know how not to speak or how not to say what I think. And that’s something that in my culture, in the culture where I’m coming from, I mean, first of all, you are taught from a very early childhood to always speak the truth, but I guess that’s generally true. But also I think what is important is that speaking truth is considered a respect. When you respect someone, you will always tell them the truth. You will not try to manipulate that truth to make people better or to make it sound easier or more convenient or any of this. If you respect someone, if you love someone, if you care about someone, you will always deliver them the most brutal, no matter how painful truth, because you care and because you want people to be better, to improve. Now, that’s something that I carry deeply inside of me. And it is something that helped me in my professional life, but I think it also cost me more than it helped me. And something that is also connected with that is I was always seen, and I don’t know, we might or might not talk about my career, but I was seen always in my working environments, as someone who is always keeping others honest. And I to say, whenever we were doing all this psychological tests and stuff, I was always the majority of people would always be mapped somewhere in the center of the map. And I was not only extreme, I’m joking, I was probably outside of the map, because they couldn’t even fit me in. Which meant, and I was talking to these coaches, how is that? Why is that? What’s wrong with me? And they explained to me, nothing is wrong with you. You are actually very valuable to the organization, because you are balancing everyone out. And I’m well, I never, ever asked in my life to have a role to balance someone out, it’s a hard role to play. But apparently, people appreciated that. And they appreciated it in a way that whenever there was an uncomfortable conversation, they would bring me in. And they’re why are you even bringing me in? I’m not a confrontational person. I swear, I’m not. I’m a nice person. Everyone likes to believe about themselves. But then I realized that a lot of people that know me or see me, they see a couple of things. One of the things is that they believe that I’m brave, that I am, that I have courage to stand up and to say things, which is honestly, I mean, for God’s sake, it can’t be further from the truth. I’m not brave. I’m scared every moment of my life, which is probably because I built all these shields to make me perceived as brave. But the reason why I’m saying and how is that connected to my culture is that the bravery is not about being courage, it’s not about having courage to do something, to go against something, to whatever, to fight. Not about that. It’s when you’re seeing the truth so clearly that you cannot help it. You need to go after it. And that’s why I’m saying that truth speaking quality, or I would say, probably, inability of not speaking truth is also what makes me in the eyes of other people confrontational, brave, intimidating, all these things, which is very much not true. So that’s why I’m saying I’m coming from Balkans and because I want people to understand me and I want people to see beyond that hard shell. The other thing that is important about my origin is that I was born, I was born at the time, I am giving my age now, but I think it’s important. I was born in a country that was called Yugoslavia. That country does not exist anymore. It was completely, I don’t know what, dispersed in the 80s and 90s, which resulted in a big civil war. And I was I happened to be born in a country that was Yugoslavia, that was all built on this idea the different nations and different religions should live, work together and feel that sense of unity. That’s how I was brought up. But also my parents came from the mixed backgrounds or different backgrounds, so my mother is Croatian, Jewish, my father is Orthodox, Montenegrin, Serbian, what have you. The point is I have in myself any possible combination of different nations, different religions, different everything. And this is what makes me, me, and this is, I was brought up, firstly, not to recognize that, because it wasn’t important, why would it ever be important to me, where is someone coming from, what’s the religion, what’s the nationality. My parents taught me, it’s not important, the second thing, I believe I’m carrying this complexity of different things, or multitude of different identities. But anyhow, why is that important? It is important that, as I said, sometime in 80s and 90s, specifically 90s, the country and Serbia, Croatia, all of that, went through the massive, ugly, bloody civil war. And it was a situation that was going against everything I am, against every single fiber in my body, against every belief that I ever had. And I just couldn’t take it, and I left the country. I left the country actually one day before the bombing started. And I left with the idea to never go back, because it’s not really about the war, it’s about the values, and I felt deeply betrayed by that country, by the history, by being born where I was born or when I was born, and I decided to build a new life. So that’s how I left, and I’ve been living for, I don’t know, 30 years now, abroad. But anyhow, that’s where I’m coming from in terms of my origins. But that’s why I said, I’ll give you that part first, and then I’ll try to connect it to a bigger, most important part. When people ask me a similar question, I am, I’m always saying I am coming from a from a place of confusion. I’m coming from a place of being permanently lost. And when I say something that, well, permanently lost, place of confusion and brokenness. And what, by the way, there was a, sorry for a digression, but I read about some Indian semi-goddess, and I wouldn’t be able to repeat her name, but her name in English meant never not broken. Because it’s a goddess, by the way, she is riding a crocodile, and the crocodile as a symbol of fear, a crocodile that represents her biggest fear. So she’s riding that, and then she’s always coming in situations where she’s breaking down. So she’s never not broken, or she’s always broken, and she’s always arising from the ashes and from the brokenness. But it’s actually that situation and the energy of brokenness that is her real power. And that’s something that I identify with strongly, so I’m saying the place of being lost, confusion, brokenness, that’s really who I am. But I’m not saying this in a sense that if something is wrong with that, I’m actually in love with that state. It’s my most productive, my most creative, the most happiest place, state. And why is that? Because I think, and that’s why I was saying, that’s why I was giving you the story also about leaving myself, my country, my place of birth, my family, my friends, everything, when I was 20 something years old, six, seven, and deciding to go and create a new life, because I’m not afraid of building new. I’m actually I think that that’s the most powerful state you can be. And I think I was writing recently, I’m confused, I don’t know if I wrote it or if it is just in my head, but anyhow, it is this moment, moment, moment, zero moment, it is a moment before you make a first step, and I believe that that’s the moment with the highest potential. And it is a moment without fear. It is a moment that exists almost in some sort of a limbo, it’s a moment that lives in a limbo, it’s between the past and between the future, between the past and the future. It’s a moment in which everything is possible. So I to stay in that moment. Anyhow, that’s my long answer to your powerful question. Oh, my gosh, it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful, beautiful answer. Thank you so much for it. I have so many questions about it. I’m not sure exactly how to. I guess I’m curious about, usually in this, at this point in the conversation, I’ll ask, what did you want to be when you were a child? And I wonder, yeah, when you were young, what

