TED Audio Collective.
HBR presents. Hi everyone.
You're listening to After Hours.
I'm Yang Mi. I'm Felix.
I'm Mi here. I feel like it's been a long time since the three of us have been together.
It has been a long time.
It's been way too long, yeah.
So, I don't know about you guys, but I do this thing where I keep a mental list of things that I want to ask you about when I see you next.
Maybe we should do like a version of this show where we do like a 60 -second round, Robin.
Like on every single topic that you could possibly imagine.
And you get one minute to answer?
Yeah, and then I'll hit the buzzer.
The equivalent of a tweet.
Boom. Go. Felix, go.
60 seconds. That'll be easy.
So, figuring out what we wanted to talk about tonight was hard.
But then, at the end of the day, the one I wanted to pitch to you guys was taxes.
And I can't believe I said this.
Out of all the topics, you're choosing taxes?
I know. I mean, we've talked about corporate taxes before on this podcast.
I want to talk about personal income taxes.
Because Biden has put forth a proposal that has some pretty eyebrow -raising pieces to it.
I think one of the most eyebrow -raising pieces to it is raising the capital gains tax, not by a little.
Yeah. And so, I wanted to ask about that.
And then, Meher, you had a phenomenal topic you wanted to bring in.
You know, I think it's kind of just amazing.
Sometimes people just time things in the world perfectly.
So, I think, Young Me, we see companies all the time kind of rethinking strategy from the ground up right now.
Because of everything that's going on in the world.
And then, lo and behold, who comes out with a book?
Who? What genius? Who could it be?
Who could it be? Who could it be?
I don't know. Could it be our friend?
It could be our dear friend, Felix Oberholzer -Geet, who has a new book called Better, Simpler Strategy.
So, we've got to talk to him about it.
Do I have all of 60 seconds to answer questions about the book?
Exactly. So, no, I think, Young Me, we've got to go to school with Felix on Better, Simpler Strategy.
Absolutely. So, in addition to being in the presence of a strategy giant in the form of Felix, we are also in the presence of a tax giant, Meher, who recently testified.
The Senate Finance Committee, right?
Indeed, yeah. What was that like?
It's great. I consider it like an honor, and fun, and a privilege.
I've got to tell you, it's not as much fun over Zoom as it is in person, like many things in life.
Was this your first time?
No, I've done it a couple of times, and this one was on Zoom, but it was terrific.
You know, it's an opportunity to really think hard about a problem.
In this case, it was about tax and race, but it's also like an opportunity to like, just think really broadly about what we want to do in tax policy.
So, it was really, really fun.
But Felix, I cannot imagine a scenario ever in my life that the Senate Finance Committee would ever ask me to testify.
I can easily think of 36 other committees that absolutely should be asking you for your advice.
Oh, you finally. But I have to ask you about this.
So, there are a number of features of Biden's tax proposal, and I'm going to start with the one that has perhaps gotten the most attention, and that is raising the capital gains tax.
Right now, the effective capital gains tax is sitting at about 24%, roughly.
Under his proposal, it would go up to 43 .4 % for those earning more than a million dollars.
So, we should just start by saying it doesn't affect that many people, population -wise.
And yet, this has gotten a huge amount of attention.
And so, I would love to know what you guys think about this.
Well, yeah, so maybe I'll get started.
It's really complicated and tough, but I think let's get down to the basics.
So, what are we trying to do when we tax capital gains?
And the answer is, well, in general, what we're trying to do is tax people when they're better off, because they have more income, for example.
So, if you have an asset that goes up a lot, we kind of think to ourselves, hey, she's better off, and so we should tax them.
That's like the first piece of why we do it.
The second piece of why we do it is, if you care about redistribution and equity, it turns out to be a powerful way to do it, because the people who experience capital gains are very, very wealthy.
It's the top 1%. And then finally, we do it, because if we didn't do it, we'd worry that people would take a bunch of like their labor income and make it into capital gains, which is like there's a variety of ways to do it.
Think carried interest, think like stock ownership for CEOs.
Okay, so that's why we do it.
Why would we not want to do it?
And why do we have a better rate for this kind of income, this kind of capital gain income?
