THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING Podcast

Lindsey Wehking is the Chief Investigative Strategy Officer (CSO) at Nonfiction Research in Brooklyn. If I remember correctly, I first met Lindsey in 2021 in Brooklyn, when I reached out to Nonfiction in a fanboy kind of way. I ran into Lindsey at the 4As Stratfest in New York City, where she presented (with Jim Stengel!) “Why taking your clients into nightclubs is the future of insights.” I was excited to talk to her about her path to this work, and how they work at Nonfiction.I think you may know this, but I say it anyway, but I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I borrow from a neighbor of mine who helps people tell their story. And I stole it because it's a big, beautiful question, but because it's a big, beautiful question, I over-explain it, like I'm doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know you're in absolute control.You can answer and not answer any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from?I knew this question was coming, and I purposely had to resist the urge to over-engineer. I feel like it's a beautiful question, but it's also the kind of question people over-engineer their answers to. And so it's funny, I just closed my eyes and tried to figure out what visual came to mind.And the image that kept coming to mind was of me when I was about eight years old, sitting in my dad's burgundy Ford Ranger, a 92 Ford Ranger, in our driveway with him, listening to NPR. My parents were notoriously defects from the Catholic church, and so I feel like NPR sort of became our religion. And my dad and I, he would pick me up from school when I was a kid, and my dad loved the heat, so he loved to sit in a hot car and bake like a poor man's sauna after work.And I loved it too, so we would just sit in his hot car, sauna-ing, listening to very in-depth reporting on some anthropologist talking about the history of sex in human society, or what the Tootsies were up to. And I don't know why, but I feel like something about my personality is just forever ingrained in a shitty Ford Ranger listening to NPR with my dad.And where were you? Where did you grow up?Right outside of St. Louis, Missouri, on the east side of the river, so Illinois, so we were kind of edging the great western gateway.Yeah. And you said they're sort of notoriously, I can't remember how you said it, but they left the Catholic church. What made that significant?Both my parents came from, my dad came from a large Catholic family, and my mom came from a smaller Catholic family. But I feel like they in the era of scandal in the Catholic church, all of the priest abuse. I feel like at that time, every week a new leader of the Catholic church you found out was gambling away everyone's donations.And so that had a big, especially my dad, that had a really profound impact on him because I think he yearned so much to believe and part of believing, especially believing in the Catholic doctrine was such a big part of belonging in his family. And yet he just couldn't stomach what he felt like was a lot of the hypocrisy and the contradiction. And because of that, he was such a seeker.I think that's why the church of NPR, I joke, kind of was the church of our family because without the church, I think he was looking for other ways to seek connection and wisdom and knowing and not being able to put a God up there. I think we just all put, I don't know, nerd stuff, which may not be the best God, but it's not a terrible substitute.And do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?When I, God, I was probably in like kindergarten or first grade and my dad took me to work and my dad was a, he was like a network architect. He was an IT at, at Edward Jones, which is like a very old school financial institution that's headquartered in St. Louis. And, and I remember walking in and seeing all of these cubicle people and up here, I found cubicle people fascinating.I was like, just like, there was all this like drama. Like he would tell me about how like, like lunches would go missing in the office fridge. And there would be like, like there'd be all this, like, like my dad was like a little bit of like a armchair anthropologist.And so he loved describing the, like the politics that would happen in meetings and the way certain people would like, you know, kind of peacock for attention or the way certain people wouldn't speak their mind. And, and his way of like viewing the corporate world, I just like fell in love with. And I think at some point I like wanted to grow up to study cubicle people.I was like, this is, this is my purpose. I will study cubicle, which is honestly not far off from what I think I do now.What, yeah, you mentioned the anthropology even in the NPR segment and your driveway moment with your dad. Was there sort of anthropology or culture in your, in your childhood or?We were so f*****g white. Like we were so white and without like much, much traditional lineage, I think because of all, like all, you know, we were German, German Catholic and German Protestant. And so because so much of our probably like ancestral ethnic lineage was so tied up in religion.When we left religion, we kind of were lost of all that. And I think like, I haven't looked into this, but I, I presume there is a whole cohort of white people who feel this way of like, you know, they at one point or another, there was some break from religion in their family. And then you're kind of like left without any tradition or without any real anchor or sense of self.And like, I don't, you know, honestly connect to like my German-ness or my English-ness. And so as a, yeah, maybe that, maybe that void is part of what made me want to know so much about how other people lived and prayed and loved. I don't know.Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Do you, do you have, can you tell me a story about that void? I'm, I'm identifying a lot with what you've just described and I'm just wondering if, because I know you went, you studied anthropology in college, so there must've been some sort of appetite for that at a relatively young age. I wonder, do you remember what it was like to sort of be in that void?Oh, I feel like I'm still in the void. I don't know. Maybe we never leave the void.Yeah. I, I mean, I, you know, I think for the, the first few decades of like trying to figure out who I was, was defined mostly by this insatiable appetite to understand others that like, in some ways I almost didn't have a sense of self. Like it was, it was so, it was so outward looking, but in, in pursuit of, of just like wanting to know how other people lived and found happiness and found safety.And, and, and I was always very like fascinated with communities that were kind of on the margins. And one of the biggest, one of the first like big ethnographies I did when I was in college was on a, a subculture called Juggalos. I don't know if you're familiar with Insane Clown Posse.I have a note, I have a note here to ask you about that.Did you, like, have you, have you ever listened to their music?I haven't listened. I don't think I've listened to the music.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.I mean, it was very like, I mean, you know, for, for people who don't know, like Juggalos was what they call like a horror, I think this, the genre is actually called horror rap. And so they were two white guys out of Detroit who started in hip hop and rap in, I think they were coming up in kind of the nineties, but by the early two thousands, mid two thousands, they had really cultivated this like insane fan base. And they, you know, were one of like, I think we're kind of seeing a resurgence now in like pop music that has like true ritual.And like, you get dressed up, you paint your face, you have singalongs, like it's, it's becoming like, there was a time where pop, you didn't like, didn't have fandom that way. But, but Juggalo culture was like true intense fandom. And it was like, it was a very true music subculture.Like it, you know, existed in the lineage of like other cult music fandoms, like Deadheads and Fish Fans and, and, you know, Kiss. But, you know, it was specifically kind of speaking to, you know, they grew up in a pretty poor area of like white Detroit. And, and so a lot of the like, the culture that they grew up in was in the music and in the performance.And so they would wear face paint. And so they would dress like clowns, but they were called serial killer clowns. And, and so they played with both like, these like dark circus themes.And, and, you know, a lot of like themes around like serial killers and violence, but, and then they would, they would dress up as like dark, kind of like they throw these dark carnival shows where Juggalos would have like clown face paint, they would have these little like this little hatchet man was their logo. They would like spray the audience with Faygo, just like a cheap, like really cheap generic brand of soda that you could find in and around. I mean, you could find a lot of places now, but it was especially in and around Detroit at the time.And but, but these, you know, people considered themselves family, and they would travel all over the country to go to these shows. And they would spend days and weeks and everyone would like party in the parking lot for hours before the show. And one of the reasons why I was so interested in them at the time, the FBI just classified them as like a gang.And there was like a lot of fear around Juggalos, because, you know, it's a lot of young white men who appear to be very angry and are wearing like killer clown face paint. Like, you know, you can imagine how that would like scare the mothers anytime they came to town. But one thing that I was really interested in is like, what's really, what's really the pull here?Like, because I think it's, you know, it's part of that era where we were just like, very dismissive of hip hop and rap as just being like, about violence and mistreatment of women. And, you know, there was definitely like, if you just consumed the stuff at the surface, you definitely got a lot of that. And there's definitely themes within that music that like, can be degrading towards women and does have violence in it.But I think one of the most interesting things is that when you, when you talk to a lot of Insane Clown Posse super fans, there is, there's a lot of history of personal violence, of abuse in their family, of sexual abuse. And a lot of the violence in the music, not all of it, but a lot of it is actually towards predators. So when you actually listen to a lot of the music, it's, it's revenge against predators and abusers.And so that was when I started to realize, oh, this is like a, this is like a, this is a trauma outlet, you know, like people are trying to kind of process their, their trauma, and their abuse through this like dark carnival. And there's actually like a great history of dark carnivals in human history, like even going back to medieval ages, like the dark carnival, and carnivals in medieval culture were a place in which you could, they call it turning the world upside down, that you would invert the social norms of a society for a day, as a way of kind of purging a lot of feelings of pain and oppression and injustice. And they sort of did that with the music, like for, for this one night, you were connected to everyone in the crowd.And like, yeah, you were like screaming curse words, and like wearing fucked up paint. And there's a little like hatchet man running around stage. But it's also fun.Like, it's very fun. There's like a lightness, even in all the darkness. And I don't know, no matter what you think about the music for the people, like, I just, I thought there was something very beautiful and in that.Yeah, it's wonderful. It's really beautiful. I had not paid nearly enough attention to sort of understand everything that was happening there.And so this was, this was an ethnography that you did while you were in college. Is that right?Yeah, yeah, it was like a, it was like an Anthro 101 class, like everyone picked something very simple. And I picked, we had to like, I dragged my best friend, we had to drive to Des Moines, Iowa, we were in Missouri, eight hours one evening to like go to a concert. So I could we could get like a concert experience before we finished writing the paper.And it was the night before like our major journalism exam, like this is the exam that like makes or breaks you if you fail it, you can no longer continue your career in journalism school. And we were like, it was like 1am we were like in Des Moines, Iowa, just like covered in Faygo and like confetti. And we were like, f**k, we have we have seven hours to get to class to take this exam, or our career in journalism is over.But we made it and we passed the test.So catch me up. Where are you right now? And what are you doing for work?I'm in Crown Heights, Brooklyn now. And I work for a company called nonfiction research. So we are a, you know, we always say we only do one thing well at nonfiction.And it's deep studies on particular audiences or subcultures or occasions. And we do both qual and quant, but we also do conventional and more unconventional techniques. So I think a lot of the like, actually that, that that story about the about the insane clown posse ethnography is kind of how I got the job.It was like in, in the most unhinged email that I wrote our co founders, the day I found nonfiction. And so we use a host of conventional and kind of unconventional techniques to do those studies. And so that sometimes that is a quantitative study on American sexuality.Sometimes that's we've been on chaperoned into prisons to study the inmate experience. We have been rollerblading with Atlanta rappers to study Atlanta hip hop. We've sat with teachers in lunch rooms, gossiping to kind of understand how they make decisions on field trips.And so that like deeply immersive approach to try to get to the life underneath what, okay, we believe most people are sharing with market researchers is, is basically like what we do now as a company. But when I, you know, when I look back, it was, it was what I was probably trying to do in, in Iowa when I was studying juggalos too.Yeah. When did you discover you could make a living doing what you do?Well, I mean, when I was in college, I was like, it was kind of a, I feel like it was the beginning of anthropology starting to sort of like bleed into the world of brand and marketing. Like there'd obviously been like anthropologist consultants working for brands, but it never really like, I don't know, like you'd never really seen like a shop. I'd never seen a shop really dedicated to it.There were like some like anthropologists doing consulting work that I was like blind emailing at the time, but I just could not, couldn't get any traction with that. And so I, I kind of stumbled into strategy as like a consolation prize to that. And worked in strategy departments and I worked for a big PR firm out of school.And that was during the era where all PR firms were trying to like import strategy into the agency and import creative into the agency. So it was like a, it was a cool time because, you know, I was trying to learn the discipline at the same time that organization was trying to kind of sell the discipline in to the industry of PR. And so they, you know, that came with a lot of, it gave me a lot of opportunity I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.But ultimately I like burned out and was just, I was just tired of not doing anything that felt real. You know, there's so many late nights and long hours and brief writing and nothing ever seemed to come to fruition. And so I was kind of had like a existential crisis as one does in their mid twenties.And yeah, I was thinking about going back to grad school or becoming a bartender or I don't really know. And then I happened to be on LinkedIn one day during that existential crisis. And I saw a job posting that felt like a letter to my soul and I dropped everything I was doing.And I wrote the most unhinged and unprofessional email of my life. And that's how I ended up with Ben and Gunny at Nonfiction.Yeah. What do you remember about your unhinged email?I think the title, the subject line was like dumb strategist for hire. And the, I think I meant, I mean, I mentioned juggalos and drag queens within the body copy. And I mean, it was just like, I just told, I told the stories of kind of everything that I had been doing in my life to in, in search of, in search of, I think, something real about people.And yeah, but I cursed and I told inappropriate stories. And I was like, it's either gonna work or it's gonna fail miserably. But it worked.Yeah. What do you love about the work? Like, where's the joy in it for you?I love, people are so weird and delight. I just love strangers. Like, in some ways, strangers are probably easier for me to relate to than sometimes the people I'm closest to.There's something so beautiful about the container of meeting a stranger and the joy of just being able to watch this person open up to you. I think it's much easier for us to expose ourselves to strangers than to people who depend on us or people we're married to. It just comes with fewer trappings. An interview with a stranger is like the purest expression, I think, sometimes of who we are.And I love it. I just love that you never fully know what they're gonna do. People always surprise you. Trying to find that take or understanding on why someone's doing something or what they want—that other people are dismissing or not paying attention to—that's my f*****g drug. I love that. Because I think we're so quick to form narratives around each other and ourselves. And those stories shape how we perceive each other and perceive ourselves. But that story isn't the only one; there are often many stories happening around us at once. It's about deciding which one to pick up and which one to put down. Can you find a new story about someone that will change how they do something or how they think about something?Like, I don't know, to me, that's just, it's such a joy. Yeah, how about you? Why do you like?Oh, I mean, I'm with you 100%. I mean, yeah, the thrill of people, I feel like I learned kind of late that I'm a people person, you know what I mean? Like, I'm amazed, you know what I mean? I can get really long with people very quickly.Did you think of yourself as, like, what did you think of yourself before?I mean, I guess I knew I was social or something, you know what I mean? Like, but, yeah, but I didn't realize the degree, not the degree, exactly. But it's, well, actually, you know, what I'm thinking about is the science that indicates that sort of a masculine is more, boys are orient more towards objects and girls and the feminine orient more towards people.And so when I say I felt like I discovered I was a people person, I really feel like I discovered, it clicked for me that I have no f*****g interest in breaking something and putting it back together again. My brother, my brother can tell me the technical specifications for every piece of technology in his house. That information glides right off of me.You know what I mean? Yeah. But I'll remember a story or a gesture or, you know, turn afraid or a person.Yeah, that's beautiful. I totally, I totally get that. I totally get that. It's funny because you're in some ways you're still a technician. You're just like a technician of people. You know, there's a similar like, but yeah.So when you, when a client comes to you, when you get a project, what are the first kinds of things that you think about when you're trying to wrap your head around what you want to do and how you want to approach it?I think that question, 'What are we really trying to do here?' haunts me, because people come to research from a lot of different angles. Sometimes they come because someone just told them they needed to do research. So they're just like, 'We need research.' And you're like, 'Oh, for what? And to what end?'Sometimes people come and they've got a really specific business problem. I think maybe an invisible part, the invisible 80% before you even begin a project is just: What are we really trying to find out? And how do you narrow the scope of that? Because often bad research is just because you were trying to go too broad and too big and too wide. It's really hard to get people to narrow on what they really want to learn and what they really want to find out.As a strategist, often when you start asking those questions, you end up climbing up the ladder because you've got to figure out what business problem we're really trying to solve. And then what does that mean for what audience problem? And then what does that mean for what we can actually go and find in the hearts and minds of people?There are a lot of questions you can ask that you can't ask people directly. I think a lot of times in our industry, we try to ask questions of people that they can't really answer. We begin projects with like, 'What's the future of financial services?' not 'How do people feel about money?' But when you're starting with people, you have to begin on their terms and in their language, and in how they think about the world, which is much different than how brand strategists or business people often think about the world.So I think step one is always like, okay, translating all of that - all the brand and the business needs - to what we can actually find out from people. And then from there, I tend to be, we are as a company, just very obsessive about a process we call edge finding. There's so much that is known already, and we're constantly haunted by the idea that we're just going to find something that someone else has already known, and it would be a waste of everyone's time and money. So how do you as fast as possible get to the edge of a domain and understand: What are the seven schools of thought around this problem so far? How have every major brand or person tried to crack this problem? What are the top five solutions? What are the top five ways to think about the problem?What has all been done in this field so far? And once you have that base, it's much easier. Then when you're talking to someone, you can pattern match. You can be like, what am I hearing? And how does that compare to what has been said about this problem or how people feel about it in the past? And I think that's really the superpower in doing great research quickly - really knowing your canon so that you can figure out what's really going past the edge or what's contradicting a previous orthodoxy of how something is thought about.Yeah. How do you feel about how most marketing organizations go about trying to learn?There's a lot of pressure to have answers and knowledge very quickly. Most organizations are flooded with information. They have subscriptions to seven services and they have trend reports and they have research they commission every year.The problem is not a lack of information. Everyone has too much information. But you could have all that information, still have no f*****g idea where to move or how to go.I'm a big believer that often you have to see it and experience it to know what is real. It's really hard to figure out what is real in this world. There's a very famous war correspondent, Maria Colvin. She's amazing. She has an eye patch. She was a war reporter, had so much style. Her reporting evolved over the course of the Internet Revolution. She was doing war reporting way before the Internet.Then she was doing a lot of reporting during the Arab Spring, once we started to have Twitter and all these social media platforms. One of the things that she talked about a lot is just how rapid misinformation happened. The fog of war is already so confusing.But to be trying to rely on social media to have any understanding of what's going wrong, it just so quickly skews the picture of what's happening. I think that's true with everything. We have so many think pieces and Atlantic articles and all this other crap. And some of those Atlantic articles are really good.But you don't often have a strong feeling of, is that real? Is that really what's going on, on the ground or in people's real lives? Or is that just whatever narrative got picked up that day?That lack of being able to feel what's true is a big problem. Because ultimately, that's what makes you feel confident and have the conviction to push things through: when you've had your own emotional experience with a topic, when you've seen it in real life, or you've watched something that was deeply moving, or you've heard it for yourself, and something inside of you has changed and clicked. Decisions become much easier and action becomes much easier.We know that in our personal lives, when people have a really transformative moment in their own life—they have a near death experience, or they watch their child go through something difficult—that experience is so real and tangible. It's not abstract, it's not intellectual, it's not something they read in a book, it's real. And because it's real, all of a sudden, they can change their life. I think organizations are the same way. They're relying on essentially what is equivalent to reading a self-help book, relying on secondary information and arms-reach information so much, that no one's having the transformative experience inside of themselves. The experience that's gonna say, "Okay, I believe this insight or idea enough that I'm going to commit the next two years of my life to the very difficult challenge of trying to get an organization to operate around that thing."I think that's what we try to do. Even if we can't bring people into the field all the time, I think we're trying to bring them something that will move them so that it's not just information on a page or another 200-page PDF. Instead, it's an emotional experience with their audience or their problem that will get inside of them and change them. And then that transformation will help them.Hopefully, my hope is to help them carry that through into action within the organization.That's amazing. The, the analogy of self-help books is sort of, you're characterizing how organizations currently use data, right? Secondary, secondary data as self, self-help books to guide strategy.That seems totally apt to me. What, can you tell a story about the kind of thing that you deliver? I mean, I know you guys are so, what's the right word? Disciplined in really putting that kind of emotion, emotional truth forward. But how do you know when you've landed on something like, ah, here's the thing that we were going to the boardroom with?So I think there's always two, I'll tell you like an example of this, but to abstract it first, because that's what we do as strategists.I mean, I think one thing that I tell my strategists a lot and I try to practice is like, do you feel like, does it hit, does it really hit you? Like being able to be sensitive enough to be moved will tell you like, is this thing inspiring or moving enough? Which is like part one, but that's not the whole picture.Things can be moving and inspiring and they can kind of be still useless to whatever you're trying to do. And so it still has to be useful and potentially something that either hasn't been done before or has been overlooked, or, you know, in some way it helps you to shift what you're doing. And so I think that like something that is both deeply emotional, but then something you have put through the ringer of, you know, debate almost, you know, we like, we debate the f**k out of our ideas.Like we have this concept we call the Thunderdome, which is like, where you just let ideas crash into each other. And so like, we're constantly trying to toggle between like these deep feeling moody artists, people who are like, just inspired and felt. And then like, you know, kind of ruthless debate practitioners who are willing to kind of like separate yourself from the idea and then beat it up based off of what you know about the business and the client landscape.And so maybe the best story, maybe the most recent is, we were doing a piece of research with twill, a mental health app on pregnancy in America a couple of years ago. And Gareth, who, I'm sure, you know, Gareth Kaye, like legend strategist, and he had just become their CMO. And he'd come to us initially with this ask to create a piece of research that they were trying to make a new product specifically for pregnancy.So it was like a mental health product to address issues in pregnancy. And he felt like he really wanted to create something that would help his team empathize with the experience of pregnancy more. And so he wanted to create what's the most like realistic portrait of pregnancy.And obviously pregnant, there's been so much done on pregnancy. And there are so many kind of cliches and tropes about the experience. And so we did a very large edge finding process to kind of identify like, what are the major tropes about pregnancy and the culture and in brand worlds too, like, what are the images we are most fed about pregnancy?There's a lot of them, you know, there's like, there's a segment of Instagram that pregnancy is the most empowering moment of a woman's life. And you're like beautiful and your skin is like better than ever. And you're like glowing and it's like amazing.And it was like the opposite where there's like pregnancy trauma, where there's just like, you know, a lot of, you know, they call it trauma porn where it's a lot of really difficult stories about like things going very wrong in pregnancy and childbirth. And then there was like kind of the, you know, there's been more conversation around things like postpartum, but they were kind of flattened to this idea of like, even when we call them, we call it baby blues, right? Like a very like cheeky kind of expression of maybe like some of the sadness or depression that can happen.And so when we got in there, we were having all of these conversations with women and a lot of them were so moving, but I remember like, I remember the interview, and it was with a woman who, her, we call her M and I was asking her about her most difficult moment of pregnancy. And she begins to tell me a story about, you know, getting pregnant with her, her then partner and, you know, they didn't have a lot of money at the time. And so they were going to like, Wendy's a lot, they would get the four by four, the dollar, the dollar deal.And, you know, she had felt really bad about kind of having to eat fast food during pregnancy that like, that's not how she wanted to be eating, but they just didn't really have the money or the support system. And she was going through a lot of like body change and body image issues with her body changing. That, that was really hard on her.But then she started talking about these dreams she was having where she would go to bed and she would have these dreams where she was killing her unborn child and she would wake up and like, not even know what to do with that, you know, like, and it was this experience that started to like haunt her. And in the interview, I'm going to say something, I'm going to say something difficult. So, if anyone who listens to this struggles with mental health or suicidal ideation, I just want to give you a heads up.But she did like the depression and the difficulty that was opening the darkness that was opening during her pregnancy eventually escalated to her trying to take her own life. And thank God her husband found her and then like, didn't leave her side for the next like six months of the pregnancy. But, but I remember afterwards she was like, why did no one tell me this could happen?Like afterwards she like, you know, she got into psychotherapy. She never even had to go on medication, just like a little bit of talk therapy helps pull her out of it. And through that process, she learned it's actually exceptionally common for women to feel suicidal during pregnancy.It's exceptionally common to have really crazy fucked up dreams about your unborn child. Like, you know, women would have all sorts of wild, like the dream landscape of pregnant women is fascinating. And there were all these other fears and anxieties that opened up, but women often didn't have any context to make sense of them.And no one really told like, we talk a lot about postpartum, but no one really talked about any of this happening during pregnancy. And that interview, I was just like, why did no one tell? Cause if she would have known that this was an experience that is common, she would have had context for it.And I think having that context for it, even if you don't have any mental health resources can help you survive an experience. Like they say, there's been some research that has said that when they tested parents who essentially like what are their beliefs going into parenthood? And then how does that compare to their like feelings of resilience and satisfaction after becoming a parent and parents who expected parenthood to be really f*****g hard, had a much easier time.And so there was something just about that expectation setting. That was such a powerful antidote to some of the difficulty that arises. And so after that interview, I started diving into some of the literature and one of the like fascinating things I found is that, in the 1960s, there was an anthropologist who coined this term called matresence.And part of what she was doing is she went out and she started studying indigenous communities and looking for models of models of making sense of the transition to motherhood and how have other societies and particularly more indigenous societies helped women make that transition into motherhood. And one of the things that she noticed is that, you know, in the West we have, we have a concept for that transition, in your teenage years, it's called adolescence and adolescence is a term that marks the transition from being a child to becoming an adult. And we have a lot of research on like the developmental arc of adolescence.And we also have a lot of like just cultural wisdom that like, guess what? Teens get really depressed and really anxious. Like we know that we know rates of suicide spike when you are when you're in your teenage years, like we have a lot of understanding of that, that kind of developmental period.And then we've been using that information to help people through that period. Motherhood was not the same. There was no word to describe that transition.And what she argued was that, you know, right now, even we only have very clinical terms to understand pain. You know, we tend to like, we have kind of over, not say over, there's value in certain clinical terminology, but, you know, we've got words like depression and anxiety and, you know, BPD and all these other like DSM five terms to describe pain and suffering. But what she was, she was sort of arguing, it was that like, of course, this period is going to come with so much suffering.Like your entire identity is being like reduced to the rubble and then being rebuilt over a period of nine months. Like your body's going crazy. You've got all these, you're making life like, there is a natural sort of darkness that comes with that, that we have not helped pregnant Americans like learn to expect or manage.And then if it does reach a certain point to tip over into like, you know, proper clinical care, but there's even a big like section of those experiences that would never escalate to psychosis or postpartum depression. If women or pregnant Americans had the support, and even understanding of what was happening inside of themselves during pregnancy. And so that's, this is a very long-winded story, but that moment was like the emotional moment.And then I think we looked back over the course of like human history and then looked at the healthcare system today and you're like, okay, this isn't like, like, yes, there are a lot of really systemic issues in healthcare, like massive mental health practitioner shortage. Like a lot of women, especially in rural areas, and who are, you know, don't make much money, like don't have access to a lot of these resources. You know, even rates of OBGYNs are low.However, even with all of that, there are very simple things you can be doing by just telling people, this is something that might happen to you. And when it does, like, here's, what's in the normal range. Here's when you should call for help.Like, it doesn't mean you're a bad mother. Like just because you have these dreams or you have like, OCD is a really big thing in pregnancy too. Like women get forms of OCD and intrusive thoughts that can be like intrusive thoughts of harm towards a child.It's not really like, it doesn't mean you actually won't harm your child. It's just, it's your brain going haywire and like, it's fine, but there's just, just no one was talking about it, in a way that was actually helpful. And I remember I went to my OB during this time just to get like a routine pap smear.She's like in the middle of the pap smear. I was like, Hey, so I'm doing this study. And like, I'm just curious, like, why don't you ask?Like, it seems like from a lot of the conversations I've had, one of the biggest problems is that women just don't know this is something that could happen. Why don't you ask, why don't you ask how, how you're really doing? Cause even the conversations in the OB office would often just be very like, how's mama?You know, there would be this like, and I remember my OB being, being like, she was like, I don't ask cause I don't have anywhere to send them. And I don't, it's too difficult for me to know if like, if I don't have a way to resolve the problem. And I was just like, what?Like what? We've got like a don't ask, don't tell policy of like mental health and pregnancy among OBs. Like that's crazy.It's crazy.So yeah, I, that was a very, I don't even remember your original question.Well, I mean, I got exactly what I asked for, which was, you know, like, what's an example of the kind of the truth, the reality that you guys deliver and how do you make sure that, you know, how do you, how do you, um, know that you've got one? And it occurred to me just listening to that thing that the, the, the power of this kind of research is that it becomes a story that you tell about your experience of this person. And then it's sort of, it's smuggles in all this stuff, right? Like just because you're telling the story of an interview, it's just compounds just the whole thing into this form. That's like a, it's like a, it's pure, pure magic. Do you know what I mean? Am I making any sense?No. Yeah. I mean, it's beautifully said. I don't, I don't think I actually thought about, um, thought about it that way, but, um, but you're right that like so much of research is about aggregating experience into like a collective and, and then it, which is important because you have to know, is this just Miranda or is it 25,000, 25,000 Miranda's out there? But it often comes at the cost of like also finding like, what's the, what's the story that encapsulates the experience that you found that is moving enough to kind of be passed along and shared and retold, you know, a thousand times.Yeah. That's my experience too, that it'll be one moment, you know what I mean? In a, in a, in a, in many, many interviews where something I'm moved, like you said, and that becomes kind of the, the, the foundation of something. And it, you, you seem to say the same thing that there was a, there's that moment with Em kind of opened you to the reality.Yeah. Yeah. What was the last time you were moved?I mean, I, you know, I have, I mean, you probably have this experience too. I mean, I had a successful project a little while ago, so I keep telling that story. I think I told it to Gunny. I told it to Gunny. Not in the interview, but yeah. I mean, for me, it's like free association. It's the imagination. And it was a project for Lundberg. I guess I'm going to tell this story. Lundberg's Family Farms.Oh, fun.Yeah. It was about rice. And you know me, I do the free association stuff.I love that stuff. You work a lot with the unconscious.I love it. And so I did, I was doing this, the battery of free association exercises around rice to understand and premium rice because premium rice isn't selling.What comes up in people's subconscious associations with rice?So many things, but there was one guy that I just, he totally nailed it for me. He was the new dad. And so he was sort of overtired and his animal, I would ask like, is it an, if it were an animal, if it were a day of the week, if it were an article of clothing, this whole bunch of questions, and they're writing it all down.But his animal was a zebra. And I was like, well, tell me about a zebra, right? He said, well, I was told that there were two types of zebra.There's black zebras with white stripes and there's white zebras with black stripes. And I thought he was screwing with me, but he really wasn't. He was, I say there was this bewildered pause and it was that, that bewilderment was sort of the center of the insight, which was that most Americans have no idea how rice is grown or what it looks like.We have no mental model of what rice is or how it's grown. Whereas if I said corn, you know what I mean? The whole family pops up in the house and cornfields.So anyway, so that, that confusion was, I was just amazed at his bewilderment. And then I realized, I realized what was going on. But it's too obvious to say, which is the other thing. It felt almost like crazy to say.It's beautiful because it's also like one of those insights that's almost found in the negative, not the positive. Like it's found in the absence of something rather than the presence of something. And yeah, it's so, it's so true.It's so true. I love that.Thank you for listening and turning the tables on me. I have one final curiosity I want to talk to you about with the remaining time we have because I, so we ran into each other at StratFest. You're telling the story of this crazy Frito-Lay project, which sounds amazing. And there's two things I think I want to ask about. One is the difference between, I guess what we're telling a story to a client, right? Going and doing your own research and then, and then coming and telling the story to the client versus taking the client out on an immersion like you did with Mega Flavors.And then an asterisk question around that is, because that was a subculture exploration. And of course, when I was coming up, nobody really talked about subculture, but that word subculture seems to dominate marketing conversation today. And I'm just curious, what do you mean when you say subculture?How do you think about subculture? So do you know what I'm after?Yeah. Wait, on the first one, do you want to know like the diff, like what, like, what do you want to know about the two?I guess I'm curious about how you, how you feel your role is different. How is it different for you as a, as a researcher to be immersing a client versus immersing yourself?Yeah. So we, you know, we used to never take clients into the field. And there was a reason for that other than being a dick.And it was that it's really hard to cultivate intimacy and trust with people. And it takes a lot of work. And the minute you've got the feeling of an audience, people tend to go into performance mode.And so we've, you know, we've always been really diligent about trying to protect the intimacy. Like we have one researcher almost on everything. We don't have people listening to calls.We don't do group interviews. Like, um, and, and so that was kind of how we operated for a long time. But with this project, um, you know, our client made the case to us that she wanted her whole team, everyone who's part of the process, innovation, marketing, um, brands to feel what we felt because she thought there would be a better chance that that would stay alive in the innovation process.Also, we were working on food innovation. So like tasting the actual food is kind of helpful. Um, but I think like to your point, like when you're, when you're the researcher, you're in this mode of like the seeker and you're trying to find the truth.And I feel like you're like, I always imagine like you're, I've just got, you've got like laser beam focus. Like it's you and whoever you're with or whoever you're studying. And that's like the only, it was like a, it was like a laser beam that goes from year to them.And that's the only connection that matters. And you are just turning over rocks and exploring different things and trying to collect as much as possible. When you bring a client into a space, you're no longer the investigator. You are like the camp counselor, you know, you are facilitating an experience with people. And so a lot of times what we talk about is like you, the researcher can't do research in that moment. You are producing, not producing is not the right word. You're facilitating.And so the research needs to be done beforehand. So if you're trying to, there's different ways to, I think, bring a client in the field. You can do it in a way that helps them see insights you've already found in real life, which means you have had to have done that research already. And for that project we did, like we would get on the ground a week before clients came and we'd already done significant research on the subculture. And then we would immerse ourselves and we would deepen the connections with the community.And we would build trust because they have to trust us deeply to then bring in another stranger. And so we spent a week, a week and a half, sometimes building trust in those communities before we brought the clients in. And so by that point we had our findings, we had the, like, it was all done. We were just trying to give the client an experience that was an expression of what we had already found.And then there's like a more free form version of that, which is, you don't necessarily need hard findings. You're just trying to give them an experience of a culture that might inspire them. Because that in culture is important. And so in that case, we essentially take our researcher hat off and we're like, we are going to facilitate your experience, but you're the researchers. And so you take the notes, you look for the details, you ask the questions, like, we are just going to hold the container for this and the client becomes the researcher.Um, and so in that case, like there's still a lot of trust building that has to be done ahead of time and networking within those communities. Um, but we kind of, we kind of take a backseat on the role as researcher and we make, we make our clients, the researchers. Um, so is that, does that make sense?Um, and wait, what was your second question?Subculture.Subculture. Yeah. I know it's such a funny, it's been so funny to watch the industry change on this. Cause I guess, cause I grew up sort of being obsessed with anthropology and anthropology is all about stuff. Like that's the entirety of anthropology is about subculture.And so I'm like, I don't have like a tight quippy, you know, even in anthropology, people debate the definition of subculture, like ad nauseum. So I don't necessarily have, we don't have like a quippy definition of it. But for me, it is people who share a worldview, and a sense of taste or style.So like you both have to, I think, share some way of viewing the world and that can come in at different levels. You know, like some people share a religion. Some people share an ideology. Some people share just an expression of an idea. So you have to share some kind of belief or worldview, and then you also have to have a shared form of expression. And so I think that expression can be music. It can be clothing. It can be symbols. It can be tattoos.It can be, but there has to be some both belief and then some outward expression that is connected to that. And it's not like, it's not easy to be like, this is definitely a subculture. This is not a subculture because subcultures are like anything. They're these moving organisms.And you know, I think in the age of the internet, it's been a really interesting transformation of subcultures. Cause I think before the internet, you would, subcultures tended to anchor geographically and they tended to be like, you know, you had either like religions or you had scenes. So like art movements would birth subcultures, but the boundaries of that subculture were more easy to define because there was often a geography and a set collection of like influences, you know? And so you'd, you know, you'd have all these, you have, you know, Atlanta hip hop, that's an easy subculture because it's anchored to a geography.It's also around a music and there is a hundred percent, like a shared experience, but there's often, there's also different expressions and it's also evolved, you know, like you now have sub subcultures. So ATL hip hop might be the large subculture, but then you've got something like trap music, which is an evolution of Atlanta hip hop that has its own distinct expression and the symbols change and the themes change. And so it's all very fluid.And you know, I think a lot of people like, spent a lot of time debating like, what is a subculture on the internet? And it can be tough cause I think there's a lot of things that are like groupings of people or ideas on the internet, but they're so shallow that there's not often enough there, there, I think to like, call it a subculture. And so we've kind of like, we've abandoned trying to like define so hard what a subculture is.I tend to think about it in terms of like, whatever you're trying to do, like with Frito-Lay, we knew that we wanted to draw inspiration for new flavors from groups of people who were a little bit on the edges of culture. And so because of that, we knew, you know, we wanted people who had a story and expression that maybe wasn't as, hadn't like broken through the mainstream as much. But because we were also trying to invent a they needed to have a shared palette.And so there's a lot of subcultures that are cool, but there's no like cuisine associated with them. There's no like lineage from like a palette perspective. And so that definitely kind of shaped the types of subcultures that we paid more attention to.And so I think like, depending on what you're trying to do, like maybe, maybe cottage core, or like, you know, like coven culture, like witch culture, like there's so many different expressions of that. And maybe that's enough to think about as a subculture depending on what you're doing. But, you know, if you're trying to like invent a certain kind of thing, it may not, it may not be enough.So, yeah, no, no. What's your take on the like explosion of that concept in our industry?Oh man. I don't know. I mean, I feel like it's an indication of, yeah, the influence of anthropology and business, I guess. And yeah, the role that culture plays this sort of just naming culture.Yeah.That was sort of a, that wasn't happening when I started out, you know, so like, uh, you know, you said that you observed that change too. So yeah, but it does sort of flatten out into, it just becomes like this crazy mapping of course.It's just like, and you're like, I said, I was like, I'm like, is it like, just because you wear fringe and wear like a white frilly dresses and you read Harlequin romance novels, like, is that enough? You know, do you actually have a, I think it's like, do you have a shared worldview? Like, is that, is that enough or is that just an interest?Right. Or, um, I saw this guy, um, Eugene is a, he does TikTok brand strategy, brand strategy. He says, it's all he, I think he says subcultures are over. It's all cosplay.Well, I mean, that's like a deep cut take. Cause doesn't like, um, God, who was the philosopher who was it? It wasn't Foucault. It was, who's the guy who was really obsessed with studying our, um, I've got his book.I'm going to forget it now. I'll remember and I'll send it to you. But this idea that like, everything has just become a simulation of everything that like, um, has, has been around since like the sixties, I think that like, we are now in an age of human behavior where we are all just signaling.It's like the idea that like something is a, like, think about like a straight out of Compton, like at some point straight out of Compton as a phrase meant something very real. It had a very real basis of like a group of people's experience, but then it became a slogan that signaled a certain aesthetic and lifestyle and worldview.And what, what this guy was arguing is that almost everything has just become that, that like, there is almost nothing real anymore. We've all, um, just, we just signal we use, we use different identity markers to signal, which is kind of different. I don't actually, I haven't fully, I've been thinking about this idea for years and I have not fully reckoned with, um, with what I, cause I, I think it's true on the internet and I think it's true in social performances.Um, but it's, it's curious to me about how we do reclaim, reclaim things that feel real and we don't all just become like a performance of identity signals.Yeah. Well, it feels like that's very apt right now. I mean, um, that, uh, I mean, the guy that I worked for started out, he had this way of talking in koans. He would say that we consume what we're afraid we're losing. One of his little aphorisms.Oh my God. That's kind of, I gotta sit with that for a minute.I feel like, I feel like right now everybody wants to be in real life. Like we're hungry for the thing that we've, we were pretty sure we lost, which is connect human connection and presence and reality.Do you think we will, do you think we will like reclaim that? Like with all the, it is curious, all the fear around AI replacing people is also made me wonder, like, will it force us as a species to like double down on the stuff that they're not like, and right now AI can't regulate co-regulate your nervous system. You know, it can't, um, it can give you some expression of intimacy, but I think there's probably even in the best form, something that would feel gone or off. And so does it actually like almost like forces as a species to become more competitive by doubling down on those things.I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think it, it makes them, it asks us to name them in a way that we would never really have to name them before because there's no alternative. You know what I mean? Like, I think about this a lot with qualitative because this guy, John Dutton asked me, he says, what do you say to a CMO to invest in qualitative in an age of, um, you know, synthetic users and LLMs. You realize that on some level, those things kind of do replicate, they do something close and it's close enough that you kind of wonder, whoa, f**k, what is it exactly? What is it?Yeah. Yeah. And like the other thing I've also wondered about those kinds of things is, um, is does it ever create a feedback loop that actually starts to influence real people, you know, like the simulation of people.Cause like when we were doing the journalism work, one of the things that haunted me is just how flexible we are. Like, um, you know, at the time, like I was looking at the way people express themselves and their political beliefs in social media. And like, you know, at that time, like everyone was like the idea of being extreme online.Like, it was just like the, it was the, the bastion of the era of being hyper extreme online. But when you would get, you would talk to people in real life and you would set a different, um, a different value system of that interaction. If you would be like, Hey, like, we're here to talk like the truth.Like, I want to know, like, do you actually believe these things? Like, is this too? And like, when you set the rules of an interaction of nuance and when you set the rules of an interaction of gray area, people became more nuanced and more gray area and more uncertain.And they admitted their uncertainty. And that's the exact same person who like, I would talk to people and then I would have them send me s**t. They have posted on the internet and the person on the internet was like, like, you know, an extremist and so certain and like very hard line.And then the person in front of me was like, well, you know, I don't really know. And like, I've really wrestled with this. And you're like, these are the same people.They're just a different part of themselves is expressing based on the environment and the rules of that environment. And, and I just was like, Oh my God, we're so much more, we perceive each other as so fixed, but we're actually so flexible. And that's beautiful, but it also makes us fragile and like these feedback loops, like the internet and like algorithms.But I'm also like curious, like when we have AI telling us about ourselves and like telling us what people think, do you see people begin to become that image? You know, like I think we, and how do we, how do we fight the flattening of, of who we are? Yeah. Yeah. It's horrifying.Really. I mean, it's so alienating. It seems to me, I mean, the, the momentum that these generative AI things have.Um, but anyway, we've, we've wandered way off, way off the path and thank you so much. I really appreciate you. Yeah. It was nice to see you at Stratfest, um, in presenting amazing work. And, um, I really appreciate you, um, coming and spending time with me.Yeah, this was great. Thank you, Peter. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Karen Faith is the CEO of Others Unlimited, an empathy training company she founded in 2021. Karen lives a country mile south of me in Tivoli, and that’s where we first met as neighbors. Her TEDx Talk “How to talk to the worst parts of yourself” has racked up nearly 2M views. Previously an ethnographer and strategist, I was excited to talk to her about what her path to ethnography, and then to empathy training, and what happens between people. I start all of my interviews with the same question, which I borrow from Suzanne Snider, who teaches oral history in Hudson. It's a big, beautiful question, but because of that I over-explain it. Before I ask, I want you to know that you're in absolute control and you can answer or not answer in any way that you want. The question is: Where do you come from?It is a big, beautiful question. I feel like I should have prepared for that one.You have, you've been preparing all your life.In a way, I suppose I have. Oh goodness, Peter, how could you stump me immediately? Well, I'm going to go ahead and just go with my first couple of thoughts.I come from Mississippi, which is a geographical place. I don't know that I'd give that answer if I were to think about the other kinds of ways I might be from, but Mississippi is already a loaded answer because Mississippi is a very unique, rich, deep, complex place. And that might be the other answer.I feel like I come from a very rich, complex place. I grew up in a very religious and also volatile and violent home, which is a common experience for people like me, which I know can mean a lot of things. But I think that the reason why I would say that I come from that is because I believe that my work is really grounded in the experiences that those things birthed.So the experience of being a part of a very intense religious community, being a part of a very dysfunctional family, and being from the Deep South are all things which sparked areas of curiosity in my life that are absolutely the roots of the work that I do now. I think I can draw those lines very clearly, but I admit it makes me happy when other people are surprised.How do you mean?Well, I mean, I don't want the first impression to be that I am maybe born of brokenness, but I am.Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?Yes, I remember. Specifically, I was in third grade when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. At that time, my family was living in Melbourne, Florida. My stepfather actually worked at the space center, and we saw that happen with our eyes, not on TV. Krista McAuliffe, who was the teacher on the shuttle, was actually in our school district. So because of that, there was this big push for everyone. It was like a "reach for the stars" thing, you know, because of the fun of it, where we were all writing essays about what we wanted to be, our aspirations. And because I have that piece of paper that I wrote, I actually know exactly what I wanted back then. But I do remember dreaming about it as a kid.I had just started learning to play the violin, and I wanted to play in an orchestra. I wanted to be a teacher. And I just started getting interested in poetry. I wanted to be a writer. But also one thing that's really funny is that I remember as a kid, when I imagined myself as an adult, I always imagined myself being 25, which is hilarious to me now. You know, I was like, yeah, when I'm 25, and I think maybe because my parents were quite young. So I think 25 was about how old they were when I started having those thoughts. So yeah, I was like, when I'm 25, I will play in an orchestra, and I'll be a poet and a teacher. And when I was 25, I was. I played in an orchestra, and I was a teacher and a poet. So, you know, I kind of like dream accomplished. And then there was this moment of like, oh, what's the next one then, you know?One of my favorite parts of Dune, the David Lynch movie, is when after Paul Atreides is sort of in the desert, having all these prophecies come true, these dreams, these prophecies come true. And he gets to this place where they'd all come true. And he feels lost. And he's like, all the visions of my future have already manifested, like, what is next for me? And I think that that really was a moment, you know, when I was mid-20s. And I was like, well, I did the thing I wanted to do. Now, what are we going to do?Where were you at that time?When I was 25, I had actually just stopped playing. I played in the symphony for seven years, and I just stopped doing that and moved to Chicago to go to the School of the Art Institute. So I had already changed the vision, but I wanted to. Then I was going into performance art.[I'm curious, will you tell me a little bit about what it means to be from the Deep South? I mean, you have these three territories, like the church, the family, and then Deep South. I'm just curious, what does it mean to be? I mean, I've met you in Tivoli, New York, upstate New York. What does it mean to be from the Deep South?Well, something that might be revealing to say is that it's hard for me to talk about it, and it's important for me to talk about it with respect to the people who I really love who are there. I found since I left Mississippi that everywhere else I've been in the United States finds it easy and fun to ridicule Mississippi for a couple of reasons that have factual basis. Mississippi has for many years been close to the bottom of the list for education and close to the top of the list for poverty and obesity and other kinds of systemic problems that are very interrelated and correlate.That is not at all what Mississippi means to me. For me, the things that I've carried with me and the things that I really feel, the kind of stereotype of Southern hospitality is 100% true. There is a very urgent sense of responsibility to welcome a visitor, which directly and immediately opposes the idea that Southerners don't like outsiders. I'm not saying that that doesn't exist too. That's in there somewhere too. But the immediate thing is, come on in, let me make you a cup of coffee.I also carry this very deep sense of hospitality. I love hosting in a very literal way, but I also bring that to the work in a lot of ways too. For me, the experience of facilitating groups of people, which is largely what I do, is a lot about making sure that every person present feels welcome to be present exactly as they are. That takes some doing. That's not easy. It's also, veering into another topic a little bit, it's also not possible for me to carry that responsibility entirely. I cannot make anyone feel any particular way. I can only provide an atmosphere. That's important to me.Being from the Deep South is also a place where there are cultural values that are so deeply ingrained. Family is one of them, for sure, which is so difficult because of the situation of the religious background, also because of the situation of being in a rural area where people are relatively spread apart. I wouldn't even call it privacy, I would call it isolation. There's an isolation that happens that makes the family dynamic very intense, because it's just you and your people. You don't necessarily see much else. Even growing up the way that I did, many aspects of my childhood and my family life that were untenable and harmful were not things that I recognized because I didn't know that it was uncommon. I didn't know that it was wrong. I didn't know that it was harmful until later. That's a part of it.That's the part that I would relate to being from the Deep South, is that there's a very intense cognitive dissonance between the values of family is first, honor family, family is the most important thing, and also, wait a minute, this is the most harmful, most scary, most destructive, terrorizing aspect of my life. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure this is where my loyalty belongs? For many people, the answer continues to be yes. I've often felt a kinship when I watch mafia movies, because of the to-the-death loyalty, which no matter how ugly it gets, no matter how scary it gets, it's like the family's the family, and you're either with us or we'll kill you, which is just a kind of like, but there's something about the power of it.It is sort of seductive is not the right word, but it's like there's an attraction to the safety, or at least the story of safety. It's like, oh, you mean, will you fight to the death for me then too? The answer should be yes. In my family, it was not yes, it was no. And so, in my particular family, loyalty to the family meant loyalty to the secret. And when I wasn't able to keep that, then I was out.Is this where you wanted to go? I feel like we're going to a really, really intense place right now.Yeah, wherever we go is fine. I mean, it's all up to you, really, whatever you're comfortable sharing. But yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely, getting to know you better is why I'm here.So, tell me how you got to where you, tell me where you are now and what you're up to from there. Now you're in Tivoli, and how do you talk about what you're doing these days?That's a hard shift. Well, I do live in Tivoli. It's a really tiny little 800-person village in upstate New York. It's absolutely beautiful and idyllic. And it's on the Hudson River, looking at the Catskill Mountains. This morning, I took a walk at sunrise and watched the deer and turkeys scouting around. And it's absolutely darling and beautiful and reminds me of the first half of a horror movie, where everything is just so perfect, you can't imagine anything bad could ever happen. And it turns out that this village is made of human beings. So yeah, it has its shadowy parts.But for the most part, my life is very, very lovely. And I'm very close with my neighbors, and we all have little dinners together. And it's a life that I didn't imagine I would be living. And in every way, I'm a homeowner now, I'm a business owner now. I never in my life wanted to own a home or a business or live in the country. And I spent most of my adult life in Chicago, and then I moved to New York City. And I always imagined that's what my life would be. And I came up here through a series of kind of uncommon circumstances during 2020, as many of our lives were turned upside down and like shaken loose. And I didn't design the plan, but it just sort of happened that way.And today, I'm grateful that it did. But it would be yeah, I guess I have a sweet contemplative life where I get to write and speak and work with people about some of the things that matter to me the most, which, you know, kind of what we were touching on before is, you know, a lot of my work as an empathy trainer, opens the doors to conversations about emotional intelligence, but all of those things are informed by this interior side of ourselves that a lot of people either don't necessarily dig into, or don't feel allowed to dig into, or don't feel or they do it, but they don't feel allowed to share.And so there's a special thing that happens, you know, that I really love in my work, where I create spaces, emotional energetic spaces for folks to be able to do that exploration in a way that is both deep and cavernous, and also protected and safe and boundaried. And that is a you know, that's also a that's a balance. And it's it's fun. So, you know, I in general feel very, very lucky that I have managed to create a work product out of my life product, which has been an exploration of what it means to be a person and how to handle having this mind and heart and body in this little short time on the planet.When did you discover you could do this kind of thing, you could make a living doing this?I don't know that I do make a living. I'm kidding. I sort of.I completely identify with you.I am grateful for what I have, and I am not in a desperate situation. However, as many business owners in the beginning experience, my income is extraordinarily unstable. It is absolutely like, you know, feast or famine over here. And that's because I'm not a good business person, honestly. And I even though I know I want to be responsible and be better at it, I also don't. I think that I believe in leaning into my strengths and then finding other people or that to help me. And and I am looking for them. So that's good. But I, I am at least a little bit proud of not being good at business because I think it's the result of being, you know, at the risk of alienating some listeners, perhaps.I believe that what I'm doing is is a spiritual practice. And it's very much, um, you know, I'm not a public servant. I do it for money. But what I'm doing is for me, the purpose of what I'm doing is to open really expansive spaces for folks to deal with their humanity in a way that also transcends their humanity.Yeah. And I mean, I understand enough about your story. You kind of came in into this through ethnography. And I feel like I connect with you as a as somebody who, you know, has that practice. And so how do you how did how did ethnography lead you into this space of to where you are now? How do you what was the transition like? Or how did it how did empathy training evolve out of your experience as an ethnographer? And I don't want to ask. Yeah, that's it there.There's an answer I would give you, Peter, which is different from the answer that I would giveThere's an answer I would give you, Peter, which is different from the answer that I would give whoever might be listening. The answer I would give you, Peter, is this: When you're sitting with someone and practicing presence, practicing just being with this person, the practice of ethnography is one where I don't erase myself, but I resist myself to allow the other person to take up as much space as they can or want to. That practice of being entirely present, while being contained enough to let someone else be open, has consistently provided me with mind-bending experiences of transcendence.I said once to an intern that if you don't fall in love with every research subject, you're not doing it right. Of course, we have to contain that and be boundaried. But when I'm really present with someone, when I'm really seeing them, when I'm allowing them to be seen, and they're allowing themselves to be seen, I haven't had a research subject that I didn't love in a way that felt so infinite, it felt like it destroyed me. Maybe that might be a diagnosis I haven't gotten into yet.But for me, it has always felt like it feeds me, it nourishes me. It's something that made me want to go, "Oh, what the hell is that?" I need to know what that is and why it happens. I believe it happens for a very deep and beautiful reason, which is that the part of us which can be present, whatever consciousness is, is infinite, and may even be identical. The part of me that can get there and the part of you that I'd like to get to is actually made of the same thing. I don't teach that, but that's kind of scooting over into the spiritual aspect of the practice.The reason why I got into this work is because I kept finding that it was touching something that was so much bigger than me and bigger than work and bigger than a brand or a mission. For me, it's kind of an everything practice. The way that ethnography turned into empathy training is a story I love.It happened because I was training an intern how to do it, and accidentally developed an empathy training curriculum. I had been giving portfolio reviews at a college in Chicago. This sophomore industrial design student got really excited about ethnography. He said he wanted to learn this from me. Because of where I was in my life and my career, I didn't have the confidence to be like, "Oh, come, let me teach you."So I said, "Oh, we don't really have an internship." But he was persistent. He kept emailing me, asking if he could come to the studio, sit in on a thing, watch. He was really curious and persistent. I was a little annoyed by him, but I was also intrigued. I wondered, what does he see in me that I'm not seeing?I asked my mentor at the time about it. She said, more or less, that the credential you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need to have whatever degree; he's asked you. He's given you the credential that it takes to teach him. I'm actually writing a talk about that right now, because I think it's such a profound and beautiful way of going about it - just to be what it means to be asked.Because he asked me, I quickly pulled together an eight-week curriculum. I decided if I were to teach this kid everything I know, what would that look like? He was living in Illinois, in Wheaton, I think, and would take the train into Chicago once a week. This kid had just the most irritating case of ADHD. He was so annoying, with no attention span.I was young and easily irritated. I realized I needed to teach him how to sit still, how to shut up. I thought I was going to teach him about how to design research approaches to address particular design problems. But I realized, "Oh, I need to teach him how to just sit and listen to somebody." So we went all the way back to basics, even to the level of "Take a breath, watch the inhale, watch the exhale, and then see who's watching it. What happens when you don't watch it?" Really basic mindfulness practice. It was a beautiful summer.Darren and I are still really close friends. I officiated his wedding recently. He's just so dear to me. Because of his persistence, and because of all of the trouble that he gave me as a student, what we did is the foundation of what I do now. Others Unlimited is based on an empathy training curriculum that I built for Darren. whoever might be listening. It's just you the answer I would give you, Peter is, you know, like, you know, you know, how, when you're sitting with someone and practicing presence, practicing just being with this person, the practice of ethnography, being one where I I don't erase myself, but I resist myself to allow the other person to take up as much space as they can or want to. And that practice of being entirely present, while being contained enough to let someone else be, like open, is, has, has consistently provided me with mind bending experiences of transcendence, like just, I mean, I have, I said once to an intern that if you don't fall in love with every research subject, you're not doing it right.You know, it's really, and of course, we have to contain that and be boundaried. But but when I when I'm really present with someone, when I'm really seeing them, when I'm allowing them to be when they're allowing themselves to be seen, and I'm really seeing them, I haven't, I have not had a research subject that I didn't love in an in a way that felt so infinite, it felt like it destroyed me. And, you know, and maybe I don't know, that might be a diagnosis I haven't gotten into yet.But, but I but for me, it has always felt like it feeds me, it nourishes me. It's like, it's something that made me want to go, Oh, what the hell is that? You know, I need to know what that is. And why it is, why does that happen? And I believe it happens for a very, very deep and beautiful reason, which is that the part of us which can be present the part of us that that part, whatever consciousness is, is infinite, and, and may even be identical. Like the part of me that can get there. And the part of you that I'd like to get to is actually made of the same thing. And this is sort of, I don't teach that. But, but that's like, that's kind of scooting over into the spiritual aspect of the practice.You know, the reason why I got into this work is because I kept finding that it was touching something that was so much bigger than, than me and bigger than, than work and bigger than, you know, a brand or a mission. For me, it's kind of it's an everything practice. The way that it turned the way that ethnography turned into empathy training is that God, and I love this story.I, it happened because I was training an intern how to do it, and accidentally developed an empathy training curriculum. But the story of how that happened, I had been giving portfolio reviews at a college in when I was in Chicago. And this little sophomore industrial design student got really excited about ethnography. And he said, you know, I want to learn this from you. And I didn't, because of where I was in my life. And in my career, like, I didn't have the confidence to be like, Oh, come, you know, let me teach you.And, and so I was like, Oh, we don't really have an internship. And, and he was persistent. And he kept, he kept emailing me, I was like, Well, can I just come to the studio and can I sit in on a thing? Can I watch? He was really curious. He was really persistent. And, and I was I was a little annoyed by him. But also, I was really annoyed by him. But I also was intrigued, like, what does he see in me that I'm not seeing, you know?And I asked my mentor at the time, I told her about it. And she said, in in more or less, she said, the, the credential that you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need toHere's the continuation of the cleaned-up transcript:And I asked my mentor at the time, I told her about it. And she said, in more or less, she said, the credential that you need to teach is to be asked to teach. You don't need to have whatever degree he's asked to you. He's given you the credential that it takes to teach him. And so, which honestly, I'm actually writing a talk about that right now, because I think it's such a profound and beautiful kind of way of going about it, you know, just to be what it means to be asked.And so, because he asked me, I, you know, just real quick pulled right out of myself an eight-week curriculum, I decided if I were to teach this kid everything I know, what does that look like? And I put together an eight-week curriculum teaching him. And he, you know, he was living in Illinois, in Wheaton, I think, and would take the train into Chicago once a week. And this kid had just the most irritating case of ADHD. I mean, absolutely. He was so annoying. No attention span.And he was just, it was and I was, you know, I was also young and easily irritated. And I realized I needed to teach him how to sit still. I needed to teach him how to shut up. I needed like, I was just like, Darren, listen to me. And because of that, I thought I was going to teach him about how to design research approaches in order to address particular design problems. And I was like, Oh, I need to teach him how to just sit and listen to somebody, you know, and so we went all the way back like to basic, basic, basic, and even to the level of take a breath, watch the inhale, watch the exhale, what and then see who's watching it. What happens when you don't watch it? Like really basic mindfulness practice. And it was a beautiful summer.Darren and I are still really close friends. I officiated his wedding recently. And we're he's just so dear to me. Like, he, he because of his persistence, and because of all of the trouble that he gave me as a student, what we did is the foundation of what I do now. Others Unlimited is based on an empathy training curriculum that I built for Darren.Yeah.And I'm, you know, I'm so grateful to him, you know, we've given each other a lot. So that is the behind the scenes answer to how it happened.Yeah. And how do you think about empathy? How do you talk about empathy? I mean, this is an annoying definitional question. But I'm just curious how you talk about it.I usually talk about it in a way that starts with, you're probably thinking of it wrong. I mean, I don't say those words. But most people when they're talking about empathy, they're actually talking about compassion. And I'm not talking about that. So compassion is really compassion is a is a byproduct of empathy practice. And it's a cool thing. I'm not against compassion. But I don't teach compassion for a couple of reasons.Number one, compassion is almost always offered and inspired by suffering. And practicing empathy can be done with anyone, whether or not they are suffering. Compassion is primarily directed toward pain. Empathy doesn't require anyone to be hurt, which is great. The other thing is that compassion is often an emotional experience. And many people that I teach, for all kinds of reasons, including neurodiversity, do not necessarily feel that that is the easiest door to walk through. And so, for people who don't feel warm and fuzzy, or for people who don't feel or for people who don't even understand what you mean by feel, it's more accessible to teach it as a cognitive practice.The other reason I don't teach compassion is because it can have moral implications, which, which then get into who deserves my compassion? Where should my compassion be directed? And frankly, f**k that. So I teach cognitive empathy practice, which is simply the practice of non-judgmental curiosity. This is and this is what ethnographic research is, non-judgmental curiosity and perspective taking. And those cognitive practices can be entered into by any person with any kind of mind.They can also be offered to any person with any kind of mind. They don't require agreement with someone, I don't have to like you, I don't have to, I don't even have to wish you out of pain. I don't have to agree with you or even want to agree with you. But if I practice non-judgmental curious perspective taking, then I can at least understand you better, which may actually empower me to influence you, negotiate with you, manipulate you. Empathy practice as I teach it can be used for evil if you wish. It is, it is entirely amoral.And most people that I speak to and most writing and speaking that I see about empathy does not approach it that way.It approaches it more as compassion is what you're saying.Yes. And what, I mean, that's so much you said that I'm interested in following up on. I'm gonna, the first thing that comes to mind is that perspective taking, which reminded me of a paper I think I read by Nicholas Epley about perspective mistaking, you know, and he was making the case for getting perspective, right? As opposed to the practice, because I feel like, I guess I'm wondering the degree, like when people reach out to you, what are they asking? What problem are they asking you to solve? Like who comes to you and who do you want to help? And just in his, his, he was studying the difference, I guess, in a lot of organizations, I'm talking about the use of personas and I've heard for empathy, the empathy I've heard and read about empathy as being something one can do alone in thinking about somebody else. So you can have a persona, right? And you can just sort of imagine the experience of another person versus I think he goes, he, I think he called it perspective getting, you know what I mean? It was like, go ask them. You're going to be, you're going to get better. You're going to get better input if you ask the person as opposed to use this, this, this idea that empathy is, is imaginative and can be done all alone. And so I guess my question now that I've discovered what it actually is, is, is empathy something that one can do alone? And, or what do we call that? What is empathy in when you're actually interacting with another person?Yeah. I just had to take a couple notes while you're talking. Cause you said like 15 trigger words to me, but I, I want to I think perspective getting is a really great reframe because it's active.Yeah.Perspective taking. Yeah. It, it, it, yeah. It's just, it's such a shuttle subtle shift, but it's really, that's really, really good. I love perspective getting and I like perspective of mistaking. So one of my, one of my little pet peeves is the concept of the empath, which is typically understood as a person with some kind of innate ability to perceive the feelings of other people, which is b******t. You can bleed that if you need to bleed that. It's, I understand the concept of someone who is energetically sensitive. I am energetically sensitive myself, but when the moment that I decide or believe that what I'm feeling is what you're feeling, I have completely erased you. I'm defining you in terms of me and I'm, I'm shutting down curiosity. And this is why, you know, a lot of us, the very common common attempt to empathize is that feeling when in a story, someone tells you something that you recognize and you say, me too, me too. Like I've had the same experience and, and, and, and that's also criticized highly. And I'm saying there's nothing wrong with doing that. But my thing that I say is if you think, you know, ask more questions till you don't just keep asking until you find how it's different. You're like, Oh yeah, your father died and you felt this way. My father died and I felt that way. Okay. Don't go. Yes, I know. And then stop, ask more questions until you find out how it's different. How is their experience unique from yours? That's what, that's what real perspective getting is when you, when you can acknowledge other other person's singularity, because it's not, yes, we have shared things and it's nice to share things, but when we just assume what I feel is what you feel, there's no curiosity and there's no real understanding.Yeah. My, uh, I did, I interviewed this guy, Michael Lipson. And I remember he described that phenomenon as collapsing into oneself and that thing where you just sort of, and it's a closing. I really, really connect with your description of that. I am curious about what were the trigger words? What trigger words did I use then?Oh, personas was a big one.Yeah. Yeah. Talk, tell me about personas.Oh, but also I wanted to get back to like, who comes to me and why they come to me because that's, well, that's related to personas actually. So can I start there?Wherever you want to be.Um, a lot of different kinds of people come to me. Uh, and so the answer to who comes to me and the answer to who I want to come to me are different, but, um, when let's, let's go ahead and start with like when an ideal client comes to me, that person is usually there, there are basically two different tracks of work that I do. One is on understanding customers, how, how a brand or a business can understand their audience. The other is internal. So how can our team collaborate, communicate better? So there's an external focused empathy and there's an internal focused empathy for a company.And I can, um, I like to work in both ways. The, you know, secret spoilers that it's the exact same skillset. It's just like applied differently, but, um, and you can do one thing and actually get the side benefit of getting more, getting better at the other. So you can go in through either door and it kind of, they influence each other. It's really great. Uh, the, the truer, more honest and funny answer is that usually when someone comes to me, it's because a specific person in their company is, um, shitty and they're like, can you fix this person? And the answer is always no.So someone comes to me because they're like, we have someone on our team who has the way that they say it is has no empathy. And, and I also don't like that. This is another trigger word for me is has no empathy. Like empathy is an object, like a noun that you have, or you don't have. And I, I insist that it's a, that a practice, that it's an active thing. It's something that you do or don't do. It's not something that you have or don't have. And when people say there's someone on our team or whatever that has no empathy. So we want you to come and fix it.And, uh, and when I, when I'm feeling, you know, cheeky and confident, I usually kind of spend some time with that person to get them to realize that, um, if you think that someone refuses to empathize with you, you probably are also refusing to empathize with them. Probably because it's, if you did, if you were really practicing that you wouldn't, first of all, be as irritated by it because you'd understand more about what that person, why that person is behaving in the way that they're behaving. But the other thing is that, I mean, there's just very, this like really universal, universal to the degree of being cliche truth that you can't change anybody else. The only person that you can change is yourself. The only person who can practice is yourself.I can't make anyone practice. And I, and I do say in the workshop too, that, you know, when we start to talk about the practice and I ask people to, to imagine, you know, if there, if there is, is there somebody in the room who you kind of hope is really paying attention right now? Because that person probably hopes you're paying attention. It's so real. It's like, you know, it's why AA and Al-Anon are almost the same program, you know, because the person who wants the person to change needs to do the same work.I'm curious about how I feel like what you're doing is really making the invisible visible. And I guess you've talked about this in a way, like my experience is that when, at least I feel like that when it's done well, right, it becomes invisible, right? So I feel like clients have seen me work and they just think I'm super nice. You know what I mean? It just becomes like, I'm just a good guy who lets people talk about themselves. And so any kind of, any kind of skill set kind of just disappears and it becomes, gosh, that Peter, he's just an empathetic guy. He's got, he's so empathetic. You know what I mean? And so, but I feel like that causes real problems for organizations that want to learn because it's not something that seems real or that you can teach or that you can train or that you can turn into sort of a formal practice. And so I guess, how do you feel about, about that?Yeah, there is the thing of, I think about that, that phrase, good design is invisible. It's like when it's done really well, it's, you know, when it's really frictionless, you don't notice it. And I think that sounds like a lot of what you're experiencing when, when you're doing the work, people just kind of assume that you're a wonderful person. Though, I will tell you that I did get a little gender bias resentment because I'm like, oh yeah, men always get praised when they don't act like total dicks. They're like, oh, you must be enlightened or amazing or really, really kind. Where no one says that about me. They just assume I'm a woman.It's true. I benefit from a low bar.Yeah, that's correct. But wait, what was the question?I guess I was asking if you feel how, to what degree does the organization value empathy as a practice? And do you, is it difficult to make this kind of thing visible as a practice?How do it's it's awkward, like making it visible has the clunkiness of, you know, frameworks with names and, and diagrams. And like, this is what that is called and we're doing this now. And even though that all those words are unnecessary constructs, they help a team to have a shared vocabulary for like, oh, I know what we're doing now because Karen taught us this tool. And that's what this is. That's what we're doing. And so giving the, giving the practice names and frameworks and, and, and that stuff is the way that it sort of makes it a little more concrete.However, you know, for some, and I've gotten the comment a lot like, well, yeah, we can practice this right now. But in real life, you know, when we really have these conflicts or when, when the, when the real argument happens, that's not how it goes. And, or just because like, I'm practicing, but that person isn't responding the way that you, that you taught us to respond. So like, what do I, and, and so, you know, what I say about that is you don't practice like you play. And in the same way that a, that an athlete trains with all these other, other machinery and different, you know, different resistance bands and weights and like all the kinds of stuff that, that that's not on the field, you know, that's not in the game that we practice with very clunky tools.And we're like, yeah, we're going to do it in an awkward way first, where we're going to go through step by step and do this in a, in a kind of way that feels unnatural and that feels, you know, inauthentic, but it's a practice. So we're going to practice through it. But then when you're in the game, who knows what's going to happen? You know, that someone could fly off the handle, someone could break down into tears. That's not a, you know, we didn't write that in the script. And so it's like, how do you handle this? And it's just the more practice you have, the more ability you, you gain to be able to improvise those tough moments.Yeah. And what, what is happening? What, how do you know when your work is done? That's sort of a, sort of a two grand construction.It is not done. It is never done.Right.I mean, that's bad news.So, and I guess I'm, I'm selfishly laying on top of this conversation and your work, some of my own sort of questions about what is the actual value of qualitative? You know what I mean? Like the kinds of learned, what?How dare you?I know I'm, I'm just, I'm self-interested, but I'm, I'm curious, like what, how do you think about the value that you bring to an organization? I mean, this is in the context of, you know, big data, you know what I mean? LLMs, like everybody's just, they're just drink, they're drinking at the fire hose of quant data, right? And there's no, there isn't a framework for, for valuing, generally speaking, qualitative research or the kinds of understanding that it brings. And so I wonder how do you, what would you say? What's your sense of the difference between the kind of team or understanding that gets created when a team is, has empathy or has a practice of empathy versus a team that doesn't have a practice of empathy, that hasn't gone through a process of trying to learn how to understand or communicate with each other better?This question really illuminates my, the conflict I have around being a business person with a, with a spiritual practice, because while I wouldn't really want my clients to hear me say this, I don't care what the value is monetarily. I know they do, and I can measure it for them sometimes. You know, I can tell you that if, if only one of your employees doesn't quit this year because of cultural problems or conflict, you will save probably $160,000 to $180,000, which is more than I charge. So, you know, so I'm like, I can tell you for the culture, just the attrition management benefit is very valuable.For the, for the, for the product or the service or the brand or whatever it, whatever it is that you need to connect with your customer about, those benefits are so extremely valued, valuable, they're very difficult to measure because we're talking about developing brand loyalty or a customer really actually feeling cared about or caring about a brand in a way that is very, very difficult to measure over time. But some people do measure it. I just, I truly don't care enough, but there's a, but there's, you know, the other thing of just connecting deeper means making better products and also solving problems from a point of view of in a more integral way.I give an example a lot. I use this contact lens solution called Clear Care, and it's the best one. If you wear contacts, it's the only contact lens solution that's worth a s**t. It cleans your contacts so well that you can keep the disposables for like six times as long as you're supposed to, because it really gets everything off of them. It does that because it has peroxide in it. You've got to leave it in the solution for six whole hours before you put them back in, or you'll burn the living s**t out of your eyes.Now, I know this because I have done this. There are other rules too. Like if the case tips over or if something... There are so many different ways that you can make a mistake and burn your eyes very badly. I have done it so many times. I know I'm not the only one because every couple of years, they put another warning label on the bottle or on the box. This box and this bottle are just covered in red warning labels everywhere. The cap is red and everything's red. It's all just like, "This is so dangerous."It's not working. Now, why is it not working? Well, this is a problem that is multifaceted. Number one, why are you sending this problem to graphic design when contact lens users definitively do not see well without their contacts? That's one thing. The other thing is, when am I doing this? Late at night when I'm really tired. This bottle is shaped exactly like, feels exactly like a bottle of saline, which is perfectly safe to pour directly into your eye.There are so many design flaws with this solution, and so I ask, when I use this example when I'm teaching, I ask people, "What does this solution tell you about Clear Care's values?" Everyone knows immediately, they're only caring about protecting themselves from liability. They don't give a s**t if I hurt my eyes. They don't care. They just want to make sure that their ass is covered. So I tell people, your customer knows. Your design will rat you out. Your customer knows whether you care about them or whether you even know them.Clear Care either doesn't know or doesn't care, but I know they know it's still happening because they keep making that bottle more red. For me, knowing your customer, learning about your customer, connecting with your customer, understanding why my customer is even my customer, what they care about, what they value, what they're afraid of, what matters to them, will change - should change - the way you do business, the way you solve problems, the way you market, the way you build solutions.If and when you do that, the rewards, the loyalty from that, and the greater good of that are absolutely immeasurable. If you don't care about that, then honestly, I don't want to work with you anyway. I'm not here to measure that stuff. My clients are people that already know that it matters. For me, the value is not monetary. The value is unnameable, unutterable. That's why it scoots into the spiritual lane for me, because I do feel that what I'm teaching, practicing, and trying to share is truly unconditional love. I never say that to a client because usually it makes them sweaty. But that's what it is.In what way is it unconditional love?Well, I think that's what... They say that, what is it, 78% of atoms are space, right? It's like mostly space. We're mostly made of things that are mostly space. What's in that space? What's in there? I think it is the energy that makes things alive. And I think the energy that makes things alive is love. I do not believe that love is necessarily good or soft. I think that love can be quite harsh and brutal, like nature requires some violence, requires some decay. But for me, the life force and the love force are the same force.And that force is, I think, what I feel kind of surge through me when I'm just in presence with someone. And that force is very powerful and very creative. And when you allow that force to come through, what you get is creative power. That's good for business. You know what I mean? And so, I know that when I speak about this, and I'm only speaking about this with you because you're you. And I might even, when you share this with people, I might get crossed off some lists, but I have to be honest about where I'm coming from.I mean, some people want to solve symptoms. I want to go all the way. Some people want to build better products or make money better. I want to go all the way. I'm not interested in surface symptoms. I'm interested in what I do taps into an infinite source of power and creativity. And if you're interested in that, come on over. If not, do whatever f*****g s**t you're doing. I don't care.This is like a hundred percent the reason why I wanted to talk to you. And I mean, I love that. I mean, that's just beautiful. And I agree and, and co-sign a hundred and a hundred percent on the idea and everything you've just said in particular, the idea of, I mean, creative power is really, really staggering. I mean, so much of this conversation series for me is, you know, trying to have other people tell me why, what I do is, is useful. Do you know what I mean? And because it is such a strange time and there are so many other easier ways that organizations can go about trying to get creative or be creative or learn or understand. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's a beautiful articulation and I totally agree. It's wonderful.Thanks. I wish I had the, I remember long ago, like hearing some kind of, I don't even know if it's true, but some like kind of business lore stories about people kind of offering their services for free and just being like, you know what, in a year pay me what it was worth to you.Right.And, and I, you know, the story, the legends that I hear are like, oh, and then it was worth $5 million or whatever. And I would love to have the confidence and financial flexibility to be able to do that. And maybe one day I will, but I would love to just tell a client, let me do what I do. And then, then you tell me because I promise you it won't be unnoticeable.Yeah. That's interesting.But I don't, I don't like math a lot, so.I mean, I think we both sort of got lost in the pause of the, of the, the non-mathematic trying to imagine a contract that would make that real. I'm trying to think what else I want to talk to you about. What do you love about the work? I feel like it's all you've been talking about, but where's the joy in it for you?Where isn't it? I mean, the joy is my kind of standard Empathy 101 workshop that I start everybody with. It involves putting people in pairs and giving them some techniques to sort of interview one another. It's not the right word, but it's a little bit shorthand. And when they practice this with each other, I ring the little bell when it's time to stop and they look back at me and their faces are open and bright. Some of them have tears in their eyes and some of them are grinning and some of them are laughing and some of them are just stunned and that's it.When I'm like, "Oh, they did it," that's what it looks like when you look someone in the eye and you connect with them. And it's not, I don't do it in a weird, spooky way where there's forced eye contact. It's not that. I just have them listen to each other. Just pay attention, pay attention to someone for a few minutes without interjecting yourself and really just open yourself to receiving whatever they might have to offer. And then also reverse that and get the experience of that happening.And then they look back at me and it's even more profound when I do it on Zoom. Because we come back out of the breakout rooms and I have a whole screen full of faces that are all just like, "Oh, it just happened." And I'm like, "Yeah." I'm not allowed to say so in my professional life, but that's love. They just experienced love. And for me, that's what it is.And unconditional love is really cool because so many people celebrate romantic love, which is honestly the shittiest kind. It's super conditional. Unconditional is so great because it's limitless and able to exchange with anyone, and so surprising. Everyone's always stunned because they're like, "I don't even, I'm not attracted to this person. I don't like this person. I have nothing to gain from this person. And I kind of would die for them right now." You know, it's just like, "What?" It's like, "Yeah, that's what it is. That's what it is."Cool. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. And, uh, I really appreciate you accepting the invitation. It's been a lot of fun. So thank you. Yeah.Thanks for being willing to hear all of this.Oh, absolutely. Oh my gosh. It's great. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel is the Senior Lead of Global Insights at Reddit, and a cultural theorist, writer, and strategist specializing in inclusivity within marketing, media, and tech. With a PhD from Duke University, she's a senior insights lead at Reddit and has advised global brands like Nike and Disney. Her book, "Cultural Intelligence for Marketers: Building an Inclusive Marketing Strategy," offers a practical guide to navigating the intersection of cultural shifts and commercial purpose. I start all these interviews with the same question. I use this in my work actually, too, with a question I borrowed from a friend of mine. She's an oral historian and she helps people tell their story. I steal it because it's such a beautiful question. But because it's such a beautiful question, I kind of over-explain it. So before I ask, I want you to know that you're in total control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. All right. And so the question is, where do you come from?What a question. A beautiful question, indeed. And a complicated one. My mind goes to thinking about my immigrant story and how the question of where do you come from can be complicated and at times painful. And I suppose painful, not in a kind of cringy way, but in a beautiful way, because it points to the complexity of human experience.It's a complicated question for me primarily because I'm not only an immigrant, but I'm somebody who left home by myself when I was still a minor. I had just turned 16 when I left my family and my home behind. And what one would refer to as where I come from.So there is no straightforward answer to that question, because where I come from is both there and here and in other places as somebody who has crossed borders from a rather young age. But from a genealogical point of view, I come from Eastern Europe. And I suppose I like to think about the genealogies of struggle that I come from.And that's something that I speak and write about quite a bit. And I like the word struggle because it can be taken up as something to describe adversity or difficulty or struggling to endure certain conditions. And I come from genealogies of people who struggled and survived under occupation and war and living decades under authoritarian rule.So where I come from is defined by those repressive histories and being born into a repressed society. But I also think about where I come from from my experience of being in struggle. And so when I answer that question, I would always say, well, I come from Eastern Europe, but I also come from the US South and Durham, North Carolina, which is where I was part of a lot of political and social movements that have been my political home that are not genealogically where I come from, but politically and in terms of my values are a home that raised me and that shaped me into who I am. So this is my way of answering that question, I suppose.Yeah, it's beautiful. Do you have a memory of being a child and like what you wanted to be when you grew up? Do you have a recollection of what you kind of wanted to be?Yeah, so interesting to say that out loud, given the current political environment we're in and the electoral politics in the United States. When I was growing up, I was convinced I would be the president of Latvia, which is—I'm not sure if I actually mentioned. I said maybe Eastern Europe, but I grew up in Latvia.And I was growing up when the first female president of Latvia was in office in the late 90s. And that was my vision for myself and something that I was completely convinced of. And it was an interesting contradiction of living in a cultural and social environment where no one had ever told me that I couldn't.But there were also a lot of different repressive ideas around what it means to be a girl and who you're supposed to become. So I had a grand dream of being the president of my country. And that was that was my first aspiration.And I have since admittedly become a little bit more skeptical of electoral politics.What was the impact of that, just the impact of seeing a woman as the leader of your country? Do you remember how significant that was or what it felt like?I think on some subconscious level, and I should clarify, I was like six or eight years old. So on a subconscious level, it did open up possibilities for me of what was possible. It was never necessarily positioned to me that a girl is not supposed to be a leader.However, a contradiction exists when you exhibit leadership qualities as a girl in post-Soviet Latvia in Eastern Europe. It becomes more of a problem that you realize. But growing up, it did, I suppose, give me an idea that I could be anybody and I could achieve whatever I wanted to.No one ever told me that that was an unattainable position. So I suppose it impacted me even at a very young age and subconscious level of seeing somebody that I saw as my role model and how that has influenced me and shaped me and my passion for women's empowerment.Yeah. So where are you now? Tell me a little bit about where you're located and what you are up to these days.I am located in Birmingham, Alabama, in the south of the United States. And as I said, home is here and there and everywhere. So where you come from is a complicated question.But this has been my new home for the last almost three years now, going on third year. I'm here because my spouse also has an immigrant story. He is a son of Haitian immigrants who is pursuing his neurosurgical career here in Birmingham, Alabama.So I'm here supporting his immigrant dreams. And meanwhile, I continue my work primarily in brand research and cultural strategy. I work within or I have been working within the space since leaving the academy, which was another home of mine for many, many years.Yeah. When did you first encounter the idea that you could make a living doing this thing called brand consulting or brand strategy?Very late into the beginning of my career. In fact, it was not only not on the horizon, it was not within the realm of my consciousness, in the least for most of my academic slash activist career. As I alluded to, I've been part of a lot of social movements and political causes.And for the longest time, I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. And in fact, I would probably be the person to critique and boycott brands and in other ways, challenge what brands were doing, which I'd like to hope now makes me a better strategist and a better marketer. Just understanding the spectrum of how people see brands.And it first occurred to me at the end of my doctoral training in 2019, when I started exploring career paths outside of academia, I trained in cultural studies and specifically in Black Studies and Feminist Studies. And I joined a brand-a-thon at the beginning of the pandemic that was focused on creating ideas and coming up with creative campaigns to encourage mask wearing, specifically in predominantly conservative states. And so that was my first exposure, real hands-on exposure, besides thinking about media studies and brands and advertising as part of cultural production and pop culture.It was the first time I became aware of the role that I can play in shaping behavioral adoption and driving cultural ideas. And so from there on after, it was a straight line for me or a straight journey into cultural research and strategy.Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about the kind of clients you work for and the kind of questions that come to you with? Yeah, what kind of work are you doing?Currently, my work has shifted because I went in-house and I'm currently an insights lead at Reddit. And so a lot of my work is actually more so in the realm of what I would call digital topology, studying online communities and essentially supporting Reddit's ad business and supporting our clients across a variety of verticals from financial services to travel to CPG to tech and in identifying communities online that align with their needs as a business, right? And reaching those communities and engaging them.Prior to Reddit though, I was a consultant and I worked in cultural research and innovation strategy. So a lot of my work involved applying semiotics, cultural analysis and media studies to help brands understand and uncover areas of opportunity, reposition their brands in line with emergent trends as well as identify insight related to overlooked audiences. So much of what I focused on was drawing on my black feminist studies training, gender sexuality studies training and critical race studies training to help brand clients like Nike, Hinge, Amex, Disney, etc. activate with consumer segments that they might have overlooked in the past.What do you love about the work? Like where's the joy in it for you?The joy is truly in understanding the power of culture and more specifically the power of brands and culture and the kind of influence that brands as producers of media have in the world. I find that in marketing and in brand strategy specifically, we talk quite frequently about trends and what trends can do for brands and what culture can do for brands. But I find that the conversation about what brands can do for culture is there but comparatively not as explored or not as rigorous and top of mind for us.And so I find joy in really bringing that to the forefront both as a practitioner now but also as an academic and somebody who passionately believes in the role of public intellectual work and thought leadership to change the discourse to shift and advance standards in the industry and in a profession. And my joy and my mission is really to bring to the forefront the kind of impact and influence that marketing has in culture, the kind of influence that brands have on shaping consumers behaviors and practices, norms and values, stereotypes, narratives that we see, and so on and so forth.I really resonate with everything you just said. And I remember, it just occurred to me, I remember feeling like brand was the idea I always had in my head. It was like a Trojan horse that you could just smuggle in all these big beautiful ideas into the corporate sphere because brand is this sort of shared entity, right?And I don't know if I'm not, I mean, that's what came to my mind. I don't mean to impose that on you. But I thought, I love how you said, we don't often really talk about what brands do for culture.So I wanted to just sort of start at first principles because you also point out that maybe even the advertising and marketing world doesn't really talk insistently about what culture is. So what is, how do you define culture and what do brands do in culture?I think of culture as an organizing system of beliefs, values, norms, expectations that we have or ourselves and each other. And the kind of meaning making that we are engaged in every day to make sense of the world, to understand it, to interact with it and to establish what is normal, what is valued, what is holy, what is forbidden, what is acceptable, what is celebrated, what is excluded and so on. And so it is an ecosystem of practices and behaviors that we have taken for granted and we have inherited.And one way I think about it is the moment we are born, there's so much that goes even to the words, it's a boy or it's a girl. From the moment we come into this world, we are inundated with these sets of ideas, expectations around who we are, what we might be interested in. Thankfully, that's changing because culture is ever evolving.But those kind of cultural scripts or rules are something that we inherit, adopt and then perpetuate from the time we are born. And to me, that's so powerful. And that's also so overwhelming in a sense, because everything around us is culture, which is why it's so hard to define it.And when I think of brands' involvement in that, it seems to me pretty obvious because brands do use storytelling and representation to appeal to what we care about, what we desire, what we aspire to. I was just getting ads for cars and different kind of new models, right? Even the stories and narrative aspiration of what we want is embedded in those kind of stories that we are consuming through mass media, including advertising.And so then there is such an undeniable symbiotic relationship between mass media, including advertising, that draws on culture as a material for inspiration and also for behavioral manipulation, right? In convincing people to behave in certain ways, to buy, etc. So I know I answered a little bit more than you asked, but that is why I think culture is so relevant to what we do.I mean, this seems particularly challenging as change is happening so quickly, right? And the responsibility for brands to sort of participate in a meaningful way is, you know, the last 10 years has been this really challenging time for brands who are accustomed to maybe not assuming that kind of responsibility for meaning and for culture. Who gets it well and who doesn't get it well? I mean, you've written this book, Cultural Intelligence, right? To give people a guide. I mean, what kind of guidance do you give to brands on how to decide the role they play in culture?I'm not sure that there is a brand that I think does it perfectly or I think is a brand that gets it all the way right. And I think part of that, now that I have transitioned from academia into commercial world with both my feet, I realize part of what we as marketers and people of conscience, people who want to do commercially viable but also responsible work are dealing with is constraints of the system, right? And we're talking about brands that are part of businesses that are looking to not make social impact per se in their work, but to make commercial impact.And so when I think about what brands could be doing better or what brands in my view should be doing or rather marketers and brand leaders who are in charge of these brands is to actually reckon with the history of advertising. And I'm going to pivot a little bit the question or my answer to the question because that's something that I really want to talk about and what I described in the book, which is the long history of the relationship between representation, inclusion, social responsibility and brands that actually started way, way, way before than 10 years ago or 15 years ago when so-called brand purpose or social purpose entered the marketing arena. And currently I am on the hunt for this letter that one of the civil rights leaders actually sent to the CEO of Coca-Cola in the mid sixties demanding better representation for black Americans and threatening boycotts.So on the contrary, now we have in the last year or so a lot of research coming out about boycotts, about brands facing pressures from consumers to do better, to be more inclusive, to be more socially responsible. Well, those calls have been coming from the margins all along. And the difference was that in the sixties, those consumers segments were not seen as influential.We're not seen as worthy of listening to. And what we're now seeing is that people who care about these values and care about engaging in culture and with culture in a matter that's conscious and responsible have the power of the dollar behind them. So I think to be a conscious marketer and a brand leader, one has to really reckon with the history that has been erased and that has been sidelined and has been overlooked in marketing and advertising so much so that if you talk to an average marketer in our industry, they likely wouldn't even know that there's a long history of brands being implicated in the civil rights struggle in this country where there has been so much struggle to my earlier point about the word struggle in regards to demanding that brands act more responsible.I probably didn't answer your question, but I found that important to mention because I do get a lot of questions around which brands are doing it well. And I guess my answer just to summarize is that I don't know if as an industry we're doing good enough.Yeah, yeah. There's a therapist I quote often, Harlene Anderson. She is instructing her students on becoming therapists, and describes questions as conversational and not to be asked to get an answer, but to be asked as a way of participating in a conversation. So I have no expectation of getting any answers. I'm really just here to see what happens when I ask a question. I love it. I wanna, you came back to that idea of struggle and I just, I would love, are there examples or stories that you have about the struggle? What am I asking? Cause I think this is like to the point, like I came into this work with this really ideal about the Trojan horse, that there was a way in which some sort of understanding of the people on the other side of the transaction would transform the way brands operate in culture and in the world. They would sort of assume responsibility for being better. Are there any examples of brands doing this well or at least leaning in the right direction or what, yeah, what do you tell a brand leader who wants to guide their brand in this direction? What kinds of activities can they do to try to steer their brand in the right direction?There are certainly examples of brands that I talk about often. In the book, I talk about Billie, which is a razor brand. So they started as a startup around 2018, around that time, if I'm not mistaken.And they are one of the brands that I mention nearly in every interview that I do because I think they are a prime example of what it means for a brand to transform culture or to participate in culture in a way that carves out commercial advantage while also responding to the cultural movement and, in fact, leading the cultural conversation.So for those who might not be familiar with Billie, Billie is a brand that was one of the first to put out campaigns around their direct-to-consumer, at that time, direct-to-consumer razor products and show women and their natural body hair in depictions of women using razor blades, right? Razor products.And if you go back to the archives, so to say, of the 2018, 2019 culture conversation, it was seen as offensive, as rather outrageous, and certainly as groundbreaking. And they really left a mark on the category and they really broke into the category with something that wasn't yet normal and normalized in the way that it is now. Now that body positivity and body acceptance, size inclusivity, all ofthese things are being taken up by brands widely, but they saw that opportunity.They identified what their consumers were yearning for that was missing from the category. They pinpointed where the culture was headed and they showed up with a product and a narrative around that product that really registered emotionally with women who have never seen their own body hair on the screen or in an ad. So that is an example, I think, of a brand that combined commercial opportunity with a cultural opportunity and leveraged it for the benefit of the business.Now you can see Billie in Target. And if you go to the razor aisle, you'll see a bunch of other brands who look like Billie and try to emulate Billie, and have come after Billie. And so they have done that for commercial advantage, but also they shifted cultural conversation in a way that is really meaningful, but also really positive for representation that women and particularly young girls are now consuming when they are exposed to mass media, including marketing and advertising as they're coming of age.Yeah. I wanna get to, because my newsletter is called THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING and you've used the word meaning in meaning making, what does meaning mean? When you use that word, what are we actually talking about when we talk about meaning? What does that word meaning mean for you?What does the word meaning mean to me? To me, it immediately evokes this notion of ideology, which I'm very attached to as a classically trained cultural theorist, as somebody who finds value in semiotics, not only for academic inquiry, but also for business and commercial innovation. And meaning is truly how we make sense of the world.It's how we assign value to things around us and how we make sense and define things. If I mentioned the word red, it evokes so many things. And if you ask me, if you give your answer, and if we ask a bunch of other people what they associate with the color red, we're likely to get somewhat similar responses.Red, the color of passion and love. Red as in stop, right? Red as in tomato, right? If I wear a red lipstick, that projects a certain image. So in that small example, I think meaning is all about how we make sense of things. But most importantly, meaning is shared.And in that sense, meaning is a shared system of what we might call representation. Because when you and I look at the red stop sign, we interpret it in the same way. And when we look at the red rose, we also are likely going to interpret it in the same way.So all that is to say that meaning is shared. And meaning is the kind of web of signs and symbols that we all require to make sense of our condition, of our interactions, and move through the world.Yeah. Do you have, what's your sort of methodology in terms of research? How do you get smart about the meaning of a brand or, yeah, the state of a category? What's your sort of preferred methodologies? And of course, I'm totally self-interested and will eventually ask you about the role of qualitative and ethnography and all that stuff.The approach that I like to take is very interdisciplinary. So a lot of what I rely on is semiotics as a tool for understanding how culture is manifested, how is it shifting through the collection of signals and analysis of visual and verbal cues. And that might mean desk research, which I know a lot of times can get bad rep in marketing and strategy circles, specifically when we're pressed for time and we are looking for that stat to put in a pitch deck or something like that.But I'm really thinking of desk research in terms of media and cultural analysis, gathering materials from social media, from pop culture, from politics, and really creating a mosaic of cultural artifacts and then looking for patterns that evolve in that picture of what is transpiring within culture or category. And specifically in category and brand analysis, I rely a lot on visual analysis of cues and signs and symbols that show up in everything from ad campaigns and ad narratives to product packaging and visual cues used by the brands. So that's kind of one way of approaching it.And then additionally, I do discourse analysis. So as I mentioned, currently I work for a social media company. So a lot of that has to do with understanding online conversations, what is happening, conducting social listening.And that's where we see some of the quant tools enter where we are not only trying to analyze the conversation by reading, analyzing the themes, narratives that emerge, but also the quantitative element of mentions, conversation volume, growth of certain communities, etc. So those are some of the methods that come to mind. And I do also have some experience in ethnographic research and direct consumer research, which I do less of now that I am with an online social media platform, but have done extensively in the past and find it so important, particularly when it comes to uncovering insights from people and groups of consumers that have been historically overlooked in advertising and marketing.What's your sense of the difference between the kind of learning or the kind of understanding you get from a semiotic analysis or discourse analysis and what you get from a conversation or an ethnographic interview?Such a good question. I write about that a little bit in the book. I find that the challenge that strategists, marketers, researchers face within the commercial context is that oftentimes, in my experience, working in various contexts, we expect people to give us the analysis of culture or the analysis of a category. The worth, the value of qualitative research is to hear people's stories and how they themselves make sense of their condition, of their lived experiences, of their reasoning, of their interactions. Which I think is very useful for finding that special insight that might be bubbling under the surface. It's not very obvious.And understand how people think about their experiences. Because at the end of the day, to me, if I am interviewing somebody, if I am talking to them about their experience, whether with a product or a category or a cultural topic, it's really understanding their experience of it, their subjectivity, their way of seeing the world.When I think about semiotics as a tool, I'm thinking more of a systematic analysis of what is being represented in media. And in part, what that person that I'm talking to is consuming, what is shaping their perceptions, what is shaping the kind of narratives that they are exposed to through media, through politics, through conversations online, through mass marketing, et cetera. The visuals that they receive. So in some ways, perhaps we can think about, or I think about, the qualitative ethnographic approach as bottom up and then semiotic approach as more of a top down where we are more focused on these kind of macro narratives that are shaping the cultural discourse.Yeah, that's beautiful. Can you tell me just a little bit about semiotics? Not everybody really knows what that is. I think it's sort of a, like everybody in the UK knows what it is and practices it. But in the States, it's not something you kind of bump into all that often. I mean, more and more, it's true.Well, funny enough, when I was consulting, I worked primarily with UK agencies, which is a great pain point for me because I do believe that semiotics has immense commercial value and is absolutely underappreciated in the US marketing circles, primarily because I suppose it's not as scientific, even though semiotics is an art and a science. And the way to understand semiotics is to think of it as a study of representation. So semiotics really is concerned with analyzing signs and symbols that we see around us.And it could be something as simple as a milk packaging, milk package, milk packet, or something as grand and macro as a presidential ad campaign, right? So we are looking at the way things are represented and the way that meaning is encoded in those forms of representation. So other ways to think about it is to ask, how is meaning, or in other words, messaging, to use more simple language, communicated in direct and indirect ways?How is meaning communicated through explicit language and implicit language, meaning symbols, colors, signs, things that are beyond spoken language, but that we all register and understand on a subconscious level. That's the way that I would describe it.Yeah, it's wonderful. I'm curious about the value of semiotics is it is, is it theory? Is that an accurate term? I'm reminded of a conversation, one of these conversations I did with Kate Sieck, who's an anthropologist working in the business world. And she advocates really strongly for that theory, academic theory, when applied to method, it makes method super strong. It's a way of strengthening qualitative if you've got theory to back it up.You come from academic world and are operating in the commercial space. Is semiotics a kind of sort of framework or theory that makes a strategist stronger or more effective in that way? And then follow up sort of what's it been like? What's the biggest, what's the most biggest challenge of coming from academia into commercial wackiness?Absolutely. I mean, my whole mission, I suppose in the commercial world is to bridge the gap between academic theory and commercial practice. And one of the reasons for that is that shortly after I came on the scene in the commercial world, after 2020, I found that brands were asking questions that academic theory has answered long time ago.And that's how my book came to be. It's an answer to a lot of the questions that marketers have asked about brands, identity, representation, inclusion, that coming from the disciplines of black studies, gender sexuality studies, critical race theory, decolonial theory. I found a lot of the answers already existed.And so I wanted to bring some of those concepts and framework into the practice of marketing because I do believe that it can be useful and effective and very beneficial in the marketing practice. And so to that end, semiotics is an academic theory and semiotics or semiology is really originating in the disciplines of linguistics and understanding how language is formed. So to my earlier point, language can be written and spoken and language can be unspoken.And so in that sense, semiotics is a rather complex theory that I would not even argue that I am fully reversed in terms of academic specialization. But all that is to say, I am absolutely convinced that marketers can only be more efficient and more successful when we look to other forms of knowledge that exist outside of business, precisely because as marketers, we deal so much, even though if we don't talk about it that way, with psychology, sociology, behavioral science, narrative, discourse, identity, representation, all of these things have been taken up by researchers, thinkers, artists, intellectual activists outside of the confines of business and somebody who came in to this work as an idealist as well, my growing concern is that there is a kind of, I might not want to call it anti-intellectualism, but suspicion of academic knowledge and I'm really committed to working against that.What is the, I'm just thinking about your inner idealist and your mission, what's your touchstone? Do you have a theoretical touchstone or a mentor or like a hero that you keep returning to to inform your mission and your work to sort of awaken the marketing world to the intelligence of academic knowledge?Absolutely. Well, funny, anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with Stuart Hall, who is a cultural theorist, that's on the academic side of things. And so it's rather funny because anytime we do any kind of icebreakers in my team meetings, and you have to talk about the last book you read or something that inspired you, I always talk about Stuart Hall.His work informs so much of my own thinking. And so I always, always, always return to his written work and the way that the British School of Cultural Studies has reformed our understanding of culture as a system of ideologies. So that's my inspiration from the academic world.But as I mentioned, I'm always looking to bridge the gap between academia and business. And in business, this is absolutely easy question to answer. I look up to my friend, mentor, colleague, Dr. Marcus Collins, who wrote the foreword to my book, for which I'm very grateful, and has his own bestselling book for the culture. And Dr. Collins is an experienced advertising executive, but also a professor at University of Michigan School of Business. And he's one of the people who I think is paving the way in the industry and inspiring these new ways of combining academic knowledge, infusing theory with practice. So he's somebody that I'm constantly studying and taking inspiration from and seeking guidance from in how he moves through the industry, precisely because he's just so fantastic and brilliant at bringing academic ideas into the business world and making them accessible, which is certainly something that I'm working on as somebody who started in academia rather than started in business and then went into academia. So it's something that I'm always inspired by.Yeah. I would love to hear a little more, Stuart Hall, can you tell me a little bit more about what you love about his work?Oh, absolutely. I love that anybody asks me about Stuart Hall and I don't get that question a lot. Stuart Hall was a renowned British Jamaican cultural theorist who was one of the founders of British Cultural Studies or School of Thought that we know as British Cultural Studies.And Stuart Hall's work really focuses on the idea of culture as a system of representation, as a collection of ideologies that are in constant tension with each other. And so, beyond Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies, we talk about following Raymond Williams, the residual, the dominant and the emergent cultural forces. So really the work of Stuart Hall and the work of Cultural Studies as a discipline is to understand culture as a push and pull between more dominant cultural ideas and emergent cultural ideas that are rising on the margins, that are rising in subcultures, they are rising in social movements.And one of the biggest contributions that Stuart Hall has made to the disciplines of Cultural Media Studies is to say that people, that audiences are not passive consumers of culture, that people who consume mass media, be popular culture or marketing or advertising, are always reinterpreting messaging and applying their own meaning to it. They're negotiating it. And that's actually one of the examples of academic theories that I use in my book to show to marketers how they can draw on the basics of audience theory, excuse me, reception theory per Stuart Hall, in which he talks about how when audiences receive messaging from media, they might accept it, they might challenge it, they might renegotiate it.And so it basically drives home the point that when you're sending out your messaging and narratives in the form of marketing to audiences, it is expected that certain segments of your audience might react differently to the messaging that was in front of them because they're actively engaged in the process of meaning making. And so that's the theory I use to explain the backlash that brands have received in the past for putting out messaging that is either insensitive, not inclusive or outright offensive. It is because marketers have not anticipated the reception of their messaging precisely because they did not account for other forms of interpretation that overlooked groups of people might have in response to their marketing messaging.So that is a little bit about Stuart Hall and also a little bit about how an academic theory, like the work of Stuart Hall, can be adopted in marketing to make sense of some of the challenges and potential solutions.Yeah. And so what does Stuart Hall, what are the implications of this for a marketer? I mean, it seems like, I mean, yeah, what are the implications for the marketer? Maybe we've already talked about this and this is a very naive, redundant question, but- Not at all. I love everything you've said about, everything you've just said, I have a lot of connection to, so I'm just curious. Yeah, what are the implications? When you know this, what do you do differently?When you know this, you understand that as a marketer that is producing media, you are imbuing the media you produce with your own assumptions, your own biases, your own subjectivities and your own ways of seeing the world. Hence, meaning making, right? We all make meaning in our own ways based on the conditions with which, where we come from, the experience that we've had.And that is precisely what has happened in marketing and advertising for so long. To pick a very tangible example, that is precisely why people, and specifically women with darker skin tones, for decades could not find a product that matched their skin because people who were producing marketing campaigns and products were operating within their own meaning-making system, so to say, within their own worldview and completely ignoring the fact that there are groups of people that have different lived experiences and will have different interpretation response to their message. So once you realize that and you realize that you are inserting meaning into whatever you produce, and that meaning is going to be disseminated to people who are going to perceive it through their own lenses, for their own worldviews, as a marketer, you can start being more self-aware and self-critical of the importance of what I call social consciousness, somebody might call attention to bias, or other ways of being more inclusive, more expansive in, A, how we do research, how we arrive at an insight, who we cast, whether in our research studies or in actual campaigns, how we send out the work into the world, and whether we ask this one question, which I find very useful in my work, what is missing? What am I missing?Who is missing here? What is being overlooked? What is unspoken? What is being silenced? What is something that we might be missing here? And I find, once we start asking that, we find things that have previously been overlooked and now can make our work only more effective and stronger.Yeah. How would you characterize the way that the marketing, the commercial world has tried to pick these ideas up or address what's missing, the blind spots, the biases that you're talking about?I am conflicted on this question because I definitely do find that I meet a lot of brand leaders and marketers who genuinely want to adopt these ideas and put theminto practice. At the same time, as an activist and somebody who has been in various social struggles for a long time, I also know it's just a condition of what it means to advocate for new ideas, that they are going to be constrained by systemic factors. And what we see throughout the history of social movements and social struggles, and I don't think that the question of inclusion and social responsibility is marketing in any exception, is that there's always going to be a push and pull between the dominant forces that have always defined, here's how we do things and here's how things run and here's what we value versus how we want things to be.And these days, I find that there's more so creative energy in that. I used to speak a lot about co-optation, about appropriation, about the ways that brands can be performative and can co-opt social struggles or even these kind of movements for greater inclusivity, which I think always is going to be the case. But there's also some creative energy that I am trying to find inspiration from in that soul impulse saying, this is how things have always been, but this is not how things should be.And asking who taught us that profit should come at the expense of ethics or who has normalized and made it widely accepted of an idea, a concept, a framework, a mindset that there is a distinction between profit and purpose, between being commercially successful and being ethically responsible. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but it sounds like you're okay with me taking whatever I want to take in. That's where I feel most passionate about is that we have erected these binaries in how we think and inevitably what brands do and how brands respond to this recent or not so recent attention to inclusivity and representation and social responsibility and social consciousness is ultimately going to be limited by these frameworks that have defined how we do things.But there's something creative and generative in trying to break them apart and challenge them and ask who said that it has to be so.Yeah, that divide is so deep and strong on both sides. I feel like I know, and I say this a lot too, because I spent some time working with sort of not-for-profits and I would put them on sort of the culture side where they value culture, right? But they don't want to participate in commerce because they feel like that's for the marketing people who are really interested in persuading and being bad actors. And then it's also, there's this question of brands on the commercial side who probably are reluctant or terrified or just clueless about the opportunity they have to participate in culture.Right, which often really baffles me because when I think about, you know, commerce and success, commercial success, a lot of it comes from innovation and innovation is ultimately change. It's progress. You can't innovate if you are stagnant.You can't innovate if you just accept culture as is, or if you try to play it within, you know, what I would call a dominant narrative. Innovation by itself, any innovation that has happened, whether it's by engineers or activists or artists, has happened because it leaned into that area of the unexplored, of the unknown, of what's coming, of what's emergent. So certainly the dogma or the way of thinking in the world of commerce is to follow the playbook and to focus on profits and to do what has worked.But I'm always very curious about folks in commerce who are a bit fearful or antagonistic towards the ideas of cultural change and kind of that creative innovation because culture is evolving and headed forward whether we want it or not. And so if we want to harness it and want to leverage it for commercial advantage, for cultural impact, you name it, it seems like it's inevitable that we have to look to the horizon and at least lean into what's possible just a little bit.Yeah. Oh, I love everything you just said. It occurred to me too because you used the dominant and the emergent, right? Is that from semiotics, that framework?That is from one of the essays by cultural theorist Raymond Williams, who's also one of the founding fathers, so to say, of British cultural studies. And that's one way in which he described culture. And that's actually one of the main frameworks since we're talking about academic frameworks that can be adopted in business and in commerce.So the RDE framework, as we call it in semiotics and in cultural analysis, is one of the ways that a lot of the consultants and cultural analysts working with brands and innovation teams will categorize signals and rather codes that they have identified, right? So if we're working on identifying innovative areas in a category, in culture, et cetera, we would think about them through the codes that are dominant versus the codes that are emergent.And is there an R in there too?Yes, residual. So residual is the, no, no, no, totally fair question. Residual is what's receding, what we might be seeing, but it's kind of less often, you know, is part of the conversation.And one visual example, I'm a very visual person that I've seen in one of the workshops or talks that I've attended that really captures it for me. It was visualized as a platform at a train station. And the residual is a train that's in the distance, you know, headed to the distant direction.You barely see it. You are aware of its presence, but it's receding. And then the dominant essentially is the train that is at the station, right? And the emergent is a train that's approaching the station. So that's one of the more simple ways of thinking about the residual, dominant, emergent framework.Yeah, yeah. And is it fair to say that you try to help people discover the emergent narrative? Is that, or is that over simple? Is that reductive?No, I think that's absolutely fair as much as that sounds specific or simple. I'm not sure which one, but that's exactly it with brands that want to be a challenger or brands that want to prepare for the future, right? You can be a brand that is seeking the emergent category in order to break into it here and right now and be one of the first to do so.I talked about Billie. Billie identified the emergent narrative of body acceptance, body positivity when it was not dominant yet. They really dove deep in there and claimed that territory for themselves.So that's one example. But you can also be a brand that knows that in order to thrive and in order to survive as a business, you have to prepare for the future. And so that's where that kind of work intersects with futures thinking and futures research, which I've also done in the past, where we are really looking towards the future and mapping what's to come.And perhaps as a brand or in business in that specific context, you might not want to break into that particular emergent territory or category, but you certainly know that your business will be affected by it. And so in that kind of work where it's really about expansive understanding of the future that's to come, we would look at everything from politics, technology, governance to business and society to really understand what's emerging on the horizon. And brands that are here to stay for tomorrow invest in that kind of future forward work.Beautiful. So we're at the end of time, but I sort of hadn't asked you about Reddit. And I just wondered if there's a... How has it been working at Reddit? Reddit is such a phenomenon. It's such a unique community and collection of communities and subcultures and stuff. What's it like working there?I've always sworn that I would never go in-house. When I left academia, I was cozy in my consulting lifestyle where I would still select the projects that I work on and have the freedom to have my own schedule. So Reddit was an opportunity that I couldn't refuse despite the vow of solitude and independence that I made when entering the world of commerce.And it is because Reddit is an archive of human data. It is a repository in human behavior. And if you are somebody who's an anthropologist or somebody who's just simply interested in how people think or what people say when no one is around, it's just a massive resource of information.And what's particularly exciting to me and I find exciting for a lot of marketers and brand leaders is that it's a forum that's open to anybody. And I talked to quite a bit of researchers who have experience doing focus groups or doing ethnographic research and for which we still have to navigate to that distinction between the interviewer and the person who gets interviewed, right? And the scenario where you are extracting information from, so to say, the subjects of research, right?And the power dynamics and that, et cetera. Reddit provides a unique, I think, opportunity to do social listening of the kinds of conversations that happen between people in online communities where there's no researcher present, there is no one observing them. And so when coupled with other research tools, I find it to be a really fascinating archive of human data, as I already said.And so for that reason, going in-house at Reddit was an easy choice because having access to all that information on the backend is something that makes my job really, really fun every day.Cool, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation and I appreciate you, yeah, joining me.Likewise, Peter. This was a blast. I loved it. Thank you for having me. And I so appreciated the opportunity to share some of my thoughts. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Sam Ladner is a sociologist, researcher, and student of productivity studying the future of work.Sam is best known for her book Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector. It is used regularly in design, research, user experience, business and social science graduate-level classes. Her most recent book, Mixed Methods, is a companion to her popular course Ethnographic Research Design and Innovation available through EPIC. So, I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine. She helps people. She's an oral historian. She helps people tell their story. Oh, cool. It's an awesome question, which is why I use it, but it's so big sometimes I over-explain it. So, before I ask it, I kind of want you to know that you're in total control. You can answer or not answer any way that you want to.The question is, where do you come from?Oh, what a great question. Well, okay, you want to know, I've got a very big answer, probably bigger than most people. So, first of all, I'm adopted. So, I don't know where I come from. The short answer would be, I don't know.Yeah.I was born in Vancouver and I was raised in British Columbia. I went to University of British Columbia. I moved to Toronto in my early-ish adulthood, lived in Toronto for a long time, moved back to the West coast to Seattle. And that felt very much like home. And then moved down here to San Francisco, San Francisco Bay Area. So, every place I've lived is part of me, every single place. I lived in Halifax for a year also, right? So, every place is a part of me. And if you ask me where I'm from, I don't know. I don't have a place where I'm from. It's weird.Yeah. What is that like? I mean, can you tell me?Terrible. I don't like it.Is it terrible?Well, I mean, I'm learning to appreciate its gifts, but it is very discombobulating. I don't feel at home anywhere, but I feel at home everywhere, if that makes any sense. When we talk, my husband and I talk about, "Oh, we could go to such and such, and we can move to so-and-so." I'm like, "Anywhere you want, man. I can live anywhere. It doesn't matter." He's less like that than I am, right?What do you observe in him that he knows where he came from?Oh, it's interesting. And the irony in his case, he's from Toronto, born and raised, lived there his whole life until we moved to Seattle. He'd never set foot in Seattle before. And to his credit, he was like, "Oh, sure, let's go for it." Ironically, he loves the West Coast more than I do, even though I'm from here, right? And he loves California. I love California too. California is great. But he's in love with it. He thinks it's amazing. And so he has a deep attachment to Toronto that I don't have, but he also has this kind of like, "I need to run away. This is running away. I get to run away if I come here." And for me, I'm like, I don't have anywhere to run away from. I'm from everywhere, so it doesn't make any difference, right? It doesn't feel as like an escapist for me.Yeah. Do you have a memory of what you wanted to be when you grew up, like as a child?Oh, well, my cousin once told me that I told her that I wanted to do my PhD, and I didn't remember saying that. I was like, "Really? Did I say that?" And she's like, "Oh, yeah." I said, "How old was I?" She goes, "I don't know. Six." And I was like, "Wow, really?" So I don't remember that. I don't remember really knowing what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do.Which was what?I did not want to be in sales. I didn't want to do that. Found that gross. Wasn't interested.How did you know?How did I know? That's a good question. How indeed? I must have picked it up from my family. I know that in my family's case, professional jobs were considered to be good, right? So like, lawyer, doctor, journalist, priest, you know, things like that were okay. Chiropractor? No. Like, nice try, but no. Why don't you just go be a real doctor, you know? Professor, those are all okay. Business person? I mean, somebody has to do it, but why you, you know?I think that's kind of where I picked it up. So professionalism, professionals was okay. Engineering wasn't really included, but it would have been acceptable. You know, because technically it's a, you know, profession. So I don't know. I don't think I had a picture. I mean, I went through phases of things that I really enjoy doing. Like, I loved chemistry when I was in school. I found that really interesting. I was very interested in photography and journalism, and I was a journalist, but I found journalism to be rather superficial, you know? So in order to do the kind of journalism, I think that would have been satisfying for me, I would have had to have moved to the United States, you know? And I didn't think that was possible. I didn't think that was something I could do. It wasn't until much later in my life that it was possible to move to the United States.I had a PhD. I could qualify for a visa, you know? I got a job offer from Microsoft. They had the resources to make it happen. But when I was younger, I was like, I don't think I can do this. I don't think I can move to the U.S., and so I'm not going to be like this big shot journalist. I'm going to be like, you know, I'm going to be doing the daily deadline. And I'm like, this is boring, you know? It's stressful and boring. So why would I do it? So I ended up going to grad school because I wanted to do more in-depth research. And I said to myself, if you don't like it, you can quit, you know? But I loved it. So I didn't. I kept going.Yeah. And so there was a shift from journalism into research? What was the attraction? How did you make that leap?Well, the reason I was a tech journalist, and so I love technology and I love how people use technology, but I wasn't going deep enough on that daily deadline kind of treadmill that I was on. And I didn't see a way to go deeper in journalism. I just didn't see how that was possible. So I thought, if I go to grad school and I study technology, maybe I can understand it a little bit more and maybe that can lead to professorship. And so I did my master's and I enjoyed it and I started my PhD and I did the analysis. And I remember I was like, oh, demographics are on my side. There's so many academic jobs opening up in the next 20 years. Wrong. Wrong.I mean, the math was right. I knew that there was going to be a lot of retirements. First of all, there weren't as many retirements as I was expecting. And secondly, they weren't replacing people. So academic job market, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, the academic job market's terrible. It's just awful. So I had to come up with a plan B once I was finishing my PhD and plan B was to do applied research. So still got to do more in-depth stuff, more than I would say the daily deadline, more theory driven too, even in applied settings, even in industry. I don't think journalism really has a lot of theoretical canon.It's so interesting. You do find it from time to time. Individual journalists are kind of erudite and they might have followed a thread or a theme or whatever, but it's not the same as becoming an expert in a particular area. And I think that's really what I wanted to do because I wanted to understand. I want to look at technology and I want to be able to understand how it's being used pretty quickly. I want to do it empirically, but I also want to do it theoretically. And how do I do that? Well, you can't really do that as a journalist, I think. So I don't think I had these articulated back when I was making that choice. I was just gravitating.Yeah. And so catch me up now. Tell me a little bit about where you are now. I know you're semi-retired. You've had a long career. Tell us sort of where you are now and what you're working onWell, right now, I just started, I think, as I mentioned, I just put together a proposal for my next book. So that's probably going to keep me occupied. If it gets accepted, it's going to keep me occupied. I'm doing a little bit of consulting work. Like yesterday, for example, I was at a tech company in San Jose and I did a workshop for their research team, helping them understand strategy and strategic foresight. And that was actually, that was great. It went really well. And so I've been doing a little bit of that. I'd like to do more of that because I find that the researchers that I know are stuck. They don't know how to grow. Training opportunities are limited. Mentorship opportunities are limited.So I've done a lot of teaching through universities, but also through EPIC (Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference). And that's good, but I'd like to do more of that. So I'm setting myself up to kind of do that. I started a newsletter. I've been doing a lot of like one-on-one conversations with people.Oh, beautiful.Yeah.Oh, nice. So I'm curious, when did you first discover or realize that you could make a living doing ethnography and studying people's behavior with technology? Did you know that that was out there and you went after it or do you sort of?Well, I didn't actually. I wasn't sure I could make a living at it. I knew I enjoyed doing it. So I thought I would try to do more of it. I was working during my PhD at a design agency and doing research for clients. So we designed websites and apps and we had clients. And so in order to make those things, you needed to do some research. And so I was a director of research and we did like surveys and interviews. And I always was pushing for field work, always pushing for field work, which worked sometimes. Sometimes it didn't. The budget wasn't there. Timelines weren't there, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, okay, maybe I can do this. When I finished my PhD, I went onto the academic job market, but I wasn't getting much in that way. So I also started my own company and I started doing basically ethnography.Basically, that was it. I did other things too, a few other things like interviewing and stuff like that. But I made a living doing it. It was tough. It was really tough because I had to pitch it every time. But I started getting repeat customers and it was good. The problem was I wasn't doing enough tech work. And it was partly because I was in Toronto, I think. And the tech scene in Toronto is not that big and certainly not that adventurous. So I was like, okay, I want to do more tech work. How am I going to do this? I thought, should I open an office in Chicago or something?I had clients in San Francisco, but I wasn't getting enough technology work. It was mostly communications and marketing and things like that. And I was like, oh, that's fine. I did some CPG work, which was okay, but I wanted tech. So then I got an offer to work at Microsoft and I was like, I'm gone, 100%, let's do this. So we moved to Seattle and my job there was ethnographic work, more or less. And so Microsoft has deep pockets, they can afford to do stuff like that. Even there, it was tenuous though, I have to admit. I did a lot of different kinds of work. If I didn't know how to write a survey, that would have been a problem. Interviewing, of course, always doing interviews and things like that. But ethnography was kind of the expensive option.How do you describe ethnography to somebody that doesn't know what it is?Well, I often start by just, I talk about the ethno and the graphy, writing about folk. That's kind of what it is. It's writing about folks. And they go, "Oh, okay. So you're writing about people, you're talking about people." Yeah. And the key difference, of course, is between that and just plain interviewing, not to mention surveys or focus groups or what have you, is the observational aspect, right? Being embedded, going to, being part of, deep hanging out, being there. The being there part is so important.I mean, in journalism, they used to have this thing, go, don't phone, which I completely agreed with at the time. And now I understand more deeply why that works, especially if you've got a trained eye for observation. You can see, and a lot of people like to simplify this quite simplistically, in my opinion, but they'll say like, "Oh, what people say and what they do are different things," which is not false. That's not false. But it doesn't tell you the whole picture.What is missed with that?I think that opens the door, that statement opens the door a little bit to this problematic assertion that people lie. And your job is to find out the lies. Your job is not to find, people are not lying. They are genuinely unaware of the differences between their perceptions and their activities. And sometimes to their own personal detriment, story of all of our lives, right? People can see us doing things all the time that we don't ourselves even know we're doing.So when it comes to ethnographic work, what you're hoping to understand is that contradiction. And what are the contextual factors that lead to such contradictions? What are the perception gaps that people have about their own lives? And you need to know what those things are. If you're going to be doing applied ethnography for the purposes of business, you need to know what these differences are. And it's not people are lying. I hate that. I hate that belief. People simplify it that way. And I understand why they're doing it, because it is true. People oftentimes say they do things that they don't at all do. And you need to understand why that is, what's going on there. And to their best intentions, they want to do certain things.Yeah. But it also feels like I totally connect with you on that. And I feel like over the past several, I mean, decades, I mean, at least in my career, that this sort of behaviorism has taken over based on that idea that if you can't trust what people are going to tell you, then you should not talk to them at all.Yeah, completely. And I can see why people have that belief. It's frustrating for me to hear it. Because I think it isn't just innocuously incorrect. It's pernicious. It creates a sense of distance between you and that person, your customer, or your stakeholder, or whatever you want to call this person. There's a psychological distance that you're creating. It lacks empathy. It's a power move. We don't care what you're saying, but we have good reason to not care what you're saying. Ooh, isn't that convenient that you don't have to listen anymore? Convenient, right?Yeah. You get to be correct and completely self-absorbed at the same time.Exactly. Anytime that those two things come together, you have to ask yourself, is this a little too convenient?I was so excited to talk to you because not only, I mean, clearly you're sharing so much of your thinking out there, but I feel like you also advocate for qualitative in ways that is so, it feels a little rare, oddly. I mean, just to say that. Maybe, I don't know why that came out of me, but it's just exciting to me because I often feel maybe as an independent, it always feels existential.Oh, I completely understand thatSo I'm always wondering, is there value in this thing? And you make a beautiful case for it over and over and over again. How do you feel about the state of ethnographic and qualitative research today and the bias against it?It's a very interesting question because I see this coming in waves, right? I see the difference coming in waves. There's the hot new feature or the hot new this or that comes out and people gravitate toward that. It's the same with research methods. There's a hot new thing and people gravitate toward that. I think in the case of, I mean, I'm embedded in Silicon Valley, right? So I'm surrounded by tech bros all the time. And the kinds of things that I hear are hilarious. I'm like, wow, this feels like I've had this cycle many times before. And you think this is the first time this has ever happened. How did that happen? So the quantitative bias, as you say, the bias against qual isn't, I think, a bias against qual per se. I don't know if I would have said this in years past, but now I believe this. I don't think it's a bias against qual per se. I think it is a Cartesian curse, separation, mind and body.And there's a belief that there's a perfection that we can achieve if we are to banish all the things that make us most human. And so we're going to get behaviorist and we're going to get, I mean, Skinner was like, that's one phase, Skinnerian psychology, one phase of this. And you're seeing it coming again with, oh, test and learn and AB testing and analytics and objective truth. And I just laugh because it seems so childish. You clearly are not well-rounded if you think that that's what all this is, right? So the bias against qual in general, I think, is a bias against all that is messy, all that is unstructured, all that reminds us of our own ambiguity as humans.So I do take it seriously that I need to defend qual and I want people to understand that there's value there. So I work hard at articulating it. And like you, I've had to articulate it over and over and over again so that people understand. But what I see happening right now with this quant bias is it's almost manic and frenetic right now. And I think it's probably because people are really working hard to say AI is going to solve everything again. And we all know it's not. It's all so obvious, right? It's so obvious.What is so obvious?Uh, well, it's a joke. It's a punchline now. Like, "Oh, well, just AI that," you know. And it's like, no, we all know. We all know that the ability to AI a solution is limited. We all know that. And we're pretending that we don't have to do the hard work. We're pretending that we don't have to understand nuance. We're pretending that we don't have to. And I'm just waiting for everybody to get so horribly disappointed. You're already seeing it, right? Actually, it's coming faster than I thought. I thought it was going to take a little bit longer, but we're already seeing like chat GPT just blew everyone out of the water. But then they're like, "Oh, it doesn't do all these things." So now there's like, I can't remember what it's called. They've got a new model that's got like a reasoning aspect to it. And they're like, "Look at how it reasons." And it's like, okay, you use like a GMAT equivalent. Like you use a standardized test. Of course, it's going to reason in situations like this. You're not getting rid of the humans. You're just not.But it is on the same continuum as the bias against qual as you're articulating.Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that it's kind of manic, like the, "Oh, people lie and we have to watch what they do." And, you know, also, you know, "That's messy and it's not objective" and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, methinks you doth protest too much tech, bro. You know, I'll just wait. I'll wait. You'll figure it out. You know?So what's my next question? I'm curious about. Well, yeah. How does it? I mean, I agree with you. And I feel like I have a very I remember I had a conversation with somebody and I think they said it, but they said that the Western world kind of wants to be a machine when it grows up. Like something.YeahI think it resonates with what you said that there's aspirational about the abandonment of the fearful.Yeah. You know, I mean, that's Descartes. It's Frederick Winslow Taylor. Like I have to eliminate all of this weakness, this messiness. I have to eliminate it, because if I do, then I'm going to be perfect.Right.It's so transparent to me. Psychologically, it's so transparent. It's here. You know?Yeah. So how do you make space for the work that you do? And you're an island of messiness in an ocean of tech bros.Imperfectly, I would say I make room for it. I mean, this is part of the reason why I decided it was time to leave full time, big tech, because it was a struggle every day. And the benefit that I was getting was it was declining. And I knew it would write it had declined zero, but it was declining. What was the benefit that I was getting out of doing the fighting the good fight because I was fighting the good fight and fighting the good fight is a heroic and it's good and it gives you purpose and makes you more well rounded. And I felt like I had achieved like I kind of it's a forcing function to take on individual fights to take on positions so that you can formulate a coherent worldview and that you can you can formulate a good argument.Yeah.And being embedded, you know, at Microsoft and Amazon at Workday. I was able to do that every single day. Every single day I was putting myself on the spot to develop a good, coherent argument to, you know, work around the edge cases to warm my way into the mainstream of the organization. Good practice, good benefit, good skills, well roundedness, psychological benefits. But those were waning because I was had now is starting to have the same arguments every single time, the same arguments, and they weren't differing significantly. I'd seen so many.But the classic, of course, is the "How many people did you talk to?" question, you know, okay, well, first of all, you're challenging my research findings of which you have none. I have them all, right? Okay. You also have never studied research methodology, clearly, because you don't even understand the difference between probability and non-probability sampling. But let me school you for a few minutes, my son, I will help you.I had that question. The first few times I had that questions quite early on in my career, it was kind of terrifying. I remember actually having one one time with the CEO of my agency happened to be there. And she sat in on this call with the client who was like this big bank. And they were asking this question. And I answered the question. And I was like, because I didn't know the CEO was going to be there. And I like I was like, "Oh, my God, this is like intense," right? That was like the hardest client was like, "Thank you. I felt like I went back to school. This is great," blah, blah, blah. And the CEO was like, "Good job." And I was like, "Oh, God, did I answer the question?" So then I got used to answering that question. That question is really old now.And there were a bunch of other questions like, "Well, it's all nice and good. But how much time do we have?" And like, "What benefit does it give?" And you know, you name it all the objections. I got them over and over and over and over again. You could say I hit saturation.Yeah, that's right.I knew exactly what the question was going to be. I knew exactly three, four different answers to the question. I would eliminate two of them immediately. I choose one sometimes I would intentionally choose something crazy and say, "I don't know how this is gonna be a flyer. Let's see how this goes."So I felt like I had gotten the growth for myself of being the underdog on a regular basis. So the benefit was tapering off. But even more so than I had to assess the opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of continuing to be embedded in an organization that is not a native land, shall we say? I mean, there's benefit to it, but there's also cost to it. And I felt like I was starting to kind of lose my sense of I want to say self that's overstated it. I was starting to lose a sense of like, terra firma. Like everything was becoming relative, and relativism. There's no, oh, I can justify anything. Oh, I can do anything. And I was like, I'm feeling too embedded. I've lost my sense of professional strangeness.Yeah.And I don't really like that. So let's see how this goes. And I kind of like sat on it for a while to see how I was going. Benefits were not growing. Sense of floating away kind of increased. And I was like, you know what? I don't need to do this anymore. So thanks, guys. Best of luck. I left on very good terms. And my boss, I explained it quite clearly to her. I was like, "It's just time for me to go." Yeah. And she's like, "Oh, okay. Okay, I get it." And she did not notably, she did not say, "Is there anything we can do?" She didn't say that because she knew, right? She knew it was like time for me to go. So I mean, I was happy to be there. And I'm happy to leave.Yeah. How would you describe the state of sort of qual now as compared to when you started?Well, I mean, the familiarity is much bigger than it was, I would say, which is good. We haven't talked about COVID and ethnography and how that's affected ethnography. And it really has. And I'm sure that has something to do with my sense of like, exhaustion, I think. Because doing fieldwork is transformative. And like, nobody wants to do it anymore, because they think they can't, or don't need to. And again, you have to ask yourself, oh, this is a very convenient choice. Because it's hard, right? So I would say that it's good. It's on the cusp of having, it has to get more forcefully out there, not just qualitative in-depth interviewing, but like, really emic positioned qualitative research, which may involve fieldwork. But you can't fool yourself into thinking that just doing, you know, Zoom-based interviews all the time is going to give you everything, you know, that everything you want. And I so I say good things, it's the familiarity is much larger, people accept it, they know it's important, etc.But they're not taking full advantage of the qual, they're trying to be quantified qual a lot of times, you know, which is like a total waste, right? I had a, an interaction with a VP at my old company, I had done some research with him and his team. And I, qualitative Zoom interviews, right? And I mean, I'm a veteran practitioner. So I was able to get good stuff out of these interviews. And I gave him a memo. And he's like, "Great." So he went to the C-suite for something for this proposal he was going to make based on the research that I had done and some other research that that he had done, like, you know, competitive analysis, things like that. And he didn't tell me he was going when he was going to the C-suite, he didn't offer me a look at his presentation. I didn't take it personally, but he shared it with me after. And I looked at it and I was like, "Oh," and I ran into him in the coffee area. And I was like, "Oh, thanks for sharing the slides." He goes, "Yeah, what did you think?" And I was like, "Well, a few things were wrong." And he's like, "Oh, what parts?" And I was like, "Pretty much all of it."Oh, wow.And he's like, "Oh, really?" And I was like, "Yeah," I said, "You know, we had a conversation about qual and the power of qual, right?" I said, "You know, everybody, we all know we need quant and qual, right?" He's like, "Yeah, absolutely. You need to know the how and you need to know the how many." And I was like, "Exactly. You need to have both of those things." I said, "You took the qual stuff and you turned it into quant, which sucked it dry." I said, "If you had asked me before you went in, I would have coached you a little bit on how to present the qual in a way that is powerful and differentiating." And you kind of like lost some of the value. So I see that trend.Yeah.Which is a problem.Yes. How do you, you write a lot about this. How do you elevate qual in the organization?It's funny because I think a lot of times as researchers, what we do is we try, we privilege the methodological, you know, aspects of what we're doing. And if you take, in a meta point here, the emic position of your stakeholders, they don't care about that. This isn't religion for them, you know, where it is for us, right? It's not something that they're super, you know, steadfast. So the etic position would be like the researcher defines the unit of analysis and the categories and the areas of interest and you fit yourself into it. A survey that asks you something that gives you a set of answers and you don't fit into those answers. That is etic right there.Right.You know, like how often do you drive your car? And it doesn't ask you if you don't even own a car, right? Like, you know, like, uh, other, you know, um, that's the etic position. The emic position is I'm going to start with you. You're going to tell me what's important.Oh, I see.You're going to be the person who is guiding the direction of what's interesting here. You're going to give me the area of, of importance, right? So if we as researchers take that meta point and say, our stakeholders are going to tell us what's important.Yes.As much as we love methodological discussions, they do not. So, uh, one way that I have encouraged people very strongly to elevate the power of qual is to not really treat it as the power of qual, um, is instead to think about it as the inputs to strategy. Strategy is not, uh, good strategy is not a quantitative thing. It is a qualitative thing because it's basically unique value. How do you give a customer unique value? You can't find that out from a frigging survey or analytics. You have no idea what they find valuable. Even if you see their behaviors, you don't know what's value here. You don't even understand anything. You're just a dummy. You're looking at patterns and it's a, you know, lagging indicator. So much better to position yourself as like, listen, I'm going to find out exactly what's valuable, why it's valuable so that we can take advantage of that unmet need. And I can't do that quantitatively.Yeah.It's impossible.Yes. That's beautiful. I feel like, um, I, uh, I identify with that a lot. I feel like I'm a research person who likes talking about research. I identify as a research person. Um, but it totally, um, makes it difficult. But if I were to position myself as a strategist and talk strategy, it would be a whole nother ballgame. And it's a simple positioning exercise really.Yeah.It is shift to just be like, stop talking about the research.Yeah. As much as you love it. I mean, I mean, we do love it and we can have those conversations with people who are interested. Um, but I think, I think a lot of people who do research are typically trained in social science and they don't really want to call themselves quote unquote, strategists because that feels like something we're not, you know, like, "Oh, that's a highfalutin name. And I have to be anointed with that. And I don't have an MBA. So how could I be that," you know? Um, and I, I think you can dispense with that because strategy is not something that you have to, you can easily study it, you know, easily on your own.There was, um, what you had, there was a post you shared too about, um, somebody posted about that. Apple never did any research.Oh, right. Yes.Do you remember this assumption? And you had a beautiful quote about, um, the difference not between no research versus research. And you taught, you said the, it's the result of extensive experience driven intuition. And I've become sort of fixated on this idea of the intuition as being where, what qualitative feeds. Right.And yes, I would agree with that.So I just wanted to hear you talk about the role of intuition and qualitative, especially given what you just said, like, I feel like I'm going to ramble a little bit here because it's interesting to me, but that the business world talks about data as the only sort of valid input to any sort of significant kind of decision-making.Right.And so, and when we say data, we basically mean quant.Yeah. Often.And then all qualitative input happens informally and nobody talks about it. There's no, there's no language. It's like a social silence, right? That there's no talks about this informal input of the intuition into all decision-making because they just weren't trained on it or they don't know that it's there or they just don't have the words for it.I think you're right. They weren't trained on it. I think that's it. You know I actually have a friend of mine that I used to work with who's an engineer. He's a software engineer. And I remember he told me before he worked with me that he would every single day, you know, sitting in front of his keyboard coding would be faced with instances where he had to make decisions that had direct impact on what the user was going to experience. Right. And he knows this, like he knows that there's going to be an impact on it. Is this red or is this blue? Is this fast or this slow? Whatever, you know. And he had to make decisions all the time. And he said he used to make it with what he called developer whim. What do I think? I don't know. Blah, blah, blah. Right?And he would just hard code his whim into the feature and into the software. After he worked with me, he said he developed what he called developer intuition, which is different than whim. Now was it perfect, predictive, correct? No. And he acknowledged that. But what I gave him was enough contextual understanding of the user, who they are, what they value, what's important, what's terrible. I gave him these things in these little baby bird ways. Right. Often saying things like, "Oh, this is just a lunch and learn" or "This is just some fun content" or, "Oh, let's have a conversation." You know, never telling people directly that actually this is the research readout. You need to know this. I wouldn't do that because they would start talking about how many people did you talk to and all this stuff.Right.So I would give them contextual insight into who the user is and what they really value. So when he would be sitting back at his keyboard, he now actually could make an intuitive judgment. "Oh, you know what? I don't have the exact answer for this particular question, but I have enough intuition that I feel like this could be the right answer. And it feels much better than the whim answer that I would have inputted before." Right. And I think the really great product leaders in technology, CPG, financial services, they have this intuition and they also have the humility to know that it's not always perfect. What they don't maybe realize is that intuition was probably in fact structured by a researcher who had a rigorous methodological approach to gathering the insight they needed. So they weren't just like randomly picking up bits and pieces, you know, and throwing it together. Right. Like they actually had somebody structuring the qual intuition that they were developing. And, you know, Jeff Bezos even has a quote about this. He talks about this, and I hate the word that he uses, anecdotes, and it drives me crazy. But he talked about the best product owners have a fine honed intuition based on many anecdotes, which is the closest we're going to get for him saying qual data.Yeah.Anecdote is not the same as qual data, but even Jeff Bezos understood that there was a structuring that came to qualitative research that was good. And he could call out, he could discern quickly from product managers that had just like randomly done things with no decision making whatsoever and picked up tidbits, actual anecdotes, as opposed to data, qual data, but he doesn't use the word qual data, which annoys me. But then he says, you can't get that from the averages of surveys. It's not there. So fine.Why isn't it there?Well, because it's in methodologically, it's impossible to get it from there. You can get a lay of the land from descriptive statistics. And it will tell you things that are describing the people. They have these demographic characteristics, they have these levels of education, they have, you know, these geographic locations, but that doesn't tell you anything about who they actually are, you're going to make inferences based on that. And sometimes those inferences are well founded. So for example, if I tell you that the average education level of your customer base is, you know, professional degree and graduate degree, we can make some really great assumptions about their health outcomes, about their income, about their divorce rates. These are proven, we know these things, right? But you're not going to be able to learn anything about their preferences, uh, their stylistic choices, their aesthetic profile, uh, their everyday behaviors. No, you won't know anything about those things.There are some things you will know a lot about. I mean, I could probably tell you whether or not you're going to be divorced with three questions, right? Because the research has been done, but your product in that product area, nobody did that research because that's not general research. That's for you. You have to do that research.Yeah. You have to create the structure where that develops intuition.That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So I think it is a language issue. Like they just don't have the education about qual as a method. Like qualitative methods isn't something that most people realize is a thing. All they know is the scientific method. You know, they don't realize there's a whole other, you know, area of research. They don't get it.Yeah. I'm curious about the distinction you're making between anecdote and qual data. I'm, I get excited to refer. There's a freakonomics piece about a quote that the plural of anecdote is not data. And it's, it's a popular quote and they demonstrate that there's more citations, like, you know, like a hundred times more citations for the quote, the plural of anecdotes is not data. And they kind of fact-checked it and caught and took it back to its source to a Stanford professor who was misquoted it as having said the plural of anecdote is data because what else, what else would it be?Isn't that funny? Oh, that's funny. Well, I mean, anecdote, anecdote to me is, I mean, I, and I try to tell people this whenever they use the word anecdote interchangeably with qual data. Anecdote is qualitative insight that's gathered without regard for comprehensiveness, theoretical understanding, representation, ethical positioning, subject matter, expert. There's no filtering on how you get an anecdote. You get an anecdote at the gym, you get it at the grocery store, you get it from the coffee station, you get it from lots of places, but you don't, you can't tell me the difference between the anecdote you heard at the coffee station and the likelihood of you having heard something different.Like you can't give me anything like that. You said, "Oh, well, the reason we went to the coffee station is because we actually study coffee. And, you know, I could have gone to the gym to do this, but nobody at the gym has opinions about coffee. And we wanted to know people who had informed opinions about coffee." That is not what people talk about when they talk about anecdotes. They just randomly throw things in that they have no systematic method to selecting how they find that data. They have no systematic method for excluding certain kinds of data. They can't tell you why they've made any particular decision to include this or exclude this. Qualitative data, on the other hand, can very clearly tell you what is included and what is excluded and why, right?We included young people between the ages of 19 and 24, and they had to be not enrolled in any kind of schooling. They had to have a part-time or full-time job. And we did that on purpose because we wanted people to have, you know, blah, blah, blah. So the reason I think I can say this about young people's attitude towards paid work is because we had this systematic investigation. Like we went from here down to here, and this is what the outcome is. And then I'm going to do a comparative analysis maybe with the opposite, right?Yeah.I don't think people realize that you can structure qualitative inquiry rigorously. They think rigor is sheer numbers, you know?Yes.It's not. It's procedure. It's procedure. Do you have a procedure? And if you went to the gym and collected this, and then maybe you went to the grocery store and you heard it later there, what was your procedure? There was no procedure.Yeah. What is the value, in your definition, what is the value of an anecdote?Like an anecdote that I got at the gym or I got at the grocery store?Yeah.I don't think there's a lot of value.Yeah.I don't think there's a lot of value. I can't compare it. I can't compare it to anything. I can't say the gym and the grocery store, you know, opinions about such and such are different because of X. Like I can't tell you that. So like what's the value of it?Yeah.The only common denominator is me wandering around in the world and randomly bumping my head into conversations. So this is just my bias. It's not real, you know?I'm curious about this question of there's nobody has any language for qual and how do you communicate the value of qual? I mean, what would you do if you had to sort of rebrand qualitative? It's sort of a tacky question.I know. I hear you. Do you know what I mean?Yeah. I do know what you mean. It's difficult because I'm a bit of a wonky person and I know not everybody is, right? Like, you know, people don't want to hear, well, you need to read X, Y, and Z and, you know, all of these books are important, right? The rebranding is different than developing familiarity. For researchers specifically, I often say if you can't articulate these things in a way that you feel comfortable doing on a regular basis, you need to kind of do some reading and get some language. You need to understand, you know, because people, you know, the leaders in the qualitative research field, methodologists have articulated these differences and they have clearly spelled out, you know, why qual is different, how it's different, how you should talk about it to other academics, granted. But if you don't have that, you should do that as researchers. But for non-researchers who are consumers of this and, like, this is the rebranding question, like I said, don't get hung up on the religion of the methodological differences.Instead, talk about the very real awareness people have of where things have fallen for them in the past. Like, "We tried this survey and it told us we should do this and everybody said that they liked it, but we completely missed the mark." And it's like, okay, well, do you know why you missed the mark? I think it's because you didn't have enough contextual understanding. You didn't have a why. You didn't start with a why. And it's messy and annoying, but we need to start with the why. What is value? You cannot discover value from a quantitative survey because it's etic, right? The emic position, you know, value is an emic. It's emically defined. What's valuable to you is valuable to you. So I need to find out what you think is valuable. How am I going to do that from a survey? I can't. I'm going to make all sorts of assumptions. I'm going to put you in little boxes and you're going to go, "Well, it's not really that, but you don't give me a choice, so I'll stick it in there," you know?Yeah. That's beautiful. Do you want to talk a little bit about either your book or strategic foresight, like just sort of what your own practice?Sure. I'll tell you a little bit about the book. The book is about strategic foresight and how to practice it in the organizational context.Nice.So there's a lot of books on strategic foresight that talk about like how to do it. And some are, you know, on the spectrum of very academic to very practical. So there's sources out there that help people. What I think is missing is doing that kind of work inside an organization, inside a particular organizational culture always proves to be so much more difficult. And people aren't telling practitioners or want to, you know, want to be practitioners. They're not giving them the tools to understand why it's so difficult.So that's kind of the extra wrapping I'm going to put around the practice. How to do it, definitely. How to do it effectively with current technology and tools that you can use that, you know, increase your productivity significantly. But when push comes to shove, you're going to be facing allergic reactions from your organization. And you need to understand why and what they really indicate. They don't mean your work is not valuable. They do mean that individuals have anxieties and individuals aggregated up to organizational culture equals obstacles, organizational traps. So what are those traps? How do they function?And a lot of it has to do with temporal bias. A lot of it has to do with our ability and inability. Yeah. We, the further out something is psychologically from us, the harder it is for us to understand it and the more abstract we talk about it. So that is both in psychological distance, but also temporal distance. So the further out we go in time, the less tangible and concrete the thing is to us and the way we can describe it. This is a known problem. Like this is a psychological issue that our puny little human brains struggle with. Multiply that by, you know, 5,000, 10,000, however many people work in your organization, you're going to see that it's almost impossible to move that.Most of these foresight books don't talk about that. They don't talk about the organizational challenges. So if you don't understand the organizational challenges, and you're going to follow the foresight, you know, the generic foresight process, um, it probably won't work. And you're going to say, "Well, it's because I wasn't rigorous enough, or I wasn't fast enough, or whatever it was." And no, that's not it at all. There's other reasons. So the wrapping of the organizational context is where my book is going to give something unique.Wow. Beautiful. Sounds amazing.Well, I have to write it. I haven't written it yet.And then do you want to give a shout out about your newsletter and what you're doing there?Sure. Uh, the newsletter, uh, comes out every Tuesday, except for not next Tuesday, because I will be on vacation in the Hudson Valley. Um, I write about foresight and strategic foresight and how to do it. It's a very short, I try, I'm trying to be ruthless about how short it is.So good.Uh, are you reading it? Great.Yeah. And there's stints with links. I mean, not to sort of stomp all over your description of your own work, but yeah, I think they're great.Awesome. That's great. I try to make it ruthlessly short. I'm also editing, editing, editing, self-editing all the time. So what I'm trying to do is also that organizational context wrapper around the practice. I'm trying to give that subtly each time and giving people really practical things that they can try, you know, uh, they may not be able to solve all the problems by trying one of those things, but, uh, little, little approachable bites toward bigger problems. That's what it's designed to do.I guess I have one last final big question, which is about AI and synthetic users. And I feel like all the arrival of this stuff is existential in a way. And it seems to really call out for, um, you know, the, the making the case for, for qualitative, like what the value actually is. Do you feel that as well?I do. Yeah, I do.What's your forecast? When you look ahead and you think about, I mean, your point about synthetic users is fantastic. That's exactly what the machine wants, right? So I don't have to talk to people.Yeah. Problem solved. Problem solved. Um, I'm actually quite optimistic. Like I said earlier, uh, I've been expecting the, the, the fifth AI winter to arrive. And I think it's arriving right now, which I was surprised. I thought it would take a little bit longer. Um, you're gonna, you're already seeing it in stock prices and certain stock prices, which is a way of looking at prediction markets. So people are recognizing that the hype is overwrought. Um, so I am actually quite optimistic.What I don't want to see is I don't want individual qualitative researchers to throw up their hands and say, "There's nothing I can do. I'm being replaced." I have have a little more faith in yourself, you know, uh, that work with the context, right. Be curious about what's going on. Um, and you, you'd be surprised if you were not part of the hype cycle, but you're curious about the actual potential embedded in what's going on. You're going to be, it'll take, you'll be early. People won't see what you see right away, but you know, they'll eventually see it because the hype cycle is going to crash and it's already started. So don't, don't, don't count yourself out.I really appreciate you accepting the invitation. And this was, I just had a lot of fun with this conversation. So thank you so much.Oh, it's nice to spend time with you.Nice. Enjoy the Hudson Valley.Thank you. You too.Bye. 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Phil Barden is the Managing Director of DECODE and the author of “Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy” which is a classic text about the behavioral science of marketing. Before going out on his own, he held leadership roles at T-Mobile, First Choice Holidays, Diageo and Unilever. As his profile says, “25 years client-side marketing + 10 years decision science = ‘Decoded.”Okey-dokey. All right. Well, Phil, again, I really appreciate you accepting my invitation to come on here and talk to me. I'm not sure if you know this, but I start all of my conversations and even my interviews at work, actually, with a question that I borrowed from a friend of mine. She's an oral historian, and she helps people tell their stories. And she's got this beautiful question that I stole because it's really big and beautiful.But because it's so big and beautiful, I kind of over-explain it. 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?Oh, wow. This sounds like I'm on a therapist’s couch. Where do I come from? You mean sort of literally or metaphorically?However you want to take it.OK. OK. So, where do I come from? The origin story. Very, very interesting. So, literally, I'm from the UK, born and brought up in the south of England. My parents were both teachers, and my mother exposed me to creativity. She was a music teacher, and I think that probably stood me in good stead for wanting to get into marketing. My father was a science teacher, which is where my worlds have collided in my most recent career. So I think that's probably where I come from.Yeah, that's quite remarkable to have the science and the creativity. Can you tell me a story about the creativity? I listened to another interview where you talked about the role of creativity growing up. What was it like?Hmm. Yeah, well, my mother insisted that all her children learn a musical instrument, and she exposed us to many various types and genres of music. She had a very eclectic taste, which I think is admirable because we were brought up not only with classical music, opera, and ballet, but also musical theatre, pop, and rock bands.She was a huge Queen fan, for example. So she would listen to the entire album of *A Night at the Opera*, and then right after that, she'd put on the *Peer Gynt Suite* or some Rachmaninoff or something. So we were all taken from quite an early age to operas, to ballet, to the Proms, classical music performances, and also musical theatre.So, Gilbert and Sullivan, a sort of light opera, and then into rock opera even. She loved Andrew Lloyd Webber's work—*Jesus Christ Superstar* and *Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat*. She was the musical director for all the musical productions at her school.And I grew up learning the flute, my brother learned the violin, and my sister learned the piano. So we all were instilled with a love of music from an early age. And I think that exposure to the arts in general, because I then joined a youth theatre group as well, and school friends who participated in that—we played in a band together.So we were always into the creative side of making music. And one of the guys from school, who I'm still friends with, said, when we were at school, "I'm going to go into advertising," because he and I used to write stuff for a school magazine and sketches for a school revue show and things like that. So the creative process really appealed to me.And when I first learned about marketing, and that was through the husband of a babysitter actually, who worked for a marketing company, I had no idea what it was. But when I learned that it meant that he got involved in creating advertisements and packaging designs and promotional materials, I thought, "This sounds amazing," because it was very tangible. And I liked the idea of creating something tangible, but it also spoke to that creativity, that spark and inventiveness that I found so exciting.Yeah. And did you—I mean, how old were you when you discovered advertising? Was that—were you that young when the idea of working in advertising arrived?Yeah, at school, teenage years. So this friend and I used to buy *Campaign* magazine and devour it and learn about all the greats of the advertising world, not just in London but worldwide, and the big agencies. He also had a friend of a friend who was a copywriter.So we got to hang out with him a bit, and it seemed like a very glamorous lifestyle. So when I did my degree course, it was what was called a "thin sandwich" course. You spent six months at college and then six months working to get practical experience.And you had to be sponsored by a business to do this course. So I got sponsored by a company called United Biscuits, which is now Pladis, a global company. And my placements with them included manufacturing and then the sales force.And then the last placement was in the marketing department. And for me, this was like a dream come true. Because I'd heard about all this stuff, I'd been on the periphery of it.But then to be in a marketing department, and actively involved in doing some of this stuff, talking about packaging and promotions and pricing and product changes and innovation—that was wonderful. So I knew that really cemented for me that I wanted a career in marketing.Yeah. When did you first encounter the idea of the brand or the concept of the brand as an asset, or something to be managed or built or created?I think it was after that placement when I joined Unilever. And I think it was the schooling and upbringing that I got there—that brands are the lifeblood of a business, that they create current and future revenues. And it was always this idea of brands having an intangible nature. A brand was a feeling, a brand was something in your head.It was more than just the physical product and what it did, and the way it performed. It had some other essence to it that was always quite mysterious, but very exciting and intoxicating. So I think it was—I mean, obviously, we're all exposed to brands as we grow up, right, and adverts, etc., etc.And, you know, kids from quite an early age become brand-conscious and brand-aware and very quickly decide that some clothing brands are cool and others aren't. And they wouldn't be seen dead in certain clothes, you know, from quite an early age, which is interesting. But then actually working with brands and having to make decisions that were not just in isolation, like, if we change the price of this, there's a financial calculation.But over and above that, what does that do to the perception of the brand? Or if we change the packaging design or the materials used in packaging, we change the feel of it, the texture of it, what does that say? What meaning does that give?So the idea that the brand was not just the physical components, but there was something else around it, this intangible equity, was something that was certainly cemented during my industrial placements.Yeah. And you spent a long time managing brands, right? I mean, at high levels before, excuse me, the sort of the arrival of—you use the phrase "decision science." So I'm wondering, when did you first encounter decision science? And what did that do? How did that change the way that you operated?Yeah, I guess that's the question.Yeah. Well, I spent over 16 years at Unilever. And then I went to Diageo, which was also a real brand-centric company. And then I moved to T-Mobile. So I was invited by a former Unilever colleague. And it was a very exciting invitation because he said to me, "Listen, you and I know that businesses have to be based on consumer demand.And we have brands that are running through our veins. We take them for granted. But I've joined a business which is technology-led, it's supply-led. And the role of marketing is very different."It's about sort of chucking stuff out there and seeing what sticks. But the problem is that all competitors in this market operate on pretty much a level playing field. There's one technological advance, and then very quickly thereafter, everyone has the same thing.Everyone has the same handsets. So it's not just a question of who gets 4G or 5G first or who's got the fastest mobile internet or who's got the latest iPhone. Everybody does something very similar. So the only way to differentiate is through the brand.So that's what I joined my former Unilever colleague to do. And slowly but surely, we managed to turn this ship. And it was when I was at T-Mobile that I first got exposed to decision science.And decision science is a catch-all phrase that we use deliberately to include different fields of academic study and science. So a wide range—from neuroscience through the different flavors of psychology, cognitive, social, evolutionary, but also semiotics and cultural anthropology, and then more recently, what's become popularly known as behavioral economics. And I was exposed to this because I faced a dilemma. I commissioned a very expensive piece of research in 12 European countries.And it was research with which I was familiar from Unilever and Diageo. But the data we were getting back just didn’t seem to make sense. And I didn’t, honestly, I didn’t know what to do.It was a huge personal risk because I’d convinced the business to spend a lot of money—I mean, a high six-figure sum—on this research. And yeah, my own personal brand was in grave danger at this point. And someone said, “You should have a talk with these guys from Decode.They’ve got a very interesting perspective on what we do.” And I met them, and the two founders—one of them is a neuroscientist and the other is a psychologist. And I showed them the data, and I showed them the methodology that had led to and created the data.And they immediately critiqued it, using frameworks and language and views that I’d never heard before. But what they said and the questions they asked seemed to make intuitive sense. And I commissioned them on a small piece of research to kind of replicate the approach but using their approach in one of the countries.And it came back with far more useful data that intuitively made sense. So I took a very bold decision to cancel the original research and to commission Decode to run their approach, which was an interesting and novel one for me. I’d never heard of this implicit testing.I’d never heard of so-called System One and System Two at the time. It turns out, actually, some of the guys I now work with were at Unilever at the same time as me, and they were using implicit testing in their product testing and sensory testing because they had PhDs in psychology. And it was obvious to them that you had to use this particular method if you wanted to validly measure certain aspects of brand performance.And implicit testing grew out of social psychology because the psychologists knew there’s this big thing called a say-do gap. You know, what people say is not necessarily what they do. And particularly when you are asking for information about which people cannot say anything or will not say anything.So, you know, racial, gender, stereotyping, and biases are where all this started. But now applying it to brands and understanding what brands meant at an implicit level, how communication works at an implicit level, this was a complete revelation to me. And the upshot of it was that we commissioned this research through Decode.We used their approach and their model to create a new brand proposition and brief an agency. And the first manifestation of the brand relaunch in the UK was so successful. It grew sales by nearly 50%.It actually doubled footfall into retail stores within 48 hours. I mean, I’ve never seen such a dramatic cause and effect before. And it’s got 40 million YouTube views or so, which is still pretty famous.We didn’t have Instagram or TikTok in those days. It was Facebook and YouTube. So, it had 72 Facebook groups set up on the back of it.And it was this unique idea of a flash mob, and that was the creative leap that brought what we wanted to bring to life. And it was so successful. I went back to the founders at Decode and said, “Nobody can believe this.This is incredible. The company’s never seen results like this.” And these guys kind of shrugged and said, “Why are you surprised?Because you know what we’ve encoded in that ad are motivators of behavior. So why are you surprised that it works?” And that for me was just like a huge lightbulb moment when I realized the sheer power of leveraging what these guys knew.Because they were working with 150 years worth of scientific and academic study into human behavior. And ultimately, marketing is about behavior change. We want people to buy our brand, talk about our brand, share stuff, buy more, switch, whatever it might be.It’s behavior and behavior change. And learning, as I did through this experience, that leveraging what the different fields of science know about behavior change has dramatic and direct commercial impact. And that’s what got me into decision science.It was so exciting and so fundamental to marketing that I ended up deciding to quit my 25-year client-side career and join these guys because I just really wanted to be part of bringing decision science to marketing.Yeah, what an amazing story. It's so clear that you’re right there on the front edge of this paradigm shift, right? I mean, does it feel that way, that there was a before and an after, clearly, in your story? But how would you describe the way marketing worked before? What’s the understanding that’s out there for people who don’t understand what decision science is?Yeah, it worked. It worked. And it probably still does to some models and approaches that have evolved over many years that are simply either wrong or incomplete.For example, I was schooled that to get behavior change, you need to change someone’s attitude—that people behave in a certain way because they hold certain attitudes. So what you needed to do was create an intervention, which typically was an advertising campaign that would get people to change their attitudes. And as a direct result of that, they would then change their behavior.And what decision science tells us is that’s not the case, or it is the case, but in very few examples. What normally happens is that attitudes form following the behavior. It’s like a post hoc rationalization because we need to, in order to stay sane, we need our attitudes to conform to our behavior. So the relationship is not causal in one direction—it actually happens more post hoc.So that was one example that, you know, we shouldn’t just go chasing attitudinal change and measuring attitudes as the be-all and end-all. And the other was the so-called AIDA model—the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action—as a sequence of events, and that you needed to get each one nailed in turn. And then, learning from behavioral science that it doesn’t work in a sequence like that, that actually, you can get attention because people are interested, rather than having to get attention first in order to create desire and interest.And so understanding more about the mental processes that exist in the brain was fundamental to me but also very challenging. And being honest, very uncomfortable because, having grown up with certain paradigms, it’s hard to shape them. And it hurts. It’s effortful to change, change our minds.And that even is described in behavioral science, it’s the so-called Semmelweis reflex, because change is inherently risky. And that’s why we have a bias towards a status quo. It’s why change management, per se, is very difficult in any business because we stick to what we know, because it’s comforting, it’s familiar, and it’s safe.And once you rock that boat, it takes effort to change, to rethink or reconfigure your mental model of how the world works. And I think it was only because I had that personal experience of living through the T-Mobile relaunch and seeing the impact that helped me reshape my mental models. But it’s no surprise that, you know, when I first set up business in the UK with no clients but with this utter conviction that this was a very powerful tool, and I went to see my former colleagues from Unilever, and I would tell them about decision science and tell them the T-Mobile story.And they were fascinated, absolutely fascinated. But they kind of gazed blankly at me and said, "Well, that’s amazing. But anyway, back to the day job," because it was too challenging.It really, really hurts when you’re told that what you’ve been doing for years might not be the best way of doing something.Yeah. Yeah. What are the implications? I mean, I’m a researcher, right, and a brand person, but what are the implications for how a team learns? You know, if you really digest the implications of this, what does it do methodologically in terms of how you go about building a brand or just understanding what’s motivating your customers?I think you need to have a model that is rooted in how the brain works. And that’s what first attracted me to the Decode approach because what they said to me was, "Look, people buy brands, whether they’re physical products or services, to meet a job to be done," as we’ve come to know it popularly. And those jobs to be done are a mixture of things like functionality.So, you know, I’m thirsty, I need refreshment, or I want broadband, I want fast connectivity. So it’s very, very important that you deliver those. But that’s not enough in a competitive world because there are many brands and choices that could satisfy that functional job to be done.And that’s where there’s this other level, which is a more implicit level of social, emotional, psychological goals that people seek to achieve by using a product or service. And it’s the expected fit between a choice and its ability, its instrumentality, to meet a goal that drives valuation in the brain. Because if we’re faced with many choices, you know, going to a supermarket, and there are many brands that could meet your particular functional needs, but how do we actually make a choice?That valuation is driven by the expectation of best fit. And that expectation itself is driven by the associations that we learn that the brand has. And that can be through personal experience.But it can also be expectations and associations that are built through things like advertising, or word of mouth, or the signals that a brand sends through its packaging or its other activities and touchpoints. So they are all forming associations in the brain and the so-called System One associative network. And it’s those associations that we use to assess instrumentality when we’re faced with a choice.So once you understand that is how human beings make decisions, then the question is, how do we measure associations, both at a category level and a brand level? And how do we, if our brand is deficient in associations versus what it needs to be, how do we strengthen them? Or maybe how do we weaken some associations if they’re kind of not helping the cause as well?But once you understand that and it all fits together, you strengthen association, you get a better-perceived fit with