[upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto, and I did not book a guest for this week [chuckles]. That's okay. You're not supposed to tell them that, you know?
You can keep the, keep the fourth wall up, um, we're breaking it here. On purpose. I didn't book a guest on purpose. Today we're talking to each other. Yeah. We needed to catch up- Who are we talking to, Daisy?...
so why not do it on the record? Mm-hmm. It's been a while since we did one of these. I know. Um, I think we did one right before the holidays. Mm-hmm. Which feels like five years ago, so... Yeah. That was five years ago.
Um, I- We've had several weeks where everything... decades happened since. So- Several weeks where... This has really been a week where decades happen. Um, we don't really need to get into the geopolitical events.
I don't think that's what people come to Tasteland for, and I don't- Also, I'm, I'm really glad that, um, [lips smack] Ryan at Garbage Day, he has a good take on monitoring the situation. I'm kinda done- Mm....
hearing that phrase. So- Monitoring the situation... could have done it I'm kind of done monitoring, monitoring situation monitors. Wasn't it, um, uh, a friend of the pod- Who will monitor the situation monitors?...
Reggie, wasn't he vibe coding some situation monitoring app a few weeks ago? He did. I'm gonna ask him about it. I think it, uh, I think it broke. [chuckles] Mm. It was overwhelmed by the situation. Too many situations?
[laughs] No, um, I'll, I'll ask him about it. I'm actually talking to him tomorrow. Some of you need to stop monitoring the situation and situ- situate yourself in front of a monitor and, and get some work done.
Some of you need to monitor your situationship. [laughs] Eyes on, eyes on your own home. S- uh, I, I'm gonna stop it there. Um- It starts in the home. It starts in the home. It starts in the home.
S- so situations [laughs] They start in the home... situations often start in the home. Uh, no- I myself have been in several situations [chuckles] in my own home- In the home?... this week. Today even?
As, as late, late as an hour ago. [laughs] Did the... Was it the exterminator breaking into your house again? No, that hasn't happened in a while. I think I scared him- Mm... sufficiently last time. Mm-hmm.
Realized that he was never gonna exterminate you. [laughs] Yeah. Um- Anyways, okay, let's talk about something. So I today- I haven't seen the mouse in a while, though. You haven't seen the mouse?
Yeah, I know you guys were wondering about that. Yeah. Mouse, mouse has, mouse has seen you, I can tell you that. I actually think I repaired the hole that the mouse was coming through.
I don't wanna give myself too much credit, but I, I think, do think I found. How did you repair the hole that the mouse was coming? Like, did you, did you- Um, with some spray foam. Oh. Hmm. Yeah. Nice.
Anyways, I wanna talk about Caper, the new food media company.
I profiled them for Creator Spotlight, published today as we record, yesterday as you listen to this, listener, if you really, if you listen to this the, the day it comes out, um- I think most people do.
I think most people can't wait and structure their week around it. I would agree, mm-hmm.
Uh, no, okay, well, I wanna start, though, s- be- not just Caper, but a conversation I was having with Emma Orlo, one of the founding journalists, when I interviewed her, uh, last week.
I think it wa- I think it was too much context and too little about Caper for that conversation, but we've brought this up before. Although about a year ago, I remember when Eater critic Robert Sietsema was laid off. Mm.
Emma said she was there for four years, and she said she remembers around five layoffs in the four years she was there. Um, and this was one of them, right? This was, this was December of '20.
Gotta really spike your cortisol, huh? Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Uh, this was December of '22. Getting layoff mogged by your employer. Layoff mog, getting mogged. [laughs] Um, I mean- Everyone just shut the...
Everyone just shut this off. I'm using- Anyways... not only are we using Gen Z slang, it's, like, stale from three weeks ago. It's not even- How embarrassing, you guys... behind. Um, yeah.
Well, anyways, l- I'm gonna, I'm gonna topic mog you and keep this going. Okay. Uh, no, okay. But we, we, we did talk about this a little over a year ago.
Robert Sietsema was laid off, and then I noticed, um, New York food influencer, Foodbaby NY, he then got his first byline.
It was, like, Foodbaby's Best Slices of Cake in New York City, and you know, that seemed like no coincidence that, and a, a food creator was getting a byline right as their last- Also, he's not the food baby...
remaining senior creator was laid off. He's the dad. He's the dad of the Foodbaby. One thing I'll say that, like, this is no shade to Mr., to Mike Chow, the Foodbaby dad.
I think that he does good service journalism work. He's at these new, these new restaurants as soon as they open. He's boots on the ground, yeah. He's boots on the ground. He's taking, like, detailed photos of the food.
He's giving you the prices. Like, it is useful service journalism. So the point I was trying to make to Emma when I was talking to her was that, um, maybe creators are becoming the main, most crucial
source of this sort of food world or, you know, restaurant service journalism.
If these creators are gonna go and they're gonna take these detailed photos and have these carousels, they are doing service journalism for the audience as well as marketing, service marketing work for the restaurants, right?
And then that- Well, they're one half of the barbell, right? Mm-hmm. Do you wanna talk about the barbell? About the barbell? Yeah.
Well, okay, so the barbell, on one side you have the independent creators, and on the other side you have the institutions.
And in the middle, this is how Max Chan, founder of, co-founder of Caper, pi- uh, pitched Caper to me, Caper's in the middle of the barbell, right, which are these- Max is squatting the whole thing.
Max is squ- [laughs] Four, which, you know, 40 pounds. The, the bar itself is 40 pounds, you know, so this is no lightweight [chuckles] barbell. Yeah. Oh, Soran found that out the hard way.
[chuckles] Soran did find out that out the hard way. Um, sh- I mean, that's, that's an aside, but we could talk about him s- him comms mogging Trump. Murray Hill Guy? No. Also Murray Hill Guy.
[laughs] What's up with Murray Hill Guy these days? The Trump of the, of Murray Hill. Uh, Murray Hill Guy, I mean- I, I might have muted him on Twitter or something-... if anyone knows this g- this guy's deal...
'cause I haven't seen in a while... email me. Like- [laughs]... I think his deal is just, like, what the hell is this guy's deal? He's kind of a hater. I mean, no, he is a hater. It's
allegedly, like- I'm surprised Nick Cutucci hasn't given him a column in GQ yet... there's rumors that the account is run by multiple guys. It's some...
It's weird, like, incel adjacent, 'cause, like, it's kinda hard to be an incel in New York, you know what I mean? It's like- Mm-hmmTake that shit- That's your evol cell... elsewhere. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, he sucks.
Um, uh, he think he's a Zoran hater, and he encountered Zoran on a Citibike, and took a photo and just posted it, and like, "Zoran looks great." Um, so I don't know what he was hoping to achieve with that.
He kind of mogged. He thought it might- So I thought that's what you were referencing, but you were actually referencing the President of the United States. The, uh... Yeah, well, the, um, [tsks]
Trump to city, let's build. I thought that was great. Anyways- It was very clever. I also saw a TikTok that imagined how that was conceived among Zoran's team, which felt a little too meta for me.
And I know you and I wanted to get into the meta conversation happening around media that covers media and power [tsks] right now. Yes. But do you have... Did you wanna, like, um- May put a point-...
finish on Caper first? [laughs]... I wanted to say. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the point I wanted to make was that, you know, with
creators kind of taking up this service journalism torch, I think it's a good thing in that it creates room and demand for this more serious journalism that, you know, food, food journalism that's not necessarily about the food, but it is about the restaurants, the relationships, power dynamics, et cetera, the kinda thing that Caper is doing.
Um, I think of this as not just, like, in food media, but as creators grow more sophisticated and produce a better offering, I think it creates a... I'm hoping, this is, like, optimistic, right?
It- that it creates a, a greater demand cross niches for more well-funded, well-researched journalism.
That's a trend that I would say Caper represents, and that I'm hoping we see magnified in various industries more and more. I think it's... Mm.
Because especially as people, as there's so much content to consume, and in any given topic, people are consuming so much content all the time, looking at their phone day in and day out, you inevitably become a prosumer consumer of whatever topics you're following, right?
Like, this is why there's that whole thing of, like... A- Emily Sundberg wrote about this a while ago, right? About, uh- Who? Uh, maybe it was Rachel Cardin. I don't know.
One of, one of, one of the, uh- I'm just kidding... one of these Substack, um, stars, about [tsks] people commenting on ads being like, "Marketing girl... Like, the marketing girly slayed this." Ah.
[laughs] Like, "Wow, marketing. Okay." Mm-hmm. You know? Like- Mm-hmm...
that's because people are spending so much time consuming marketing, and they're becoming more fluent in, I mean- Yeah, we talked about that with-... in parts of what marketing is...
CBS contributor Casey Lewis on our- We t- [laughs]... TikTok, uh, Taste Lead appearance. I think I am skeptical that increasing demand is as simple as c- increasing supply.
Um, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. Well, I've never read Marx or Adam Smith, so I, I certainly wouldn't know.
Well, but you're saying, like, that if you have increased supply of service jou- journalism, you can increase the prosumer offering in proportion to that? Not necessarily.
I think, I think that these things are, like, related, but not... Like, correlation not causation type of thing. Yeah. I think that, like, if- I mean, I think it all comes down to demand to pay for it.
Like, I'm curious whether Max gave you any insight into what they're, what they're expecting to do in terms of their relationship with advertisers. He did. Yeah, he did. He, he...
They are planning to work with advertisers.
He didn't give me too much that's specific, but the way they're planning to monetize, um, one will be subscriptions, which he gave me a number that he asked me not to print because- Mm... it's...
They hadn't, they haven't, they hadn't finalized it yet.
Um, there'll be these events, event series, which I think subscription, if you are a paid subscriber, uh, if you are a paid subscriber, you will have the ability to buy tickets to these events.
But I don't think that you, you will get, um... You may or may not get access just by dent of being a subscriber. Mm. But one [tsks] example he gave me, he ca- [laughs]
He described it as, uh, 8 Mile meets Top Chef, um, it'll be... Which is a cooking competition with New York City chefs in rooms that you wouldn't expect. Um, which, you know, sounds fun.
I would- This is, uh- I would, I would certainly go... taking place in Detroit? No, no. [laughs] No, no.
But, you know, there's that classic scene in 8 Mile that you see clipped in the memes where it's, like, Eminem's throwing up in the bathroom, Mom's spaghetti. Maybe that's just that music video.
And it's like, the point is... I, I, I guess the point is he's implying- I think, Chris-... it's some sort of, like-... that you should not speak-... warehouse rave-... on Eminem... but it's like Top Chef.
