Loewe x The Grateful Dead. Worried yet?

Plus: Texas is getting into psychedelics, and AI talent scouts are here.

Jun 29, 2025

Morning,

Can’t wait to share out Cannes recap / hot takes with you mid-week. Lots of takeaways. If you don’t usually tune into the podcast letters, don’t miss this one.

If you only read one thing in this letter I recco: IBOGAINE GAINS and AI REFS are really intriguing.

As always, the lens of this letter is a best-of-the-best on culture, trends, marketing, etc. What I’m dropping to friends on Slack or finding useful in meetings with brands.

Let’s dive in!

CULTURE

FOUND IN A SNAP // Snap has acquired Saturn, a social calendar app for high school and college students. Saturn enables users to share their schedules with friends and make plans in real time (Gen-Z loves live location sharing).

as seen on

says this is all part of Snap’s “Friends over followers” trajectory. Frankly, all I can say is that Saturn would have made Cannes a thousand times easier. Snap was there with the branded tiny train, but had they used the moment to make themselves an essential part of the user experience, that would have been the real win. More brands need to look at how they add value.

COPENHAGEN MESS // Copenhagen is fast becoming the new Paris, and it’s easily overtaken NYC for the fashion-forward set. Interesting,

FOR SCALE

reports that Copenhagen is ditching its clean Scandi vibes for a more unkempt look. “Looseness, relaxation, a comfort in one’s skin” is, no doubt, about to take over your feeds.

WHITEBOARD BILLBOARD // Fred Again and one of the UK’s biggest rappers, Skepta, released their new song on a Twitch live-stream, with a whiteboard behind them announcing tickets for the release party. They proceeded to drop the track, straight from the live-stream, onto YouTube. Unpolished is the new black. (Fred Again’s Tiny Desk episode—incredible)

LOVE LANGUAGE ->

Casey Lewis

// Giving someone your scribbled in, highlighted book complete with your mid-read predictions in the margin is becoming the ultimate love language in the romantasy world. Effort, care, and shared worlds are resonating harder than ever. This will trickle down to other categories.

F&B

LEVEL 10 TEA // I’ve written about the global expansion of tea shops many times. Loved this boots-on-the-ground take on how the tea and coffee space is evolving in China from

Yaling Jiang

. Quchashan's prickly pear beverage looks delicious. Saanci's wild apricot coffee (their ginger coffee, also interesting). What stands out here is the sophistication of flavors. Now that the world has come around to Ube everything, expect more interesting flavor developments to move west.

DRUGS & BOOZE

IBOGAINE GAINS // Texas has approved $50MM for psychedelic ibogaine trials. At the beginning of the month, I mentioned Christian Tooley’s SXSW on taboo investing, where he shared the work that Soneira is doing on exploring this African shrub for neuropsychiatric conditions. If you’d have told anyone that Texas would be leading the way in psychedelic research investment a year ago, we would have all laughed. But the south is now ground zero for the MAHA movement. The world is an upside-down place, but regardless, you’ll be hearing a lot more about this drug soon.

SILVERS, ALPHAS & ZS

FUNGI DIAPERS // The founder of Thinx and Tushy, Miki Agrawal, has a new venture, Hiro Diapers, launching via Kickstarter. Each of Hiro's MycoDigestible Diapers comes with a packet of fungi. You add it to the dirty diaper, and in 1-2 weeks, it begins to biodegrade. Despite Agrawal's spotty past, the concept does tackle something many parents emotionally struggle with: the environmental impact of diapers. And as loud as the cloth diaper gang wants to get, many parents aren’t going to go there. This could work.

RETAIL

NIKE RUNNING // Nike hasn’t stopped the bleed. Anything but. Revenue is down 10% and net income is down 44%. But it’s clear they are trying to regain their footing with this Breaking 4 campaign. While Faith Kipyegon didn’t break the mile in under 4mins, she did beat her personal best. And the rallying around women’s performance feels right. As mentioned last week, women’s performance is a blank space that On is leaving wide open with their (odd) new positioning. If I were Nike, I’d be running at light speed towards that differentiation, while actively reimagining the future of IRL retail. The old Nike retail playbook feels played and needs a relook. As a recent interview in Puck put it: “retail is the best place to own your customer journey.” And I haven’t seen that evolution from them yet.

TECH

STORE DON’T ACT //

Zoe Scaman

’s reporting from her meetings with Silicon Valley’s slew of AI/tech firms has been great—and quite reflective of everything I’ve been sharing here—huge changes are coming faster than you’d expect. This not only requires a tech reframe but a rethink on how you’re team operates. Companies need to allow for AI experimentation at every level, a philosophy that Craig Hepburn echoed in a recent

BRXND Dispatch

’s interview (great read). And importantly, sharing that knowledge internally more expeditiously than ever. Loved these actionable tips for how some are doing it.

