I’ve had a very traumatic history with ‘90s Disney movies.

I remember getting the flu when I was 5 after seeing Beauty & the Beast for the first time and throwing up all over my parents’ Isuzu Trooper.

I remember being super unsure what was happening to my insides the first time I saw Jessica Rabbit.

But I think my earliest memory was seeing The Little Mermaid in the theatre for some kid’s birthday party around the time I was 4. And, I’m not ashamed to admit this, all I really remember is how freaked out and frightened I was by Ursula, the villain.

As scared as I was back then though, I think she’s even scarier to me now as a grownup because I now realize she represents one of the most vile things you can do to a person…the thing she does to the little mermaid…she steals her voice.

Have you ever had those dreams when you’re trying to shout and you’ve literally lost your voice? Creepy, scary stuff.

If you’re navigating anything—a team, a brand, a family, a community—you know those moments where you HAVE to find your voice. You HAVE to know where it sits and what it believes. You get that there’s a difference between being heard and listened to.

I’ve noticed lately how much we’ve all been using AI to help us when it comes to this. These tools can be incredibly helpful, especially when we’re trying to write that email to a teacher, or that scope-creeping client, or maybe an uncooperative co-parent, and we don’t want to come off as too weak or confusing, or maybe we just don’t want to sound as angry as we really feel inside.

And it can feel like magic, right? We suddenly sound WAY more professional than we actually find ourselves in the moment. It can turn…

“Hey Ms. So-and-so, why is my kid being bullied? What the bleepity-bleep is going on in your classroom??”

to

“Hi Ms. So-and-so, I wanted to check in about some ongoing peer interactions that my child is finding upsetting.”

It does a really good job of de-escalating conflict.

But I’ve also noticed that we’ve started to outsource these same tools to those moments where it’s imperative that the thing that shows up is our own unique and unmistakable voice.

What’s funny about this moment in time is that it’s getting easier and easier to identify a voice…It just happens to belong to AI. We all know it. AI has a certain way of saying things, certain preferences, hooks, structures, etc. It’s incredible at writing correctly.

What’s becoming rarer are the moments we can identify someone else’s unique voice, whether that’s a brand, a leader, or an artist.

It’s now become a competitive edge to sound like yourself.

In our current climate, what’s more likely to get people to pay attention, to stop scrolling for a second…more stuff that’s written/said in the generic tone of AI? Or something spoken in a unique tone and rhythm, an idea that carries a particular identity?

For all the talk of upskilling and optimizing during this moment, there’s one skill I see worth honing that I don’t hear mentioned a lot.

Courage.

As far as I can tell, courage is one of the few human attributes AI can’t really emulate, at least on its own, because courage is the ability to look at the available data, and choose to bypass it, to go against it. Courage is, “if you do this thing, the chance of this bad thing happening is high” and deciding “I’m going to do it anyway.” It’s Han Solo energy. Remember that scene where he’s about to navigate an asteroid field and C-3PO tells him the chances of surviving are 3,720 to 1? What does Han say? “Never tell me the odds!”

Recklessness ignores the odds. Courage understands them and still chooses action.

Courage is “strategic foolishness,” the art of ignoring “should” in favor of an unapparent upside.

So when it comes to our voice, courage may be purposely choosing to say something in a way that doesn’t default to the most simple, or the most punchy, or the most grammatically correct. It may be choosing to meander a bit, or inject your own sense of humor, or acknowledge that we’re all navigating an asteroid field instead of acting like it isn’t there.

Sometimes courage looks like slowing down enough to consider that thing that gives you an advantage over “instant content.”

There’s that old quote by Miles Davis, “Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

Maybe that’s the real challenge of this moment.

We live in a culture tilted heavily toward efficiency. But a voice isn’t something you optimize into existence. It’s something you develop over time. It’s the accumulation of experiences, convictions, quirks, observations, scars, jokes, rhythms, and stories—the wonderfully laborious work of paying attention to what you actually think and believe.

Which is why I suspect one of the most valuable things we can do right now is resist the urge to outsource those parts of our identity that make us recognizable.

The irony is that in a world where everyone has access to the same exact tools, sounding like yourself may become one of the few advantages that actually compounds.*

*If this idea resonates, this week’s podcast episode goes deeper. I talk about a project we produced that completely changed how I think about voice, identity, and what happens when people discover they no longer have to follow a script. It starts with a school bus, a recording studio, and me thinking (as usual) “God, I sure hope this works.”

Or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

I was talking to a friend from New York last week. And when I say he’s from New York I mean, he’s really from New York. The guy used to run sound for Sinatra…that kind of New Yorker.

He asked me what I thought the reason for Reculture’s current season of growth was. You ever get a value proposition handed back to you better than you articulated yourself? This was one of those moments.

“I get it,” he said casually in his thick pre-hipster-Brooklyn accent. “You can get people’s attention but then you gotta know where to go with it.”

Depending on how long you’ve been following my work, you’ll know, like many of our vocations, it’s evolved over the years. (sits back and basks in the cleanness of that sentence thinking, “they’ll never suspect that it’s felt more like a non-linear roller coaster with the seatbelt flown off halfway through”).

However, the thing I attribute most to this growth period for Reculture is that, while yes, some of my work over the past 15 years might seem different on the surface, it’s really all been orbiting this one question: why do some stories stick with us while others disappear the second our attention moves on?

I think people are exhausted by how empty so much modern communication feels right now…which is why I keep coming back to ideas like artifacts, adventure, myths, voice…the kinds of things people actually lean into when so much is incentivizing them to lean back.

And lately, it seems like these ideas are often the exact same ideas leadership teams are wanting to unpack in person (i.e., certain podcast episodes have now become signature keynotes, workshops, and premises for advisory work). And I think it’s because the central tension is something we can no longer avoid at this juncture in history:

Attention has gotten easy. Meaning is becoming harder.

And I think the organizations that survive the next decade will probably understand the difference most acutely.

Your Audience is Split

This past weekend several commencement speeches were made at universities where two things happened:

1. The speaker praised AI.

2. The crowd of graduates booed.

I have to admit, it gave me a bit of a dopamine hit to watch the expression of multiple “distinguished” speakers go from extreme confidence to “whoops, I have no idea how to get this train back on track.”

The more cultural data like this I collect, the more I see a communication problem every brand is about to inherit: Two polarizing bubbles hardening, calcifying, and cementing themselves.

“What? There’s yet ANOTHER place we’re all polarized, CJ??”

Yes. It brings me no joy to say so. But it seems that more than a decade of flattening nuance in favor of a quick dope hit (see above) is starting to finally have some effect on the human population (Shocking!).

Camp 1: The Maxxers

Undeniably, we’re living in this exciting unprecedented age where you can now “optimize” just about anything. It used to be people could make excuses for not getting therapy, not knowing how to cook, not getting in shape. “I don’t have the income.” “Pinterest recipes leave out major details.” “I can’t find the right personal trainer.”

