Today's guest, Madison Utendahl, is a two-time Webby Award-winning creative director, writer, and brand strategist. She's the founder of Utendahl Creative — the Black-owned, all-female agency behind iconic brand identities for Law Roach, Lena Dunham, John Legend, Scarlett Johansson, and more — and now runs Utendahl Consulting, a solo practice working directly with founders. She was on the founding creative teams of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Refinery29's 29Rooms, and Museum of Ice Cream. Her latest venture is her BURNT Substack — not just a burnout prevention guide, but the lens through which she critiques culture. I'm so grateful she was willing to come on the show. We're friends in real life, and I basically asked her to take the conversations we have in private and shine some light on them — peak Find Your Light style. The centerpiece of this episode is Madison's reconsideration of Brené Brown's 2010 TED talk on vulnerability; the one that quietly shaped how an entire generation of millennial women approached work. After Madison wrote about it on BURNT, Brené Brown commented on her Instagram post. And then chaos ensued — racist commentary and attacks on Madison from people eager to defend Brené, stung by the fact that she'd hit a nerve. But Madison is not on a revenge tour. Our conversation is about re-examination: the way people become figureheads for ideas, our shared love of excellent apologies, the reason Madison is unlikely to get one, and the way Brené has responded more like a Boomer than the Gen X-er she actually is. We also get into the ways my own celebrity empathy has been getting in the way of recognizing privilege. We're also both a little obsessed with Lulu Garcia-Navarro and Wesley Morris over at the NYT. Lulu's interview with Brené gave us a window into exactly what we're unpacking in this episode — and Wesley's cultural criticism has been a throughline in how both Madison and I have been thinking about all of it. If you're not reading or listening to either of them, fix that immediately. We also cover why Madison has the humor of a teenage boy, her deep thoughts on the (jokingly titled) Forbes 30 Under 30 " prison pipeline," why Boomers are the last generation that genuinely trusts media and what that says about everyone who came after them — and why Madison is unironically, wholeheartedly in love with Gen Z.
1h 0min•May 12, 2026
