Eli

Today on the pod, we're joined by Colin Nagy and Noah Brier, they co-pilot, a fan favorite newsletter, called Why Is This Interesting? It was the rare five guests or five panel podcast, you could put a starting lineup out there. But yeah, after a few technical difficulties, I thought it was a pretty fascinating conversation. Trey and Clara what say you?

Clara

Yeah. I also enjoyed myself.

Eli

Wow, great.

Clara

Yeah. Well, no, I did. I mean, I think and we covered I don't know, like a good amount of stuff. But a lot of it talking about like reclaiming some agency around how the type of information that you're engaging with online, but also the type of like, either expertise or POV that you want to bring to it. And I think sometimes it's hard to feel empowered, I guess, to shift your relationship, like to reading on the algorithm or getting your news on the algorithm. And I thought they both had interesting things to say kind of on that subject.

Trey

Yeah, I think like to, you know, an antidote to what we've been talking a lot about on the podcast, which is like the algorithm dictates your tastes, and we can't really escape what the algorithm sends you there was sort of this lively discussion about how borrowing deeper into your interests, whatever that looks like, can actually be very healing.

Eli

Yeah, I agree. So for the uninitiated, Why Is This Interesting? is a daily newsletter. And basically, they have a bunch of usually guest contributors, but also Colin and Noah, write pieces that are kind of very niche, off trend cycle topics. So for example, just scrolling through their website, they have the kiss of death addition, the operations order addition, the spy travel edition, the birding edition, the saddle stitch edition. So there's a bunch of like, very wide ranging topics. And then one of my personal favorites is the Monday Media Diet where basically, they profile someone, usually in kind of like the media ecosystem, and ask them a set series of questions about just what it sounds like their media diet. But I think what interesting me what interests me about the newsletter outside of like, learning about something new that I might not have otherwise searched for, or sought out? is basically the question that they ask, during every newsletter, which is why is this interesting? And I feel like, at least in our line of work, sometimes someone will like share a link or like, you'll read about this campaign. And that's it. And no one can really answer a lot of times, like, why, why do I need to pay attention to this? Or like, why is this interesting? It feels like, almost too simple and straightforward. But I think it's something that's kind of like missing as a whole.

Clara

Yeah, I would agree with that. I also think it's, it's interesting, because a lot of the time, especially I think, in marketing, but I think in any field, where a lot of the reason why you're paying attention to news is to do something with that information, where the question that you end up asking is, like, why is this relevant? How does this like connect back into the work we do every day? Which is, in itself a valuable question, but like, asking about, or learning things that are interesting, either independently of that, or just sort of opening the aperture on information that you like, consider to be useful and applicable to your life? Like, I think a lot of what's cool about the types of stuff that they cover, and the types of people that they have contribute is, to your point, they're people that have dove in really deep into their dived really deep into their, you know, particular interests.

Eli

Doven sounds like a "Doven get back in here. That's enough time outside".

Clara

Like, I think it can be really, I don't know how you guys feel but sometimes frustrating for me when the parameters of like the conversation about a subject, like if we're talking sports, if we're talking something else is like, so dictated by like, what's relevant or what's like immediately applicable right now in this moment, versus stuff that's maybe interesting, independently of what the major talking points have been in the news, but it's like, nevertheless, something you can take away from or maybe apply. Maybe not maybe just like no for your future reference.

Eli

All right. Well, I think that was a good segue. Let's bring him in. All right, call the Noah. Welcome to the pod.

Colin Nagy

Thanks. Nice to be here.

Eli

So after a bit of technical difficulty, but we do have the rare five person panel I think this is only the second time that we've done that. So I'm glad that you guys could be here with us today. But just to dive right in, there's a lot I want to get to in a short span of time, we want to get to rather. But you to co pilot, a newsletter that has an agency favorite, called Why Is This Interesting? Curious, what is it? Why is it interesting? Why just start it, etc?

