Take A Brain Break with Mangesh of Kalidescope

You're like, so for that, you just want You're just gonna pay for my twenty years of experience with a cup of coffee.

coffee with someone. But but the big thing for me is when they make it a lot of work for you and they don't like and so like this one person, uh was like, hey, would you mind like listening to a show of mine and and like giving me notes? And I was like, already, that's that's a little bit about work. But you know it was like a friend of a friend. I was like, sure, sure I could do that, but just like pick out pick out the

episode for me, and they wouldn't. And they just got being like, oh, you know, I've got this massive catalog, so so you you find one that you like. It was like, if you're going to ask for someone's elf, just make it as easy as possible, you.

just be a good hang. Like I'm not gonna like if we're going out for coffee, like I'm not gonna invoice you or nor am I gonna be like you know, uh, we can't talk about that right now, you know what I'm saying, Like, nah, like you know you're gonna give me game. You're gonna give me a game, you know. I I you know, obviously I'm from a I come from black people, you know what I mean. And that's part of our cultures that you give each other game,

you know what I mean. But yeah, but anyway, Uh, this show is really just like I I I am essentially just gonna go all over the place because I I find what you do in the way that you've showed up publicly more attuned to what's going on inside my head rather than like what's happened what I'm putting out?

not that serious, you know what I'm saying. Like, so I try to like put some somewhat of a sense of scale to what we're going through.

how tall is this dust cloud? It's five light years tall, Like wait, that's it's so tall that you don't use that, you don't use distance, like you know what I'm saying, Like, so I try to remind myself of stuff like that that like.

was like, should I do this or should I? Like, I have a friend who's like a uh who's really good at freestyling, another friend who's a drummer who like had taken lessons from Max Roach like like and and and we're like no, like should I be in this hip hop band or should Oh?

fact that like you know, like anything from like string theory to economic theory to whatever. And it was it was like but but it was really just the most fascinating stuff and the stuff you want to hear. And and part of what we realized was like, you know, are like my dad was out of work, We're taking all these loans to go to college, like I was gonna have to get a job to like you know that felt like probably pre law. So something that was

like you know, destined to to be very specific. And and what Will and I were saying was like after you graduate, like what like where do you learn? Where

do you have time to learn? Like like you're so focused on this one thing and and and even getting to that, right, like you have to major in one thing, you have to specifically like like go deep on something, but like where do you get the time to like engage with the incredible richness of stories and knowledge and stuff that's out there, and he and I had this idea.

We're like, well, what if what if it just felt like sitting What if you could get a magazine in the mail and you could like skim it and just reading it felt like sitting with your favorite professors at a bar where they're just telling you stories, right, They're telling you the best things, the most interesting things, and it's not like comprehensive, but it gets you to be engaged in a topic, right, Like it gets you to like to want to know more about a certain subject.

And so that's kind of what we did. And we were like naive and cocky and and like you know, twenty years old, and we put out a campus edition, and we we googled a book called how to Make a Magazine, written by Mister Magazine, and we followed it page by page.

We're gonna have to like go to law school or whatever,

like figure out something else. And what we found was that, you know, when the world's in turmoil, like people need a break, like and and it's not that like you shouldn't be paying attention to things, but sometimes you just do need a break and and and this magazine was a break for people, and it made them feel good about learning in a way and and and so like that that was really joyous and and and we you know, in the beginning it was like my mom, Will's mom and two hundred of our mom's friends.

out with a large print edition? And we were like, we can really get like, you know, we we're like working two part time jobs and like spending our evenings like trying to make this magazine and put together and whatever, and like like there's no way we're gonna get a And then Will wrote her back and he said, Hey, we're not going to be able to put out a large print edition, but we are going to send you word documents of every article and you can print them

out at whatever size you want and and you can, uh, you can still read and enjoy the magazine. And she sent out like thirty subscriptions to friends for Christmas, and it was like, we had no money for like marketing. We barely had enough money to like to get the magazines out the door, and and it only grew through word of mouth. So that was this kind of a.

Like how many times people have hit me like in my other world with music where they're just yeah, hey, man, like I don't you know, I can't afford a forty dollars hoodie, all right, I'll just I'll just send you one like it's fine. I'm saying like, yeah, okay, you know what I mean, and then you know, and then

it turns out like like I can't say. I can't tell you how many times it's been like you know, you you were kind to somebody that like, you know, went to pick up coffee, and then it turns out like whether the head of curation at Spotify now you know, yeah, like dude, you were like and I'm like, dude, man, yeah, like.

y'all dance? Like I get So that kind of opened my mind to a lot more just being connected to

the world. And my father was a black panther, so I was already kind of like plugged in with like social movements and stuff, you know, just finding a lot of finding figuring out that I found a lot of things interesting, you know, And really what I enjoyed about college was that, like I joined man, I joined the like the Filipino Club, I joined the like Southeast Indian Club, Like you know what I'm saying, Like because I was just like, like I find it interesting.

well what do you mean by that? He goes, you know a little bit about everything, you know what I'm saying. Like, so when you're at the company mixer, you know, and you're chatting up the head of HR you know about the three laws of thermodynamics and like it's an accounting job, you know what I mean. But you're like, you know, we're talking about like the Magna carta being, you know, the rough draft of what the constitutions becomes.