Do you want me to speak on Eminem? I can't speak- No, I think you should not speak on Eminem. You think I shouldn't? Why is that? [laughs] I don't think that you have the expertise.
I'm not speaking- I think that I know- Look, I'm quoting Max... more about Eminem than you do. I'm sure you do. What if we gave Chet Hanks a cooking show? Um, hmm. I, I would watch it. What if- I would watch it...
Chet Hanks learns how to cook Jamaican food? Do you think- Since he already speaks the language... well, that's a reminder I was gonna do.
I mean, I would like to see him cook a, an over easy egg, in fact perhaps a whole diner breakfast to order. Well, we have to get him back into the country first. We have to get him back on the pod first.
Uh [laughs] I'm, I'm monitoring the situation. I think, I think- But okay, so it's that, and then the fi- So there's a high-low, there's a high-low component of this.
I mean, I guess, I guess that's what the 8 Mile thing is. I don't think it was necessarily about high-low. I think it was just about, like, like, maybe the low might be the location.
I think it was more ab- He said, "Rooms you wouldn't expect," and then he said- The G train... 8 Mile. The G trai- in- on the G train. Subway takes meets cooking competition. Oh, God.
This is gonna come in handy when we all go to prison for our tweets. Well, it's a good thing... You might go to prison for your tweets. I'm horrible at tweeting, and I tweet, like, I tweet like I put...
Like, I tweet like I'm 12 years old again posting on Facebook in, like, 2000, I don't think I was- Vagueposting? Would you say you're vagueposting? I would say I'm vaguepodding.
[laughs] But the final piece of the puzzle for the Caper revenue structure that Max, that Max said there's gonna be some professional products, business intelligence type of thing. He, he did not-... elaborate too much.
I think they're still planning that. Even as we speak, that's technically the, the website's not launched yet. You're telling me- I think it's supposed to launch today... a business made this intelligence?
You tell me, um, I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm not gonna give a response to that, but that's, yeah, that's really all I have to say. I don't know. I think it's cool. I'm probably gonna do a paid subscription.
It's exactly the kind of thing I want. Um, I stopped reading Eater around the time that they laid off Seitsuma. Hmm. I used to read it every day. I would open it up, and then it just kind of became
uninteresting over time after that. Uh, so I don't know. I'm, I'm excited to read some well reported... I've been reading the newsletters already. It's good stuff.
Yeah, I mean, the last thing I read in Eater was the p- big piece they did of, like, what happened to the foodie, and that was kind of a while ago, so- Hmm... it's not great that I can't remember
reading anything in Eater recently. No. Even like I, I used to like, like every Monday morning they would do some little thing like, what our editors ate this weekend. Uh, maybe they still do it. I don't know.
I guess all the people I followed there just left, and Emma Orlow was probably the last person who, whose name I- What about Jaya?... really followed there. I really like Jaya's stuff.
No, for- it's Dirt, Dirt Writer sometimes, right? Am I correct? Jaya? I don't know if we've had Jaya. Hmm. I would love to have Jaya. Um, well, I uncharacteristically have been tracking restaurants that I wanna eat at.
This is very- Oh. Wow... Francis Ford Coppola maps- I've not, so... of me. Um- Mm-hmm... well, because my birthday is coming up. Hmm. And I gave Ben- I forgot, you're a Pisces, aren't you? Mm-hmm.
I gave Ben a list of restaurants that I was interested in. Um, I don't know maybe of this. I also, like, need a b- new pair of boots, so we'll see- Hmm... what happens, and we have, like, some expenses coming up.
Um, but my list was Nowon, N-O-W-O-N. Mm-hmm. It's a Korean- Is that the, is it in Bushwick, or is it only, is there one in Bushwick- Mm-mm... and one in the city? East Village Korean fusion spot.
You think there's two of them? There's, there's one off the Jefferson L as well. That tracks. Have you been to The Snail yet? Uh, no, I have not. The Snail is on my list. Stissing House. Stissing House, upstate.
Yeah, not that far from me. Well, it's still like an hour drive for us. A harder reservation to get, but because we could go on, like, a week night or whatever, maybe not unattainable.
Um, and then this one I crossed off because my best friend wants to go there with me for my birthday. Il Leone. Hmm.
Pizzeria that started on Peaks Island off of Portland, and they have a lobster pizza that I really wanna try, and they have a new location, like, kind of in Park Slope. Sounds nice. Park Slope, wow.
Did I tell you I'm going to New Orleans in May? Uh, you didn't. Okay. Why are you going? I'm going to New Orleans in May. Um, my parents had some timeshare points that they were willing to share with us, and so
I did, like, a city search for a few different places- Hmm...
and New Orleans had, like, a lot of options, and it's Ben's sobriety anniversary, his 10-year sobriety anniversary, so we wanted to do something super special. So you wanna go to New Orleans for that? [laughs] Exactly.
Um, anyway, if you can be sober in New Orleans, you can be sober anywhere, as I say. That's true. Shia LaBeouf, not capable of being sober in New Orleans. Not...
[laughs] Well, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, but he is sober in New Orleans, right? This is the thing. Well, he's high on- You think, do you think he broke sob?... being short. I don't know.
[laughs] He did say, I, I- He broke something. He broke something. He did say, he did say that he thinks he has a small man complex. Yeah, I know. I agree. But you should go to Eviva.