Colin Nagy

I think he came out of these long discursive conversations that Noah and I've had since like the beginning of our friendship, where in having a breakfast or something we managed to cover like 17 disparate topics, right. And I think we're kind of spiritually united as being very curious people. And I think that despite what you do for a job, I think the people we're inspired by are the people that are able to see lots of different vectors, right, whether that's in fashion, or design or business. And that's kind of the spiritual Northstar that governs that, if that makes sense.

Eli

And how do you guys know each other? Just a backup.

Colin Nagy

NYU.

Eli

Oh, nice. Clara went to NYU too.

Colin Nagy

Yeah. So NYU, I think it was Jonathan Sadlowe was like the person that I think we've we met at a something that he was going on. And that was, that was the days of the kind of nascent brand planning, kind of advertising kid community in, in New York City.

Noah Brier

Yeah, it was sort of being around New York and doing the kinds of things that were interested in doing. I was running a thing called like mind back then, which was a sort of coffee meetup. And so we just had a bunch of mutual friends. And then after, we got to know each other a little bit, we kicked off a multi year, Wednesday breakfast at Balthazar, which was the sort of staple of our, newsletter empire and everything else, which was just sort of meeting with interesting people and inviting them to breakfast.

Colin Nagy

Yeah, I think a lot of the people that we invited to breakfast were just people that we thought were interesting from realms of journalism or other things, and also, the types of people that will show up to a breakfast with these two kind of like young gun kids in the city, despite them perhaps being more established is actually kind of cool. That's its own litmus test. Are you an open minded thinker, and, you know, we, one of the sort of spiritual, the guides to what we do is someone that we're both friends with Mickey Drexler, who's a huge, you know, businessman was the CEO of J. Crew. But he's the type of person that can find something interesting out of anyone, and he doesn't hold himself in this detached tower that a lot of very successful business people do. He's a mensch, you know, he's talking to everyone on the street. He's just like a sponge, for inputs and information. And so I see someone like that, as someone that I look up to where, despite the fame, despite the, you know, commercial success, he's still looking for the thing. And I think that I'm inspired by that.

Eli

Mensch? that might be the first time mentioned has been used on this podcast. Great word.

Colin Nagy

We are in New York.

Eli

Exactly. I'm curious. There's like, a ton of different topics that you guys cover in the newsletter and guest writers as well, just hearing over at Clara's screen, although I am an avid reader, recently has been the disco clam edition, the Japanese luggage forwarding edition this morning, it was about DJing, you know, is skewing CDJs the more analog approach? What kind of is the pitch process? If there is any who what are the types of people who are approaching you or you guys reaching out to them? What's the standard? I guess

Noah Brier

It's all a little bit organic, to be honest. So you know, at the very beginning, when we started doing it five years ago, it was just column night writing every day. And we'd have this sort of standoff at like 4:30 of who was going to text to and see if they were up to writing. Like we had no editorial calendar or anything, it was just sort of like, okay, somebody's got to do it, and whoever whoever blinks first, so to write tomorrow's addition. Over the years, we've asked lots of different people to sort of throw one in the hat because, you know, we just need some help getting a newsletter out every day. And then, over time, we've also gotten other people who have sort of reached out and contributed. And so everybody comes on, joins the contributor slack, that also becomes a sort of self perpetuating thing where people are sharing a lot of stuff, it's very active. And a lot of ideas come out of there. And then you know, frequently we'll reach out to people, you know, whether it's something they wrote that we really liked. And so, you know, we've had a bunch of additions where, you know, we just asked somebody we knew or somebody we didn't even know that, well, if we could rerun something that we just liked it. Or there's some sort of cific topic where we're like, okay, we know somebody who can really nail this, let's, let's ask them if they can, if they can write this up. And then, you know, I just think in our sort of day to day lives we're always meeting people. And you know, the kinds of topics and ideas that I think we try to publish are, are the things that are sort of, they seem impossibly boring, but when explained by somebody who has gone deep and is passionate about it, it's pretty amazing.

