More Queue, Less Feed with Sacha Judd

Brad Frost: [0:11] Sacha Hello. we're just gonna dive right in and I'm really excited to hear what has you waking up excited right now.

Sacha: [0:22] Yeah what a great prompt I think what what's got me most excited at the moment is a startup that I'm working on uh which is called Lume Music This isn't about to be an ad for that but the thesis behind it is finding a new way to um consume music in this era where everything is subscription focused and where the system is broken for everyone but importantly for artists who can't make a living wage so we've spent a couple of years now thinking about how we might shift that And um we are launching with a new digital album format that comes Bundled with extra content that dedicated music lovers and fans want to see from their faves So behind the scenes uh video photography handwritten lyrics the story of an album and packaging that all together in a really beautiful app experience And I think what's making me excited about it is like all startups you get to spend time with people who are really optimistic and creative about the world I think to be um A startup founder you have to have an enormous amount of hope and optimism and positivity because otherwise you wouldn't be doing it Uh and that's something that I've always loved about the startup space which I've been sort of adjacent to or working in for um nearly 15 years now And it's still what I love most about it and particularly this one to be doing it um surrounded by creative people who just wanna do the thing that they love and are sort of constantly facing an uphill battle to make that possible to be building something that we hope will help them with that is really exciting So

Brad Frost: [2:08] That's, oh my God. I mean, like, that's, there's a lot there. So one, it sounds like you're, you're reviving the physicality of an album of like, like an LP or even, whatever, CDs, doesn't matter. Cassettes, like, there's the, the, the tactile multi format nature of music is not just like a thing that we, we listen to. That's like one aspect of it, but there's like the whole like getting to know them and understanding and interpreting.

Sacha: [2:37] And I think for whatever reason the album is still the pinnacle of an artist's musical expression And I think artists spend a long time thinking about the world of an album like the songs that are gonna make the album and the songs that aren't the order that they go in the story that it tells the um artwork and the photography and the brand Not not in the commercial

Brad Frost: [3:02] Yeah,

Sacha: [3:02] the look and

Brad Frost: [3:03] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sacha: [3:05] and now that just gets chopped up and thrown

Brad Frost: [3:08] Yeah.

Sacha: [3:09] and um you know your only sense of artist is the little square you know

Brad Frost: [3:14] Yeah.

Sacha: [3:15] that they get and so we never really get to experience it the way That the artist made it you know so the the songs go on Spotify or or Apple or wherever and then the everything else sort of winds up fragmented You might see a bit of it on social or you might see a bit of it on YouTube or you might you know you might get some of it in in a fan mailing list or whatever but we really wanna

Brad Frost: [3:39] And it,

Sacha: [3:40] together

Brad Frost: [3:40] and it's, that's all labor and it's additional labor for artists that are, that are just like already buried and like you said, like having this, this uphill battle. And it's just like, left, right and center. Any attempt to carve out a viable living and, you know, actually do things in an authentic and sustainable way, just like the rug just continually gets pulled out from under them.

Sacha: [4:08] not

Brad Frost: [4:08] And it's,

Sacha: [4:09] anyone Now you know it's not working for artists obviously it hasn't been for a long time but it's also now not working for labels it's not working for

Brad Frost: [4:16] Yeah.

Sacha: [4:17] know it's discovery is becoming impossible Um you know the the flood of AI generated music is making it impossible Like just everything about it is kind of wrong But I think the other thing is You know there's a real push online to talk about that return to analog And uh you know I wrote a newsletter recently about distinction that I am trying to articulate because I think a real tendency to sort of push back and go oh I'm just gonna get offline I'm gonna stop using my phone I'm gonna return to touching grass and and the physical world and listen to vinyl and whatever And and I really appreciate that instinct but I don't think that it's It's necessarily the right answer cause I I think that the problem is not that something is digital it's that we are consuming everything online in this constant algorithmic feed of you know this fire

Brad Frost: [5:08] Yes,

Sacha: [5:09] of content And so in that piece I was trying to articulate a different distinction which for me is the difference between feed and q and I think things that you put in your queue which might be a long form article that you bookmark or it might be an audio book that you've been meaning to listen to or a

Brad Frost: [5:26] Yeah.

Sacha: [5:26] podcast or whatever Those can be slow intentional experiences Um and so for me the distinction isn't between digital and analog It's between feed and queue It's like the things that are being thrown at me versus the things that I have chosen to experience

Brad Frost: [5:46] that. that distinction that, that kind of feed versus q, the difference, the biggest difference between that is like an intentionality I am. In control of my cue, and I am wanting and willing and hoping to, to watch this video or to listen to this song. And I am like, like intentionally making decisions versus like you said, the fire hose to the face of just like, we're just getting blasted by this potpourri of just everything with literally no, no intention, no nothing. It's just literally random crap. Yeah.

Sacha: [6:27] A real content whiplash right Because you're seeing a war crime followed by a reality TV final followed

Brad Frost: [6:34] Yes,

Sacha: [6:35] show followed by a protest And it's like our brains can't weren't built We weren't built for that

Brad Frost: [6:42] Yeah. ha ha ha ha. Holy shit. I've talked about it a a bit before and it's just like when you zoom out at this phenomenon that is now what is literally like how hours upon hours of most human beings are spending. Part of their day, which is, that's depressing in its own right. what in that world is that doing to us, like psychologically like that is, that is not healthy. And to think that it, it had in any way that was intentionally designed, which they were like, that's the, these, these products made their way out into the world. Like there's, there's professional designers who I've spent a long time creating this. It's, it's truly baffling to me that if you were to just like kind of. Take a step back, and I do wanna talk to you about this a little bit. It's like your, your history of kind of the world of online spaces and how it's kind of progressed and how we've gotten to this moment, and then what we ought to do about it.

Sacha: [7:48] our corporate landlords have a lot to answer for in that sense You know this has come about because platforms focused on engagement and

Brad Frost: [7:57] Yep.

Sacha: [7:57] is engagement and they wanna keep us still and scrolling And know I think I think a lot of that is about how these companies were established and funded So there's

Brad Frost: [8:06] Yeah,

Sacha: [8:07] sort of capitalist underpinning to that I think the venture capital funding model rewards growth at all costs

Brad Frost: [8:13] yeah,

Sacha: [8:14] um that the the way that you achieve Hypersonic growth is is through using these kind of dark patterns So you know we can see how we got here

Brad Frost: [8:26] yeah.

