[laughs]

So, and so, and so fashion forecasters do this process of trying to understand the cultural dynamics, make, uh, predictions, and with those predictions they're making actual bets, like this shirt is going to be fashionable in six months when we put it in a store.

Um, and so cultural fa- forecasters do very similar kinds of work, but outside of fashion.

So they might do it with food, they might do it with, um, just general attitudes.

They work in automotives, they work in holidays, et cetera.

And the idea is what sort of dynamics are happening in culture? Um, how can we capitalize on those dynamics in a way that makes our products market ready when they come to market? Again, whether that's six weeks from now, 18 months from now, five years from now, et cetera.

Um, so I can give another sort of concrete example.

Yeah

Is that kind of, you think, part of this?

Yeah, I think that that's absolutely part of it.

Well, there's a couple of things.

One, I think it's, some of it is aging, right? [laughs] So, like, the older you get, the less you're kinda plugged into that kinda youth culture where songs are new and you're excited about every new, you know, song by whatever artist is coming out.

So some of it is that.

But I really do think some of it has to do with public spaces where people are listening to music, and if you think about it, you know...

I, I was driving yesterday and I heard Lucky Star, right? [laughs] Madonna, Lucky Star from like 1980-whatever, and I rolled my windows down and I turned it up, and I obviously looked like an old person doing that.

When you talked about the idea that how these songs come up-Do they usually seem to be coming from the ground up and that people like them, then the influencers start talking about them, then that kind of fuels it? Or do the influencers set the tone, and then the public kind of decides what the song of the summer is?