Eli

Yeah. And they'll be like oddities, you know?

Trey

Why daily, though, why the pressure of daily?

It's masochistic. I think it's like kind of playing hacky sack, and you're like, I'm not gonna let this thing drop. But I do think, and maybe this is post rationalizing the pain. But I do think that when you look at people talk about creative practice, you know, I saw something from Rick Owens the other day, which he was just like, you have to keep doing, and doing and doing and doing and doing, and then your talent will reveal itself, but it has to find you working. And I think that for both of us, though it is a pain in the ass. We find there's an intellectual sharpening that comes from that. And I think that I often am able to tap into things that I might not be readily interested in, where it's not being played back to me and in my feeds. And as a result, it's making us sharper, right? So it's a little bit of like intellectual CrossFit every day. But sometimes you're sore, and you don't want to do it. But you're like, Yeah, I should probably do this.

Noah Brier

I'm going to add two more on that. So one is just I think, for me, personally, a big part of it was, you know, after many years of running a software company, and just sort of getting away from the creative process, like the day to day creative process, I felt the need to just kind of get back in there and have a kind of the daily ritual that Colin, it's describing, just, you know, needing to get something out every day. And then I'd say the other side of it, which I do actually think is true. And I agree with a masochistic point as well. But I think Colin and I both share this idea that like, if you're going to do something, you might as well do it. Right. And so that's the way to do it. Right? You got to do it every day. Like you don't mess around with things.

Yeah, it is funny with a proliferation of substacks. You know, I think people have to be very careful of what they sign up for. There's a lot of substacks, and people are like, oh, yeah, I can do this. And then they're like, I stepped on this treadmill, and the treadmill doesn't stop. So for us, it's a forcing factor. Obviously, we have a variety of voices, which I think makes it more interesting, because if it were just the, you know, whatever Noah and Colin are interested in at the time, it could be wormholely, where if no is like doing super deep on AI, we might be just seeing those notes on the keyboard. And I might be going deep on some like geopolitical things. So when we have this sort of outside provocation, I think it's helpful. And it also makes it more diverse and interesting to read. But my joke is, it's like the weather in Michigan, it's like, if you don't like it, it'll change. You know, the next issue.

Trey

So I'm curious, like, to what degree do you feel that the algorithm is kind of currently dictating culture and cultural conversation? And then as a kind of follow up—to what degree was, Why Is This Interesting? maybe an antidote to that?

Colin Nagy

I know Noah will have some serious thoughts on this, but I'll just chime in quickly. I don't really buy it. I think it's an lazy argument. I like Kyle Chayka you know, he's been on our Monday media diet a few times. But I think my issue with this is blaming the algo, it kind of robs people of agency. It's like Oh, I'm just a drone and I can't lock, I can't get out of this locked groove. Whereas like, oh, you can go delete everything you follow and follow new things you can go to a record store and look in a different bin. It's I think we always have to remember that we all have agency, you know? All the artists that I think I respect are the ones that have reinvented themselves right you know to make a dumb example I mean, you could make a big guitar rock with okay computer and then make kid A you know, to do a cringe millennial reference, but, but but this, this re-invention is predicated on having agency. So I think that like some of the malaise and the algo thing is like a little lazy. There is a lot of validity to it, but we think it's important to break out of that and to see a bunch of different perspectives. And I think that that's kind of the core ethos of what we're trying to do.

