BrandBox: Battling the Emotional Exhaustion of 2020

PRINTCast: The PRINT Podcast Studio is a curated collection of cutting-edge podcasts we love about design, creativity, branding, books, and further subjects afield. Soon, we’ll have a dedicated digital listening room. In the meantime, we present the latest episode of BrandBox, “a (playful and thoughtful) podcast on the strategies and effects of brands.”

"We are exhausted. Not just the local 'we,'" BrandBox co-host Tom Guarriello says, "but the broader 'we' of America, and perhaps the world. We are exhausted.

"2020 has been the most exhausting set of circumstances I think I can ever remember."

There's COVID. The presidential race. And on and on.

So what can we do about it—and what do brands have to do with it?

Here, in a cerebral and philosophy-laden discussion, Guarriello and co-host Mark Kingsley probe the political realm of emotions.

Show Notes

• Meet the Doctor Who Changed Our Understanding of Stress.

• If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media.

• Sianne Ngai.

• Stuplimity: Shock and Boredom in Twentieth-Century Aesthetics.

• Paul Ekman.

• Which Emotions Are Basic? (PDF)

• Facial Expressions: Scott Mccloud Explains Paul Ekman In 2019.

• Scott McCloud.

• Grimace Project Documentation (PDF).

• Joe Pera Talks With You.

• Joe Pera Takes You On A Fall Drive.

• Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

• DC Comics: The Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum.

• John Cage's Connections to Buddhism.

• John Cage: Silence.

• D. T. Suzuki.

• Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists.

• Robert Ashley: Built for Speed.

• David Letterman (and His Beard) Shop at Target These Days.

• Franco "Bifo" Berardi.

• John McLaughlin—Extrapolation (Album).

• Transcendence (Philosophy).

• Immanence.

• Claude Levi Strauss’ Concept of Bricolage.

SVA Masters in Branding program // Music courtesy of Mikel Rouse // Dr. Tom Guarriello // Mark Kingsley