    57 min

  2. Jun 29

    Amy Daroukakis on Difference & Signal

    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, and has spoken at Cannes Lions. She splits her time between Brighton, Athens, and Berlin. So I start all of these conversations with the same question. I use this in my work too. It’s a question I borrowed from a friend of mine who helps people tell their story — it’s such a beautiful question, which is why I borrow it. But it’s really big. So I over-explain it the way I’m doing right now before I ask it. I want you to know that you are in absolute control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is: where do you come from? It’s such a great question. And actually, I saw the conversation you did with Katie Dreke and loved it. So practically — I come from Vancouver, Canada. But I come from a father who was an immigrant who fell in love with what Vancouver was and literally jumped ship and ate pie for too long. Because that was what he could point to until some Greek guys in the kitchen were like, do you want anything else? I think that’s the roots of my roots, because working hard was indoctrinated young. I started working young within the realm of a restaurant. And it’s still the roots of the roots today because the reason I can talk to anyone and dive into a conversation was from waitressing. From growing up and being able to read a table, anticipate a need, bridge a conversation, help with a lull. All of that stuff came from waitressing. So that came from working with my father. Not to say that this was a joyous experience — I got fired as many times as I quit. But I can tell people, and I actually look for people who have worked in service. There’s a different level of humanity for people who have had to serve others. And you can tell those who cannot. I’ve ended friendships in a cab once where someone talked to the taxi driver the wrong way. Even in a restaurant, I’ve stopped a friendship. It becomes a real validator of the type of human someone is by how they treat someone else. So I guess I come from service. Yeah, that’s beautiful. Can you tell us a story about the restaurant where you started — your first job? So I talked about this initially when I launched Cultural Connectors, because my father was a trapped creative in the realms of the classic Greek restaurant. And that’s what you do as an immigrant, right? You land in things that are known. He landed into that. But he never just served souvlaki. He started tapas in the 90s — he had this Greek dim sum menu where you would pick out different tapas. But people were like, what the hell is this? They would walk out. Or he started whole wheat pizza in the 80s and thought it was the best pizza. So there was always an entrepreneurial edge to this restaurant. It was always served up differently. Experimental. Different. And I saw this trapped artistic creative within the realms of sameness. I realized in this heightened dizzy when building something at 4 a.m. — how your brain is at its best and worst — that he had given me all the tools to do different, but I had chosen same and started to work away from that. And what do you mean when you say the different and the same? What were you pointing at? So I started this thing called Cultural Connectors. In our industry, there’s a sameness and homogeny that’s always been really sold and really sought after. And it tends to be very global north in perspective. There’s a homogeny that comes when cars look the same and hotels look the same and voices look the same. So I did a love letter ask globally and 68 countries responded. And then there are 55 human truth specialists — in grief, loneliness, rest. We’re inside ingredients, and everyone is paid the same postcode rates. It’s community as much as commerce. And our industry hasn’t always been known for that. So the sameness comes from just getting really tired of hearing things like, this is great for your portfolio, or, well, they’re based in this country, so we should pay that rate. Challenging systems. And my father did that too in his own way, but in a Greek restaurant. That’s awesome. And I’m so excited to talk more about your work. Before we get to the adult professional stuff, I’d love to ask — do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be, young Amy as a waitress? What did you want to be when you grew up? Oh, my gosh. I really wanted to design drag queen clothing. I was just obsessed. I would sketch and draw. And I loved Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I’m now 46, so that was that moment in time when there was this immense creativity. I loved fashion design, all of those things of expression. I remember making hats, designing shirt colors. Just playfulness. But then I grew up with a very traditional father. If I had said, hey, I want to go to fashion school, he wouldn’t have supported it. But I went for fashion business. And that was supported. Yeah. So catch us up — where are you now? Tell us a little bit more about the work that you do. So I’m calling in from Brighton. Postcodes matter in this work because I live between Brighton, Berlin, and Athens. And it gives me this beautiful triangle. Brighton — I live right across from a nude beach. So I can’t take anything too seriously in terms of work. There’s a joyousness right now of how many naked people are out in May. But Greece matters because it’s the home of where my aunt now lives, in the house that was my grandmother’s. So I don’t talk about flying cars, because that contextually isn’t the edge of everyone’s conversation in a Greek home. Or in any home, to be honest. AI is not the lifeblood of every dinner conversation. And I think we need that realisticness — the importance of that. And then Germany is my husband. So I like to see him. He works for one of Germany’s largest cruise companies, so I’ve gotten to go on all these German cruises, randomly. So when I get asked by a German client, I’m like, I’ve been with 10,000 Germans — I know Germany better than you do. It peaks. All of this — the thorough thread and the red thread — is one foot in and one foot out. Acknowledging that. Knowing the limitations. I’m not the best expert for Germany, but I know somebody. I think you should always speak to lived experience. Mine is just a little more multicolored. Multi-postcode at the same time. I have a question — I want to ask about the origins of your cultural connection. But first, I want a little more information about the tradition of nude bathing in... oh my gosh. Do not think this is the norm and societal norm of the UK. There is still a layer of decorum. But in this one pocket that happens to live right outside my window, there’s this freedom. And the fact that I can see an ass pretty much at all temperatures of the year — I just think it’s really something that roots you in humanity. I once had this really important presenting call, and I heard all this noise. I couldn’t show anyone, but I said, I just have to stop and tell you — there are about a thousand people on bikes. They’re all naked in front of my yard. It adds laughter to the elements. And I think we can get so deep in our heads that — I don’t know, it’s my view of nature. It’s like touching grass, but in a form of nudeness that I really appreciate. Yeah, that’s remarkable. It must be quite something to preserve this space for people to do that. Everybody’s in agreement that this is... Yes, there’s an agreement to it. It’s one of those quirks of culture — these microcultures that live within, with written rules. There’s an organic border where people start to wear clothing. And sometimes another favorite hobby — this is the worst — I’ll see more conservative families start to go on the beach, and the kids are running to the ocean. And then there’ll be this turn back. And it’s this moment where you see the families retreating. So what’s the story of Cultural Connectors? Where did it come out of? What’s the origin story of the work you’re doing now and the network you’ve built? So I’d been described as having played outside for 20 years — two decades outside. I’d worked across 25 categories and been to 60-plus countries, but only in the form of Baskin Robbins. There’s only so much of a flavor you can get. The best example I can give: I was in Lisbon with a friend and she said, I’m going to take you to my favorite restaurant, but you can never tell anyone we’re going. Nobody can know where this is — we have to keep it local. Fair enough. And on that day, there were so many men with children taking them out for ice cream. They were out for dinner. It was this magical scene. And if I had just parachuted in without knowing anything about cultural identity, I would have thought, oh my God, the progressiveness of Portuguese culture, that men are so involved in children’s lives. It turned out it was Father’s Day. So this very special moment was just a moment. And that’s why we have to be careful with our cultural assumptions — parachuting into a market and saying, well, this is what it is, you start to lose the edge. So I’ve looked for voices in each of those markets that represent their local reality. Not just by country — though country is important because you start to learn what it means. Mapala, based in the Philippines, talked about the evolving identity with music and how a Filipino band was at Coachella for the first time. This is a musical culture, but for the longest time it’s always been in English. So what does that mean f

