age, the podcast

On why age, the podcast is made the way it is

“We are laying a long-term bet here that when the AI overlords take over, the stuff that's going to feel meaningful to people… are going to be the things that we can tell a human put their heart into and somebody cared. That's why we do it the weird way.”

On the future of posting your life online

“Before you know it, there's going to be a little orb that is like a little drone that just follows you around and captures little moments of your life and creates these edits for you to review at the end of the day, and you get to choose what content you wanted to post.”

On mass-made goods versus things made with care

“In a year from now, no one is going to buy anything anymore online, because there will be no more spirit in it.”

On the power brands now hold

“Imagine the impact brands have today… I think governments will actually become sidelined because of brands and corporations.”

On what AI does to expertise

“If everyone has AI… knowledge actually becomes the least valuable thing.”

On who owns a look

“Our nuance on IP law is going to get so specific because so many people make money off of either licensing or commanding a space in terms of specific visual assets. Shapes and colors can be trademarked.”

On lookalike products

“It seems to me like we're going to have a rash of these. We're about to have a moment where a bunch of people are designing something behind closed doors, not intending to do harm to a competitor or take credit for it.”

On creative ownership

“If you don't create your own imagination, then you will live in someone else's imagination.”

On owning your own space online

“On every other platform, you are in someone else's imagination… Your website is your imagination.”

On how creative work gets staffed

“Historically, I viewed it as either you are the business owner… or you're this full time employee… But I feel like we're coming to somewhere in between… the full time thing doesn't appear to be working for agencies and the freelance thing doesn't fully appear to be working.”

On rejecting labels

“The anti-label becomes the new label.”

To Reggie, who says he can always spot an AI video

“Are you spotting it because it's outrageous? Because AI is going to get to the nuance.”

On making a living from creative work

“Success is all just random. There is no formula that you can play out that will make you successful, and there's research that backs this.”

On companies calling people back to the office

“What corporate's gonna miss on this is that they're wanting to force it back into the extroverted lane when these introverts are going to create something so magnificent.”

On where culture gets made

“I think the interesting culture is happening in these little micro pockets of places that aren't the big city… I do feel like people in Asheville are more connected to each other than I have experienced living in New York.”

On world hunger

“We could feed literally everyone… It's not a production [problem]. It's a distribution thing, it's a control thing… You have to be dissatisfied in this culture for capitalism to work.”

On believing in an idea before anyone else does

“Like AI, like all of these things… started off as someone's delusional idea that they didn't give up on… I think delusion and improv can help change the world. You just can't give up on it.”

On the work that can't be automated

“Every job is becoming a care job… Even if you think that you're doing like knowledge work or engineering.”

On what brands are judged by

“The power of branding is now starting to trend, where the inner being of the brand means more.”

On places starting to look the same

“I think rooted in a place used to be more noticeable… I think it will become more powerful because it will be scarce to be rooted in a place that's only that place.”

On running 40 Hearts in a tough market

“Design is often seen as a luxury rather than a necessity… We think in a way that's pretty unconventional and challenges some norms, and that is not a good thing to be when people are feeling conservative and wanting like a sure thing… we might collapse in two years and find out.”

On jobs that don't require making content

“There's a huge portion of the job market that we're leaving out… and maybe those are the jobs that AI is going to come for, and everything's going to be robotics.”

On what screens have made rare

“Because we become so forced into the online and on screens world… the new commodity is… human connection.”

On social feeds run by the algorithm

“I'll bet this is in the works, in like a local mode, or it's like, oh, I just want to see what people within a 50 mile radius of me [are posting].”

On who brands are trying to reach

“Branding is now having to get very micro on some levels to get the super niche people, because I feel like those are the people that haven't been targeted in a very long time.”

On brands that try to look different

“Brands now typically will try and look at the market, and if they want to go against the grain, they will look at the market to figure out what is against the grain, right? Not like what is in me that goes against the grain.”

On what replaces social media once AI content erodes trust in it

“I think it will break down back to word of mouth.”

On whether social media can be fixed

“Social media will never change… Because even though when they try to start like a people's social media… owned by the people type thing, it just doesn't work.”

On what happens when AI takes the jobs

“They're going to put us humans in the place that AI can't do it, which is anywhere there's not [a] screen… I think money is going to be a hot topic because how do you value life when you no longer have a job?”

On growth at all costs

“Always got to grow. Always got to grow. There's no natural system that can support that… the only thing that grows like that is cancer, which kills the host.”

On growth at all costs

“[You grow] until you're the size you're supposed to be, right? The person you are, and then you grow deeper. So companies don't realize they can grow deeper.”