Go to, when you're there, go to Eviva. Okay. I'll tell you this off pod too, but the... I'm gonna go. I'm gonna be there in few weeks. I'm gonna go to Eviva.
Now, this is, like, probably a bit of a tourist trap situation, but when we were there during COVID, um, I mean, tail end of COVID, the place that's famous for the Bananas Foster, do you remember what it's called?
[lip smacks] I think it's Napoleon House. It's one of the old ones. Mm-hmm. Not Napoleon House. I, I never went, I never went to any of the classic old spots when I was there.
I just, it's one of those things where I'm like, "I'll go to..." It's like I've never been to, like, Keens or Peter Luger's in New York, right? The classic steak houses. [laughs] It's like Paul's.
It's like I'll go to one, I'll go to these places eventually. Like, I get it, you know? Yeah, that's real. It's like how I've never been, um- It's like how I've never been to the Polo Bar.
Never been, I've never been to the Polo Bar. Never read Infinite Jest. And I've never read... No, I've, I've not read Infinite Jest, but I've never read, no, the much more common, Kurt Vonnegut.
I've never read Kurt Vonnegut. I've never read Kurt Vonnegut. It's like how I've never read Train Dreams. [laughs] Hmm. Oh, you've got to read Train Dreams. It's so good. It's so good.
No, but then we'll lose that thread on this podcast. [laughs] We'll have to invite Neil Gaiman to fix it. As if, as if we don't lose [laughs] as if we can't afford to lose another thread.
Like, we lose the thread, but we never lose the plot. Never lose the plot. And you, um, sounds like you have to choose between new boots or, or going to a nice dinner for your birthday.
I probably don't- You know, I'm doing, I hope you don't lose a boot... have to choose because I don't think that my husband would say no to me- Hmm...
but I might force myself to choose based on my own sense of financial propriety. I bought this book a while ago that's been sitting on my bedside table called "The Age of Choice." Have you heard of this? No.
So it's "The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life." This was published last year. I also saw it on the, it was, like, on New York Times' Best Books of the Year list.
"Taking readers from the 17th century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions.
Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life-" I hate choices, but I love freedom. Who will speak for me? I... Sophia Rosenfeld will, I think.
But it's, it's, it's one of these, it's one of these heady nonfiction books- Not anti-choice-... that I have stacked on my book... in that way. You're not anti-choice? No. It sounded like you just were there.
I'm not anti-choice in the abortion sense. I'm anti-choice in the decision fatigue sense. Yeah. I'm, I've, I've oft beenA victim of decision fatigue. Um, what's this Dirt- this essay contest, essay contest Dirt is doing?
Oh yeah, we're doing an essay contest with Prism.
Um, so they're our very cool, um, publication focused on, like, mental health broadly, and I was having a conversation with them about collaborating, and I told them about the essay contest that we'd done with Luxe, and they came up with the theme of the correlation between wealth and health, but, like, you know, in a very broad interpretation.
Well, health is wealth, famously. Yes. Like, how, how has your relationship with wealth changed? Um- Mm... what is your relationship with wealth like?
So I hope that we'll get some excellent, um, essays and cultural criticism in addition to the inevitable Marxist screeds. And [laughs] I'm, I'm really excited to read through everything.
I enjoyed reading through everything for the Luxe contest, and that- What, what ended up winning that one?... we got, like, 200 entries for that, so. 200, wow.
Um, yeah, so that was the, uh, the sweating in the whale costume under the Texas sun essay. I don't know if you remember- Mm... reading that, about, um...
That was Brittany Lightner's essay about, um, her first job at SeaWorld when she was- Mm... in high school, and how that job allowed her to escape poverty, essentially.
Um, [smacks lip] and- Sounds like this one could also win this current contest. Yeah, there's a, there's an interesting overlap. Like, the, uh, first contest, the emphasis was sort of on work.
Um, this one's a little bit more, I guess, on the health side- Mm... because of the way that we phrased the call-out.
And then Gillian Goodman's Making Babies piece about being on the commercial shoot for baby food also won. Um, we had a winner and a runner-up from that Luxe contest.
And the Economic Hardship Reporting Project was an additional partner. So I think it's a good way for us to, like, find new contributors, and it's really hard...
Like, if I have, um, submissions default open for Dirt, I get overwhelmed by the amount that people are sending. Um,
I feel like contests are a good way for people to be tactical about what they send, and it's easier for me to review everything than just constantly be fielding stuff that's, like, really great, but maybe not a good fit for us, and then stuff that's clearly written by AI.
[laughs] Yeah. I... Yeah, that, that is, that is a good way to do it. I did...
Well, we published a few freelance pieces in Creative Spotlight last summer, and I did, like, a very concentrated, like, "Hey, we have this pitching window open for this long," and I still today have s- occasionally gotten, like, the last couple months it's, like, once or twice a month I'll get one that is still titled Q3 2025 Pitching Window.
Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Well, I'm excited to- Welcome-... read what comes out of it... welcome to my struggle. [laughs] I don't say those words- The mess that is... on this podcast.
[laughs] Well- Are you reading anything right now? Um, y- no, I'm still kind of working on- Or just submissions?... Gemora. Mm. I have a, a huge- Oh, yeah...
backlog of, um, galleys that I've been sent, like, stuff that I'm really excited about, and just, like, not getting there. I haven't been in reader mode. Um- Mm... just been working.