Currently, it's half of what the way we tax normal labor income.
So, why do we do that preferential rate?
And the answer is really a couple of things.
One is, we kind of have an instinct that, wait a second, a whole bunch of this stuff is getting taxed by corporations.
So then if you tax it at the corporate level, and you tax me when I get my capital gain, that doesn't feel quite right.
Double taxation. It feels a little bit like double taxation.
The second reason why is we kind of feel like, well, wait a second, there used to be this thing called inflation.
Well, if inflation rises and my asset prices go up, but I didn't really become wealthier because it was just inflation, then maybe I should have a preferential rate or a lower rate because of that.
And then maybe most importantly, because we worry that people will save less and it'll cause people to invest less.
And as a consequence, it'll be a drag on economic growth.
So we lower the rate for that reason.
And then the final and the most tricky piece is when you do this, what can people do?
Well, the other piece of the way we tax capital gains is we only do it when people realize the gain, when they sell the asset.
So what happens if you have a high rate on capital gains?
Guess what? People won't sell it and then they defer it.
And so people get locked into owning assets and we think that's kind of bad.
So we want a preferential rate.
So that's the nature of the debate, kind of the pros and cons of it.
The really tricky part today is if you think about that lock -in effect, well, if you raise rates a lot, guess what's going to happen?
People are just not going to realize gains.
And so what do you have to do at the same time?
And this is the other thing they're doing.
They're going to make death a realization event, which is just a fancy way of saying, currently, if you die, what happens?
That entire gain never gets taxed because there's so -called step -up basis at death.
That just means you bought the stock at 10, you die, it's valued at 50.
And now for the tax purposes of say your children, it's as if they bought the stock at 50.
Exactly. So now you can imagine Felix, if you have a higher rate, like 45%, plus you have step -up basis at death, then you're like, I'm definitely holding on to this forever, and I'm just going to keep holding on to it, and then it'll never get taxed.
So they've done both those things, but that's just one small piece of the puzzle if you really come to think about it, which is, well, what about gifts?
Okay, so wait a second, we're going to raise the rate to 45 % and we're going to eliminate step -up basis at death.
What's young Mee going to do?
She's going to gift the stock to her son right before she dies.
So it's all interconnected.
So they think they can do this, but it's going to be tough because then you have to change the way we tax people when they die.
You have to change gifts.
You've got to change things like opportunity zones.
You've got to rethink things like small business stocks.
You have to think hard about charity.
What do we do with charity?
We allow people really generous deductions when they give appreciated stock to not -for -profits.
Okay, well, guess what?
You're going to have to rethink that because otherwise, you're just going to have a lot of that going on in that same way.
So it's not that it's not possible, but the notion that you can do it with one headline number is actually, I think, not right.
So let me bring Felix in here, and let me try to organize it this way.
So you can pick apart this question in lots of different ways.
There's the practical question.
What are people going to actually do?
If you raise the capital gains rate, there are lots of other ways they can maneuver around that.
Are you going to therefore try to change those parts of the tax code as well?
I mean, so there's the practical question of, at the end of the day, is it even going to work?
Is it actually going to raise much money?
There's the more conceptual question of, should labor be taxed at a higher rate than investment?
And then I think there's also, on top of that, a third question, which is almost a civic question, and that is, our tax system, just like all the other federal systems we have in place, it's not just designed to be purely instrumental.
It's also designed to reflect our value system as a nation.
And one of the reasons why taxing the wealthy is really popular right now is there's a sense that we've gotten out of balance as a country.
And we need to therefore recalibrate our system of taxation to better reflect the kind of values we want to embrace as a nation.
So Felix, at what level do you think we should be talking about this question?
And where do you come out?
One of the motivations that I find interesting, at least in theory, is this idea that if we have a low capital gains tax, as Mihir explained, then we have greater incentives to save, that capital stock becomes available among other things to companies, and then companies have an easier time to invest
and that spills over into economic growth.
That to me is the most appealing rationale for having a lower tax on capital gains compared to labor.
And then you look at the data and you see, oh my God, the evidence is super weak.
Capital gains taxes swung wildly over the course of history.
They were as high as 40 % at one point in time, and then as low as 15%.
So we have a lot of variation to look at.
And essentially, the correlation with growth just doesn't really exist.
So over the course of history, the argument that this is a way to incentivize companies to make long -term investments, I think is a really weak argument.
And then I loved how you framed that, Young Mihir, and then I think the question, so what are the reasons why labor is taxed at a higher rate than investments?
I think that really is first and foremost on my mind.
And I can't really think of too many ways to justify having this difference, if in fact, it doesn't help the economy as a whole.
I think that's right.
The evidence on savings and growth is not great, for sure.
I think the issue then becomes, how do you think through in a realization -based system, what's going to happen when you raise rates?
And the real puzzle for the legislators is, and this is going to sound strange, but when you start to raise rates, actually some of the forecasts that come back to you will say you will lose revenue, because people will defer and defer and defer.
And so that's why you have to think about the whole puzzle, and then you really have to think about what's going to happen when people die, what's going to happen when people gift, what's going to happen when people do charitable.
I think there are two important arguments you think about.
Right now, financing even pretty big deficits is not really a problem.
It's like super cheap.
And so this is different, I think, from an environment in which you'd be super nervous about, can we service the national debt tomorrow?
All of those kinds of arguments, they might be more relevant in different economic circumstances, but they're not very relevant right now.
And then the second thing that's really interesting is, of course, as you point out, it tends to lock you in to a particular set of investments, but it also discourages short -term trading.
And so my reading of many of these changes, just like the corporate income tax, just like the question, how much lazier are people if personal income taxes go up, it seems to me time after time after time we find, you know, these changes are just not that big.
It does not matter that much.
Yeah, that I would resist, Felix.
So on the first point, on the logic of deficits don't matter, well, then we don't really need to raise taxes on capital.
I mean, if deficits don't matter, nothing matters.
If you think the tax system is only about revenue, right?
But it's not. That's right, it's about redistribution as well, for sure.
And I think about the symbolism of, you know, who gets to benefit from something that feels very special, when in fact we don't really have an economic justification for giving the rich a tax break.
I mean, symbolism is an interesting criteria for thinking about tax policy.
Or say maybe the fairness of the tax system, is maybe a better term.
Yeah, that's right, fairness, right.
But on this latter point, Felix, this is kind of becoming, I think, accepted wisdom, which I just disagree with, which is, you know what, taxes don't really change people's behavior.
Yeah, it's like totally overblown.
You know, I don't think that's right.
Are they overhyped in some cases?
Certainly. But we've kind of come perilously close to basically saying incentives don't matter.
And I think that is a very tough place to end up.
But I mean, do you think incentives matter?
I mean, do you think when prices go up and prices go down, things matter?
Do I think I will think differently about the timing of my investments?
Absolutely. Would I invest much less because the corporate tax rate?
And that's exactly the realization stuff and the deferral stuff we're talking about.
No, I wouldn't. But this is where I think the details matter.
I think if we were talking about raising the capital gains tax from 23 .8 % to 29%, I could imagine people making some changes around the margins in how they manage their investments.
But we're talking about essentially doubling.
And I think will people hold on to assets for longer?
I think it's hard for me to imagine that not happening.
Will people think differently about consumption versus investment?
Will the difference between short -term thinking with respect to investment and long -term thinking start to erode?
It's hard for me to imagine all of these things not starting to come into play when you make that dramatic a difference.
But here's what I don't want to come off as being opposed to raising the capital gains tax.
I think that is completely open for discussion.
And I also think I am someone who believes the perceived fairness of our system really matters.
And so even if it ends up only making an incremental change in terms of the tax revenue we're able to raise, if it creates a greater sense of fairness, this is something that I would absolutely be in favor of.
It's just when we start to think about shifts this large, I do worry that we haven't really quite thought through all the ripple effects associated with it.
I mean, I know for myself, I'd much rather see us clean up so many glaring problems in the treatment of capital gains.
So opportunity zones, small business stocks, do carry over basis at death.
Right now, if you have less than $100 ,000 in capital gains and that's all you make, you get a zero rate.
