The Genius Of Design

01:30:58

97% of Listeners Couldn't Tell… Rithik Kundu on AI...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/10/01

Listeners Preferred the AI Song… Rithik Kundu on What a Blind Test Reveals About Taste, Originality & the Future of MusicWhat happens when listeners don't know which song was made by a human and which was made by AI?Rithik Kundu is a Brooklyn-based music-tech researcher, producer, and investor working where generative audio, AI, and music rights meet. He founded NYU Generative Audio & AI, is a managing partner at Joker Deck Ventures, and contributes to the World Intellectual Property

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01:06:37

Reaching 100 Million People Used to Cost Millions....

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/09/21

Up until about ten years ago, reaching a hundred million people would have cost you millions upon millions of dollars. Today it's free — it fits in your pocket. So why do most creators still stay invisible?Jake Isham is a Los Angeles–area filmmaker-turned-brand strategist and the Founder & CEO of Creative Minds. With over 1 billion views generated and more than 150 brands served, his work spans names like Callaway Golf, Grant Cardone, 5.11 Tactical, TravisMathew, Marshall Faulk, and Chloe

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00:27:00

Building for a World That Is No Longer Predictable:...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/07/30

For most of software’s history, designers could assume that an input would produce a predictable output. AI is changing that.In this episode, Ousman speaks with Tammy Coombs, a product designer and design engineer with more than 15 years of experience building complex tools for security, reliability, and operations teams. Her work has included leading UX initiatives at Palo Alto Networks and designing AI systems for security researchers, Site Reliability Engineers, and other expert users working in

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01:57:58

Beyond the Prompt: Boris Eldagsen & the New Value of...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/07/21

AI Can Generate. Can You Judge? Boris Eldagsen & the New Rules of Knowledge WorkIn 2023, Boris Eldagsen won the Creative Open category of the Sony World Photography Awards with an AI-generated image—and then refused the prize.The experiment exposed a larger problem: technology was moving faster than the institutions responsible for evaluating, regulating, and governing it.Boris Eldagsen is a Berlin-based artist, philosopher, educator, consultant, and early practitioner of generative AI. He works

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00:19:30

They Did Everything Right, But No One Hired Them (Pt.2)

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/07/09

Why Building Anything Beats Waiting for Permission — The Optionality Argument Nobody Makes (Part 2)Last episode we did the hard half — the broken promise, the 41.5% underemployment, the grief a generation isn't allowed to name. This is the other half. Because while institutions take their time catching up, you still have to wake up tomorrow and decide what to do with the day in front of you.So we change the question: forget what society owes you for a moment — what does the practice of building

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00:16:39

They Did Everything Right, But No One Hired Them (Pt.1)

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/07/02

The Career Ladder Was Invented in 1911 — And It's Being Dismantled While You're Still Climbing It41.5% of recent U.S. college graduates are underemployed. In China, 97,000 new PhDs are competing for jobs that don't exist — some applying to be rural clerks or hotel kitchen interns. These are the people who did everything right. So what do we actually owe them?This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation almost nobody is having honestly. Most takes on the death of the career ladder collapse two separate

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00:29:23

What The Weeknd's Visual Artist Knows About Taste...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/06/26

YZA Voku is a Seville-born, Madrid-based visual artist and director whose clients read like a who's-who of music and culture: The Weeknd, Swedish House Mafia, La Liga, XG, The Sphere in Vegas, and more. His award-winning AI film Lapse won Best Craft at Gen:48; Pantomime was a finalist. But this conversation isn't really about AI.It's about the difference between generating and creating — between outputs that get scrolled past and worlds people want to live inside. I reached out to YZA and asked him

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01:49:47

$147 Million for a Painting… Doug Woodham on Why...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/06/18

What if the most iconic outsider in modern art was never really an outsider at all?Doug Woodham holds a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan, spent years as a partner at McKinsey, and served as President of the Americas at Christie's auction house — where he once watched $147 million change hands for a single Francis Bacon painting. But his latest book isn't about the market. It's about a person.Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Making of an Icon is the first major Basquiat biography in over 25

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01:37:30

NYU Scientist Who Started in Art… Karolina Sulich on...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/06/04

Karolina collaborates with living organisms. At NYU's Laboratory of Living Interfaces, she works with microbes — reading their DNA to detect heavy-metal contamination in soil and water, building computational pipelines that turn a cocktail of unknown bacteria into a readable signal. But her first training wasn't in science. It was in art.In this episode, we follow the thread between those two worlds — and why Karolina insists they were never separate. We get into why she sees math and code as a form

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01:27:09

The Photographer The New York Times Keeps Calling:...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/05/28

Erik Tanner has photographed Lizzo, Robert Downey Jr., Roger Deakins, Josh Brolin, and the NBA. Rolling Stone keeps calling. So does the Wall Street Journal. So does the New York Times. But Erik will be the first to tell you he's an introvert who isn't sure he belongs in the room — and that tension is exactly what makes his work extraordinary.In this episode, we get into what it actually takes to walk onto a set with one of the most recognized faces on the planet and still make the image yours. Erik

