During my first season at Saks, Vogue released an article titled “Fashion Week’s Coolest Street Style Stars are Behind-the-Scenes.” That piece marked the first time I laid eyes on Daphne Seybold. Although I had previously met her virtually while interning at V Magazine, and even made several trips to the Comme des Garçons office for pickups and drop-offs, I never managed to catch a glimpse of her in person. But there she was in the Vogue article, wearing what I can only assume was one of her many Comme des Garçons pieces. With one hand tucked casually in her pocket and the other tousling her hair, she exuded a serene aura, no doubt influenced by her idyllic surroundings.
One line from the piece that truly captivated me was her description of her signature style: "Katherine Hepburn à la Comme des Garçons. Oversized, layered, and easy, with vintage jewels from my mama, and always a flat: slippers, brogues, or creepers." The phrase 'Katherine Hepburn à la Comme des Garçons' immediately captivated me—how could I resist? I rarely use this word, but in this case, it's the only one that fits: chic. So, when I had the opportunity to sit down with Daphne to discuss her current role at Sky High Farm Universe and her 14-year tenure at Comme des Garçons, I knew I would walk away feeling even more inspired and enriched.
After leaving CDG in 2022, Daphne transitioned to Sky High Farm Universe as their Co-CEO and also serves as co-founder and CMO. In our conversation, we delved into her remarkable career at CDG, including the all-important question: what does one wear when meeting Rei Kawakubo for the first time? And perhaps even more critically, how does one leave a lasting impression.
As is my usual style, I won’t delve too deeply into my guest’s background here—I encourage you, dear reader, to listen to the episode or read the transcript for the full experience. Sky High Farm’s mission is incredibly close to my heart, and I find Daphne to be so intelligent and insightful that it would be a disservice not to make this episode accessible to as many people as possible. (After listening to this episode, I highly recommend going back to my conversation with Danielle DuBois of Sakara Life, where we also explore important topics about the food landscape.)
On a side note, as i mentioned yesterday I’ve extended the discount promotion through tomorrow. So if you enjoy listening to or reading these full-length interviews and don’t want to miss a single moment, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
One more thing before we dive into Daphne’s episode: Sky High Farm Universe just launched their F/W '24 collection, co-created with Jen Brill of Homme Girls, and they’ve also released an all-purpose tallow balm that is simply divine! I’ve been obsessively rubbing it into my hands, and it’s an absolute must-have.
Jalil Johnson (00:00:00): Alrighty. Daphne, would you please introduce yourself and what you do?
Daphne Seybold (00:00:07): Okay. I'm Daphne Seybold. I am the co-founder, co-CEO, and the CMO. We're a startup called Sky High Farm Universe, which is a brand that we built to generate advocacy and revenue for the food equity work of the nonprofit Sky High Farm, which is a farm that's based in the Hudson Valley.
JJ (00:00:29): Amazing. So the first time I met you—and we didn't even really meet, it was over email—was when I was still assisting in the styling world, and you were at Comme. So it was probably when I was assisting Scott Shapiro when he was at V Magazine. That was my first encounter with you, and I think the first time I actually got to meet you in person was via Sidney Munch, who I used to work with as well when she was in the styling world as well. And so it's been really amazing to see the growth of Sky High Farm; it has been really fantastic. And so before we get into Sky High Farm and what you're doing right now, I would just love to know where you came from, what brought you here, and what were you doing before Sky High Farm?
DS (00:01:16): So I consider myself to have a pretty intersectional identity. I was born in Canada, grew up in Hong Kong, was educated at British schools in Hong Kong, then went to UCLA for undergrad, and then eventually moved to New York because it was always my dream. Just having lived in all of these different places, it's really informed, I think, not only my identity but hopefully my ability to empathize with people of all different stripes wherever I go. I want to be in places that are densely populated, surrounded by people that are different from me, but also eat different food, look different, dress differently. And so eventually, when I moved to New York, which was, I think, 2005, I thought I wanted to be a fashion journalist. At the time, I was really inspired by Cathy Horn, and I just loved the sort of frankness of her delivery. I thought, okay, maybe I should—I had an English degree—and I was like, maybe I should try to get my start out there. So I moved.
JJ (00:02:31): Were you writing when you were in school? Were you writing fashion critiques or...?
DS (00:02:35): No, I was just reading. And most of our friends and peers in fashion, I devoured magazines. And growing up in Hong Kong, it wasn't always clear what would get imported, but also you’d get the latest issue of Vogue or Self Service or whatever months and months later. They'd come out when the next issue was hitting over here in Europe. So I really kind of clung to what I saw in those issues, and they really kind of informed me of what the industry could look like or what kind of role I could have in it. When I came out here, I decided that in order to convincingly write about fashion, I needed to go to school to learn how clothes were made. And so I did a degree at Parsons—a Fashion Design degree—just to understand construction and hopefully some of the history. And during that time I interned like crazy. I think my first internship was at Mayle, which is Jane Mayle's brand, but I also interned at Alexander McQueen. I did a wholesale internship there, I did a knitwear internship at TSE, I did a brief internship at V Magazine, and I interned at Comme des Garçons.
(00:04:05): I made it sort of my business to try to understand every facet of the industry because I don't really think you can figure out what you don't want to do without having actually tried it. So it's funny because a lot of those experiences were formative, and they ended up bleeding over into the job that I would take on at CDG, which at the time I sort of landed there as an intern in the press department, and it was only a press department of one in the U.S. We were still communicating with faxes. It was crazy.
JJ (00:04:37): Oh, in 2005 or what year?
DS (00:04:40): 2007.
JJ (00:04:44): Wow. But I think that's another interesting thing too, in terms of during the internships and terms are very important. And it's also funny that you interned at V because I was at V as well, but when you were interning, were you also working another job, or how were you able to intern? Because I think that's another thing people often think about. I have questions about, it's like, okay, you're interning. And especially, I think pre-2000—I don't know when the lawsuit happened—a lot of interns weren't paid. You’re just really just unpaid labor.
DS (00:05:18): That all happened, that stuff at Harper's Bazaar and elsewhere, happened when I was at CDG. And I'd been there for a long time. It's interesting because I actually interned while I was at school because I knew immediately when I graduated that I had to get a job because I was Canadian. And so I really kind of hustled and did as much as I could and then very quickly realized that it was actually going to be much harder than I had expected. And I remember this acutely. I was sitting in Parsons at their computer lab, and I applied to Vanity Fair thinking, okay, now's the time for me to really start building those journalistic credits. And I ended up getting an email from the then fashion director, Alexis Bryan Morgan, and she calls me in, she's like, listen, I know you applied for an internship, but you could in theory become our new fashion assistant. I was so excited I even contemplated dropping out of Parsons to do that. I was like, when is this going to drop in my lap? I knew how competitive it was. Those jobs open up only when someone actively decides to leave.