    55 min

  3. Jun 22

    Christoph Quarch on Aliveness & Cosmos

    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 works include Lebenselixier Schönheit (”Beauty Will Save the World”) and Wahre Wirtschaft (on rethinking economics). We met in Athens, and I’m really looking forward to this conversation. You may know this or you may not, but I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I imagine you’re going to enjoy. I borrowed it from a friend of mine. She helps people tell their story, and it’s a big, beautiful question, which is why I use it. But because it’s big, I kind of over-explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in absolute control, and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? And again, you’re in absolute control. This is an excellent question. So, where do I come from? This is a profound question, mostly for the philosopher, for philosophers for centuries posed this question. I would say I come from the universe. I am part of the universe, some kind of distillation of the universal spirit in an individual form, which will dwell on planet earth for a couple of years before probably my individual form will dissolve again, and I will become part of a greater whole again — without a personal identity, without subjectivity, but nevertheless being part of the cosmic consciousness. When do you feel like you discovered you were part of the universe, that you came from the universe? Well, to be honest, this is based on two columns. On the one column, it is philosophical reflection, mostly in conversation with ancient Greek philosophy, because this is a topic that I studied all my life. Mostly Plato, who inspired me very much indeed. But there’s also a kind of personal experience, which resonates with this philosophical reflection. This comes right from my childhood days, from a period when I was still adolescent. I remember very well the first spiritual experience, even though I don’t like these big concepts. As a young man, I was pretty much influenced and inspired by a kind of Christian congregation, which is called Taizé. It is a congregation located in Burgundy in France, and they practice a very contemplative kind of Christian faith. As a young man, at the age of 16 or 17, I went to their place very often. And I remember sitting on the ground floor of an old Romanesque church from the 12th century, contemplating, and suddenly it felt like my whole body opened up and a stream of warm energy — I would call it love — flowed straight through my body. This experience really had a huge impact on me. I could feel it for a decade at least, and it was my sincere intention to understand what happened to me in this moment and what it was all about. So first I studied theology, because I thought it must have something to do with Christian faith. But to be honest, I didn’t find answers in Christian theology, and therefore I proceeded to philosophy, which always attracted me, mostly ancient Greek philosophy. And there I found a concept and a mental explanation for this amazing experience of being fully alive. And when you were young, what did Christoph want to be when he grew up? Do you have a recollection, maybe before this experience — what was the imagination of Christoph of what he would be when he grew up? There was no very precise idea of what I was supposed to do in later days. It was about the same period when my spirit started to grow, to unfold itself, to evolve somehow. And in this period, I remember very well standing in front of the bookshelf of my father and finding a book called Plato’s Master Dialogues. I took that book and read a bit in it. I didn’t understand very much, to be honest, but there was something I did understand — namely that this had something to do with me. I became somehow attracted by this mind, this spirit that spoke to me through the lines I read in this book. And so it was the idea to do something that had to do with spirit, but also with beauty. I had the imagination that one day I could become a kind of poet and photographer who writes books, takes pictures, and through this makes a living. To be honest, this was very optimistic. I think in the 21st century, due to technological revolutions, this project would have failed anyway. So I became a philosopher. And when talking about this, there comes a line to my mind from the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, who once said that philosophy is a kind of asylum for those who felt attracted by poetry but didn’t dare to become a full-time poet. That’s quite beautiful. And that resonates with you and your experience. It does. And to be honest, sometimes it still feels to me that I should give up this philosophy, with these mental operations and dialectics and conversations, and return to poetry. As a young man I wrote a lot of poetry. Sometimes I think, in the time of AI, even philosophy seems to be substituted by automatically generated texts and books. But when it comes to poetry, there always remains something mysterious about it, something that I’m pretty convinced will never be substituted by artificial intelligence, even though it can pretend to write poetry. Real poetry, in my understanding, has to do with that early adolescent experience I was talking about. It has to do with the universal spirit, which sometimes grasps you, inspires you, fills you with inspiration and enthusiasm. And without that, I’m pretty convinced no real poetry will ever come into existence. So catch us up. What does it mean? Tell us a little bit about your work. What does it mean to be a philosopher? And what do you do? What’s the work that you do? I’m sitting here thinking all day long. No, I’m just kidding. It’s not that easy to explain, because when I decided to become a full-time philosopher, it was really a challenge. And if I had known at that time what it meant to do this, I’m not quite sure whether I would have decided to take that road. But anyway, what I’m actually doing is a kind of multi-task work. On the one hand — not that surprising for a philosopher — is teaching. I’m a lecturer at several universities, both in Germany and in Austria. But this is only part-time work. I’m not a professor at university; it’s freelance philosophy, and I’m invited to give some seminars. On the one hand, in a business school, in order to discuss with future entrepreneurs what it takes to reflect on what they are doing, what it takes to reflect on the spiritual dimension of economy, which actually exists. On the other hand, in Austria, I’m a lecturer at a medical school, and it’s about doing the same thing with future doctors. It’s quite inspiring for me to converse with young people and to understand how they look into the world, what kind of ideas they have for their future. Another thing is that I work a lot in collaboration with a German broadcasting corporation. I have a weekly format in which I reflect in a philosophical way on political topics that are important these days. Another thing is consulting work with corporations, mostly with leadership, when it comes to the question of corporate culture development — what needs to be reflected beyond figures and numbers and the hardcore economy stuff, but is important in order to have a good relationship with employees, all these things we call corporate culture in German. And the last thing — and this is the fun part of the whole thing — is the philosophical journeys I do in collaboration with a weekly German newspaper called Die Zeit, which is very widespread in Germany. These are philosophical journeys where we stay together with a group of interested, open-minded people to discuss week-long central issues. For instance, I go with them to Athens, where we met, to discuss the origin of democracy and political thought. Or last week, I just returned from Norway, where I had a seminar on the philosophy of nature. It’s really fun to go to places in which you can easily combine the experience of people with the topics that we are talking about. We met in Athens. I was there for the House of Beautiful Business. You were there, and you led a tour — the birthplace of democracy, of the Pnyx. And without question, it was the most powerful part of that journey for me. I was there in large part because I live in a very small town. I have concerns about the way that community conversations have struggled in the social media age, and democracy and all that good stuff. So I was excited to be in Athens, and that tour was really powerful. And I guess my question to you is this: it seems like your attraction from the beginning was to the ancient Greeks. So what do the ancient Greeks have to tell us now? And in particular, Athens and the Pnyx — the role that it plays — what do you think is significant about the Pnyx and the Athenians that we should be listening to? Well, they have so much that’s really important for us in our modern epoch. Let me try to put it like this. Ancient Greece is somehow the birthplace of Western civilization. That’s where our roots come from. Of course, there are other influences as well, from Jerusalem and Rome. But when we talk about politics and about democracy, it’s obviously Athens, or Greece, from which the whole story began. And what attracts me so much about these ancient Greeks is that they thought in a very inspiring way, differently than we do today. If you accept a metaphor from modern information technology, I would say the ancient Greeks operated with a different operating syste