the goal or job to be done, then you’re going to get higher valuation in the brain. That also leads to higher mental availability. So when that job to be done exists, which can be driven by occasion or context, situation, then which brand comes to mind first?So it all loops back together, it all fits congruently as a model and as an approach. And then the choice of research method falls out of that. What construct are we trying to measure? Is it a System One response, or is it a System Two reflection or evaluation? You know, that’s why people, I think, often get confused and conflate concepts of emotion, for example, because it’s perfectly valid to ask people about, how did you feel about this ad you’ve just watched? What were your likes and your dislikes?Those are emotion for sure, but the method you use elicits and evokes reflective mental processes, which is System Two. Right. So it’s perfectly valid to ask explicit questions or give people a like-at-scale or a rating scale for that type of thing.But on the other hand, if you are trying to measure automatic associations or automatic emotional response, then you need a different method. You need an implicit method of some sort, whether that’s a biometric method to measure a physiological response or whether it’s an implicit testing method to measure associations. It all depends on the construct you want to measure.Yeah. And I reached out to you because there was a post on LinkedIn in which you really drew this distinction between emotion and motivation, which feels like it’s really blurry. Those words are used kind of interchangeably in a lot of situations, but I loved how you pulled them apart. What is the difference, the functional difference? What is the distinction between emotion and motivations?Yeah. It’s a confusing one for marketers. And the reason is, I think, because it goes back to this dichotomous view that we’ve had for many, many years in marketing and advertising, a split between emotional and rational.And that has been conflated with System One and System Two. So people think now that emotion is System One and rational is System Two. There are a couple of things we need to tease apart here.And we’ll come back to motivation in a moment. The brain doesn’t work on a basis of emotional versus rational. It works with automatic processes and reflective processes. And System One are automatic processes and System Two are reflective. So when we learn something, like I mentioned earlier about my mother insisting we learn musical instruments, you know, when you start learning a musical instrument or language or to walk or to drive, it’s really difficult. Lots of cognitive effort going into that.And that’s a System Two task to learn those things. As they become automated and implicit, they pass into System One. So we no longer have to think about walking or driving. They are System One, but they’re not emotional. Walking is not emotional. So you can’t just pigeonhole System One as emotion and System Two as rational.So that’s one thing that needs clarifying. The other thing is emotion and motivation, because people’s popular view is that emotion drives action. There was a very interesting meta-study by Professor Roy Baumeister at Florida State University. Baumeister and his colleagues examined over 4,000 published papers that purported to show a link between emotion and action—specifically, that emotions drove action. And their review of 4,000 papers found, in fact, about 1% of those studies—about 40 papers—actually did show a link, a causal link with emotion driving action. And the vast majority of those were what Baumeister classified as extreme cases.And what he meant by that was someone gets in your face and is really threatening and angry, and you hit them, right? You get fear and anger building up in you. And as a result, you hit them, or someone cuts you off in traffic and in frustration, you honk your horn at them. That’s an extreme case. But if emotion drove action, our visits to the supermarket would just be a rollercoaster of emotions. And they’re not, of course, they’re not, right?So what actually does happen? And this is where, again, when we come back to science and examine what’s been studied, what drives motivation is so-called goal achievement. And one of the very senior neuroscientists at Stanford actually said, "Goals are the system units of human functioning, whether we’re aware of it or not."Achieving a goal is what triggers motivation. And a goal, as I mentioned before, like a job to be done, can be functional, right? My body is, I’m thirsty, I’m in need of liquid refreshment.So I drink something—that is a goal that I have. Or I need comforting, or I want to do something different, something adrenaline-filled, a bit rebellious, a bit risky. Or I want actually to—I have a goal that is about displaying self-esteem and superiority and whatever.So the choices that I make to meet those goals will be very different. Motivation and emotion—because everyone says, "Oh, they share the same Latin roots." Well, yes and no. Motivation comes from the Latin verb "movere," which means to move. And emotion comes from "emovere," which means to excite. The "e" bit comes from, is similar to the concept of "out."So it’s like moving out, so exciting. So they share some roots, but there is an important distinction between them. And when you talk to the scientists and academics about the role of emotion, they’re very clear.I mean, Carver and Scheier, who are world-renowned psychologists, say we experience emotions whenever the likelihood of achieving a goal changes. And to give you an example, so if I’m playing tennis competitively, and so my goal is to win, and I am winning, I feel good. I feel powerful. I feel proud. But if I’m playing to win and I’m losing, I feel angry or frustrated or sad. So we experience them when the likelihood of achieving the goal changes.They also act, and this is what Baumeister says as well, they also act as feedback to us, as a gauge of the extent to which we’re achieving our goals. And they then get linked with goal achievement to help us learn for the future. So imagine, for example, your friends say, you know, you’re going to meet a bunch of friends at the weekend and all go out for dinner.And the task of choosing the restaurant falls to you. And you want to feel good about your choice. And you want to maybe exhibit your knowledge or your connoisseurship. So you choose a certain restaurant. Now, if you have a great time there and a great meal, and it’s good food and good wine, a good ambiance, you’ve achieved your goal. And your friends will maybe congratulate you."Oh, great. You know, thanks for choosing this. It’s really, really nice."If you have a poor experience, then you miss your goal, right? And you feel frustrated and not good about yourself because you’ve let your friends down and it reflects badly on you as well as an individual. So that emotional feedback helps us learn for the future.We will choose restaurant A and not restaurant B in the future. Or, to win the game of tennis, we do this particular tactic and not that one. So that’s how emotions work—entwined with motivation as a gauge and as a feedback mechanism. But the underlying motivation is driven by this goal achievement.What’s my current state now? You know, am I thirsty? Therefore, a goal is triggered to quench my thirst. Or I’m going to choose a friend to go out with for an evening, and I want to have a great time.So my choice of friend would be different to if I’ve got a problem that needs to be shared and solved. I might choose a different friend who’s a good listener and someone who’s great with advice, but they’re not necessarily the life and soul of the party. It’s a bit like, which brand do I choose depending on the job to be done, and hence, what my motivation is going to be.Is it fair to say that goals and goal—the language of goals, motivations, jobs to be done—that’s all the same territory? That’s sort of the beating heart of a brand, basically?Yeah, yeah, I think so. And the other aspect of goals and jobs to be done, which are core—they’re central. But the thing to remember, because human behavior is dynamic, is that the goal or the job to be done can change depending on context.So when I first started working with the guys from DECODE, they said to me, there’s a very simple equation in psychology: behavior is the product of the person times the situation. And I didn’t quite understand it at the time. But then they said, well, imagine you’re choosing an alcoholic beverage to drink, and you’re on your own at home, and you’re sitting down to watch a movie.Yeah, you choose a certain beverage. But imagine now you’re on holiday with your friends or family, or imagine the temperature’s high or low, you’re in a work situation, you’re with colleagues or clients or whatever it might be. You change any one of those contextual variables, and it can directly influence your choice of beverage. The one constant in that is you as an individual—you don’t change. But because the situation changes, then our behavior changes.And that’s the dynamism of human behavior and how jobs to be done have to be looked at in the context of occasion as well.So this also is the foundation of that idea. I think this is you quoting that people buy categories first. This is to the degree that categories are defined by goals.Yeah, yes, absolutely. And this—because if, like, going back to my example about I’m thirsty, I need something to refresh me, I need liquid—that’s a category decision. Or I need broadband, or I need car insurance—that’s a category decision.So what motivates us at the category level is very important to understand first, because that then creates the context in which the brands operate. And this is all quantifiable as well. This is foundational research that we’ve been doing for many, many years, because once you have quantified those drivers at a category level, you can then profile the brands in the category.And that enables you to determine and define relevance. So which of the category drivers does your brand own? And also distinctiveness—the degree to which your brand owns the drivers uniquely, or it may share the drivers with competitors as well.And those are definable, and they are quantifiable as well, which is what makes it very exciting. And that’s exactly the same research Decode did with me as their client on the T-Mobile brand. But understanding the category is important because you can measure brand associations, and you can say, well, these are strong, and these are weak.Yeah, and is that good? Is that bad? Is that relevant or not?I don’t know, unless I’ve got a context against which to judge it.How has this territory, the landscape of decision science, changed? I mean, I think the book was 2013. It’s been a long time. What’s the state of things now?And of decision science or behavioral science per se? I mean, what I observe now from when, you know, Decode started 17 years ago, and I think at the time probably was unique in its offering. Now, there are many more vendors around.There are many more undergraduate and postgraduate courses available around the world in decision science and its various component fields. And I see even client-side, you know, there are chief behavioral officers, even there are new roles springing up. And certainly, you know, what I observe on LinkedIn and through marketing and advertising media, the language that’s being used now is much more embracing of behavioral science.And there have been some great proponents of it. I mean, people like Rory Sutherland at Ogilvy, you know, he has set up the Ogilvy behavioral science practice. He’s authored a book, *Alchemy*, and he has really led a fabulous charge for the whole industry worldwide, on why it makes sense to look at so-called irrational behavior.So yeah, I think it’s generally more accepted. I wouldn’t say it’s mainstream yet. In some businesses more so than others, some have embraced it for quite a long time, but others are still like, "Well, we’ll stick to what we’ve always been doing."So yeah, we’re still—I think it’s still on a journey.Yeah, I had a flashback. So in the late 90s, I got my first job at a brand consultancy, and we would do groups with deep projective exercises and free association. I had never experienced any of this stuff before.Our client was Clorox, which was like the only bleach brand out there. And in the exercises, these sort of heavy bleach users would—they kept generating, you know, we would ask if it were an animal, if it were a day of the week, and stuff like this. And the imagery was so amazing.And it was like a doorway, right, to goals, the way you’re talking. Like I remember the first woman in one of the groups said she saw a snow leopard. And the snow leopard was—she imagined a beautiful snow leopard with some cubs, like this very maternal thing.But if she went anywhere near it, it would rip her face off, is what she said. And it was just amazing, that little image that told so much, at least to me, and to us, to the goals, the motivations, right, of bleach, the role that played for her as a mother in a house. And also how, because she kept bleach in the garage, you know what I mean?She didn’t get anywhere in the house. And so I wonder, I feel like we’ve come at this truth of human goals and how it motivates behavior, drives behavior. But I came at it through this qualitative imaginative exercise.And you came at it the way you came at it. And I’m just wondering, how do you feel about free association, qualitative? And also as an addendum here, because I became a qualitative geek, I don’t—did you know Roy Langmaid?Yes.So I became like a total fan of his. I actually had a phone call with him in the pandemic. And I remember he wrote very critically of behavioral science. He says, no matter—there’s some quote, he said, read all you want about behavioral economics, you will not find people there.Oh, interesting. Oh, that is interesting.Yes. And so I wonder—that’s my thought. And I guess my question is, with the frameworks, and with the implicit association tests, which seem very dehumanizing in a way, but maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But what’s the role of qualitative in understanding the goals of your customer?Absolutely. Well, when I—again, when I first started with DECODE, I was asking them about the implicit quant methods because I’d never come across them before. I was only familiar with qual or more traditional quant, shall we call it.And they said, well, look, there are two ways to access the implicit mind and system one. You can do the projective stuff. You can do it on a therapist’s couch, you need to have real skilled operators doing that.But it can be done. But the trick is to distract or exhaust system two, because otherwise it will get in the way, right? It acts like the policeman or the gatekeeper on what we self-report.So you need a skilled moderator to be able to do that. But you can do it. The only issue then is it’s not scalable.It’s not quantifiable, which is where the implicit quant testing comes into its own, I think. But you mentioned, I mean, the behavioral economics thing from Roy’s is interesting because I always like to say that economics lacked the person, because economics itself was just the pure theory and lacked the reality of human behavior. And that’s where the human came in.But coming back to your thing about the snow leopard, it reminded me of our previous conversation about emotional and rational, because people often say, well, bleach, it’s functional, right? It cleans, it kills germs. That’s what it does.But when you listen to somebody with this metaphor about the snow leopard, and it’s the same that we’ve done it with cleaning products, you get really rich, evocative imagery about protection, and caring for other people, and reassurance, even pride, and a sense of efficiency and expertise and control. Those are amazingly powerful emotional responses to something that otherwise might be dismissed as a purely functional product with rational messaging. And that’s why this emotional-rational dichotomy is just completely false.And it’s also very unhelpful because there’s nothing that’s not emotional, you know, and the Clorox is a great example of that.There’s a few different ways I wanted to go at this point. Well, I know George Lakoff—I don’t know if you’ve ever read him—he always—I can never find the quote, but he calls reason imaginative. He has a way of saying imaginative reason, which I feel like bridges the gap between the—allows all of us into that idea about how we’re thinking.The way that you describe the relationship between system two and system one, between, what is it, reasoned or reflective?Reflective, yeah.It struck me maybe just because of the use of the word automated, that sort of AI is kind of a next level of—it’s almost a linear progression, these things that we’re learning. And we said when we outsource something to generative AI, we’re sort of automating something. It’s like a further refinement of automation.But I thought because you were there when decision science and behavioral psychology and behavioral economics kind of arrived, we’re now at a point where generative AI is probably putting—what was the—it’s making people feel really uncomfortable probably about how things were and how they’re going to be. What is your thinking on the value of it and the implications of AI on marketing?Well, I mean, I confess that with Decode, we’re spoiled because one of the co-founders actually did a double PhD at Caltech. So Caltech, the number one academic institution worldwide, right? So he did one PhD in neuroscience. Concurrently, he did a second PhD in AI, and he co-authored a book called *Understanding Intelligence*, which is still a reference work in academia. And 20 years ago, he was teaching robots to learn. So he then kind of parked it and said, "I’m going to focus on Decode and the whole decision science bit, but I have a vision for AI."But computing power doesn’t allow it yet. But now it does. Especially the last few years with the development of processing power in the chips, it’s enabled his vision. So we have actually set up a sister company three years ago, which has built a suite of apps that predict and optimize creative effectiveness. Now, this is based on—this is predictive AI, it’s not generative AI. But what he’s done is to take everything we know about mental processing—so attention, through perception, through memory, emotional response, semantics and semiotic associations.And he’s trained these—our AI tools with human data. So we’ve got, for example, 15,000 hours of eye-tracking data, 5 million eye-tracking, static images, 450 million images, and the corresponding human tagging with words. So if I showed you a sunflower, you’d tell me, well, it’s yellow, it’s a sunflower, it’s got seeds, you make oil, blah, blah.But then at a more semantic, conceptual level, you would say, well, it’s outdoors, it’s the sun, it’s warmth, it’s nature, it’s positivity, it’s uplifting, things like that. So we’ve trained the AI with that. So now if you showed it an image of a sunflower, it would learn, it has learned what humans associate with it.So we’ve got this suite of tools now that mirror—they’re like a digital brain. They mirror all of these processes. So we can now upload a static or a video piece of creative, whether it’s a bit of point-of-sale material or a pack design or a YouTube ad or whatever it might be.And the AI will give us some metrics that predict its creative effectiveness. And we’ve got principles behind it that help—if you’re not getting the metrics you need, how you optimize. So then, because of the nature of the AI, of course, you can then iterate.So you can chuck 100 ads at it and pick the best three, and then do some evolution of those, and then test them again. And it’s done in minutes. And it costs pennies.It’s ridiculous how effective it is. And this is being used globally now by about 500 brands in about 25 languages. And our biggest client is using it to test every one of their social media videos now.So that, I think, is a beautiful marriage of the behavioral science, decision science principles, and understanding of human behavior and then using AI deep learning models to then predict how a human would respond.Yeah, that’s amazing. Have you had any interactions with the synthetic users that kind of—that approach?No, no, I haven’t. No, we’re not using synthetic data at all. I’m not sure if this guy, Chris, our co-founder, has examined it at all.I know he’s starting to think now about the relationship and the loop between predictive AI and then generative AI, because in theory, that could be very interesting. You know, you could generate and then predict. And if it’s not optimized, then regenerate and predict, etc.He’s very—Chris is always very clear to say, you know, this doesn’t replace humans. You still need the human to write the right prompts, for example, for the generative AI. And we always talk about it as augmented intelligence rather than artificial.So it’s got, you know, it sits alongside. We’ve had examples where clients have—and to give you, this is a real example, and I think it’s very helpful. A client has an internal design team that produces all of the visuals for all of their brand comms, and they’re doing, they’re producing lots every day.They had a change in their brand positioning, and their CEO said, "Guys, I’m not seeing a lot of difference in comms now, even though we’ve changed the brand positioning." So they asked us in to talk to them, and we sat the design team down, and we said, "What we really need to do first is to define what is on brand, what sort of visuals are on brand and what sort of visuals are off brand." Because only by juxtaposing those will we really be able to tease out this difference.And what it led to was a really deep, sometimes heated, but very useful debate amongst the design team to really distill the essence of what they meant as on brand. Then once we’d got that, we were then able to select about 100—no, I think it was about 200 or 300—visuals that reflected it and train the AI. So the AI was trained with what equals on brand, and similarly, what equals off brand.So the next time they got a visual, they just stick it through the AI and it gives them a traffic light. Is it on or off brand? If it’s neither, if it’s an amber score, go back to the team to debate.But the team actually then upskilled. So by having the AI alongside them, they were then able to have much more useful and efficient conversations about the choice of visuals. And it cut—it sped up decision-making by a factor of about 10 inside that business.So I think that’s a nice example of where the AI sits like an assistant, you know, it is augmenting human intelligence, not replacing it.Yeah. Well, I want to thank you so much. I mean, it was a very kind and generous thing for you to do, to accept this invitation. I really enjoyed the conversation. So thank you so much. I really appreciate it.Likewise. It’s a pleasure. Thanks, Peter. 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Max Kabat is the co-founder of goodDog, a brand consultancy. I first met Max and his partner Lisa Hyman way back in 2013, when they first hired me to partner on brand discovery for their client, Leesa Sleep. Since then, we have partnered many, many times, and I was excited to hear more about him, Marfa and his story. Max is also the publisher of the West Texas newspaper The Big Bend Sentinel and owner of The Sentinel, a community gathering space in Marfa, Texas. Max, very good to see you. Thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of this.Yeah, happy to be a part of this, Peter. Always nice chatting with you, my friend.Nice. So I start all these conversations in the same way, with the question that I borrowed slash stole from a neighbor here in Hudson. She teaches oral history. Her name is Suzanne Snyder. And I love the question so much, but it's so beautiful, I kind of overexplain it. I caveat it up front. So before I ask, 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?Yeah, I come from New York. I'm a New Yorker. I spent the first 30 something years of my life, mostly in the Northeast. I went to college in rural Pennsylvania. And yeah, that was where I sort of was born and bred and raised. And then I married, I met a cattle rancher's daughter from South Texas. And I moved to Texas in 2016, about eight years ago.And you're from New York. So where did you grow up? Where were you?Yeah, my parents are products of immigration of some sort. And they were both born and raised in and around New York City. I was born in New York City, in Manhattan, and then my parents moved up the Hudson River to Briarcliff Ossining when I was a two-year-old kid, and that's where I was sort of raised.Yeah. And what do you have memories of, as a kid, what you wanted to be when you grew up?Oh, I don't know, probably any kid during that era, I probably wanted to be a professional athlete. I think that all died quite quickly. I am athletic, but I am not very large and not very strong. And so yeah, that probably died pretty quickly.Yeah. And what was life? What was it like growing up? And what do you say Briarcliff Ossining? Is that one of those adjacent?Those are two towns. Yeah. But some people don't know Briarcliff Manor. It's now probably most known because Donald Trump bought the rinky-dinky golf course that was there and turned it into Trump National, probably in the last 20 plus years. Or it's also in Mad Men.Oh, wow.Oh, yeah. The main character, I can't remember his name at the moment travels up the Hudson. Don Draper goes to Briarcliff. That's where he lives. He commutes up to.Oh, wow. What was it like growing up there? What was your.Yeah. Suburban, you know, New York City, growing up this Westchester County, all the other, I think, counties that surround New York City in the Tri-State area. You know, people commute. A lot of people commute. A lot of people are involved in business and supporting business and all those kinds of things. And my parents didn't commute. They worked locally. But yeah, that was sort of the town I grew up in.Yeah. Did you have a relationship with New York City? Did you identify as a New York? 100 percent. Yeah, 100 percent. I always said New York if I was in and around somewhere else, if somebody asked me where I was from, I would sort of start pointing towards the place, you know, and then or I was it's funny, I was growing up as a kid or even as a young adult living in New York City after college, I always took offense. Oh, you're from upstate. No, no, no, no. I'm not from upstate. Whereas now I live in literally in one of the most desolate places in the country. And, you know, rural America has a very soft spot in my heart. And I probably should have worn that more proudly as sure, I am from upstate technically north of the city would be up.Yeah. Tell me about where you are now. I'm in Marfa, Texas. It's in Big Bend country, the Big Bend region of far west Texas. I'm on the border. My closest city is El Paso, about 180 miles away. Or I live right in the middle of town. It's about 60 miles from the county that I'm in Presidio County borders as a port city. Ojinaga is the Mexico side. And Presidio is the U.S. side. And we're in a set of grasslands between two mountain ranges. Bottom of the Rockies. If you look at a map, the bottom of Rockies sort of spills out and goes actually all the way into Mexico. But we're at the bottom of the Rockies. So we're nine-tenths of a mile high in the high desert.Yeah. And how do you describe Marfa to somebody who's not encountered it?I think it's sort of an anomaly of a place. It's an island in the middle of the desert, as people call it. It's really hard to get to. It takes intestinal fortitude. It takes effort to get here, not just to live here. It takes an effort to get here. And so it's sort of a self-selecting kind of idea. And yeah, people. It's had a lot of change over the last bunch of years, the last hundred years, we should call it. You know, there were World War bases that were out here. There were POW camps. This was the film Giant. Have you ever seen Giant was filmed out here. So this was sort of that at one point in time, even before that, it was Mexico? Was it the U.S.? Some people sort of made a border. And lo and behold, this was on the U.S. side. So, you know, it's part of the Chihuahuan Desert. The Chihuahuan Desert reaches starts in the state of Chihuahua, a little bit south of that in Mexico and comes up through West Texas, a little bit into Mexico, a little bit into Arizona. So what is it? It's a place. It's an ecosystem. It has a border, but it doesn't. It was really great grazing and cattle country. And until it wasn't until it was overgrazed, it was the far reaches of desolation. It's known for really high-end art and sort of the father of minimalist art, Donald Judd came here in the 70s and sort of established himself and established the place. And so it's a lot of different things. An enigma, I don't know, might be a one-word answer, but a complicated but easy way to sort of explain that it's everything and nothing all at the same time.Yeah. What do you think people get wrong about Marfa? There's an idea of what Marfa is, but people haven't really experienced it or known. But what do people not understand or get about it?I think that it's interesting the last number of years, if anything changed in the pandemic, I think all the quote-unquote special places sort of got a lot more attention in the pandemic, especially if they were not in the middle of a city. People started exploring what it might look like to live somewhere else. And those places, everything drastically changed. I think it was sort of a lot of things went into turbo into overdrive. But. I'm sorry, your question again was I lost my train of thought.What do people get wrong about Marfa?There's probably an impression. Yeah, sorry. I remember where I was going with this. Thank you. I think people get wrong at everything about a place that they have expectations about what it's supposed to be. And they go in with these preconceived notions instead of just experiencing. And I think it's. That's what I would sort of hope people would be able to do as a visitor of a place, sort of experience what it is, take it for what it's worth. You know, if you go in with certain expectations, I think that sort of clouds your judgment. Not to say that that's not who we are as humans. We at our core. But when you go to a place and you have a preconceived notion of what it's supposed to be and the way it's supposed to be, you're probably stuck in a situation where it's not going to meet or maybe exceeds or. But I think it just sort of clouds the whole experience.So I of course, we met through your work at Good Dog as a co-founder, brand strategy and growth strategy. You also have you're the publisher of the Big Bend Sentinel and the owner of the Cisco, which is a gathering space. How did let's start with the with Good Dog. How did you get into brand that kind of brand strategy work? When did you first sort of encounter the idea of brand and that you could make a living doing that kind of work?Yeah. I had spent some time after college to go back to your early question. What did I want to be when I was brought up? I won't be an athlete. I really wanted to be in sports marketing. And that's what I thought I was going to do after college. And then two guys I used to caddy for in the summers offered me a job to go work on Wall Street. So my first three years on were working on Wall Street at a broker-dealer firm and then at a hedge fund that was a client of the broker-dealer in trading equities, options, swaps, that kind of stuff. I didn't get an MBA, but I like to say that that sort of gave me an understanding of the way in which the business world works through a particular lens. But it just gave me a sort of a good understanding about business. I didn't like where that was leading or what that was, what my life was like there. And I ended up spending a bunch of years at a media company that sold space, sold media to advertisers. They had an outdoor advertising business and a sports marketing signage and sponsorship business. And it was sort of there, I like to say, that my education of the United States was I was spending a lot of time trying to ingratiate myself into the NASCAR community and sort of traveled around the country, not the coasts, the middle of the country and sort of realized very quickly that, oh, I am not from America. I might think that New York City is the center of the world and I might have all these ideas and ideals. But there's this whole other place called America that I don't know a lot about. And it made me sort of start to question a lot.It was also after the 2008 crash, I was in college in 2001. So I think I was sort of already into this mindset of sort of questioning and thinking and realizing that we're, you know, the experience is short and we're all intertwined. And how do you leave the place better than when you started? And I realized that I think, you know, through that media sales, the company was called Van Wagner. I realized that marketing had this awesome ability and advertising, this awesome ability to influence people and affect change. I was just sort of a cog in the wheel. I was part of the system. What happens if I could use the system to sort of do something different to start to sort of shift consciousness to a more conscious place? So that didn't work there at that media company. I had tried to rally support from senior leadership to say, hey, what would happen if I could do this, but stay here? And they weren't really into that. So I ended up going to work for an integrated marketing agency where I met Lisa, my business partner, good dog. She was my boss. And she had built this thing that was called Green Dog, Good Dog. It was, you know, sort of using integrated marketing's ability to influence people and affect change, but do it for good, for good brands and all these sort of this is 15 years ago, let's say. So, you know, one of the only ways in which you could vote with your dollar was to do it via food and beverage. That was sort of the closest tie to there's a you can eat organic, you can farm a certain way, you can support a certain kind of lifestyle. And it's also healthy for it's, you know, it's good for you and good for the planet kind of idea. And so those were sort of the first products and services. And so I participated in that rode that wave. And Lisa and I eventually spun out of the larger integrated shop that was like 250 people when we left. And it's and it's a two-person Good Dog is now like a two-person, high-level thinking, high-level doing shop where we work with founder-built brands and mostly in the twenty-five to three hundred million dollar run rate work through growth plateaus as they scale.Yeah. Can you tell I love can you tell me a story about that moment where you encountered America, as you said, at the NASCAR? You know, I'm I don't I think you said you're you won't be able to see me, but I'm a if you're from New York, I'm a curly-haired New York Jew. That's what I look like. Right. And so I talked a different way. I looked a little bit different. I acted a little bit different. I dressed a little bit different. And here I was trying to figure out how to get on the inside of a community that I didn't know a ton about. I didn't grow up watching NASCAR, but I quickly realized that the fandom was incredibly palpable and super powerful and brands were spending oodles of dollars to try to ingratiate themselves into that community and at the same time sort of create these kinds of experiences. And those were things that the company I worked at was really good at. And also, yeah, I just was trying to figure out where was there a place for me in business? And I did it for a bunch of years and became a part of sort of the business community in some sense. I would travel from race to race. I would hang out in the pits. I met some really fantastic people. It was a really amazing experience. And, you know, there's nothing like standing on the track and feeling the actual weight of cars racing around the track and how it shakes you to your core and wearing headphones. And it's a pretty event. People in the states. It's the whole thing is a spectacle. It's an amazing, amazing experience that travels week after week after week. But yeah, I think that sort of gave me a better idea of, wow, I'm such a pompous idiot, I'm totally not from there's this whole other place called America. I want to learn about this. Yeah, that's how I think I experienced that.What do you love about the work that you do? A good dog. What's the joy in it for you?Yeah, it's a good question. I think that, you know, the joy is I didn't know this at the time, but I guess I always had somewhat of an entrepreneurial spirit, right? Having your own consultancy can be a whole other conversation. Consultancy agency. We're using the word fixer because that's what Lisa and I really do. We're sort of we're brand fixers. But you're an entrepreneur in and of itself, you're running your own business and you're entrepreneurial. But I think until my wife and I sort of started Macy, not Lisa, my business partner, Macy, my wife, when we started this project in Marfa. I think I realized that I always had this want to help people make their idea sort of flourish. And when there's too many people and too many cogs in the wheel and too much distance between the big idea or sort of the heartbeat of the business that's driving it forward and sort of the people that are helping it flourish and they're looked at as more of minions rather than part of a team. I didn't like that whole idea. I sort of wanted to exist in sort of this is a capitalistic society. I was more interested in existing in sort of things that were more tangible and tactile. And you could you felt like you were really your ideas and your influence on helping somebody make their business better was actually making a difference rather than was just sort of part of the system.Yeah. You said that you're calling yourselves fixers. When people ask you about what you do, how do you how are you talking about it? What do you what do you say when people ask you what you do?Yeah. Lisa and I've been at this really long time. And I think that, you know, the thing we've baked a lot of cakes, as I like to say. We've helped people grow their business top line. We've helped them participate in equity events, pre post, raise money, exit a business. We've been at this for a while. And so there's a lot of people, I think the market that exists now from a consultant standpoint, there's a lot of people that are free agents. But what do they actually do? What is their experience? What have they actually built? How have they actually helped somebody sort of grow their business? And so yeah, I think Lisa and I are, we're always helping somebody sort of differentiate themselves. That's what we're helping a business do. And so if you can't differentiate yourself, that's as a consultant, I think that there's an inherent problem there. So everybody is a consultant, everybody's an agency, the barrier to entry to stand up your own thing, takes little effort and some words on a LinkedIn profile, and ta-da, you've hung a new shingle. So we're sort of in this moment of everybody's consultant, everybody's an agency, everybody says they can do something, what can they actually do? We're a fixer. We help you fix your business. We've seen a lot of these situations. And we've been on the inside a ton. And so how do we pull on that experience to help you sort of turn your challenge into a solution?Yeah. I mean, I've had a one sort of angle on your work and seen you get amazing clients. The relationships I think I see you having with them are really strong and very honest and direct. And I was curious about how you get, if there's something about the moments that you engage with clients or the moments they come to you, it seems like you're really alive in these very transitional moments with clients and you really are helping them. And I just wondered how you how you think about the client and how you what those kind of conversations are like when you when a client reaches out to you and they're in a transitional moment. How do you help them understand what's needed to to move forward?Yeah, I think that in transition, thank you for using the word in transition. Those are our favorite opportunities. And that's really when we're at our best. If everything's really great, probably don't call us. There's a lot of really great people that can make really lovely creative that looks a certain way and is creative for creative sake. Or you can have really lovely packaging that doesn't necessarily say anything. But if you're in this moment where you're trying to go from one place to another, where what got you here isn't going to get you to that next stage of growth, if you created a category and the world sort of collapsed around you and you can't remember who you are, what you are and what your special sauce is, if you have a ton of innovation coming out, if you're in transition - those are really big, juicy problems that we love to unpack and help you figure out how to move the business forward. Those are actually the best times to bring you in. You know, that's how we've really gotten to know each other over the last bunch of years. Because a key component of that is, for whom are you for? Really knowing, not just your current consumer, but your growth consumer, and getting to the nitty-gritty. These amazing insights is some of the favorite work that that we get to do with you. That's the best stuff and really helps drive our work forward. And then building a story around that. And then once you sort of have that story, that unique, authentic, culturally relevant, resonant story, that's differentiated for the business built on the insights, then you're able to sort of pull that through. And that last part is obviously super important. And what does that look like from a, you know, if it's a CPG business, what does that look like from a sales and category management story? What does that look like from an innovation story? How does that work? How is your founder story told within the context of this? What's your do you have a thought leadership position or not? What does the creative look like on pack on your, you know, paid or known assets? And, you know, how are you doing business with whom are you doing business with? And so, you know, if you sort of we've, we've, as I said, baked a lot of cakes and pull that through. So that's why we look at Yes, we do that. That very first part, that's sort of our special sauce of you need to, we believe you have to have a really good story, then you have to have a really good plan of how to activate that really good story. And then you have to have, you know, a really, really good creative, a really good way to sort of have that live in the world. And those are the sort of three markers that we believe super strongly about. And that's where we focus our time and effort. Yeah.And I mean, I've, it's, we've, it's been over 10 years, I think, I think 2013 might have been the first the first time that we worked on Lisa sleep. But I remember I had an amazing client who one time I remember I, she always left me, she kind of left me alone, she sort of took my guidance, and she'd had very little feedback very often. And I asked her what that was about, because it was such a pleasure to work with her, you know, and she said, Well, I thought that the first sign of a professional is they let other professionals do their job. And I feel like that's the relationship that we've gotten into where you really do allow me to do my own approach. And I remember the first thing, Lisa, we showed up at the we didn't even interact until the presentation day, in which you guys were presenting your work, and I was presenting my work at the same time. And it was really a beautiful experience. And so I just say that, but I was curious about the role of qual when you're when you're talking to a client, when do you feel like you need qual? And when do you not need qualitative? What's the question for you when you when you want to make that kind of suggestion?Yeah, I mean, a lot of this is sort of arts and science, right. And I think it's really interesting. We're working on a new piece of work, and this business, you know, it's less than $100 million. And they are so they are armed with so much data, and it's such good stuff. But I think that what we're realizing is that they're they're missing a little bit of the softer side of things. And, you know, data definitely tells a story. From a quantitative perspective, it's super helpful. They have a new they have segmentation, they have data back from retail partners, they have data back from their own channels. And we just sort of looked at all this stuff and started talking to this particular client. And, you know, the place that they were hoping to that they want to hang their hat on from a messaging standpoint, we felt could it could be deeper, it could be more intentional. And so that's a really great place for a qual to sort of tie there's, we all have our assumptions, we're all humans, we all go to retreat to our certain corners and have our ideas. But I think that from a qualitative perspective, that sort of insight that you're that you're able to drive in our work, it really helps us. It really helps us drive the whole idea forward. You know, it's great.Yeah, I love that word intentional. When you say that you felt like there's a need to be more intentional on the client side.Yeah, I think, you know, when you're talking about founder-built brands, when you're talking about sort of middle-stage brands, everybody's doing everything. It's all hands on deck all the time, it sort of feels like and, you know, building relationships with CEOs or C level, the C suite and boards, that's that's where a lot of our all of our work sort of starts. I think you need to be super intentional, and they're coming to you for expertise and understanding they know you've, they've done a lot of reps and so have you and so how are you going to sort of make sure that the recommendations that you're providing are intentional? It's not we're not saying, you know, tactical marketing for the sake of tactical marketing, but none of this is everything has to be intentional. We're not talking about Verizon budgets. We're not talking about, you know, everything has to be about ego or it has it has to be about driving the business forward. So everything has to be intentional.Yeah. It also feels like on a number of these experiences I've had, it might be the first time they've really done qual or they've really you've led them into an experience that they haven't really had before. And I'm really curious about that, like what that conversation is like, and how that works.I think that there are a lot of people do quote-unquote brand strategy or messaging or positioning. I don't know what you want to call it. A lot of people are consultants. I think the situations where we find ourselves in sort of the in the dating phase that first sort of feeling each other out, are we going to be right for each other phase is if people want to do the work. If they want to do the hard work about questioning what exists. If they've recognized that everything isn't so rosy. Because nothing is ever rosy. We as humans know that nothing is ever 100% amazing. If they want to lean into that, then they are the kind of person that wants to understand in a different kind of way. They want to make decisions based on something that might feel a little bit intangible to somebody else. That’s why I think our work together has been has been so fruitful for the both of us. Because those people are sort of attracted to us, right? They're attracted to Lisa and myself and our line of thinking and our experience. And so, when we say, hey, we want to learn more about this thing, we're sort of leading the horse to water of they're they're trusting in us. And we're bringing them a solution that we think is going to make the work product better. And yeah, I don't, that's, that's how I think we get there so easily.Yeah, yeah, it's really wonderful. It's wonderful, creates wonderful experiences. I had another question. I wasn't sure how. I have had experience in sort of not for profit space journalist space, which I kind of, I guess I'm laying on top of a B Corp mission-driven kind of culture, like that there's a cultural maybe skepticism about brand marketing, because it's attached to sort of corporate marketing strategy stuff. And I just wondered if that's something that you encounter or no.I think 15 years ago, that was totally the situation. I think, you know, when Lisa and my early work together, you know, one of the biggest pieces of work we worked on when we first started was with the Nature Conservancy, one of the largest, oldest environmental organizations in the world. And we were trying to get them to answer really hard questions. And even then, there was too much bureaucracy. There are too many layers. And they didn't, they didn't want to necessarily do it. They were sort of just like, where's the stuff? Where's the where's the creative? Where's the thing that we're putting into market? And we're like, you are not answering actually the first questions, like, why does somebody give a s**t about nature? Right? You got to answer that question. You can't just make somebody care. Because it's not a good hook. No one, no one is going to give a s**t about if you don't know how to tell somebody or talk to somebody or engage somebody about giving a s**t about nature, why is somebody actually going to care. And so I think all organizations and all that kind of stuff has sort of evolved over the years. But I don't know, I mean, I think I got to a point where in my career, you know, I'm married to a Macy's award-winning photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, her most recent film, Zorowski v Texas just premiered at Telluride a couple weeks ago, to rave reviews. She's really good at what she does. And so when we were living out here in the middle of nowhere, in Marfa, we got to know the folks that owned the paper, it's almost good. It's gonna be 100 years old. And in 2026, they were running it for 30 years, and they wanted to retire. And they sort of asked, they propositioned Macy and I do you want to take it over? You're a marketing brand person, advertising person, and you're a journalist. We've been living out here for a couple years. You know, and we said yes. I think the main reason we said yes, was because I was helping businesses influence people and make change using capitalism and wanted to take that idea and apply it myself. And we also looked at the at the stats, the dew and gloom, the demise of our democracy is contributed by the fact of that local and regional voices are fading with local journalism sort of struggling to find a sustainable business model. And so why am I telling you this story? Because what we did was we sort of leaned into this concept of community, we thought that newspapers have always owned through a macro, through a macro lens, they've always owned this concept of community, but they've just sort of manifested itself through news and information and print and digital. What would happen if we sort of went backwards to go forwards? What would happen if we created a physical space where people could interact and exchange information and participate in capitalism and commerce in the name of getting provided more information? We thought it was ownable because it wasn't, you know, the local newspapers and local journalism writ large is not going to do any good job of fighting the digital fight in comparison to everyone else that doesn't have the capital and the know-how and, but something that we did think we had was sort of leaning into this concept of community. So we did the work, what was, you know, what was the product market fit? What did the community need? And how would we sort of fill that need and sort of thread the needle? And, and for us, it was providing a third space for people that live here and visitors to interact with and serve them coffee and food. And we have a retail shop and it's event space. We do anything from the prom to a hoity-toity wedding that blows through town. And so all of that is to say, we took journalism something that, that I think really struggled to figure out it's over the last 25 years, it's, it's just been a battle and hasn't really done a good job leaning into the concept of brand. And we just, we just owned that idea. We just sort of took unlocked value out of what existed iconography that's been around for, you know, almost a hundred years. It's almost the oldest business in town and in the region. And, and yeah, that was, so to get to your, back to your earlier question, I don't know that everybody has necessarily done it incredibly well, but we happened upon a place that no one was playing, doing the brand play. And we sweat, we, you know, we went headfirst firmly into that and sort of have found a lot of success and a sustainable business model and a better, a better news product by doing so.How are things at the Sentinel? How long has it been now?It's been five years. Yeah. We, we, we opened our doors July 4th, 2019 and published our first newspapers. There's a bilingual paper called El Internacional that's Presidio, the port city, as I said earlier, and the border paper. And yeah, we published our first two papers on July 4th, 2019. Got a really good headstart of nine months before the pandemic hit. But, but yeah, five years later, it's, we've grown top of line revenues, you know, 500%. We have almost, from a couple of people, we've employed 20 people full-time, part-time between the cafe, retail, restaurant, and newspaper. We have more journalism. We're paying people a higher wage in a small town. I know 20 people doesn't sound like a lot, but when your population is less than 2,000, it makes you a decent-sized employer pretty quickly.Yeah. And you used that phrase, third space, right? And I feel like more people are talking about third space all the time now, right? And what have you learned about what that means? You know what I mean?Yeah. Yeah, totally. You know, I think that, I think going back to that, that, that part, I was just saying that, that as the world becomes more digital, it's, it's like, it's a freight train, right? We're not stopping that. And we all participate in it and it's making our lives better. It's making us more connected in some capacity. But I also, I also think maybe this was just a Luddite in me, but I always felt that it was making us more disconnected. And, you know, you look at the rise of experiential marketing over the last X amount of years like that's because creating sort of a physical experience that can be shared somewhat on social a hundred percent, but like creating that physical experience, that's, that's like a memory. That's something that sort of happens in a different kind of world versus the doom scrolling or the, you know, the flash in the pan of reading a something or something that happens online. It's, it's just, it's different. Something I have been thinking about is there's a very large difference in my opinion, between audience and community. And I think we've, we've sort of conflated the two. Community is about a place and its people. Audience is about not, it doesn't have to be sort of place and people specific. And local journalism is about recording the history and telling the stories of a place and its people. If it's, that's, you know, monetize, when you say monetizing audience, you don't talk about monetizing a community. Yes. The Sentinel has done that. We've monetized, you know, figured out a way how to monetize all that stuff. Cause the reality of the situation is news and information is free as, as humans are considered and people don't want to pay for it. And so we're, but people want to pay for experiences and $7 matcha lattes and, you know, all that kind of stuff and being together with people. And so that's sort of, I think that's a big difference for me is that audience is like, you use your users, you're monetizing them. It's, it's, it's not a two-way conversation. It's a one-way conversation. Whereas community is about sort of building and interacting. It's, it's a different kind of thing.Yeah. And I feel like you and I have had exchanges about how that word community has been really, you know, co-opted or, I mean, marketing we're in sort of a community era where brands are building community. You're talking about community. How do you, what are your, how do you think about community in the, in the, in those two worlds that you occupy? You've got people in the brand space probably asking you about community and you're actually building a, be in place.Yeah. I mean, I think I have a very adverse reaction to when people in the brand community are like, it's my community. It's like, No! I'll show you community……We've had such a conversation about digital isn't what it used to be, you know, Facebook, Instagram, all these sort of community aspects. They don't work like they used to. And people are looking for differentiation. People are looking for, you know, a deeper connection. In the last couple of weeks, Columbia, we have some gentlemen from some, some folks over at Columbia that are professors published a paper about, about third space and you know, what building a third space has done for, for places economically and the, the benefits and what that sort of spurns off up from an entrepreneurialist thought, which is really interesting, you know, and then you have brands like I saw Faraday, which is like a men's clothing line. The people that started it, two brothers from the Jersey shore went and took over an old post office and built this third space and are serving coffee and food and home goods and all that kind of stuff, sort of looking for a place to sort of like for people to interact. And I think it's a really interesting place for brands to play. I just wonder, my question that I'm sort of grappling with is like, to what end and like, and for what, right? Like, were this, this business, this idea that we happened into is about, about a place and its people. It's about journalism. It's about providing, you know, some, what some people call a public good for the community and sort of a symbiotic relationship. If you support us, we're going to support you kind of deal. I don't know how it plays out with, with other brands that are like not a coffee shop or not like an actual third space business that are trying to play into it. It feels more pop-uppy and feels not as more like more audience, an idea more about audience rather than community. That isn't to say like the people from Faraday might be like, we want to do something special for the place that we're from. And now we have the capacity and the monetary wealth to do it. Like, I think that's really awesome and great. But I don't know. I'm sort of, I'm trying to figure out like what this moment we're in, what exactly is it?Yeah. So we're kind of near the end of time. What's next for the Sentinel and the other paper?Yeah. So, you know, the first five years have been about building and, and establishing the foundation and, you know, iterating and iterating, you never stop iterating, but iterating to a place of like, we know we have a really good business model. We know what works. We've, we figured out a way how to, how to really make it sing. But there's a ton of value for us to, to really unlock out of the brand and the business moving forward. And we haven't gotten to everything. You know, we're still sitting on a hundred years of archives of Far West, Texas, Pancho Villa, you know, came through this area. There's like, there's some really amazing, awesome stuff that's happened through here. We've, you know, we haven't published, we were a content engine, but we haven't gotten into the game of sort of publishing and, and creating experiences besides obviously like the daily coffee shop for a weekly newspaper, the daily and sort of the weekly things that sort of have a bit more reoccurring revenue. Yeah. So there's a lot of ideas. It's the great part is, this is a marathon, not a sprint. And yeah. And I'll at the same time, a lot of conversations about when you do something in a, in an industry that is not so into change and doing things differently, such as journalism, even though they report on change all the time, how has that happened? You know, when I think we started, people were like, those guys are crazy. There's been many moments through local journalism's last 20 years where people have said like, wow, that's a stupid idea. And that's crazy. But I think people looked at us as sort of crazy and insane. And, and five years later, it's like, well, we did it, you know? And so how do we use the, the insights and understanding and, and learnings to help other folks do what we've done? There's a lot of conversation going on about that too.Yeah. How has the journalism world responded to you guys?Yeah. I think now they're, they're like, they're pretty excited about it. You know, we still don't fit the mold. I'm not a journalist. I'm like a still, I've been doing this for five years as like a quote-unquote publisher, you know? So yeah, it's still, it's still, we're looked at as sort of outsiders to a degree, but that makes sense, right? All entrepreneurial thought is really looked at as, as outside the comfort zone. I like to say that like the journalism world isn't necessarily comfortable with being uncomfortable yet. And that's, that takes time and hopefully it'll happen sooner rather than later.Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Max. It was a pleasure speaking with you.Yeah. Nice to chat with you too, Peter, as always. And nice to chat about something besides, besides the working on a piece of business. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Lipson, PhD is a clinical psychologist, author and translator living in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He is the author of, most recently, Be: An Alphabet of Astonishment, Stairway of Surprise: Six Steps to a Creative Life, and Group Meditation. Michael, thank you very much for accepting my invitation to this interview.Thank you for inviting me. It's a luxury to be invited.So I start, I don't think you know this, but I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine who lives in Hudson. She's an oral historian. She helps people tell their story. It's a big, beautiful question, which is why I steal it, but I also overexplain it because it's so big. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you're in absolute control and you can answer or not answer this question any way that you want to. And the question is, where do you come from?Absolute control, what would I do with that? Go ahead, what's your question?The question is, where do you come from?Ah, well, that's a very Zen master kind of question. They often said that, trying to plumb the depths of where the other monk, for instance, was coming from, not geographically or biographically, but sort of from their spiritual source. I don't know if you ever read "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." Well, of course I did. And in there, there's a little boy who's hiding in the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan from the guards and the boy and a girl. And at one point, the boy is hiding. He's standing, I think, on a closed toilet. But the guard opens the stall and sees him and says, "Where did you come from?" And he says, "My mommy always says I come from heaven." And then he runs away. So I guess that's where I come from, just like you and everybody else.Where do I come from? Sure, I could just answer that in so many ways. To be more down to earth, I was born towards the end of the 50s, a baby boomer in New Haven, Connecticut. My father was a professor at Yale, which certainly had a big effect on me, not only because my mother also was a professor more briefly. And at UConn, she got her doctorate in American history. My father's field was law, in particular, international and Soviet law.It had a big effect on me because of a kind of a reading, academic orientation, fundamentally, and the people we knew and so forth. But also because though I was Jewish and raised in an agnostic background, my dad, to a lesser extent, my mom, but definitely my dad had an early interest in Zen Buddhism. That was like an academic, fashionable, almost intellectual thing. Back in the day, he wasn't a sitter in meditation or an attender of workshops and so forth, but he was a reader and thinker. So, I grew up hearing stories of the Zen masters and the wonderful old Hasidic rabbis, sort of as if they were all one group of fascinating people. And I think that had an effect on my siblings too, but it took a little more in me.So, I think that early wondering about the nature of the mind, the nature of our project of being here, what this is, the Zen people talk about the great matter of life and death. I would say also the fact it's a spiritual kind of a background or, I don't know, psychological background that's very fundamental is that my parents' first child died when he was just three months old in a car crash. And so, my parents were driving. My mother was holding the baby on her lap. This was before car seats. And my dad swerved to avoid a dog in the road. The car hit a soft shoulder, flipped over. My mother fell on her firstborn child and killed it, as she said, with her weight. So, that was a kind of untalkable about thing, you know, and a grief that I think pervaded my family when I was growing up. And one of those things that's an open secret, where to some degree people know about it, but it can't be talked about. And I think that had an effect on all of us, sort of making us have some kind of relationship, mostly not a cheerful relationship, to the great matter of life and death. All those are ways I could answer the question, where do I come from?Yeah. You said that it kind of, the Zen, the masters took with you, more so with your siblings. Can you tell me a story about that? Well, like the kinds of stories I would hear from my dad? Or what makes you say that? Is there a moment where you realized that it had took, I guess I love that word, that it struck you differently than your siblings?Well, not a moment, but for instance, I doubt my brother and sister did what I did when I was seven. I remember sitting on the stairs in my home, in our house, and really trying to penetrate the question of mu, which is a Zen koan, a kind of early koan in a series of koans. And it just means nothing in Japanese. And I remember thinking, how can I have it in my mind? How can I focus on it if it's nothing? If it's nothing, there can't be anything to get about it. So I just had an affinity for these kind of puzzles.And do you have a recollection of knowing what you wanted to be when you grew up? What did you want to be?Oh, sure. I wanted to be lots of things. But they weren't a psychologist who writes books on spirituality. They were, I wanted to be, gosh, well, I wanted to be Sir Galahad who occupies the perilous, you know, around the round table in the Arthurian legends. And I wanted to be a cowboy. And what else did I want to be growing up? I wanted to be a poet from very early on. And I wrote poetry into my 20s. Byron said, to be 20 and a poet is to be 20. To be 40 and a poet is to be a poet. By the time I was 40, I was no longer a poet. So he was right about me, he nailed me hundreds of years before I was born.You described yourself as a boomer. Does that word or idea mean anything to you?Yeah. Well, sure. I mean, it's got a pejorative slant since people started saying, "Okay, boomer." But it was, sure, it's, I recognize as a grown up, how insanely privileged we were, growing in a time after the Second World War, where America was increasingly wealthy, increasingly, you know, hugely respected. And it was, you know, as a white, upper middle class American, I was just in an incredibly privileged position, male, which I certainly didn't appreciate at the time. But now I see sort of what this amazing, you know, kind of bolus of a generation, enjoying an unprecedented, and probably never to be repeated standard of living was. So, and then, you know, realizing my cohort is aging and dying, that's, now that certainly is something. And feeling that we were sort of central to the universe, and now no longer. So, that's an interesting trajectory that a lot of people in that cohort are going through.Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about where you are now and what you do now?Sure. Yeah, I live in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist. I've been here many years now. And in full time private practice. Since COVID, a little bit before COVID, I no longer see clients in my office sitting down. I much prefer and insist on seeing them walking in mostly in the woods or talking on the phone while I'm walking. So, all seasons, all weathers, some people want to accompany me, about half my clientele accompanies me, and the others, it's phone or Zoom, but I don't like Zoom. It's better for me to stay awake, to walk in the woods. It's better for my, I have, you know, spinal issues. But also, it's a big revolution in how it feels to be with people.I guess I've always had a kind of democratic, small D and big D tendency. So, there's something very equalizing about negotiating the same fallen log together, or the rain together, helping each other out through going through a puddle or dealing with bug spray and ticks and mosquitoes. You know, you just, it has an equalizing, democratizing quality. And then, too, there's a kind of third interlocutor, which is the surround. Coming up through a psychoanalytic and also, to some degree, family therapy and cognitive behavioral graduate program, nobody ever mentioned the physical surround. It just wasn't, it was just all about people's habits and thoughts and feelings and history. But it wasn't. You're actually somewhere on a planet, in a man-made surround, or out in the woods, as I am now.And to actually realize that there's no such thing as a human just floating in space. There's a human with, of course, a history, that's a kind of a surround or environment, and a human kind of biosphere, the people you're connected to professionally or through family or friends and lovers and so forth. But there's also the material world that we're part of and embedded in and surrounded by, whether you think of that as an animal world or a biosphere altogether, or everything else, the mineral world, world of air and earth and water. And of course, our so-called man-made surround, if we're in a building, there's wood and metal and plastic and paint, all those things are also nature, just transformed by us. It's almost as if we see them as something utterly different from a tree or a rock or a river or a donkey. Well, they're very different, and we've transformed them and denatured them to hugely, so they're not recognizable, but we got it all from the earth. It's all earth.If you look at a, I don't know, a computer, every single thing is mined from the earth and then hugely transformed by human intervention, but it's all earth and we can have a relationship to it. That relationship is psychological, but also energetic. Now we're getting into a more mystical or magical or wondrous thing, but one of my many trainings was in kind of energy medicine or energy relationships. That's a California thing from back in the 80s. But that's a very real part of my life and I think everyone's life and part of our connectedness with the world.You mentioned that it was COVID that sort of shifted the way you are with your clients. I just had a conversation with somebody who was talking about their experience in psychoanalysis, sitting on the couch, lying on the couch with the therapist behind them, like a New Yorker cartoon. It's not something I've ever experienced. I didn't know that it was still going on. But how big a shift is it, what you're doing, and how did COVID bring it about?Well, it's a huge shift that does exist, but it's not very common. The old style New Yorker cartoon set up, which was Freud's set up, which by the way, comes from Anton Mesmer. Mesmer had people lying down, hypnotism, hypnos, that's sleep. Hypnotism was thought of, mesmerism, hypnotism was thought of as a kind of sleep. So you would lie down and then you would get suggestions. Actually, Freud was no good as a hypnotist, which it's very well known, it's part of the literature. He was bad at hypnotism, and he ended up inventing psychoanalysis, or actually a patient of his, Anna von Oh, who we now know was, that was her, the name he gave her for confidentiality's sake. Actually, we now know it was Bertha von Pappenheim, who turned out to be a brilliant woman and is really the founder of modern social work.And she said to, actually, she was a patient of both Breuer and Freud's studies in hysteria, 1899. Joseph Breuer was a colleague, another neurologist and colleague of Freud's, and she was his patient originally. She told him, please shut up and listen. He was telling her what to do, telling her what she thought, telling her what the source was. She had some very odd kind of symptoms. And she said, you know, I think it would go better if you just shut up and let me talk, I mean, in the language of the day. And he was wise enough to do that. And then she started talking and things started to go better. So the whole idea of the blank screen analyst and so forth, comes from a woman. Now I mentioned that because, and then credit went to Freud and Breuer.But I mentioned that because actually, it was many years before COVID. I had a patient and a middle aged woman who, I don't think it's right for me to say her name, even though she's long dead. And she had terminal ovarian cancer. But she was told by her doctor, you've got three months to live. And she said to me, "Michael, I'll pay you for your whole morning. I want to climb Monument Mountain, largest mountain in Great Barrington." It's only, I don't know, 2000 feet high. And she said, "I want to climb Mountain with you. This is before cell phones. And when we get back down, I want you to call Dr. Johnson and tell him she's not dead yet. She doesn't look like she's about to die," which I did. And she was very happy with that. It took us a long time to climb because she was already in pain and not doing well. But she ended up living another five years. So she was quite right.Anyway, that got me out of the office, if you see what I mean. And I had one other episode like that long before COVID, where I saw a little boy in therapy. And it was a terrible first session, really. After the session, his mother said to me, "How did that go?" I said, "Well, it wasn't very forthcoming." And she said, "You know, if you walked in the woods with him, I bet he'd be more voluble." So the clinic that I was in then was right, there were some woods right behind it. There was a little river, a little stream with rocks in it. So next time he came, he and I crossed the stepping stones across this stream. And we went into the woods where no path, we just went into the woods behind it. You'd never do that now without permissions and so forth. And as soon as we crossed the stream, and we're in the uncharted woods, his gait changed, his kind of face changed, and he started talking about all kinds of things. So she was right, the mother.But that also got me out of the office. So then when COVID came, and we had to have, you know, six feet or more distance, and you're supposed to be outside, or many of us bought special air purifiers for our offices, which I still have also. But then I arranged with some people to go outdoors and meet them. Even then, I remember being anxious and wanting to walk sort of at a distance from people. That was before the vaccine and everything. So then I felt like, oh, this is kind of great. This has a lot of different qualities, this walking, sometimes on city streets, but mostly in the woods, with patients. And so then I gradually decided this should be a full time thing. And I'm sick of sitting in the office, which I did for 30 years before that. So it's okay to go through a change.How did you get into the work that you're doing? When did you realize that you would make a living doing this kind of work?Oh, well, it was a tortuous long process. So I have a lot of sympathy for young people who go through a lot of torture finding their way in life. Let me see. Well, as I said, I was raised in an academic family, and I was good at things like analysis of literature. And in the fullness of time, actually my undergraduate major was German literature. And I read German literature, because I was interested in the poet Rilke and in the works of Rudolf Steiner, who I'd run into also. I wanted to read Steiner in the original and Rilke's way better in the original. So and then I eventually, in the fullness of time, was at Yale in a doctoral program in comparative literature, with German, French and English being my languages.But, you know, things I had seen before, like working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, it was just so dusty and empty to be in these theories. It just didn't cut it for me anymore. And I'd grown up with it. It was really like I'd already done it. It wasn't news to me. And I felt dead. And I had some prophetic dreams or suggestive dreams and so forth. And it was really hard to leave because being at Yale incomplete, my whole academic career was assured, you know, and it was very hard for me to leave. But I was in my late 20s at that point. And I, but I quit after a year and floundered for a while. I didn't know what kind of, I wanted to do something helpful to the world. So eventually I got a doctorate in clinical psych.But I think that one thing that made it impossible for me to stay as an academic was my time in Calcutta, although it was brief. But after graduating from college, I got a fellowship, the Sheldon Traveling Fellowship from Harvard. And they, my project was to go live with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, which I did. Not with her because it's a very, it's a very gender segregated organization, still very traditional. So I lived in a novitiate house with some brothers, some of the missionary brothers of charity, and worked in Kalighat, the home for dying destitutes. So we scraped up these dying people from the streets and I turned TB positive there and was exposed to a whole bunch of diseases and got very, very sick with dysentery. But of course, none of that was really anything compared with the incredible depths of disease, poverty, suffering, abuse that you see there. I won't go into that in detail, but you see a lot of distressing things there. I was also somewhat distressed and confused by the whole way the Catholic church and Mother Teresa had of treating people or ministering to people. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic experience, a big education for a white kid from America.I mean, to the best of your ability, what was that experience like? I mean, my first, I've been to India and my first experience was on the streets of Calcutta. Nothing like what you're talking about, but just the mere exposure to the streets of Calcutta was enough to just blow my mind really wide open as to just how different life is out there in the world. I don't even know how to talk about it really, but what was your experience? How did you come back changed from that time?Well, I just felt the absurd luxury of our world here. That changed me. But also I'd been kind of blasted open by the amount of love and compassion that was there in the missionaries of charity sort of in spite of everything. It's not like I believed in the Catholic doctrine, but they were doing something just amazing and trying to help people in their way. And, oh gosh, I remember one of my first days there, there was a guy coughing into a little clay cup. He had tuberculosis and he's spitting blood and he was gesturing, of course, I didn't speak any Bengali. He's gesturing to me. He wanted to be shaved. Now he was kachaksek, emaciated, covered with sores, dying of tuberculosis, but he wanted to be shaved.So they gave me a straight, I mean, not a straight razor, an old fashioned safety razor, which as you know, isn't very safe. And there was no shaving cream or soap. They gave me a little thing of water and this terribly dangerous, dull, safe, quote unquote, safety razor. And I had a little shard of mirror. There was just a broken shard of mirror. And I shaved him and with every stroke, the blood would come because his skin was just paper thin. But I showed him as I was going, both the blood and the fact that some of the beard had come off and he was so delighted and was going, come on, keep going, keep going. So I shaved him in this frightening way. And then he died that night. Next day when I was there, he was dead. He was gone.So those kinds of experiences, seeing people with, you know, missing limbs and I went to a clinic for people with leprosy and just alarming things. So it changes your sense of what is this world that is presented to us in such a sanitized way through our media and our direct experience here. A lot of white, relatively well-off people, well, a lot of people of all colors and genders and nationalities, but people who are relatively well-off in America never experienced the pervasive poverty, disease and so forth that you see in other countries. At the same time, I have to say there's a level of connection among people that far exceeds our loneliness. So those kind of cross-cultural, what we now, people are familiar, I suppose, with that idea. I certainly confirmed that.Which idea?The idea that we have no idea how privileged we are. And that can be told you. I grew up hearing about the starving kids in Africa, so we should finish our food. But you can be told you, but of course, going and experiencing anything makes a world of difference. Same with spiritual practices and realities. You can hear about them, you go, oh, this sounds pretty, or this is nice, or whatever, nice theory. But when you experience anything, it changes you.Yeah. I feel like I remember a conversation with you where we shared this song, "Do You Realize?" Is it The Flaming Lips?Yeah. The Flaming Lips, yes. It's wonderful.This amazing song because it captures this kind of feeling. You've got two books, right? One is "Stairway of Surprise." And the other one is this "Alphabet of Astonishment." And I guess I wanted to ask you about what makes those things so important, surprise and astonishment and realization, I guess. What's your attraction to those ideas? And what have you learned about them?Yeah, thank you for pointing out. The "Stairway of Surprise," and it's actually called "BE," B-E colon, "An Alphabet of Astonishment." But yeah, surprise and astonishment are in both those titles. I do have a third, "Group Meditation" about a kind of a technology of spiritual experience in a group. But what's so important about surprise or astonishment, or I could mention a bunch of other things that are kind of in the same family, like curiosity, or wonder, or gratitude. These are all qualities that open your mind, that soften the edges of what you think you know, that make you available to new understanding.The Zen, the Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn, who died, I don't know, 10 years ago or so. He had a lifetime slogan, "Only don't know." He didn't really quite mean only don't know. He meant don't know the way you already know. Don't know. Drop everything you think you know to, of course, have new kinds of experience that don't necessarily grasp anything. It's the difference between, if I reach into a river, let's say I want to get some of the water in the river, I want to know what the river's about. If I reach into the river and grasp with my hand and pull away, I have very little water in my hand. But if I reach my hand in and leave it in the river, I have the whole river.Qualities like astonishment, wonder, surprise, curiosity, gratitude, you can wash yourself through with the quality of innocence. Not that you've never done anything wrong, but it's a state or quality of mind, of innocence. Those things open us. They're like, another Zen teacher refers to opening the palm of the mind. Opening the palm of the mind instead of grasping and quote unquote, having some understanding or some knowledge. Opening the palm of the mind.These are all ways, these words are just cues to the tip of the iceberg of various practices that return us to a state of cognitive non-grasping by which all kinds of interesting things come your way. William Blake, the 19th century, well, late 18th and early 19th century English poet has a phrase, "He who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies lives in eternity's sunrise."So no binding to yourself, but kissing or appreciating it, gratitude, wonder, awe as it goes past. So flying or flowing, either way, not something to hold. So we need to train our minds away from getting the right answer, having the right doctrine, thinking we understand, train our minds to an openness that can bring us into greater intimacy with the universe. That takes various kinds of spiritual practice. So meditation, that there are many, many kinds of meditation, but there are many other things of the spiritual practices that don't quite, aren't meditation, but they're also restructuring how we know, how we live, opening our hearts to compassion for other people.I think the time in Calcutta, which probably I was oriented that way because of my family's deep history with a death that couldn't be faced. I think it furthered my amazement at the fact that we do exist and we are alive for a while. And sharpen the question, what do you want to do? As Mary Oliver says, what do you want to do with your one wild and precious life? Sharpen that question. So it winkled me out of the academic career and into a career of helping people. You can't do that as an academic. I think I could have stayed. It would have been fine. There are plenty of wonderful professors who do wonderful, amazing things for people. So I'm not saying it was necessary.I'm curious about the role of literature. You're always, you always have a quote. You always ground everything in language or literature or poetry. It's always really amazing. You say you started with Rilke. I have this real attraction to sort of the German idealism and Goethe. What is it about Rilke and Steiner and the German imagination that's so powerful? They're all unique. I'm not sure I've ever grouped it really into thinking, I don't know, the German mind or something is so wonderful. But it's true that idealism and a lot of important authors came about and the romanticism really started in Germany and so on. I'm not sure why that would be Rilke. You're a romantic or an idealist?I think they were onto important things. People like Novalis, also Friedrich von Hardenberg, younger contemporary of Goethe's. Of course, Heidegger has the kind of flowering of the German Seinsphilosophie, or being philosophy. I'm not quite sure how I got led there originally, as I think about it. How did I first hear about Rilke? Or why did I decide to major in German? There were a lot of factors behind it. My dad, again, was a big lodestar for me. He was a huge quoter of poetry. He knew French, Italian, German, Russian very fluently. And so I started memorizing poetry when I was very young. Poetry and to some degree, passages like speeches like the Gettysburg Address or things like that. I enjoyed memorizing.And I think memorization for me as a kid, and even today, it's kind of taking a break from your own mind. It's like I have this, the repetitive worries, or just repetition altogether of your own thoughts, isn't as interesting as repeating very beautiful, elevating, suggestive, intriguing, challenging thoughts of others. So hopping out of my own mind into the minds of others. And then I guess, yeah, it really has to do with the beauty of the language, whether it's Rilke's writing or English-American poetry.What do you love about Rilke?Oh, sorry. Well, Rilke knew everything. He just knew everything. Now, Rilke, mind you, I read a wonderful takedown biography of Rilke and what an a*****e he was in interpersonal. I'm not sure he's my favorite person, but in terms of his poetry, he got himself into a good state to write his poetry. And he understood, you feel that he understands the inside of the world. It's like this whole world, our thoughts, our feelings, the physical world we see is kind of like a result, a clunky result. It's like the ice cube that forms, but the fluid river that coalesced into these fixed forms of thought, feeling, perception, memory, everything. You feel that Rilke's in the living stream before it coalesces and dies into the everyday world. And his poetry kind of teases you backward and upward, which, by the way, is a famous trope inside of Zen also, is to take what they call the backward step.That's why that question, where do you come from, your first question, where did this thought come from? It doesn't belong to any particular person. I remember there's a Quaker story that some early Quakers were sitting with their Native American friends. They invited a Native American elder from somewhere around here, the Mashapauga, one of the East Coast tribes. And after a silent hour, the elders, the tribal elders said to the Quaker elder, it's so good to spend some time in the place where words come from. So one feels that Rilke and the great poets altogether are teasing us back to the sources which are actually livelier than the results, the processes livelier than the results. We're familiar with that idea.Yeah. So I shared with you just a little while ago, because it crossed my path that Pope Francis had written this thing about the role of literature and formation. And I just wondered if you had a chance to think about it, what your thoughts might be. He wrote this, I mean, I guess he writes these papal letters all the time, but I don't, of course, I'm not always paying attention to them, but this one crossed my path through the Chronicle of Higher Education, because they were saying, can the Pope save the humanities? Because he'd written this letter about the benefits of literature and formation, which I think is the technical term for the development of a person in the church. But he says in the first paragraph, this is open for everybody. And one of the first benefits he sort of points out of literature is just this idea of empathy. And I guess I'm curious to hear you talk about, we talked about wonder and all that other stuff, but empathy, and you spent all this time listening and being with people. Maybe you're not listening. I don't know how you describe what you do when you're with patients, but how do you think about empathy and what's happening when one does empathize with another person?Yeah, I think literature opens our minds and our hearts to not just the human condition or our own condition, but other people's conditions. And one of the key things for meaningful empathy, compassion, treatment, etc., is to let the other person be other. That is not to assume that what they feel, what they suffer is just what you feel. So you can empathize, you can sympathize. I think literature, biography too, certainly helps us to imagine minds and lives and sufferings and joys for that matter, other than the ones we already know.Montaigne had a slogan, that he had written over one of the beams in his office, Michel de Montaigne, meaning nothing human is alien to me. So he too was interested. He would read about cannibals, you know, was a new thing in the 17th century, learning about cannibals in remote areas in South America. And he wanted to feel, you know, I can imagine that. So he wasn't pretending he was that, or he already had done that. He was interested precisely in the new and yet feeling, even though it's alien, it's not alien, even anything human, I can somehow embrace, have empathy for. Let it be other and then let it not be other. That's empathy.Simone Weil, W-E-I-L, who I mentioned extensively in the book, "Be an Alphabet of Astonishment," she died in 1943, a brilliant student at the Sorbonne. She wrote a wonderful little essay, a classic of 20th century spirituality called "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God." So that may be whispering in the Pope's ear still, but the right use of school studies with a view to the love of God and what she says. And by the way, she ends the essay on the topic of compassion, because she says the real reason we learn things in school is not to have the content, but to learn to pay attention. And that comes to its highest form in prayer and in empathy, compassion for other people.So only someone capable of attention, she says, is capable of really helping another, being oriented towards another. So there we have prayer and meditation, how properly they develop a meaningful kind of selflessness, not as a mask or a principle, but as an actual orientation of the mind that can empty itself of itself and be open to the other. School studies, literature, imagination can be helps towards that end.I'm curious about your take on sort of the current state of things, I guess, you know what I mean? That we've only got a couple of minutes left, right? But you spent a lot of time with people. You're talking about attention. My mentor would say that we consume the thing that we're afraid we're losing. And that I feel like everywhere I go, people are talking about mindfulness or the attention economy that we're very, very focused on our attention right now. How do you think about what it means to try to be astonished or surprised or curious or open in 2025 when our attention is so occupied?Well, yeah, attention, like every other word can mean, can be a slogan that means so many different things. But what's rarely talked about is the deepening or the intensification of any of these capacities. They can all be infinitely deepened. So the attention economy and so forth, that has to do with an attention deficit disorder. That has to do with our attention being ripped around by a million things, social media and everything. And people are coming through that to realize the importance of where we put our minds intentionally or unintentionally.But rarely is it spoken about that the attention can be deepened, the consciousness can be deepened, intensified intentionally. There is a, in the Frick Museum in New York City, there's a picture, I don't know who it's by, a medieval picture of Saint Jerome. And the title is "Saint Jerome Reading." So he's obviously reading the Bible or some holy scripture. And so the book is in his hand, he's holding the book, but he's looking up in a way and says he's reading. He's not looking at the book because what he's doing is he's taken something from the book, he's read a passage or a sentence, and now he's letting it sink in deeper.Now he's working with it before he goes on rushing through to finish or jumping up to do something else or checking his iPhone. He's staying with what he's already read and deepening his sense of its validity, its reach, its life. So our staying with things and our letting the world and our own minds grow in intimacy and significance, that's more rarely talked about. That's not what we mostly mean when we talk about attentional problems or the attention economy or thieves of our attention these days. It's related, but it's only at one level.Beautiful. Michael, thank you so much. We're kind of at the end of time, but I really appreciate you joining me. Thank you.Thank you. I really appreciate your questioning and your receptive silence that invited me in. All right, take care. Be well. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Kate Sieck, PhD is Director of the Human Centered AI at the Toyota Research Institute, where she leads the Harmonious Communities Department whose task is “developing technology that integrates AI in furtherance of Toyota's global mission of happiness for all and collective well-being.”I met Kate through this newsletter. We spoke for the first time a couple months ago, and it was so much fun, I was excited to invite her into a conversation here. We spoke for almost an hour and half. The work she has done is amazing, and her enthusiasm is truly inspiring. Mentioned in our talk is this paper on ritual-based research, “Move Me: On stories, rituals, and building brand communities.”All right, beautiful. Kate, thank you so much for agreeing to sort of be a part of this. I think as you know, I start all these conversations with the same question, which I always want to give credit to Suzanne Snyder, who's a neighbor. She teaches this oral history summer school which is really amazing, and it's such a big beautiful question I have to use it. But because it's so big, I always feel like I want to caveat it and make sure you know that you can answer or not answer any way that you want. The question is: where do you come from?So I'm going to answer that in two ways, and I'm so glad I've listened to all the other episodes to hear how everybody else is answering this. First, geographically, I grew up in the Midwest. Born in Wisconsin when my dad was in grad school, and then we spent most of my childhood in a Chicago suburb called Oak Park, which was this sort of—at both the time and the place—it was this sort of idyllic bubble of what's possible.Oak Park had watched what was happening with all the blockbusting on the west side of Chicago and had really put a hard line on maintaining economic, ethnic, racial, and religious diversity within the community. So they changed a lot of how houses were sold and how neighborhoods were built. Well, it wasn't perfect. Let me be clear about that. As a kid, I had friends from every possible background you could think of, and the schools were one of the first to sort of integrate kids with physical or intellectual disabilities into the classroom. So we were all together, and you really saw, sort of in the truest sense of public, accommodating everyone.That was really the foundation for where I grew up. You know, that's kind of through the eyes of a young kid. I'm sure there were a lot of other challenges that weren't on my radar at that time, but from my perspective, it really was an indicator of what was possible if we all kind of worked and lived together.From a sort of more conceptual and emotional standpoint, and part of why we ended up in that neighborhood, is that I grew up in a household where three things were kind of paramount: gratitude, action, and community. So my parents very deliberately chose to live in Oak Park because they wanted us in a place where we were not the highest, we weren't the lowest, but we understood that it took everybody to make a community work. Every day we should approach the day from a place of gratitude for all that we had and how can we use that and share that to build and bolster our community. Not just like cheer it on from the sidelines, but what is our role, what is our action, what is our behavior in fostering all of that goodness that can come when you all kind of come together and work together. So I'll leave it at that.It's beautiful. Can you tell me a story? I mean, I love how you highlight the word "public" right in the biggest sense of the word public. Is there a story that comes to mind that sort of captures what it was like to grow up in that place with all those values?I think what I just remember was being in kindergarten and first grade and living on the block where we did. We were right off the train, so it wasn't—you know, right off the L trains into Chicago—and there were apartments on our block and there were really lovely homes on our block. There were probably, I don't know, 30 kids, which—it was the '70s, like we still had some big families. I just remember our neighbors were like these vegetarian hippies, and then there was another block, another house where one of the kids had—like, we would all just get together and run around and be crazy kids all afternoon and on the weekends.It was just—there was no "you can't play with us." Like, everybody kind of fit, and we had, you know, kids from the apartments, kids from the homes. Like, everybody was just welcome to the crowd. I just remember I was one of the only girls on the block. I remember that, but even at that, it wasn't like, "You're not allowed to play with us, go play with your dolls." Like, it was as rough and tumble and bikes and soccer and tag and everything because that was what was expected. The parents kind of enforced that. It's like everybody was kicked out of the house after school and you were made to play together, and you had to figure out how to do it.A lot of my work now looks at the very shrinking space of what are those truly public opportunities. Like, even back then, the pool—you know, the community pool—I think you got a free pass if you lived in the town, and if you didn't, it was like a quarter or something to get in. Now it's like 12 bucks, and there are so many ways in which public is actually no longer really available. So I look back on that moment and think about all of the lessons I learned and were afforded to me because I had to—had to and could, you know—interact with all these kids who were not me. So it's just like, that's where my head spins a lot.I'm excited to hear about that work. What—before—while we're still in your childhood, did you have a memory of what you wanted to be when you grew up?Yeah, I totally wanted to be a forest ranger. So I'm about as far from that as you could be. I still love hiking. I'm not as—much sure I love tent camping as I get up in the decades, but I'm still trying. I really loved the idea of being outdoors, of the expansiveness that you feel when you're among trees that are, you know, hundreds of feet taller, when you're on the edge of a lake or an ocean or something and you just know that the world is so much bigger than you.Then as I got into high school, I decided I wanted to run the World Bank, which was, you know—It's a hard turn from—Well, yes and no. All right, so I was—high school was during—I think high school kicked off with the Live Aid concert for me. So the whole crisis in Ethiopia and the famine in Ethiopia, and I remember writing a paper about the policy. That's—my sophomore year in high school, this is how geeky and nerdy I was. I wrote a policy paper about why—why just dropping aid was probably not going to solve the problem. Like, this was a political famine, and in order to solve a political famine, you had to address the roots of what was going on. I think my high school, like, sophomore English teacher was like, "Holy cow." Who is this weirdo? Yeah. So when did you discover that you could make a living doing anthropology?Way too late in my career, as I'm still paying off student loans from grad school. But it was 2010, and I had been out of grad school for eight years at that point. Largely, I had two kids. We—I had two kids right at the end of grad school, and my husband at the time was also a professor. So I was doing—I was on more of like a lecturer track because we couldn't afford child care even if both of us were faculty, which is a whole other conversation we can have.But we had moved to Minnesota. I had spent a year teaching five classes, usually with 60 students, and—sorry, let me close this so it's a little quieter—and made less than I made my first year out of college. I was like, this is an unsustainable career path. One of my students had come into office hours and had found this job in marketing, working for a marketing firm, but they wanted somebody with an advanced degree and she was just finishing undergrad. So I always tell people I did not steal a job from a student, but she shared it with me.I think at that point I'd been, you know, on this kind of lecture path for eight years and was a little bit jaded and definitely broke. I was like, "Oh, they need somebody who knows American culture. I know—you like, my dissertation work had been in the U.S. I was like, I could—I could do this. I've taught methods classes, I—you know, I can probably handle this." So I put my hat in the ring, got the job, and I finished teaching on a Friday and started in that group on a Monday.Very quickly realized I had no idea what I was doing. It was a very hard toggle for me. I was a very traditional academic, you know. My fieldwork was two and a half years on site. You know, I—you know, I went to and then went to be a professor. So a lot of it is like deep ethnography and how do you do research and all of this stuff. Now here I was and they're like, "All right, we got like a week to figure this out. What are you doing?" Yeah, and so the pace was just a massive shift.I still remember the first week I was there, I was put on a new business pitch and at that—they were like, "So where are your slides for the deck?" And I was like—or "Where's your stuff for the deck?" And I looked at them. I'm like, "What's a deck?" And that's when we all realized something was definitely—definitely not aligned here.So it was—I am ever so grateful to the team I got to work with that first year who really brought me up to speed and were so very patient—patient with me. It also gave me—a lot of it was probably one of the biggest professional challenges of how do you do anthropology when it's not going to look like what you did?Yeah, so—and what have you discovered? I mean, what was that transition like? I can imagine that being extremely difficult, right? To—to believe—I mean, I'm just putting myself in that situation. I would be very skeptical that you could do anything. Right? You must—must—well, you did it.So well, I feel like I—I feel like I came up the commercial—the commercial way as a market researcher with people who were really smart and—but doing it. And then I discovered that there's this giant world of anthropology out there that I was not aware of. And now this is where I have this—I have a whole imposter syndrome around this now and why I talk—talk to people like you. But to be an academic anthropologist and—and then try to fit that into the commercial context seems like that would be really hard. I'd love to hear—but you've ended up in a place where it's—it's—it works, right? And it's valid. So—so there are a couple things. I mean—Like, there's the hilarity of like, how do I even dress for work? And, you know, like, "Oh, I can't wear Birkenstocks and I can't do this." You know, I like—actually need clothes that match and maybe some jewelry too. So there were some little funny moments with that.But in terms of the work itself, I think there were two big lessons. You—you will never have the time to do the studies that you want to do. That said, I firmly believe that most things that we see in the world come down to probably a handful of human questions, right? And so if you can think about where in the literature you can find those questions, you can actually tap into the wisdom and depth of somebody else's experience to give you at least a framework or a pathway to explore what it is you want to explore.So it—you—and this has actually been one of the—how do I say—how do—I'm going to just sound like a horrible person when I say this, and I thoroughly agree—one of the disappointing things for me about how anthropology has often translated into industry is that it's—it's been reduced to qualitative methods. Like, "Oh, I just need to do interviews and I need to go watch some people." And I'm like, those are great, but if you don't know what you're looking for, if you don't know what you're thinking about, if you don't know what others have done, you're still not necessarily cognizant of what you're processing. And—and I've seen a lot of stuff come back and I'm like, "That's great." And—so to me, I always actually started with, "What do we know already from theory?" And what do we—in theory with like both a big T, like what do we know from Marxism or from structural functionalism, but theory with a little t too. Like, who's written a cool ethnography or paper or talk or something about this that can at least start to give me a framework?So I spent a lot of time digging through every annual review article I could find that was like an overview of whatever I needed to do. So very quick example: we were working on a pitch for a cosmetics company. We literally had like two days to come up with a framework. And you know, everybody does the—"Oh, what's been done before?" But that doesn't necessarily tell you where an interesting white space is. So what I did was really look at, "Why do people disguise themselves? Why do people do anything that changes their appearance?" And then you can come up with like, "Oh well, there's like battle and then there's, you know, this deception and then there's these other categories." And then you can start to come up with a really interesting way of looking at how, you know, how other companies kind of fall. But it's falling within a framework that's coming