So sometimes I'm going through periods where I'm doing, like, a ton of editing, and I don't wanna use that part of my brain anymore, and that's when I go TV mode.
Um, duh, and then I go through long periods where I don't watch TV at all. Mm. We haven't even touched on the Industry finale. [laughs] And I'm only still, like, two or three episodes- Okay... into the season, so.
So we'll get into it later, but- Yeah... I mean, maybe a couple episodes from now. I, I was watching Industry, and then I, I started this show on Apple TV. Have you heard of Palm Royale? Palm Royale is, is news to me.
I, like, never heard anyone talk about it. Classic Apple TV. Kristen Wiig is in it. You know what I do love on Apple TV? Those Slow Horses. Slow Horses is great. We've talked about this before. Yeah. I watched...
I don't know if I'm caught up on Slow Horses. I have to check. I definitely watched, like, the first three seasons. There's, like, five or six. Yeah. I might have been... I might have stopped after four.
I really like Slow Horses. Um, the Jon Hamm show was, like, fine. We got, like, four or five episodes in and maybe less. Yeah. Probably four episodes in, and then, and then I never watched it anymore. Yeah.
That's, that tracks. Um, Severance obviously. Mm-hmm. And I watched the first season of Bad Sisters. Second season, I was like, "You know what? I get it." News to me. Speaking of- Uh [laughs] W- w- w- wait.
W- No, I wanna see what you were gonna do. What I was gonna do, um, I was going to talk about what I'm reading very quickly, which is W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.
Oh, so you just asked me so you could talk about yourself. Is that so wrong? [laughs] No, it's fine. I just think it's interesting.
I talked a little bit ab- when we had, when we had James on the other, the other week, um, I was reading this book, Dolgand, by Samuel Delany, so I finished that. That was really good.
But reading Sebald after that, I was thinking last night as I was reading it, how it's, it's kind of like laptop nonfiction. Shout out to, uh, FOTP. God, I can't believe I said that.
Shout out to friend of the pod, Greta Rainbow. Um, in that it's, it's ostensibly about Sebald/narrator, you know, a bit of a, bit of a blur there, no Knausgaard, uh, walking around the eastern coast of England.
But he'll get distracted in, like, the history of herring fishing, right? Mm.
And i- in that way, uh, specifically when I was reading that segment last night, I'm like, this is the kind of thing where I'm, like, sitting at my computer thinking about what to write, and then I start writing something, I'm like, "Oh, herring.
Like, what's up with herring? Let me Google this," and then, like, read four sources and then compile that into whatever essay I'm writing. Um, so it... the other interesting thing about it is there's no paragraphs.
Like, maybe there's- Mm... some, but it's kind of hard to read when, you know, you've got two... you're just looking at two pages and there's no... It's just like-There's no paragraph breaks.
Anyways, it, it's, it's an entertaining book, but after the very intensely idiosyncratic, colorful stylings of Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, it's, it's a bit, it's a bit staid. Mm. Kind of is. Would you say it's a bit vague?
I would say... Are, are you vague queuing? You're specific queuing. I'm, I'm vague queuing. Uh, well, no, I just wanted to see if you had a chance to read Grace Byron's piece about vagueposting in dirt.fyi. I did. I did.
You know, [laughs] you know what it should have been? Once you see it, you see it everywhere. Once you see, you see it every- it should have, it- I think I should have titled it differently.
I think, no, I think you should have... What was it, what was it, uh, titled? Everybody Knows, and then the subhead was like, "But Nobody Wants to Say It," or something like that. Nobody's saying it.
Yeah, so you should have had just that, and then the body should have been completely empty. It's very avant-garde. I like it. Actually, speaking of avant-garde, submitted something for the first time in a while to,
um, my friend Joshua Hibern's, uh, call for pieces about repetition, and he name-checked Joe Brainard, some other of the- Mm. I remember... repetition maxers. [laughs] Sorry. I don't know, I, I've, I just wonder...
It's interesting 'cause, like, in some ways it's easier than it's ever been to write a script for writing to do something more avant-garde, and I'm thinking about, like,
HTML Review and some other projects like that where it's like the liter- like literature and code really colliding. I was talking about this weekend that, like,
the humanities and technology, this is the era of the true collision between humanities and technology. But people forget that the book is among the oldest technologies, as some people would say. And so- Mm-hmm...
it's really not a competition between not technology and technology. It's actually a competition between one form of technology and another form of technology.
And if, if I could find a novel way to write about that, I would, but I'm probably just gonna keep writing weird prose poems and submitting them because I have to blow off steam. Mm.
You gotta, gotta blow off steam somehow. We all do. [laughs] Um, what's... Do you know what's up with the New York Review of Finance? Do I know what's up with it? Uh, yes. I just... Well, my, my...
The context I ask this in is that I saw someone on Twitter- I have a voice note from Greta describing the scene at their launch party a few months ago if you want me to play that for our audience.
[laughs] Um, may- I don't know if that would be the best- Oh, we still haven't done-... UX... our voice note episode. Oh, we did talk about doing... I don't send voice notes. Like, you, you...
So, so, list- listener, Daisy is a serial voice noter. I'm not a voice not- I've been better lately... I, like, my, my texting style is 10 long, or 10, like, you know, short to long texts. I, I, I text as I think.
It's, it's easier for me to do that than it is to send vo- Yeah... I, to me, but look- I've actually been texting less lately. Mm. I, I'm down to, like, 15 people a day instead of 40. Texting less and going out more.
