Category: Personal

  • Our Best Friends

    Mark Zuckerberg thinks our BFFs will soon be AIs. He’s wrong. They’re still dogs, and that’s never more clear than when our dogs die. I have two distinct (but oddly connected) topics this post. AI Gone Weird The number of stories continues to increase about people surrendering all common sense when it comes to AI.…

  • The Unbearable Complexity of Drug Pricing: My Ozempic Journey Continues

    Regular readers know that I’ve been taking Ozempic for the last few months because I have Type 2 Diabetes and also have struggled to lose weight. I’ve shared My Ozempic Journey from time to time (this issue is one of those times) and also talked about the Center for the Digital Future’s research about Ozempic Disruption generally. Since…

  • When Strategy Devours Culture

    When Strategy Devours Culture

    In 2004, I had an inside view of a company facing irrelevance and also making bad choices. Peter Drucker famously observed that in business “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” meaning that an organization can have a perfect strategic plan and still fail if the corporate culture doesn’t align around that strategy. The reverse is also…

  • Ozempic Update, Musk Redux, & More

    An update on my experiences with Ozempic, then thoughts about the AI competitive landscape and what Elon Musk believes. Back in September, I started taking Ozempic both because I have Type 2 diabetes and because I’ve struggled to lose weight for a long time. I’ve been open about this, writing about it in this newsletter, and many…

  • When Great Artists Are Bad People

    Artists can have dark sides, some alleged and some convicted. Should evil actions by artists change how we experience and judge the art? Let’s start with two thought experiments. #1. How would things be different today if newly uncovered evidence revealed that William Shakespeare was a pedophile who assaulted the boy actors in his company?…

  • Today’s Wildfires, Yesterday’s Memories

    There’s only one story on my mind this week: the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. The last few days tore my attention to shreds and patches. I was in Vegas for CES when the Palisades Fire exploded in my hometown of Los Angeles. I flip-flopped between thoughtful business meetings and anxious refreshes of the Cal…

  • B.L.U.E. revisited…

    In today’s issue of my newsletter, The Brad Berens Weekly Dispatch, I revisited a piece I wrote on this blog back in 2019: Am I B.L.U.E.? (Bored, Lonely, Uncomfortable… Ever). Here’s the context from The Dispatch: Last week, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes had a peculiar op-ed in The New York Times about the value of boredom that’s a…

  • Movie Marketing Magic and… Stupidity

    Two Hollywood stories this week prompted a mediation on the two things movies need to succeed—and yes, it’s only two.  Two things in the movie biz happened last week: one fantastic and one fatuous. Let’s start with the dumb one. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal ($) ran an article titled, “Here’s a Hollywood Twist: Streaming Success…

  • Incursions of Memory

    A delightful podcast provoked three unexpected memories and a think about the differences between coincidence and serendipity. Let me start with a PSA: if you have any affection for or curiosity about Shakespeare, then don’t miss the delightful book Shakespeare: the Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea, which is part discussion about…

  • Family as the Ship of Theseus

    For some irksome reason, the old philosophical question about the Ship of Theseus has come to new life as a business cliché. Type “Ship of Theseus and business” into your favorite search engine, and you’ll find numberless (yawn… whoops, sorry… started to drift off there) articles about organizations as Ships of Theseus. If you’re so lucky that you…