out of this sort of rich world of—of work.We did a very similar thing with—we were the agency of record for the country of Belize. Like, how do we grow tourism for the country of Belize? And you're—you're like, "All right, it's tropical country. Like, why do people go?" But then we really started to look at, well, why do people move? Like, why would you go from one place to another? And then we got into the idea of pilgrimage as this sort of exploratory space, which was something that was really not well explored but fit the context really well.So a lot of my work was trying to see where this business question—like, what's the human dynamic that underlies this business question? And where can we find parallels of that in the literature so that I can come up with something that's a much more interesting framework for what's happening?No, it's—it's wonderful. It's wonderful. And so how—what's happening in that first phase when you're developing the—that question, that human question for you?I'm laughing because my dissertation advisor always looked at me. He's like, "I see where you are and I know it's the right place, and I have no idea how you got there." And so there are times I'm like, "I don't know how we got there." But I think that—I think it's really just pausing to—to think about a business problem not as a business problem but as a—as a person question. Like, the—the tourism problem isn't one about tourism. It's about what motivates people to—to move, right?We had another one with a bank during, you know, right after the financial crisis, and it's like, "How do we—how do we get customers?" And it's like, that's not really the problem. Like, why do—what does trust look like after you've broken a relationship, right? And how do you—how do you start to reflect on that?What do you love about this work? Like, where's the joy in it for you?Oh my gosh, where is the joy in it? I think I—to me, the joy was partly at a very selfish level. It was the discovery, right? Of, "Oh, can we think about this really staid terrain in a radically different way?" That uses a discipline that I love and cherish in—in a way that you like—well, I got—I—the ritual. And so you talked about the ritual paper when we were chatting before this. That used Victor Turner in a way that Victor Turner would probably never have thought about. And then somebody told me like, "He'd probably be rolling in his grave to know that you used his framework to facilitate capitalism." And I was like, "Yeah, probably. I hear you on that, but I did it anyway, and it was super smart."But—but to me, there was this joy of like, "How can I—can I leverage this like 100 years of really interesting creative thinking and bring it to an audience it's totally different?" So that was a selfish thing.The second thing that I loved was working with people who were so radically different from me. Like, I remember going in and working with creative teams and particularly designers, and oh my god, you give them like a four-page brief and they just like—they flip it over. You give them a two-page brief and they still flip it over. So they're not going to read something like that. So it really forced me from a methods perspective to think about how do I communicate in non-written ways? And how can I tap their expert—more importantly, how can I tap their visual, their tactile, their sensory knowledge and their expertise there to make this thing come to life in a way that—that we know we do in fieldwork, but that we often don't do in—in how we communicate our results. So there was some really fun and close partnerships with creative teams that—that were fun for me.So a quick side diversion into my fieldwork: I worked with teenagers who were in foster care and who were in a group home facility in Atlanta. Teenagers do a lot of their thinking through music, through art, and through non-verbal mediums. So a lot of my dissertation data was things like song lists and, you know, artists. And I gave them all cameras multiple times, so I had a lot of that. We had like big art projects that we built together. So it's very non-verbal data. And so to be able to dig back into that was super fun.Can you—you said that the teenagers do thinking with music. Can you—that's a beautiful expression. Can you just explain what you mean when you say that somebody's thinking with music?Sure, and I actually wouldn't necessarily restrict it to just teenagers. Or maybe I just have failed to grow up myself, which isn't entirely possible. But I think oftentimes, especially for teenagers, our emotional landscape can be quite complicated and very difficult to dissect. And what music enables is somebody—somebody else is giving shape to an experience that is potentially so new to us that we don't really know how to articulate it. And they are able to articulate it either with the sound structure, and suddenly it like literally resonates with you, or with the lyrics that, you know, you're like, "Oh my god, that's it. That's the thing that's the—that's the—that they've said the thing that I've always been trying to say." Or with the tone structure, right? So there's a big difference between, you know, jazz and punk and country in terms of often the tone of it.And so to be able to have something that—that gives form to elements of our life where we are often struggling to do that—that's why it's so common in ritual, right? Like and especially rites of passage, like a lot of them use music and rhythm to bring that sort of visceral component to shape the sense of what you're—what's happening. And to me, it just made a ton of sense. Like, here you are in this moment of your life that's not making any sense at all, and other people who are further down that journey are giving you a way to structure it. And I loved that. And there are still moments, you know—I think in any moment of transition in our lives, music can be that.So what was the role or how did—how did the—what was the role that that music played in that in the project you were talking about with the—the kids?So if you look at my dissertation, it actually has a playlist to it. And so in a classic dissertation, you know, most of the chapters and sections of chapters open with like quotes from theory and, you know, quotes from the literature. Mine all open with song lyrics that the kids—so one of the things I did was I had all the kids make song lists for me, playlists, and then talk me through like, "Why this song? Why that song? You know, what do you like about this?" And so I understood sort of the emotional resonance that they were trying to add to at that moment. And so as the, you know, throughout the dissertation, each of the chapters can, you know, tries to bring that voice of the kids to life in a much more serious way. Like, this is actually about the same thing. And so it was my way of sort of honoring something that was such a deep and rich part of their world.Yeah. Are there—you mentioned, you know, the—the centrality of theory and making the people—making it a people question up front. Are there touchstones that you keep returning to? Like when you—when a new challenge sits in front of you or if you have a different problem that arises, are there touchstones that you keep returning to to sort of frame your work?So there are—simply because I—what I notice is that thing that we all notice with your professors like, they're kind of thinking often stops at the time that they stopped. And so I now see that in myself. A lot of my—a lot of the evolution in the theory that I cling to is the stuff that I covered both between my time as a—as a student but also my time as a faculty member. And so my familiarity with the literature post-2010 is much more tenuous—really post-2015 when I left the—the sort of marketing world. And I own that, and that's also why I was like, "Oh, I should be careful how I talk and think."Jerome Bruner, I think, is probably one of the key thinkers who you'll see show up in a lot of my work. He's actually, I think, a legal scholar, but he has this brilliant book called "Acts of Meaning," really looking at how do—how do our behaviors create and meaning in our world and where do they come from. And so to me, it's this—one I always—I have a whole paper on this at EPIC, but essentially for—at a very simple level, one of the things that I—that he argues is that people align behaviors to values, right? So whatever your core values are, you can align any range of behaviors under that value if you think that it is aligned to that value, which is why, for example, in parts of the country, we can see freedom expressed by book banning, right? And we can see freedom expressed by—and, you know, it's like the devolution of rights to different—different controlling bodies.So because it's all—once you know what that core value is, you can wrap a narrative that links any set of behaviors to that value. The good thing is that that's also how we change our behavior, right? You don't—you very rarely change what is deeply meaningful to you, but you can change how that looks. And that's that fuzziness that's often around—around—and that's how cultures evolve, right? It's the fact that those things are really fuzzy, that you can move it forward.To me, Bruner links really closely with people like Victor Turner, who talk about this sort of fuzzy interplay between the poles that diametrically opposed poles within cultures and that it's in that interplay that things live. But as those move, those pools can also shift a little bit, or where we are shifts. And so to me, that's also where it's like, "Oh, this is really like"—you start to put some of these frameworks together.My committee was deeply informed with cultural models. So Brad Shore was my chair, and his book "Culture in Mind," I think, has obviously been a big influence to me. I had a linguist on my committee, Deborah Spitalnik. She really introduced me to a lot of the Russian sociolinguists, so Bakhtin and Voloshinov, and a lot of their writing is really about what I say is not what you hear, what you read is not what I intend. And so really that, you know, kind of always getting back to that fuzziness and challenge of communication for how we all deal with each other.You see the same with people like Brent Berlin, who were really early cognitive anthropologists. Like, what is the color red? What is a bird? Like, when we all look at a bird, it doesn't mean the same thing. And so really looking at that dialect, that negotiating process of how we create culture together.So when I look back at my dissertation, there are a thousand—you know, for any of us, there's a thousand ways to spend what your dissertation was. But one of the things I was really looking at is how do we collectively talk about what is a successful life for young people, and how that path gets laid out for them, and how is it that we can all think we're on the same page and actually be in very different places? And what are the consequences for the people then—like the teenagers who have to walk this life knowing that they are being judged from two very diametrically opposed perspectives, and they will either lose or win. Like, there's no winning ultimately when you're stuck in the middle. So a lot of my work has centered in that—that space of fuzziness where we have to figure out what is—how are we working through this together?Yeah. How do you talk about what you do? I mean, I feel like you're—I mean, you know, I'm always sort of fixated on the role of, you know, qualitative and anthropology and sort of business decision making and corporate decision making and all that stuff. And oftentimes I can feel kind of doomsday a little bit as the world becomes more—I always—I feel like I—there's—I don't know where I picked it up, but the idea that the corporation or the organization kind of wants to be a machine when it grows up. I have this feeling. Do you know what I mean? How do you describe—how do you talk about what you do?At this point, I actually don't really—you know, at this point, I just—I manage a team and my whole goal is where are we going and how are we going to get there? And so I cheer really for some really brilliant people that I have the privilege of working with.Yeah. Tell me where you are and what you're doing too, because we haven't really—so how did I do it when I was—Really more on the research side? Metrics are—so I—so I can talk about like, there's the—there's the how do we measure like the success of a campaign part, but then there's also how do we think about being an anthropologist within an organization, which I think is a little bit of a different conversation. And it was one that actually took me a long time to figure out. And—and I wasn't like—so I'll kind of parse those two conversations.When it comes to metrics, one of the things that I really tried to push hard on was, "What are we really measuring?" Right? So let's go back to, you know, it's like a business problem is actually a people problem. So do you understand what the people problem is? Right? And we're dealing—or we're working on a project about this right now with like morale and attrition. Right? So morale and attrition aren't actually your problem. Those are the first words—sorry. Morale and attrition are indicators of something else. And if we can actually understand what those other things are, then you have the ability to address the right problem because you're really focusing in on the right space.So what we can see with metrics is usually a later stage thing, and so I've always tried to talk about it that way. When I worked in marketing, one of the things that that—I'm not a big fan and everybody knows I hate personas, and I'm not a big fan of demographics. I think that there's a wonderfully weird variety of people and they can all look the same on paper. And so what we tried to do was design a quantitative system that was actually built on social theory principles. Right? So when we like—what is people's preference for ritual and structure in their daily lives, and how can we—how can that actually be something that's an indicator, like a differentiator between people? How much do people use symbols of status in their daily life, and—and how—how is that actually a way of parsing people? What are people's perceptions of the threats that they're up against? How do people shop differently? Like online, in-store, do they want customer contact? Like, what is their preference for those kinds of relationships?So we built this whole framework and then used the MRI—it was a survey of the American consumer—and structured all of the questions into these sort of sociological anthropological categories and then use that as a way to look at people rather than like, "Oh, women 25 to 50." And like, all shopping devolves to women who are 40 years old. And that's a really non-indicator of anything unless it's a Porsche, in which case you've got men who are 40 years old, right? And—and like, it doesn't tell you anything about why they bought a Porsche versus why they bought a Lamborghini, right? So it's still a ridiculous way to think about things.What do you call the output of those—that framework sounds so beautiful. What's—what do you—what is—what's the—if it's not a—persona? What do you call that? We just really started to look at it as is more indicators of why things are happening. And it was never like—first of all, never, you know—so we did it against the question. So then you could run any brand against it, right? But it always looked different. Right? So and it was never really just one thing. It was like, there's this cluster of these three things that we're seeing that we think tell a story about your people versus when we look at your competitors where they're different on these other elements. So it was more just to kind of understand the landscape differently and in a more theory—but what it also allowed, actually getting back to the very original thing, is I didn't have time for qual, right?So I don't have time to interview everybody who, you know, uses Schwab versus, you know, some—some other investment firm. Right? So we were able to get it—get it—some of the things that you would look at in—in a richer qualitative study from a much more quantitative perspective.Yeah, because it's focused on what—it's focused more on the driver, what I would consider the drivers of behavior.Yeah, right. So, you know, and because then it's also category agnostic, right? So a lot of how personas are developed in marketing is like, "Oh, we're a food company, so we're going to look at how people shop for food." And then we're going to maybe add in like spending or maybe a couple of questions on well-being. And then, you know, "Are they busy?" Right? But you've artificially constrained what you get to look at by your own assumptions rather than thinking how I shop for groceries might have everything to do with my perspectives on, you know, the environment or like how I think about credit cards. Or like—like the—like anyone who's done long-term ethnographic work knows that those things are often all driven by something similar, which is where we get back to Bruner, right? Like those core values can shape a ton of behaviors, and we'll all rationalize our behavior according to those values.Right? So you can start to understand how those values play out. You get a much richer sense of why people are doing what they're doing, not just what are they doing and when are they doing where they're doing it. So that's what we're really trying to do is take some of these big theories about why people do what they do and see if we could see that in data patterns.So how would you describe your relationship with AI in turn? I mean, it's so new and unformed and amorphous and it's all very sort of bewildering, honestly. But how do you think about it? How do you—what's your relationship—That's kind of funny because I lead an AI team and I'm still like desperately learning how to do this. And again, I always find myself in environments where I am ever so grateful that there are people who have tremendous expertise and they teach me. And together we bring these sort of multiple—multiple pathways forward.Where is AI? First of all, I think a lot of machine learning has actually a pretty rich history. And again, going back to where did it start and how did it work and when did it, you know, when did—where did it come from? I think if we assume that it's just this like blip that happened last, you know, the last year with LLMs, we've missed a lot of what brought it forward. All of that said, I think that a lot of the—what we're seeing with the neural nets and, you know, the diffusion policy—diffusion models and all of those things is a little bit different.Where do I live with it? My goal is partly like, what's actually in some of these, you know—so we do talk as a team about which data sets, why, how are we thinking about them, how is the data aggregated. Do we want to use somewhere where, you know, they have like pretty abusive policies about how people are coding this data? Can we think about other data sets? We've built several of our own because of some of that. So we do try to kind of think about the ethics of what's going on and how this data is formed.The second thing that we really try to do is—as a team, our goal is where can AI complement and supplement the things that that humans may not be good at and get us to a place that's a little bit where we can bring our own skills to the table. So that comes up in two ways for my team.At one level, when you're looking—you're using it to like summarize or categorize notes, AI is really good. LLMs and stuff like that are really good at pattern recognition. What they're not good at is outlier recognition, right? And so when we think about the richness of anthropology, where the fun typically happens is actually in the outlier space. So if you're using it to summarize your notes, it'll be great, but then you need to keep your brain attuned to what's not—what is it missing that I remember, or what's not getting covered? Or this is great, but what in the data pattern is maybe on the fringes of it?And so I would strongly encourage all anthropologists who feel like they are getting replaced to remember it's actually doing the thing that's kind of like the—like the—the grunt part of the work, which is the categorizing. So think about that.The second thing that we try to do is think about how can we use some of these platforms like I said to supplement where we're bad. Like, I am a horrible designer, can't draw my way out of a paper bag. It is hilarious. My dad is this amazing person, you know, amazing designer. I live in my—entire family have these incredible design skills—my kids, my husband—and literally like, I can barely draw a straight line.And going back to kind of Bakhtin and—and some of the early work, what I say isn't what you hear, what you hear isn't what I say. Can we design systems—can we use AI to help people better communicate when they're—they think that they disagree about something and use the sort of generative capability of AI to create a shared language? So if I say on this empty lot, I want to put in, you know, some affordable housing, and I'm thinking like cute cottages that have little gardens and there's a space and blah blah. And you're thinking cinder block tower with guard posts. We're not talking the same language, and we might end up in—in quite a—quite some disarray around that.So can—can some of the generative capabilities of AI allow us to express those concepts more richly in a visual format so then we can both go, "Oh, like we're kind of actually on the same page." And I'm—you thought that, but this is what I was thinking. And is there a shared space for us to move forward? So that's one way that we start to think about it.And—but our team—Toyota in particular is adamant that AI should never replace. It should supplement and complement either the hard parts or the—the tedious parts where people tend to—you know, when things are—people actually stop paying attention and then your notes might not be accurate anyway. So that's really where we really focus a lot of our work.Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about what—where you are now and the work you're doing at Toyota—the Toyota Research Institute?So I am a director of a team called the Harmonious Communities Department at Toyota Research Institute. We were stood up about two and a half years ago. Toyota's overall corporate mission often is translated as "happiness for all," but it's really this deep concern for the well-being and welfare not just of the people who use our products, but the people who build and—and work on, you know, work in and through Toyota, but also the communities where we are based.So when you think that we are one of the largest global corporations and we are almost 400,000 people, like that's a pretty big network of people. And they are committed to thinking about technology and products and problems that really—or technology and products that really address this comprehensive range of challenges that people face.And so one of the things that that we were tasked with doing was how do we really help people live together in a more harmonious way? Like harmony implies difference. We don't all have to be the same, right? So how do we live together amidst our differences, and how can community—this gets me back to my childhood, right—how can community be a celebration of difference and not like, "Oh, I finally feel like I belong because everyone is exactly like me?" And—and really, what can we learn and foster in that difference?In many ways, it is the perfect dream job for me. Like, it's even better than the World Bank because I don't have to do econ. And I get to work with this unbelievably talented team of researchers where collectively we are tasked with high risk, high reward projects. So if it sounds—if we have an easy solution to it, we are not thinking big enough.We're working on something right now that the entire team is like, "Man, if we could do this, this would be super cool," but nobody's really sure how we're gonna do it or if it's even possible. So I take a lot of joy and gratitude and pride in being in an organization that is pushing the boundaries of what's possible to solve the challenges that we have to solve.[Speaker 2]Yeah, I'm so connected with the beginning of the—well, yeah, you talked about—so in my own experience, I live in a small town in Hudson, a small town Hudson, and have experienced, you know, a whole variety of divisions and divisiveness and like the lack of shared space, the lack of this idea of something that's called public, that there aren't very many places where we gather or mix naturally. And the places where we do, more and more they're sort of private. And so I think about this idea of civic design. Have you encountered that? Right? And exactly—this guy James Howard Kunstler, do you know him? He wrote "Geography of Nowhere."Yes.So he wrote a book and he and an architect who lives in Hudson is friends with him. And so we organized—he gave a talk at the library and was it was called "The American Small Town Is Where It's At, Don't Don't Screw It Up" or something like that. But I asked him, I'm like, "What do you mean by civic design? What does that mean?" And he said, "It's the relationships between all the buildings." And I just thought it was the most beautiful thing. And I feel like I didn't know this coming into this conversation that this is very much where your work seems to be focusing, that this idea of public—The dwindling public is that what you said?Yeah. So I think that—I mean, when you look at public schools, right? So they're increasingly under fire in terms of like who gets to be there and the in and who's in charge. Like, are parents in charge? Are teachers in charge? Are educators in charge? Is a school board in charge? And who gets the right to say what's there?We're increasingly diverting funds for public schools into private schools, right? Where—where people can can say, you know, "This is what I want and I'm going to take tax dollars to go there." Libraries have long been one of the last bastions of the public, and they are under massive attack in terms of what's acceptable and not and who gets to decide whose stories are represented and included in a library.We also see this in parks, right? Like no kids, you know, no adults over here and no kids over there, and nobody after this time and nobody before this time. And we look at the—I live in Los Angeles, and we see all of these public benches popping up that are deliberately designed to be uncomfortable and, you know, uninviting because they don't want people staying there.And probably like it's—we're just seeing the—the like massive—and even a lot of communities now are run by HOAs, right? So you have to have—I think that there's some huge number, some significant percentage of just neighborhoods that have HOA fees, which means they also have rules about what you can put in your front yard and how your landscaping can be and what color—You get to paint your house and like—There's a whole genre of TikTok videos of HOA people harassing members at their door. And it's just like, you know, like who decides? When we moved here, we, you know, our neighbors were like, "You can—we're so excited, but you can't build this kind of house." And we're like, "Okay, are you paying our taxes? Like, are you buying the house for us?" You know? And—and just this idea of who owns what and where are the limits of what our voice gets to be.And I remember thinking when the—with the rise of—of like targeted marketing through social media, I was like, "Oh, in some ways it's brilliant because there are so many people who really did feel alone." In social media and allowed them to know you are not alone. There is this world of people who are just like you, and they have all found ways of building rich and good lives going forward.At the same time, we—so we increasingly see everything devolving to the worlds that are just like me. And when you look at the voting map in a lot of states, it's not 50-50. It is 90-10 in almost all the counties, or 80-20 in most counties. And when I lived in Georgia, there are like 150-some counties in Georgia. It is entirely possible to live in a county where you are surrounded by 10 other counties where you don't know anybody who actually voted for Biden.So it's entirely possible to think, "Yes, of course the election was stolen because there's nobody in my universe who would have ever voted for him." So how is it that this matter—like how does this make sense? And that to me is the really, really worrisome part of what's happening in—in a world where we fail to recognize the humanity, dignity, and respect that is due to—Everybody. So back to my childhood.Yeah. So—so what's the role of social science or research, qualitative research in this—in this project of harmonious communities?So there's a bunch. Part of it is all of our technology is always developed in—in collaboration with who is it that we're working with. And so there remains this kind of always give and take and—and, you know, participatory design. A lot of our work grows from—from—from theory. Like, what's out there? What do we know? What's been tried? What's working? And can we take a nugget of something that's working and then do it differently or apply it differently?Like we know immersive technologies help people feel and greater empathy towards others, right? Can we do that at scale, and can we use AI to back-end it so that it's not just immersive, but you actually have the ability to—to redesign and change it so that somebody feels like they're listened to, like they're respected, like they're included?Those are the kinds of things that my team—we don't start a single thing without really looking at like, what is the space where we need to be? And Toyota Research really focuses on what we call use-inspired research. So we ladder—we leverage everything that's happening in the academic world on all of our topics and then think about, you know, what are the challenges out in the real world? And can we start to create these like pilot things? Like, I call them my ugly beta babies that—that start to move us toward something. And if it works, then it goes to Toyota big Toyota where they make it into like products or put it into their technology or something along those lines.What's an example of an ugly beta baby?So they'll—my team actually—I'll talk about the one thing that my team's been publishing on lately, which is this tool that we call Envision, which is actually like when you have—when you have a community conflict about what should happen in a space, can we use generative AI to help where you listen to—you read stories and see what matters to other people who are really different from you? And then you are tasked with changing the thing that you most love to accommodate somebody else. And generative AI helps you to redesign the images and areas that you love the most to really think deeply about how to include somebody else and see that like the changes might not be as horrible or radical as you're afraid of.What's an example? Can you give me an—Is that—I mean, I feel like you're talking about housing, but—Yeah, so it actually started because—so I work up in Silicon Valley, and we see this all over California, though, is fights about affordable housing. Yeah, there's a new affordable housing unit or affordable housing complex that was going in, and the neighbors were really angry. The homeowner neighbors—Yeah.And this is so—right? So these are expensive neighborhoods—were really angry because there were going to be windows on the side, and they were afraid people would look into their backyard. And you know, and I'm like, first of all, what are you doing in your backyard that you're like that worried about? But the—the solution was that they took away the windows. And I'm like, why is it that we keep punishing people? Like, windows are not a luxury, right? In housing, we know light and—and all of those things make our lives better and calmer and—and—and happier. So why would you do that? And why would you demand that? Like, what gives you the right to think—right?—can demand that somebody doesn't have a window?And so we feel like there's—had to be 10,000 other ways to think about how to do that where you could have included, right, and seen how it would look without just wiping, you know, like putting up a brick wall. Yeah, so that's where it started—was—was around housing. But we see it—like I live near Venice Beach, Venice, California, and a lot of the—like what do we do about RVs parking on the neighborhood? And so they just keep putting up parking restrictions, and then the RVs just move to new neighborhoods rather than thinking about why are they here? What would be a better solution? If we ask them, what would they prefer? Could we actually start to co-design things that are—that are better?Like, we literally have thousands of parking spots right along the beach. How could we think about something differently? And—and I feel like we just get stuck in our little worlds and don't think about how we could—how we could collaborate towards, you know, better solutions for everyone. So that's really what drove it.Wow. So exciting. I mean, I have—I mean, I've had exactly—just had that same experience here in Hudson where the local housing authority, you know, was proposing a giant housing development. They released a very sort of rudimentary watercolor, you know what I mean? And—and—and as far as I'm—there wasn't enough space given for anybody to process what might have been happening. So people have reactions, and then you end up in the—with this whole—this really limited set of options which are horrible, right? Like, oh, you're just gonna—it's like—like it's like a binary. You just like—oh, you don't—Let us know—we can come to Hudson.All right. Please do. I might—I might actually invite you. There was another one here in Santa Monica. They were like—the high school, they were wanting to replace one of the buildings, and people were like, "Oh, it's historic and we went there and it was beautiful." And I'm like, "You went there 50 years ago, and there's no AC, and it's crumbling, and my kids are really uncomfortable. Maybe we could actually have the current students and you who want this preserved like work together and talk about what's actually going on with this." So—so there we go. So that's our goal.It's beautiful. I mean, I really—it's so exciting. I—before we end, I mean, I guess there's two things that I wanted to make sure I talked to you about. One is the ritual-based research, and then the other one is just to hear you—because I want to get the first principles in these conversations with professionals like you about why is qualitative important? What is it—what is its value? Like, how do you make the case for it? I always feel like it's existential for me, but—so how do you make the case for qualitative? What's the proper role and the value of it? And then I'd love to hear you talk about the ritual-based research.Sure. So I think to me, qualitative is one other methodology that you have to have in a range of things. Like I said, we always start with lit reviews. We do tons of quant. I have a lot of people who are anthropologists who apply for my team, and they have like no quant backup. And I'm like, "Oh, I'd so love to hire you. Can you—can you just learn some R?"And—and then qualitative—but what qualitative brings is—and I think it also depends on where you use it in a project, right? So a lot of our work starts with that moment of going, "Huh, like this is an unusual thing that I'm seeing. How do I start to understand why this is happening?" Right? So to me, qualitative tees up the—the spaces where we should be moving.Right? So when you see somebody like—we worked on a project for McDonald's, and there's all these like Whole Foods, like granola-y parents who still go to McDonald's. Yeah, but I was like, "When?" Because it's not every—it's road trips or it's divorced families finding a shared space where they can meet and hand off kids, right? And I was like, "Oh, that's what you get." And qualitative is a little bit of like, "Huh, what's happening here?"And it should always be the starting ground, and every brand should do this of like, who's using your brand? Who's doing it in a different way? What are the unique and weird things they're doing? Where's it going actually in ways that you don't want it to go? And how do you celebrate some of what you're seeing? And also who's on the fringes of where you think—who's kind of coming up, right? And some of that is just like basic out and about having a real life. Right? So you should always be attending to some of that.And the second place where I think qualitative really comes in is understanding why, right? So qualitative will never give you—in—sorry, let me slow down. Qualitative should always help you understand why, how—like some of the nuances of all of this. If you have done your quantitative data properly, you should know kind of the breadth of what it is you're trying to do. And so you can recruit against that breadth of, "I need some people who are—who do this, who do that, who do these other things."And like, we did a project for Reynolds Wrap. We needed some people who had, you know, kids at home, who did a lot of entertaining. We knew that like the roommate scenario was a whole other thing we wanted to try. And so we recruited against—and then people who were like really serious cooks and foodies. So we recruited against that rather than just being like, "I just need 20 people," right? So thinking about how your quantitative can help you start to dig into like, "This is an interesting place that I want to explore. This is an interesting use scenario that seems to be showing up. What's going on with that?" That's also why when you do your quantitative differently, it gives you some more of that.Yeah, to think—Yeah. And then qualitative can come through whether it's design or whether it's data analysis. Like, is—are we on the right path? Is this the right way of thinking about something? It becomes this way of validating or sort of co-collaboration at the end. Or, you know, at the start as you may think about it that way. Is this resonating? Does—you—and not so much as like—I know a lot of companies use it as a thumbs up, thumbs down for product launches or, right, campaign launches. I wouldn't necessarily do that. But—but how is it that we either miss something or where is it going?But I think that those are probably some of the ways that you use it. But to me, data—data is—data by default is always partial, whether it's quantitative or qualitative or anything else. It is always partial. And what you get when you parallel and mix all of these is you're trying to offset where things are partial. Quantitative data can give you a good picture of a lot of things, but it doesn't necessarily tell you anything else. Or it doesn't tell you the experience, doesn't tell you the why, like all of that stuff. What do you make of—I mean, I feel like I—I bump into people using the word data to be synonymous or quantitative, and qualitative is this sort of—you know, nobody really takes it seriously and they don't—you know, I always tell this story. There's a—the—there's some quote that's that—that Freakonomics looked into that "The plural of anecdote is not data." And that quote is more popular in Google even though it's wrong, and they find it's because the plural of anecdote is data according to the—I guess where do you fall out on this? Is it that business culture just chooses not to see the value in qualitative data? How do you make sense of this?That's why I get so frustrated with like AI and LLMs. Is like, do you know what you gathered? Any idea what's in your data? Yes. Ovetta Sampson posted something on LinkedIn the other day of like, "Quantitative data is just a lot of opinions, but it's still opinion, you just have more of them. But this is such an interesting anthropological question, isn't it too? This is where I think I'm gonna go back to—to a point I made earlier. If you don't know what you're doing as a qualitative researcher, if you don't have some framework, if you don't have some idea of theory, if you don't know why you are looking at something, your qualitative data will suck. Very frankly, it's not going to be good. But the same is true of quantitative data. If you don't know why you are asking questions, if you don't know why you are polling a certain group of people, if you don't have a theory about why it should look certain ways or not, and you just somehow expect it to show you the truth, right, it's also going to be crap.And so that to me is where—we're in a rush to bring richness to the—the industry world. I think we often missed what it was about a lot of the early qualitative researchers who were in industry. What they brought was that like huge background in theory, in ethnography, and like not just, "Oh, I'm gonna go look," but you know, like "I'm looking in a certain way for certain kinds of things at certain types of behaviors," and that's what matters. And we haven't held that level of rigor.I—let me be clear—lots of people do this and they do it incredibly well, and I want to be really mindful that I'm not like painting a wide brush. Yes, but we're—when it has failed, to me it has largely failed because it's just like, "Oh, I interviewed 15 people and I learned this," right? And why does that matter? And how does that connect? And where does it link? And what else—[Speaker 2]Does that show you? Yeah, that's where I think we have failed. Yeah. No, what do you mean—what are you—like, I just feel like I—like this is definitely a passion point for me because it was—sad when anthropology and—and ethnography started to lose value. When did that happen? What are you pointing—[Speaker 1]I feel like when data sciences really started to come forward, kind of the late 2010s, everyone's like, "Oh, we don't need ethnography anymore. We can just like run it and big data." And then certainly with—with the LLMs, people like, "Yeah, I can just ask the LLM to—what would a woman who's 40 in—"[Speaker 2]Michigan think about this? Right, yeah. Yeah. So it's just sad. So—do you feel like qualitative research is undervalued, ethnography is undervalued, that it's not really considered real data by—by many? Is there a need to sort of to champion this role?[Speaker 1]Yeah, I do feel like it's probably undervalued. And yet at the same time, I can't tell you the number of business meetings I sit in where people—like senior leaders will essentially offer what I call anecdata. Oh yeah, oh that's—that's qualitative. And—and helping them understand where they're doing it themselves.Yeah, I think it's actually kind of a—one of the—the more joyful parts of my current role since I don't do like outward-facing research so much anymore. And then can you tell—I want to talk about the ritual-based research. I mean, this is a few—while—a while ago, this paper, but it's so interesting and wonderful. Can you tell me a little bit about the origins?So it basically started from a kind of conflict we were having about qualitative versus quantitative data. And this other thing like—marketing is fundamentally a discipline that we want people to do something different from what they're doing, right? Like, I need you to buy more of this. I need you to tell your friends about buying this. I need you to—switch brands and buy more of mine and less of theirs. So it's fundamentally a behavior change discipline. Policy is fundamentally a behavior change discipline.And so I started to think about, all right, well, how do cultures change behavior? Right? So back to my like, I don't have time for this. Like, I gotta figure this out quickly. And cultures change behavior in two typical ways. The first is like the slow enculturation of how you like raise a child and the steady, you know, "Let's do that. Let's do this other thing. Like, let's not do this third thing."But the other big way they do it is actually through rituals, right? So you have—we all can think about like graduations or weddings as you are literally changing the status of somebody in those moments from student to graduate and from single to coupled. And there are whole categories—there are whole categories of rituals that are around behavior change.So even if you think about anniversaries or birthdays or—anniversaries in particular, those are moments that are really intended to kind of bring you right back to what was the commitment you made? What was the promise? Are you living up to that? Are you in that same space? And if not, how do you re—how do you re-get—how do you get yourself back there?And so I was like, well, if rituals are designed to change behavior, maybe we could think about how rituals align to certain types of behavior change. And then can we ladder different business and product challenges against those types of behaviors so that we can not just do like qualitative research, but do research that's actually trying to get people to do the thing that we want them to do anyway?And so the way that we thought about it was like—graduations, weddings, things like that are—are status change, right? So this is where you're welcoming somebody new, welcoming somebody into a new community. So I need you to not buy that and I need you to buy this. So how do we think about, "Oh wow, what does it take to welcome somebody into a new product community? And what do they want to feel? How do you want them to belong? What do you want to celebrate about who you are? How do you—how do you also tell them like what the rules are and what the expectations are and where we go, where we don't go?"At the same time, like I said, anniversaries are rituals of remembrance, right, where you remember why you made a commitment to something. So how is it that we can structure something where—where you remember why it is you are part of this thing that you are doing?So we use that for Saucony. We worked on the—all the brand work for—elite runners have a very difficult time talking about why they run. They're like, "I—I just do it. Like, I—my shoes are there and I do it and I just—I have to do this. It's like who I am." But if you get them talking, they all have—they all save race bibs and medals and stuff like that. If you get them talking about specific races, they talk about—you get these really rich, fun narratives about, you know, the challenges and the hilarious moments in the community and that other stuff.And those become moments of remembrance about why they do what they do. And so we had a whole campaign that was really around like the hilarious moments that happen in racing and running that—that were kind of like insider jokes to the running community to celebrate why we all get up at four in the morning and put on shoes and ache all day long.So—so and then—so there were a whole bunch of ways that we tried to do it. But it was kind of back to that bigger point like, what's the theory? What's the human question I'm trying to get at? And how can I think about not just like, "Oh, we'll do a deprivation study." Or like—well, why do you want to do a deprivation study? Is that the right study? Is that a right approach? Is that to get you the challenge that your customer—like your—your people actually have to make? So that's where it all started. And it was—it turned out to be super fun and actually worked, which was kind of surprising.[Speaker 2]Really? Because a lot of my stuff, I'm like, "It should work—"[Speaker 1]Should work in theory. I can see this.[Speaker 2]Yeah, it's amazing. So it was really fun. One final question because we've talked for a while and I could keep talking, but I'm—I have this—the Jerome Bruner book. I have not read it, but he uses the word meaning. I use the word meaning in this—that business of meaning. I pretend I know what I'm talking about, but it's a big mushy thing. What are we talking about when we talk about meaning?I don't know. It's a big mushy word, right? And I'm gonna go like, words can mean a lot of things, right?Yeah.What does meaning mean? I think at one level, it's—it literally is how we organize and make sense of what we do and the world around us. And it shapes that—that's kind of glib.I think at another level, it shapes the way that we engage with the world and the kinds of choices we make, which then kind of create the world that we're in, right? So I think it works at two levels. Or it's kind of that—that sort of pre-conscious—this is what I should do because this is what I've always been raised and taught. Like—like I was saying, the uncultivated consequences of—Yeah, like this is—this is what is—makes it—matters.It's then also how we go back and re-narrativize what's happened in our world to make sense of the choices we made and to leave things out. But the thing that's really interesting for me about meaning, and this ties a bit to some of my worries with AI—meaning—a lot of stuff that's meaningful, we—we take for granted because it's sort of the backdrop of our everyday, right? It's the—it's—and things stand out because they are different or unexpected or unique or unusual. And—and we pay attention to those. Sometimes they're good, like that's—it's an unexpectedly good moment. And sometimes they're outlier, like they're not.But we find ways to craft narratives that kind of weave those back through. And my goal with a lot of qualitative research is how do we keep bringing more of that surprise, more of that unexpected? Because that's where—and how do we focus on that unexpected? Because that's where people have to articulate why is it unexpected, right? And how do I make sense of this thing that I didn't know was going to happen?That's really the brilliance of long-term fieldwork is you get to ask people like, "Oh, why did you do that?" And it's the everyday of their world, and they look at you like, "Well, because we always do that." But then you push and you get the underlying why. I think those whys change over time. Let me also be clear. But—but I think to me, that's what meaning is. It's the frameworks that start to pattern and organize our lives, but it's also those frameworks that pull in the stuff that's unexpected.And I—I also think that sometimes those—sorry, I'm gonna go one more step further. When something is so far askew and we can't process it, we just like—yes, that thing never happened. And we don't have any way—like—like the—the framework breaks if we pull it in. And I think that when I look at politics and some of the social divides that we're now seeing, I think that that's part of why I'm really afraid about—I'm not afraid, but—I think that that's the big challenge when something's so different that we—that we have to like other it. And can't create a narrative in which that makes sense.What's the opposite of othering? Is it belonging, isn't it? It's a—okay, Tom—Thomas Tornish was one of my favorite phenomenologists who said self and other always existed the same boundary, right? You define yourself by defining what is other. So if the opposite of othering, it's selfing, right? How is—how am I like this thing? Yes, that—how is this thing like me? Where did it—A totally made-up word on the moment. I think the—yeah, I think the opposite is selfing.Oh, it's beautiful. Awesome. Well, what a beautiful—what a wonderful way to end. This has been such a joy. I—I really am really grateful that you—you—you agreed to speak with me, and this has been a real pleasure. So thank you so much.Thank you. I always learn so much more about myself and about my discipline when I have these conversations. So absolutely love what you do. Please keep it up. I—and it makes my Friday every day. I'm excited to now finish this and go read your newsletter for today. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Phil Adams is a brand consultant based in Edinburgh, Scotland, practicing what he calls Lowfalutin Strategy. He has over 20 years experience as an account manager, planner, and managing director in the advertising business. He was Planning Director at digital agency Blonde, and then Managing Director at The Leith Agency. He has a wonderful newsletter here. I reached out to him because of this: “Mixtaping my metaphors.”---Beautiful. So, Phil, thank you for coming and being a part of this with me. I start all of these conversations with the same question, which I tend to overexplain. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, who’s an oral historian. She helps people tell their stories. It’s a big, beautiful question, but because it’s so big, you can answer it any way you want. The question is, where do you come from?Yes, well, thank you for that. Forewarned is forearmed, because I knew it was coming, so I had a chance to think about this. Rather than giving you a standard personal life story, I think the best answer is that I come from two places: one called mischief and the other one called creativity. Looking back now, with hindsight, I think those are the places I came from.Tell me a little bit about mischief.Okay, well, something that stuck with me from an early age, and I try to stay true to this, is what my maternal grandfather once said: "The thing about Phil is he always has a twinkle in his eye." He meant that I’m always on the lookout for fun and mischief. I’ve never forgotten him saying that, and I try to live by that ethos—having a twinkle in my eye. I think that’s probably why, despite studying engineering at university, I made a sudden turn into advertising. It suited me more as an environment—a sparky, fun environment. That was the idea. I didn’t know much about it going in, but it turned out to be exactly that.So was creativity the other place you came from?Yeah, again with hindsight. Looking back on my childhood, there was a lot of creative mischief. For example, I used to play with Scalextric racing cars. I stripped the wires from the transformer and used it to run science experiments, like copper plating things. My mum freaked out once when she found out I was running experiments, like putting a lit candle in my cupboard and timing how long it would take to burn all the oxygen and go out. So, with hindsight, a lot of my play was mischievous but also quite creative.Did you ever have an idea of what you wanted to be when you grew up?Not really, no. It was all quite predictable, I think. I was a pretty good student across most subjects, with a slight bias toward the sciences. My dad’s a scientist, so with his encouragement, I narrowed down my subjects to maths, physics, and chemistry at 16. Not surprisingly, I ended up in an engineering degree, but not with any strong vocational drive to be an engineer. I’ve always liked understanding how things work, and that’s served me well in advertising as well. But I didn’t have a vocational drive until university, when I suddenly decided that advertising was what I wanted to do. That was at age 21.What happened at 21?I was in the changing rooms after a soccer game, and one of my teammates, who was studying chemistry or geology, decided he wanted to be an advertising copywriter. He was putting together a portfolio of ideas to show, and it looked really interesting. I’d always had a fascination with ads—my sister and I used to play a game where we’d guess the brand behind the ad quickest. So when I saw his book and Campaign magazine, it all looked really glamorous, and something about it appealed to me. I decided I wanted to go into advertising, not as a copywriter, but just in the industry. I had to re-engineer my CV, managed to get on a Procter and Gamble marketing course during an Easter holiday, and then worked for nothing in a small agency over the summer. By the time of my final year at university, I could demonstrate some enthusiasm for advertising. I applied to all the top agencies in London, got maybe five first interviews, and one job offer, which happened to be at BBH. So I landed on my feet, and my football teammate went on to a glittering career as a creative, including being executive creative director at BBH in the end as well.Oh, wow. Were you together at BBH?No, he was there after I was.And where are you now? What’s the work you’re doing now?OK, so I worked in advertising for about 18 years. I went through account management, account director, head of client services, and ended up as the managing director of an agency. In 2006-2007, I helped co-found our sister digital agency. I liked the guy we’d hired to run it so much that I jumped ship and joined the digital agency, effectively recruiting my own boss and reinventing myself as a strategy person. Most digital agencies then were run by technical people, so it was quite unusual to have a brand person in a digital agency. I did strategy in a digital agency until 2020, then jumped ship again to go freelance as an independent brand strategy consultant. Now, I work mostly with B2B and service organizations.What do you love about the work? Where’s the joy in it for you?The joy in the work is that it’s both an intellectual and a creative discipline. You kind of jump from one to the other, almost seamlessly, when you’re working on a problem. That suits me. The work I do now involves that constant combination of logical and creative thinking, one informing the other. That’s the joy that sustains my interest. People keep asking me, "When are you going to retire?" I have no desire to retire because I’m enjoying the work. Working for myself now, I can pick and choose who I work with, so I keep the joy of the work and lose some of the negatives that come with working in an agency. It’s great. And actually, the joy also comes from the fact that I feel I’m doing the best work of my career now, at age 58—work I couldn’t have done even when I was 50. I don’t want to sound overconfident, but I do think there’s been a blossoming in my late career. There’s joy in that as well.Yeah, and how do you mean? In what way are you doing things that you couldn’t have done before?I think it’s a new level of confidence. Not overconfidence—I hope I approach my work with humility—but I feel comfortable having conversations with founders and CEOs, having the confidence to price according to my ability, and to decline pitches where I’d have to give away intellectual property for nothing. I’ve either learned these things in the last five years or just reached an age where I’ve had to. I feel quite different from how I felt even five or six years ago.The name of your company is fantastic, and it feels like it has a "lowfalutin" strategy. Is that right?Yeah, that’s not the name of the company. It took me four and a half years of consultancy work to finally figure out who I am as a consultant and what my style is. I think I’m good at keeping things simple, pragmatic, and unpretentious. "Lowfalutin" was just an idea I had to describe that style, rather than being another consultant who talks about pragmatic solutions. It’s a slightly pretentious way of saying unpretentious, and I like it for that. It’s not the name of the company, but I did trademark it as my signature style. It’s wonderful. It’s a good filter because you have to know what "highfalutin" means to get it. And I guess I don’t want to work with people who don’t know what "highfalutin" is.Well, I don’t know when I signed up for your newsletter or when I started seeing your stuff on LinkedIn, but you had this amazing post you called a "mixtape of metaphor." You really went deep and gathered all of these beautiful nuggets about metaphor into one post. That’s what inspired me to reach out and invite you here. So, talk to me about metaphor. Why create a mixtape of metaphor, and what’s the role of metaphor in your work?Well, I’ve been collecting them for quite a while. I don’t know why I’m interested, but I do a lot of writing. I get great joy from writing, though I wouldn’t say I’m brilliant at it. But I’m interested in communication, professionally, and metaphor is a powerful tool. When you subconsciously read or watch something, you’re not aware of how prevalent metaphor is in our language. It was only after I wrote that post about metaphor that I realized I was unconsciously using other metaphors to write about the ones I was consciously using. They’re a prevalent form of communication because they’re so powerful. I’ve always had a fascination with them. I have an online repository of stuff I find interesting, and I’ve had a section called "Metaphor" where I’ve been collecting them over the years. It was only recently that I decided to pull some of those greatest hits out and put them together into a single article called "Mixtape," which itself is a metaphor.Metaphor all the way down.Yeah, exactly. And in terms of using metaphor professionally, quite often a creative idea, an advertising idea, can be a metaphor. Another example is that if you want to use a celebrity as a spokesperson for your brand, it works best when the thing for which that celebrity is best known is a metaphor for what your brand stands for. That works really well. So, metaphors are a frequently used and powerful tool, not just in language generally, but specifically in commercial creativity.I want to return to the idea that you’re a simple and pragmatic communicator. What are the challenges when working with clients to make things simple? How do you do that?I think it’s an attitude, and I do think it’s one of the few benefits of getting older. Learning to keep things simple, not being afraid to keep things simple, and knowing how to keep things simple are skills that get better with age. I don’t have a fixed brand framework—no brand house, brand key, or brand pyramid. That just gives you boxes to fill in every time, most of which are superfluous for a given client. It makes more work for me because I do a bespoke thing for each client. But the philosophy I bring to every gig is that the strategy will have the best chance of working if it has as few moving parts as possible. So, I don’t have a set framework, but I do have a philosophy of keeping the number of components in a brand strategy to a bare minimum to do the job. That helps, although it does create more work each time.Yeah, that’s wonderful. I’m curious about your shift from account management to strategy and then doing strategy in digital. How has the strategy changed? How has the advertising challenge changed? How would you describe how things have changed?I think, can I start by saying what hasn’t changed? My favorite advertising maxim is McCann Erickson’s idea of "Truth Well Told," which goes back to 1912. I still think that’s as good a definition of advertising or commercial communication as you’re going to get. It’s deceptively simple because you have to identify what that truth is from many options, and then you have to decide the best way of telling that truth. So, it’s simple, but it’s not easy. That fundamentally is still the same. The things that change are more surface-level, like delivery mechanisms. The advent of the internet and social media was a radical change in how commercial messages are delivered, but they’re still doing fundamentally the same job—telling the truth in the best way possible. Some people get fixated on surface changes at the expense of the core discipline. The fragmentation of media channels, both online and offline, presents new challenges. It’s harder to achieve reach, which is important for building a brand over the long term. That’s more of a challenge and may have contributed to the discipline of advertising feeling a little less important than it did when I was working in it. But that’s easy for me to say from the outside looking in now.What’s the role of research in your process? I’m a qualitative researcher, so I’m always interested to hear how people value it and use it.It’s fundamental. One of the values I apply to my consultancy work is what I call "dealing directly," but access is a shorthand. One part of that is having access to my clients’ clients or customers to do primary research. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll take a project on unless I can talk directly to their customers. One of the reasons I specialize in B2B and service businesses is that they both involve deep, ongoing relationships with my clients, and the relationship matters. They know about my clients and care about my client doing a good job for them. As well as buying the product or service, they’re also buying into my client’s culture. Part of my job is to understand the culture behind the brand, and I’m quite good at that because I’m really interested in it. Also, because my clients’ clients or customers know my clients really well, they’re often going to give me the answer I need. It happens so often that what my client thinks they’re selling is not the same as what their customers are buying. Somewhere in that tension is the answer to the brand strategy problem they’ve set me. I couldn’t do the work without doing the primary research with those clients or customers, to the point where I won’t take the work on. It’s absolutely essential to the work I do.Was this something you learned coming up, or how did you develop as an interviewer, a researcher, someone who asks questions?I’m not someone who feels the need to impress with what I’m saying. I much prefer to listen, think, and then speak. That natural inclination to let others talk and not try to impress them with what I think is a solid foundation. I’ve always had that. The more you do it, the better you get at asking good questions. I’ve always been pretty good at listening, and as you know, you don’t just listen with your ears—body language is a huge part of it. It’s not just what they’re saying, but how they’re saying it. Being receptive to when there might be something else they could say if I just leave a pregnant pause for them to fill often leads to the most interesting insights. I enjoy the back-and-forth of those conversations. Usually, I’m talking to people who want to say nice things, who want to be helpful, so that helps too.You mentioned learning how to ask questions. What have you learned about what makes a good question?I guess keeping it open-ended is important—inviting someone to share their opinion. It’s a difficult one to answer because I do this naturally now. When you’re writing a discussion guide, the first pass might not be that great. What I do is, and I do this for meetings as well as for qualitative research interviews, I don’t just write the discussion guide—I imagine myself having the conversation. When you do that, you can imagine how it will go and whether they’ll open up or if the question will shut them down. That’s a good discipline, not just for qualitative research but for preparing for any meeting. I’ll Google the people I’m going to talk to, watch videos of them presenting, and get a sense of who they are. Then I imagine the conversation and whether a particular question will work or if it needs rephrasing. So, that imaginative approach would be my overall method.Yeah, it’s awesome. I think about this stuff way too much, of course, but there’s this amazing quote I always return to. A woman named Harleen Anderson, a therapist, said, "How could you possibly know what questions to ask somebody until they’ve said something for you to be curious about?"That’s useful, yeah.Isn’t that nice? I felt like I saw that in you too.Yeah, totally. You reminded me that part of my opening spiel when I first meet someone to interview is that I’ll say, "My discussion guide is over here on this screen, so I’m not checking email. I’m just seeing where we are. But I’d be delighted if this conversation very quickly goes off-piste, depending on how you lead it." I know the outcome I need from the conversation, but I don’t need to slavishly follow the questions to get it if they lead me in a more interesting direction. Having the experience and confidence to go with the flow and not be tied down by set questions is important.Yeah. How do you know when you’ve gotten to the strategy? You’ve talked about getting to the strategy with as few parts as possible. How do you know when you’ve arrived?It goes back to the idea of "truth well told." Most of the projects I work on are for clients who don’t think they’ve ever found that truth, or they had it but lost their way. They haven’t got their story straight anymore. Most of the projects I work on are some version of finding that truth, working out how to tell it, and giving them a blueprint they can work with. As I talk to them, I get a sense of who they are, what their values are, what their culture is. Then I go and talk to their customers, maybe creating some stimulus material from the conversations with my client. I get a sense of what that truth might be. Once I know what the answer is, I think about the most appropriate way to structure it so it becomes easily digestible and pragmatic. I don’t like strategy as an intellectual exercise—it’s a means to an end. Someone has to execute the strategy, so I have to leave it in a place where it’s easy to follow. And if they give it to a creative person, it has to be a joy for that creative person to work with. So, it’s got to be precise, accurate, and inspirational.To the degree you’re comfortable, can you give me an example or tell me a story about what that looks like? Is there a form that your strategy usually takes?I don’t have a set form, but there’s an end result I always aim for, which is the client saying, "Oh my God, that’s us." That’s us in terms of what we’re saying, and that’s us in terms of how it’s being said. And because of the way I’ve done the work, it’s "that’s us" in a way that’s going to press the right buttons with the kind of clients or customers they’re trying to attract because it’s been informed by them in the process. That’s the outcome I’m always looking for. I’m so pleased when I occasionally get that verbatim, "that’s us," which is a deep joy. Often a client will say, "Thank you very much, you really got us," which is another way of saying the same thing. But that’s what I want—for them to see themselves expressed in a way that was missing before, in a way that’s going to attract the kind of clients they want. Does that answer your question?Absolutely. There’s no such thing as a wrong answer. I totally connect with the victory of them seeing themselves in the work. It’s powerful and beautiful. I appreciate the lack of dogma in your approach.Thank you. I’m happy with that. One common problem I encounter with service businesses, especially marketing services businesses, is that when you get down into messaging, you have to do three jobs: inform, enthuse, and reassure. Marketing services businesses, in particular, forget to do the "inform" bit and are all about trying to enthuse. You’ll see ad agency websites that say things like, "We connect clients with culture," and yet you wonder, "Do you do ads?" They forget that fundamental first line of the elevator pitch—what kind of company are you?There was an amazing quote from James Bridle about AI in the metaphor mixtape. I wanted to ask, how would you describe your relationship with generative AI?I don’t have one. Back in 2007, when social media exploded, I was advising my clients on whether and how they should use it, so I had to dive in and immerse myself in social media. Right now, I’m advising my clients on brand strategy, not on AI technology, so I don’t feel the need to dive into AI. Also, it’s moving so fast, changing so quickly, that I’m letting others make mistakes and learn for me. I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not making my own mistakes. For example, prompt engineering sounds like bad UX to me—it’ll get sorted out eventually, where I won’t need to be a prompt engineer to use this stuff. So, I’m not wasting my time on that. I also don’t want to outsource the hard work of wrestling with a problem. I don’t want to take shortcuts because my ability to know when something’s right and to talk it through with a client depends on me having done that hard work. I’m deeply skeptical of AI and don’t think I need it. The kind of work I do—talking one-on-one with human beings—if that ever becomes replaceable by AI, it will be one of the last things to go. I’m listening with my ears, eyes, gut, and a sixth sense, and I just don’t see how AI can replicate that. I’m skeptical and less inclined to dive in than others. I don’t think I need to.You were part of the internet’s arrival, which was our most recent transformation. What was that experience like, and what did you learn that you’re applying here?I worked with people who’d been on the internet from day one, so 2006-2007 was a long way after day one, but it was kind of the wild west when marketing people and brands suddenly realized they might have to think seriously about it. It was exciting. I learned a lot from diving in early to social media. I made a lot of friends and connections, which made going freelance in 2020 much easier. It’s been a huge professional boon to me, both in terms of meeting people and learning from them. But it also informs how I feel about generative AI now. Social media started as a beautiful, generous, open thing, but now we realize it can be a threat to democracy, exacerbates polarization, and has negative impacts on mental health, especially among younger people. None of that was foreseen back in 2007. So, I assume despite all the amazing use cases for generative AI now, we’re going to see similar negative impacts down the line. That’s my assumption—I don’t know what they will be, but I’m cautious.That’s a good place to end our conversation. Thank you so much. I really appreciated speaking with you and enjoyed it. I appreciate you accepting my invitation.Thank you so much for being interested. I’m deeply flattered, especially given some of the people who’ve gone before on this podcast—people I admire from afar. I was honored to be asked. Thank you. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe

Jakob Voldum is Director, Insights and Strategy at Designit in Copenhagen. Prior to that he was a Senior Consultant at ReD Associates, having joined the company at the beginning as an intern. At Designit, he is co-hosting the event “Beyond the Lens: How ai is changing creative workflows" with the hybrid image agency Scenes. Thank you for agreeing to do this. I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend who teaches oral history. Because it's a beautiful question, I over-explain it. Before I ask, you should know that you're in total control. You can answer any way that you want or not answer. The question is, where do you come from?That's an interesting question, one that I could potentially answer in many different ways. Maybe I could start from the top, or from one perspective - the overarching, big picture perspective. I come from Denmark, a small country in northern Europe. It's known for its pretty and windy coastlines, for smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches), very delicious. But probably what I'm most proud of is the extensive welfare society.We might have one of the highest tax rates in the world. But on the other hand, healthcare and education are mostly free. I can try to zoom in further. Denmark is a small country, but there are quite a few people here. I come from the capital, Copenhagen. It's a highly livable city, optimized for bikes. We've got bike lanes all over, so someone like you who enjoys biking might appreciate that.Zooming in further, I'm from a first-row suburb of Copenhagen. I grew up in a large two-family house with loving parents and a sister. My parents - one is a teacher, the other is a lithographer; she used to work with retouching images for magazines. It was a sort of liberal, left-wing household with strong family values. I think I was always encouraged to follow my passions. I was told that should be the most important selection criteria for what I should choose to spend my time on.This two-family household was also quite unique because we grew up with two families under one roof, two separate apartments, but with a lot of companionship and community within the household, sharing dinners. We were four kids together, more or less similar ages, so we could play together and explore the neighborhoods.To this day, I'm quite fortunate to have most of my family and friends around Copenhagen. Interestingly, I've actually gone full circle. When I came of age and moved out of the house, I lived in the city for a while and traveled the world. But now I've moved back into my home. My parents are a little bit older now. I bought half the house and I'm living with my parents. So we're kind of like a multigenerational household now, which is great.How's it been? What's that like?It's been really good. It wasn't a decision that happened quite quickly because we had a great apartment somewhere else in Copenhagen. But all of a sudden, this apartment became available. My mom called me and said this could happen. We have to make a decision now. I think she hit us at the right moment. We were just about to have our second kid. I thought it might be nice to have some extra hands around to help raise the kids.They're both retired now, so I think it works pretty well. It's nice to be close to parents. It's nice to be close to someone who loves you almost unconditionally and to see my kids actually build a strong bond with them as well. Of course, there are issues, but nothing that we haven't been able to solve so far. So I think it's nice.You were encouraged to follow your passions. Do you have a recollection of what you wanted to be when you grew up?The first thing I wanted to be was a zoologist. I was always super interested in insects and animals. I had this friend in kindergarten whose father was a zoologist. He was always telling these tales of fieldwork in remote parts of Africa, coming home with super interesting stories of looking for new species. I thought that was really cool and interesting.But I didn't end up choosing zoology. I ended up choosing something that would feed my need for curiosity and exploration of other places and cultures. I chose a field called ethnology, which is in the social sciences. It's a unique Northern European or European phenomenon. Ethnos means people or nation, and the logic part is the teaching of them. So it's understanding people, closely related to anthropology and sociology.I remember when I was trying to figure out what to study, I was looking at this leaflet from the University of Copenhagen. I was always very interested in history and anthropology. I thought it was fascinating to go out and try to understand cultures and meet people, to be bombarded with new experiences like that. I was also interested in philosophy and sociology. When I read the description of ethnology, it seemed like I'd be getting this full package of all these things combined in one.What's unique about ethnology is that while it has the whole methodology of anthropologists - learning to do participant observation and the whole qualitative toolbox - it also uses history to teach you something about change. It encourages you to look at both the past and the present and combine those two views, which I think was super interesting. A guy I look up to when I read his books is Noah Yuval Harari. He has this notion that history is not just the study of the past, it's a study of change. I try to carry that with me as well. It's kind of supposed to be sense-making to practically make sense of where we're going and why.When did you discover that you could make a living doing this, studying people?That happened by chance. As I was studying, I was preparing for the graduate program. In the university system, there's an opportunity to do an internship as part of your master's program. I saw an ad for an intern for a famous design agency here in Copenhagen. I went to the interviews and got the internship.But when I was supposed to start this internship, some of the partners in this design agency had broken out and started their own thing. That became a company which has become quite well known within social science-driven consulting, human-centric innovations. It's called Red Associates, with offices in Copenhagen, New York, and elsewhere.I ended up being one of the first employees at Red Associates. I think we were six or seven people at the time when I started back in 2005. By this time, I hadn't even finished my studies yet. I was lucky to enter the world of applied anthropology, applied social science with a really interesting group of people who would quickly send me around the world on fieldwork for global companies and even for some of the ministries here in Denmark. I couldn't have wished for a more exciting beginning to my career, getting access to all these interesting questions, domains, and contexts.What do you love about the work? What's the joy in it for you?If anything, I think curiosity is my superpower. I do a lot more than anthropology these days, but that was the bulk of what I did for a long time - go out into the world, understand something, and be driven by my curiosity. I think it's very difficult to be curious without also having some sort of foundational empathy. So I think those two have been my key drivers in terms of having done what I do, and having done it successfully - curiosity and empathy, and just wanting to understand what's going on.That's still what I try to do. These days, it might be some of my team members who end up doing the fieldwork, but I simply can't help being involved to some extent because I want to understand how things work, how the world is changing, and how we can create change. I think today, in this day and age, there are so many big, hairy problems that we need to solve. We sometimes get the opportunity to make our best shot at solving them for some of our clients.One of the moments I really love is the eureka moment, the aha moment. The first time I had that, I remember, was in university when I was introduced to some of the theories around anthropology. Is that really how the world works? Wow, is that how a nation is constructed? Is that really something that you can actually construct? As you educate yourself and read books by smart people, you start to understand a bit more of how the world really works.Anthropology is a great facilitator of these aha moments. Sometimes it's a minuscule thing, just understanding what really motivates someone. But sometimes you can connect the dots and come up with grander visions or understandings of why a certain market works the way it does, or why a certain culture in a given company is dysfunctional. That feels so rewarding for me - to understand something and be able to convey that so you might actually inspire some sort of change.So beautiful. You mentioned that with ReD Associates, the business world runs on numbers, and they were coming at it from a very different point of view. I'm wondering, what kind of conversations do you have with clients around the role of qualitative? I mean, I imagine people self-select, right? They're going to come, they want that kind of work. But for you, what's the argument that you make for qualitative? I can often feel kind of doomsday about things becoming less and less human, and it becoming much easier to avoid the work of qualitative. But I'd love to hear you just talk about the proper role of qualitative. And how do you pitch it to the C-suite, if it were?There are multiple different insights into this, but also multiple trend lines. First of all, it's really about getting to the why. We might have all these numbers about the way things worked in the past, and we've been trying to project that and say, well, then it'll probably work like this in the future. But we can't say that with certainty. No one can predict the future, not even the most expansive data sets.If you want to understand why something is happening, you need to understand the people who have a stake in it, whether it's the consumer, the employees, or whoever else it might be. Every company is part of an ecosystem populated by people. Those people make decisions and are driven by certain things. You need to understand why they do what they do, and for that, you're going to need the whole qualitative apparatus.There are two big groups of clients. There are the very mature clients who are used to working with design tools and qualitative research. For them, it's more about how much, where, timelines - more practical aspects, because they respect it and have it embedded in the way they think. Then there are the more immature clients that don't necessarily see the value of it or have a very instrumental way of proceeding. That's a completely different ballgame. You need to start from scratch, educate them, show the work that you've done, the difference that work has made, and tailor that to whatever problem they're sitting with.Right now, we're being hit by all these LLMs and synthetic research. You look at the entire design process, and there are new tools emerging every week trying to automate some parts of it. I still think it's going to take a while before we actually figure out the use cases. Of course, we're experimenting with it, but at the end of the line, for things that really matter, we're going to need to have someone in the loop - someone who really understands and has an intention and understands the priorities. For that person, the qualitative knowledge of how people act, how they understand the world, what motivates them, what drives them is just super crucial.I don't see a future where we can just automate this. Yes, for some aspects, probably some of the more tactical stuff like testing a new digital flow, parts of that can be automated. But for the big, fundamental things of really trying to understand what's at stake, I don't see us automating research anytime soon.So how do you see that practice changing? Let's say we're in the future, and a lot of parts have been automated. But it leaves this space for the big qualitative. How do you see that practice changing? Is it just more of the same, just sort of goes untouched? Or do you see it operating differently?I do see it operating differently. For myself, experimenting with AI tools, both in research and in concept development and design process, has been really rewarding so far. I'm curious by nature, so I like to think I'm trying to understand how things work and how I might benefit from it.What's been beautiful about it so far is that we've been able to automate some of the parts that are not necessarily the most interesting parts of it. The actual interaction and relationship between people, establishing that rapport, establishing an empathetic relationship with someone to understand a given context - I don't see how you can automate that. But maybe some of the planning, some of the thinking about how to structure the fieldwork, field guide, observation guide - stuff like that, you can very well use LLMs for, not completely automating, but at least using it and then editing with a human in the loop afterwards. For those aspects, just like any writing tasks these days, there are some obvious use cases.When you move to the analysis as well, I think every anthropologist or social scientist who's done large-scale fieldwork will respect that it's a big task to come home, sift through all the research, do all the documentation in the right way, in a structured way, and then actually synthesize all that information before you can start to distill what everything actually means and how to enable your strategy or your concept. For some of those tasks as well, if you upload all your field notes into an LLM that you've trained, and that's secure and all that stuff, of course, it can do a great job of actually helping enable analysis in a quicker way.I think we'll be able to do things much more efficiently. But I like to be an optimist and say we're going to choose the ways where we can actually see a gain. But for the human connections and for the all-important sense-making in the end, it's still going to be us who's doing it.That's amazing. Tell me a little bit about your current position and company and the other things that you're working on.After I left ReD Associates, I needed a change. I think that's probably natural after you've been in a company for many years. This was my first job, so I needed to travel a bit and try to figure out what to do. But then I figured out that there was a need for someone like me. So I actually ended up freelancing for a few years, self-employed, working with different companies.You said, “a person like me.” How do you think about yourself? How do you talk about your particular skill set?I think it's evolved a bit. But I thought of myself as a business development consultant using ethnography tools primarily. My skill set is primarily around research, but of course, also making sense of that research and using that to strategize and to develop concepts creatively, grounded in my expertise within research and social science.That's what I did for a few years. Then a design agency, the same agency I'm in right now called Design-it, came knocking and offered me a position. At the time, they were growing quite rapidly and could see a need in the market for someone like me. So I came on board and quickly got the opportunity to build a team around what we call Insights and Strategy.Basically, I built a team with the capabilities of handling everything in the front end of the design process. From engaging with the clients to understand their need in depth - for me, that's also a big part of the capabilities of an anthropologist, to empathize with your clients, to understand where they're coming from and what they really need, and be able to challenge them in the right way and actually meet their need with a precise brief and process.But then, of course, the whole front end of the design process, from understanding the client's need to figuring out what we should do, what kind of research we should be doing, who we should be talking to, what kind of new methods might be cool to start working with, how the design field is evolving. So basically building out a team that could tackle the entire front end of the design process up until you start developing concepts, to start bringing in more visual designers to bring things to life, whether it's a digital product or a physical product.I did that for a few years and I'm still here. I'm still a design director. I'm not leading the Insights and Strategy team anymore, but have a little bit more of a thought leadership role slash commercial role. Of course, owning the pipeline together with one of my really good colleagues and driving new bids and rebids and trying to figure out where to take our different clients. But then also trying to have an opinion about important topics of our time.I appreciate that. You guys have really taken a point of view on AI, which you've already talked about a bit. What are the positions that you guys are taking? Was it Beyond the Lens? Is that what it was?Yeah, that's exactly right. The event was called Beyond the Lens. We had it back in April, and we actually have another event coming up in the second-largest city in Denmark called Aarhus because we also have a satellite office over there. We thought we'd take it there after it had pretty nice attendance here in Copenhagen.Essentially, it's a two-part event. It's an after-work thing for people within the design community, but also for clients of ours. We know everyone's talking about AI these days, trying to identify the use cases. So the purpose of that talk was really to discuss how generative AI is changing design and creativity. That's kind of the first bit, a bit of a tour in the helicopter, but also looking back and saying, how did we get here? What's going on? What are the use cases that are emerging? What might we need to be aware of at this stage?Then the second part - an old colleague of mine started a new creative agency. He has a long career within branding, and he's teamed up with a friend of his who's a professional photographer. They're basically doing commercial photography, hybrid photography, merging real photography with AI and applying that for brand development purposes of all sorts, campaign work and so on.The idea with the event was really to say, okay, there's kind of a more philosophical track. Let's try to make sense of this together. And the other part is really about actually showcasing a unique emerging use case, which is that now we can do these amazing images using AI tools, or at least combining real photography with AI tools.How would you describe your relationship with generative AI right now?It's complicated, I would say. Part of me is quite excited. I've gotten a lot of fuel for my curiosity. I think it's really interesting to follow how this is evolving. And I think it's interesting exploring in the context of my work. I think it's interesting to figure out some of these use cases that really make my work more enjoyable.That's the professional, personal angle. But in the bigger picture, I'm also really concerned, to be honest. I think it's going super fast. I think there are some things that just don't really add up. All the tech giants are investing billions of dollars into chipsets. A company like OpenAI was positioned as the pioneer. But people are leaving the company. There are all these speculations about the billions of dollars that they're burning through to get to AGI. And can they really get there and all that.I think there's no doubting that we're in the middle of a huge hype cycle. Whether it's a bubble or not, I don't have the insight to really offer you a perspective there. But I think something is definitely going on. I think a lot of the tech giants were in need of a new story in the wake of the pandemic. And I think AI fit the bill.I'm not neglecting that this is a revolutionary set of tools and I'm experiencing that myself. But I don't think it's society-altering or revolutionizing to the extent that some are trying to make it. So I think it's about stepping back and asking, where are the adults in the room?Can you tell me a story about your ideal experience with generative AI? You said you've had moments where you've been tinkering and enjoying it. What are you using it for?I think I talked about this a little bit earlier. Let's say you're doing qualitative research - there are some obvious low-hanging fruits of how you can ally yourself with ChatGPT or whatever large language model you're using. You can train it on a particular problem you're working on, and then you can actually have it generate a question guide, for example. That's a low-hanging fruit.It becomes like a writing companion, and you become the editor. You're not just outsourcing, but you have someone to do the bread-and-butter writing, and then you can actually edit and improve it.I think that's a very common use case. Most people will probably recognize that. But then we think about design - you might be familiar with the double diamond method, it's about diverging and converging.First, you try to figure out what problem to solve. You explore that problem broadly, and then you figure out which part of the problem you can most ideally solve and which might make most sense to invest the most resources in. Then you get to ideation, trying to ideate potential ideas to solve the problem you've identified. Ideation is a bit of a volume-dependent activity.You need creative people in the room. We can probably all agree that there are principles that make for a good ideation session - having people with diverse perspectives, different backgrounds and age groups, people who come at the problem from different angles. But at the end of the day, you want to be able to generate a lot of ideas.If you actually prep a lot of language models, you can get them to output a lot of ideas quickly. So ideation being a volume-dependent activity, I think it works really well to give you some of that volume. I'm not saying you're outsourcing the ideation or the solution to a large language model, but you're using it as a contributor to an ideation session.Similarly, once you get to a prototyping stage, because you can use these tools, you can actually develop more prototypes simultaneously. So I think everything that's volume-dependent within the design process, it makes a lot of sense to figure out how to use large language models for parts of it.One thing on my to-do list is to explore some really sophisticated, smaller large language models where you're basically building a project repository in a cloud. While you're doing that, you're also training a large language model. So you start to be able to interact with all your data from the original brief and proposal, whatever field guides you might've been using, all the field notes and so on. You start to have it all in one central place.Because you've trained a large language model, you're actually interacting with all that material. The large language model essentially becomes a version of your project that you can have a dialogue with. I think that's really interesting.That's something we're looking to experiment with. And then there's knowledge management. I think there's an obvious use case there.A lot of companies have gone down this route by now. I know no clients who've done it, but imagine if you have - so we have 15 offices around the world, 700 employees, and they're all unique in their own ways. They're all producing knowledge of some sort every day. While we're pretty good at maintaining our staff, people eventually go on to pursue other dreams and careers. When they leave, some of that knowledge leaves.Yes, you might get access to your employees' files and folders, but are you ever going to get through that? Not really. So a lot of stuff gets lost in translation.Imagine if you could actually interact with the entire knowledge repository of your company in a large language model. Show me the three best cases within this industry, the most recent cases. Have it actually summarize the key insights, and so on.I think some of those are the big use cases that we really want to pursue at a company level going forward.What's it been like? How have you responded? I've had some interactions with clients where it feels like the house is on fire. Do you know what I mean? It was like, "Oh God, we got to figure this out." And then other people are very cautious and they're just not even really paying attention. But what's it been like being on the inside, trying to orient Design-it for this moment?I think it's actually been quite easy because most designers, most of our employees are curious, explorative, experimenting by nature.So valuable. You keep coming back to that. Tell me more about why that's so vital right now.In most big companies, things happen top-down, and you don't feel like you have the mandate to do something unless it's been mandated by management and it's within official policy or priorities. So when I go down to, let's say, one of our digital designers, I can be sure that he's already looked at all the different tools that are coming out. He's already tried to make images using Midjourney when it was still in beta mode because, oh, this is interesting. I need to understand that.So I think a lot of what is happening is very organic. For us, it's more about making sure that we don't compromise our clients, that we are respecting all the boundaries and that we have the right guardrails in place. That's definitely difficult, and I do not have all the right answers to that. But I think a lot of the methods or tools are being explored naturally.We are owned by a large technology company called Wipro. It's headquartered in India. They have 250,000 employees. They're obviously also investing heavily in AI. I think they've earmarked north of a billion US dollars for AI initiatives across the company. So of course, they're also supportive of it.What impact has it had on client relationships? Has it changed that in any way?To be honest, not so much yet. We are having dialogues around sense-making around AI. We might have a client who is interested or intrigued about potentially understanding how we might use some of these tools for brand work or for imagery, image creation, maybe for concept development.There are some dialogues around creating AI-enabled sprints. We've also hosted a few events where we have actually done quick and dirty design sprints leading into AI tools. One of the cool things, because we were able to prep in advance, we could actually prototype some of the best ideas that were produced in the sessions.We had basically created a series of prompts where we could then quickly try the right brand colors and create tangible experiences. That was really cool because it made the participants, who were not necessarily designers and not necessarily capable of creating great illustrations, able to quickly sketch up something that looked like their actual idea, but also felt like an actual product or experience that they could put into the world. So I think it's still emerging.Some clients are very much on top of it and some clients are still trying to make sense, for sure. But definitely more and more dialogues, and a lot of them, of course, related to some of the more or less proven use cases around imagery and basic design stuff.How different are the worlds of LLMs and visual AI like Midjourney in our conversation? Have you been talking about both or have you been talking exclusively more about the design side?I've been talking about both. The main applications we're using, of course, we've talked about OpenAI, Claude, as you mentioned yourself, the big ones. But apart from that, there's also GitHub Copilot, and then Midjourney and a few other image generators.Those are the primary ones. But then there are also some more niche ones that are emerging, specifically within UX design, for example, or specifically within logo design. I can't remember all the names, but there's so much coming out.It's really about understanding that the hype cycle is on fully. So you need to be careful not to end up wasting your time. But Midjourney and ChatGPT are two very different things.Obviously, Midjourney is text-to-image, which OpenAI can also do, but I think the general opinion is that Midjourney is quite far ahead in terms of being able to prompt an image that resembles your intention. You can actually start to have some sort of consistency, you can create commercial-grade photography and so on.And then there's all the combining workflows. We're starting to see workflows where people start in OpenAI to describe the type of image they want to generate, then take that prompt into Midjourney and go back and refine. So there's using these different tools on each other in different ways. It's interesting and inspiring as well.I'm curious about synthetic research. Have you had any interactions with it? What are your impressions?I've come across some of these companies, there's one called Synthetic Users, I think. I haven't used it personally. I've experimented with the workflows using it. Let's say, okay, now I'm trying to understand the world from the perspective of this particular user who is 50 years old, lives there.For that, it works well. It's quick at least. It's quick to build a persona for whatever purpose you're doing. I wouldn't necessarily say that it completely replaces personas built on actual data, but the times I've tried it, it's worked pretty well.Can you give me an example? When you say it's worked pretty well, just walk me through what that looks like. I'm very naive.Sure. One example could be that we're working within the obesity space. You might be aware of the new medications within obesity. We're working quite a lot with that recently. As we've been working with our clients, we've also been trying to, when we've conceptualized experiences, tailor those experiences to a persona. We basically describe the persona and then try to say, okay, if this is the persona, how might that implicate the ideal experience?So we're describing the persona in detail, maybe using the LLM to refine that persona and then maybe defining an experience across a number of steps. I can say, okay, if we were to appeal to this persona, what would then have to change in the different steps? That could be one way of thinking about it.So again, mostly it's creatively trying to make sense of something and then saying, okay, can I use these large language models to help me actually get ahead or get a jumpstart on thinking about something in a particular way? That's kind of the gist of it.How do you think about generative AI? What's the metaphor or analogy that you use? What's the best analogy for how you interact with it?I think for me, it feels mostly like having a PhD intern of sorts. It's a very smart and very efficient intern. You can ask them everything and they will respond promptly. Sometimes you need to go back to them and say, well, that's not exactly what I was looking for. Could you try again?For orienting yourself in a particular domain, prepping yourself for a meeting, as a writing assistant and so on, I also like to think about how the role of the designer is changing. Maybe someone who's actually doing something hands-on - you can imagine us becoming more like curators or editors.We're still there with our intention, our craft, and our wisdom. But we are actually getting help from these systems to do parts of our work. So I like to think that we're becoming curators and editors of sorts.And again, you can't really be a very good curator and editor without actually having deep knowledge and experience of your craft. A while back, actually way before the whole AI hype cycle started, we had this futurist team. It was mandated to explore the future, apply foresight methodology, say what's happening, what's changing, what do we need to make sense of?I think it was back in 2019 or maybe even 2020, we did this huge global research with experts, thought leaders, and creatives all around the globe and tried to say what's happening. What are some of the big themes that we as designers need to tackle? The big thing that emerged from that was actually artificial intelligence, but then artificial intelligence broken down into some sub-themes.The first thing, which I thought was really interesting and still is super relevant, was around trusting invisibility. How many of us are actually capable of describing what's going on inside a large language model? None of us. Well, it's something about it consuming all this data and spitting out these amazing answers. It can understand what you're saying and sometimes also where you're trying to go. But other than that, it's a crazy complex system. It takes a lot of experts to build and train those.It's an effective yet invisible system. So this will be a key challenge for us going forward. How can we trust these invisible systems and what do the tech companies need to do to gain our trust? I think that's hugely relevant as we start to embed these technologies, not just AI, but any digital technologies into our workflows, our everyday lives, from our daily workflow to smart cities and stuff like that.A second finding was this notion of playful unlearning. When we start to embrace these new technologies, there's going to be a need for us to unlearn some of the stuff that we've actually spent years honing and learning. Like we talked about before, if you're an anthropologist, you're going to need to figure out how you can lean into these technologies and optimize the way you think and learn based on those, and then adapt your workflows based on that.Big organizations face these challenges on a much larger scale than you and I. So how can you do that? I think this notion of it has to be playful - it's not just the whip and the stick. It has to be about trying to figure out how you can actually bring people along in a way that becomes meaningful and value-creating, not just commercially, but actually also on a human level.And then the third one, I think, is maybe the one that's being talked about most these days, which is this notion of enhancing humanity. How can we ensure that these technologies are not used to develop weapons of mass destruction and scam schemes and deep fakes and all that stuff? Unfortunately, that's already happening in my opinion - like Facebook is imploding with artificial content that's just disrupting and destroying the experience, to be honest.But this is an opportunity for us to enhance not just humans, but humanity. Sam Altman and some of the other gurus like to talk about that. I like to think that there is some truth to what they're saying, that it's not all just a ploy to increase valuations and so on, but that this is actually a force, potentially a force for good. And I think it's a sign that we're quite good at being optimistic and taking something new and trying to figure out how we can actually use this in a deeply meaningful way. I'd love to see more of that happening, more experiments.Beautiful. It's a wonderful moment to stop the conversation. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. I learned a ton and I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks so much for sharing your time and your point of view.No problem. I enjoyed it as well. Thanks for inviting me.Yeah. Get full access to THAT BUSINESS OF MEANING at thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com/subscribe