Given n points in the plane, how many pairs among these points can have distance exactly 1? More formally, what is the maximum possible number of unit distances among a set of n points in the plane? This problem is a very famous and still largely open problem, called the Erdos unit distance problem. One can also study this problem for other norms on R^2 (or more generally on R^d for any dimension d) that are different from the Euclidean norm. This direction has been suggested in the 1980s by Ulam and Erdos and attracted a lot of attention over the years. We give an almost tight answer to this question for almost all norms on R^d (for any given d). Furthermore, for almost all norms on R^d, we prove an asymptotically tight bound for a related problem, the so-called Erdos distinct distances problem. Our proofs rely in part on arguments from polyhedral geometry (and some tools from matroid theory are also relevant). Joint work with Noga Alon and Matija Bucic.