Sacha: [8:27] but I think it's it's not working for anyone I don't think you meet anyone who's like yeah I love to discover that I lost an hour scrolling on

Brad Frost: [8:36] Yeah. but, but you, you, you touched on something though, like, like right out of the gate in talking about sort of like startups and I, I thought that that was like a really fascinating thing is just like talking about like positivity and hope and an optimism. But I think that there's, there's also something that you're really sort of touching on and I think I, I really like admire in you in that like there's a real responsibility and intentionality and like good values and good like kind of community driven values that isn't just about like hope and optimism. It's like cause what we've seen play out with, with the social media landscape and, and the internet landscape is like those people had plenty of hope and optimism for the hockey stick, right? Like for the hockey stick, for that, for that infinite growth, for that hypersonic growth or whatever. So it's like, what are you actually like. Trying to like direct your hope and optimism at,

Sacha: [9:33] yeah that's a useful distinction cause I think particularly at this moment when AI is making uh much more trivial I think that the the bros chasing the hockey stick everywhere now You know like as a as a sort of shorthand for people who it used it used to be a mantra in startup life that ideas were easy and execution was hard right Like that that it was very simple to come up with your brand new app idea but actually building something that was useful and that people wanted and whatever was the complicated bit And and I think we're seeing a little bit of an inversion now because of course um anyone can throw a prompt at code and lovable and whatever and have something up very quickly setting aside the Ethics and the environmental impact and the you know war profiteering and everything that goes with it But execution has become more straightforward And um I think that that means that what's going to should be the focus in the next phase is okay well anyone could build something So what's behind it Like what's who are the team and what do they care about And what is their domain expertise And do they deeply understand this idea and the people that they're building it for And um I think when startups can become a dime a dozen some slightly different um levers are gonna come into play yeah there's there's gonna be new kinds of disruption I think

Brad Frost: [11:04] yeah, yeah. Just a hard agree on all those fronts, and I think that it's like my hope and optimism is that exactly what you're describing, like when all of this just becomes just so, so noisy, so whatever that, that, you know, we're going to be flooded with everything we're all, I think, collectively at a human level looking for human real, authentic. Good things to, to, to latch onto. They are like really, like going to be like the, the, the life raft in an ocean of very, very, very noisy, competing like slop.

Sacha: [11:45] I've been writing a lot over the last year about what discovery looks like in a post search era because we know that that search is broken now You know like at its most simple level if you want to buy a new Kettle You can't um just search best kettles on Google because the first like 30 pages will be AI slop and so we have to return to a human element And I've been doing

Brad Frost: [12:13] Yeah.

Sacha: [12:14] of interviews on my newsletter called Curating the Curators where I've been talking to people who write curation based newsletters or or blogs or sites because there's something really interesting to me about the of of the newsletter Not so much in the people pumping out their hot takes but the people who we subscribe to or we follow because we trust that they're gonna bring together Curate an interesting series of links or articles or

Brad Frost: [12:42] Yeah.

Sacha: [12:42] thoughts on a topic And that to me is really reminiscent of the early web Um because those of us who are decrepit and ancient remember the web before search engines And in that era we relied on human curation You know Justin's hot links from the underground was how we found things And I think in this next phase where the sheer tidal wave of slop that we have to wade through some people are relying on LMS to tell em and without

Brad Frost: [13:16] Mm-hmm.

Sacha: [13:18] the limitations of that and other people myself included are like let's get back to a more human centered

Brad Frost: [13:25] Yeah.

Sacha: [13:26] where we relied on people to um to do that labor and to share their Their journeys and where

Brad Frost: [13:35] Yeah.

Sacha: [13:36] And and so yeah I've been spending a lot of time over the last year writing about some of this stuff You know like the dark forest theory of the internet the digital gardens like all of this kind of what does it look like when we have to go exploring again um because it's not easy to find things And how do we share those journeys with other people How do we share more of our work in progress sort of re fostering that sense that the internet is a kind of limitless place but it doesn't have to be a limitless place full of crap

Brad Frost: [14:08] This might seem like a very weird follow up question to all of this, but where are you based and what's your go-to Thai restaurant?

Sacha: [14:16] Ah I'm based in Auckland in Ero New Zealand my go-to Thai restaurant is uh an Uber Eats place that delivers an incredible uh pineapple fried rice which is one of my comfort foods I dunno why I just love it I drink COVID I had to learn how to make authentic pineapple fried rice myself because I couldn't get

Brad Frost: [14:39] I, they weren't,

Sacha: [14:39] Um yeah well we

Brad Frost: [14:41] what's it called?

Sacha: [14:42] time we couldn't

Brad Frost: [14:43] Or do you just like, have it on like speed dial?

Sacha: [14:46] Ooh I've got it on speed dial

Brad Frost: [14:47] This is good. Well, we could, we could find out if they, uh, deliver to, uh, outside of New Zealand. Outside of Auckland. it's that, that question is like the, the thing that I've been kind of picking at just. not that one specifically, but, but that, the spirit of that, right. Of like the, I feel like Thai food and I think that like, as you know, and how do we find that today? Well, we bust out either the Uber Eats and we're like looking just my eyes, just go straight to the how many reviews and how many, like five star what things like, it's, it's total like blindness to everything else. It's like, oh good, this one seems popular and

Sacha: [15:25] is a terrible example right Because we know that it's it's not paying the restaurants properly

Brad Frost: [15:31] yeah,

Sacha: [15:32] the growth of Ghost Kitchens where you think that you are ordering from a place that you know and you're

Brad Frost: [15:36] yeah,

Sacha: [15:37] from some sort of

Brad Frost: [15:38] yeah.

Sacha: [15:39] you know so

Brad Frost: [15:40] But even like Google, even like Google Maps and like other things, you got like the sponsor results and stuff is like, and at the end of the day though, I, I, I think that like as our ability to trust. Those results. Again, just even pre pre ai, like the sponsored results, it's like crowded everything out. It's like, how do we get to like you?

Sacha: [16:03] Reddit is going through a renaissance at the moment because Reddit has become one of the few human places

Brad Frost: [16:12] Yep,

Sacha: [16:12] to find recommendations and and answers you know

Brad Frost: [16:16] yep,

Sacha: [16:17] um a Reddit thread will will now be often my first stop if I'm trying to work out why something doesn't work or what the best thing is or a a review of a product because I know that for all of its flaws Reddit is still a place with human people and human moderation

Brad Frost: [16:35] yep.

Sacha: [16:36] um long may that continue

Brad Frost: [16:39] Hell yeah. I've shared that, or, or, or sort of experienced that as well, where it's like, yeah, we're going like, to like seek for like, again, just like realness, like, and, and what realness is, is increasingly going to be a difficult question to, to answer. And so that's where it's like, it gets pretty philosophical, pretty quick. Gets into like, it's like, okay, I, I know that I am here talking to you and I don't know much else that could exist. I know it's raining outside. It's like, like we're literally like looking for things that we could latch onto and I could like just, all you need to do is just fast forward two years and I am utterly and completely terrified about our ability to even just kind of like process, like what's, what's real or not. So I think that these, these instincts to kind of like go to, to where humans are and to go like, okay, like I know. That other humans are real and this online avatar, we are gonna need to figure that thing out too. we understand it to be a problem. There's now like. Plenty of like research. There's that like even kind of within the companies and stuff themselves is like starting, you know, some semblance of acknowledgement of, of the harm, but there doesn't really seem to be like a whole lot of like answers or counter weight thrown around to, to change course.