Exactly. I, I'll have you know, I was at Charleene's until 3:00 AM this weekend. 3:00 AM this weekend? Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm. I'll, I'll text you next time.
[laughs] I, uh, I will exclusively reveal I was still up and looking at my phone when I saw that we had gone to war with I- Iran on, um, Saturday. I was sitting at the bar at Charleene's. Yeah. Intense.
And my friend came back from the bathroom and I said- "Hey, by the way"... "We bombed Iran." Yeah. Um- Not great... anywa- the, the vague posting thing though, yeah, th- th- this, it feels like a new trend, right?
Like, that you'll see... I guess what, what's really annoying is the, "I require context" wojaks, which I, I'll say, somebody will- Right?...
post something on Twitter, and I won't necessarily get the reference, and I will go to the replies thinking- They're more annoying-... "Oh, what are they referencing?"... 'cause they're burying the real information.
You're so right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, you should write something about that. I should. I do... I, I ne- I need to blow off some steam and write something so I don't have to do this podcast.
That, like, "I require context" guy is, like, kind of like being like, "Is there a doctor on the plane?" And it's, like, some guy stands up- [laughs]... and he's like, "I'm not a doctor." It's like, "Okay."
[laughs] Like, "I'm an electrician." [laughs] Okay. Well, but see, actually that's really helpful 'cause then you've eliminated, um, at least one person on the plane. No. I don't know.
[laughs] D- see, to me, it's really helpful. Um- I don't believe that you really think that. [laughs] No, I don't. Uh, okay, let's talk about 25 years of iPod brain. I really enjoyed- Yes...
this is an editing published in Dirt quite recently, I think a few days ago, a week ago. Uh, but I like this line.
I, I took out this line: "It's hard to believe that there was once a time when consumer technology solved [laughs] problems we actually had.
In the late 1900s, one of these problems was the portability of one's music collection" I'll tell you, the phrase late 1900s, my soul left my body when I read that. [laughs] I was like, "That can't be right."
[laughs] That can't be right. Have you seen these, um, there's, like, this m- meme trend I've seen on Instagram Reels where it's like, it'll be, like, a sports team and they're like, "When, when were you born?"
And they'll say, like, "19," and then they didn't, they don't get to finish it 'cause they go, like- Mm... it's like the bruh sound- [laughs]... or something like that. I don't watch Reels, but, um- Yeah. Well-...
I believe you. Believe me, Matt... there but, there but for the curse of the devil going into an Instagram- I've actually been dealing with an ongoing Instagram situation. [laughs] Um, I can't really post- I...
Wait, wait, hold on. Let me watch it. No. Let me watch this [laughs] really quickly. We hit our quota for that. [laughs] Okay.
Um, I, I can't really post on my Instagram story because it has all of my photos that I've given Instagram permission to use out of order. Huh.
Um, so if I add a photo- You don't give it permission for your whole photo roll? No, and I actually have a conspiracy that this is their way of trying to force me to do that. Prob- probably, yeah.
Um, but I found some other people on Reddit, as one does, who are having the exact same problem, and I'm like, you know what? Maybe I need this.
Maybe this is what I need right now, for my Instagram to be kind of unusable. Yeah. That's... I, no, I, I think that's, that is what you need. I think that any sort of glitch like that is really good.
It's not what Dirt needs, though. [laughs] I'll tell you that. I'll, I'll, I'll say this.
On, um-On, so I've got my YouTube logged into our, our home television, and Emma will use it to play, like, you know, 10-hour relaxing music mix. Mm-hmm. Something like this.
And, uh, and a, a few months ago I said, "Oh, you know, it's, it's kind of annoying that, like, my algorithm on, on the TV is ruined," which the TV algorithm versus the phone versus the browser algorithm, they're all, they're all different.
Mm-hmm. YouTube tunes them all differently. But I thought, you know, like sometimes I wanna watch something on here, and I have to, like, go search for it instead of it being fed here.
But I, I just, I was, like, in the middle of saying it and I realized, like, oh, I should be thankful that she has flooded my algorithm with these, with, like, relaxation slop, right? Yeah, she did me a favor.
Like, this is so great that there's not an avenue for YouTube to exploit me here. She's, she's cut it off. It's actually great, great partnership. What have you been doing to relax recently? Getting in bed at, like,
9:00 to, to read for an hour and a half before bed. You've been going to bed earlier? Yeah. And, and just reading- I've also been going to bed earlier... and then trying to wake up earlier.
I feel like I've just been working a lot and [laughs] and then that, that's, like, my, my one thing. Yeah. It's like when people say lower your stress, it's like in what regard? What do you mean?
[laughs] I j- I d- I, I rely on my stress. This is... Stress is, like, how I- Well, I'm also, like- It's like my, it's like my oil, my gasoline... less stressed when I've worked so hard that I have fewer things to do.
[laughs] Hm. I... Okay. I remember my first job after college, dishwasher- Hm... prep cook, getting in and it was, you know, near the end of one of my first shifts and I, and I asked James, our chef, I was like,
"Is there anything else for me to do or should I go home?" [laughs] And he la- he laughed at me. He's like, "Well, there's always something else to do." Hm.
Um, and, and that was when I truly entered the workforce, and there's never, there's never been less to do. That's when you became a, you became a man in that moment. [laughs] That's when I became a man, yeah. Yeah.