Those are interesting things.
This feels to me like a populist measure, which will be symbolically important, but won't raise much revenue.
And I think you guys like that because I think you like the signal it sends.
But to me, if it actually isn't doing what we say it's doing, it feels a little double talky.
So I do think the fairness aspect is real.
It hurts us in so many ways.
I agree. If the economy is seen as fundamentally stacked against a large majority of people.
And I like many of the proposals that you have here as well.
So I'm hoping at least that some point in time, we move to a more rational system.
But in the meantime, would I feel more comfortable if we did it in steps maybe to see what can we learn when in fact capital gains tax rates go up?
Yes, I would have thought that's a great idea because we could then see does the fiscal situation change?
What are these behavioral responses that we see?
But the idea that we need to move to a tax system that is fair to a larger number of people I think is very important to me.
The interesting thing, just a final note, a lot of the moves that you advocated for here would actually get us to a more fair tax system.
Oh, totally. It's just they're less visible and they're more esoteric, I think.
I mean, the real thing that's going on here, so we all understand it is, Biden made a pledge not to raise taxes on people below 400K.
And that is a little bit of insanity because that is the bottom 98 .5 % of the population.
And so everything that we're seeing is a manifestation of that promise.
And that's the problem, right?
Because then we can't do all these other things because we've basically said the bottom 98 .5 % of the population is off limits.
And it's a measure of how kind of crazy the world is where we now basically have told anybody who's below 400K their middle class and they deserve to have less taxes.
And in some sense, that pathology is just bonkers, but it's there.
And then it leads to a whole bunch of other things.
Look, this is only the beginning of a set of conversations that we're going to have about capital gains, about what the top earners should earn, about inheritance, young me.
And so you're unfortunately going to have to listen to more of this, young me.
I'm sorry. No. This is good.
I enjoyed it. All right.
On to strategy. And, you know, as I mentioned at the top, young me, everybody's rethinking strategy with COVID.
Every executive you meet is rethinking strategy right now.
Which is both wonderful, but you also wonder like what they're really going to be doing in that process.
But we have this wonderful new guide, Better, Simpler Strategy.
And I have to tell you, the thing I admire so much about this book is...
How handsome the author is.
Do you see that picture in the back?
Oh. You loved that, right?
So dashing, right? Unbelievably dashing.
Yes. When somebody like Felix takes really a complex world and makes it simple, that is a very risky thing to do.
Because you basically strip away a whole bunch of stuff that people have been trying to build up and make seem more complicated.
But Felix in this book actually walks this remarkable line between demystification but then also revealing how complex something is, but in a simple way.
And it's just fantastic.
So let's dig into this, young me.
I mean, Felix, right from the start, you almost make the argument that the complexity with which we think about strategy is killing us.
Yes. And in fact, this is one of my concerns about this particular moment that you have a global strategy and then you have a social media strategy and then you have a talent strategy and now you have a global pandemic strategy.
It's layer upon layer upon layer.
And I don't know about the two of you, but when I visit companies, I'm always so impressed.
There are so many initiatives.
There are so many projects.
And then you look at the financial results and you see, wow, what is it?
Like a quarter of S &P 500 firms barely meets their cost of capital.
How can that be? And so the central argument is that what we've lost in this sea of activity is an ability to bundle, an ability to bring things together in a way that truly make a difference.
And one of the things that I show in the book, I come up with basically these three avenues to financial success.
Create value for customers, create value for employees, or create value for suppliers.
And that's the bundling.
I mean, one of the things I love about this book, Felix, is we always talk about and are obsessed with customers, kind of customer centricity and willingness to pay.
But the part that I loved most about the book just personally was flipping it and thinking about the willingness to sell and the employee piece of this and the supplier piece.
And that just struck me as obviously true, but also just hugely overlooked.
Yes, so it's such an important point.
In traditional strategic thinking, one of the biggest decisions that you were taught to make is, do you have a leadership position with respect to customers so you can charge premium prices because you're nicely differentiated, or do you have a cost advantage?
And if you can't quite make up your mind or you're trying to do both of these things, you were said to be stuck in the middle.
Remember that? Stuck in the middle was sort of like the worst, that's like strategy hell.
And then when I did the research for the book, I noticed company after company had an advantage in the relationship with customers and they had a cost advantage.
And you think, how on earth can that be?
And then of course you discover is that, in particular in a service economy, how do you think you're going to get better services that are experienced as such by the customers?
You need a lot of employee engagement.
And so creating employee engagement then spills over into having better services.
What's your favorite example of that, Felix?
One example that I talk about is an experiment that the Gap ran, the fashion retailer.
And if you work in retail in the United States, one of the really nerve -wracking things is that you never really know how much work you're going to get.
You typically learn maybe a week in advance what your shifts are going to be like.
And that means two things, it's almost impossible to plan your life.
But maybe even more dramatically, it creates enormous swings in income.
So what did they do?
They partnered with an app called Shift Messenger with essentially allowed employees to trade shifts.
What's the result of this?
Sales went up, labor productivity went up.
But you know the thing that I thought the most amazing?
People slept better.
Their health improved.
To me, it's such an amazing thing to do because when I ask in executive courses, how do you make a particular job better?
Very quickly we end up talking about work processes.
Exactly. But work is everything in our lives.
It's the commute, it's the joy or dread getting dressed in the morning.
And so we talk about customer centricity so often.
But if you come to a holistic understanding of what it is to be in your organization, to be an employee, that gives you a million opportunities to create value for the people in your organization.
Felix, the title of your book is so apt.
Better, simpler strategy.
Because it's really just about value creation.
But, and this is what makes the book so lively, I think, creativity and imagination play a huge role here.
In other words, when you think about creating value for your employees, most businesses will think, well, we pay a competitive wage, we offer competitive benefits, that's it.
And so what you're describing is something much less obvious.
You similarly have these imaginative examples of how to create value for suppliers so that their willingness to sell changes.
And then on the customer side, there are so many non -obvious ways to begin to create value for customers and therefore increase their willingness to pay.
It's such a great point.
Better, simpler strategy.
What's simple about strategy is conceptually, it's creating value for these three groups done.
There's nothing else I can tell you.
But then, of course, where on earth do these ideas come from?
I often ask people, how would you raise willingness to pay for a movie -going experience?
And I get very predictable answers.
Better seats, better projection, better sound, reservation systems, and so on.
And so I tell this story of this movie theater in Arizona and they offer babysitting services.
And in hindsight, it's so trivial and you've seen it a thousand times when you go to IKEA.
But in the context of movie theaters, no one's thinking about it.
Just as you said, Yang Mi, in the end, what is challenging about strategy is where do these ideas for novel value creation really come from?
I sometimes ask people, what's the mood in your strategy meetings?
And they would say, you know, analytic and focused.
And I ask, like, how often do people laugh?
And they said, no, we don't laugh in strategy meetings.
And I say, well, so imagine like a different meeting.
Like you're trying to imagine a novel product.
Like, what's the mood in that meeting like, oh, and we're having fun and we're throwing ideas.
And that's of course what the strategy meeting should be like.
And one of the remarkable things about the book is the range of examples, Felix.
So you go from the corner flower store to a bank in Eastern Europe, but you also tackle really big companies.
So I'm curious, what did you see about them and the way their strategy is evolving that kind of was linked to what you wanted to talk about in the book?
So one reason why compliments are strategically so powerful is because they give you a lot of flexibility.
In a world where you don't really know how consumer tastes evolve, what technology will bring, this flexibility is actually super, super, super valuable.
And you see this over and over and over again, iPhone margins falling so quickly.
What does Apple do?
Well, Apple just shifts the profit pool from hardware to software.
If you understand how your organization creates value and how you can shift that value, then actually predictions about the future are not quite as important as you thought they would be.
You know, sometimes you come across ideas and they're superficially, you think you understand them.
This is an idea about complementarity and shifting profit pools that the more you think about it, the deeper it gets.
Because it seems like, again, like many things, it seems kind of obvious, but when you really flesh it out and you use it as a way to think about the world, it's actually very, very powerful, I think.
And what's so interesting to me is people have all kinds of shortcuts when they think about strategies.
For instance, when it comes to compliments, they would think of razor, razor blade, and they would say, oh, you make money off of the consumable and you give away the blade.
And then you think Apple did exactly the opposite.
And then they say, oh, that's because you make money off of the hardware and you give away the software.
And then you think about Xbox, and that's exactly the opposite.
So there are so many recipes for financial success out there.
So one of the things that I'm trying to do in the book is to say, look, all of these recipes, when you look at the data, you will always be able to find examples where these recipes work.
But invariably, you will find companies where these recipes don't work.
And the real task is not to stay at the level of the recipe, but to understand why does it work sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't work.
And then the answer, fortunately, is super simple.
Sometimes these recipes create value in a particular context, and sometimes they don't.
One of the things that I love about the book is I find that when I speak to executives that are contemplating remaking their strategy, they start from where they are.
And what I like about your book is you really encourage first principles.
Yeah. Competitive advantage comes from the creation of value with customers, with employees, with suppliers.
Those are first principles.
And then once you start there, you actually have so many more degrees of freedom than you realize.
Once you begin thinking about complementarity and differentiation along so many different dimensions, but it's all anchored by this notion of if what you're trying to do doesn't create value for one of those constituents, then you're just spinning your wheels.
And this latter point, young me, is absolutely critical.
If you live in an organization, I think like most people do, where you have smart, engaged people, you get ideas for what you could be doing next five minutes.
And before you know it, you pursue many of these.
And then when I go in and I look at these initiatives, sometimes for half of them, I cannot possibly imagine how they change willingness to pay or how they change willingness to sell.
And so that's always my first recommendation.
Look at the pile of work on your desk.
If you can say for any one of these initiatives how it absolutely will change willingness to pay or change willingness to sell, put that folder aside.
What I've seen in working with companies, this is almost a light bulb moment because then you have this experience, oh my God, I'm doing a third less of what I used to do, and now I can really focus on the things that make a difference.
And it's almost like a virtuous cycle because it feeds on itself.
There is this kind of undercurrent of optimism in the book, I think, which is really wonderful.
So true. It's who you are.
First off, as a narrator, you're kind of like a wonderful companion because you kind of feel like this is a fun person to be around.
Be careful what you ask for.
Yeah, exactly. But it struck me that there is this underlying kind of optimism in the book which takes something that's heavy and makes it light.
You know what, I think it comes from when you're reading it, it generates ideas in your own head.
So I'm reading it, you give an example, and I'm thinking of three others in my own head, and so you feel imaginative as you read it because you are creating new examples in your head as you go along.
And you know what I found by looking at these companies and both the point about optimism, the point about innumerable ways of thinking about creating additional value is so true.
And in companies that, once you have that ethos, were all about value creation.
What I find so fascinating is it shows up in the smallest of decisions.
And I tell a story.
It's a personal experience in the book.
So I have a friend in Los Angeles, and I sent her flowers for her birthday every year.
And then one year, I forgot.
I didn't pay attention to my calendar.
So I noticed a few days later, oh, it was her birthday.
I didn't order flowers.
So I called this flower store in LA, and the salesperson asks, should we deliver the flowers today or is it good enough tomorrow morning?
And I said, well, you know, a little embarrassing.
I forgot my friend's birthday.
It would be really great if you could do it as quickly as possible.
And she asks, should we take the blame?
I love that. And I was so surprised.
And of course, you know, I didn't want her to lie for me, but what's beautiful about the story is she is in this value creation mode.
And in a way, my biggest hope for readers is that they get into this very mode where you read the book, you read the examples, and hopefully you'll just be inspired because I cannot imagine that you don't have a million ways to create more value that you haven't really thought of.
So if you're a listener out there and you've ever thought, I wish I could take a course on strategy from Felix, this is your chance.
The book is called Better, Simpler Strategy, and it's out and available everywhere, right?
Yes. Better, simpler strategy.
Okay. Hey, picks, who wants to go first?
I have something that's closely related.
It's another strategy book, so this is the book that you should read.
Wait, wait, wait. You only need one strategy book, Felix.