TV TAKEOVERS // “The living room is definitely a new frontier,” says David Kaufman, the global head of product operations and solutions at TikTok. And Tubi, the free streaming platform (owned by Fox) that now has +100MM active users, recently inked deals with six YouTube creators to distribute more than 500 episodes from their shows. Everyone wants a piece of YouTube’s Alpha and Z audience. As

Ochuko Akpovbovbo

says “Niche TV is the new Peak TV.” Great line.

NEW NUCLEAR // “Everyone else is betting on foundation models and frontier AI—but we’re heading into an energy bottleneck, and nobody’s talking about it. The smarter the [AI] models get, the more power they need. If you can’t solve clean, scalable energy, none of this gets to where it could go.” Another great point in the

BRXND Dispatch

’s interview with Craig Hepburn. Companies working in fission? Oklo, TerraPower, X-Energy. These projects aren’t quick though. NYC just greenlit a nuclear energy project that’s expected to take at least 15 years to come online (if you’ve ever worked in construction, you know to 2X that). And there’s still the issue of the waste. Switzerland, which never got off the nuclear train, has been working on a waste site for years, and that’s still not expected to be finished until 2050. AI companies need to be working on these infrastructure issues. And speeding them up. Stat.

SPORT

FAN FANATICS // I wrote about Fanatics Fest last week, but hadn’t really understood the extent of how interesting it is until now. Fans getting to play pro athletes—cool. But pro athletes getting business coaching—go on. Then there’s the brand engagements like this little Nike disposable camera moment, all the way to giant experiential booths like this 47 Brand x Christian Petroni activation. This thing was enormous. Get ready for next year now.

AI REFS // The founder of X Games has a new AI startup, Owl.ai—an AI platform built “to remove human error and bias from judged and refereed sports”. Apparently, they have used the tech at the X Games, training it to understand “every rule, every scoring framework, and what great style actually looks like”. They tested it at Aspen X Games and it accurately predicted gold, silver, and bronze, just by watching practice. It can also commentate live sports in any language, give coaching advice based on training videos, and do talent evaluations. This could upend the very highly paid coach and scout industries.

WELLNESS & BEAUTY

SQUASH SQUATCH? // Unilever has acquired my favorite example of brand misbehaving, Dr Squatch for $1.5B. But here’s the rub: can they keep being the brand that everyone loves? Not only are people into their ingredients which big CPG often change, but they also love the brand’s give-no-f’s energy. Given that Unilever has blocked Ben & Jerry’s from being the unapologetic brand their fans love, I’d be concerned.

GUT HUNCH //

Rex Woodbury

shared another 10 charts letter (MANGO is the new FAANG) but it was this that stood out to me, corroborating my own predictions: “fiber will take off; gut health is all the rage. And I also think creatine will be huge…brands like Create [that] pack creatine” in more accessible formats will do well.

TRAVEL

EPIC VACATION // Travel is becoming ultra fancy.

Emily Sundberg

had very fascinating chat thread going on what ‘luxury travel’ actually means today (if you’re in this industry or luxury in general, it’s a must-read.) In that thread, it appeared that the personal touch was winning, far more than over-the-top amenities, and that Belmond is killing it (I’ve stayed at one Belmond and it was glorious.) But there’s a lot happening in the more ‘epic’ segment of luxury travel, regardless. According to

Tori Simokov

, Pam Am is relaunching with $60K, 50-seater transatlantic flights. She also shared that Luxury Escapes, a lux-LTO travel site, is expanding their Signature Series into the US. “Each Signature Series trip is co-designed with a cultural insider who brings their world to life through one-of-a-kind itineraries” like this 25-day, 9-city private jet tour of all the best hotels across Europe. I’ll sign up for this and Belmond, thx.

BRAND HOSPITALITY // Brands getting into hospitality is not new, but it’s heating up. And coming in all forms. Europe’s most coveted table, Jondal, has Jacquemus parasols over their sunbeds which you can book via Dorsia, a bougie membership for fine dining and beach clubs (

Nadine // The Stanza

partnered with them, some of the smarter advertising I’ve seen on Substack). London’s fave Indian restaurant, Dishoom, has a new tiny, boutique hotel. Vipps, a brand known for kitchens and nice trash cans, has its own farmstay. Even personal brands, like Deepak Chopra, are doing it. And while it’s not quite a hotel (yet), Zara introduced a travel mode with city guides and special shopping features.