Sacha: [18:06] but they are are small scale or local answers and I don't I don't think that that's necessarily wrong I think we didn't know what Twitter was when it came out right

Brad Frost: [18:19] Hmm.

Sacha: [18:20] when Twitter first emerged um it was like the apt to post your sandwich at lunchtime right It wasn't an apt to destroy democracy Um and so I think things will continue to emerge Twitter for its first few years was extremely niche Um you had to be a giant nerd to be on it I remember giving a I was a partner in a law firm at the time giving a presentation to my partners about why our firm should be on Twitter you know and it's like they didn't understand what it was and and so I think I think it's really easy to look now at this handful of platforms that we're stuck with as inevitable that this is all there is And you know there's never gonna be anything else We're just stuck with short form video everything apps Um but I don't think that's true And I think some of the optimism that I still feel is when I see smaller um efforts in new directions And and you know one of the things that gives me hope at the moment is what's going on with App Proto and Blue Sky and Black Sky and North Sky and and the uh various apps that are built on that um protocol leaflet and Tangled and and whatever And I think there's a tendency to dismiss those efforts and go yeah but you know nobody's there except the nerds And it's like well nobody's there except the nerds always in the beginning Um but something sort of fundamental is different there when it comes to your ability to control what it is that you are Um you know your ability to customize your own feeds and your own experience your ability to build things on top of that protocol that are genuinely decentralized and not in a Uh ferociously hard to understand mastodon sort of way and I think those kinds of sparks uh I think it's very easy to just be a downer about it and go oh yeah it's a little left wing echo chamber or it's you know it's never gonna be as big as Twitter I don't think we want anything as big

Brad Frost: [20:20] Yeah,

Sacha: [20:20] Again

Brad Frost: [20:22] that's right. That's right.

Sacha: [20:23] wrong with that and so I think the the bigger challenge is to reach people for whom the internet's been ruined because their experience is just terrible and they've just opted out

Brad Frost: [20:37] Yep.

Sacha: [20:38] and fair enough too

Brad Frost: [20:39] Yeah.

Sacha: [20:40] but to start to to start to sort of build those community neighborhoods again where you can start to share with people who share your interests or who are near you geographically or who care about the same community outreach or whatever those things are

Brad Frost: [20:57] Yeah.

Sacha: [20:57] um and build those healthy human scale spaces Again in the way that we used to have in weird had little Usenet groups or early live journal communities or whatever your experience of the early web used to be some guitar forum or or bodybuilder forum or whatever

Brad Frost: [21:18] the, what would happen if we put all of humanity in the same room to together and allowed everybody to just talk to everyone that that is proven out to be. But, and, and for very real, you know, kind of like evolutionary reasons, right? Uh, there's, you know, the idea of like Dunbar's number and like all this stuff where it's just like, yeah, we, our brains only have some, we have like an upper limit and sort of like how many like connections and relationships we could, we could handle. But also just the, our idea of, of in and out, you know, groups and tribes and, and the rest of it. It's like when we just short circuit all of that or put 'em all to the same room, it's not compatible with our, with just like our neural wiring after like, like many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many centuries of just evolving a certain way at a certain pace. the answer isn't necessarily the off switch, although absolutely there, there can and should be more of a, a return in, in a blend of the physical and visual world and, and that those aren't mutually exclusive, but like digital stuff is good stuff. Like there's a lot there. It just requires like the right type of design, the right kind of of foundations the right kind of values in place to, to, to make it so,

Sacha: [22:36] even with the right value system in place like I gave a talk in at Beyond

Brad Frost: [22:41] Mm.

Sacha: [22:41] couple years ago called Everything Breaks At Scale And and my thesis in that was like best Will in the world like scale is just a terrible thing to happen to you because uh anything that happens fast and at that Those sizes you know is is gonna produce these results Like we just can't So you know you see a company like WeWork grow from sort of 10 people in a office to tens of thousands of employees at a festival style retreat and you go of course that fell apart How can you

Brad Frost: [23:18] Yeah.

Sacha: [23:18] can you build a company that quickly that large with good HR and good leveling and good

Brad Frost: [23:24] Yeah.

Sacha: [23:24] culture and good like no you see the same thing in the growth of megachurches for example You with ultimately great values but Fast growth heaps of people you know nobody's got an eye on culture Nobody's got an eye on whether people are being protected and supported So so I think I think obviously values are important but I think scale does something irreparable that that just kind of poisons whatever it is you're trying to do

Brad Frost: [23:56] As, as you're saying this, you're the, the fact that you're in New Zealand becomes very apparent and I, 'cause I feel, I feel, I feel like, like New Zealand maybe.

Sacha: [24:08] syndrome

Brad Frost: [24:09] Well, no, no, but my understanding is that because of New Zealand's just location history of the, the whole nine yards ecology. There's like kind of an attitude towards like, there's, there's a finitude to You can't explode your population to like billions upon billions of people. Like you, you can't like do I've always understood you all to like have to care more about sort of, uh, sustainability and, and like what you are allowing in, and there there's just like a little bit more like thought to it just because of like the, the nature of in shape of your country. I don't know. Is that, is that wrong? Is that, or is that, or I, I, I might be wildly off the mark there, but.

Sacha: [24:58] is I think there is something to that I think our isolation and our distance and our population size does probably put some sort of different fences around what we do And I think probably we saw that most keenly during COVID um when we took a different approach to everywhere else in the world Um pretty much so so yeah I think I think there is something to that hypergrowth is something that um is a pretty recent phenomenon The idea that you can be global from day one which is a a phrase that gets kicked around here a lot It's like if you're gonna build a company in New Zealand there's no point in building it for the New Zealand market cause the New Zealand market's too small So you have to build something that's capable of of being global right from the start And I think there's um some pluses and minuses with that as we've discovered You know

Brad Frost: [25:51] Yeah.

Sacha: [25:52] maybe maybe we don't wanna build things that are global from day one

Brad Frost: [25:55] Right.

