The Russi Hive

Scott Asen: The Enemy Is Boredom — Taste, Risk, and Turtle Bay Records

In Episode 8 of The Russi Hive, Alejandra sits down with Scott Asen: founder of Turtle Bay Records, investor, raconteur, and proof that a life can be organized around taste, mischief, and a highly productive fear of boredom. The interview traces the unlikely arc of a man who grew up with show business in his bloodstream—his mother in vaudeville, his father a clarinet and saxophone player—and then somehow threaded his way through Groton, Harvard, Wall Street, a Cambridge piano bar, private investing, and several lives’ worth of detours. At the center of the episode is Turtle Bay Records, the jazz label Asen founded during the stillness of 2020. What started as a way to record extraordinary musicians playing older jazz has become a larger ecosystem of albums, parties, friendships, music videos, late-night performances, and an elegant excuse to keep very good people in the same room. They talk about the strange usefulness of not fitting in, old New York, and Asen’s Manhattan townhouse, affectionately known in younger circles as the “Jazz Mansion.” The result is a conversation about music, timing, nerve, and the fine art of turning an address into a scene. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@russihive] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/russihive/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@russihive] Substack [https://substack.com/@russihive]

Laetitia Barbier: Pocketable Museum — Tarot as Creative Language and Mirror

In Episode 7 of The Russi Hive Podcast, Alejandra sits down with Laetitia Barbier—tarot reader, writer, art historian, and longtime explorer of the strange, sacred life of images—to talk about tarot not as fortune-telling, but as a creative language. The conversation begins with Barbier’s childhood in France and her encounter with her first deck in a tobacconist’s shop. From there, they explore Barbier’s lifelong relationship to images—their power to instruct and enchant—with museums as surrogate churches and the tarot deck as a “pocketable museum”: a portable world of symbols and archetypes that keep rearranging themselves into new meaning. The core of the episode is tarot as a poetic practice. Barbier speaks about readings as intimate, collaborative encounters, where images are gathered into a kind of secret theater—opening space for reflection, vulnerability, and self-knowledge. They discuss New York’s countercultural lineages, the resurgence of tarot in a cynical age, and why people may be turning again toward ritual and symbolic depth. The episode closes by turning the cards toward creativity itself, moving from the Fool’s raw potential to the Star’s quiet clarity, with failure and transformation as part of the path. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@russihive] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/russihive/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@russihive] Substack [https://substack.com/@russihive]

Elizabeth Dee: Who Gets Seen — Attention, Power, and Building Independent

In this episode of The Russi Hive, Alejandra sits down with Elizabeth Dee, founder of the Independent Art Fairs, to talk about what it means to build the kinds of platforms the art world doesn’t yet know it needs. The conversation begins with Dee’s early years at Deitch Projects and the founding of Elizabeth Dee Gallery, then moves through formative exhibitions with artists such as Adrian Piper and Ryan Trecartin; the broader New York generation that emerged around shows like Greater New York at PS1/MoMA; and the delicate question of how to honor artists’ histories while helping their work find the right present-day context, audience, and future. They dig into the origins of Independent: how a handful of conversations among like-minded dealers became a different kind of New York art fair, designed for slower, more intentional looking and often centered on tightly curated, narrative-driven presentations. Elizabeth traces how the project has since grown into a larger architecture—one that includes editorial publishing, research initiatives, and an invite-only press bureau. She talks about stewardship in practice: commissioning English-language scholarship for artists from Latin America and other underrepresented contexts; using the fair’s platform to encourage collectors to look beyond a narrow “I only buy contemporary” mindset; and treating press and criticism as part of the historical record, not merely a PR afterthought. Along the way, Elizabeth speaks candidly about what it meant to build a gallery, close one, and reinvent herself through Independent—and how those experiences reshaped her thinking around risk, responsibility, and visibility. She describes the fair and its related projects as an “architecture” for showing work, where exhibition formats, commissioned texts, and press coverage all have to align. Again and again, the conversation returns to a central question: how to use that structure to give artists from different places and generations meaningful visibility, without reducing their work to another short-lived market story. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@russihive] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/russihive/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@russihive] Substack [https://substack.com/@russihive]

Marc Brown: A Letter from the Future — Arthur, the Inner Child, and Keeping It Honest

In episode five of The Russi Hive, Alejandra sits down with Marc Brown, the creator of "Arthur," to explore how a bedtime story told during one of the lowest moments of his life became a beloved book series and the longest-running children’s animated show in U.S. history. Starting with the night the first book was born as a story for Brown’s young son—whose delight gave him permission to keep going—they move through Elwood City and the evolution of Arthur’s world: how real algebra teachers, childhood friends, and the family living room became characters and settings, and how humor paired with emotional honesty became the “secret recipe” that helps children feel seen while they learn. In a first for any interview he’s done, Brown reads two books—"Arthur’s Nose" and "Arthur’s Teacher Trouble"—from beginning to end, in full character, making the episode feel like live storytime with the person who drew your childhood. He talks about insisting on hand-drawn, watercolor continuity even as digital tools entered the industry; collaborating with PBS to keep the show educational rather than purely commercial; and what it took to let go of control and trust a team of animators with a character who had once been his alone. Later, Brown reflects on creative partnerships, including his collaborations with "Goosebumps" author R.L. Stine. He recalls how they met on Air Force One, en route to a children’s book festival in Moscow hosted by Vladimir Putin’s then-wife—a story whose details are as surreal as they are hilarious. He also talks about drawing monsters that suspiciously resemble old gym teachers, attorneys, and ex-agents, and the pleasure of exercising a very different creative muscle. The conversation closes with life lessons about detours, kindness, accepting help, and staying open to change—shaped by influences like his grandmother Thora and his friend Fred Rogers, and by the conviction that true success is doing what you love for as long as you’re lucky enough to do it. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@russihive] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/russihive/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@russihive] Substack [https://substack.com/@russihive]

Adam Hanft: Half Man, Half Machine — AI, Creativity, and the Human Edge

Adam Hanft is a brand strategist, writer, and cultural critic who’s spent decades decoding how language, persuasion, and creativity actually work—from his early days writing jokes for Garry Marshall, to coining the “Flick Your Bic” campaign, to advising brands like Match.com, Microsoft, Sony, and Obama’s 2008 digital team. In this episode of The Russi Hive, he joins Alejandra to talk about what generative AI is doing to creativity, branding, and our sense of self as makers. They start with dueling on‑air definitions of creativity and use them to ask whether large language models can ever be more than dazzlingly derivative synthesizers, or if the real shift is how they rewire our expectations of speed, volume, and authorship. Drawing on his work across advertising, consulting, and media such as Fast Company, Adam traces how AI has changed the texture of cultural production, why “no ChatGPT touched this” may someday sit alongside “GMO‑free” as a marketing label, and what gets lost when we treat process as expendable and only care about the end product. They dig into AI as collaborator versus crutch, the coming “slow creativity” backlash that may mirror slow food after fast food, and how these tools unsettle everything from branding’s supposed North Star to the authority of parents and teachers when kids can just ask a bot. Threaded through the conversation is a more personal question: how to decide what to automate and what to protect, so that the skills, limits, and inner worlds that make us human don’t get flattened into just another dataset. Original music and sonic identity by Antfood. Sound design: Federico Casazza. Follow The Russi Hive: YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@russihive] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/russihive/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@russihive] Substack [https://substack.com/@russihive]