Clara

Hello, welcome back Day One FM. I'm Clara here today with Trey and Eli.

Eli

Thanks, Clara. Welcome back. How are you feeling?

Clara

I'm feeling good. I was doing I was doing a hard Alex Cooper. Yeah, I wasn't doing sickly I was doing a bad Alex Cooper. But yeah, no, I wasn't sick yesterday.

Eli

I know. I know.

Clara

I was at my sister's graduation, which was fun

Eli

Good for her.

Clara

I know. It was fun.

Eli

Did you send a congratulations on behalf of the pod.

Clara

Did I send one should I say one?

Eli

A verbal.

Clara

Congratulations.

Eli

No, not on the pod.

Clara

Did I send Yes, obviously. I was like, Yes. Everyone is proud of you. Oh, type of thing.

Eli

Right.

Clara

Same same thing. I tell my cat every night. I'm like, everyone loves you. Everyone's so proud of you. You're so cool. Anyway, what did you guys get up.

Eli

Thanks for asking. We had a great conversation with Ben Dietz who some of you might know from his weekly newsletter, [SIC] Weekly. Where I know we get a lot of our links and references from some of you might also have attended his weekly Wednesday Breakfast Club at Le Crocodile. Great Cup of Joe, for some. But yeah, I mean, it was a wide ranging conversation. He's been in media in multiple different facets for a long time is one of like an early Vice employees. Get a little bit of the rundown on that he's working on a new pitch, I guess you could call around this concept of Super Formats, kind of reinventing the flywheel. A long discussion or longish discussion on good band names. We get schooled in Idiocracy references Trey, right?

Trey

I got Mike Judge on my list now. It's not my genre, but I'm getting into it.

Eli

What Idiocracy?

Trey

Just like the Mike Judge era.

Eli

I also learned about Victoria Day. Right?

Trey

Right, right. Important holiday.

Eli

You know it. It is an important holiday and I'm glad that I know about it now. Anyway, to hear more. Let's bring Ben on.

Ben Dietz

I had a drink with Kareem Rahma. The creator guy. He is a friend and we had a drink at Hotel Delmano at the corner of N 9th and Berry the other day. When I was telling him I was like that New York Times article about the evolution of Williamsburg, the last 40 years in Williamsburg was really interesting because it reminded me of a place called Oznot's Dish, which existed in the space where Cafe Colette is now and in 1998 that was as far as you could go from the Bedford L safely.

Trey

Oh, wow.

Eli

That's what a lot of people still think.

Ben Dietz

Oznot's Dish was the outer limit of where you could go and then we were sitting there at a Hotel Delmano just drinking you know, having Negroni's and it's full of 22 year old college girls who are clearly like in Brooklyn for the first time.

Trey

They saw Hotel Delmano on Tik Tok.

Eli

They're coming from the alo store on whatever Bedford and 4th. Yeah. Well, anyway, Ben Dietz. Welcome to the pod. Thanks for making it out here from Greenpoint.

Ben Dietz

Thanks, I I took the L train. I rode a bike. I ran into an old colleague. It's a real New York City. It's been a real New York City story.

Eli

That's what Day One FM is all about you know.

Trey

So New York is not dead to you?

Ben Dietz

No, no, not at all. Although that doesn't mean it's exciting as interesting as it was I was at the Hypebeat Flea over the weekend and that I really wanted that to be awesome and I I can't say that it was I'm sorry.

Eli

What was give us like a quick rundown.

Ben Dietz

Well, the long story short is it just felt like a flea market which on the one hand is cool right super organic. On the other hand, it feels to me like when you have media company backing when you have brand design when you have sponsored dollars you have the opportunity to create something that's actually new and different and feels singular. And it that to me anyway didn't. Was it like the curation or the programming or kind of all of the above? Neither it was the production. It was this the sense of just like, we're all in a big room together. And it was hard to understand where vendors were it was, you know, it was tricky, and having been like to the printing matter art book fair recently, which was also super chaotic, but at least was navigable and was understandable. And having been to freeze recently and haven't been to nata recently, which do a very good job of situating. You with the the vendors, the, you know,the, whatever they're called the exhibitors. I just wanted more of that.

Trey

So if that is representative of like the New York that is not so great, what is getting better? What is good in your opinion?

Ben Dietz

I mean, look, I just think that the the energy at on the street level is as vibrant as it has ever been. And something has to do with all of the food on the street, I think has a lot to do with it. It has to do with just generally the fact that despite many people struggling, the city is as prosperous, more prosperous than it has ever been. And also, I just think it's like people are, people feel safe, you know, in a way that didn't necessarily exist in the past. That means you lose some of the rough edges and the randomness, but you know, I'll trade my kids being able to travel the school safely for double decker bike jousts on the waterfront any day of the week.

Trey

Well, yeah, come up to the Bronx where that's, you know, I guess people take me home and a cow. And they're like, oh, it's like the Williamsburg of it's like, you know.

Ben Dietz

Is that right? Really?

Trey

Yeah, cuz I'm, I'm in South Bronx. So there's like this kind of whole row of new build, like, luxury buildings with everything you need inside them. You never have to leave very like, what's that?