Noah Brier

Yeah, I'd say, the one piece I'd add to it is that, you know, I don't I don't think this is new to the algorithm. So I'm actually reading this book with my daughter, my, my eight year old, called The Truth Detective. And it's Tim Harford, who writes for the FT. And he's written a bunch of books on economics. And he took a book, I think that's called the Data Detective. And he made it into a kid's book. So it's like, written for kids. And it's got some illustrations. And just last night, actually, we read the part, which was pulled from his other book, where he sort of imagines what a 50 year newspaper would look like. And so you know, he's making this point that, you know, the fact that a newspaper is published daily, is naturally going to change what they consider to be news, right? And the economist is going to be different than the newspaper and the monthly magazine is going to be different than the Economist. And so if you sort of zoom it all the way out, and you say, you know, you had a 50 year newspaper, it would cover an entirely different set of stories, right? Like the sort of little blips of culture that happen on a day to day basis wouldn't really matter. And so, you know, I do think a piece of what we're after is these things that otherwise aren't really news, like one of the early pieces that Colin introduced me to, or ideas was this thing, the news hook, right like that, you know, like, every time somebody goes on a talk show, or they do an interview, they've got to have, you're selling a book, or you've got a new movie out, you're doing whatever. And we're just sort of anti hook. Like, there's, these are these things that are just kind of around that it doesn't really matter.

The tyranny of the news hook is a really scary thing, because it shapes our lives. And in many ways, I believe it was Kailyn Phillips, who's a writer and thinker that is kinda like a downtown girl in New York City, although I think she lives somewhere else now. But she was just basically saying the tyranny of the news hook totally sucks, because it's basically, oh, we're letting all these commercial considerations dictate a lot of the conversations we're having, right? You know, you see actors that are like plugging a movie or, you know, yatta yatta. And like, if a friend of ours that writes for us has a book coming out, we'll perhaps like have an MMD pegged to that that's about as tight as we'll ever get to hook. But it's more of like, wanting to be generative, and like support the mission as opposed to being a slave to the hook, you know.

And I think also maybe connected to that somewhat is like being somewhat a slave to the news cycle, which I think goes sort of hand in hand with both the algorithm and what that argument is trying to say. But I think also to your point about taking back more agency and rethinking about what relevance means, because I think, I mean, many of the why's is interesting subjects are somewhat connected to the news cycle. I know you talked about Otani, you've talked about Mr. Beast of all people. But I think for the most part, the pieces like Eli brought up disco clam, they have relevance. And they have I think, if you read them sort of application to different things that people are talking about, or maybe thinking about, but they're not as beholden, I think, to the sort of churn of the news cycle that I think many newsletters too, are also sort of caught within of having to constantly be reacting to something rather than bringing something new to the conversation. Just curious what you think?

Noah Brier

Well, even the Mr. Beast one, which is funny, because I wrote that, and it's like, I'm coming to that like 10 years later, because I just happen to have two kids now and they are super into Mr. Beast. And so I have discovered this person who everybody else in the entire world knows about. So even that wasn't particularly tied to a piece of news. You know, I just think it's, it's, it's freeing again, I think the sort of thesis that underlies the whole thing is that people who are interested in things that who go deep, right, like people who know what it means to go deep, like, they know what it means to know. And they can write and, you know, you can help them right, by by editing them that, you know, you can make anything interesting, there's interesting stuff everywhere. And yeah, I think, you know, whether it's sort of algorithms or newspapers or magazines or anywhere really, right, like we we see it a lot. And I think it's just something that, you know, I mean, Colin, I have always enjoyed sort of pulling on disparate strings and trying to pull them together. And that's sort of the fun of the whole thing. So, you know, I think we're just, we've been lucky to find an outlet and a way of doing it and a whole community that exists surrounded, who want to write and want to read and just are sort of into the same kinds of things. But yeah, I tend to sort of take the kind of long view on a lot of this stuff. There's a article from, I think, 2011 that's a favorite of mine by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker where he was reviewing a bunch of books about technology. And he basically broke technology writers down into these three buckets who had never betters, right? So the people who are sort of like everything is is I'm gonna say it wrong. But anyway, he had basically the people think everything is going to be perfect that people think everything is going to be terrible. And then the people in the middle who see any moment of sort of great change as a moment of great change, but also recognize that, like, we've lived through a lot of moments of great change, and that, you know, you have to sort of like, look for the historical precedent and the, the, you know, going back to the algorithm not to picking on too much, but the, I think the, the kind of, it's the responsibility of the people who say that to prove that this is different, fundamentally, then, then again, because I think if you look for the patterns, you see, that is what people were saying about newspapers and what people were saying about, you know, we've sort of been saying these things for all time. And, and certainly, you know, it's happening in different scale, and we are connected in different ways. But, you know, I do think there's something, there's a lot more fundamental stuff happening around it. And I think, you know, the fun we try to have is just like, you know, there's a million sort of bad publications out there who write every day, whether they're, you know, on the web or on substack, or anywhere else. They're are amazing for the wrong things, right? It's, I think, optimizing for the page view, or that sort of enrichment, et cetera. I'm optimizing for disco glam.

