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How do you connect with an increasingly fractured audience? Erika Ayers Badan reveals the ups, downs, and lessons learned in her first year running the lifestyle brand Food52a big pivot from her role as CEO of Barstool Sports. Her new podcast Work drops advice from her own career, plus hot takesfrom generational differences in the office to her surprising insights for in-person work. Badan also shares how Food52 is finding its voice around politics, and navigating the current moment. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. 2025 has started with so much volatility. A lot of business leaders are on their heels wondering how to respond to the array of changes issuing from the Trump White House. For you, do you have a philosophy about how to respond? How much do you react to the daily news? How much can you ignore it? It’s funny, when the first announcements around the tariffs came out, it was on a Saturday. I was really freaked out. I called an emergency meeting on a Sunday. And that’s become the new normal, where there’s a lot of whiplash, there’s a lot of pontification, there’s a lot of speculation. And really, what I’ve gotten to is that you can see what’s happening in the Trump administration is going to be chaotic, and I think CEOs being able to stay the course and set their own pace is probably the best course. Being in a reactionary mode is dangerous in general, and it feels especially dangerous right now. I sometimes think about the role of business and business leaders as part of the checks and balances in American culture. And I don’t know whether you think about that at all or whether you think something like, Listen, your job is to run the business and that’s what you do and there’s not another mission beyond that. Government used to regulate business. Now what you’re seeing is entrepreneurs are reshaping the government. Everything is topsy-turvy. I think this is one of the fundamental questions we’re going to have right now. We’re clearly entering an era where there will be less regulation, so will brands police themselves? How’s that going to work? Are we just going to pendulum swing every four years? So I don’t have any good answers for you, Bob, but I also think about it. A lot of CEOs are uneasy about being candid in public. What’s the value of that candor, and how does it flow back to Food52’s business, or is it just about connection? I think candor is important in general, and I think consumers are looking for the story behind the story. And this show is a way for me to do a couple things. One is I’m trying to experiment and model out how shows could and should be launched, produced, clipped, cut, managed, and I’m dogfooding it on myself. So if you want to know, my real intention is to be able to create other formats that look like this that are about home and lifestyle and food, and I’m using this as a template. I’m realtime creating a template that I can then give to other people here. I’ve not really talked about that, but that is my intention. So for example, we have two really, really phenomenally talented test kitchen chefs. I believe that they both should have shows where they’re showing not only the art and their craft, but also talking about how they feel about it and what they learned about it and what inspires them and how they got there. So that’s one way it helps Food52. And then the second is a connection point. One thing I really learned at Barstool was, unwittingly or unknowingly, I created a community of really professional women, like I talked about, who are looking to other professional women to relate to, to be informed by, to ask advice from. And this is a way for me to keep current with that community who ultimately I think will help inform what content this company creates, what products we develop, and how we think about our go-to-market positioning. On your podcast, you drop a lot of hot takes about work, and you’ve said that you’re mostly in favor of in-person office work and also that people are becoming less resilient in the workplace. And I wondered whether those two things are related or are they separate? Great question. I am a fan of in-person work. I don’t know that all businesses will go back to five days a week in the office. I think great start-ups will, in the most part, require people to be together in a way that is hands-on and in person in some capacity. And as it relates to resilience, I think there’s a whole bunch of things that are leading into the resilience question. One is how kids are being raised and how much risk we expose people to. When you look at time spent from elementary school kids through college kids, you’re never bored anymore. You’re not out. You’re not left to your own devices. You’re not messing up and getting in trouble the way at least I got in trouble when I was in high school and college. And it’s because there’s a safer, more interesting option on your phone. And as a result, when you are forced into the real world, a lot is required of you, and you have to make unstructured time into something, and you have to propel yourself into new places. It can be very, very, very difficult. And so I think that’s contributing to it. And then I think working over Zoom and in the comfort of your homeand I don’t think working from home is comfortable. I think actually working from home is pretty hard. It’s easier to tune out or feel more distance and feel less connected. I often think when we go to school, a lot of the things we learn are not the school work, but how to engage with other people. And the same thing happens when you go into a workplace: You learn how to work with a group of people in a different way. Definitely. You learn what happens when people don’t like you at work. You don’t experience that when you work from home. What are the power dynamics? Who’s the hierarchy? I remember getting my first job at Microsoft, and I was very enamored and terrified of the execs there, and I just watched them all the time. I couldn’t get enough. I just wanted to watch what they wore, what they ate, what they did, how they talked to one another, how they led their people, how they dealt with failure. And I got a whole tuition just sitting in a room. If you’re on a Zoom call, you’re not getting the full picture. There’s no meeting after the meeting. There’s no hallway conversation. Then I think that’s the osmosis that can really feed you at work. That unstructured serendipity that is part of a workplace, which is not always efficient but can be effective. 100%. You can waste a lot of time at work. The days I really need to get a lot of work done, I don’t go to the office because the commute takesa long time, the chit-chat takes a long time, but it is really important because you learn the dynamics of a place, and that’s really where the fabric and culture can be developed.