Ben Dietz

Hermetically sealed?

Trey

Yeah.

Eli

Well, speaking of hermetically sealed, I'm sure you read friend of the pod, Emily Sunberg, private, private club piece?

Ben Dietz

I did. I mean, to be fair, both to Emily's craft as an author, and also just to the amount of media I consume. I scanned it, because she and I'd had a conversation about it separately. But yeah, I mean, look, I think we are everybody is searching for that third place that allows you to be both convivial and social and also productive. And I don't know what like efficient in your career growth or whatever. And so it makes sense that these things are existing I, my problem having encountered a lot of hospitality industry over the course time is they just don't they don't feel particularly distinctive or particularly interesting. And, and what's worse is that they are all regressing to a mean, where everything feels like all of the other ones. You know, like, I'm debating whether or not I want to renew a Soho House membership at the moment. And when I can have the exact same experience at the brewery down the street, from my house for the price of a $6 Iced coffee, if they're even checking versus, you know, thousands of dollars a year for a Soho House membership, I'm just not sure that that's really worth it

Eli

Yeah, well, everything feels like everything else feels like a good encapsulation of a lot of culture. But back to your media diet. So you write a newsletter called [SIC] Weekly. It's a, well, eager to hear you speak to it. But essentially, it's a link round up of things that you find interesting. Curious, what's the process like? Why'd you start it? How much of the links are you actually reading? Because I know I follow you on Instagram, admittedly, and I know you're a voracious reader books, you know, in the multiple digits per year. So like, what is your media...

Ben Dietz

Can you imagine if you read one digit books a year? It would be awful. Well, okay, so I think your your estimation of what [SIC] Weekly is as a link roundup is correct, it is a, I often say to people, it's like me scraping the plaque off my brain. It's a kind of obsessive compulsive behavior, where by ingesting all of this information and processing it, I can then speak to it, find patterns within it, and so on and so forth. But I started when I was, the bulk of my career was spent at Vice. And I started it towards the end there, when I found that there was a kind of a disconnect between references, I was making two things that were happening in culture, or the competitive landscape and the understanding of the people around me and that for many years had never been the case, we had been all very simpatico. And so when I discovered that there was this kind of delta, I was like, alright, well, maybe if I just start pointing people to the things that I'm referring to, they'll begin to understand kind of how my whole process works. I started that and it became a favorite within the building. And then as people moved on to other jobs, or as our commercial partners or whatever heard about it, they asked if they could be put on the list and that was kind of how it turned into a newsletter. And then when I left in October of 2020, I took it with me and have made it a you know, a calling card. It's, you know, as I always say to people, it's beer money, but it's also a great door opener and it's very effective from a pattern recognition. standpoint as well as understanding like, who else is in the market, thinking or consuming in that way? Because it's my regular contributors are people who are also similarly, you know, Catholic in their approach to media.

Trey

Yeah, I've got one friend who like you send her any link, and she's like, oh, yeah, that was a great story. And I'm like, how did you it was just tweeted two minutes ago.

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I have I have only one friend like that. And who is Casey Lewis. And I can I can beat Casey on stuff that isn't Gen Z. But of course, only thing I want to send her as Gen Z studd to see if I can beat her. And so far, no joy.

Eli

Do you ever get because like, I don't know, with a lot of exposure to certain things comes certain fatigue, or maybe like a cynicism seeping in? Sometimes that happens. Well, I mean, yeah, we're about honesty on this pod.

Ben Dietz

Okay.

Eli

Maybe not, to be honest

Ben Dietz

I'm going to start being honest.

Eli

But yeah, are you ever like, A. I don't want to do this B. The kind of critical mass of things that I'm seeing, I think our, I don't know, a net negative or something like that, like? Or is it kind of just like, these things are happening that I think people should know about regardless of my kind of, like, personal opinions on whatever.

Ben Dietz

I mean. Yes to all three, the, you know, do I find myself fatigued at times? Yes, the nice thing is that it's, you know, this is my endeavor, right? I stop if I want to, or if I can, if I take a week off or whatever. And, you know, somebody might be concerned, I certainly get annoyed when my regular sources of media interrupt themselves for whatever reason. But I don't put a lot of I don't put a lot of weight on the idea that I'm ruining something by taking a little time. In terms of like the preponderance of of news, I am a glass half full person, I have always been glass half full, I will, I hope will always be glass half full. And so I tend to think of these things less as, you know, indications of a harbingers of a terrible future and more as mile markers to getting to the whatever the next state of things is that we're that we're getting to. And so consequently, what I tried to do is, is just mark those things, and then translate them back after 25 years of experience to be able to say, Oh, this is like, that thing that I've seen happen before, whatever. And it's funny actually, it's like this, you know, the whole discussion around Super Formats, which is this kind of calling card I'm using to describe what brands agencies you know, publishers ought to be trying to look for in terms of how they produce that's not a new idea at all. It's it's just a recapitulation of creating long lasting IP value that is modular and scalable for today's market as opposed to the one that Walt Disney did for you know, 1959.