    52 min
  4. Chris Danton on Building & Mattering

    Jun 15

    Chris Danton on Building & Mattering

    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 in Italy. So I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I borrow from a friend of mine who’s a neighbor and she helps people tell their story. And once I heard this question, I just decided that it was the only way to really begin any conversation that’s coming out of nowhere. And it’s a big, beautiful question, which is why I over explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in total control. You can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? Well, you did warn me and I did listen to some episodes. So I’ve thought a lot about it. It’s a really good question. So I admire you for the consistency. I love a good ritual. And I thought about it. And I think that the truth is, is I come from nowhere. And that’s maybe the whole story. I am a third culture kid. I’ve moved around my whole life. Probably every three years, I’ve had a major move of some variety, whether that’s different country, different continent, different state, and at least moving between states or even Long Beach to LA, I would say is a pretty significant cultural move, even if it’s within the same state. So I’ve moved a lot. And I think that the moving is really the foundation of where I come from, to the bigger meaning of your question. I feel like what drives who you are? And how you approach things. And I think that not having a place - people will be like, where’s home? And I’m like, I don’t know. I think it allows for the expansive thinking and the curiosity that drives a lot of what I do and what I write about and what I think about. And yeah, so in the end, I don’t really have a place, but I have consistency. I have my family, I have my very small family, as my child likes to say, she’s like, what’s our immediate family? And she means our dog and her two parents. But then there’s my family lives all over the world. And I’m anchored by that. But I’m anchored by my work and the people that I work with. But it’s, yeah, I don’t really have a place. I don’t have a place to come from. But I think that’s the genesis of me. Yeah. You use that phrase, third culture kid. And that’s, what does that mean to you? I’ve heard that before. And I know what it means. But it’s a funny phrase. When you say that you’re a third culture kid, what do you mean? Well, and I do this a lot, I hear things, I see things, and then I’m like, oh, appropriate that, that’s mine. I’ll use it how I wish. But the way I use it is to say, a lot of the people that I grew up with, I would identify them as third culture kids and people I’ve met throughout my life. But they’re people who have moved around so much, that they’ve never really been part of the cultures that they are visiting, are from. I’m from England, I’ve lived in a grand total of three years of my life, all at the very beginning phase of my life. But I’ve also, that’s the place that I went back to every year, Christmas, summer, for my whole life. So in some ways, it’s more constant for me than any other aspect of culture. But I am not English. And I don’t identify with English culture. And I can visit it. And I can cosplay in it sometimes. But it’s not mine. And I grew up in France for a while. I’m not French. But I identify in many ways as being somewhat French. But again, a visitor, a guest. I lived in Singapore. When I go back to Asia, I feel so at home in Asia. I can’t describe it to people. It’s very, I lived there when I was very young. And I think it’s very formative for me. But I’m obviously not Asian. And then I’ve lived in America. And everybody says, oh, you sound American. But then Americans say I don’t sound American. I’m not an East Coaster. I’m not a West Coaster. I’ve lived in Cincinnati. I lived in Zurich for a long time. And now I live in Italy. And I’m not Italian either. But I visit into all of these cultures. And I take pieces of them. And everybody will ask me, where do you like the best? And I always say, you should just like the place that you are, because it’s just not a helpful exercise to revisit something that you’re not in. And they always stay with you. And you revisit them, even when you’re not there. Yeah, those types of things. When you spoke about Singapore and Asia, it changed quite a bit. Can you say more about the feelings you have about that place? Yeah, I mean, I’ve gone back to Asia many times. I’ve spent an enormous amount of time trying to revisit that part of my life. But I moved to Asia when I was four years old, at a time when a little blonde girl in Asia, especially in Singapore, was weird at the time, or different anyway. And people would come over and try to touch my head, because I was lucky. It was very, it was a different time to what Singapore is like now, which is so vastly different. But yeah, that’s the four to six years old, four to seven years old was very formative time for me. And I lived barefoot running around with almost green hair, because I was in the pool so often. It was a fun place to grow up. And then I’ve gone back many, many times trying to find my essence, so to speak. Yeah. And do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up as a girl? Like, what were you, or where were you at? As a people pleaser in recovery, I thought that I wanted to be a dentist for a really long time. Mainly because I had a lot of dental issues when I was little. None of my teeth fell out naturally, so I had to have them all removed. It was very strange. There’s probably some psychoanalysis of that. But I was like, oh, dentists are terrible. I would like to be a really nice dentist. And then I realized that none of the things about me, but everyone was like, yes, yes, be a dentist. That’s a great job. And then I realized nothing about my identity at all would align with dentistry as a practice. I’m not super into detail. I really like difference and change. I can’t handle anything that’s monotonous. And not to say that that’s what dentistry is, but that’s my impression. And then I quickly changed to architecture. And I stuck on that road, and I went to RISD for, well, ultimately I did interior architecture and then architecture, and I got my master’s in architecture. But along that way, I realized that I also don’t have the capability of being an architect. Speed is something that I, change, things happening at a pace is something that I really enjoy. And yeah, architecture doesn’t, that’s not really a part of that work. But it is a very good place to learn how to become what I became now, which is somebody who spends an enormous amount of time thinking about how people think, how people move, what people like, how they behave, what they’re attracted to. Because essentially architecture school is sales school. You just, you think about that. I always describe it as the law degree of the arts. You never build a building, ever, right? So you’re just selling your idea of the building, right? The whole time that you’re there, that’s all you’re doing. Telling your, and at RISD it’s very big thinking, right? So it’s like, this is the kind of person I’m building a building for. This is the kind of community I’m building a building for. This is what they believe in. This is what they have values in. This is what they need. I’ve identified what they need by thinking about all of these different things in their lives. And now I’m going to create this space or whatever it is that you’re doing, house, gigantic infrastructure, who knows, that is going to service these people, right? And help them somehow or provide something for them. And you just sell that. And you do that for years. And people come and critique your sales pitch and somewhat critique your building. But for the most part, they critique what you put forth, which is your idea, right? Of how the world is working and what you can do for it. And I essentially use those skills every single day. So. For me, there’s a parallel. So catch us up. Tell me, tell us, where are you now and what is the work that you do? Yeah, I mean, maybe it’s a little bit like the question at the beginning. It’s like, I don’t really know what I do. No. So I do two things. I run an agency called In Good Co. day to day. And we, for the most part, our bread and butter is repositioning brands. So or positioning brands. Sometimes they’re from scratch brands, but often they’re legacy brands who’ve lost their way in culture. And we’re trying to help them return to a place of success and growth. And then my other accidental day job is that I started writing a substack called Good Thinking, which has turned into having a small media company. We now have a podcast, we do events, we do lots of different things. And I write that about 10 different categories every week. And it’s really about the intersection of lots of different parts of culture and how I see them working together. Which, yeah, it’s been fun. Yeah. How long has it been, the substack? Two and a half years, about. Yeah. Yeah. It’s been crazy. Yeah. I mean, that’s how I discovered you. It’s amazing stuff. When you say it’s a small media company, what’s it been like growing it? Or yeah, what’s the experience been like? What inspired you to do it to begin with? To what degree are you surprised by what it’s become? Well, I