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Some directors are known for their typographic flairfrom the ultrawide tracking of Christopher Nolans film titles to Quentin Tarantinos genre vernacular font and lettering selections. But last week, as we reported on Sean Bakers extensive use of Aguafina Script across his past four movies, we wondered: How many other directors have firmly embraced a single, singular typefaceand what does that typeface say about their films? The first part is easier to answer. It is rare, says title designer and Art of the Title editor-in-chief Lola Landekic. It’s a very interesting choice. As a creator, you have to sort of commit to a specific aesthetic. And I think you also have to know yourself very well and know that there’s a throughline in all your work. Thats clearly the case when it comes to Baker and the directors below. Sean BakerAguafina Script Perhaps the most audacious thing about Bakers use of Aguafina in the Best-Picture-winning Anora and his other films is the sheer amount of personality it contains. It is anything but a benign catchall facebut it is also a tonal fit that enhances the characters and themes at the heart of his most recent movies. Landekic likens titles and title sequences to seasonings that can make or break a dish. While Bakers work often deals with poverty and marginalized characters, the energetic Aguafina elevates everything all at once, providing a contrast to the common visual iconography around such subjects. It has perhaps been a key to his films since Tangerineand one that has carried over into marketing materials and more (a rare luxury when, for example, posters for the Men in Black films feature a bulky sans serif rather than Pablo Ferros far more interesting signature lettering that appears in the actual movies). It can be a difficult thing to achieve as a filmmaker, that kind of consistency of aesthetic, Landekic says. I admire anyone that can get that through the door because it’s hard these days where everything is created so piecemealoften the distributor controls the promotional materials, and the filmmaker has very little say into how that gets to look. Moreover, as you peruse this list, youll notice that it is a veritable boys’ cluband there are reasons for that. Women don’t get to make as many films, don’t get to make as many follow-up films, and don’t often get to have the level of control over their films that a lot of male filmmakers have, Landekic notes. So it’s a multipronged issue why we dont have a lot of female examples in this particular category. Wes AndersonFutura A lot has been written about Wes Andersons thoughtful and intentional approach to type and letteringbut the face that made him famous was Futura, which branded the first half of his filmography (so much so that many considered it an aesthetic betrayal when he sidelined it for Jessica Hisches title lettering in Moonrise Kingdom.) In Andersons masterpiece The Royal Tenenbaums, Futura was essentially a character in its own right, appearing not just in titles, but on buses, books and myriad places beyond. It harkens back to the French New Wave and sort of how Godard used titles, Landekic says. The thing about Futura is that its very unadorned. It feels almost like you could overlook it. But the way that Wes Anderson uses it gives it a very clean stamp. . . . What it really does is it makes everything feel very arranged and curated. And for a filmmaker like Wes Anderson, that is a lot of the point. One further Futura aside: Its a common misnomer that Stanley Kubrick used it widely in his filmography. In reality, he only truly deployed it in Eyes Wide Shut, and it croppd up in promotional materials for other projectsthough he did reportedly call it his favorite typeface. Woody AllenWindsor Perhaps no typographic directorial bond runs as deep as Woody Allen and Windsor, which has kicked off every single one of Allens films since Annie Hall in 1977. As Jarrett Fuller, host of the podcast Scratching the Surface, has detailed, Legend has it that . . . Allen would often eat breakfast at the same New Jersey diner as noted graphic and type designer Ed Benguiat. Allen, knowing Benguiat as a “printer,” asked him one morningprobably sometime between 1975 and 77for a good typeface to use in the credits of his upcoming film. Benguiat offered up Windsor. It would go on to become synonymous with the director and all things related to him. And regardless of whether a given film of his was a hit or a flop, quality or not, Windsor was thereand, well, it just works. It’s long, it’s kind of lanky. It has serifs. That f that you see in the Windsor font . . . looks like Charlie Chaplin standing with his two feet poking out, Landekic says. And so it has that kind of feeling to me where it has a sense of humor about it in the way that [Allen is] using it because a lot of his comedies and his dramatic work deal with a sort of a humdrum misunderstanding elevated to a sense of dramatic chaos in some senseand Windsor kind of flies in the face of that, where it wants to be regal, but it’s very rounded. So it has two personalities embodied within it. John CarpenterAlbertus In addition to his directorial chops, Carpenter is known for creating some iconic soundtracks for his films. So it tracks that he would be meticulous about other elements within his fictive worlds. One such detail: The typeface Albertus, which he first used in the titles for Escape From New York in 1981, and further deployed in seven other films, including The Thing, Christine, Prince of Darkness, and They Live. One of the larger tenets of horror is a fear of aging, Landekic explains. Many monsters are considered monstrous because they are, for example, wrinkly or deformed in a way which can be likened to how age afflicts all of us. And so Albertus . . . has that feeling of time and legacy and something worn. You can easily imagine Albertus being chiseled into a rock face because of its shape. So it lends itself very well to that kind of atmosphere. Ultimately, as a title designer, does Landekic wish every director would take as strong an approach as those referenced in this article? Landekic says she loves the fact that David Finchers movies have such radically different title sequences, and she thinks trying to fit everything into a tightly branded box could push films more toward being devalued as mere content. She adds that it could narrow a filmmakers focus too early if they made such a decision at the outset of their career. If Sean Baker wanted to make a sci-fi film, would it work with Aguafina? Would he feel pressure to make it work? At the end of the day, I would like the film to feel cohesive,” says Landekic. “And however that happens, however that needs to look, is the ideal. Ultimately, a title sequence and a title font is in service to a larger picture.