Eli

So let's talk about Super Formats. Excuse me. Good band name. So is it are you saying a lot...

Ben Dietz

Sorry to interrupt you might have a lot of my stuff starts that way I have a whole I have a whole very long list, thousands of names that just occur to me as like band names or album titles. And I write them down and then they become titles for the newsletter or they become new business ideas or whatever the case may be. Strongly encourage people to do that.

Eli

I'm the same way my Slack—This is so f**king depressing. But I Slack myself a lot kind of misc thoughts corporate capture of the mind, I guess, but also a good band name f**k on a roll.

Ben Dietz

I mean misc thoughts is not bad either.

Eli

I was gonna say corporate capture of the mind, but...

Ben Dietz

Well with their album, misc thoughts.

Eli

Yes. This is our first song super formats. Are you uh, are you like a shower thinker? Are you kind of like, this comes to me randomly or depends?

Ben Dietz

No, it almost always comes to me in conversation or through interaction with some kind of external stimuli, which is part of the reason that the newsletter is so important to me. It's like if I don't get like, I like doing nothing as much as anybody does. But if I don't do that stuff, I find myself sort of bereft of exciting thoughts. I get too deep into the things that are mundane and mundane has never been a good place for me. Like I'm, I am always attracted to the margins. I'm always attracted to this the sort of outliers and so...

Eli

So is a Super Format like a real articulation of like the flywheel?

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I mean, it's it's certainly a cousin of it. It's the idea basically, is just that a great brand great, sort of creative thinker is always going to have a couple of pieces of value, which could be a position it could be a an original creation, it could be you know, a name or a jumping off point that can fit into multiple formats within their sort of, continuum of of creation, right, like the misc thoughts could be a podcast, it could be a newsletter, it could be a, fashion line, it could be just a slogan on a t shirt, it could be a series of events, it could be, you know, any number of it could be any number of different things. And so it's it's about trying to assess the stuff that in your portfolio, if you want to think of it that way of the portfolio of your creative mind and going like, what are the things that are applicable to as many of those instances as possible? What are the things that are as understandable and as differentiated from the rest of my competitive landscape as possible? And what are the things that are the most fun and natural for me to do, right? Like it, I could dream up a scenario in which a car design could be a Super Format. But I don't know how to design cars. And so that's not a good Super format. For me, it might be one for you, because you went to Cranbrook and you know, you know how to design cars.

Eli

I can't drive. But yeah.

Ben Dietz

I didn't say you know how to drive I just said you know how to design the cars. But you know what I mean? So it's like so so, and this is essentially what I'm saying to people this is like, we have to get in assess what your Super Format could be and then go, alright, what is the order of operations in which we bring them to life?

Trey

That's your like, when you talk about the catchy name thing. It's really interesting, because I think that a lot of ideas that we people end up selling to clients are sold on the strength of a catchy name.

Ben Dietz

Oh, yeah.

Trey

So in that sense, I do feel like once you get the brain working, thinking about all the things that name could be or what could it apply to? Like, the door opens?

Ben Dietz

Yeah, for sure. Well, well, hopefully. I mean, I think that part of the reason that I'm spending this time articulating the concept of Super Format, right, as distinguished from the flywheel, or as distinguished from COPE, which is another, you know, acronym create once produce everywhere. It is that it tries to differentiate it from those truisms or practices, to say, this is more like a modern condition, right? COPE, for instance, we, if you create a crate, once produce everywhere implies that you make one item and it lives in variations everywhere, that it should, what that means is that you can't not have it anywhere, which means that you are by attempting to create efficiency, you're actually creating more work. You know what I mean? And so the goal should be how do we determine the best places for things to go in the or in the order in which they should go there. So it's, it's, you know, it's very strategic, it's very go to market as opposed to driven by efficiency. I think the the tricky bit about operating off of the creative inspiration of names is that there is some CFO someplace, God bless him, who's going like, alright, give me the row as on the name. And so it's like, okay, well, hold on. That's not what we're doing here. We're not trying to create efficiency for the sake of efficiency, we're trying to create Super Format, because that's going to create value for us long term. It's a little bit of a Heisman to, you know, business thinking, as a way to reengage like, a creative mindset. With durable value.

Eli

Yeah, efficiency for the sake of efficiency would be like a McKinsey bad name for it just on the concept of band names.

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I feel like that's not giving McKinsey enough credit, but okay.

Trey

So do you have an example of like, a Super Format?

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I mean, you know, one of one of the ones that got me thinking about it, and sort of helped me understand that what a like a modern flywheel is, is, or, like a Super Format engine is the podcast, How Long Gone. Like Chris and Jason are old friends from before their podcast days. And they started that in the pandemic out of just sense of opportunity and boredom, essentially. And but what they realized pretty quickly was this is a thing where we have a means to build community, we have a means to record and to broadcast across multiple formats to create corporate relationships with those formats. We have an opportunity to engage with advertising as dumb spend that comes to us. You know, through the market, we have an opportunity to engage with advertising as things that we go out and get. We have privileged access to very smart thinkers, which we can take behind our proverbial paywall and turn into agency services. We have a live performance if we feel so empowered to stand up and do a tour we have merch we have so on and so forth. And it just occurred to me like that's it that is the way that I think the the actual crater economy can work and should work is that it's a series of logical and organic evolutionary decisions as opposed to like, you must do this, this and this in your little creator tool book. To get out there. Sorry, There's a lot a lot to a lot to do. So.. Yeah those guys have done like 650 episodes. So there's a lot.

Eli

I know we have our work cut out for them. I don't know if Day One FM is a is a Super Format quite yet. It could be it could be.

Trey

Well, yeah, I think we are harvesting the great opinions and great minds coming into the podcast studio. And I think a lot of that kind of reflects back, you know, in our work and informs a lot of our cultural thinking and kind of signposting that we do here. So, in that sense, I think it's one thing I'm curious though, from your sort of curation standpoint, putting together a [SIC] Weekly Yeah, is the, I think we talk a lot about like drinking from a firehose, like the fact that so much is coming through your open tabs, I imagine reading all these stories and distilling it into like the best or most interesting. How do you take the time, I suppose, away from that, to kind of find the patterns like how does that, how does that look? Because in my, you know, daily conversations, I'm always like, I have 100 references, because I read a lot of new stuff. But for some reason, I have zero recall, you know, you might mention something and I'm like, I could probably speak to that. But like, nothing's coming to mind right now. I feel like you need space from the consumption behavior.

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I suppose. I mean, to me, that's part of the reason that that creative exchange is so important is because getting into these conversations, thoughts get sparked, and you know, little digressions get get explored. But I would just say this, I think, you know, the reason that the, when I began the newsletter, in particular, I began it in this kind of exquisite corpse style, where it was like this development, then this development, let me figure out a way some sublime connection between them to link them. And those are really fun, because it allows you to just bounce all over the place and go, well, here's how the Timberwolves winning ties to the release of Chat GPT 4.0 ties to the sale at guard store in London on garments from Beams Plus, and my brain because of the way that it works, can I can elucidate those connections. But what I what I found was that it was too hard for me to then come back to and recall things. And so I started I just took an old school publishing strategy, which is basically like a table of contents. It's like every week, there are 10, rough areas in which things get grouped. And so as links come in, and stories strike my hands, he I go, Okay, that one fits in collaborations that one fits in Technopolis that one fits in, you know, whatever. The other the natural world question mark, which is not always about the natural world.

Trey

And then you look back, I assume they're like, wait, last week, I saw this similar thing?

Ben Dietz

Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, look, I think one of the things that I admire very much about, you know, the Emily Sundberg's, and the Casey Lewis's and, you know, Jonah from Blackbird Spy Plane, and all that is that they do a really good job. I think analyzing things in real time, I am more interested in pure pattern recognition, because I don't privilege my point of view as to all of these developments over anybody else's, I just want to create the connections and then let people make up their own minds about what's there. I think there's a there's a huge value in what those guys do. But it also is a way for me to be differentiated from it.

Trey

I have a theory that I'm seeing a lot and culture people are and by people I mean, like the proletariat, like, the kids on Twitter, are super interested these days in like numbers. And by that, I mean, people are posting that, like Billie Eilish is debut, or like her second album stream are bigger than Taylor Swift's first day on platforms. And this film got this at the box office like box office numbers, and I'm seeing like sports, you know, betting and sports scores. And like, I don't know, if you follow Stan's a media or like the fashion industry stuff or like Puck News and you know,

Ben Dietz

Puck for sure. I don't the other ones, though.

Trey

Well, that one's kind of a similar thing. It's just like, you know, this, this company's investing in this company, and it's worth this much of a deal. And, like I see those numbers having previously been very b2b, whereas now I'm seeing it kind of like leak into mainstream culture where I guess fandoms are so I don't know rallying around to like the numbers and success of their favorites and their favorite companies and stuff that it's become so common. I'm just curious if you've noticed something similar.

Ben Dietz

Well, I take a slightly different point of view on it. Because of my advanced age. I had this conversation a year or so ago with with Matt Klein who does Zine, the newsletter who is, you know, a friend and is excellent his own way. And he was having this is probably two years ago, I guess, when Stranger Things was out and the Kate Bush running up that hill went to number one and Matt was having a little bit of a meltdown. I say that in the most loving way, but he was having a little bit of a meltdown over the idea that like, there's nothing new in culture, right? Like, here's a song that that is 35 years old. And it's back to number one because we've exhausted the well of creativity. And I just took it very differently. Because when I was 12 years old, Stand By Me came out the movie, and had Benny kings Stand By Me as its theme song, which I was 27 or 28 years old at that time, and it went to number one. And nobody wrung their hands and went, oh, my God, it's, this is the kind of culture everybody's wanting, oh, it's a good song, it's in a movie, it makes this whole thing makes sense. The reason I bring that up is that I think all of this stuff is to some degree or another, our cultural tendencies repeating. And I think all of that, you know, obsession around numbers, is a translation of fandom through the through the modern age. And when I was a kid, we would record Casey Kasem was top 40. And we would write down lists, I think my wife has still a diary full of like, number one hits list from the BBC, because she's English. It is all just a question of how it gets reflected to the modern day, the difference, I think, and what you're intuiting as, as being sort of strange and uncanny is that the business of it is shot through a little bit more specifically, everybody understands what artists get paid, per Spotify per thousand Spotify streams or whatever it is. And so there's a there's a way to keep score at a at a level that is deeper and more engrossing then was able when when, when we were recording Casey Kasem. So that's interesting and different. However, I don't think that that's, I think that's explained essentially by the fact that we have exalted entrepreneurs in the last 10-15 years, and they are now our cultural heroes in a way that everybody goes, okay, well, how do I think like an entrepreneur, how do I think like a founder? How do I think like a, you know.

