pop-culture
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E! News outgrew the 11 p.m. appointment
The nightly show ended. The celebrity conversation kept going. Inside a media brand learning which parts of television belong on a phone - and which still deserve a red carpet.
Why a gin brand needed a rock band: the BNC story
Bragman Nyman Cafarelli built a business connecting Hollywood talent with consumer brands. Its history, from a cassette-era music contest to a reunion of former colleagues in 2025, shows what an agency can own - and what walks out the door.
Jonathan Cathey Built a Toy Company Like a Punk Band
He started The Loyal Subjects with $500, a living room and a drummer's appetite for improvisation. Seventeen years later, Jonathan Cathey is still turning pop culture into objects people can play with - while making room for a second act on canvas.
The Loyal Subjects Turned $500 Into a Toy-Aisle Time Machine - and Found a Way to Sell Nostalgia Twice
Jonathan Cathey bootstrapped a toy company with a $500 check, learned that shelf space is scarcer than ideas, and built a licensing machine around the emotional details collectors refuse to forget.
Mighty Jaxx
Mighty Jaxx is a Singapore-based, technology-driven brand platform that designs, manufactures and distributes limited-edition art toys and 'phygital' collectibles. Founded by Jackson Aw in 2012, it pairs licensed pop-culture partnerships (Netflix, Disney, Hasbro, DC Comics, Formula 1, Toei Animation) with more than 120 artists, and embeds NFC chips into products to enable blockchain-based authentication and a digital fan journey. The company ships to collectors in 90+ countries and operates a family of brands spanning collectibles, retail (PLAYe), experiences and Web3.
GLD (The GLD Shop)
GLD (The GLD Shop) is a Miami-based direct-to-consumer jewelry brand founded by Christian Johnston in 2015. It designs classic and custom chains, pendants, watches, and accessories that blend streetwear culture with fine-jewelry craftsmanship. Backed by officially licensed partnerships with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NCAA, and WNBA plus pop-culture collabs and celebrity fans, GLD has grown from a Pittsburgh basement into an international brand often called the 'Nike of men's jewelry.'
Stan Lee: How Spider-Man Came Into Being
In this short, heartfelt talk, comics legend Stan Lee tells the true (and hard-to-believe) story of how Spider-Man was created. He recounts being asked by his publisher to invent a new superhero, spotting a fly crawling on a wall, and landing on the idea of a wall-crawling, web-slinging teenager with real-world personal problems. His publisher rejected the idea outright, so Stan quietly slipped Spider-Man into the final issue of a dying magazine, Amazing Fantasy. When the sales figures came back, the character was a runaway hit. Lee turns the anecdote into an inspirational message: if you have an idea you genuinely believe in, don't let anyone talk you out of it, and always do your best work by doing what you want, the way you think it should be done.
UPROXX
UPROXX is a Los Angeles-based digital media and entertainment company that grew from a music and pop-culture website into a connected-TV and social-video powerhouse reaching more than 160 million monthly viewers. Founded by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, it owns brands including UPROXX, HipHopDX and Dime Magazine, produces original music and culture programming, runs a content studio for brand campaigns, and - after going independent again in 2024 alongside will.i.am and Rich Antoniello - sells media across YouTube and CTV while folding AI into how it makes and monetizes content.
Fandom
Fandom is the world's largest fan platform - a sprawling network of 250,000+ community-built wikis covering movies, TV, gaming and anime, reaching about 350 million monthly visitors. Born as Wikicities in 2004 from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, it grew into a for-profit pop-culture reference engine and, after acquiring GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs and Giant Bomb in 2022, also one of the loudest editorial voices in entertainment.
Nina Perez
Nina Perez is the founder of Project Fandom, an entertainment news and podcast platform she launched in 2009 that covers TV, movies, gaming, comics, anime, and books from a geek's perspective. Dubbed 'The Oprah of MySpace' for her uncanny ability to get readers hooked on almost anything, she is also a published author with three series under her belt, a Social Media Community Manager by day, and a lifelong Brooklynite who now calls Portland, Oregon home.
Sirasom Si
Sirasom Si is the Chief Executive Officer of Fandom, the world's largest fan platform and wiki hosting service headquartered in San Francisco. With over 350 million monthly visitors, Fandom hosts tens of thousands of fan communities spanning gaming, TV, movies, anime, and pop culture. Based in Bangkok, Thailand, Si leads a company that has raised over $239 million in funding and generates approximately $175 million in annual revenue, sitting at the intersection of community-driven content, entertainment media, and digital advertising.
Zack Hudson
Zack Hudson is the co-founder of Golden Fandom LLC and one of the organizers behind Golden-Con: Thank You For Being a Fan, the world's first fan convention dedicated entirely to The Golden Girls. A Chicago-based social services professional and self-described hardcore fan, Hudson transformed a pandemic-era bar trivia idea into a sold-out multi-day convention at Navy Pier in 2022 that drew over 3,100 attendees from around the globe. The event grew from a single social media announcement that, in his words, 'just kind of escalated from there.'
Drew Gooden
Drew Gooden is an American commentary YouTuber and comedian known for sharp, slow-burn deep dives into internet and pop culture. A Vine alum behind the 'Road Work Ahead' clip, he rebuilt an audience on YouTube with a 2018 takedown of Jake Paul's live show and now plays theaters with Danny Gonzalez.
Kurtis Conner
Kurtis Conner is a Canadian comedian, YouTuber, and podcaster with over 5.6 million YouTube subscribers and 1.16 billion views. Known for deadpan social commentary, he parlayed a Vine following into a full-time comedy career, releasing multiple stand-up albums, hosting the Very Really Good podcast since 2017, and headlining his Goodfellow World Tour across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe in 2024.
Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is the only writer in history to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism twice - once in 2012 at The Boston Globe and again in 2021 at The New York Times, where he serves as Critic at Large. A Yale-educated Philadelphia native, Morris writes about film, music, race, and American identity with a voice that is simultaneously playful and incisive. He co-hosted the NYT podcast Still Processing for six years, launched Cannonball in June 2025, and runs a Substack newsletter. His work stands at the intersection of entertainment and cultural politics, making him one of the most respected voices in American criticism.
Trung Phan
Trung Phan is a Canadian writer, newsletter author, and co-founder who built one of the internet's most entertaining business media brands. His Saturday newsletter SatPost mixes deep-dive tech and business analysis with viral memes, earning him 725k+ Twitter followers and tens of thousands of Substack subscribers. A former equity analyst, Kensho Technologies researcher, and The Hustle writer, Phan is descended from Vietnam's most famous anti-colonial revolutionary, Phan Boi Chau - a lineage that sits somewhere between irony and destiny for a man who now runs his own media empire from a laptop.
Brooke Averick
Brooke Averick (@ladyefron) is the Philadelphia-born preschool teacher turned TikTok royalty with 1M+ followers, 68.4M likes, and zero shame. She went viral in April 2020 reading her childhood diary, quit teaching, launched Brooke & Connor Make a Podcast (named Best Comedy Podcast of 2024 by Adweek with 30M+ YouTube views), started a solo show called Obsessed with Brooke Averick, and is now publishing her debut novel — Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It — with Crown/Penguin Random House in May 2026. The internet's favorite oversharer, described as 'the app's Jewish voice of Gen Z' by Hey Alma.