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William Reilly, who served as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush, first moved to Washington D.C. in the late 1960sbefore the EPA was established. He remembers a contest in which dogs were to retrieve items by swimming into the Potomac River. After the first two dogs got out and vomited, it was closed down, he says. At the time, the river was intensely polluted, full of raw sewage and industrial waste. Then came the EPA, which President Nixon established in 1970, and then it’s 1972 Clean Water Act. Now, Reilly notes, theres a campaign to allow swimming in the Potomac, and every summer people flock to the river to kayak, canoe, paddleboard, and more. Reilly was speaking on a press call, along with two other former EPA administrators, in response to the Trump administration’s decision to roll back nearly three dozen environmental regulations. Illegal dumping in New Jersey, 1973. [Photo: Gary Millar/US National Archives] Christine Whitman, who served as EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, remembers how, when visiting the beach as a child, you had to be very careful of the tar balls, she says. Wed go down to the beach and wed get tar all over our feet. Floating balls of sticky tar were common in the ocean in the 60s and 70s, because of offshore oil tanker operations or even oil spills. Nobody wanted to go in the water, she says. Though sometimes tar balls still appear on beaches today, the frequency has dropped drastically, thanks to efforts by the EPA. Huntington Beach, 1975 [Photo: Charles O’Rear] This is what were in danger of returning to amid the Trump administrations efforts to gut the EPA and roll back regulations. Lee Zeldin, the current EPA administrator, said such regulations have unfairly burdened industry. But experts say removing those regulations would be a catastrophic move that endangers all of our lives. Pollution in the Schuykill River, Philadelphia, 1973. [Photo: Dick Swanson/US National Archives] Before the EPA was established, environmental regulations were left up to the states, many of which were plagued by dirty air and polluted waters. After the Trump administration announced its plans to roll back crucial environmental protections, people began sharing images on social media of pre-EPA America, showing cities shrouded in dense smog, mountains of waste, and even Ohio’s Cuyahoga River on fire. A fire on the Cuyahoga River, 1952. [Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images] One reason I think there is less immediate understanding of the environment is people don’t remember how bad it was, and it truly was, Reilly says. Thats not to say the country is perfect; there is still air pollution, water pollution, and risk from chemicals like PFAS. But there have also been major improvements. Between 1980 and 2017, weve reduced the emissions of six common air pollutants by 67%even as the countrys population, energy use, and even GDP grew. We cannot have a healthy, thriving economy if we dont have a clean environment, Whitman says. And if the United States steps back from environmental regulation, it could have reverberations around the world, because weve historically been seen as a leader. If we withdraw from our involvement in trying to clean up the air, it sends a message to the rest of the world, dont bother. The Tacoma Smelter stack emits arsenic and lead residue. Ruston, 1972. [Photo: Gene Daniels/US National Archives/Wiki Commons] Under Trump, Zeldin has made it the EPAs mission to unleash American energy, a contrast to the agencys long-standing mission to protect the health and environment, says Gina McCarthy, who served as the EPA administrator under President Barack Obama from 2013 to 2017. That, in combination with the moves to rollback regulations and fire workers, is a not so subtle way of ushering in a global age of pollution, she adds, at the expense of our ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and to continue to protect and preserve our national resources. Smog over Louisville, 1972. [Photo: William Strode/US National Archives] Though the courts may stop some of the Trump administrations efforts, these previous EPA administrators worry that the government firings will still leave the agency without the ability to actually carry out any laws if they are reestablished. And if the laws are rolled back, that leaves Americans with far fewer crucial protections, particularly from polluting businesses. Were almost going to have an honor system where were going to trust corporations and businesses to behave in a way that they have been behaving when there were laws, but all of a sudden there are no laws, Reilly says. And so I honestly wonder if the malefactors are going to give us more burning rivers.
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