Trey

Yeah, to that kind of point about the, you know, numbers thing. I do think, too, there's something I don't know, I would say new in that, like, also kids these days have every social platform or they're like monitoring their own analytics and seeing what engagement they're getting from all these numbers. So numbers are kind of naturally ingrained into your behavior. And so you're recognizing that happening in culture too, because you want, you want Billie Eilish to win just as much as you want your reel to pop off on Instagram, you know what I mean?

Ben Dietz

I was talking to I was talking to Adam Faze about the that story that you guys brought up in advance of this conversation, too, about the, you know, the factory tours blowing up on and why that is, I think there's something that part of it that is driven by a general how-ification of our culture generally like if you I don't know, but partially because I am ripping headlines constantly. I notice how frequently how, or why is the first word in every story and stories that do not need them. And I find myself constantly removing how and why from headlines that I, that I that I cut and paste into into the newsletter, because I just think it's, I mean, I think it's pedantic and annoying, and B, it doesn't serve the headline or the story at all, it serves the search engine, it serves, you know, the SEO optimization of discovering that piece of content so that the advertising impressions around that piece of content can be served, you know, to perpetuate this kind of commercial cycle. And I, and I guess what that ultimately says to me is like, there is a system built to make all of that easy, that doesn't benefit audiences and doesn't really benefit your understanding of a of a topic. And because that isn't ultimately valuable, it's going to, it'll go away.

Trey

Well, yeah, I think it's already starting to have the collapse of like, you know, media being served to you through Facebook, or like, you know, I'm sure you saw a lot of that at Vice..

Ben Dietz

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, you know, I would argue that one of the big downfalls of Vice as it got too big was that it brought in this sense of, how are we going to optimize? Right and that was a it was a company built on the idea of stories that exist outside of a zone of optimization, right like you you it doesn't matter how many—just use a really crass example, like if you're sending a corresponding into the sewers of Bogota, you don't have time to AB test, you just you'd go in, you get the story, you come back out, and then you figure out to do and of course, you know, as somebody who helped lead commercial there, people would bring stories like that back to me. And I was like, well, we are never going to sell anything against that. But f**k What a great story like, how could you not? And I think the what happened towards the end was just like people going, alright, well, let's you know, let's AB test this, let's slap some programmatic on it let's, you know, turn a turn a franchise into this, like, endless, endlessly repeated kind of thing. And in fact, it's funny, like Vice's dark side is a good example of what I think is not a super format, right? I think that it's a it's a concept in a franchise idea that you can apply endlessly to anything that has a dark side. But the minute you take it out of this zone of like pain and emotional trauma, it ceases to be additive. And so it will always be sort of reductive. And that's, that bothers me because it's like I will I would I want to again, as a glass half full guy, I want to see the expansive possibility.

Eli

Yeah, well going, going more off the glass half, half full. And the kind of anti optimization, we recently spoke with Colin and Noah from Why Is This Interesting. And they talked about kind of how the intention, I guess of the newsletter is to kind of be the anti news hook, where they are spotlighting and writing things that are very niche, very kind of out there. And like, just because because people are interested in them. And I think there's a lot of value to that. So do you, are you, I guess optimistic, for lack of a better word, have more projects, or more kind of franchises are creators are individuals who are operating, you know, outside of the confines of the algorithm or SEO, etc?

Ben Dietz

Well, I don't know that anybody can necessarily operate outside the, you know, SEO or the algorithm, right? Like, it's, this is the, this is the gravity that we contend with on this version of cultural Earth. But I do think that there are lots of people who are able to say, I'm going to take that lack of participation, I'm gonna take the participation that that I forego in that system, and I'm going to turn that into slingshot energy to take me someplace else. I think Colin and Noah are good examples of that. It's like the witty recommends thing that he talked about, you know, is driven by an AI system, and allows you to pull all of the recommendations from the however many 1500 posts or whatever it is that they've done, and makes them shoppable. Now, are they starting up an E-commerce thing? Not to my knowledge, but it is interesting to think...

Eli

They could do a flea market?

