My "Rebrand" + What Makes the TV Show Beef so Brilliant

The host of the Mark Simborg Podcast explains the reason for the rebranding. He wanted to recreate the experience of interviewing people from his previous career as a journalist. He initially named the podcast "Deep Shit," but realized there were other podcasts with the same name. So he decided to rename it the Mark Zimborg Podcast to have more creative freedom. He also discusses the Netflix show called "Beef," praising its dark humor and exploration of issues around race and status. The show portrays the unhappiness and anxiety experienced by both working-class and wealthy individuals. It serves as a statement on American capitalism, highlighting that nobody truly wins in the status game. The host plans to continue discussing interesting life stories, his own experiences, and topics related to screenwriting and the entertainment industry in future episodes. Welcome back to another episode of the newly rebranded Mark Simborg Podcast. So as you can see, it only took me two weeks to go into a rebrand. So the reason I started this podcast, number one, it looked fun, number two, I started off my professional career as a newspaper journalist and I really missed all the parts of interviewing people with that, and so I wanted to kind of recreate that or restart that in a more contemporary way, you could say, through a podcast. And I wanted to talk to people about their interesting life experiences, and so I called it Deep Shit, but actually when I initially researched it, I thought there was only one other show named Deep Shit that had only produced one episode and was now dormant. And looking into it again, it looks like there are maybe three or four others with that name, all of which have since gone dormant, and I think the only one that had lasted any significant amount of time, like more than six months, there's only one of them. So that did not bode too well for my show. And the thing is, I want to tell my own stories, I want to tell other people's stories, and there also seems to be an unending appetite for stories about screenwriting and the entertainment industry and how it works, so I also want it to be about that. In light of all that, I just decided to rename it to the Mark Zimbork Podcast. Obviously there's no chance of there being a podcast with the same name already out there, but this way I can just have it be about whatever I want. It will be an unlimited number of potential episodes for however long I decide to continue with it. And yeah, even though maybe this means that a year from now I still only have a total of three listeners, two of which are family members, hey, that's okay, at least I'm having fun doing it. So yeah, that explains my rebrand. And going on to the second topic of the episode, I wanted to talk about the absolutely brilliant show, Netflix show called Beef, which is now into season two, and I've only, full disclosure, watched through the first seven episodes of season one. I have to say, this is one of the best shows I've seen in a really long time. Not only is it darkly funny, laugh out loud darkly funny, but it also digs into issues around race, also issues around status, and just, in a way, like modern day versions of depression and how it comes about and how it is so influenced by social media and also, as I said, also by status. It's brilliantly written, the acting is amazing, and it's just so poignant in how it addresses, I think, the issues around status and the way people try to, you know, so one of the characters, Daniel Cho, he basically is a working class person. The other is a wealthy person, Amy, and you can see how they're both miserable in their own way. Daniel is miserable because he wants more out of life, he wants more money, he wants more success, more recognition, more status. Amy is miserable because she's hiding a lot of dark secrets and she's lonely and she's anxious and she's stressed out. It's so brilliant the way it portrays these characters because I live in a suburb of San Francisco that has both a large working class community and a very large wealthy community and there's not necessarily a lot in between those two extremes, there's some, but it's very interesting to see kind of like the mix of these two communities, you could say, although they're not really communities. Like the working class people, you kind of get a sense of unhappiness because it's like a low, maybe like a low energy apathy or disdain kind of. The wealthy people have their own unique kind of misery going in the form of stress and anxiety and you just see it in the people when they drive by and they'll be driving these luxury SUVs worth at least six figures and you can see them stressed out and anxious and their wealth is so fraught, it's so precarious and they have so much to lose, so much to protect and then you have at the other end of the spectrum the working class and you kind of get a sense of like disdain or apathy or deceit. I mean neither is a good place to be in. Obviously it's totally possible to be a very peaceful, content, joyous, happy person as either a working class person or a wealthy person, but I think when these things are put together in the same community and they're kind of given a context, the wealthy people are shown what could happen if they lose it all. The working class people are seeing what they could be if they maybe, I don't know, worked harder or made better choices. It's a very interesting dynamic and the show Beef is really a statement on American capitalism and it's saying look, nobody wins in the status game. The poor people or lower class or working class people are unhappy because they're not quote unquote there yet and the wealthy people are unhappy because they've made it there and have this kind of empty feeling like okay, I've made it but I'm still not happy. I still want more and now on top of that I have to protect all this. I have to find a way to keep it, maintain it. It kind of makes me think of the War Games movie quote, it's a strange game. The only way to win is not to play, but at the same time how do you not play this game? How do you not get involved? We have to kind of participate in the capitalist system. We have to support our families. We have to make money. So it's very hard not to play it. I do think there is a way to still play it but you have a healthy relationship to money, to status. You kind of don't take it that seriously. You don't let it consume your identity and you kind of make love, the love of your spouse or kids, friends, whatever and make that the center of your life and make activities or hobbies the center of your life. You know, where I live it does get hard sometimes not to get caught up in it and you do see it all around you. You see these two types of angst coming from either extreme, the working class and the wealthy class and it's a bit unnerving and this is really the first show I've seen to capture this. So anyway, yeah, I thought this was worth talking about and like I said, with the rebrand I plan to make the show equally about other people's interesting life stories, my own kind of weird, quirky, funny life stories and also I'm going to be talking a lot about screenwriting, the entertainment business and hopefully I'll be interviewing a lot of producers and directors and entertainment business professionals as well. So please stay tuned and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks.