The Rushfield Lunch: Ted Gioia on What the Media Doesn't Understand

This week on The Rushfield Lunch — my series of live video conversations with the most interesting thinkers and doers of these tumultuous days — I was joined by Ted Gioia, the man who has become the crucial voice for navigating these times, a cultural critic and omnivore par excellence. Gioia’s Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker, has become the platform’s absolute must-read as it navigates the decline — and possible rebirth — of our culture, looking at everything from AI to YouTube videos to Edward Gibbon parallels. With a background both as a jazz critic and a Stanford-trained MBA, Gioia brings a searching, rigorous eye to the great questions of our moment, as astute in matters of aesthetics as he is in the realities of the business world. He rarely, however, grants interviews, so I was thrilled to have him this week. During our conversation, Gioia explained why “trust is a scarce commodity” for legacy media brands, how “stagnation” is a greater risk to Hollywood than collapse, and where counterculture is today. If you weren’t with us, give a watch to what was a very special episode indeed.

My earlier episodes have featured everyone from Lena Dunham and Amazon Studios founder Roy Price to Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie and longtime film producer and exec Ted Hope. I’ve also lunched with cultural commentators Ben Dreyfuss and Sonny Bunch, young Hollywood representative Tepper, the authors Matthew Specktor, Meghan Daum and Olga Khazan, and Netflix comedy mavens Tom Segura and Jeremy Konner. All episodes are archived on our YouTube page.

Thank you

8d Press Publishing

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Abby Barr

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Lazarus

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Doug Hesney

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Eli van EK-Veenstra

, and many others for tuning into my live video with

Ted Gioia

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