Ben Dietz

They could could do a flea, it would be an interesting flea market no pun intented. But, but what they are, what what I like about those guys, and what I find interesting people generally is this, there's the sense of like, this is possible, let's, you know, give it a shot and see what happens with it. And I think more and more people are, are doing that. And I think also you have a general tendency towards a freelance economy towards a decentralized kind of media ecosystem. So you're going to have pockets, right, and the people that are going to be best within those in that ecosystem are those who who go, I am creating value here that is translatable in a different zone over here. dimensionalized as me it makes me special. I talk a lot about Peter Zion. Do you know Peter Zion? So Peter Zion is this geopolitical strategist who comes out of think tanks and advises the US Navy's reserve officer corps and consults for you know, I don't know this for certain, but you would imagine the RAND Corporation and you know, those sorts of big defense companies. But he also is this weirdo who goes up to the top of the mountain behind his house in Colorado and points his phone at his face, and then we'll give you a dissemination on on why the death of the Iran President this morning or yesterday, was not the result of a terrorist attack. But it was in fact, it was an accident, right?

Eli

Like a selfie like the Emily Sundberg of geopolitics?

Ben Dietz

It's a bit like that but what you realize what what it conveys, like Emily selfies is a sense of personality and not taking myself too seriously. Like my, my personal brand is acknowledging that I'm in it with you, and that, you know, we're all able to exchange information and not for nothing, but it's like if I had a massive consulting company, he would be the first person I would want to bring in as a speaker for my core of workers because what I would want them to understand is A. This guy has a bunch of really interesting and fascinating opinions. B. You also have a bunch of interesting and fascinating opinions and this guy is doing nothing except what you could do. Notwithstanding you know, you'd have to grow a ponytail and get weird sunglasses

Eli

Buy a house in Colorado.

Ben Dietz

Well, yeah, but I mean look at you know, there's no reason not to do that you know, wherever you are. But I think you know, Emily's that selfie is a good example of it because it is not the glammed up version. It's the the real take.

Trey

Are you, do you know, Jack Schlossberg?

Ben Dietz

I know that name. I don't know him yet.

Trey

Yeah Kennedy's grandson.

Eli

Is he the Kennedy's grandson.

Ben Dietz

Oh, right. Yeah, sure. Oh right. Okay. I have read about him recently.

Trey

Yeah he does, well, I'm not even going to qualify, like he does something similar in that he like, opens his phone in his car. And we'll just like rant about the most random topics like, you know, we shouldn't go to restaurants because the food like you're looking at a menu and having to choose from like a lot of it's, like, nonsensical and just kind of hilarious. But you're like, he's also kind of stumping for Biden at the moment. So he'll be like, here's why the oil prices are like this and stuff. And there's also this other guy, Jeff Jackson, I think, who is like in North Carolina. He's in like, Congress or something like that. But he'll just tell you.

Eli

Trey's from Canada. So yeah.

Trey

I don't know anything about politics.

Ben Dietz

Happy Victoria Day.

Trey

Thank you. Thank you. We're the only country to have an actual holiday for Queen Victoria. That's like publicly observed.

Ben Dietz

I ran into a Canadian friend of mine on the subway on the way here, and she informed me.

Trey

Oh, wow.

Eli

I'm sorry. Sorry to completely cut you off. But, you know, for our listeners, what is...

Trey

Victoria Day is like, just a holiday that we publicly receive the day off. In celebration of Queen Victoria. Beyond that. I don't really know a lot.

Ben Dietz

She was England's most iconic leader of the, you know, post Industrial Revolution era.

Eli

Shit. I just started watching The Crown last night.

Trey

She's not in The Crown.

Eli

I know, but I'm just saying part of the British...

Ben Dietz

She's implied.

Eli

Yeah the Royal Family.

Trey

American education system for you The Crown on Netflix.

Eli

When the teacher rolls out the TV. Alright, anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Trey

But anyway, this Jeff Jackson guy does a similar thing to where like, well it is his job. But he goes on social media and post he's very, like direct to camera. Let me explain to you what happened in Congress this week. And like, though, they're trying to fire the speaker again. And let me explain in this, like, this is the way that I want to consume my politics. Just have some normal looking guy just tell me exactly what's going on without any BS and it's like, very convincing.

Ben Dietz

Yeah. Well, I mean, look, that's, and again, it's like I'm working to articulate a lot of this stuff around Super Format, but a lot of it has to do with voice, right? Because voice is what engenders the trust between the creator or the speaker, the you know, the the original thinker and those who are receiving those thoughts and, you know, processing them and converting them into their own value.

Eli

Well, I think that's what a lot of media companies are trying to start to build around, obviously. Axios does it, Puck, Punchbowl, etc. And probably why like a lot of substacks are popular as well. Yeah, because it is a more kind of editorial bent to it, then kind of like this amorphous here's information spat out at you with no kind of like distinctive point of view, eventually that stuff's all gonna get automated regardless.

Ben Dietz

Yeah. Well, that and you know, the the advantage to voice is that voice has the ability to be iterative and forward looking right? Whereas anything driven by large language models, say or whatever, it is inherently backward looking, right? It's inherently reductive to things that have already happened. So it cannot achieve real original thought. It's funny actually, I went to Noah's brand AI conference the other day, and I ran into this woman, Jenny Nicholson, who is a creator or not a creator. I shouldn't say that. She's, because she does lots of stuff. But she is a creative out of Durham, North Carolina, who has experimented with AI and all of these really interesting ways. She's like, Noah on steroids. But she one of the things that I said to her I was like, look, my fundamental question about all of this or my fundamental sort of assertion, I guess is a better way to put it is that per a tweet I saw not too long ago, AI cannot f**k around and therefore cannot find out. Like it is it is categorically unable to do anything that hasn't already been done and there is huge value in assessing and doing all of the analysis. But that doesn't mean that you have the sublime thought that takes you on to you know he truly valuable next thing.

Eli

So there's a lot of discussion recently and I'm sure still recent depending on when this comes out of OpenAI's new chat GPT 4.0 over Omni. And then the kind of Google AI whatever it's called.

Trey

Is it Gemini?

Eli

No, it gives you like, essentially like an AI synthesis. It feels more like, like a UX update than anything, you know, I'm talking about. I was reading an interesting piece from Max read who's substack writer over the weekend, and he talks about like, essentially likens the Chat GPT kind of rollout keynote as more of entertainment and a magic trick and marketing than anything. And I think that's been true with a lot of tech for a long time, you don't necessarily need to roll out the finished product, you want to hook people in, etc. And that ultimately, what AI really is, is just kind of like slop and garbage and things. That's, that is not I don't know, super productive. I'm sure. And I know there's a lot of, you know, productive and useful use cases for AI for like, it's kind of the less sexy stuff in the background, you know what I mean? But I'm curious, like, your, your thoughts there. Because I am of the equal mindset. Anytime I talk to my parents, and they mentioned AI, it's like, you know, we really need to be careful about like, you know, sentient AI, etc. And I, I don't know, as much of a cynic as I am, I don't see that being like what we really need to worry about right now. So kind of packed in a lot into a non question here, like, what are you? What's your take there?

Ben Dietz

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I view, I view most of this stuff as trending towards utility, meaning, the way that electricity is a utility, meaning that it just comes out of a wall, and you plug into it when you need it, and it makes your life better, more comfortable, more efficient, and enables a bunch of change into the future that will be a net positive for everybody. But that is not, it will cease to be visible in a way that I you know, I think people are trying to make right now I also think the take that it's slop is wrong. Because of that, I think as it tends towards utility, it will find its its real natural value. And the fact that it's throwing off a bunch of froth at the moment is a distraction from the fact that it will find that out.

Eli

Do you use AI for like a utilitarian purpose currently, or?

Ben Dietz

Yeah, I mean, so for instance, I'm, I'm working with a brand targeted at runners and we were trying to come up with a special formulation of a beverage for them. So I get in and I talk to Chat GBT about what are the beverages that and the formulations of beverage that naturally have, you know, high levels of restorative chemicals or have high levels..

Eli

Of electrolytes?

Ben Dietz

Well, yeah, I mean, that was the plants crave.

Eli

All right. Nevermind this is obviously the whitespace. This is why what?

Ben Dietz

Well electrolytes, it's got what plants crave. That's what plants crave. No? All right, you guys gotta watch Idiocracy. Very, very, very cultural documentary.

Eli

Oh Right. No, I've seen it. I forget it. I know that. I know that they're feeding the plants with Gatorade. And that's why nothing grows.

Ben Dietz

No that's Brawndo.

Eli

Brawndo?

Ben Dietz

Yeah. Very important difference.

Eli

Throw me a bone. But yeah.

Ben Dietz

But look, I think when I get to the when I get to the slot point what it is. And you know, I think there's that's a cool headline. It's a case. And it's what's a point worth interrogating. But it also takes me a little bit back to you know, NFT and blockchain mania from a couple of years ago, if what we're talking about is reinventing a custodial chain that allows people to participate in a way that they haven't in the future and creates an annuity for them that they can use to make their life better in the future. There's huge value there. Is there huge value in me having like the super rare punk? Yeah, maybe not probably not so much. But the idea of of my kids inheriting a royalty for me on some blockchain backed definition of Super Format, that's tremendously valuable. Right. So it's all a question of the, the way in which this stuff gets implemented,

Trey

Like still today, and there's still today the best use case I've heard for NFT's is for driver's licenses, like you could have your driver's license that you will technically never lose in your wallet, your digital wallet, and it's assigned to you and you can just like easily renew it or whatever. Like that, to me is a great use case. Sure. Versus like having a rainbow cat or whatever.

Ben Dietz

Well, I think it's also I mean, for those of us in in creative industries, it's also there's a way to think about it where you know, these things bring participation at credit and value to you in a way that the the current hierarchies are not maybe set up. You know, I don't think anybody likes to shout out Grimes as a thought leader per se, but she said...

Trey

Fellow Canadian.

Ben Dietz

Right. Fair enough. She said something, you know, really early on about why she was interested in blockchain. And it was because when she makes a music video, you have all of these people that are adding all of this sort of indefinable little sauce to it that makes the object or whatever the the creative result makes it work. Only a couple of those people get remonstrated in any way. That's, you know, commensurate to the value. And so if you say to everybody, you are part of this ongoing system of of value and asset allocation, that can be tremendously valuable, right, like the makeup artists who created the signature look, gets paid once right now, maybe that person gets paid forever going forward. Like that's a really powerful thought. Not to say that it's any nearer today to being true than it was in 2020, when she said it, but nonetheless.