It's a compliment. It's a compliment.
I will, I see. It's a compliment.
See, once you start reading one strategy book, you want to read more strategy books.
This is the book that you read after you read that other book.
It's by Jesper Sorensen and Glenn Carroll, and it's called Making Great Strategy.
And it tries to do something really interesting.
It tries to think about when we talk about company strategies, we're almost always uncertain about what the right answer is.
And we should pay a lot of attention to what's a high -quality argument.
And basically, the book tries to develop a framework, which arguments should receive a lot of weight, which arguments can we possibly discount, and how can you as an individual become better at arguing about strategy?
So it's thinking more about the process of how you make decisions.
It's called Making Great Strategy by Jesper Sorensen and Glenn Carroll, a great read after that other book.
What about you, Yangmi?
Okay, so I have a lighter read.
I have a sub -stack I want to recommend.
Oh, nice. Yes, it is a newsletter called The Department of Salad.
It's by Emily Nunn.
Oh my God, you guys got to subscribe.
It is so delightful.
First of all, I think we would all agree it's salad season, right?
As we approach summer.
Yes, yeah. I'm thinking of salads.
You want fresh vegetables.
It's a newsletter obsessed with salads.
So she interviews fellow salad enthusiasts.
She'll feature a salad.
They're super creative salads.
And sometimes they're kind of highbrow.
So she'll talk about, you know, kind of a fancy salad.
Other times it's, you know, let's think about the crouton.
Yeah. And she'll just go deep, deep into like what is the crouton?
And the salad is comfort food.
Right, right. And it's just so culturally rich.
And you know, of course, the best food writing is about so much more than food, and she just so manages to capture that.
Oh, that sounds great.
That's amazing. And very seasonal.
That sounds really fun.
So it's The Department of Salad by Emily Nunn.
Very nice. That's my recommendation.
Here, what do you have?
So I don't think this will be news for either of you, but for me it was.
I have just recently dramatically upped my butter game.
Ooh. So I love butter on toast and I've been putting Land O 'Lakes on my toast.
And I have just been experimenting with butters around the world.
And you realize that Land O 'Lakes is just fine or whatever your local brand is, is just fine for baking.
But if you really, really love butter, there are so many wonderful butters out there that will change your life.
I'm nodding vigorously.
Are you with me? It is such an unlock.
I'm telling you. It's such an unlock.
It's such an unlock.
I can't tell if you're making fun of me.
Are you making fun of me?
There are times when I'm with my sister and we will just remember this one time, we went to this place for oysters and they serve this bread and butter and we can never recreate that butter.
But just here's the great news, which is there are various brands that are available to you in almost most supermarkets in the US and around the world.
So I'm going to plug in particular Cary Gold because I think Cary Gold is spectacular and widely available, but there's a Danish butter called Lurepak, there's Plougras, there's President.
I mean there is a world out there that you have to explore.
It's surprisingly global, which is interesting to think, right?
It's given all the impediments to trading agricultural products.
And the price differences are not huge, right?
So this is not an expensive habit to pick up, but it will change your toast.
It is an unlock, young me.
It is an unlock. I've been spending time in Vermont during the pandemic.
Which also has great butter, spectacular butter.
Yeah, some of the local butters, and then you find yourself playing with different salt levels.
Exactly. And it just makes you realize that the meal of a piece of toast with butter or baguette with butter is just amazing.
Maybe we're just sensory deprived.
I mean listen to us, we're just talking about butter.
This is just... Remember, we used to go to concerts and we used to do the...
Now we're just, oh, this butter, this butter, it will unlock your toast.
And we're all agreeing.
But this was news to me because I've been using Land O 'Lakes and it's just terrible for this purpose.
No, no, no, but you can't just Land O 'Lakes.
Land O 'Lakes is totally solid.
For baking. Yes, but you do need a default to establish the baseline.
Okay, I'm going to go with Kerry Gold as the baseline and then I want...
I think you should be experimenting on the margin.
Oh, you really moved up.
All right, so that's it for tonight.
Thanks everyone for listening.
Our sound engineer as always is Peter Linne.
This is After Hours from the HBR Podcast Network.