(00:06:37): No joke. The first question I was asked when I sat down was, you are a Canadian citizen, right? An American citizen? And I was like, actually, I'm not.
JJ (00:06:48): Oh no.
DS (00:06:49): And it's no knock on them, but I realized right then that despite being qualified, there was a bit of an uphill battle then. So I really spent a lot of time trying to prove my worth in these internships so that they could then hopefully take the leap on someone who I sort of had to prove that there was more value add than just a person that already lived and worked here.
JJ (00:07:16): Because they would've had to pay for you to...
DS (00:07:21): They would have to sponsor me.
JJ (00:07:23): Sponsor you. That's what—so Vanity Fair, so I'm guessing it didn't happen?
DS (00:07:28): No. So I finished my degree, and then I went to intern at CDG, and my predecessor left, and they said to me—and I remember I'd been kind of interning there for an extended period of time—they said, do you want her job? Which they referred to everyone as the head of. So I went from being an intern to being the head of the US PR effort very quickly.
JJ (00:07:54): Wait, that's because of the size of the team at the very, yeah.
DS (00:07:57): They're headquartered in Tokyo, headquarters in Paris, but Europe was very much a satellite, and so they only had one person doing the entire US market.
JJ (00:08:10): Wow. And then also too, so going back briefly when you were in Hong Kong and you were getting those Vogues, was Comme one of those brands you were always like—was Comme already kind of in your perspective of fashion? What drew you to Comme initially for the internship?
DS (00:08:30): I mean, I knew it through going to the department stores out there, but they didn't have a Comme store yet. I knew the breadth of Japanese design, but I hadn't had an opportunity to fully engage with it. And back then I couldn't afford it. I was in high school, and things like designer vintage—it was all very different then. Not nearly as easily accessible. I was really kind of reliant on going to the department stores to look around. But over time, I continued to follow the brand and understand that what makes them unique is their approach to fashion, which has always just naturally bucked the status quo. They never do anything for the sake of doing it. They didn't believe in diffusion lines; they believed that every collection that they put out had a reason to exist. And I was really always interested in beauty as a social movement, beauty as a sense of identity, beauty as self-expression.
(00:09:42): And I remember my interview—I showed up wearing, at the time I was wearing a Vena Cava blouse and a pair of very nondescript wool pants. I was wearing heels. And then I also wore a McQueen scarf that I had gotten on my internship when I was there. And it definitely stuck out. But over time, when your eye adjusts, whatever you had trepidation about and sort of understanding that you only dress for yourself was very important to me. My husband still sort of laughs to this day. I have a lot of jackets in the closet with three arms or that you have to wear inside out or backwards. It's funny; my eye normalized to that pretty quickly. And I realized there were people out there who were actively inspired to think differently about how they could self-express, and that was always really interesting.
JJ (00:10:40): It's beautiful. And I think that's also—that is the beauty of fashion really. I think fashion at its best makes a person think and change their perspective or change their opinion on something and really get excited about getting up and putting on that coat with three arms.
DS (00:11:02): I mean, it's funny. I used to—this was back when the office was in Starrett-Lehigh, and I would—at the time, my husband was studying at Columbia. I would take the 1, 2, 3 down in my Comme couture, and then I would trudge out from Eighth Avenue all the way out to where Starrett-Lehigh is, which is 11th Ave, through the snow. And I would pack boxes all day. I mean, I had so many samples I had to send out, so I'd be in my Comme, literally just like—and it was kind of funny in hindsight, but I loved everything that the company stood for, that Rei and Adrian had built, what they stood for. And because I got such direct exposure to them, I was like, there's no other place in the world where I would get to talk to them directly at the age of 20, whatever. And then on top of that, the way that they sort of thought was a lot about—a lot of the people that came up through the company had been at the company for a while and really had absorbed the DNA, and they really entrusted young people to do the work of more senior people at other companies. And I just felt like it was a constant challenge. I was of course very much afraid of failing, but at the end of the day, it's a very self-selecting person that chooses to work there.
JJ (00:12:27): Well, also, I am kind of dying to know, and I hope this is not vapid...what do you wear to meet Rei? What did you wear to meet Rei for the first time?
DS (00:12:41): Oh my gosh. I'm trying to remember.
JJ (00:12:44): I feel like that's very daunting.
DS (00:12:46): Well, you know why it's hard for me to remember? Because I tripped.
JJ (00:12:52): No!
DS (00:12:53): On the stairs up to her office, the very first time I met her in person. We'd already corresponded over email by then, but, you know, I was in Paris for my first set of shows. I amble up the staircase and tripped right in front of her, and she was very sweet. She actually started speaking to me in Japanese; she'd forgotten that I was Chinese. I'm pretty sure I was wearing all black, and my wardrobe was minimal at that point. I'd started—pretty sure I was wearing Comme Comme, which is what she wears every day, which is all the kind of codes of CDG distilled into everyday wearables. But yeah, that's what sticks out in my head because I 100% embarrassed myself.
JJ (00:13:40): You gave a lasting impression.
DS (00:13:42): I mean, they didn't get rid of me.
JJ (00:13:45): And then, okay, you were at CDG as the head of PR for how many years?
DS (00:13:52): So my entire journey there was about 14 years and seven months. When I started at CDG, there was no Dover yet. Dover came in 2013, but by then I had already—it was kind of ironic. The nature of doing PR was such that I actually got to talk to all of my inspirations. I was on shoots because we would bring the clothes to set ourselves. I was on set with, or I organized stories with, Cathy Horn. I was shooting with Craig McDean, and I was with Karl Templar. I was with Mario Sorrenti. It was just like, Grace Coddington—all these people that I would never dream of having contact with, who I later became very familiar with, and many of them have supported me through this period too, like Phyllis Posnick, who's the legendary sittings editor at Vogue. She created all those iconic images with Irving Penn.
JJ (00:14:52): Like with the bee and all those things.
DS (00:14:53): Yeah, exactly. Some of the most arresting images.
JJ (00:14:58): Yes, I'm getting chills actually.
DS (00:15:00): I worked with her. And then a few months ago, we did a shoot for our first beauty product with Tata Harper. Oh my God. So just that there's so much goodwill that kind of followed. And I felt very privileged in that job because I realized pretty quickly that not only were they entrusting the world to me, but I got to talk to all of the experts in the industry. Even though I was scared shitless, you have to push back on Grace or push back on someone. It's not a great feeling.
JJ (00:15:27): It must be terrible.
DS (00:15:27): But I learned also—the brand like CDG, where we really were careful about the brand image and thoughtful about it—I tried to really approach those conversations with a sense of transparency about our goals rather than playing all of these strategic cards. I was like, okay, I'm 20-something years old.