Eli

When you really quick a couple of things when you said mash is a reinvention. I thought you're gonna bring up JoJo See, you offer a socket, which maybe your kids know who that is or not, could be a new, why is this interesting addition, but she's been in the new cycle for claiming that she is reinventing herself.

Trey

This is funny, it is funny to see like these young people, which I'm sure you've come across in the same way, like Mr. Beast thinks he's like reinventing things on YouTube or something by gambling. It's all it's like, this has been done before. And you just haven't looked beyond the surface. And you think, therefore you are like reinventing,

I have an incredible example for this. So these cultural Provet provoca tours, the qlf. They basically like wrote this thing called the manual. And it was basically like, how to have a hit record in the UK. And then they did everything from the manual. And they had a number one hit, and I think it won the Murphree prize. Oh, wow. So there are these constants, and there are these playbooks used by David Bowie or used by different eras of culture or whatever. But when you get down to the source code of of that playbook, it's applicable to other things, you know what I mean? And so things are recurring.

Noah Brier

But I also think and like, on the Mr. Beast, one, I do legitimately think that I don't know what he thinks, or whether he thinks that he's sort of invented all this, but I don't get the sense that he has spent a lot of time studying that history. And so I do have a lot of respect for the fact that he has sort of come to these conclusions. And, you know, I sort of have this sense that he's kind of like speed run all of media history. Like he's just sort of like, consumed more YouTube and created more YouTube than anyone else has ever done and maybe will ever do. And as a result of that, he has sort of like just fast forwarded through, like, what happened in 60 years of television. And I just think it's kind of amazing. Like, it's just a you know, whatever you think about his videos, and, you know, again, my kids really like him. And, but I just think, I don't know, there's again, there's just people doing amazing stuff all over the place. And, you know, if you start looking for it, and you know, you don't sort of you know, Colin talked about Mickey Drexler at the beginning, like that's a person who sort of always got his eyes open for that no matter how much success he's seen, and like, that's where it is, like, you know, influence and inspiration and people doing amazing things. I mean, you know, I sit and watch YouTube all the time with my kids and we watch you know, like, weird Minecraft videos are people getting bit by animals or whatever.

Eli

That one guy, that Australian guy gets bit, yeah, I think Mr. Beast, the one thing he's really really really really good at is making thumbnails he just really good at making thumbnail imagery. He's like the DaVinci of thumbnail imagery with that weird smile.

Trey

Did you see that like AB testing tweet is so you're talking about there was like, this tweet that was like a video of him AB testing like, like hundreds of different thumbnail options with different like, you know, choreographically behind him. Yeah, like smile this way, smile that way. And it was like, he literally went through so many iterations that finally when you land on one, it's like the one or whatever.

Eli

Well, speaking of AI, Noah. I want to talk a little bit about what you're in the city for the work that you're doing with the startup or company that you have Brand AI from the basics. What is it? What's what's happening?

Noah Brier

It's a great question. Yeah, I have no idea yet. When I first started, I called it an organization at the intersection of marketing and AI. And my wife was like, why are you calling in organization instead of a company? And I was like, because it's just like a thing that I'm doing.

Eli

Much like this podcast.