Sacha: [25:56] want to build things that that work on smaller scales and uh for specific communities or um for specific purposes rather than trying to be everything to everyone And and I think you know when you think about design choices I wrote a piece last year about the the design of the Everything app because I feel like the even just the look and feel of our platform apps they're becoming indistinguishable You know like if you look at the front page of your Spotify app it's um audio books podcasts video podcasts they're now moving into selling physical books It's like the the reason you went there Which was music you loved is increasingly buried under a torrent of other things Substack the same You know like a platform that begins as a place for independent writers is now video content um social media style short form posts Now they've got Substack tv is what a chat show You know like it's um and so they the motivation to keep everyone on your app for as long as possible

Brad Frost: [27:07] Yes.

Sacha: [27:08] of produces this b b the apps so that that they're they're all the same

Brad Frost: [27:14] Yeah.

Sacha: [27:14] you know I I don't think that's what we want We want to you know there's a reason that we resist chain experiences chain restaurants or chain bars except when we need sort of know the the reliability of knowing that a Big Mac tastes more or less the same everywhere and the reason we resist that is because we want personalized experiences You know we want we

Brad Frost: [27:37] Yeah.

Sacha: [27:38] neighborhood feel or a local feel or a great pineapple fried rice You know like we

Brad Frost: [27:43] Yeah,

Sacha: [27:44] don't want it to feel the same everywhere

Brad Frost: [27:47] yeah. I, I, and I love, I love that corollary, like to the physical world. One of my, my favorite articles of all times written by my, my friend Rachel Andrew called, that, called The Small Shops of the Web or something to, to that nature. And at the time she was working on like, kind of like a small scale content management system that was like a, you know, a, a a paid thing. she describes this, that street right with those local restaurants, so with the local butchered, with like the local bookseller and with like that, the, the local butcher doesn't wanna scale to become also a bookseller all of a sudden, oh, by the way, like here and, and here's our. Yeah. Here's our, our suite of, of barbecue gear. And, and it's like, no, how about, how about we all just like coexist? And it, it, it gets, it gets, I think like what you're touching on are like kind of two things that are, that are, are front of mind for me is just like a wholesale rethinking about growth in general as like a desirable thing. growth versus sustainability. Like, like, we wanna sustain the local butcher shops. We wanna sustain the local bookshops. And yes, there needs to be like enough of a, you know, money coming in to keep those lights on. But like the, growth isn't good in that case, right? Like, we want, we wanna sustain that like healthy. And then there's also this, this idea of competition versus collaboration. And I, I can't. Stress enough? Just like, like how unhealthy I see. Like any, really as time goes on, aside from like sports, I like, competition is so incredibly awful when it comes to doing things that are meant to, like we are all the recipients of people competing against each other, countries competing against each other. It's companies competing against each other we all get a shit experience as a result of it. So it's like we need to figure out right quick how to start actually like collaborating with one another to realize, oh yeah, like maybe I shouldn't. Be the bookseller and I should like, we should figure out how to like, kind of feed one another. And that's what you see with like a vibrant main street. Like that has the things like, yeah, you go to that street and you're gonna wander up and down the street and you're gonna have a charming experience, a diverse experience. And it's the entirety of that charming main street, not one particular shop that is like, that is contributing to, to the charm and to the, to the, to the ecosystem.

Sacha: [30:25] to continue that that physical world analogy you know those vibrant neighborhoods don't happen by accident

Brad Frost: [30:30] Yes.

Sacha: [30:31] a whole bunch of infrastructure that underpins a great neighborhood and

Brad Frost: [30:35] Right.

Sacha: [30:36] requires human centered governance It it requires sort of long term thinking It requires a whole bunch of stuff And so when you pull that analogy back into the digital world um that's when people sort of go it's too hard Like you can't you can't fix it now like the genie's out the bottle This is just what we're stuck with

Brad Frost: [30:55] Yeah.

Sacha: [30:56] I refuse to believe that because you know I often quote Molly White when she talks about how the internet is still outside the walls And um that was one of the most helpful sort of things I I think for me to understand is that we've come to accept this handful of wall gardens that we're all living in now but the web is infinite Like it just it's out there and we can build whatever spaces we like We can um make whatever communities we can throw up whatever infrastructure And as we were saying earlier that that's becoming uh easier not harder

Brad Frost: [31:34] Yep.

Sacha: [31:35] and and I think the What we have to change attitudinally is this tendency to go well but I have to build something that that's for everyone Or I have to you know this is only a success if it's the next Twitter or the next TikTok and it's like no the success will be dozens hundreds thousands of great healthy neighborhoods not

Brad Frost: [31:59] Yeah.

Sacha: [31:59] giant city again

Brad Frost: [32:01] Yeah. No, I, I couldn't agree more. I think that that's, that's like really beautiful and most of these places have been built as like basic human or, or like kind of communication protocols or with that idea of, it's like, ah, yes, we want like literally everyone to be using it because of the aspirations of scale or whatever. But it's like there's, there's, there's something intentionally, deliberately small, right? This is for New Zealand only.

Sacha: [32:33] It's a focus right Like who is it for And

Brad Frost: [32:36] Yeah,

Sacha: [32:37] somewhere along the way like you used to talk about product development and user personas and whatever and you knew specifically who you were building for

Brad Frost: [32:47] yeah,

Sacha: [32:47] along the line the goal became well it has to work for everyone And it's like we we know that it can't so I think it's also about focus It's about coming back and saying who is this for And you know

Brad Frost: [32:57] yeah.

Sacha: [32:58] when when while we've been building Lume you know we have to keep focusing on the fact that this is for a a subset of people This is for music lovers who want to sit down and immerse themselves in an album's experience It's not for everyone And um you know 80 90 of people will continue to put on a Spotify playlist in the background and be perfectly content do that you know like

Brad Frost: [33:27] Yeah.

Sacha: [33:28] summer afternoon and you chuck on aha lounge tracks whatever because all you're looking for is that background music and you're not sitting down to immerse yourself in an artist's work so maintaining that rigid focus like who is this for I think is really key And and along the way we sort of decided that you know it had to be for everyone and you just you can't build that way and the the products that come out the other side of that process are don't work for anyone

Brad Frost: [33:56] like, as you're talking about, like music, it's like, oh, like you're, you're building a product that is, that is a kind of a representation of what actual music is most successful. Music, successful in the sense that successful music is something that I feel like is, is a true reflection of, true expression of the human beings who created it. Not, not commercially successful, not like, like anything like that, the goal with that, the goal is truth. The goal is is authentic expression versus, is me adding that quaver to my voice, gonna sell some more copies. The thing like, that's not, that's not it. Yeah.

Sacha: [34:37] Last night I was lucky enough to go and hear a New Zealand musician Julia Deans perform her new album through for the first time And it's uh I guess it'll be out by the time this drops And it's about her journey with cancer and it is an incredibly personal moving album that is telling a story of a really difficult time in her life And you know there's there's nothing more real than that And I think

Brad Frost: [35:08] Yeah.