(00:15:46): All I can do is be honest about what we're trying to accomplish and see if they're willing to support us. And it turns out in life that tact has worked pretty well. I'm not a hardliner. I can't walk into a room and be like, I want this, and walk out. And I think that's also a reaction to how in the old days, a lot of the fashion industry was run. It was like one figurehead, I'm going to prescribe the rule of law, and everyone has to live by it. Now, I feel like we live in a society that's much more flat and more voices can come to the table. So anyway, I was in the head of PR job at CDG, doing all the shows, doing every kind of whatever, launch, all the press release writing, all the send-outs, all the show prep, all of everything. And then Dover Street opened in 2013, and they trusted me enough to let that fall under my remit as well. So then I sort of became very well-situated actually to manage the PR work for so many emerging brands...
JJ (00:16:53): I was going to just say...
DS (00:16:53): ...in the store.
JJ (00:16:54): When I think of Dover, I think about the vast amount of emerging brands that they've helped really start in a sense. And that's pretty amazing that you were getting that first experience with them too.
DS (00:17:06): Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, I remember Simone. Simone and I are around the same age; we're friends. Craig Green—I remember when I walked into the show in Paris, and he would be there. And at the time he was with Barbara Anii at Drk or Dark. I've never known if it's... but really it was the early days. Melitta Baumeister, Marine Serre—I got Marine Serre her first piece in the New York Times. Just I sort of saw myself as an agent on behalf of all of these young brands that needed support and visibility. I got a piece for Idea Books in the New York Times. They were Idea Books back then. They've become Idea now. But this idea that through the credibility of CDG and Dover Street, we could lend our apparatus to supporting so many up-and-coming designers was amazing.
JJ (00:18:02): It's really fantastic. I think I talk to so many people about this. We're in a very interesting retail landscape, and especially emerging brands are so important. And we're going to talk about the brand that you're with right now too. Sky High Farm, which I still see—it's a small brand—I still see it in that emerging category. They're really important. I think they lay the foundation for the industry. They set the trend, whatever they may be, they set, I think, the initiatives for where we're going. So I think about sustainability, I think about investing in initiatives such as food sovereignty. I think those are all important things that we all collectively will have to start thinking about and we should be thinking about. But I want to talk to you about what made you take the step from the world of CDG—which I mean Sky High Farm is still in that world—but go to a different company. Going into a small brand.
DS (00:19:03): So towards the end of my tenure at CDG and Dover Street, which frankly I feel is the biggest gift I could ever have had as a career. Dover Street sat at the center of something where you could convene all this energy and power. And I think that's what really got carried through to Sky High Farm, which is really how we got our start. And at the time, I think it was 2018-19, I met Dan. He had already founded the farm, gosh, in 2012, and had been doing that food equity work for that long. But he wanted to make some products that he could sell in a retail space that bore the brand's—not the brand, sorry, it was under the umbrella of the farm—but could bear the farm's icon and be a physical object that someone could interact with and learn more about the farm through. So we met through Marissa Jartcky.
(00:20:07): Dan and I began working on a project with my then Vice President, James Gilchrist, and Matty Friedman, who you know, and it was really about utilizing the time—it was vintage clothing, much like you're wearing now, that we could customize and use to uplift not only Sky High Farm but other food equity partners that the farm had. So we organized a talk around a vintage collection for these customized goods and also some jarred products, did it in New York and in LA. We hauled a tractor into Dover Street Market LA. And then the pandemic struck. And Dan and I at that point shared friends in common but had not ever formally met and then really interacted extensively. And he invited me to be on the founding board of the farm, which at the time was myself, John Gray of Ghetto Gastro, Josh Barfield, who's now stepped off the board and is the co-executive director of the farm. And that's slowly expanded to include many wonderful people that work in the communities that we serve as well as some other experts. But we were in dialogue and the pandemic hit. It was really hard. Everyone was losing the shirts off of their backs. I realized people were really hurting. We would be trying to move goods to keep the store going and had a job to fulfill; it employed all these people. And I just felt like there was such an urgent river of need, and I'd become more attuned obviously, to food sovereignty work at that point. So that happened. And then BLM...
JJ (00:22:13): What was the moment that turned your eye to that? Because I feel like you've always—from before you even got to New York—you always had attention to community. So was food poverty something that—when was the exact moment that you became aware of it?
DS (00:22:34): I mean, honestly, when I moved to the States, I had come from a homogenous society and gone to a school that was very diverse. But also people's relationship to food back then, or over there, was very different, right? Food wasn't expensive. You could go to a wet market and buy your fish, fresh fish. It wasn't like the kinds of New York prices you're seeing. And it was actually only after I moved to the States and was at a big public school for college. And I really sort of credit UCLA with this. I mean in hindsight, sometimes I'm not sure I should have gone there, but I realized that watching a public school at work and the dynamics within it—it was essentially a small city. It was 50,000 people. There was so much unrest. People were always protesting something. And of course, California has a relationship to agriculture, right?
(00:23:28): So I sort of understood a little bit about it then but was really becoming immersed in the dynamics of living in the States: inequity, the way the makeup of the States poses this tremendous chasm between the widening gap between the very wealthy and the impoverished. And so when Dan invited me to be on the board in that sort of immersion, it really kind of—something I became really kind of—not infatuated with it, but I saw a pathway to participate. Whereas before, even though I'd always wanted to volunteer—it was something that me and my friends would be like, oh yeah, when we have time, we're going to do this on the weekend. But at that point we were working 60, 70 hour work weeks and it was a lot. There was no free time. My identity was so wrapped up in my work, and this really allowed me to see that there was a world of need, but also that there was a pathway or an avenue by which I could play a very small role in it. And so around about just following those really sort of pivotal social justice movements—BLM, which is still with us obviously, API—I said, gosh, I don't think I can do the status quo anymore. And there's nothing about CDG that's rote. But I needed to step out of that cycle a little bit.
(00:25:01): It was a hard choice because they're my family.
JJ (00:25:04): You've been there for so long. You really, in a sense, grew up there.
DS (00:25:08): I grew up there. I spent all my formative years there. I married my husband during those years, had my first baby while I was there. It is a part of my makeup now. And I think what really informs a lot of my approach to what we're building, but I remember just sort of thinking, I have agency, I was like, I'm the age I am now, and this is as good as it's going to get. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and be like, oh, I've now metamorphosed into another person. This is it. And I kind of have to trust what I know and the relationships that I've garnered, the friendships that I've made, the little wisdom that I think I have. That's it. I got to make something with that. And Dan and I sort of realized that there was a world in which we could start a brand because the farm had these wonderful icons. We'd already seen the power of those icons to interact with people within the public sphere. They're uplifting; they're playful. When you look at it—I mean, the shirt that you're wearing doesn't even have the name on it, but it's so recognizable.