Noah Brier

I spent a lot of time running software companies, and I needed to break from running software companies. And so now I'm doing this other thing. And it is a place where I house a bunch of stuff, including a conference that I put on and some writing, I do, a lot of experiments I build. And I basically, I just got super into AI, I just think it's amazing. And I've been building stuff with it. And I have found it to be just the most impressive piece of technology I've ever experienced in my lifetime. Like I don't, you know, I remember when I got my first computer, but I didn't really experience sort of like the world from no computers to computers. And like, I feel like that's what we're living through in this moment. Is this the world with no AI to AI. And I don't know, it's just like, every day, I discover the most amazing things and, and build crazy stuff that is completely unimaginable. And so I'm just having fun, and putting out conference.

And I think the superpower that Noah has always had, is moving beyond the sort of theory and like talking shop things. I think Noah pre AI was building, coding and getting well we kind of there's probably a German word for it. But like this notion of like finger feel, right? You know, to feel like what it is to play something or type something and like that tactile experience. And that mindset of curiosity, and kind of being in the code, as opposed to like theorizing about the code has served him particularly well, when it comes to AI. Because a lot of this stuff is just like an absolute accelerant to things that might have been done in the past, or you could do but very manually. So in like about a week, he hacked up a thing for Why Is This Interesting, where we, you know, have everything that's ever been recommended on the site, kind of like archived. So if, you know, if you want to see what this MMD guest has recommended, you can like go go buy it. And that would have been a hugely like manual, you know, manually intensive thing. Do you want to talk about how you built that?

Noah Brier

Yeah, sure. So that one, I basically just sucked it and all the 1500 emails that we've sent, and I ran it through a bunch of different sort of models in bunch of different ways where I first pulled out the products, and then I hit some other API's that then pulled back links for those products, and it used AI to figure out which link was the best and, and like Colin said, I think the magic there was just the ability to do this thing that would have been impossible, like we would have had to hire people to spend a lot of time to go through all those 1500 emails. And, you know, we got it done in a few days. And, you know, it's not perfect, but it enables you to do things that just were unimaginable before. And that's if that's the sort of big point, I think people are just missing with this stuff. They're so focused on the things that to the point earlier, sort of get the most press or, whatever. And the sort of deeper, more interesting things to me are these kind of, you know, what becomes possible that wasn't possible before.

And then a lot of the narrative around AI and Noah and I have talked about this a lot. It was such an abstraction for a lot of journalists until there was like the grammar handle in the shower, which was like Chat GPT.

Eli

That's a great phrase. Adding that to the repertoire,

I forgot that I have to give my friend Will Calcutt. A shout out because I think he was talking about it for the first time in the context of like, pretty abstract, like electronic music. But just like with enough of like a kick drum to have fun, like people can grab on to something and then they can get it. But I think what's important is, that was a moment that then kind of sparked a lot of interests, a lot of investment bubble blog, just because people can see this tangible example. But I think what we're getting into is this very scary territory where the level of commentary about the thing is not as sophisticated as the thing. And so there's starting to be a quite a sizable delta between the writing and the analysis of something and the actual comprehension of it. You know, there was, was a big geopolitical story about like a deal that Microsoft did with the UAE regarding AI. And it had had ginormous types of geopolitical implications like US versus China. You know, a lot of the future of strategy grand strategy played out in this like little story, but it got kind of page 16 Play right? Because there's not enough people that are able to kind of hotwire that. I think the same can be said with a lot of like cyber warfare. A lot of the things that are happening underneath the iceberg between like nation states in terms of like hacking zero days like the the sort of subterfuge that's actually shaping our future is underneath the waterline or underneath the understanding with like, except for just a few subject matter experts with this. So the forces that are shaping our world and those kind of commenting and writing on that there's a distance between the two. And I think that that's always a little dangerous. I realized that's quite a tangent. But that's we do.