    51 min

  5. Jun 8

    Nina Beckhardt on Systems & Words

    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 conference for people who make a living making names — launched in 2025 and moving to Brooklyn in September 2026. Of course, as I think you know, I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrow from a friend of mine who’s also a neighbor who helps people tell their story. And when I heard her, when I learned that question, it felt I couldn’t really start any conversation without asking it. But it’s a big question. So I always over explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. It’s the biggest lead up ever. And the question is very simply, where do you come from? And again, you’re in absolute control. Well, I think how I want to answer that is from the more immediate frame of today, which is coming off of a very early morning and a really nice bike ride. Where do you ride? I ride in my neighborhood. I live in Mount Washington in Los Angeles. And it feels like Europe, it feels like a little bit like Italian countryside. So very hilly, really dense nature. And it’s the way that I want to start my brain off experiencing things in the morning. Yeah, how would you describe that ride? That’s a beautiful routine to have. I love getting on my bike. But what’s your morning bike ride? So I live on a really steep hill. So the first part is going down an incredibly steep hill, a hill that when people from the Northeast come to visit, they’re “What do you do in the winter?” And then they’re “Oh, wait, oh, wait, it’s LA.” And yeah, I just went my way around the neighborhood. And there’s this internal dialogue in my head of which way you’re gonna go, which way you’re gonna go. But then I always leave room for these last minute impulses, and following flowers or cars or certain directions that appeal. That’s beautiful. Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up as a child? What did young Nina think she would be when she grew up? The first thing that comes to mind when I think of that question is, I recently found in my dad’s attic a report from, I had gone to Montessori school. And it was a report from the teachers on how I was doing and status updates. And it just had this sentence that says, Nina really enjoys being Nina. And I’ve tried to channel that henceforth. So I guess for a while, I just wanted to be Nina, which was great. And then yeah, the earliest thing I can remember really getting excited about was being a fashion designer, actually. For me, fashion is very much a creative practice and a means of self expression. I ended up studying art, minoring in psych. And yeah, so I never thought that I would be a namer or end up in the world of naming where I am now. I always envisioned it being a much more applied arts pathway. What do you mean? I think simply making things with my hands. It’s funny to think of myself as being behind a computer all day, every day, most days. Because my first loves, my first experience of flow state was with paint and pom poms and glue and mixing media and stuff. Yeah. I mean, first, it just has to be said that that note from your, did you say kindergarten? Yeah, Montessori school, kindergarten. I mean, that seems to be the note to end all notes from a teacher. I mean, I can’t imagine what a wonderful note to get. And then can you tell me a story about, I guess the art where the creativity, where that began? I think the biggest influence of that is probably my dad’s sister, my aunt, Karen is a, she’s retired now, but she was a professional artist. And I ended up spending a lot of time with her when she would come to visit. And we would often go on, I was an only child too. And the benefit of being an only child or one of them was being able to go on vacation a lot more than I think other kids that had a big family that they had to haul around. And my aunt and I would go on vacation with my parents. And when my parents would want to go off and do their own thing, Karen and I would sit and paint. And so that was just such an early thing that shaped me was from a really young age, just spending a lot of time being really still and observing a lot. And I think not just having that time and space to paint, but also having this mentor that was an expert. And I just remember her telling me things “okay, when you do the shading on that person’s neck, look really closely at the shadow because the shadows aren’t just black.” “There’s green in the shadows, there’s blue in the shadows.” And so I think she probably was one of the first people that really taught me to see things in such layers. Yeah. Yeah. Can you say, I mean, it sounds amazing. I really followed right into a moment where she was sort of teaching you how to look. Yes. And I think the way that art or creative practice has manifested in the last few years is through poetry, which as a namer, as somebody who has dealt with words and advising corporations on words for two decades, it feels funny that I’m just now in the last, I’d say four years really discovering how much I love poetry, but I think it’s a less messy, time-consuming creative practice that draws on the same way of seeing that Karen instilled. It’s seeing, you know, a vase or a coffee cup, but then seeing what it means, seeing all the layers, things like that, which is then reminding me and sort of bringing me to something that I can’t remember if I’ve said this to you before, but on your, on that business of meaning and a lot of your communiques, you have these images, they’re mostly of your hometown where you live, but it’ll be the light hitting a decrepit boat in somebody’s backyard. And I’m yes, it’s just, it’s so refreshing. And I just really relate to that part of your aesthetic and I really appreciate it. Oh, wow. That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. Yeah, that’s really, that’s really sweet. Yeah. And it feels that way too. It’s wonderful. So when you talk about the poetry, are you writing it or reading it or doing both? How would you describe your current relationship with it? It’s both more writing than reading, although I do read it. I think my favorite poet is Jane Kenyon, who is a master of making the mundane poignant. So yeah, just my friends and I have, I have two girlfriends and we have something called s****y writing club and it’s really to get us to keep writing, but to keep the stakes low. So we meet once a week and sometimes we write from a prompt. Other times we do sort of homework and bring it back there. But yeah, that’s where a lot of the poetry comes from. That’s great. It makes me, it made me think that every writing club is a s****y writing club, but the s****y is silent. I want to go back to the fashion designer. What did that mean? Do you have a recollection of what you were aspiring to or what it meant to be or what a fashion designer was or who? I’m going to think about that for a second. I think just that felt like one of the more exciting parts of life when I was younger. I remember in middle school, we had a magazine project where we had to basically build out a whole magazine over the course of, you know, a semester or something. And mine was a Vogue fashion magazine. It was called Faboo. And I just I remember this. Yes. My, maybe, maybe one of the first things I named. I’m glad things have improved since then. But yeah, I just, I think it goes back to that original thing I mentioned of fashion is a way to get to know people without speaking with them. And it’s just this immediate broadcast of choices that somebody has made. And so to me, it felt so interesting to build out pieces of a vocabulary that somebody could use and put on their body. I think I was always, my grandmother and my mom were both crafters. And so there was that sort of the piece I just mentioned about building the vocabulary, but then there was also just the gratification of the applied art of using a sewing machine and understanding how fabric works and color coming together. I think that’s another job as I got older that I was well, maybe I should be a color psychologist. So it was, it’s interesting. I don’t know if you feel this way, but just, I feel like I have landed in my work, but it didn’t, I didn’t seek it. It sort of found me and then I’ve nestled into it and found what I love about it. A hundred percent. I mean, I really, yeah, I really appreciate that observation. I think it’s totally true for me where it feels like I followed it into something that felt new and discovered also. Yeah, I was thinking as you were speaking that there, you mentioned that fashion was a way of understanding other people without having to talk about them. And it just, I feel like so much of this work is, or at least, you know, that we’re sensitive because we need to be for some reason, you know what I mean? This sensitivity or this awareness is a way of navigating the world, I guess. You know what I mean? And I remember my mentor who I really felt like was channeling all this stuff to me. I remember, you know, maybe we had a bad meeting with a client or something. And I remember looking at him in an airport line and saying, maybe we’re the ones who need the meeting. Nobody, they didn’t seem to give a s**t. You know what I mean? And I was why is this so, this is really important to me. You’re saying that you were the ones that needed, wait, say the piece of that once more. I thought