JJ (00:26:28): I would love to talk about this too. So for the viewers is a strawberry sitting on top of the moon. And so where did this idea, this iconography, come from?
DS (00:26:40): Well, that really preceded me. So in the years where the farm was operating, Dan worked with the illustrator, Joana Avillez, who's still a very good friend of ours, to create these icons. And there's a whole host of characters, and they're all things that come off of a farm. But it's kind of funny because a lot of people think the moon is a banana, which could be the case. But I have this sort of acute memory: Jake Gyllenhaal was wearing a pair of our sneakers, and I think the stylist—I don't know who it is at the moment, I know who used to take care of him before—but she clearly put these sneakers on him, and he's sitting at a press event, and I forget who was sitting next to him. It was a pretty renowned actor, but he was like, dude, what's up with your shoes? And he's like, well, it's a strawberry and a banana. And then I realized the icons have a capacity to transcend. They're funny. They're cute. They're youth- and adult-appropriate. There's just something in them that is just engaging.
JJ (00:27:46): I think the colors too. I feel like red is such a warm color, and I feel like so many people—red and yellow—they just feel very calming. And I think that's also when I think about the farm, I think about the farm and the brand.
(00:28:03): This approachability to everyone. I think that's what this icon brings to me. It's like to your point, it isn't specific to an age group. It isn't specific to a specific person. It's digestible for everyone. And I think the farm's approach to the farm and the brand, there's something for everyone, which is quite beautiful. And I think something else that's sticking out to me—and this came to me when I went to the festival, which I want to talk about with you as well—it's like the brand and it's truly operating like a farm. There's a whole host of pieces there. It's truly...
DS (00:28:44): Inputs,
JJ (00:28:44): Inputs. They're truly a community. And that is one of the first words that comes to mind when I think about Sky High Farm is community. And it's beautiful because I think—we were talking off the podcast—but I think fashion sometimes can be very insular. It can be very elitist. And I would say to you, really, that has fostered such community, which feels really refreshing and beautiful and it feels new, especially in the fashion space. Beautiful.
DS: So nice of you.
JJ: Of course, of course. And I think there are so many people that are supporting Sky High Farm, and their support, they're there for you, they're there for the brand, which is really amazing. And what goes into building a community?
DS (00:29:34): I think it's a purpose that has to sort of transcend all of our differences. And I just want to preface all of this by saying I'm one of a team of people that makes all of this happen. I really can't take credit for all of it at all because I realize it's a very spirited group of individuals, including yourself, that have decided to make a change in their work life to support something that's new and unknown. So I kind of see us all as kind of this renegade crew that's building something from scratch that has no known outcome.
(00:30:18): But to the point about community, coming from a place that had a very strong identity and sense of community, it seemed obvious to me that that would be a big part of why I would go anywhere is that I would be able to foster something that would join what maybe seem like very different spheres of the world together. And in doing so, could actually broaden the community. And so much of the stated aim of the brand now is to basically coalesce the average customer who cares about these issues but may not be able to write a million-dollar check, may not be able to volunteer—I couldn't back in those days with corporate entities—asking them to participate with their dollars, looking at participants in an industry as a whole and saying, okay, every one of these different sectors or groups of people can be in dialogue with food equity work.
(00:31:15): We just have to create the bridge. And I think that has really kind of served us because everyone understands the urgency that we should all be feeling around the state of the world, right? Climate change is fully upon us. The hardship that faces so many farmers is a story that needs to be told more. But also the way that the farm approaches community, and I just want to be clear that they are separate entities, and I'll explain why, but the farm centers its work around the communities it serves. So instead of being prescriptive about what the Ecuadorian community should eat, it instead says, what should we grow that they want? And that dialogue is sort of essential to informing the choices they make about what to grow and what to give away. It's also about giving the best and most nutritious food to people that have been deprived of it.
(00:32:15): Many of them help grow it, but they actually can't afford what they grow. And these farmers that we're connected with, they don't benefit from the subsidies that the big agro-industrial complex benefits from. So it's really about empowering the next generation of farmers, right? Regenerative farmers and food system advocates through a model for a nonprofit. Now, I don't know how much you know about the difficulty of running a nonprofit, but you have traditional revenue streams, right? Donations and grants, but those are very much contingent on a wealthy donor's willingness to write you a check of a certain amount of money and that they're willing to do it continuously, right? Because most organizations need this funding to continue their work over time. But oftentimes also when you get grants, there are lots of institutional interests attached to those dollars. So the idea of creating a separate entity that could storytell, that could create vessels for this work regardless of the type of product, but that could also just raise as much money as possible through consumption that people were already engaged in seemed like a way forward.
(00:33:28): And in looking at other brand examples that exist out there, you have something like Red, which was Bono’s AIDS and HIV nonprofit. They're still very much active. I think they've generated something like 750 million to date. And then a company like Newman's Own, which is the most ubiquitous salad dressing and popcorn and pizza in the States, they're a hundred percent of profits to charity. They've raised $600 million. I mean, the fact that people don't know this kind of tells you there's something to be said for being able to communicate right to the center of culture to where people feel like they want to be engaged. And if we can package it, which I feel like we're learning how to do in a way that feels like not only we're creating excellent products that are desirable, but people actively can be like, oh, I'm buying this because it's a great alternative to my other hand cream. But it also does something so much greater.
JJ (00:34:32): Which I think you're hitting it right on the head about culture because there are a host of things I want to talk to in the realm of culture. One is we're right now eating at Thai Diner, and it's fantastic. We got the same meal, correct? Which is the second time in the history of this podcast has happened except you got a chicken version and I got the mushroom. But something really special happened where I picked this place sometime in terms of the restaurant, it's kind of a back and forth of who picks. I picked this restaurant because I knew last year there was a partnership with Thai Diner and Sky High Farm when you all were developing a drink. Yes. And I would love to hear about how did that come around?
DS (00:35:17): So even before we had a clothing line, Dan and I were conceiving of a beverage. It just seemed obvious that we should do something in f&b, but all things, and especially for two people that never set out to make a brand—a clothing brand, at the very least—we learned the process from scratch. And we were very fortunate to have linked up with a fellow named Andrea Schneider at FedUp Foods. And his company is a company that was born out of a desire to rethink the beverage system because that's also very broken. I think that's something that I would say to everyone on this podcast is just that now that we straddle so many industries, you see that they're all dealing with their own systemic issues. And so we learned from scratch how to make a product. We conceived of something that we thought was delicious, a sparkling water flavored with honey.