But now, for anywhere from $0-$20 a month, you can maxx any skill you want with a friendly expert at your side. It’s no coincidence we’ve seen a rise in lookmaxxing, moneymaxxing, and even Catholicmaxxing.

These are people who see this moment as an opportunity to optimize the optimization…optimally. Energy deficient data centers, workforce disruption, and questions about copyright are simply loss leaders for the net positive of finally being able to achieve the best versions of our lives.

Camp 2: The Enoughs

Then there’s the camp that hears the phrase “AI” and runs, judges, laughs, or…perhaps most relevant…boos.

Not only are millennial grownups having to contend with the existential crisis of being replaced while oil prices rise, their kids are graduating from high school and college wondering what the past four years were for.

They’re concerned about the environmental impact, the emphasis on replacing human creative skills, and the moral disconnect. Anthropic can hire a creator to make an ad on 35mm film in the hopes of signaling, “Hey we’re human and artsy!” But to Enoughs, the mismatch between aesthetic and action is worse than if they didn’t try at all.

The through-line I keep seeing in this camp: Enoughs repeatedly reject the assumption from those in power that just because something is new, shiny, or novel, “the kiddos will love it!” That’s the assumption those commencement speakers made, realizing, in real-time, they may have bet on the wrong horse.

"So what’s the right horse? Perhaps a clue…

I took this picture of a game some kids made over the weekend on my walk through our neighborhood this morning. No one asked them to create this challenge. They wanted to. More than that, they were ready to hand a prize out to whoever could complete the challenge. Fascinating how our human minds work even at an early age.

The one thing I see that unites these two polarized camps? “Effort.”

Regardless of where we fall on the spectrum, humans seem to choose the brands, stories, and experiences that cost something to make. It seems like, even with all these new tools, we can’t escape the fact that if we want people to pay attention we have to earn it from them somehow.

What does this mean practically? Well, for one, I think everyone gets a free pass for the past year. We’ve been collectively experimenting with AI, figuring out what’s worth adopting and what’s not, all while the plane is being built in mid-air. Together, we’ve experienced all the feelings from exhilaration and exhaustion to encouragement and embarrassment.

That said, given these camps, the age of experimenting and novelty is now over. Everyone can tell Chat GPT’s voice ticks now (and Claude’s, and Gemini’s, and Co-pilot’s). I’s time to decide, “Am I speaking mainly to optimizers or people allergic to these shortcuts?” Either way, pretending like no one can see them for what they are…shortcuts… is a losing battle.

We’ll talk much more about this on next week’s podcast, but even if these models become better at things like writing and visual art, what makes humans latch on to a specific type of voice or visual isn’t necessarily the fact that it’s perfect, but the feeling that it cost something to make.

At some point, whether we’re maxxing or resisting, optimizing or opting out, we’re going to have to show our work.

Alicia, as my 13-year-old daughter would say, is a “Grade-A-baddie.”

One day, in 1977, the dictatorship in Argentina simply took her. She was just this young mom…and {BAM}…she was instantly separated from her 18-month-old daughter, blindfolded, and locked inside a secret detention center called The Little School.

And while she was imprisoned, Alicia did something interesting: She wrote.

Not in order to build a following or to get published, but for a reason WAY more primal: to preserve reality before others could erase it.

Little poems, scraps of memory, fragments of witness. All of them breadcrumbs…something that people could point to…and eventually follow.

A few decades later, those exact fragments, words written in dark corners where hope was a ghost, became hard evidence used as testimony in trials against the very dictatorship that imprisoned her.

As someone who nerds out on brand & culture, hearing Alicia’s story made me realize how small a word like “content” is. “Content” is a fine catch-all, but Alicia was doing more with her writing.

She was leaving an artifact.

We live in this super strange, perplexing moment where it’s increasingly hard to know what’s real, what lasts, or what to even trust. And if you find yourself the one people expect to lead, navigate, and communicate “said moment,” no one would blame you for feeling foggy on what the strategy should be right now.

“Should we lean into rage bait?”
“Should we optimize the optimization?”
“Should we make the cuts quicker?”
“Should we say the thing we know will perform?”

Listening to Alicia, I kept coming back to the same center:

Make messages that become artifacts.

Things that orient people vs. distract them, that are steeped in human experience and emotion, that make us lean in vs. lean back.

This is the work.

Clarity + meaning = what get results after the fog lifts.

Just ask Alicia (who, by the way, comes off INCREDIBLY joyful in this interview for someone who experienced such suffering…something I can’t stop thinking about).

Or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

One of the men we met was Mr. Peach. He told us about how, during the height of segregation, his shop became a kind of Main Street sanctuary for the Black kids in his neighborhood. If the world outside got dangerous, or if anything went wrong, these kids knew exactly what to do. They ran to Mr. Peach.

Several years after we wrapped the project, Mr. Peach passed away.

A few days later, his daughter reached out. She had a question: could she play the interview we’d filmed at his funeral?

It’s a strange thing to realize something you made for work is going to be played in a room full of grieving people.

In that moment, the way I saw my job fundamentally shifted. We hadn’t made content, something you scroll past and forget. We had made an artifact.

An artifact is simply something people hold onto.

When you hear a story about a man like Mr. Peach, it does more than entertain you for a few minutes. It changes what you do next. You hear about someone building a sanctuary in his shop, and you pause and think: “Yeah… I want to be like that.”

It gives you a direction.

You see this same dynamic playing out in culture right now. It’s why shows like Shrinking and Ted Lasso have hit the nerve they have. People don’t just watch them. They internalize them.

These shows model how to apologize, how to lead, and how to show up for people. They do more than show us how to be a decent person, they operate like blueprints for how to move through the world. They signal what’s acceptable, who we belong to, and what we actually have permission to do.

That’s the difference between content that performs and meaning that prevails. Content is easy. Meaning is hard.

At some point, distraction isn’t enough. We all look for a blueprint, meaning we can actually act on.

If you’re responsible for a brand, a team, or a company, you’re likely feeling the friction of this right now.

Generating noise is basically free these days (yay?). And because of that’s true, it’s incredibly easy to fall into the exhausting trap of just competing for visibility. We start to operate under this assumed rule that if we can just capture enough eyeballs, people will naturally know where to go.

But in the rush to stay visible, it’s worth pausing to ask: which messages are actually making people do anything differently?

Capturing attention isn’t the same as offering direction.

When a shared story starts to lose its shape—whether it’s a brand losing relevance or a team starting to drift—it’s rarely because people weren’t listening. It’s because something got named, but nothing became an artifact people could actually take with them.

That’s what I’m unpacking in this week’s podcast episode: how to go from capturing attention to making something actually mean something…because that’s where things either move or stall.

It starts with me finding a secret list in my son’s backpack and ends with me completely covered in mud.

Larry David and Mr. Rogers are actually the same person.

No, this isn’t a conspiracy theory. I’m not pitching it to TMZ.

I’m simply a guy who leads people who has the occasional crisis of “what the heck are we actually doing here?” If that’s you too, stay with me.

First, let’s take a look at Larry David.