Trey

Did the bored apes we're in it for all of us?

Ben Dietz

I mean, look, we again, the genius of outliers, is that it shows us the way to the future. And it also, you know, it's a guardrail. Well, not necessarily a guardrail. What I was gonna say was that it that it provides us with a case in point of how not to do things, you know, it's like, for every amazing way, and I learned a lot about liminality, this theory, and when I was in college, in the jazz history course, like for every jazz musician, who was able to take copious amounts of drugs, or drink copious amounts of alcohol and perform at a prodigious level, there were addicts and alcoholics who died, you know, it's like, there's these things aren't necessarily paths to charity, they are just like, illustrating a sense of possibility that people can explore and then, you know, make work for themselves.

Eli

What was that thing? That guy who this this was going around on Twitter, or X, the platform where it all happens. That guy he had to like sold his ape or the ape died? And he wrote like, a eulogy?

Ben Dietz

I have to say, I'm checked out of that argument. And oh, and by the way, this gets back to something Trey asked me earlier, like, how do I process and organize all of this stuff in the [SIC], in the newsletter, like, once a year, I changed those 10 categorical designations. And it's based on the idea that just you can sort of feel the shifts, the cultural sands shifting into something different, right. And so you know, Metaverse and NFT's was probably a third of the links for some period of time. And now..

Trey

That's cool. That's cool that you can like jump between, you know, I mean, is it what interests you currently? Or is what you think people should know about? Or like?

Ben Dietz

Well it's, more I mean, this is and look, I think that this has a lot to do with with the, you know, the the creator, future creator live future and going forward is that what I am interested in? Is the stuff that goes into the the digest, and then it finds adherence and people who are similarly interested elsewhere, I don't feel like I have to spend a bunch of time going, like, oh, man, if I don't put something in about bored apes, this time Trey is gonna unsubscribe, you know? I don't care.

Trey

Right. To what degree do you feel that what you curate and collect is a direct reflection of what's actually going on outside in culture.

Ben Dietz

That's part of the reason that there's so much included in the newsletter is that I hope that it gets 40% of the way there 60% of the way there, whatever it is, like it will never be a true reflection a will always privilege my point of view will always privilege my sort of the things that I have access to that others may or may not, but I want it to be expansive and inclusive.

Trey

Because I feel like when I went to journalism school, shout out journalism school, they'd be like, everything outside, like, you have to go outside and meet people and like talk, you know what I mean? So I just one thing that I struggled with often is just like we spend, I don't know, a good portion of our days looking at a screen reading these articles about things that are happening, apparently somewhere, like somewhere there's a tomato girl having a summer somewhere, like in that, you know, but I'm like, is this is this real? Am I out of touch? Is this real culture?

Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's all down to defining you know, who are who our filters and editors are right, who who says, this thing is important, this thing is less important. Because it's all important at some point or another. I just, you know, I think we are we are in a moment of transition where the gatekeepers which is a word that I don't particularly enjoy and try to avoid are changing and because there is so much both sunk cost in the in the creation of those previous gatekeepers, and because there is so much like power invested in them, there's a lot of worry about what happens when somebody else takes over. When somebody else takes over, it's going to be a not great result for those very small group of people, and it will be probably a better result for everybody else. So it's like, let it happen, Captain.

Trey

Do you still have a weekly breakfast that you host?

Ben Dietz

I do. Yeah. So Breakfast Club is a Wednesday breakfast at the Wythe, at Le Crocodile in The Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg. And the idea is essentially like, I'm going to go to the Wythe every Wednesday at 8:30. And anybody that wants to show up, can show up and it doesn't cost anything, there's no agenda, there's no sort of expectation, you just show up and you meet people who are down have breakfast with me. And what that breeds is a bunch of people who are curious, confident, interested in one another, and generally speaking, pretty smart and pretty sort of, like multifarious in their in their pursuits. And so it always ends up being this really fascinating conversation. What I never wanted to do though, is make it my thing that only exists on Wednesdays at The Wythe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I always want, you know, anybody listening to take that to their local thing, because I didn't have that in Syracuse growing up, and I would have liked it. You know what I mean? Like, my friends do have it now in London, and they love it. And they want to, you know, as they move go on and do it someplace else. Like we want that spirit to persist because that's what you know, t's what motivates this sublime sort of connection of disparate thoughts.

Eli

Curious, confident, good looking, most of them. I'm sure.

Ben Dietz

They are. It's a handsome bunch.

Eli

Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining before we officially sign off, where can our listeners find you, your newsletter, the Breakfast Club.

Ben Dietz

So, Breakfast Club is at breakfastindustries.substack.com. That's a newsletter that just has all of the Breakfast Club events. So they happen both here in New York and then around the world. And that's a weekly tracker of it. The newsletter that we have talked a lot about is sicweekly.substack.com and I am in the process of standing up a little creative umbrella for all of my stuff called range life. That will be hitting the market at some point pretty soon, too.

Eli

Wow. Ben, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Ben Dietz

No, it's my pleasure, guys. This has been fun and stay curious.