On crying

“I think crying is an underrated skill. Like it's something that people should own more.”

On why fast food tastes worse than it used to

“They have had whatever, 20, 30, coming up on 40 years to like squeeze more money out of less quality… And they'll approach it scientifically to where… eventually you're just eating a piece of cardboard that tastes good.”

On music that all sounds the same

“Music for me has lost a lot of its… quality because it doesn't have its own thing anymore. It's all melded together… I think Justin Bieber's album, the Swag album, is the first time that I've heard an album that sounds like the anti-song, the anti-album.”

On how much stuff the next generation will want

“I feel like we're going to experience a major shift because I don't know that the next generation values materiality. I think their life is in the digital frame.”

On housing

“Once we turned homes into assets of investment, we took away the essential need for someone to have a home.”

On how people will describe what they want

“Aesthetic is going to be a prompt. I want a house that looks like designed by Rick Owens mixed with Nicky Kehoe.”

On designers in the age of AI

“I don't think they're going to lose their value. Like, yeah… maybe AI will catch up and be able to make art, design, brand that is passable. But the designer is the master of taste… businesses will always come… to us because they won't know what's good.”

On kids growing up with screens

“My biggest takeaway from this whole thing is that youth will find their way. Like, they will be all right.”

On young people and activism

“Like the greatest generation is coming back around… these days activism is going way younger. You got middle school students walking out.”

On where people will go for information

“I think people will be going less to more open platforms and going to people's websites where they actually can learn more authentic… information… not this big open platform where you don't even know if the people are real or not.”

On the future of search

“When you're thinking about search engines and you're thinking about bots and you're thinking about deepfakes, I'm nervous about how valuable search engines will be.”

On telling people from bots online

“I think humor is becoming to me a tell of like, is there a real human here? Because I don't imagine that a computer could have made it.”

On starting a small business

“Most small businesses, as you know, start off as vanity businesses.”

On competition

“I once read this book and this guy said, there are 2 ways to look at this. You can either try and beat someone or you can try to win someone.”

On how American politics moves

“Liberals set the floor and conservatives set the ceiling, and we all gotta live in this room.”

On cancel culture

“I'm sure the Founding Fathers had something worth canceling. I'm sure that every other popular figure throughout history [did too].”

On privacy

“Anonymity may be like your health in that you don't know how valuable it is until it's gone.”

On business ethics

“If you incentivize the making of money as success, as the only metric of success, then you incentivize bad happening.”

On labels for sexual orientation

“I do think that eventually we just surrender. Eventually we just release and say, why do I need to define you and prescribe a label to dictate what I think?”

On how freely people can show attraction

“I think the world needs to get over itself. I think ultimately people need to just let people do what they want.”

On originality in design

“Unique is only first to the market. There's nothing unique about design… The original nature of your experience is the only thing unique about this life.”

On hiring in the age of AI

“We are being reduced down to a transaction or an image. But the reality is, and we will start to see this more and more as people start churning stuff out with AI.”

On political division

“I think we're seeing this in government in our country, if you can't fight well together, then you're never going to survive. One side will outdo the other side every time, and that only leads to the end.”

On government

“[John Dewey] said that government is the big shadow cast by corporations. So every time I hear government, all I hear is a sort of user experience layer of contrived theater for the populace to feel things are happening or sides are taken.”

On what changes people's priorities

“Death is a throttle. Everyone will go up to a certain speed and to a certain cadence if death is becoming evident. Then they throttle and they change and they shift their vision.”

To DeWayne, on keeping up an art practice

“You get your blood pressure down, you're like, oh, I'm good, I'm gonna stop taking medicine. Your blood pressure goes right back up as soon as you do… you gotta keep taking the medicine… And that's what art is. Art is your medicine.”

On ideas that go viral

“The shelf life is so short. When I was in the music industry, there was this understanding that the harder you come at it, like the more intense you come at it, the shorter your shelf life.”

On upgrading the human brain

“Technology is going to move really fast in my lifetime. I'm trying to brace myself… But I don't see it getting to the point where you can just download a skill in my lifetime.”

On augmenting the body

“I think there will be a growing movement with people that have chosen technology and people that have chosen organic technology. And I'll say that loosely in that what our bodies can do, for instance, the placebo effect.”

On kids who grew up with less human touch

“How do we get kids in particular back to this regulated place?… My assumption is that, oh, we're just going to have to parent differently.”

On AI as a therapist

“Somebody, a therapist telling you, here's some things that you can do… and I'll work with you every week and we're going to go there together, and feeling like you have a companion on the journey. I just don't see any way that AI is going to be able to replicate that.”