Larry’s schtick is to expose absurdity. To call out denial. To stop with all the social “pretending.” It’s cathartic and dare I say, even heroic at times?

Now, Mr. Rogers.

Fred Rogers was obsessed with restoring dignity to people.

His words made reality feel bearable to many. His purpose was to offer an alternative to the absurdity of what the medium of television was becoming.

The thing they’re both doing? The one thing that drives them?

Both of them pick a fight with what society calls “normal.”

Both are allergic to bulls***.

And both of them expose the truth.

Now, the way they go about it is obviously different. Which is actually the point. Right now, the difference between content that’s built for attention and stories that are built for retention is wider than ever. And I’m realizing one way we cross that bridge is to make things that help people feel like they aren’t crazy… that they’re seen… that another way is possible.

I recently had a conversation with Memo Torres of LA Taco.

They’re now one of the most trusted media voices in Los Angeles, and increasingly, one that national outlets are turning to.

At first, they were just this cool independent publication covering the food and culture seen in LA — told by people from the communities actually living it: Street vendors, neighborhood spots, the places locals would tell you were the real ones, especially as the city around them kept changing,

But earlier this year, something shifted. People didn’t just read LA Taco anymore. They started turning to it. Especially when things in LA started to get chaotic and policies started affecting real people.

Memo said something in our conversation that I haven’t been able to shake. At a certain point, he said they just started feeling responsible.

Not in a performative way. Not in a “we have a platform” kind of way, but in a “people are actually relying on us now” kind of way.

And that’s the difference I’ve been trying to name.

Larry calls things out.

Mr. Rogers calls people back.

Memo and LA Taco somehow does both.

They’ll point to something absurd, broken, or unjust and say, “this isn’t right.”

But they don’t leave you there.

They help people orient, they give people something to stand on, they remind people what’s still true underneath all the noise.

And I think that’s the kind of work a lot of us are being invited into right now.

Not just louder messages, not just sharper takes…

But something people can actually rely on.

This conversation with Memo is a glimpse of what that looks like in the wild.

Other Ways to Watch/Listen: Spotify, Apple Podcasts

But then I think of the question that’s been on my mind this Easter weekend: What Would Bob Dylan Do?

Maybe it’s the rust-orange steel stacks, or the sound of the graffitied cargo train, or the untouched architecture of post-war row houses lining the landscape, but the American songbook is my soul’s playlist at the moment.

I’ve had some profoundly spiritual experiences listening to Dylan’s music. He captures what C.S. Lewis calls “a longing for another world” — and a stubborn argument that we have a part to play in satisfying that longing.

With that, I’ve imagined what an Easter service might look like with Bob Dylan serving as our musical guide (Spotify links and covers included since I know his voice isn’t for everyone).

My hope is that no matter what you believe (or don’t) you’re reminded like I am of the simple truth that Winter brings Spring and our longing doesn’t go unloved.

CALL TO WORSHIP

Album: Oh Mercy (1989)

“Oh, the lines are long and the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong”

Cover: Sarah Jarosz turns this song into a sunrise.

PRAYER OF WAITING

Album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

“When your rooster crows at the break of dawn / Look out your window and I’ll be gone / You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on /But don’t think twice, it’s all right”

Cover: Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau turn a monologue into a conversation…or maybe a dance.

GOSPEL READING

Album: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963)

“When your rooster crows at the break of dawn / Look out your window and I’ll be gone / You’re the reason I’m a-traveling on /But don’t think twice, it’s all right”

Cover: Marion Williams’ 1969 version listens like a communal protest

COMMUNION

Album: Time Out of Mind (1997)

“I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawling down the avenue / No, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do / To make you feel my love”

Cover: Sleeping at Last’s phrasing kills me.

BENEDICTION/SENDING

Album: Saved (1980)

“Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack.”

Cover: Glen Hansard turns every song into a gospel song. He doesn’t need a choir. He is one.

A PS…

To be honest, God is still a big mystery to me and I don’t spend much time these days wondering about the details. However, there was a moment a few years ago when my wife Kelly was asked to sing a cover of Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” at an Episcopal church we were frequenting.

I was holding our son Mack, a toddler at the time, in the pew. The second I loosened my grip, he bolted and “wobble-ran” toward his mom. She scooped him up in her arms and kept singing those beautiful, haunting words while holding him close.

No admonishment. No embarrassment. No pause in the plan.

If God exists, I’m pretty sure I saw Her that day.

(Got most of it on video)

What do you do when what you say isn’t what people heard?

Every organization has a story it tells itself about why it works. A myth, if you will.

It could be something like: “We’re scrappy. We figure it out.” Or “We move fast. We don’t wait for permission.” And for a long time, that story is true. It’s the reason it works. It’s what attracts the right people, shapes how decisions get made, and becomes the thing everyone’s super proud of.

The problem is that stories don’t stay still.

It isn’t because anyone changes them on purpose. It’s because as a company scales, the myth gets interpreted… then reinterpreted… then handed down…then diluted.

The result?

Slowly, what may have once meant “be resourceful and move with conviction” starts to mean something else entirely. Something more like: “Spend as little as possible everywhere. Commit to nothing fully. Don’t get caught holding the ball.”

Which, if you think about it, is like the time I was 5 and dressed up as The Hulk for Halloween but everyone thought I was the Jolly Green Giant. Two completely different stories. Same outfit. One sad little green child.

If you lead something that’s grown, you can relate. The language you hear still sounds like the company you built. People still say the same words in the same meetings. But underneath, the myth has quietly drifted. And the drift is almost impossible to name from the inside, because nothing looks wrong. It just stopped working and nobody can figure out why.

This is what I’ve started calling myth repair.

And once you start to notice it, you realize it’s everywhere. In products. In campaigns. In the way a brand shows up.

There’s a super successful skincare brand my daughter and her friends use. They makes acne patches. But instead of hiding the blemish, they turn it into something you can’t miss, something you’re almost asking people to notice—these bright, colorful little stars.

It’s a small thing. But it’s doing something deeper.

It’s taking the old myth (hide what’s imperfect) and rewriting it into something else entirely.

That’s myth repair too.

Not replacing the myth. Not burning it down. Just noticing that it hasn’t caught up with who you’ve become. That the story you’re living inside has gotten too small for the thing you’ve grown into. It isn’t wrong. It’s just unfinished.

Most of the leaders I work with don’t need a new strategy. They just need a way to recalibrate the myth underneath the strategy...the one that’s subtly shifted…in ways that are almost impossible to catch in real time. Because that’s what myths do. They morph, often without permission.

But here’s where it gets really interesting… This is the part I could give a passionate Jimmy-Stewart-style filibuster on for days…

Myths that are aligned are what make things scale.

Think about some of the world’s most proven and beloved brands—Disney, LEGO, Apple, Nike—or properties like Batman, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. The thing that keeps these from becoming one-offs and instead, transforms them into global franchises is the meaning system behind them…

…this legible set of values that gets embedded and passed down over and over again. At a certain point, these properties stop building the brand and start stewarding the myth.