(00:36:16): We love the idea of using honey because honey is great for people to understand the pollinator story and the ecosystem of the farm, but people also understand the plight of the honeybee, which is a very real one. And so we brought that to market, and I'm friends with the owners of Erewhon Market, which of course is a very beloved grocery store.
JJ (00:36:39): I've yet to go.
DS (00:36:40): Oh, you must. And we essentially launched the drink there. They were very generous with us and also some merchandise to accompany it. And I was really interested in this idea of cross-pollinating—having a beverage, but then also doing clothing with them, thinking about the lifestyle that you could create out of these types of more responsibly produced goods. The drink was a great success. We got so many people contacting us. We were putting it into industry events. And I put it on pause recently because I want to make it shelf-stable right now.
(00:37:18): It's a pre- and probiotic drink, so it has to be refrigerated. It has a lot of fiber. We wanted to work to tweak the formulation so that it could have a great shelf life. But what Thai Diner did for us, which gave me a tremendous amount of confidence, was I emailed Ann, the owner, and I was like, would you be interested in carrying this here? She immediately wrote back and said yes. Ann basically was like, we'll take the product in and we'll give you all of the profits from its sales. And I was like, wow, what an act of generosity.
(00:38:13): The margins in beverage, in food in general, are so low; for her to do that was really remarkable. And I realized that in some ways, restaurant owners and the people that work in the service industry and hospitality industries, their connection to the land is very real because they’re dependent on the products that come from it. And so the plight of the farmer is equally as prescient to them as an issue, as many other things that we're dealing with. And so seeing that we could transcend this fashion as a space and apply this model broadly was very attractive.
JJ (00:38:48): And it was a delicious drink. I can't wait for it to come back. And what made you pick Thai Diner specifically? Is this your...?
DS (00:38:59): I had met Anne through friends but have always just loved the vibe. When you come in this restaurant, the food is incredibly cosmopolitan but very well made. And it's always full when I come in. And I feel like there's so few restaurants in New York now that are price-accessible but also make great food that is dependable. And we have a lot of shared friends in common, so it seemed like a great starting point. But yeah, we sent it here. We sent it to Attaboy, which I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they're these two really, really esteemed. It's a chef and his wife. And his wife is my friend, Elliot Park. And JP, they own Atomics, which is one of the best or most highly rated Michelin star Korean restaurants.
JJ (00:39:51): Oh, I think I have heard of this.
DS (00:39:53): Yes. And they have a whole restaurant group now, so they've got Naro at Rockefeller Center. And they were very supportive too. They're like, we'll put this on the menu. And I was like, wow, really? Their food is amazing. And then the other group that I called was Four Horsemen, because I'm very good friends with Christina Topsøe and her husband James Murphy. They're part owners of Four Horsemen. And I also am very good friends with Amanda. I'm forgetting her last name now. She's going to kill me, but she's not. Well, I just think of her as Mandy in my mind, Amanda McMillan. She was once in PR at PR Consulting and then went on to basically become, I think the general manager for Four Horsemen. So I was like, do you think you could put this on the menu? And she's like, yeah, send it over. Let's see what it tastes like. And just that generosity and everyone's sort of willingness to just take the drink without really knowing if it was vetted or good was kind of inspiring.
JJ (00:40:54): It was. And then something else that we have right here too, which is, again, not a fashion-based product, but I think this again speaks to the ecosystem of everything, is a balm. And I got to try it at the festival this summer. And what made you all want to design a balm?
DS (00:41:16): Well, first of all, we just embarked on a partnership, a collaboration with Tata Harper, who for me, even long before I knew her, I was a tremendous fan of what she'd built. And there was something very sort of convincing about a partnership between two farms. She is the leader in clean beauty. She has a very devoted and loyal following, and she's just like a wonderful human being, as is her whole team. And we saw that there was appetite for something like this from us, but also all of these raw materials come from the environment. They come from the earth, they come from animals, they come from wherever. And so the idea for the balm—maybe I would've waited a little longer to put it into the market—but was essentially came out of conversations we had with the farmers at the time. I'd also met this amazing group called Shellworks based out of the UK.
(00:42:14): They had developed this amazing material called Vivomer, which is basically a plastic substance. It has no plastic in it, but essentially is created by microbes. It's a protein that's extruded from microbes when they're fed, and when it hardens, it behaves like plastic. But not only is it zero plastic, but it also fully decomposes in your home. Wow. So the idea of using a container like that, that was already illustrative of the sort of cyclical circular movement of the earth and the seasons and the soil, was really intriguing. But the idea for this balm, which I'll share with everyone, is a tallow-based balm, which for those of you that aren't familiar with it, is beef fat. Was this idea really that there's an ingredient that exists in a world that's highly efficacious and has been used for centuries. It really kind of tries to illustrate that there are amazing raw materials in the world that might be deemed waste, but that we really see as a co-product, something that comes out of the food system that has tremendous value. Tallow is packed with vitamins. It mimics the natural lipids in your skin, provides a really nice moisture barrier. It's an antioxidant, everything. And the thought that it could illustrate not only that there are these waste products that can be converted to something different, but also that we could potentially successfully create another revenue stream for farmers. Because most of the cattle that they send to the places where the meat is convert, the animal's converted to meat is wasted. 60% of the carcass is wasted.
JJ (00:44:07): Oh, that's terrible. So this is a fantastic way to your point. This is all creating a place for those byproducts to go. And then there are 2 scents, I guess you would call them. Yes. So there's tomato leaf and...
DS (00:44:23): Meadow.
JJ (00:44:24): Meadow. What made you all decide between a tomato? What made you all pick these?
DS (00:44:30): Well, I think we obviously wanted to ground the scents in things that felt familiar, but also specific to the scent experience on the farm.
JJ (00:44:39): And I'm—for the listeners, our readers—I am putting it on right now.
DS (00:44:44): Yeah, rub it into your hand and see how you like the way it absorbs. But essentially, tomato was inspired by when you're harvesting a garden, the smell that comes out of that bounty. We were thinking a lot about tomato stems and leaves, which is such a unique smell that we all know. And then Meadow is really about—it's inspired by upstate New York meadows that are kind of dewy and marine, but also have tremendous sort of earthy smells. So I'm curious, I think you prefer the tomato leaf, right?
JJ (00:45:20): I think both smell amazing. I am a big tomato part. I love tomato. I hope it's tomato in anything. Me too. So I have kind of a bias for anything tomato.
DS (00:45:29): Yeah, me too.
JJ (00:45:30): But no, it feels amazing. I am very particular about hand products, and I told this to you too when I tried this Tata Harper, your collaboration with Tata Harper, fantastic hand cream. I like something that has, I feel like, a bit of weight to it. I really despise very liquidy, thin moisturizers. It just does nothing for me. And I think this is, it's great. It's not greasy. It has that nice weight to it. I love it.