Ben got to come home from work yesterday early 'cause the heat in the building went out, but he had to finish working from home. How Dickensian. [sighs] Truly. I was like- Mm-hmm...
they were all in their little coats like the Ikea monkey. [laughs] Speaking of which, we haven't discussed Punch on this podcast yet, which is shocking. Discuss. Ben and I both cried about Punch.
I, I, I- I cried right as the- I have to say I don't know what you're talking about... the monkey... what's Punch? The monkey. You've seen him everywhere- Oh... with his little stuffed monkey. Mm-hmm.
Okay, I only know about this from, from SNL. I did watch SNL this weekend. He's being bullied. He's making progress now with the rest of the monkeys.
First time I tried to tell Ben about Punch I started crying in the middle of my explanation, and I couldn't really, like, get the words out, and he was so confused.
But it must have really affected him, 'cause, like, later we were, like, hanging out before bed and he, like, started tearing up and he was like, "Why would they show us that monkey [laughs] if he's so sad?"
[laughs] It's really funny. It, it's also generated a lot of, like, really good, uh, meme material. Um, yeah, I, I think... Well, I don't wanna,
I don't wanna speculate, but I think that they might have started a war to distract from Punch. Mm. Because if we continued with that I think that there was gonna be- That's-... an uprising. Yeah. Bread and circuses.
Bread and, and circuses- And monkeys... and monkeys. And monkeys. You know, monkeys, often at circuses, so actually that makes a lot of sense. Actually, not anymore. Not anymore.
My nephew went to the- When was the last circus you were at, Daisy? Francis, I'm telling you, within the last two weeks I FaceTimed my best friend. I call her son my nephew. He is my nephew.
Um, I FaceTimed my best friend.
Of course my nephew wants to speak to me directly, and she informs me that he's going to the circus later in the day, but they're, they don't have animals anymore 'cause of, like, animal cruelty.
But then I did receive a video of him at the circus, and he looked like he was having a great time, so maybe- Hm... no animals necessary. My mom also told me, um, I conveyed this to my mom later.
She said that she never took us to the circus, which is true. I did go to the circus, but it wasn't with my mom.
Because when she went to the circus growing up, the sound of the whip that they used to tame the lions really scared her, and I wrote that detail down- Damn... to use in a story because I thought that was very poetic.
Mm-hmm. Poignant. Imagine being so affected by the sound of the lion's whip that you never take your children to the circus. It just echoes down the ages. That's an incredible line. [laughs] Yeah.
Was that what- Hey, Conrad and Mickey, if you're listening to this- [laughs]... you do not have my permission to use that in season five of Industry.
[laughs] That's, I mean, I, you know, that's kind of what Train Dreams is about. [laughs] I wouldn't know. I haven't read it. [laughs] Did you watch the movie, the adaptation? No, I- Okay... I've not.
I've, I, I've only watched one movie this, [laughs] this, this year. No, I've watched two movies this year. Um, I've only watched... I watched Frankenstein in theaters. I was like, wait, that's crazy- The, the-...
and then I remembered it was fully March... German photo. But actually, like- So... you've only, you've really only seen two movies... I've, I'm two months in and I've only watched two movies. Okay.
Which is crazy, 'cause during the week of, like, of Christmas, a seven-day period at the end of last year, I watched 12 movies. Um, brought to you by Letterboxd. Uh, I,
I, yeah, I watched, I watched that, and then I watched this awful movie from I think 2011, um, a few weeks ago, Predators, which, you know, part of the Predator franchise. But the reason- Oh...
I wanted to watch it is 'cause the cast is, like, Adrien Brody, Walton Goggins, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo. There's, it was, like, all these names, and it was sort of this- This was post-Resurrection...
a why- You know what? They all needed money in 2011. They all needed money. That's what happened. Wal- Walton Goggins es- especially was like what, what a, what an oddity it was to see him there.
This was before- Same hairline... we knew about himUm, actually it was a little... His hair was a little... He had a, a slightly younger hairline Mm. His hair was darker black- Yeah... and it was much shorter.
And he kind of had this r- real, like, sideshow villain character. He- Mm. He's playing, like, an escaped...
The, the premise of this movie is that, [lips smack] like it starts with Adrien Brody just plummeting out of the sky above a jungle, and very quickly, like, you know, all these other characters plummet out and you learn that, like, oh, they're all s- in some way, like, these cold-hearted, cold-blooded killers and they've been dropped here to be hunted by the predators.
And Walton Goggins is, he's in his orange prison jumpsuit. Um, he in particular has some really awful dialogue. But, but Brody, Brody is, is the star of this one.
I mean, he's the star of anything he appears in, in my opinion. Uh. My humble opinion. Including the, the Oscar speech one year ago. Wow. Yeah. I, I did love The Brutalist though.
[lips smack] I've been thinking of rewatching it, 'cause Ben hasn't seen it. Yeah. We've been, we've been going through a list of movies together that we all, we both wanna see. We saw Demon Lover.
Um, if you've seen it- Never heard of it... you should watch it. Um, there's this great moment where Gina Gershon appears in an I Love Gossip shirt.
And Gina, I mean, look, if you're listening to this podcast, you can listen to a spoiler. Um, Gina- [laughs]... will be appearing on this season of The Desire Question- Question, mm... to talk about her new book.