Sacha: [35:08] of the things that frustrates me a little bit about I mean I spend all my time writing and thinking about Fans and fandom and online fan communities And one of the tendencies that that frustrates me at the moment is fans trying to dig into what is the song about you know like who who is this song about Or what's this you know like which of Taylor Swift's exes is this song about Or you know who is Harry Styles dating based on this on this song And it's like it's not a it's not for us to decode The artist has made something that they're sharing with you It's not a Rosetta Stone for you

Brad Frost: [35:45] Yeah.

Sacha: [35:46] um greater access to their personal life

Brad Frost: [35:49] there's something psychologically that like drives people or compels people to it is like, Ooh, I like this and I feel like I need to like. Get closer to it, or I need to, like, it's like, how do I go deeper into this thing that like, resonates with me, right? It's like, it's like something, something draws them in and attracts them to Taylor Swift, Terry Styles, or, or really anyone. and then it's like, I got, I gotta get closer. Like, I, I don't know, like, is it, is what drives that stuff or is it, I don't know, something else?

Sacha: [36:22] Yeah I think I think there's a few things There's the parasocial aspect of I wanna know this person or I feel like I know this person um

Brad Frost: [36:30] Hmm.

Sacha: [36:31] art or or through their creativity And so you know I wanna know more they're like my best friend and so I want to sort of

Brad Frost: [36:38] sure.

Sacha: [36:38] them

Brad Frost: [36:39] Sure. I.

Sacha: [36:40] there's also something that's happening over the last sort of decade with um uh I I speak a bit about the the impact of conspiracy thinking on pop culture and celebrity spaces And I think there's there's something that goes on where people feel like there's a a puzzle or a mystery to solve There's signs and signals to to be decoded I used to think that that was kind of cute and harmless I now think it's a bit of an on-ramp to much more dangerous thinking But in celebrity spaces it sort of takes the form of um that paparazzi photos are always staged or that um you know relationships are for PR or you know like this kind of and there's there's aspects of that that are sort of fun or funny where you go oh was Beyonce ever really pregnant Or you know like that sort of that's that feels harmless but actually takes on quite a dark Undertone And I think there are some artists who lean into that deliberately And Taylor Swift's a a great example She loves to hide Easter eggs for her fans and you know like sort of drop signals about what's coming And and she knows that they love that but that that I think that then drives like a a really intrusive Mode for some people who are like well she's secretly gay and she's trying to signal that to us by using the color lavender And uh you you know like it's sort of that that piece um plays into something which I think is quite a human response We love mysteries and we

Brad Frost: [38:10] Sure.

Sacha: [38:11] solving And in celebrity spaces you know there's this mode of gossip called celebrity blind items or blind items And so you'll often see um posts that are like which a-list celebrity was seen making out with a you know Euro pop star after the Golden Globes And uh and people are always trying to solve blind items and work out who who it is that they're talking about And we love

Brad Frost: [38:36] Yeah,

Sacha: [38:37] little brain brain tickle but they're also uh An on ramp to starting to think that everything we see is staged or fake or for PR or and and it's not a it's not a long leap to then getting into some of the more complex conspiracy thinking which leads us down anti-vax and Q anon and much more complicated political kind of roots

Brad Frost: [39:03] Well, I'm sure that AI is going to fix all of this, so

Sacha: [39:07] Oh

Brad Frost: [39:07] we have nothing to,

Sacha: [39:08] We have nothing to fear unable to

Brad Frost: [39:10] but

Sacha: [39:10] anything is real or fake

Brad Frost: [39:12] it's like those things, like, uh, it's always weird to be like, oh yeah, when it comes to that like celebrity culture, it's like, oh, poor Taylor Swift. And like, people are like, ha ha ha. And it's like, no. Like, man, that's a, that's a hard life. But also they're, they're kind of like the canaries in the coal mine for what's kind of coming for us all, which is again, this, this very real like, here's the thing, deep fake, like if you could just like snap your fingers, especially whatever it's like. You don't have the, the eyeballs of, of these like mega celebrities and instead it's just like neighbor trying to slander neighbor or student trying to bully, you know, cyber bully or like whatever, or stage something or whatever. It's like again that, that that ease of creation as going down to next to nothing. To the point where any one of us could just, you know, prompt a thing and, and end up with something in the ballpark and fast forward a year or two, whenever it's just like no noticeable differences in in the fidelity.

Sacha: [40:14] and and I think that works both ways right Because we're also gonna see people who have done things wrong claiming that the evidence of their misdeeds is fake as well You

Brad Frost: [40:24] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sacha: [40:25] only we're we're not far from people saying no I wasn't in the Epstein files It was a deep fake So

Brad Frost: [40:30] Yeah.

Sacha: [40:31] like there's there's obviously there's a lot of danger that underpins all of that And I don't know what the right answer is I think we are seeing some promising signs around digital literacy uh coming out of Finland Finland is a always a great place to start I dunno what it is about the fins but they they seem to have it under control Um but they they're having real success in their um schooling programs with teaching kids from the youngest age to start to understand um what they're being fed and why And and

Brad Frost: [41:08] Yeah.

Sacha: [41:08] and I think the the rest of the world just needs to catch up in terms

Brad Frost: [41:12] Yeah,

Sacha: [41:12] of

Brad Frost: [41:13] yeah.

Sacha: [41:13] that kind of teaching kids defense against the dark arts And and unfortunately the Western response at the moment seems to be well why don't we just ban kids from using the internet

Brad Frost: [41:24] Yeah.

Sacha: [41:24] is a terrible idea

Brad Frost: [41:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sacha: [41:28] you know it's gonna take a little bit to to get past that panic that's going on at the

Brad Frost: [41:35] Mm-hmm.

Sacha: [41:35] Um and for people to realize that age gating the internet only affects It

Brad Frost: [41:41] Uh,

Sacha: [41:41] affect kids Um and for a few large scale data hacks to reveal everybody's uh personal information signed up for porn sites and then maybe the pendulum will swing back the

Brad Frost: [41:52] yeah.

Sacha: [41:53] we'll see

Brad Frost: [41:54] yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it's like, that's like kind of like a through line of our conversation so far as like the, the answer isn't necessarily just like, things are bad, we need to hit the off switch, and it's like that's one impossible

Sacha: [42:09] Yeah

Brad Frost: [42:09] a lot of respects. It's like, there, there's obviously you have like personal agency just as in like, Carry a lot of this stuff over to things like the decision to, to be vegan or not. Uh, for instance, it's like plenty of amazing reasons to be vegan, but to just be like, everyone just needs to be vegan. And then like, we'll, we'll get out of this. It's like, dude, like that's a great idea. And it's like, and best of luck to you trying to, to convince the, the world, but like, as at a personal level, sure. If you wanna like throw your phone into the ocean and go back to the earth, good on you and you'll probably be healthier probably. But at the same time, that's not feasible at a societal sort of scale. It's like, like the, the,

Sacha: [42:52] scale And also I think it it gives up on the amazing things that

Brad Frost: [42:58] yes. Yeah.

Sacha: [42:59] being online So you know I'm not I find zealots the only touch grass mantra annoying cause I'm like

Brad Frost: [43:09] Yeah.

Sacha: [43:09] Your screen time is 30 minutes a day when you allow yourself Good on you but I still think you're missing out do I have to work harder to consume the internet in a healthy and ethical and and fabulous way Sure

Brad Frost: [43:26] Yeah.

Sacha: [43:26] I see lots of things we could improve to make that easier for people Absolutely But I'm not giving up on it I I

Brad Frost: [43:32] Uh,

Sacha: [43:33] experience so much joy and connection and um curiosity and I learn so much every day Um that that I think uh turning your back on it is not the answer

Brad Frost: [43:45] I, I couldn't agree more. And I love how you said it earlier. It's like those, those, those early years in building block years of, of the web as people were first getting online, figuring out what it's all for. the, the literal like principles that the worldwide web was founded on and the fact that it was founded through, you know, CERN and not through like a, a commercial entity, although there's plenty of stuff like around that, whatever. But it's like this stuff is built at a bedrock level. The web is on like some of the, the loftiest and most hopeful and optimistic and beautiful, I think i I ideals and values that, humanity can aspire to

Sacha: [44:24] And I

Brad Frost: [44:24] and.

Sacha: [44:24] one of the biggest challenges with behavior change in this way is you we were both in Berlin at the end of last year and and one of the things I did at that conference was interview my good friend Lucy Blackstone who runs um the Gen Z media uh empire Shit you should care about one of the things that that was new to me in that conversation she and I obviously talk about being online all the time her pointing out that for those of us who remember the early web can see a path forward something different because we remember what it was like But for her

Brad Frost: [44:57] Yeah.

Sacha: [44:57] who have grown up entirely on platforms that doesn't form part of their foundation they've only

Brad Frost: [45:03] Yep.

Sacha: [45:04] platform life her skepticism That she could ever convince you know her generation to want to try something different because they don't know it And I I

Brad Frost: [45:16] Yeah.

Sacha: [45:16] that to me is a really interesting challenge Like remain optimistic about the possibility of the web because I remember a different web and

Brad Frost: [45:24] Yes.

Sacha: [45:25] say remember rather than long for because it had its own set of flaws You know it was small and homogenous and hard to get around and you know like it's I'm not utopian

Brad Frost: [45:38] Yeah.

Sacha: [45:38] early web at

Brad Frost: [45:39] Yep,

Sacha: [45:39] but I am utopian about its possibility right And

Brad Frost: [45:42] Yes,

Sacha: [45:43] think um the more interesting challenges what does it look like to show that possibility to a generation who ha who doesn't remember it

Brad Frost: [45:52] yes.

Sacha: [45:53] um who hasn't experienced it

Brad Frost: [45:55] yep.

Sacha: [45:55] um and kind of get them excited about the possibilities again

Brad Frost: [46:01] Yeah. Uh, that's, it's so amazing and, and those, those kind of generational divides are, are really truly fascinating. And that's going to become, I think, more pronounced, which really does put a lot of responsibility, but also again, like, kind of provides that opportunity. It's like, oh yeah. The, the needs of production are coming down. We've been on this ride for a long time. We've seen the, the, the good aspects, the good qualities, the good affordances of a lot of these things. a lot of times misused and gone wayward or built using the wrong things and stuff. And it's like, there is kind of like that Yeah. Taking that and it's not nostalgia. It's like, it's the real, like, like we, we got, we got like a front row seat to sort of see what that like connection can, like, look like. Before we all kind of, put everybody in the room and it all just went, went bonkers. I think you're, you're hinting at it with your, your work that you're doing now, but also just like kind of what needs to happen to show these, these younger generations that it is possible and it, it, like it needs to exist. People see, you know, that, that seeing and that experiential part of it I think is like really, really necessary to show people

Sacha: [47:20] I think to learn better lessons from the history of the internet I

Brad Frost: [47:25] Yeah.

Sacha: [47:25] I'm writing a nonfiction book at the moment and it's a history of the internet through the lens of um online fan communities And that book is about um the women and queer people who To my mind are the power users of the internet over its history who built these fan spaces who um came up with some of the earliest forms of uh self-governance of tagging of content moderation of all of these sort of things that um they created out of whole cloth uh to make these spaces healthy

Brad Frost: [48:07] Yeah.

Sacha: [48:07] and and workable for large groups of people And um and that that's an untold history because we like to tell the stories of Silicon Valley bros who Chased scale and made millions And it's like can't learn the right lessons from those histories Um and so I think I think also going back and sort of digging into the the stories of you know what happened in the early muds and moves around governance and conflict and how people work those things through what happened in um early Usenet groups around how you signaled content in a subject line when something was essentially a list serve Um going back to the first fan archives and how people thought about preservation and tagging and taxonomies and um and all of those things are like crucial underpinnings of what good healthy online spaces

Brad Frost: [49:08] Yeah.

Sacha: [49:09] like Um and instead we have pursued this sort of revisionist history of the internet which is Iconoclast who are a trip to Mars

Brad Frost: [49:23] I love it. I love it. Yeah. It's like, you're kind of exposing, it's like here's all the, the sort of unsung heroes that have really kind of put a lot of the foundational pieces for like a, a durable caring human web. Like a way, a way to sort of like foster and, and build community and sustain it versus the, the, yeah, I'm going to win, I'm going to compete, I'm going to, I'm going to go to Mars. you've been pointed in that direction for a while. Like when you felt like, you're like, uh, this needs to be in a book format.

Sacha: [49:56] Great question Um so my my online journey has always been in transformative fan spaces And uh for your listeners who aren't necessarily familiar with that um that's fans who are engaged with um acts of creation around the things that they love So fan

Brad Frost: [50:13] Yeah.