DS (00:45:58): No residue, no white cast, nothing. You wouldn't know. Oftentimes what I do is I put it on people's hands and then I tell them it's fat. And they're like, oh, where can I buy this? I got into an Uber the other day, and the Uber driver, I'm not even joking, or she was a Lyft driver, she wouldn't let me get out of the car until I told her where she could buy it and when it was because the scent was so fragrant. And I think it really kind of, like the aromatherapy, which is something Tata is really known for, was important to us. But I'm not a person that can do heavy fragrance. So it had to be sort of subtle and not feel too chemical. But I think that the cream, in some ways, it's so much the embodiment of what we do to support regenerative farming. It's a product that's conceived with the land in mind. It uses the resources from the land that the land naturally produces as part of whatever that cycle of life is. It's not about extracting more from the land than the land can provide, which is where we find ourselves in the current climate. We're basically extracting more from the earth than we put into it. And I wanted to, with Dan, with the team, turn that relationship to products on its head.
JJ (00:47:18): That's amazing. And then too, when will this product be live?
DS (00:47:23): Well, we're looking to launch at the beginning of September. So after Labor Day weekend, we want to make it really price affordable, whereas the Tata cream is a little bit more expensive. That retails for $50. But everyone should know that Tata Harper is donating a hundred percent of all of her profits from the cream to the farm. So that's fantastic. So the price is a little elevated there, but this particular product, I think, will retail for $38, and it will last a very long time. You just need a little bit; a little goes a really long way, and you...
JJ (00:47:55): Can put it on your whole body.
DS (00:47:56): I put it everywhere.
JJ (00:47:59): And then something else you were telling me too off, will this be available? So by the time this is released, but Barney's is coming back for a brief moment.
DS (00:48:10): Yes, yes. We plan to sell our tallow there. Barney's, through the sort of continuing generosity of Julie Gilhart and Simon Doonan and the entire team at Hourglass Cosmetics, they will be hosting a multi-week Pop-up in Soho. Sky High Farm Universe is really sort of privileged to appear alongside many of the brands that Julie helped discover. But Barney's is an identity that has such equity. So the opportunity to show alongside some of our friends Proenza Schouler, Thom Browne, they're all going to be there. And we get to have a platform that not only celebrates the clothing we produce—I think our next collection is co-creatively directed with Jen Brill of Homme Girls, who's a very longtime friend of Dan's, and a friend of mine now too. And we're going to essentially have tallow hot off of the presses there at the store. That'll be...
JJ (00:49:13): That'll be fantastic. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to, I mean, it's going to be amazing. Iconic moment.
DS (00:49:17): I hope so. I hope so. I hope that everybody tries it and loves it. And the festival was actually a very important moment for us to see if the concept had legs, because I didn't know if anyone would be willing to adopt a fat-based product. Never mind that it's used for... People use it for all kinds of biofuel for cooking. It's been used for time immemorial, but with this specific purpose, it's a relatively new thing in modern culture.
JJ (00:49:47): Yes, and then I would love to talk about the festival too, because how... Well, the Picnic? Picnic, picnic festival.
DS (00:49:52): Picnic festival.
JJ (00:49:53): And how did that come alive? Because that was also amazing that there's so many people there. It was beautiful to see again, community. It was a beautiful community there. And so what birthed that idea?
DS (00:50:06): Yeah, so the farm—and I'd love to just take a second to describe the work that it does. It's a nonprofit, again, it was founded almost 12 years ago or more than 12 years ago now by Dan and a group of co-founding team. From day one, they've donated a hundred percent of all of their regeneratively grown produce and pasture-fed livestock to marginalized communities. Over time, the organization in acknowledging that it can't feed everybody, has also undertaken this sort of mantle of helping to create equity in the food system and modeling that change. So we now write grants. This year we're writing $350,000 worth of grants to regenerative farmers, many of whom are BIPOC and unseen by the system that benefits from all the subsidies that Big Ag does.
(00:51:02): They're people that are doing this work and actively stewarding change and fostering healthy eating habits in their communities, but are unseen. And in some cases, they exist in opposition to their governments. We also do a paid fellowship onsite, which is a nine-month program, which is very intensive. Six months are spent on the land over the course of the growing season. The next three months are spent on a research project. But the idea really is that people that are interested in jobs in the food system, whether it be in farming or within the actual work of farming itself like that, they can garner the hands-on experience that you actually need in order to have those kinds of jobs. Farming is the most laborious, most skilled labor. Every time I listen to our vegetable farmer talk about what goes into growing and all of the planning, I, I'm amazed she's an engineer and a scientist in one.
(00:52:04): But if you think about what that kind of work is, it's not well paid. It's not acknowledged in the same way as other very high specialty industries or work. And so the idea there is to really arm people with the skills they need so they could find those jobs after the fellowship. Then we also do educational programming for youth. Many of the youths that are in the communities we serve, the farm actually is in the process of transitioning onto a much bigger property. It's 40 acres right now, and the property that it's moving on to is 560 acres. So it's almost like a small town.
JJ (00:52:45): And how far is the farm moving from where the farm is right now? How far is it moving to this new farm? What's the distance?
DS (00:52:53): It's down the street. Oh, down the street, which is pretty amazing. But the idea there is that they can really expand their capacity as it relates to the urgent food donation work they do, but with everything else too, and how that land can be used and stewarded, that's a longer process. But of course, it's important that we begin raising awareness around the work that we're doing as well as funds. So the festival was really sort of our first large-scale fundraiser for the farm. Whereas everything else had been small fundraising dinners. This was really meant to be the opposite of—it's like the anti-gala, not just a bunch of very well-to-do people who know each other, but rather really about bringing all of these people that we serve into dialogue with everybody else. And what was really kind of remarkable is in the same way that the brand is sort of set out to do this through products, we were able to bring together an amazing group of performers.
(00:53:55): It was a one-day event in Hudson Valley: the Roots, Moses Sumney, Kelsey Lu, Michaël Brun dj’ed. And then we had Devon Tuscher, who was a prima ballerina at American Ballet Theater performed. But tickets were sold on a sliding scale. Some people in the community came for free. I think we'd allotted 250 tickets out of the 700 for free. And then the rest of the ticket prices range from $250 to $25,000. We were able to bring in a host of amazing fashion companies as donors. Actually, they weren't just fashion companies. We had Chanel, Gagosian, Levi's, Birkenstock, the North Face, Jansport, Nike. We brought in Luna Luna, which is that fair that's opened up on the West coast. Tata Harper was there, was there. So it was really just a collection of our friends and family that really kind of came together to help underwrite the project. And the brand had this amazing sort of merchandise booth where we sold goods, really trying to connect all the dots and using this sort of moment of gathering through music to enliven people's spirits and gather everyone. And then through the merchandise, to raise some additional funds.