Why?

Assets can be copied.
Meaning has to be carried.

This is the meat and potatoes of my latest podcast episode. It’s about how the myths we inherit can carry us for years and help us grow, what happens when they start to morph, and what it looks like to repair them without losing what made them true in the first place.

It starts with a sloth, passes through Rudolph…and ends somewhere I didn’t entirely expect.

Listen/ Watch Here:

▶ YouTube
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple Podcasts

There’s no shortage of messages right now.

No shortage of takes, reactions, content, commentary, or things asking for our attention.

And yet I think a lot of us still feel the same tension: we’re surrounded by language, but still trying to make sense of things in real life.

You probably feel this even more if other people look to you for direction. Maybe you’re leading a team. Maybe you’re building something. Maybe you’re raising kids. Maybe you’re just trying to live honestly inside a noisy moment without getting swept away by it.

That tension is a big part of why I started the Reculture Podcast.

In which CJ becomes self-aware: I realize launching a podcast technically adds one more message to the pile. But the hope is that this one helps us make a little more sense of the ones we’re already living inside.

It’s a place to explore better messages. Messages that don’t just tell us what to react to, but help us understand where we are. Messages that don’t just grab attention, but orient us, map us, and point us somewhere.

Episode 1 is called Better Messages Send People on Adventures. It’s about why so many messages capture attention but fail to move people, and why the best ones don’t just inform us. They invite us into something.

You can watch/listen here:

If this feels like a conversation you’ve been wanting, I’d love for you to subscribe and come along for the ride. Over the next few months, I’ll be exploring themes like myths, artifacts, voice, and culture, along with conversations with people who are living these ideas out in the real world.

Let’s see where this goes.

Watch/Listen to Episode 1

▶ YouTube
🎧 Spotify
🍎 Apple Podcasts

In this opening episode of Reculture, we explore why the messages that actually move people don’t just inform or persuade. They invite people into an adventure.

Drawing on childhood stories, leadership dynamics, and everyday cultural signals, this episode introduces a simple idea: attention captures, but adventure forms.

In this episode:

• Why attention alone rarely changes behavior

• The difference between information and formation

• Why adventure is a leadership capability

• The hidden forces that move people: joy, awe, and courage

Reculture is a podcast about better messages. Messages that help us understand the stories shaping our moment and navigate the stories we’re becoming together.

Not just politically or culturally, but at work, in institutions, even in our own lives. There’s a low-grade fever in the air. A sense that familiar language isn’t landing the way it used to, and that old explanations feel thinner than they once did.

The best language I’ve found so far is this: we’re living through a season of myth morphing.

The stories that once shaped us haven’t disappeared. They’re still pointing at something real. Still carrying something we need. But they’re also not working the way they used to…at least not in their old form.

And it’s that in-between space, where a story still matters but no longer fits, that creates the friction we so easily feel.

In this reality, we’re attempting one of the hardest things humans ever try to do: hold onto what’s essential while letting the form evolve.

And through that lens, you start to see it everywhere. In institutions that feel caught between past and future. In brands carrying a message that once worked, but no longer lands the way it used to. In people who sense they’ve outgrown a way of being, but don’t yet have language for what comes next.

This tension isn’t always a sign it’s time to start over. Sometimes it’s a sign that the story is still meaningful. It just needs to be spoken in a way that fits the moment we actually find ourselves in.

PS. You can see this same dynamic play out at every scale, from democracy, religion, and companies all the way down to pop culture. One small example is The Muppet Show reboot last week. I shared a quick take that unexpectedly took off.

This is a longer piece than usual. It’s an attempt to make sense of why the current moment feels so tense, and why the stories we tell about Strength matter more than we think.

If you’re paying attention to culture right now, this is a pretty heavy moment to be responsible for…anything. A team, a family, how you show up in the world from day to day.

You don’t have to be an expert to feel it. You can sense that the world is more volatile and less forgiving than it used to be. The problems aren’t subtle. Geopolitics. Economic fragility. Climate stress. Systems that feel more wobbly than we were led to believe.

And still, when you listen to the array of solutions, something feels off, missing, or incomplete.

What makes this moment so disorienting is not that the problems are hidden. If anything, they’re pretty flippin’ obvious! What’s harder to notice though is the underlying tension that’s fueling them: the fact that we’re watching two very different myths about the meaning of Strength totally collide with each other, often without either myth actually being named.

While the same pressures are landing on all of us, what’s different is the story we each use to make sense of them…and how that story shapes what we do next.

So... let’s try to name both these myths. And what better way to do that than by using the nostalgic character archetypes of my youth (because if we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of why things feel so weird right now, we might as well make it fun).

The 90s’ Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Hero Myth

The first myth we’ll call “The 90s’ Arnold Schwarzenegger Movie Hero.” It’s the one that’s increasingly visible in America’s leadership right now and it begins with a pretty blunt premise: the world is becoming harsher. Cooperation is less reliable. Institutions move slowly and are widely distrusted. Volatility is the punchline.

From that starting point, its logic is straightforward. Simplify. Harden. Act early. Impose costs on others now so they aren’t imposed on you later.

Seen through this lens, a TON of recent decisions start to make sense. Pressure campaigns against places like Venezuela are more about leverage than moral posturing. Greenland isn’t so much a real estate fantasy as it is a signal that geography, resources, and chokepoints now matter again. Aggressive immigration enforcement focuses more on deterrence than on whether people see the system as fair or worth cooperating with. De-emphasizing our complex civil rights history (moments when people successfully changed policy via dissent) makes challenges to authority less visible during times of stress.

Taken in isolation, these moves all look super chaotic. Taken together, they reflect a coherent belief: in a fragile world, authority must act first, narrow the field, and accept backlash as the cost of staying ahead.

In this myth, Strength comes from both dominance and leverage. Borders matter more than norms. Control matters more than persuasion. Compliance is sufficient, even if belief erodes. The future is treated like a contest where hesitation is fatal and softness is a liability.

This myth resonates precisely because it doesn’t deny reality. It doesn’t pretend the world is kind. It doesn’t promise comfort. It promises preparedness. It’s 90s Arnold. Lots of muscle. Lots of camo. Lots of foreboding when it comes to artificial intelligence.

The Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi Myth

But there is another myth being told, albeit more quietly right now. It’s the “Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi” myth. It starts from the same diagnosis, but it reaches a different conclusion.

It agrees the world is volatile. It agrees shocks are compounding. It doesn’t pretend complexity is going away. Where it diverges is in how it fundamentally understands Strength.

This myth centers on something we’ve lost a good word for, so let’s name it with intention. Legitimacy.

Legitimacy isn’t just about being well liked or morally pure. It’s about whether people believe a system is worth participating in, even when it asks something of them (like taxes or laws). In mythic terms, legitimacy is a shared story that makes cooperation possible. It’s the kind of Strength you see in figures like Yoda or Mr. Miyagi: quiet, steady, and principled.

Legitimate systems move faster in crises because people comply without having to be coerced. They adapt better because dissent illuminates errors early. They recover more reliably because trust lowers the cost of coordinating people. In this frame, diversity, pluralism, and arguments aren’t things to tamp down. Instead, they act as a kind of sensing system. To quote the poet, M.C. Hammer, the Yoda-Jedi-Master-Mr.-Miyagi system is “too legit to quit.”

Control and Capacity are Not The Same

This difference between both these myths often gets framed as Pragmatism versus Morality. That misses the point. What’s actually at stake is a choice between control now and capacity later.

Dominance works, especially at first. The tradeoff, however, shows up over time. Fear doesn’t compound. Compliance without belief is expensive to maintain. Systems optimized for control perform well under stressors they’ve gotten used to, but kind of poorly under new ones when they inevitably pop up. When loyalty starts to outrank competence or information is hoarded, mistakes travel farther before they have a chance to be corrected.

Legitimacy, on the other hand, is Yoda energy. It’s archaic and inefficient…and then suddenly it becomes indispensable. It’s what allows societies to absorb loss without tearing themselves apart. It’s what lets organizations make hard moves without triggering internal collapse…and turn complexity from a liability into an asset.

Making Sense of the Mismatch

The uncomfortable reality is that the hardest challenges ahead aren’t clean conflicts that can be solved by force alone. They’re cascading failures, climate events, economic volatility, technological disruption, and social strain—problems that don’t care much about borders or hierarchies. In those conditions, adaptability matters more than uniformity.

The dissonance many people feel comes from sensing this mismatch. But it also comes from a third myth, a “tale as old as time” if you will (ok, last 90s reference I promise).

The myth: You must always choose between two blunt binaries.

If there is an invitation for us in any of this, it’s that we can acknowledge that the world is getting harder and still question whether narrowing our imagination, flattening our history, and thinning checks on power will actually serve us in the long run.

We can accept the failures of institutions without assuming that hollowing them out leaves anything sturdy behind when control falters.

This moment can feel like whiplash everywhere because stories told at the top of the mountain don’t stay on the mountain. They travel downward, shaping expectations along the way. For leaders, founders, and organizations, the tension shows up close to home. Many of us are stuck between reacting to pressure and articulating a coherent path forward. We feel the volatility but lack a shared language for what kind of Strength we’re actually trying to build.

In those moments, the work isn’t persuasion or performance. It’s sense making.

It’s not to choose a side in a culture war. It’s to choose which kind of Strength story we’re preparing people to live inside.

And that’s not an abstract choice. It shows up in how we lead, how we build, and how we decide what kind of future we’re rehearsing for…often long before anyone realizes it.

Share

I know someone who, for as long as I’ve known them, has seemed trapped in a cycle of isolation, heartache, and a crippling lack of self-worth. Just this past week, he was introduced to the work of James Baldwin from an Instagram post. It was a clip of him explaining how suffering can be a bridge.

You go through life for a long time thinking, No one has ever suffered the way I’ve suffered, my God, my God. And then you realize—you read something or you hear something, and you realize that your suffering does not isolate you; your suffering is your bridge. Many people have suffered before you, many people are suffering around you and always will, and all you can do is bring, hopefully, a little light into that suffering. Enough light so that the person who is suffering can begin to comprehend his suffering and begin to live with it and begin to change it, change the situation. We don’t change anything; all we can do is invest people with the morale to change it for themselves.

He told me it made him weep. He told me he saved it every place he could as a kind of safety net for himself. This guy who, after years and years, I’ve simply come to accept as permanently stuck and impenetrable, was broken wide open in an instant by the voice of a prophet from 55 years ago. Excited, I quickly recommended he read “The Fire Next Time,” and to my surprise he bought it.

There’s something in particular, however, that’s got me a bit tangled when it comes to all this. I can’t stop thinking about what his point of discovery was.

Instagram.

Yes, the same Instagram with the addictive dopamine hits.
And the AI slop.
And the body shaming.
And the opinion ranting.
And the ability to process daily atrocities in real time.

The paradox, the contradiction, isn’t lost on me.

We are just a few days into 2026, and it already feels like a lot to carry. If you’re navigating a team, a family, a venture, etc., no one would fault you for wondering, “Why does it feel like we’re living in a world full of contradictions? And how, in this contradictory world, do I even begin to move through it… let alone anyone I’m responsible for?”

And while there are no simple answers, I’m struck by the gift Baldwin seems to have given my friend, something viral in the most sincere sense of the word: a small sense of agency.

My friend’s realization that even in the midst of despair and depression, he has the ability to move did, in fact, move him. The illumination of a bridge and the whisper of reassurance that it was within reach dislodged something so stuck that, over time, I too had come to believe in its permanence.

Myths are stories we tell each other about the world we want to live in. This year, may we remind ourselves that we get to choose what myths we believe.

If you ask me, I don’t see the contradictions going away. If anything, they’ll continue to become more complex. We can either determine to shut it all down, (always an option) or take up the task of sorting through those contradictions to find the narratives that wake us up, shake us loose, and send us across the bridge on an adventure we were made for.

To be still is a gift. To stay still is to miss out on a birthright.

Share

Some HouseKeeping

Reculture: Live in LA is fast approaching and you’re invited!

One of my New Year’s resolutions has been to try and enter more spaces where communion can happen offline and in-person. If you’re on the West Coast (or have means to travel) I’d be honored if you joined us for what we’re calling “an experiment in collaborative curiosity around some of our culture’s biggest challenges.”

It’s an intimate, in-person dialogue with leaders who are thinking about culture differently, from Fr. Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries and Latif Nasser of RadioLab, to educators, writers, and producers from shows like The Problem with Jon Stewart and The Michelle Obama Podcast.

Together, we’ll explore the story we currently find ourselves in and consider what it might look like to step into a better one. It’s a space to listen, reflect, and, if you choose, actively participate in the dialogue. I’d love to see you there!

And tucked inside it is this strange, beautiful phrase:

“And a little child shall lead them.*”

*”Them,” meaning the wolves, lions (pretty sure a leopard joins the mix)…basically, the kinds of carnivorous creatures you definitely wouldn’t trust around your kid.

What I love about that image is that it’s not a commandment telling us what to do. Instead, it’s a picture meant to help us imagine what’s possible.

So many of the stories that have shaped me, especially around Christmas, work this way, whether it’s Charlie Brown, The Muppets, or Dr. Seuss.

They don’t argue their way into meaning. They show it to us, simply enough that a child could carry it.

This year, I had a small, unexpected Christmas gift.

I realized that Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, lives about two hours from me.

That discovery did something strange. First, it made me wonder where the line is between stalking and, you know, just lingering around a neighborhood in close proximity waiting for someone to show up.

But secondly, it sent me back.

I grabbed the Complete Calvin & Hobbes Anthology sitting on my shelf (every house should have this) and started rereading the strips to my son before bedtime.

One night, one panel from a single strip jumped out and has since lodged itself in my heart.