So- Season two. When is season two coming out? [lips smack] Um, end of March probably we'll start releasing episodes, but we're recording now. Nice. Mm-hmm. Same host? Same host.
What, how could we do The Desire Question without Laura? That's a great question. That's why I asked. I was teeing you up. She's the greatest.
What did, what did Nick Susy have to say about the, uh, the 25 years of the i- iPod piece? Oh, 'cause he's on his music hardware beat? Did he say music is a fashion accessory? [laughs] I, he might- Say the line, Nick...
he might have. Um, well, so the piece was written by Molly Mary O'Brien, who is such a good funny writer, and she's written for Dirt before.
She wrote about, um, she was part of our Pure Moods package a couple years ago, and she also wrote about Imagine Dragons and this idea of rocktimism, which I love.
Um, she's great at, like, peppering in the personal anecdote. So the essay starts with her possibly illegal job at age 14 [laughs] in the state of Vermont, um, [lips smack] using the proceeds to buy her first iPod.
And just the way that the iPod shaped her relationship to music, where all of a sudden you could centralize it in one place, but it almost created more pressure for you to diversify your taste and make sure that, like,
the spectrum of what you were collecting really represented who you were. Um, and at the time there wasn't really a way to externalize that, so it was still pretty private and a private listening experience.
Um, and we haven't really achieved that again. Um, there's pieces of that that have carried over into music streaming culture, but the
intimacy of the relationship with your own iPod and your own library, I think has been lost to the ages. Certainly. I certainly have lost it. [lips smack] Interesting thing about, um, my iPod is
I, when I got an iPod, my older brother said, "I will just put my library on your iPod." I don't know how this conversation happened. Maybe he was like, "I can get you started," or whatever.
So my iPod actually was not really my taste. It was my brother's taste. Mm. And I look back [laughs] and I'm like, I never would've been like, "I'm gonna put Pearl Jam on here."
[laughs] I was like on the bus listening to Pearl Jam, 'cause that's like what my brother had, and like, who knows where he got it. I never even talked about it with him. Yeah.
It's a band that I never, I never really got, never really listened to. [lips smack] And I don't even think I knew what I was listening to, but it's not like I had... Songs were like a dollar each at that point.
I didn't really have a ton of money to be spending on music.
So, like, the amount of music that I paid for to download over the course of having my iPod was always dwarfed with the music that my brother had seeded onto my iPod. Yeah.
And so if you look, if I look back [laughs] at my iPod, and I might still have vestiges of that library somewhere within my Apple Music library. Um, [lips smack] I need to check. I'll check after this and let you know.
Um, it's such a weird representation. I don't feel like it really represents who I was at the time, but I also don't think that I understood myself or my taste in music at, like, a, a conscious level yet. Certainly.
Um- I certainly did not at that moment... if anything, it shows that I've always just been the type of person that will, like, ingest what is put in front of me culturally and somehow integrate it into what I like.
Like- Mm-hmm... I've- Yeah... so much of my wardrobe is still, like, a shirt that a friend gave me that doesn't fit them anymore, or like a hand-me-down from my mom.
Um, and I think that, like, if anything, that's sort of like my, my taste identity is integrating things that I have gotten more by chance than having sought them out.
That makes, that makes sense. I mean, I think of pivotal things in my life, piv- piv- pivotal books or music, and so much of it did come from other people.
It wasn't really until, like, with books-One of the most influential books for me as a child w- the Redwall series was really big for me, and my friend's mom, when I was a first grader- Mm... gave me one for, um,
for my birthday, and that became so influential on me for the next, like, 10 years into high school.
Uh, or with music, my now brother-in-law, for my, I don't know, 12th or 13th birthday, something like that, gave me a... like, one terabyte external hard drive full of all his music.
That was all the music that him and his friends, um, had. You know, he's 10 years older. That him and his friends had collected over the years.
And so that, for a long time, like similar to you, was the bulk of my-- the vast bulk of my music library. It was so-- It was like 500 gigabytes of music. The most, the most impactful piece of that was Simon & Garfunkel.
I listened to... There was like a bunch of Simon & Garfunkel on there. Interesting.
And soon enough, 'cause I remember on iTunes it would track how often you listen to a thing, like, every Simon & Garfunkel song had over 100 plays on it, um, pretty quickly. Huge for me. But yeah, I don't know.
That's, that's how, that's how taste is, is formed, right? You- Yeah... you're exposed to things by other people And it also makes you more conscious of the stuff that you definitely found and told everyone about.
Like- Yeah... I know I'm more conscious of the musicians in my library or stuff in my wardrobe, brands, whatever, where it's like I was the one that found that. Um, there was no intermediary. And- Mm-hmm...
that's like, I think that's important, too. I think those, that also plays a big role. Ties into that because it tells you i-i something that you feel is, is truly of yourself. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Also, like, I feel like it comes up a lot when people steal stuff from people that they dated. Mm. Like, I stole a lot of stuff, like taste-wise, from people that I dated. Well, you know what they say.
Love keeps the score. I stole Jeff Rickly from my ex-boyfriend. I didn't know who Jeff Rickly was. Mm-hmm. Um, and now he was a huge fan of his music, and now Jeff and I are like personal friends. Are friends, yeah.
The ta- the taste [laughs] I can't say it. Like, the taste keeps the score. Sorry, Joe. [laughs] Sorry, Joe. We'll end it there. Yeah, sure. See you next week. This has been Taste Led. Thank you.
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