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01:12:20

Oxford, UNICEF, to PUMA — Design Guru Paul Boag & Why...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/05/18

Paul Boag has been on the internet since 1994. He's advised Oxford University, UNICEF, PUMA, and the European Commission. And after thirty years at the front edge of digital, his take on AI is not what you'd expect: stop worrying.In this conversation, we get into why good design fails in the real world — and why it has nothing to do with the quality of the design itself. Paul breaks down the difference between art and design, why perfection is a trap, and what taste actually is beneath all the

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00:59:51

Double Your Price… 10x Your Creativity: Christian...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/04/12

What if the thing capping your creativity isn't your talent — it's your price tag?In this episode, CPA and Profit First for Creatives author Christian Brim makes the counterintuitive case that charging more doesn't compromise your art — it frees it. Drawing on 29 years inside the financial engine rooms of small businesses, Christian unpacks why so many creatives confuse suffering with authenticity, effort with value, and humility with good pricing.We get into the Mercedes-Benz move that turned a

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01:15:54

Life Is Not Safe by Design: Ken Buslay on Analog...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/03/25

Ken Buslay is a German photographer whose work blends quiet intimacy with documentary depth, shooting primarily on analog film to explore human connection and memory. In this episode, Ken takes us from his first 3-megapixel camera to years of shooting only black and white on a single 50mm lens, to medium format Hasselblad, and what each stage taught him about himself and the people he photographs. We get into why limiting your tools teaches you more than upgrading them, how slowing down literally

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01:13:03

The Studio Nike, Netflix and Calvin Klein Call First:...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/03/18

Haris Fazlani is the co-founder of WØRKS, the New York creative studio behind campaigns for Nike, Netflix, Fear of God, Converse, Calvin Klein, and more. In this episode, Haris takes us from growing up as a child of immigrants drawing alone in his room, to interning for Ryan Leslie and living on a tour bus, to building a studio that the biggest brands in the world trust to shape their visual identity. We get into what good design actually does to the human body, why WØRKS leads every project with

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00:05:03

The Ones Who Finish Are Not More Talented. They Just...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/03/12

You said you'd start, and yet there you are, staring at a blank page with nothing to show for it. That pain is real, and it has a way of compounding. One day becomes a week, a week becomes a month, and before you know it, the book, the app, the project you swore you'd build never happens. But here's what nobody tells you: that feeling isn't a sign that you're failing. It's actually the process working exactly as it should.The secret is understanding the difference between push and pull. In the

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00:12:11

Why Your Best Ideas Disappear (And How to Keep Them...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/03/05

What if the problem isn’t inspiration—but infrastructure? In this episode, we break down why most creatives don’t suffer from a lack of ideas—they suffer from losing them. You’ll learn how a simple capture system flips you from blank-page paralysis to creative overflow, why your brain needs a trusted external home for ideas, and how reviewing what you capture turns chaos into compounding momentum.We also unpack the one small, “boring” captured idea that completely changed a life trajectory—unlocking

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00:18:26

Stop Searching for Originality… How Copying landed me...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/02/26

Creatives should stop waiting for original ideas and instead focus on copying and iterating on existing works to develop deep skills. Mastery comes from deliberate practice, which includes focused attention, clear standards, immediate feedback, and pushing comfort zones. By copying the work of masters, they can discover their unique voice and create original work through the process of iteration.

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01:05:16

From National Geographic to The White House: How Mike...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/02/19

For National Geographic, The White House, The Baltimore Sun, The Milwaukee Journal and some of the most decorated newsrooms in America, Mike Davis has been the quiet force shaping how the world actually sees the story. A legendary visual editor, educator and mentor, he’s spent decades helping photographers turn raw images into narratives that endure—most recently as the endowed Alexia Chair at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School. We talk about what really makes an image stick in a viewer’s mind,

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00:51:34

When Microsoft, Sony and the NBA Want Spaces to...

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/02/19

For brands like Microsoft, GitHub, NBA, Johns Hopkins, Sony, VW, Audi, BMW, Hennessy, New Balance and global stages such as World Expo Dubai, the World Economic Forum in Davos and Electric Zoo, Vadim Mirgorodskii is the person you call when you want space itself to come alive. In a world where most people treat technology as a tool, he treats it as a living material. Founder and art director of Interactive Items Studio, he designs interactive installations and “living interfaces” for brands,

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00:14:00

AI Will Change Everything… But Not Really

The Genius Of Design ·

2026/02/19

This episode confronts the uncomfortable truth about the AI revolution: for most people, unlimited creative and technical power will be completely wasted. As the cost of code, content, and creative production collapses to near-zero, the bottleneck shifts from execution capability to strategic direction.

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