It’s Calvin and Hobbes running into summer, a flag in hand, a shovel over their shoulder, charging into the great unknown of their own backyard.

Pure adventure.

That image has become this quiet little symbol for me. Of childhood, yes, but also of the kind of life I still want to live, especially lately.

This week alone, the world felt unbearably heavy. So many unnecessary losses. So many headlines competing for our attention. It feels like every morning requires a small, exhausting decision about which tragedy to hold first.

In these moments, I’ve begun to notice something in myself. I don’t long for more information. I long for formation.

For reminders of who we are. And who we could still be.

If Advent is the ache for a new possibility, Adventure is the act of stepping toward that possibility with courage, becoming someone new in the process.

There’s something about Calvin and Hobbes that feels kind of like that ancient Christmas text. A boy and a tiger. A kid and a carnivore. Innocence and danger, somehow learning to run together.

A child leading, not because they know more, but because they see differently.

Maybe that’s why the stories that stay with us don’t necessarily shout, tell us what to do, or demand certainty.

They just remind us of some kind of possibility.

As this year closes, I don’t have resolutions to offer.

Just a possibility.

That in a world very good at capturing our attention, we might make room for the things that shape who we’re becoming.

That we’d tell the kinds of stories that help us see again. That bring joy, courage, and wonder back into reach.

And that, every once in a while, we’d let the child lead us.

PS. Reculture: Live in LA is fast approaching on Jan 22 & 23, and there are still tickets available. I honestly haven’t been this excited about something in a while. This is a rare opportunity to gather for an intimate, in-person conversation with folks like Latif Nasser of RadioLab, Father Greg Boyle, and other reculturers to explore the story we’re in and consider what it might look like to step into a better one. It’s a space to listen, reflect, and, if you choose, actively participate in the dialogue. I’d love to see you there!

What I’d really like to tell you, the message I think a lot of us need to hear…is that what you’re feeling right now is normal.

If you’re feeling a blend of hope and existential dread, it’s normal.

If you don’t know how to parent your kids with screen time, it’s normal.

If you’re not sure who or what to believe anymore, you’re no different than anyone.

So as we gather around this holiday season, can we attempt to do so with a kind of virgin grace for the fact that we’re living through one of the weirdest times in history where simultaneously we’ve never had it so good…and everything also feels massively uncertain. Can we bring that uncertainty to the tables we share and be grateful in the assurance, that at the very least, we have each other?

I’m hosting a gathering.

One way I’m trying to model this is by bringing people together to talk about how weird things are and what normal people can do about it.

On Jan 22 & 23, I’ll be hosting something we’re calling Reculture: Live in LA — in search of a better discussion about what divides us. And you’re invited!

We’ll be looking for signs of life across issues like education, democracy, media, technology, and faith… and we’re determined to have fun doing it (The whole thing will actually end in a comedy show featuring the brilliantly funny Aparna Nancherla who you’ve seen on Netflix, Conan, etc.)

Here are some other reculturers we’ll be in conversation with:

To be clear, this isn’t a conference. It’s more of a retreat-style gathering. If you attend, you’ll be able to actively participate and ask questions. For that reason (and the fact that our venue is cozy “aka” small), we’ve only got spots for 40 people. Admission is only $30 so, if you’re interested, secure a spot now.

Confusing times ask us to listen more carefully—to the messengers, the makers, the ones wrestling meaning out of the chaos. Every dark age gives way to a renaissance.

If you feel that tug in yourself, and you want to learn alongside others carrying the same torch, I hope you’ll join us.

He would talk openly about his flaws in meetings with a kind of charming resignation. He would say things like, “I know I’m impatient,” or “I can get controlling,” in a tone that suggested, “Can you believe it? Even good looking people aren’t perfect!”

People admired it. He seemed honest. He seemed self-aware. And after all, he was good looking.

Over time, though, I noticed that nothing ever changed. His updates about his growth began to feel like reruns. Eventually the organization’s board put him on a six-month probation. Like God delivering instructions to Adam & Eve, they told him he had to refrain from doing just one thing in those six months, one thing he was known for always doing. He had 180 days to prove he could NOT do that thing, that he was capable of change.

He couldn’t do it.

All that vulnerability, all that transparency, none of it had any muscle behind it. It was authenticity without architecture. The moment other people pushed on it, even gently, it collapsed.

Raw Isn’t the Same as Real

That experience comes back to me whenever someone insists that the age of the millennial-inspired polished, well-lit, carefully curated brand is dead and “authenticity” is now the secret to modern branding.

“Young people don’t trust polish, so throw everything out and replace it with ‘authenticity.’ Add some lowercase captions. Throw in a little chaos. Create a sense that nothing was rehearsed, including the lighting, the script, and the basic emotional hygiene.”

It sounds noble, but without some structure, authenticity is just…well…raw. It’s flour without dough. Dylan without Adele. An onion that might make you cry, but for the wrong reasons.

We think the choice is between polish and vulnerability, but let’s consider my old boss. He was both authentic and good looking. Ultimately, neither was strong enough to save him.

The thing we humans seem to respond to, the quality that sticks out against a never-ending vortex of hype, is actually something else entirely...a message with enough design and intentionality to hold itself together, and enough integrity that other people can touch it without breaking it.

In a word, resilience.

Resilience vs. Shrink Wrap

Look at Mamdani’s campaign. Let’s be honest: that thing looked good. The colors worked. The typography worked. The story worked.

It wasn’t allergic to design; it just didn’t use design to barricade itself off. The team opened the floodgates and let supporters see themselves as fans, creating their own riffs and remixes. The brand didn’t panic. It didn’t feel threatened by amateur Canva jobs. It had a center of gravity, and people naturally orbited around it.

Compare that to Cuomo’s AI-generated material, which had the strange quality of looking both polished and lifeless at the same time, like a stock-photo-laden church brochure with the tagline, “Community matters here.” It was as if no human fingerprints were allowed anywhere near it. Call it the branding equivalent of shrink-wrap.

Shrink-wrap is what killed the Kamala campaign. The Democratic establishment tried to curate her public presence so tightly that any oxygen in the room felt like an accident. They wanted control so badly that spontaneity became a liability. When Joe Rogan didn’t leap at the chance to bring her on (how we got to that point is another story), it wasn’t because she had nothing interesting to say. Allegedly, it was because her terms were too narrow. The atmosphere around her felt sealed, the way museums seal off artifacts that can’t be exposed to light. People sense that. They wonder what happens if the curtains get pulled even an inch.

The trouble starts when authenticity stops being a byproduct of resilience and starts becoming a strategy. You can practically see those team meetings. “Can we make this appear more real?” “What if the CEO films this on a sidewalk so people know he’s the kind of guy who walks?” The whole thing becomes another layer of choreography.

If anything deserves a funeral, it’s that version of authenticity. Not the real thing, but the glossy, commercially viable imitation. Authenticity Inc.

“What do you think our approach should be?”