JJ (00:55:16): It was really fitting that it was upstate too. I feel like it not only is a problem up there, but I think there's something about that land. I mean, Woodstock is—I don't know how far Woodstock was, but Woodstock happened upstate. It was a very magical moment that day. I think there was something about a lot of people from the city coming to the land and getting to see all the greenery. There was a nature walk that Nike put on that was quite beautiful. And the trail guides told us about the different plants. And there are particular plants—I can't remember the name of them—that you can bite into if you are stung by a bee. But no, it's beautiful to see the land. And I also think it taught to appreciate the land that we're on because we only have one earth. And I think, again, a big part of Sky High Farm, the brand, and the farm is to remind us about the importance of where we live, the importance of the land. It was a beautiful moment.
DS (00:56:19): I think there are few more beautiful outdoor performance venues than Kaatsbaan, which is in Tivoli, New York. And to be able to share in this moment with everyone outdoors—it was pretty idyllic.
JJ (00:56:37): I had lobster rolls.
DS (00:56:40): Lobster rolls. I mean, it's interesting. A lot of all the beverages were donated, so we had water donated, we had Moet donate, but all of the food vendors, we invited them to come in and there was no charge. They just sold their goods so that they could make some money. We wanted to give them the opportunity to generate some.
JJ (00:57:09): Is this going to be yearly?
DS (00:57:12): Maybe not yearly, maybe biannual. It's a lot of work.
JJ (00:57:15): I like a biannual. I feel like there's something—it really builds momentum to the... I like it biannual.
DS (00:57:21): Yes. Hopefully people won't forget what it is by then.
(00:57:23): No, you couldn't forget. So this has been really amazing, and we're kind of nearing the end of our time together. I feel so motivated, not if I feel even more motivated now to get out there and spread the message. And also, I think food sovereignty is so important. I grew up in a very small town. I grew up with a working-class background. And so food always, I have a weird relationship with food. And so I think as I gotten older, I am contextualizing food and also the importance of what it does to our bodies. Yes. Also, making sure that people, no matter—food should not be a privilege in a sense. Everyone should have access to...
DS (00:58:13): That's exactly right.
JJ (00:58:14): ...good food, whole food, those kind of things. And I think what you all are doing is so important and it's making changes, and that's...
DS (00:58:23): Really important. Thank you. Well, having someone like you model in our campaign with Cass Bird and styled by Samira Nasar was amazing, but I might just close on saying the brand has raised in two and a half years a million dollars for this work. And to see that this germ of an idea is bearing fruit, but has almost—it has so many directions to go in and expand into—is very exciting. So yeah, watch this space.
JJ (00:58:56): You're going to make another million, more millions. More million. So to wrap up each, we have four questions. So the first question is, do you have any questions for me? This is a very new, new segment I'm doing that was unintentionally given to me, but I thought this was actually kind of brilliant, because I think the purpose of this is for it to feel like a conversation. And I just want everyone to feel relaxed. And I think oftentimes when you're getting interviewed, the interviewee never gets to ask a question. So I'm giving the power back to you all to interviewees. Do you have any questions for me?
DS (01:00:04): I do. I mean, I feel like you are in the midst of forging a new chapter in your life, which I told you at the top of the interview that I just have such admiration for the way you move through the world and what you've built through your own identity and sense of self. And even when I was a young fashion person, which I was at some point, I always felt like I was pretty faceless. And I didn't know where. I'd argue that this job has allowed me to really come to the table as myself. And I see you and I think, wow, what you've been able to accomplish in terms of your own identity and representing your values and your interests and also just having such amazing style is wonderful. And I guess, what does it mean to sort of transition through these different identities in this sort of new chapter?
JJ (01:01:02): That's a very good question. I only know how to be myself. And I think that clothing has always been a vehicle for me to express who I am, even when I didn't really know fully who I was.
DS (01:01:23): Is it a character that you're assuming when you do it, some of your looks have proper characters?
JJ (01:01:29): I think the act of putting on clothes as a performance—I mean, RuPaul always has a phrase that...what is the phrase? It's like life is a drag. Or
(01:01:41): I will find the quote and put in there. But basically, we're all putting on a performance. And you have to have a costume of what that is. And the real test, though, is will you let the costume be the whole thing, or will you shine through that costume? And so I think something for me is everything I put on my body is genuinely something that I'm invested in and I want. I'm not dressing for another person's idea of what it means to be cool or what is considered trendy. I'm purely dressing for my own happiness. And I think that that's what comes, I hope that's what comes through in how I dress, is that I am trying to find joy in myself first in performing.
DS (01:02:27): That seems smart and right.
JJ (01:02:31): Because I think so many people go through life concerned about what other people think, which is—that's how we're taught. Also, we're supposed to think about others as we go through life, but it's really a challenge to put yourself first.
DS (01:02:48): Yeah, it really is. That's beautiful.
JJ (01:02:54): That was a good question. Now I have three questions for you to wrap this up. Okay. So the first question out of the three, who is the most cultured person?
DS (01:03:08): It's a really, really hard question to answer because I feel like there's a lot of people to reach for. But the person that I want to talk about is someone who I think is deeply cultured is—he goes by the name of Nav. I don't want to butcher his first name, but I think it's Nav. And he's someone I met this past May, right after the festival in Copenhagen. I was there to speak on a panel with him on the subject of how the consumer can play a role in affecting change as it relates to the climate. And we were in this sort of small panel, and he had built a company called The Washing Machine Project, and he's a former engineer that was working at Dyson. And he tired of creating really nice vacuums for wealthy people and was like, I think on a trip he came to see that there are so many women and children or girls that are spending time in developing countries washing clothes.
(01:04:21): So he's based in the UK. He's now traveled all over Africa, India, and they have some partners here in the US too, but they're sponsored by Whirlpool. And what he's done over, I think, five years is to create a washing machine that can be assembled by hand. It's almost like an Ikea-style thing where you can assemble it on location, and it's like a manual crank that you have to turn, and the clothes get washed inside. It obviously minimizes the amount of water you use as compared to what we use, but it completely allows anybody who's washing clothes to cut their wash time down from sometimes as much as 20 hours a week to 15 minutes a day.
JJ (01:05:09): Wow.
DS (01:05:10): So you can really kind of—what you do in terms of not only empowering people with their time or giving them their time back, but the physical hardship, the skin irritation, the soreness in your joints from spending all day washing, but also the ability to make money—you could wash other people's clothes—is really kind of remarkable to me. And when I think of culture, I think of somebody that has a degree of fluidity that can step into different spaces,
(01:05:46): Has garnered a sense of empathy and relatability to all kinds of people. And I see that Nav travels to the world in a way where he's, almost all the places he visits is imprinted on him, and he's motivated by those exchanges and experiences. So he's the person that comes to mind.
