It was a super nice surprise to discover that my ‘Seinfeld Chronicles‘ data viz project had received a generous mention on the latest ‘Acquired‘ podcast.
Hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, each Acquired episode involves a very well-researched, long-form (4 hour!) deep dive into a “single company’s history from its founding until today” with the aim of uncovering how each company was so successful in contrast to others.
In something of a departure from their typical ‘companies’ of focus, such as Disney or Ferrari, they recently released an episode dedicated to the US sitcom, Seinfeld.
"Seinfeld, which ended three decades ago, has been watched by 72 million Americans so far THIS YEAR. Behind that incredible stat is an equally incredible business story: obsessive creators, perfect market timing, an ownership structure that aligned incentives for the long term… all of which created a sitcom that became number one by breaking all the rules."
During the final part of the episode, in a section titled ‘carve outs’ which is an informal post-script to topic of conversation whereby the hosts share specific “related books, movies, gadgets, articles, or cultural finds”, Ben Gilbert was very kind to describe his discovering of my original, limited-edition printed version of the Seinfeld data exploration, created in 2020.
You can hear the section in the bookmarked video clip below (from 3h43m onwards).
Alternatively, here’s a few captioned screenshots from the related Netflix episode to give you the gist of how the project was covered…
My sincere thanks to Ben and David for the delightful mention and for linking to the full digital version of the project on their episode page. (And sorry to disappoint those keen people who have been in touch, as a result, seeking to get a copy – ANY COPY! – of the book, here’s the web viewer version of it at least)