A few years ago, the head of a brand that had gotten huge on Instagram called me in a panic. Someone had created a parody of them, a gentle, clever send‑up of everything they were known for: the immaculate photography, the aspirational influencers, the tagline that promised “authentic community.” The parody wasn’t mean‑spirited. It was wry and playful, a lighthearted jab at just how overly polished and self‑serious the whole aesthetic had become. But it spread everywhere. For about a month it was unavoidable, showing up in the press, people’s feeds, group chats, you name it. And despite its lightness, the founder was rattled.

“What do you think our approach should be? he asked me.

I thought about it for a moment. “I’d lean into it.” I replied. “Laugh at the joke. If you respond negatively, you’ll look like you deserve to be parodied. If you have fun, you’ll prove any skepticism out there about your brand wrong.”

Ultimately, he decided to go the opposite direction than what I suggested. Their success dissipated within a few months.

Be The LEGOs You Want to See In The World

We know resilience when we encounter it:

A brand that knows itself well enough that it doesn’t disintegrate when the public starts interacting with it.

A message that doesn’t fall apart when someone asks an unscripted question.

A story that can hold its shape even when fans reinterpret it, parody it, borrow it, or even gently abuse it.

Resilience requires form. A point of view. A design language that doesn’t apologize for being designed. Think of it like Lego: intentionally shaped, thoughtfully constructed, sturdy enough to stand on its own…yet meant to be taken apart, reassembled, expanded, reimagined, and occasionally turned into something no one ever planned for. A message that invites that kind of creative interference isn’t fragile. It’s generous. It’s confident. It knows that being remixed is part of the point.

The next generation isn’t rejecting good branding. They’re rejecting fragility masked as good branding. They want the confidence that comes from a brand being genuinely itself, not because it’s trying to be relatable, but because it has nothing to hide.

So instead of announcing the death of millennial branding or authenticity branding, or any kind of branding, maybe we should announce the death of pretending that any one thing alone can carry a brand anywhere. The future belongs to the identities that can survive multiple kinds of contact—from supporters, creators, critics and disruptors alike.

Authenticity is nice. Resilience is better. And the brands that last will be the ones that let people in without losing themselves in the process.

☝️This should NOT have worked.

When Reculture was asked to create a music video directing third through fifth graders to call 988, the suicide prevention lifeline, the first thing out of my mouth was:

“There’s no way we can pull that off.”

Not with our characters Crumb and Unk, an uptight alien and his goofy robot friend. Not with that age group. Not with that topic.

But John, my creative partner, reached his hand out, looked at me, and said, “Hold on a minute.”

And thank God for “Hold on a minute.”

Because what followed was one of the most surprising creative breakthroughs I’ve been part of in a long time. It taught me, again, what all great messages have in common:

They meet people where they are.

Even if “where they are” is fourth grade.

The Simplicity Ceiling

Most people think smart messages are supposed to sound smart.
But the best ones sound simple.

Think about “Just do it,” “You’re not you when you’re hungry,” or “Think different.”

We don’t process messages with a red pen; we process them with our nervous system. And our nervous systems love simplicity.

I’m not saying this is ideal, but the average American reads at about a seventh-to eighth-grade level. On top of that, studies show that when we’re under stress, we tend to revert to simpler language processing. In short, when we’re overwhelmed, distracted, or emotional (so, always), we reach for what’s easy to digest.

Which means if your message only makes sense to a C-suite, Ph.D., or policy wonk, it might be smart…but probably not very effective.

Crumb, Unk, and the 988 Challenge

Back to the project.

The ask was clear but daunting: Make a song that tells 8-to-11-year-olds that 988 is the number to call if they, or a friend, are struggling.

At first, I balked. I didn’t even realize that kids that young struggled with suicidal thoughts. But the data says they do. And once that sobering truth settled in, it made the challenge feel all the more important.

We went to work.

We knew the sensitive directives we had to communicate.
But we started the way we always do: with story, with characters, with hope. We refused to make this thing feel like a downer. Instead, we wanted to ground it in positive feelings like joy, courage, and—dare I say—even a little fun. We teamed up with friend & music producer Chris Cron, and together…

We made the message so simple a fourth grader could understand it.
Because that was literally the point.
But also, maybe, because all of us need it that simple, too.

How to Communicate on a Fourth Grade Level (Without Sounding Like a Fourth Grader)

Here are a few handholds I learned from projects like this that I trust are helpful to you too.

1. Bake the veggies in the mac & cheese.

Kids don’t need five bullet points to pay attention, they need a reason to care. Adults are no different. Joy. Curiosity. Fear. Surprise. Humor. Offer those things up first…the things we all naturally get excited about. Bake the more substantial stuff inside.

2. Don’t confuse gravity with heaviness.

Just because a message is powerful (like gravity) doesn’t mean it automatically has to feel heavy. The more important we feel a message is, the more likely we are to weigh it down in one way or another. Resist that urge and see what happens.

3. Talking down doesn’t work. Bending down does.

When Yo-Yo Ma was seven years old, he played for Presidents Kennedy, Eisenhower, and a room full of other famous people praising the young boy with platitudes and pats on the head. But the person he remembers the most? The actor Danny Kaye (White Christmas, Hans Christian Andersen). Why? Here’s what Ma says:

“He came down to my level in order to be an equal. He extended himself, met me at the crucial edge that divides adult from child, and won my heart. I subliminally internalized that gesture and that attitude, and I’ve tried to be mindful of this in everything I do—to meet people at eye level, at the edge that divides one person from another.”

There’s a subtle difference between talking to people and talking with them. I’ve found that subtle difference often leads to paradigm-shifting results.

If we can bend down, if we can lean into gravity without always succumbing to our own heaviness, if a fourth grader can get what we’re saying, everyone else has a fighting chance too.

We’ve conquered sight, sound, and soon, smell.

While machines focus on perfecting all that, the job every creatively maladjusted leader, every nihilism-bashing educator, every wonder-preaching parent should be focused on is the remaining two senses:

Taste and Feel.

Taste

…as in that uniquely human ability to see something, hear something, or even smell something and respond by saying, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

The recipe may call for a pinch more salt, a color outside the palette, or a note that bends just a little to catch your ear. It’s the bulletproof ritual of bringing our intuitive selves to whatever story we’re faced with and understanding we can change it for the better.

Feel

Of course, you can’t have Taste without Feel—without building a résumé of experience learning what’s true, or good, or beautiful in the first place.

Without developing a vocabulary for groove.
Without having your heart broken.
Without knowing it can be repaired by the company of another’s broken heart.
Without rolling down a window in favor of a skyline that’s un-tinted and un-air conditioned.

Forget soft skills. Feel is perhaps the roughest of them all. The kind that can withstand wind, get close to suffering, and hold fire.

While the landfill of artificial-everything keeps growing, Taste and Feel are the intelligent tools wielded by those smart enough to realize that people’s attention isn’t the end goal; it’s whether that attention moves them to care enough to do something about it.