JJ (01:06:10): I have to look up his name. This sounds really,
DS (01:06:13): He's incredible.
JJ (01:06:14): And is there a way to donate to his...?
DS (01:06:17): Yeah. Yeah. So you just look up the washing machine project. He's actually coming to town soon. It'd be cool to introduce you—is the time of the conference that happens in September, mid-September. Fantastic. Yeah, he's wonderful. That's amazing.
JJ (01:06:34): That's great. Okay. Wow, that's an amazing person. That's cultured. What is your latest cultural obsession?
DS (01:06:47): Cultural obsession.
(01:06:53): Now that I'm in the beauty space—or sort of—I'm really into K-Beauty, which has always been around, but little known fact, Korea is the second biggest in terms of our traffic to our website. And in terms of the support outside of the organic influencers that we get in the US, all of our biggest supporters come out of Korea. So new jeans, Jenny, Ruby, Jane, they all buy the stuff. We don't know that they've bought it. They just buy it and wear it. And I'm just so fascinated by their evolution as a people in style. They're so outgoing; they really get the aesthetic. They also love the transformation in the beauty process. So I love that. What was the other cultural question?
JJ (01:07:49): Oh, then the last one is a three-parter.
DS (01:07:51): Oh my gosh. Okay.
JJ (01:07:52): So basically it's watch, everyone read, watch, and listen to consider themselves cultured.
DS (01:08:01): Okay. Wow. These are going to be a little different from what you might normally think of, I suppose. So the book that I would pull for—I was going to give you an academic text,
JJ (01:08:12): You can do that. You can give two, you give as many as you want.
DS (01:08:14): Many as you want. Okay, I'm going to do it. So I'm actually reading a textbook of essays by an ecological economist called Herman Daly.
JJ (01:08:26): From what time period?
DS (01:08:28): So he wrote this in the eighties and nineties, I believe, this particular book. He's written several books, but he talks a lot about a steady-state economy, which is something that I really have become attracted to in a world where we're kind of juggling the tension between consumption and waste. What he posits is that the earth as a biosphere is a finite space with limited resources, and the economy is like a subsystem that grows within the sphere. And it's not really possible—the economy has got to stop growing at some point when it's used up all of the resources and can't continue to scale at the rate that it's been growing. So, so much of what he tries to address in the book is this concept of what it would mean to have a steady-state economy. And by implication, what that means for the inequity between rich and poor. And it all sort dovetails with conversation around who should pay for the pollution that's brought and who actually pays the price in farming. We talk a lot about externalities.
(01:09:41): When you think of a drink manufacturer, anybody that's making anything for raw materials in order to sell goods at a rock-bottom price, someone else somewhere in the production line is paying the price. And so this idea of who pays is a big one to me. And who are we trying to benefit in our choices. The other book I was going to say is The Overstory by Richard Powers, which is a beautiful book that is a series of vignettes by different people in different places over the course of time that talks about nature's constancy amidst the sort of turmoil and peaks and valleys of our everyday life, which it's a really beautiful collection of stories.
JJ (01:10:23): Oh, I want to read both of them.
DS (01:10:23): Now that you're moving up to Hudson Valley, you should read. And then to watch. I'm trying to think of something recently that I've watched. I watched, okay.
(01:10:38): My best friend is a filmmaker, and she does a lot of shorts, and she's working on her first feature film. She co-wrote a film with her then-partner called Civic. And Civic has gone on to become really sort of lauded, especially in the New Yorker where the film critic a year later went back and decided to write a full-fledged review of it. But it's a short that is told from the perspective of a car, and you're sitting in the backseat of the car—whoever it is is sitting in the backseat of the car—and they're witnessing a conversation that's had between the driver and the passenger. And I won't spoil it, but they drive to a number of different places, many of which have significance in this returning person's life. And it's against the backdrop of Los Angeles. And so you see this gradual shift in the scenery and the landscape. Some of the shots are vast where you can see the sky and palm trees and others are parked at a bodega. And I thought it's really hard to do this as a short, but to capture the totality and the range of human life and the sort of degrees of it in one short film was really amazing. So Civic,
(01:12:02): So it's Nicole Otero and Dwayne LeBlanc.
JJ (01:12:06): Like LeBlanc, like...?
DS (01:12:09): L-E-B-L-A-N-C.
JJ (01:12:10): Oh, I mean, what's the guy's name from friends?
DS (01:12:13): Matt LeBlanc? Yes. Yeah. Same spelling I think.
JJ (01:12:16): Are they related?
DS (01:12:17): No, no. Dwayne is African American. I mean, not that I know of.
JJ (01:12:26): I'll tell a different story. That's all. Okay. Then what should everyone listen to?
DS (01:12:31): Listen to? I don't know if this will be polarizing, but I listen a lot to Pivot, which is a podcast between...
JJ (01:12:39): I love Pivot.
DS (01:12:40): Yeah, Pivot. And I also listen to Scott Galloway's podcast, which is called Prof G. And that is really—he's an entrepreneur multiple times over, but he sort of speaks plainly about the struggles about what it means to start a company from scratch. But I think he also shares a lot of the same values around some of the systemic inequities we're trying to fight. And I don't know, I haven't really heard a plain-speaking podcaster outside from you in a long time. And then the other one that I love is Ezra Klein, who I just am always like, I sit through the whole hour and listen intently to everything he says. Sometimes I'll listen to it twice.
JJ (01:13:25): Those are fantastic. I love both. I love Pivot. Pivot's amazing. Basically, I do the Daily, then I do Pivot. Okay. Which is...that's a very jam-packed...
DS (01:13:39): That's a lot of information to squeeze in.
JJ (01:13:42): But no, I think Scott Galloway has such, to your point too, a very...
DS (01:13:47): It's a very incisive point of view.
JJ (01:13:49): Yes, and doesn't beat around the bush. It's tell it how it is. And he doesn't care if it rubs you the wrong way, which I think is perfect. I think so many people are editing themselves. They want, but I think sometimes we need that hard truth.
DS (01:14:03): Well, and I think it's very easy to feel lost in what is a really cacophonous, noisy world, and it's hard to decide if you should even care about what's happening in the markets or these, and I do think he's good at distilling what's happening on a macro level and being able to conceive of how that could affect your daily life or break down complex concepts around Bitcoin and crypto and the car industry. I just think as a citizen of the world, it's like you kind of have to understand all of the inputs, even if what you're focused on is so totally different, which for me is the case. But I like to understand all of the dynamics that are in play at any given time.
JJ (01:14:46): I think those were all fantastic answers. Well, thank you so much.
DS (01:14:49): Thanks for having me.
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