    58 min

  6. Jun 1

    Sem Devillart on Observation & Translation

    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 Christian Dior, Camper, PepsiCo, L’Oréal, Philips Design, and Deepak Chopra. So I start all these conversations the same way. I’m not sure if you know this, but it’s a question I borrow from a friend of mine and a neighbor who helps people tell their story. And I learned this question from her and I haven’t really found a better way of getting into a strange conversation than this question, but it’s so big, I over explain it the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you are in absolute control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And it’s impossible to make a mistake. And the question is, where do you come from? It’s a deep question. The way you ask it sounds very deep. And if you forgive me, I will answer it in a superficial manner. Or maybe you could almost say a deep manner. I was thinking about this question, it was coming. And the sincere answer is that I feel I don’t come from anywhere because there is a reason, because I moved a lot. So if you’re a nomad, you ask the nomad, where’s your home? You might say, my suitcase, or my tent, or my rug. But in the short, officially, I was born in Lima, Peru. All my four grandparents come from different cultures, different backgrounds, different nationalities. So alone, just genetically, very mixed. And when I was about four years old, I moved to East Africa, Tanzania, where I spent most of my childhood. And from then on, there was a three-year rhythm, more or less, of moving, mainly across Europe, Switzerland, Spain, etc. But let’s say the formative educational years, let’s say high school, I spent in Germany. So probably Germany got the most of me. And then, yeah, my professional career, I worked in Milan, I worked in London, I worked in Paris. Yeah, so, and currently, I live in New Jersey in a place called Montclair, which I find, by the way, very exotic. So yeah. I love how you said Germany got the most of me. Yeah. And I got the most of Germany. Yeah, well, the formative, that means the information, the software system, right? The poems, the literature, the culture, the love of the language, definitely the music. And it started from the classics, like Beethoven, Mozart, the classic stuff, to the techno stuff, to the modern stuff. So I spent these formative years where I delved into music, dance culture, that was very much, very influenced by the German, let’s say, techno movement in the 90s. So I would say that that is still resonating inside of me, very much so, and also the German language, which I love. Oh, wow. And do you have a recollection of being young in Germany, what you wanted to be when you grew up? Well, the biggest recollection, probably the Tanzania, well, it depends on the age, right? But the childhood, let’s say before hitting puberty, was in East Africa. And I wanted, I think, to be between a spy and an archaeologist. Oh, wow. So I lived pretty much, this is really, I think this is really interesting, very isolated in the years in Tanzania and Dar es Salaam, no TV, no phone, hardly any neighbours, very, in deep isolation. So, yeah. What explained all the travel? Parents, jobs. So, yeah, my stepfather, my German stepfather, travelled a lot for his job. And later on, I really, I think, it was also already my constitution. So it’s not just the way I was brought up, but I think it’s, I have a tendency to being a little bit restless. And FOMO is my favourite. It’s probably my state of being. I want to be everywhere and I want to know everything. And I think I’m excessively curious. So, yeah. Well, I identify with that a bunch. Often I describe myself as omnivorous, in a way, and I identify with your FOMO as a state of being. I want to go back to your, you were in Tanzania, you wanted to be a spy and an archaeologist or an archaeologist. I think first, yeah. Well, let’s say archaeologist. I had a few books on ancient Egypt and there was not that much stimulation around me. But so probably, I don’t know, I wonder, I wonder, this is pure interpretation, whether I thought that beneath the surface there was something to be discovered. I was fascinated by pirates and treasures that you had to dig out. So I often used to dig, dig around, make holes all over the place. Oh, I lived also on a cliff upon the Indian Ocean. So there was a lot of beach, very lonely beach, no people. So that captured my infantile imagination. Wow. Can you tell a story? I’ve never thought about these questions. Yes. So it’s good to being asked. Thank you. The image of being a child on an empty beach is quite powerful for some reason. Yes. Yes. It was probably my main playground. What I used to do, and actually, sometimes I share this, well, I used to collect shells. So that was something I loved doing. And luckily, my mother was very hands-off. So I could do whatever I wanted. So I had a lot of freedom. And my room was, I had such a huge shell collection. And one of my favorite activities was to sort them, organize them. So I would constantly reshuffle the order. So the pointy shells in one box, then I would classify them by their color. And so I would keep moving the shells around by classifying by their characteristics. And I think I still do somehow with information the same. And the spy part of the grown-up dream, what was the spy? Well, I think I always found invisibility pretty amazing. I always wanted to be invisible because you find out more about what people are talking about, what they’re thinking. And I think that also goes hand in hand with my introverted character. I’d rather listen in order to find out more. And I also believe this might be, I hope I’m not forcing here an interpretation, but because I moved so much and was constantly exposed to different environments and to different languages, I had to figure out how things work. So you stand on the side, imagine a playground, kids are playing in the playground and I probably would be at the periphery and figuring out how things function. So that’s a way of looking at. So spy is not, I don’t mean in the dubious way of stealing information or lying, but much more the passive observer and recording everything that the awareness that information is valuable, that every information bit counts. I think maybe that has been, that was a, I wonder, I mean, I’m just maybe over-interpreting. I appreciate how cautious you are of your own interpretation. You mentioned now that you’re, my usual question at this point is like, catch us up, where are you now? You mentioned Montclair, New Jersey, and you described it as exotic. Well, first of all, I have my Manhattan studio where I’m talking right now. And so I commute, right? I go between Manhattan and Montclair, but Montclair, I mean, I did not grow up in the American suburbs. I just knew the world of the suburbs through movies like American Beauty, example, or in the several chain of horror movies, right? And how should I explain this without being offensive? I find it very exotic because it’s, I never, I mean, if you consider that I grew up in Tanzania and that was my home, now imagine fast forward, like the contrast of a lonely beach and on a cliff to American suburbia. What is the suburbs like for you? It’s very interesting. I find in particular as a mother, right? The mother scene, very interesting. Luckily, many creatives picked up on the themes and wrote fantastic novels and wrote incredible horror movie scripts and a whole. I mean, it’s interesting. I think it’s interesting. So, and for those who don’t know you, what do you do for work? Talk a little bit about what the work that you do and what keeps you busy? Okay. So what keeps me busy is just recording everything I can get my hands to. I read a lot. I read a lot that keeps me busy and it’s a full-time activity, right? Like taking an information. So there is no real work. I mean, it’s not really work. It’s just basically the way I breathe and everything is my work is my life. I don’t see much distinction, but let’s say that if I had to nail it, I’ll say I do three things. I advise clients on what’s coming next in culture, especially aesthetic and psychological trends or shifts. That’s one area. The another area I do is I teach people also how to spot patterns in society, if it’s zeitgeist or trends in particular areas. I teach at the School of Visual Arts. I teach at the University of the Arts in Zurich, also in Poland and Warsaw, a place called School of Form. So internationally, I also give these workshops on how to sense the zeitgeist to companies. So the teaching aspect. Then the third one is I really love theory, like theory or trend theory and building models and speculate on the nature of trends a lot. I have never published anything in that respect, but that’s my plan of working on a book. Can you say more about that, about the theories and what you’re working on or what interests you about? I guess I’m not even sure what that means. What are the current theories about trends and patterns? That’s a very big question. I would not know where to even start. It’s too big. What’s the work that you’re doing that you’re comfortable sharing on theory? One of the, let’s start with the most macro, like the clumpy part, aspect of what I do. Let’s look at the macro part because it gets really, it can get into a very, almost very molecular level of how observation works. But I started with art history, right? That’s what I studied and noticed, which it’s