I already functioned. And I was like, man, but to your point, like I knew I didn't want to go to grad school. I was like, I don't have time to burn a thousand page book, you know, and like, yeah, I'm already a slow reader. Like that's something that's been true for me. I just I just read slow, you know, But like.

the world was really fascinating to me. But the other thing I really loved about it was that the writing. And I'm a slow reader. In fact, I I have poor comprehension, so it takes me like slow time to like like make sure I understand something or whatever. But but so the thing I loved about anthropological writing and these ethnographies was that they weren't self serious, they weren't pedantic,

they weren't like talking down to you. They were just like and and there was this thing called participant observation, and so like they would go try to live with a you know, a group in the Kalahari or a group and wherever, and and they'd make fun of the fact that they pitched the tent in the wrong place and it flooded and everyone laughed at them. Where they you know, like like all these things, like it was you're allowed to make mistakes, you're allowed to laugh at yourself,

but you're also like allowed to be fascinated. And to me that was like very much the tone of like everyone's welcome, you know, everyone's welcome to hear this stuff, and and like and it's not going to be hard to read. And then and and that that was like very much like part of part of the philosophy.

In my career leading up to this, the record label I was on for ten years was it was called Humble Beast, who started by like one of my closest friends, but like in two thousand and seven, he had the wherewithal to know that within like ten years, you're not going to be able to sell an album. Like so he was like, we'll just give you give us your email address, and we'll send you a download link. This was like, we didn't we didn't conceive of streaming, but

we can. But he conceived of like digital music and not being able to like they're gonna get your album. So here's what we need. We need your contact info. So like like this is two thousand and eight, like him being like, yeah, like send us your email address, and then he was like, once we get an e newsletter.

We have five hundred emails in this city.

that mattered was the connection to the audience, right, like, and you need an audience that really cared for you and and really cared about you, and so like we worked extra hard to like make captions really funny, right, Like there were footnotes that were funny. They were like things that like like things that no one else cared

about or looked past. Like yeah, we we like worked extra hard because like if you're caring about that thing, you're definitely caring about the article, right and the way the article was shaped and the facts and all that stuff and and so like when we realized we couldn't make money off advertising, we figured out other ways and so we'd like spent all this time making like funny uh headlines, right, but the headlines were ephemeral, the only last for so long, and so like so we took

those and we put them on T shirts and people started buying those, right like like we we we we you know we we we we realized, oh you know we we At the time, there were all these men's magazines like lad magazines and like they all had like swimsuit isshoes and so like we decided to do our own swimsuit issue with like Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt and Louis Armstrong and like like real historical photos. It

was the worst selling issue in our history. But it was really all this press, yeah, and and and then and then we turned that into like a book deal right like and so like everything was like, how do we do something else out of this? How do we delight our audience? And how do we like preserve that feeling that we're making something special for them continuously?

make this feel small? How do you still make this feel like you're talking directly to the reader, right like and along the way we sold a magazine. The guy who we loved was a crazy billionaire who decided to give all his properties to a forest in England, and so like we were owned by a nonprofit that was a forest in England, that owned a British company that owned an American company, and so like it what it

was a structure that made zero sense. And when we kept proposing things, we were like, hey, we can do this book in print, we can do this TV show, we can do this, and they're like no, no, no, we just like, you know, they weren't interested in anything. And so when we looked at non compete, the only thing we hadn't done was audio, and How Stuff Works reached out to us and they were like, hey, do you want to help us make more ambitious things in audio?

