This week on the Friday Heaters podcast, I'm joined by artist, producer, painter, and creative force Benn The Good—also known as Benny Cassette, and Benedetto. He has built a career that spans music, visual art, and culture, collaborating with artists including Kanye West, Rick Rubin, John Legend, Daft Punk, and many more, while continuing to develop his own distinct voice across multiple creative disciplines.

I've wanted to have Benny on the podcast for a long time. We've been neighbors for years, referring to ourselves as "sacred neighbors”, and some of my favorite conversations happen across the street talking about art, music, life, and whatever creative rabbit hole one of us is down that week.

In this episode, Benny shares the story behind his creative journey: from growing up in East Los Angeles, finding art through graffiti and mural culture, and discovering the Bahá'í Faith as a teenager, to the unlikely path that took him from making beats in his grandmother's house to working alongside some of the biggest names in music.

We talk about why community matters more than networking, how curiosity fuels great art, why the lines between music and visual art are fading, and what it actually looks like to build a creative life that isn't confined to one medium.

If you've ever wondered how someone develops that kind of creative confidence or how a lifetime of experiences eventually comes together into a singular artistic voice, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation🔥

On this week’s episode of the Friday Heaters Podcast, we sit down with painter, Tidawhitney Lek, to talk about the path from working art jobs in Los Angeles to fully committing to her own painting practice. Tida reflects on growing up in Long Beach in a Cambodian family shaped by the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge, and how those experiences eventually found their way into her work through family narratives, domestic spaces, memory, and identity.

We discuss the moment she quit working side jobs, surviving the uncertainty of the early years, and how a series of studio visits and chance encounters helped launch her career during the pandemic-era art boom.

Tida also breaks down her painting process, balancing practicality with experimentation, the influence of artists like Kerry James Marshall and Amir Fallah, and where she sees her work evolving next as she prepares for upcoming projects with Night Gallery and Victoria Miro.

On this episode of the Friday Heaters Podcast, we sit down with Emma Webster ahead of her major New York show with Petzel. She breaks down her process, from handmade sculptures and real-world digital scans to VR-built landscapes, painting and how it all comes together into something that feels both real and surreal.

We talk about play, failure, risk, and the less visible side of building an art career, along with bigger ideas around technology, nature, and what it means to create entirely new worlds.