This past weekend at Coachella, Justin Bieber showed us the future of fame: raw, self-referential and direct-to-consumer.
It was a stark contrast to the “Hard Power” and superhuman sacrifice of Beyoncé’s legendary 2018 Homecoming performance at the festival. While the pop world was debating these generational shifts in the desert, a group of women were cracking the same code on a different field of play just a week earlier.
In this episode, we go behind the scenes of Project Stella. The team took on The Speed Project on an unsanctioned 340-mile relay from the Santa Monica Pier to Las Vegas. It’s a “no rules, no spectators” nonstop push through the heat of the Mojave Desert, and they shattered the previous record by 2 hours and 54 minutes — finishing in 30 hours and 19 minutes in an average pace of 6:30 per mile.
This all-women’s squad didn’t just lower the record, they built their own digital Main Stage by providing live, raw updates across the entire record attempt on social media. We chat with project architect Hannah Jackson to discuss the “Bieber treatment” of live-streaming sport, the logistics of managing elite talent in the middle of the desert and what the future of Project Stella holds.