And the truth was, initially I was like, no, I think. I think I just want to like figure out something small that's like meaningful that I get my hands dirty,

you know. And then the more we thought about it, it was like, oh, the fact that you're in someone's ear, the fact that you like the fact that people who listened to How Stuff Works were listening to eleven hours of content every week from this you know, this network, you know the fact that people really wanted this and there was opportunity to like, it just felt like there was something that could be done in the space that hadn't been thought of yet, and lots of things done

in the space, lots of voices to bring in, lots of you know, like all of that. There was so much possibility and so much fun. And also like the people at the Stuff Network, who at the time were like like some of the La crew, you know, like Robert Evans coming in, Like it just felt like, oh, this is a great time to be here, you know.

you're just like I still like learning, you know. And I think specifically that one was because you know, whether it was the music, the like justice work I was a part of, like a lot of the stuff that I do, it's just so intense, it's just so psychologically emotionally, like it's it's taxing, you know what I'm saying, Like you know, get especially like right now, like talking about politics every week, I try.

this space. And and honestly, like within this network, you have a voice that is distinct and necessary and and and it's like you know, like like I told you before, I was like, you know, I listened to the stuff you've done with Robert. I'd like, you know, been aware of stuff and and and I binge stuff. And then I started sending it to my son, right and I was like, oh my my, you know, my my son loves hip hop, he loves drill, he loves like like he loves jazz, loves music and and and he's trying

to figure out how to be in this world. And he knows that like the voices that are coming through to him on TikTok aren't the right voices, you know, like like and and and so like how do you counter that? How do you find like so like what you do is so important and also like of course you've got to protect yourself, right, like like because you're basically doing therapy for for a world of blisters.

Like what I wanted to get from the show, which was justice, the the living in the tension of the the seriousness and the levity that like you whether it's and from that level and from the meta level, because like you know, you're you're, you're. That's like this might sound more competitive than I mean it to be, but

it's I'm not trying to be competitive. I'm just like, Bro, you're like like the way like you're speaking about starting multiple multimillion dollar businesses and just like, oh yeah, we were just you know, we're just kids and trying to figure it out and we don't have any money for this, Like bro, wait time out me Like come on, fam these I like, I am like actively considering, Like I started a coffee company and I'm like actively like figuring out how to wind it down because I'm like I

don't know how to do this and I don't even I'm not enjoying that, like you know what I'm saying. So I'm like starting a business it at all at all is hard, you know what I'm saying, and not fun, but then starting one and then it works and then selling it, Like are you hitting me?

of ways, right Like I got. My dad had worked at a company where he had worked there for twenty nine years, and he was about to the reason he'd stayed there that long partially was there was an agreement where where like if you get to thirty years there, you get your full pension, you know, like all these things, like you know, and and on his twenty ninth year, they went through and cut everyone of his cohort, like and and and so like, you know, my dad had

put all his life. You could have taken better jobs, et cetera, right like at this company. And like I was just going to college. My dad lost a job. And I was like, I don't trust corporations, you know, like like I don't. I don't, like there's no one there who's looking out for me. My dad, like you know, did the incredible work there. He was like, you know, like a very very respected scientist actually, and and and like and at the end of it, like he you know,

he was just dismissed. And also I mean this is completely separate, but like I think part of the reason that I ended up starting mental class is because because my parents are immigrants, right, like like like living between

two worlds. And and when you're brown in like a like a mostly it was diverse, but like a mostly white suburb or whatever, there's like a feeling of less than that that like sometimes you know, you can inhabit and and like for me, like this living in two worlds where I'd go to India and be a certain person come back to the States, like you know, when when I get to when we'd save up enough to

visit my grandparents or whatever. Like there were things that were just intimidating about the world and and so like something like art and art history was intimidating. There was like a barrier of entry to like understanding it. Something like you know the way you walk into like certain rooms and can't talk about certain conversations, right, like conversational topics like that is intimidating. And college can like ameliorate some of that, and like reading certainly, like and can

can fix a lot of that. But like, but for me, that's part of what the magazine was too. It was a leveler, right, Like it was this way that I could satisfy like curiosity and whatever. And part of the reason we'd started the magazine too was like in my freshman year, I had applied to all these publishing internships and I didn't get a response from many of them,

and I realized, oh, I'm an outsider. I'm going to have to do it myself, right, Like, if I'm going to want my name in print, there's no other way than like, and so for me, it's like, yeah, I

got I got really lucky. I got I got I got Will as a partner who's the most incredible, like smartest, like really savvy, really thoughtful person like that that I could have had, and and like and he had connections and he like pulled me into those and he had like you know, like his his his dad had been in the States a long time for generations, right, and so like they had the people in publishing, they knew people in right, And so like I'm lucky that way.

Like colleges, whatever college you go to, they're filled with professors who want to help you, right, and so like we took advantage of that, right, Like, like like I said in the beginning, right, the fact that I'm willing to give conversations, have conversations with anyone, right is, and it's not always easy, right, Sometimes sometimes people have to bug me like two or three times, right, Like it's it's not like but but but it's but I will make time for people because so many people made time

for me. And so like I just I just don't think I think that I got lucky. I don't think that business is I think that if you're doing something authentic and you're doing something that connects with people, and you're constantly trying to figure out like how do I make this better for you? How do I make this a service for someone? Like how how am I like entertaining or pleasing someone?