Trey

Well, now I read this story today in New York Magazine. And just to kind of yeah, as you say, kind of give like finger feel to what you're saying, my friend of mine, Ezra wrote this article about the package king of Miami, and it was all about this guy who basically did all this like cybercrime by creating this thing that it was like a fake UPS, like scan your packages, so people could return their packages get refunded for them. And the packages would go nowhere, or something like that. So he scammed like, I don't know, it was like $5 million, and basically refunds from consumers who were using this, you know, service over telegram or something like that. And I'd never heard of any of this before. And there's like an entire kind of underworld. I mean, I'm sure there's like an underworld of crime for like, any old thing. But, you know, it was to your point was like, so because there's one story now in the New York Magazine, I have learned about this entire kind of underworld of like, counterfeit return crime, that, you know, to your point, I think there's just like, there is so much going on.

Colin Nagy

Probably seismic in terms of balance sheets of companies.

Trey

Exactly, exactly. And like nobody, nobody, at least I know is talking about it, and nobody writing about it. Like, there's probably very few to your point who actually know enough about the subject, or the subjects that or maybe you know, more than me.

Noah Brier

To bring it back around. There's a very good YouTube rabbit hole of people doing stuff with returns, buying return pallets, there's a whole, they call it reverse logistics is now the whole industry that exists around your ability to buy things online and return them. But yes, definitely go look up people by buying returns.

Eli

Bring them on the pod.

Trey

But I also wanted to, you know, circle back as well, because when you were talking about I guess running all your data through whatever these models are that kind of quantified and qualified. My mind because it's so marketing, wired was like seeing dollar signs, I'm like, you have kind of the trove of cultural figures, married with the tech ability to like, make it into a commercial product that will be very valuable to consumers who maybe if I liked the taste of one of your former MMD guests, or whatever, can go through this, like incredible gift guide, with links to purchase that you can get affiliate money for. Why is that? Not something you've like done yet?

Noah Brier

We have affiliate links on there. Unfortunately, it's currently broken. I haven't had the time. But yes, I think that's that's a part of the idea.

What happened early on is we had some Greenbrae friends and this was like maybe right before the pandemic, but they're like, here's what you should have in like a go bag. And we were trying to take it away from this, like, sort of, like nerdy prepper world to be like, these guys actually know what they're talking about. And we live in an unstable world where a fire or an earthquake, choose your thing. And they actually, you know, wrote all this stuff down and we're like, Oh, let's see it, see what happens. And like, he was like that, I think it's like the top performing post of all time. And like so, like we used to have, like affiliate links back when substack used, to like, let you do that with Amazon or Amazon or you do it. And I just remember that someone buying like a $3,000 lens through like an affiliate link. I was like, Whoa, this is kind of crazy. But, um, that notion of commerce and recommendation plus affiliate is interesting. But, you know, it would be very reference to like our mission, I think that the flip side of that is, we are seeing the sort of recommendation industrial complex, that's happening where like, instead of a person with a creative voice, they're just talking about all the things that they wear or there's, you know, there's and like no shade, a lot of these people just need to make a living but I don't always want to I want to hear what that person has to say on something. I just don't you know, sometimes it can be very transactional.

Trey

Yeah. And that cuz you know, even going back to the beginning when you're talking about hosting these breakfasts at Balthazar and inviting, like curious people. I, I was thinking too, about you watching videos with your kids and stuff. How do you cultivate curiosity? Because one thing that we talk a lot about here is Gen Z? And what is Gen Z up to you and how are they like consuming culture? And to what sort of level? You know, how far out like below the surface are they scratching to get at something, and, you know, all signs point to very negative things like, they're watching. No, like, you know, it's just, it's a lot of like generalizations, but like, the algorithm tells you this one thing, then you move on, or because we have access to all this data immediately. At any point at any moment, we can find out exactly we want to move on, if there's no sort of, I guess, desire, or, I don't know, fortitude to like, go beyond what you initially just get a quick answer to. So I guess, how do you personally cultivate curiosity? And how have you?

Eli

Don't look at me.