    58 min

  7. May 25

    Igor Kuvychko PhD on Bateson & AI

    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, connecting Bateson’s ideas about information, mind, and feedback to contemporary AI. So as you may or may not know, but I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people tell their story. And I really haven’t found a better way to get into a conversation than this question, but it’s really big. So I over explain it the way that I’m doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? And again, you are in absolute control. Oh, this is such a fun question. Well, I’m gonna start from the very beginning. So I paint the picture, paint the story. So I was born and grew up in Vladivostok, in the Soviet Union. So Vladivostok is a coastal city, very close to North Korea and Japan. So to picture it on a map. And it’s very much on the periphery of the country, so pretty far away from the center. So that’s where I grew up. And I was a very curious kid. So curiosity was one of the big themes. And when I was pretty little, I was into many things, including mathematics. And I got really quite into it. And then I just by happenstance, I switched to chemistry. And I was probably around 10 years old or something like that. And it was summer and I was bored. And I found that my older sister’s chemistry textbook, school textbook. And back then in Soviet Union, we had four years of high school, mid school and high school chemistry. So pretty decent problem. And I started reading it and it just clicked with me. It was a fun subject because it was abstract and it was applied at the same time. And I was bored. So I read the textbook and I solved all the homework problems. And I just had a ton of fun. And I kept doing it. And then eventually went through all four years of high school chemistry before high school chemistry started. And the school teachers noticed me and then they gave me a little bit of extra attention and they connected me with a chemistry professor at a local university. And she took me under her wing and she gave me free tutoring, amazingly enough. So every week I would go to this university, and I would hang out with her and other professors in the lab. And she would tutor me on organic chemistry and it was just a blast. So that is one of the themes. But of course, a lot was going on societally, politically at the same time. So when I was 11, Soviet Union collapsed. And so it was a massive change. There was something that was supposed to be enduring and permanent just ceased to exist. So from many perspectives, that was a very turbulent time. And I think that was one of the early injections of just turbulence and change. So that was one of the themes. And then going further, when I was 15, my mom passed away from cancer. And that was, of course, a very one of those forming events in my life. And that pretty very early made me very aware of finitude of life. And it made me ask some existential questions and questions of meaning, specifically, where does meaning come from? So that’s another thing. And fast forward, I was, yeah, Soviet Union collapsed. But one of the lessons was the world ends, and then the sun rises, and life goes on. And we adapt. We are very adaptable creatures. So there was still state funded programs. And back then in Russia, there were these competitions, high school competitions in science. So high school kids were competing. And I was, I went into this program and got a chance to travel on basically on a government dime across the country, compete with other kids. Eventually, it led me to a very good university program in Moscow. So when I was 17, I left Vladivostok, and it’s an eight hour plane flight to Moscow. So it’s pretty far away, and got my undergrad in chemistry. Then I realized pretty early on that I wanted to leave the country. I had a pretty clear sense that the future of Russia was not the future I wanted to be a part of. So I went to the US and got my PhD in chemistry. And at that point, I was, so I was living in Colorado. And my life was just, it was just a straight shot leading me to a career as a chemistry professor. Just everything was making sense, I was going to be a chemistry professor, I was going to work in academia. But the longer I stayed in academia, the less excited I was feeling about it. So at some point, I realized that this is not a path I wanted to take. So I started taking some, I took some business classes. And then I made the decision to say goodbye to chemistry. And that was another big change, because a lot of my identity was tied with being a great chem. But I walked away from that, joined Intel, and started working in the semiconductor factory at Fab. So making chip. And then I had a number of roles at Intel. They did for almost a year. But I was moving closer and closer to software. And since I was a kid, I loved applied mathematics. So I was doing more and more at the intersection of applied mathematics and software. And then, three years ago, at this point, I made the decision to switch to software full time. And I joined Inficon, where I’m currently at. And so currently, I’m a principal data scientist at Inficon. And yeah, I just kept going in the direction of, it’s not really specifically about applied math or software. It is about solving difficult problems at intersections of the main. So, and that’s something that I’m very interested in, especially when the problem is practical and messy. And there is some interesting math and science, that’s always fun. But also the problem that I’m dealing with, there is a human element, there is the politics of change, and how people interact with your systems. So, and I feel that this is where Bateson comes right in. Yeah, hold on, I want to stop there. And because we’re going to get into the Bateson thing, but I still want to spend a little time in your past, when you were a kid, before you discovered, I mean, you told the story very well, of course. But do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up? You have a vision of young Igor, what you wanted to be when you grew up? It seems like you found chemistry as a passion. And so maybe that was the answer. But I’m just curious, what did you hope to be when you were a child? I had a very clear vision. So, since I was very little, I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to be a scientist. Yes. And what did that look like? It is interesting, because when I try to think about what was the vision, there was a word scientist. But what did it mean for me, for little me? And I don’t have a clear answer. But it was more with this sense of curiosity and adventure. And I would say playfulness, too, that you’re just wrestling with these difficult problems. And you’re solving puzzles. And it’s very exciting. So I think at that stage, that was really the vision. And I think it worked out quite well. Because although my job is, I’m not like an official scientist, but I feel that this is a lot of what I do. Yeah, that’s wonderful. And I was also curious, too, you told the story of, you were 11, when the Soviet Union fell. And I was just curious, how did you notice it? What, can you tell a story of what did you know? How did you know that it had gone away? You talked about it, this enduring thing is not there anymore. How did you know? So of course, I knew that something big was happening, because my parents were freaked out about it. And that was just a topic of the conversations, right? And everybody was anxious and noticeably scared, right? And kids are very attuned to the state of their, to the mental state of their parents, right? So we know when something isn’t right, right? So that was certainly one aspect, but there was a lot of just purely practical aspects, I remember when I was little, and back then, central heating is typical, was typical in Soviet Union, probably in Russia now. But heating was never a problem. And then after Soviet Union collapsed, it was a problem. And I remember, even after I moved to the US, during winter time, I would make a mental note that I’m warm, because I remember when I was a kid, it’s just, whatever you are, at home, at school, at university, outside, it’s always cold during winter, just this always background of cold. And it’s slowly grinds on you, like, that’s one of the things. Another thing was food insecurity. So, I remember the long queues, and the long queues waiting for US humanitarian aid. And have to, because the aid was given per headcount. So, I had to wait in these queues with my grandpa, and we would get the box. And I still remember the canned mandarins, they were amazing. Yeah, I remember, still, there was this one, like, my grandpa grabbed me, he’s like, okay, there is a humanitarian aid is being given, we need to wait. And we waited for three hours in this queue. And they ran out of canned mandarins. I still remember that. So, it was interesting. It was definitely, there was a lot of crime, and a lot of organized crime going on. There was, it was a very chaotic time, we had to, I’m still an expert in subsistence farming. I mean, I still remember how to grow potatoes, because we would grow enough potatoes to last us through the winter. So, there was this aspect that there is just things that were fine, are not fine, and you have to deal with them. But despite all of this, of course, I was very young, but despite all of this, I remember this, there