Sacha: [50:13] art people who um aren't just consuming content but creating off the back of it and transforming it in some way that was where I started on the internet like when I first came online which was early by um this standards of this country uh 93 94 the first thing I wanted to do was find other people who were interested in the same things that I was And so you know the the first spaces where I set up home were fan communities And at that stage I was obsessed with the XFiles So I was in Alt tv XFiles and then I discovered that there was alt TV X Files where people were you know writing their own case files and stories And and that's where I fell in love with that whole side of the internet And I've been there ever since And I you know I've gone through all of the major technological migrations that fans have undergone So you know from those Usenet groups to Yahoo Mailing lists Yahoo Groups then into live journal um then into Tumblr then into social the social media era um and so on and so forth And That's always been my internet journey and one of the things that I um have found frustrating but instructive over the years is that it's pretty recent phenomenon for people to do fandom on Maine right Like we've only I guess one of the upsides of everybody existing on the same five platforms is that people have started to talk about their fanish and obsessions and the things that they're into much more publicly and in a more mainstream way But for a long time it was incredibly taboo Like you didn't you didn't talk about the things you're obsessed with And I don't just mean you know TV shows but movies or or musicians or whatever it was that was something that you did in private uh usually under a pseudonym and it was you know it was just not something that you associated with your real government name and face And

Brad Frost: [52:13] Yeah.

Sacha: [52:13] that's a that's a new phenomenon And I was a lawyer so there was no way that I was gonna talk about these sorts of things because it was deeply unprofessional and uncool and you know like I I couldn't uh and when I stopped being a lawyer Which is like 10 years ago now I went to set up a and run a family office for a New Zealand investor but my job was he didn't mind what else I was doing with my life And so I started to write and speak at conferences about this intersection fandom and technology And and the reason I was doing that was because I felt like the very first talk I ever gave at a a tech conference um went sort of weirdly viral and it was called how the tech sector could move in one direction And it was about at that stage this was back in 20 15 20 16 we in tech we were obsessed with the pipeline problem Like where are all the young women in stem Um you know the reason these companies are full of Betty White dudes no offense is because you know we can't encourage young women to to study STEM subjects or whatever we now know that that was not The problem but at the time that was sort of diagnosed as being the problem And I gave this talk about how part of the reason that we couldn't find the young women in STEM was because we taught them that what they were doing online was embarrassing And in actual fact you know hundreds of thousands of young women were glued to their computers 24 7 and they were teaching themselves to be community managers and video editors and they were making GIF sets and they were designing websites and they were doing all of the things that had they been young men doing it in pursuit of I don't know knocking out their first app would've got them hired at Google But because they were doing it in service of uh boy band that we'd taught them was something that they shouldn't confess to in their day-to-day lives Then you know off the back of that I've sort of been writing and speaking about this intersection for a long time now because I feel like fan communities are often the places where I can see Either the roadmap ahead for where we should be going that we've overlooked or forgotten or where I can see some of the things that are breaking So you know the clash between curatorial or gatekeeping fans around things like the Marvel cinematic universe versus transformative fans You know fans that don't wanna see new fans into F1 or or ice hockey because they don't consider them to be true fans if they're there because they liked a TV show Uh all of that sort of clash I think is teaches us something really instructive about online life And and so yeah after talking about it and writing about it for so long I was like this is a book I don't know if it will get to be a book My agents are are still in the process of trying to find a publisher for it but um hopefully

Brad Frost: [55:03] that's amazing, but like, holy crap, what a journey and like it's like a deeply personal one, but also just like, it, that feels like, like a real through line where it's like you'd like deeply understand the, this culture that that sort of anchors you as the, the landscape itself kind of keeps morphing and changing. You're able to sort of like see. riding this, this, this kind of through line and you're able to sort of like deduce Yeah. Like, like you said, like what's working, what's falling apart? Like how, I'm sure how like the affordances of the platforms work or not, or, yeah.

Sacha: [55:39] And community is at the heart of that And I think it doesn't matter how you experience it Like I for me it's been fandom but but um as humans we crave community Like that's just that's human nature We're built that way And and I think that what fandom has helped me to see as we've moved through the areas of the internet is the way that those tools and platforms and companies have served and have failed community at its at its broadest level right And so it's a it's a pretty base human need I think we you know it's been 20 plus years since Putnam wrote bowling alone but that sort of struggled to work out what we lost when we lost small scale human scale you know neighborhoods where everybody knew each other's needs and and knew how to support one another And I I you know I think we're seeing the rise of that again with mutual aid Um I think at this moment in the United States particularly some of the the stories coming out of Minnesota of communities coming together to um just really stand up for and support one another in just the most straightforward ways you know

Brad Frost: [56:51] Yep.

Sacha: [56:51] and paying rent and and it's awful that it has to come out of you know such a horrifying set of circumstances But it's like we are wired that way We're wired that

Brad Frost: [57:00] Yes.

Sacha: [57:01] And and so as I think about online structure and I think about platforms and tools and so on I'm always community's always in the the back of my head as I think about those things

Brad Frost: [57:11] it's beautiful and I think that you're, you're dead on in saying it's like, it, it shouldn't take human made or natural disasters for people to, to sort of like come to get to that point. And, and also it's like, what does it look like to design those more kind of like hopeful forward leaning and more kind of creative pursuits that, ripple effect, that creative ripple effect that. The web does such a good job at allowing for these flowers to bLume from other things. And through the lens of community where it's like, would people individually be sort of s scrolling, you know, their fan fiction about X-Files, like just for their own gratitude? Like I think what we might be innately, fundamentally wired to create, but I think it's, it's probably through the combination of creativity and community. It's that, that feedback loop. Can you, can you like, talk about that?

Sacha: [58:11] Yeah and that sort of collaboration and and riffing and and so on Like I used to love that phase in in the early tiktoks where someone would post themselves playing a piece of music and then someone would stitch it accompanying them and so on and so on and you'd get this kind of stacked experience and the video of you know seven or eight different people making that happen But to your point about the the validation I guess um I I think you're absolutely right in transformative fan communities it's not Like the the reason you're in that community is to both consume the things that other people are making because you're getting more of what you love And also to share what it is that you are making and hope that people like it And and you know the the system of kudos that a O three the main fan archive uses you know people are always like there's nothing lovelier than when I get up every day receiving a new email from a O three that just lists like all the the stories of mine that people have left kudos on or the comments that they've left And and that's a beautiful a beautiful experience And I think unfortunately like everything breaks at scale because it's a dopamine hit and when people realize that they can achieve that dopamine hit of getting likes and followers through um darker patterns that's how we wind up with with some of these uglier um behaviors And you know back to that sort of conspiracy point I think that's what keeps people in some of these more These darker community spaces is that they find community and they find validation and they find that dopamine hit um because they share their new theory that that I don't know Melania is a wax double or whatever and they circle a few pictures with red ms paint

Brad Frost: [59:56] Yeah, yeah,

Sacha: [59:56] and and people like it and they share it you know

Brad Frost: [59:59] yeah, yeah,

Sacha: [1:00:00] unfortunately the the same motivators work in both directions yeah I agree with you I think that ability to bring the thing that you've made to a community that will appreciate it um is so powerful And I think one of the dangers of uh everyone doing fandom on Maine is that we've lost those dedicated spaces where people felt safe to share these things and That that brings with it some real challenges So one of the things that I sort of push against is in fandom we have this concept of the fourth wall which is like don't show the stories that you've written or the art you've created to the actors or the show runners or whatever because it's not for them Like transformative fandom happens after they've made their

Brad Frost: [1:00:47] Mm.