He had my elbot voice, but he used to say, man, you just got to make something that's just like just fuck off good where you're just like it's so good, you just fuck off, man, this is amazing.

like the best feeling I remember. I remember having with my clothes on is listening just like like listen Dizzy and then and it's Charlie Parker like playing but but but but like you see the products where he's like, oh, this guy who's a high schooler when I'm in eighth grade like plays these licks on the piano and they're unbelievable and and like and that's something to aspire to, right, and like you're constantly like aspiring, you're constantly making something better,

like you know, like like the first the first vaccine was riddled with so many errors that the printer back to us to like to fix all the like, like like they were like, no, we.

didn't have the price on it. And and we're so proud that we had an UPC code on this this magazine because we were like seniors in college and and and so so we had to like at Will's parents dining room table, like everyone was stickering like prices and then mailing the magazine not you know, I mean like it's you're gonna made a lot of mistakes, you know, like yeah, and and and and everything that feels like

it's going to be a success isn't. Like you know, you think you're just waiting for like the big thing to hit, and the big thing is always like really great, but it's never it's never like that big a thing, you know, it's always like a little bit better a little bit and so it's always like this constant building and and you know, to Will's parents point, I mean like like his his dad grew up very like I think, lower middle class and in Alabama and like and he

worked really hard and he made connections and stuff. But but you know where my dad didn't know anyone from college. Will's dad did it right, like you know, like but but but but there there's a line from I think it was like Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Monger said something like, what's the fastest way to like make a hundred million dollars? Start with ten million dollars, you know, And and that's exactly.

It's like it's a lot easier when you get some of these like yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, baked in advantages and.

going to get to like the politics part. So you have this this amazing outlet that I know, like I again, like I go to this when I like need a break, you know, but like I don't like I'm not like I can't do the candy kind of like four twenty, you know, not for twenty Beyonce, I don't want to make fun of Miles, but like like ninety eight Beyonce, like I I I don't find solace in that, like because I'm like, like messiness stresses me out, like you'll say,

like my TMG, Like I get more stress with that.

obvious direction. You know, I'm assuming nothing about your politics except for your knowledge of history, which would be like it's hard to not see what's happening here, you know

what I'm saying. So my question is, like, in what ways are you sort of taking care of yourself, like moving in the world, and just in the ways that you're already making the world better by the by the content you're making, but in ways that like could be things that our listeners could hear us like this how we move in through this times right now?

every person, every family. Uh. And and I think that I I have a younger kid who's non binary and and to have and one of the places that we felt was safest is New York City, right like you feel you feel it's kind of been enclave for like people who are different, and I mean it attracts all sorts of weirdos and artists, etcetera, right like and and uh and to get notes from the pediatrics division at n y U that say they know they're no longer providing services to to UH for for UH kids who

who are dealing with issues of gender like it was was really sort of heartrending. And and you see, I live in Brooklyn. The amount of homelessness around me, like it's just all the unhouse population here is like it's just like it is. You see it all around you, and you see the devastation around you and the ways that community hasn't been working, you know, like or hasn't shown up and and and I think that's hard to see.

And then on the other side of it, right like you see so many people pulling together in really beautiful and incredible ways and and so like I think, I think to me, like community gardens really are like like a place of you know, where you see older people and younger people mixing. Like Uh, I play. I play a lot of tennis, and I play with anyone who wants to play, and and uh and to be just like finding common ground and then having conversations from there.

And I play with people on different parts of the spectrum, you know, like in terms of politically and and trying to like remind people like who who we are and why we're here and and and I belong to a co op in in in park Slope. And part of my favorite thing about it is that it reminds me how lucky, you know, like when when you're when you're receiving groceries and you're like putting and putting them, like moving the boxes and like separating things or whatever, like

it's hard work. And I go in like it's almost like a tourist, right like for for three hours, like like ever every few weeks, and and and it's a reminder of like, oh, these bodegas don't get stalked by themselves, right like the the like we don't use like a lot of the fresh delivery stuff, like because because you're so removed from from like the actual work and the people and and and and to me, it's like the other thing that's really I love about the co op

And my favorite thing is like there's a there's a shelter near us, and part of the co op is like taking the food over, but also like participating and like giving coffee to people in the mornings, and like and queuing people up for forgetting meals and just remembering that all these people are human and and and that they want meals. They're they're like struggling to like be there.

And it's just like there's so much awfulness in the world and and to realize at the end of the day that there are all these people who are just like trying to make their days work, their lives work, you know, and really good people. It's just like it's it's hard not to feel better about your day when when you get to hand a couple of coffee to someone, and and it's hard not to feel grateful for all the things you do have when when you see those.

These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.