Long-form profiles disguised as speculative lunches with creative minds navigating achievement and reinvention in our very weird era. Nothing’s off the table.
Power Lunch
Between “The AI Con” book tour and marking three years of her “accidental” hit podcast, she still has time for Power Lunch. The director of research at DAIR — and ex-senior research scientist at Google — talks “AGI” silliness, the power of imagining possible futures and, of course, roller derby.
Power Lunch
She sold her first book on a lie. The lie? That she cared about tech burgers. Now, in the middle of a move back to New York City, a move off Substack, and her memoir, we set the table to discuss the mess of media work— covering everything from Carrie Bradshaw’s per word rates to martini tattoos.
Power Lunch
Silicon Valley’s sharpest critic, Paris Marx marks 5 years of Tech Won’t Save Us, telling ESC KEY .CO how he pushed through early anxiety to make the essential podcast on the subject. We set the table to discuss exiting U.S. tech, the state of criticism and one guest who made him a little nervous.
Power Lunch
For her second graphic novel, “Simplicity,” this acclaimed cartoonist and a former editor at The Nib tried a new approach: save any idea that intuitively seemed to “fit.” She did that for more than a year. We set the table to talk her process, a literal vision and making trans culture right now.
Power Lunch
When it comes to the art of judging people, who is more qualified than prolific photographer and Portland In Color founder Celeste Noche? It’s not a rhetorical question. We set the table in the midst of decisions, an austere creative economy and bad “AI” imagery, asking, “How is this still OK?!”
Power Lunch
In 2021, Tiara Darnell, a producer at Spotify, relocated to Mexico City. She soon opened its first Black soul food restaurant, the diaspora-connecting and now-closed Blaxicocina. We set the table at this intersection, discussing everything from “overnomadism” to burnout and finding new purpose.