Best friend to the creator,
worst enemy to the mediocre,
are these two less-talked-about senses each of us are born with.
May we come to them, keep them close, and cultivate them in others.
They matter even more now than they used to.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. — Charles Bukowski

It’s fair if you’re a creative person and you’re exhausted right now. I mean, I am.

Here I am writing with the audacity of a seven-year-old doing lines of Pixy Stix, about how Joy, Wonder, and Courage have the potential to beat out messages based in fear and division. Meanwhile, it’s full-on 2025 out there! The government is shut down. Violence is filling my feed with a ferocity only outmatched by Hims ads. And in a plot twist NO ONE saw coming, AI seems pretty bent on doing more soul-sucking than life-saving.

So I understand if you don’t want to hear my schtick… that your message is meaningful, that in a world of false narratives, you hold the pen to change the story, that messages like Joy, Wonder, and Courage are worth fighting for.

You might be puffing an imaginary cigarette right now and rolling your eyes while saying in your best French accent, “cliché.”

And I wouldn’t blame you.

But for one moment, before you flick your imaginary butt on the ground and reach for the unsubscribe button, may I suggest there may just be a method to my madness?

I’m trying to do something. Imperfectly. Inconsistently. But I’m trying nonetheless.

Dr. King used to say a phrase that didn’t get as much airtime as lines like those from “I Have a Dream” or “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” This was more of a deep cut.

“Human salvation,” he said, “lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.”

I’m a big fan of that term…creatively maladjusted.

We all know what it means to be “well-adjusted.” It’s something we learn from the time we’re kids, from saying “excuse me” after burping at the dinner table and taking standardized tests, to eventually allowing the last appetizer to sit there on the table even if nobody else takes it. Broadly, it means to conform successfully to all of our society’s norms.

But King argued that if those norms themselves become inherently unjust, good people should refuse to adapt…not by mere rebellion or chaos, but through a kind of creative refusal, one that builds a better order.

To break it down even more:

Maladjusted = refusing to accept injustice, inequality, or violence as normal.
Creatively = finding nonviolent, constructive, imaginative ways to resist and reform those injustices.

I am trying to practice creative maladjustment. To not roll over to cynicism or complacency and just let the whirling chaos win. To possess, as Sister Ruth Marlene Fox put it, enough foolishness to believe a difference can still be made.

If that’s you, know that you’ve got a friend.

Creatively Maladjusted people are all around us.

I believe people like us are everywhere. Every company has them. Every school. Every government. They’re the ones who can’t quite adjust to processes that have gone stale, who speak up vs. tune out when messaging starts to sound tone-deaf or the story starts losing its soul. Rather than “quiet quitting,” they’re quietly fighting—burnout, disruption, and uncertainty—to make things more joyful, honest, and thoughtful. The wisest institutions listen, mentor, and learn from these folks, understanding that they are cultural antibodies. They keep sacred institutions human…and keep humans sacred institutions.

So I’m planting my feet stubbornly in the soil. I’m going to keep writing, speaking, and creating for anyone who will listen…not because I’m pretending things aren’t a mess or that we’ll walk through the fire unscathed, but because I believe that our creative maladjustment, that small voice whispering “this isn’t how the story needs to end,” can help author the building blocks of a different chapter…even if all we add is a single sentence, word, or punctuation mark.

If that resonates, I made something small for us to remember why we’re here:

The Creatively Maladjusted Manifesto

We believe human creativity is an act of moral resistance.
We believe beauty still has purpose.
We believe honesty scales.
We believe wonder is not naïve or cliché… or any other French words that sound snobby when said while waving an imaginary cigarette. Wonder is necessary.
And we believe the next chapter of culture belongs to those maladjusted enough to love it back to life.

We stopped for a quick bathroom break at a gas station in Kentucky. Standing in line for some trail mix, I noticed the skinny gentleman in the white t-shirt behind me, a jelly donut in his hand and a Glock G19 candidly brandished on his hip.

The North had officially stopped Northing.

We got back into the car, casually merged our way back onto the concrete path covering the ghosts of men who once bled for what they believed, and, as if thinking “Now is as good a time as any,” my friend decided to DJ the next leg of our road trip conversation. “So, what do you think of this guy, Charlie Kirk?” he asked.

I’ve had that conversation many times since with multiple folks, especially after his tragic and unnecessary killing a few weeks ago. If we tend to hit an impasse, it’s usually around Charlie’s messaging strategy. But before we get to that, let’s talk about one of my favorite words.

Nuance.

I used to think nuance was the thing that would save us. More subtlety. More complexity. More patience to understand each other. As a messaging strategist, I like nuance. I’ve built my career on it. Good messaging is rarely blunt; it’s careful, crafted, surprising. The best messages don’t shout; they whisper just loud enough that you lean closer. And I still believe that.

But there’s another side of nuance. It can just as easily be a Trojan horse. It can bring in the very ideas we’d never allow through the front gate if they announced themselves honestly.

Before we get back to Charlie Kirk, I should say this: a lot has been written, tweeted, and shouted over the last few weeks about him and about what his death means. I’m not trying to solve all of that here. I just want to take one small slice of it, one angle I feel qualified to speak into, and explore it for what it might teach us.

Most of the time, my conversation with folks who don’t see the harm in Charlie Kirk’s message goes something like this:

“Sure, he said that thing, but he clarified later.”

“Sure, that clip looked bad, but you have to understand the context.”

“Sure, people on the far right loved him, but that doesn’t mean he was one of them.”

Here’s the trap of that line of thinking.

When you want to persuade someone toward something ugly, something as ugly as white supremacy, you can’t come right out and say, “I hate Black people.” That won’t work. It’s too sharp, too crude, too easy to reject. The smart move is to wrap the idea in words that sound respectable. You talk about “values,” “tradition,” “freedom,” and let the listener fill in the rest. You build a message so layered that, when someone calls it racist, you can shrug and say, “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that.”

That’s the genius, and the danger, of nuance.

So when I look at Charlie Kirk’s work, and the movement he helped grow, I don’t just see sound bites. I see careful strategy. I see the way a message is sanded down until it’s just palatable enough to pass. And I think that if we want to have honest conversations about what we value, we have to be honest about that too.

This isn’t just about one voice. The pattern is bigger than him, and bigger than politics. Anytime an idea that would be rejected outright tries to find a foothold, it learns to speak in a softer voice. History is full of these moments: segregationists talking about “states’ rights,” misogyny dressed up as “family values,” isolation-machines masked as “online communities,” anti-vaccine campaigns presenting themselves as “health freedom” movements, or common-sense gun reforms pitted as “anti-Second Amendment.”

And that’s what makes this hard. Because I don’t want to live in a world where we lose our appetite for nuance. Without nuance, we flatten everything into caricature: good guys and bad guys, winners and losers, until all we know how to do is shout.

But I do want to live in a world where we recognize that nuance can be used in bad faith. Where we get better at asking not just, what was said? but what work is this message doing? Who benefits if I nod along? Who loses?

I still love the whisper more than the shout. But lately I find myself listening closer, not just for what’s being whispered, but for what it might be hiding.