    1 hr

  8. May 18

    Nick Bodor on Strangers & Institutions

    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 spent 30 years building communal spaces in downtown New York where emerging bands, downtown clowns, and anti-folk musicians find a home. Nick is building the kinds of spaces we need. This piece makes the case we should be subsidizing this kind of social infrastructure: “Why ‘Cost Disease’ is The Secret Froce Behind America’s Toxic Solitude:’ There is a strong economic argument for subsidizing health care, education, and even child care. But should we also subsidize sit-down restaurants? Bowling alleys and the local dive bar? Coachella! Of course, I’m joking about Coachella. (Kind of.) But my serious point is that if solitude has a social cost, it’s not crazy to think that local, state, and federal governments should be thinking about creative ways to make it cheaper to hang out. Some policy solutions would be familiar, such as local governments providing more public pools and community spaces. Others might sound a little odd, like making pro-social businesses, such as restaurants, qualify for tax-deductible donations, the same way that Puccini fans can write checks to their favorite opera house. Cost disease is real, and it has a known cure. Today we’re seeing that one price of a successful economy is the rise of anti-social businesses. But if we want our rising living standards to include friendships and shared experiences—and not just a nation of couch potatoes scrolling on their phones for 10 hours a day—then we’ll need to choose our social future. And pay for it. So I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. I use it in all my conversations because I haven’t found a better way of getting into one of these conversations out of the blue. And it’s a big question. So I over explain it the way that I’m doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in absolute control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from? Yeah, it’s interesting because it is so open-ended. Where do I come from geographically? Where do I come from on my parents’ side that was somewhat formative? And full disclosure, it’s this funny thing that as... I basically came to New York City in the early 90s and I’d been hanging out there since the 80s. And I opened this coffee shop on Avenue A in 1995 across from Tompkins. And everybody was like, hey, Nick, where are you from? What do you do? Well, it was such a what I call exploratory question for people you don’t know. So with the backstory of I opened this coffee shop when I was 27, I think 27 years old. And it was just me and a business partner. We weren’t well funded. It was this very back in the day, we call it do it yourself, DIY coffee house that happened to have internet access. So we were very early internet cafe, but we wanted to be the cool internet cafe. I always called it an online coffee house, not a cyber cafe, which we were opening up at the time. So when people asked me that question, I was very gun shy because I was very proud and I had worked since I was 13 years old, working in restaurants and having coked out chefs throw pots at me, but then bring me under their wing and mentor me. To answer the question where I’m from in that environment was I was like, I’m in New York. I’m a New Yorker. And that doesn’t fly. To answer the question realistically, I think this will be me almost coming to terms with it is I’m from Connecticut. And when you say in 1990s East Village, Avenue A, gritty rock and roll and cool alternative culture, you’re from Connecticut. Everybody just thinks you’re from Westport or Greenwich and you’re a rich kid. Especially being a younger person that opened a coffee shop. Everybody would just assume you’re a rich kid if you say you’re from Connecticut. So I always had this chip on my shoulder about answering that question. But ultimately, it formed me and it formed a lot of what I’m doing now in 2026, many decades later, 30 years later. Yeah, so the way I explain it is not being from Westport or Greenwich. But from an area that’s much more rural. People don’t realize that Connecticut has rural populations like Easton and Georgetown. Where I’m from had literally an abandoned wire mill in the town, and my road was called Old Farm Road. So I grew up thinking everybody had a backyard with woods and an abandoned farmhouse that you could just walk across two neighbors’ yards and be in this giant field that was abandoned and fly kites and make model rockets that we would shoot off and just be young kids in the 70s and 80s. Your parents just said see you for dinner time and you just roamed around. And I thought everybody could kick in the door of an abandoned farm outbuilding and fall through the staircase with rusty nails and everything. Super lucky we didn’t get killed. But that formed a lot of an aesthetic of the woods and abandoned buildings and just exploring and just walking around. And that transferred into New York City, which was a choice that I made to move because I was inspired by the East Village and Lower East Side when I was part of my growing up where I’m from. I’m first generation. My father escaped in a revolution in Hungary in 1956 and came to Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is a factory town. And the Upper East Side had a Hungarian enclave. And the other one was in Youngstown, Ohio, which Jim Jarmusch made a movie about called Strangers in Paradise about Hungarians, New York, Hungary, downtown Hungarians going to a Hungarian enclave in Ohio. All of that formed a lot of what I’m doing these days. And I started working in a restaurant when I was 13 called the Georgetown Saloon. That was where all the working folk, all the working people hung out. But it was also, there was some people that had some money. But it really was the place where people had Harleys and they cut the lawns for the rich people and had really successful landscaping businesses. But they drove Harleys and wore leather vests and stuff. Honky tonk in the middle of everything. So that’s where I’m from. A lot of it, that restaurant, the Georgetown Saloon formed me because there was always one of the owners in the kitchen, one of the owners on the floor, one of the owners behind the bar. And I worked for them for 10 years and they really brought me up. And when I was 18, I said, by the time I’m 28, I want to open a restaurant. I put myself long-term goal there that again is all where I’m from. And if I didn’t have that job at Georgetown Saloon, I probably wouldn’t have been inspired to do my own thing. I probably would have tried to get an office job or something that was the norm if you could make it happen. That really influenced where I’m from. And put me in a position to open. I started getting really into coffee culture when I moved to New York and what I would call a coffee house versus cafe. I was romanticizing 1950s beatnik Greenwich Village coffee houses, but then I would travel to Montreal and I loved the coffee house scene there. And so when I moved to New York, 1992, I was 21 at the time and I got into the coffee business and I was like, oh, I don’t need to open a restaurant when I’m 28. I could open a coffee shop. And so I was able to put myself in a position there where we opened up Alt Coffee when I was 27. But I don’t know if that’s a long answer to that first question or if I should break to let you ask me a question. No, I mean, the answers have their own, they come to their own end. I mean, it’s beautiful. But I do want to go back, because the next question I often ask is, as a kid, maybe before you got that job at the Georgetown Saloon, as a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Do you have a recollection of what young Nick wanted to be when he grew up? Well, yeah, that again, it’s where are you from and what are the dates? And I was born the day they landed on the moon, is what I say. So this is also what I love about me being totally frank and honest, because I used to make up backstories for myself and that was such an interesting time. Where you can just make s**t up about your background and there wasn’t the internet to fact check, right? So I thought the Ramones were all brothers. You didn’t fact check it. So I’ve put bits and pieces of things out there, especially being in the cafe business and the bar business where I’m chatty, it’s hospitality. I love talking to various people. I’ve made some s**t up. I’ve dropped some exaggerations. So I always say I was born the day they landed on the moon, July 17th, 1969. But I have to be careful, because if people know, they actually landed on the moon on the 19th, and I was born when they were in space. Because people don’t always realize — other than now we’ve been back to the moon this year, which is coincidental — people know it takes multiple days. So I was technically born while they were on their way to the moon, but I always say I was born the day they landed on the moon. Apollo 11 landed on the moon. So I always wanted to be an astronaut. I’ve always been fascinated by space. I was a sci-fi kid. Star Wars, I was eight years old when Star Wars came out. That was hugely influential. So yeah, I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, for sure. It’s amazing. I’m really connecting with, well what a choice to make that choice to say the day that they landed on the moon as opposed to being in the moon. Where does that come from, do you think, that i

    53 min
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A weekly conversation between Peter Spear and people he finds fascinating working in and with THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com

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