Noah Brier

Well, I'd say first, like, I don't really, I think that anything that has to do with generations is always a little bit nonsense, because, you know, most of the time when we're talking about generational differences, like we're describing people, when they're 22, or 25, or whatever. And the reality is, like, almost everybody's the same when they're 25, whether it was today, or 30 years ago, or 60 years ago, or whatever it is, like it's sort of, um, so yeah, I don't know, I think probably everybody will be fine. Like, I think generally, sort of these things work themselves out. I mean, I would say sort of very specifically, I'm interested in that question, you know, less broad than, you know, what happens with generation and more specifically to, you know, I have two kids and like, what do you do to try to encourage them to be curious? And and I don't know what the answer that is, other than sort of be curious around them, and like, encourage them to kind of go down their own rabbit holes. And I think rabbit holes are amazing, right? Like, I think that people should sort of be encouraged to go deep, and to explore and to not always need an answer. And, you know, like, I try to play games that I just tried to, I mean, again, I think where it ties back to the newsletter, and the stuff we do is like, I just, I don't find it particularly difficult to be excited about things that they're into, like, you know, we've been playing a ton of Minecraft recently, and like Minecraft turns out again, like me coming to something 15 years late, like Minecraft turns out to be this like, totally amazing, insane thing. I don't find it difficult at all to sort of like, find it interesting. And then, you know, now we found all these YouTube videos of people building, like computers in Minecraft, and like, the most amazing stuff that you can imagine. And so, you know, all I could hope, I guess, is that I Rubble, a debt, a little bit of it rubs off on them, but I think he's just sort of encouraging them to get into things like I just, it sort of doesn't matter what you're into, as long as you're into something.

And I think the choose your friends thing is kind of important, because I think when you have friends with a diversity of viewpoints and interests, like that can kind of cross pollinate, you know, I think that a lot of the thing that I like about the slack that we have for contributors and the act of doing what we do is it kind of replicates like, my, like young New York time, which was much more predicated on like, in person time, and a lot of these conversations and like, a lot of people are more geographically dispersed, or in a different phase of life where they're, like not sinking, three martinis at Botanica. Like I used to.

Eli

Is that where you used to rip?

Colin Nagy

Yeah exactly. It's funny because that part of that part of New York there was kind of like that little corridor where aloo, like Media, Tech, etc. And so like, if you're Balthazar, you have your Botanica or the scratcher, or like different people had like different bars, but like Tom and Jerry's? Yeah, that's where a lot of the, the kind of these conversations might have been happening. So but I guess, to answer the question directly, it's like, understand what the frames are over the limitations, and then break them. Right. So it's like, if your explorer page is looking like a certain thing, it's like, how do I scuffed this up a little bit? How do I understand that I have the agency to chase down a different thing or reinvent myself? That that's that's something that is actually a muscle, the notion of like reinvention, we're like flipping the script. It's something that stasis is a pretty powerful thing. And to try to do that is hard. And I think you have to take some chances to do that. And I think that one of these, like, universal truths is like, taking chances pushing things, whether it's entrepreneurially, with your design, things like that. I think that that's how people can be satisfied. And it doesn't have to be someone that's trying to be a creator or whatever. It could just be like, whoever you are, as a person, you know, as a teen or whatever. Flip the script, go like skate after school. See if it takes go tries, you know, go try acting go try, you know, feel an experience and have that sense of open curiosity and then follow it where it leads us.

Eli

Well, speaking of choose your friends, I'm glad I have all of you, Colin, Noah thank you for I know, had to end on a high. Colin, Noah, thank you for joining us today real quick. Before we sign off, where can our listeners find you find your newsletter?

Colin Nagy

Yeah, it's just whyisthisinteresting.substack.com and anything else you want to shout out?

Noah Brier

Yeah, I have a AI newsletter if that's what you're into. It's newsletter.brxnd.ai.

Eli

Cool.

Colin Nagy

Thanks so much, guys so much for having us. This was fun. Awesome.