Sacha: [1:00:48] And it's for a community that understands um what it's about and and its tropes and its um conventions and and whatever But of course the problem is now fandoms destroyed that fourth wall like everything's happening on TikTok Um HBO is hiring fan editors to make trailers and actors are constantly being asked about the fan fiction that's written about them and so on And we can kind of rail against that as much as we like but I think we've probably lost that battle

Brad Frost: [1:01:17] but maybe it's like, there, there's room for, it's like all of the above. I know that there's, it's in subway shape or form, it's like, yeah. It's, it gets fuzzy to the point where you, you will like dilute the, the, the purity of like the thing or the, or whatever. But at the same time, like there, there, there's something to pluralism as like a concept to kind of like lean into a little bit, which is just like, oh, okay. Like. We don't need to like necessarily like, agree on these things, that there's like a lot of room under some, some general umbrellas, I don't know, uh, maybe that's just I'm not a part of, of the fandom communities,

Sacha: [1:01:57] I think I think that's right I think it's just whenever you take something out of its context and put it up for public scrutiny that

Brad Frost: [1:02:06] right?

Sacha: [1:02:07] be and I think the problem with fandom is often it's held up as an object of ridicule or it's held up as a kind of

Brad Frost: [1:02:12] Yeah,

Sacha: [1:02:13] crazy people are doing you know

Brad Frost: [1:02:15] yeah, yeah. Sure,

Sacha: [1:02:16] I I think that's kind of the the fear and that's why fandom spaces were always retreats or or places where you

Brad Frost: [1:02:24] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sacha: [1:02:25] and I think those spaces remain important and it's one of the things that I hate about the social media bands for teens is the internet has always been a place for Um young people to explore questions of identity of you know whether that's sexual orientation or gender or even just the things that they like and are into And um and it's where they can find their communities which may not exist geographically locally in their school system Uh and the internet's always played a really important role in that And I think one of the huge dangers of saying well we just shouldn't let teens on social media is we're taking away that safe space for exploration and connection and where

Brad Frost: [1:03:11] Yeah.

Sacha: [1:03:12] good information and where they can find people who you know are are into the same things or asking the same questions and um that that's a real danger I think

Brad Frost: [1:03:22] Yeah, and it's, again, it's that, that knee jerk, like, just, just turn it off and, and maybe all this will like go away. And of course it won't. It's like, and kids are freaking resourceful and like, everyone in my life, it's like, it's like, oh yeah, everyone will like, find, find the ways. But, You think about the TikTok dances or you think about just the, the sheer effort and creative in intellectual and creative and technical skill that goes into sort of like putting things like videos together. Like I, I've been slinging a lot of videos and audio, so it is like, oh my God. Like these are like massive skills. Back to what you're talking about with like the, the gender divide. It's like, yeah, there's like this, this, this literacy, this fluency in these very technical and valuable mediums, and we're like using all of these things together to explore who we are, but also how we fit into the world.

Sacha: [1:04:19] yeah and I think that's one

Brad Frost: [1:04:21] Yeah,

Sacha: [1:04:21] of everyone being in the same place is that these young women are finally being recognized for what they're doing You know like they should be

Brad Frost: [1:04:29] Yeah.

Sacha: [1:04:30] HBO They're incredibly talented

Brad Frost: [1:04:33] Yeah. Yeah.

Sacha: [1:04:35] you know there's there's pluses and minuses

Brad Frost: [1:04:37] Amazing. Well, I, I, I mean, I think, I think that this is, this is great. I think that, like we've covered, it's like there's, the spirit of the web is still here, held in the hearts of the people who have been online for, for a long time. And there's a, there's a real challenge, but also a real opportunity to kind of like reclaim some of that real authentic, you know, community driven, like human led. Like deliberate, intentional, good, creative spaces and to carve that out maybe at scale, but probably not. And, and just, just looking for those opportunities to sort of like, not necessarily like, yeah, like hit, hit the off switch, but rather like, how do we educate, improve and, and kind of show a better way like that, that, that really, to me at least, like, kind of like that, that's my own personal instincts have kind of gone there. It's just like, it's one thing to just kind of, anybody could throw out some commentary. Like, yeah, this all sucks and there's a lot of validity to that commentary, but at the same time it's like, yeah, but like, what are we gonna do about it? It sounds like you're doing some really cool stuff, uh, with Lume and, and I'm excited to see. Where it goes. 'cause I, I, I, I love how you're describing it and like, kind of like reclaiming that, more holistic, more connected, more kind of just like human connection with the, the art and the artists. I, I think that that's like a really cool place to operate in. So I'm excited to see where you go with it.

Sacha: [1:06:18] Yeah More q less feed

Brad Frost: [1:06:20] More q less feed. I freaking love it. last question. The only other sort of structured question in, in the show is, uh, what music do you want more people to know about? Uh, you mentioned the artists you went and saw last night. Remind me her name again. Julia Deans. Yeah.

Sacha: [1:06:38] yeah what That's such a great question What music Um I think I would really like to recommend a New Zealand album it's called WTA Anthem I'll send you the link so that you can put it in your show notes But it was an album that was recorded here a couple of years ago and it's a whole lot of New Zealand artists all recording in Al Maori which is um our indigenous language And a lot of them had to learn uh the songs They weren't they're not native speakers Um and it's just a really really beautiful album and a beautiful expression of the language Um so yeah that'll be my recommendation

Brad Frost: [1:07:26] that's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, I, I'm very curious, just your description of, it's very, very intriguing, so I'm gonna have to give it a listen. So, yeah, definitely, uh, link that up here and we'll make sure to, to get it out there and putting, putting a playlist together of, of all of the stuff too. So, the real last question is like, where could people, go to find you, support you? Where, where do you wanna point people, direct people, uh, to where are you online?

Sacha: [1:07:53] Just come to my my website Sacha judd.com and you can sign up for my newsletter there which is called What We Love Matters It's free and every week you'll get a little essay from me about pop culture Harry Styles the internet space and it always finishes with a photo from my giant Lego city which I hope brings a little bit of joy to people's lives

Brad Frost: [1:08:19] Beautiful. Beautiful. Uh, amazing. Well, thank you Sacha so much for, for being on the show. And, uh, hopefully, uh, I'll, I'll meet up with you and we'll get some, uh, Uber Eats, uh, Thai food, uh, whenever I come visit you.

Sacha: [1:08:33] Thank

Brad Frost: [1:08:34] All right. Thanks very much.