Category: Media

  • Experience Stacks, Romantasy, and Harry Potter Fanfic

    A terrific NYT article explored a new genre of big books emerging from online fan fiction and missed a few things along the way. On Wednesday, August 20, The New York Times ($) ran a fascinating article: “Why Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere: Romantasy is propping up the fiction market. Thanks to a…

  • The Paradox of No Choice

    An odd VENN diagram of tariffs and AI are narrowing our choices as customers. Will this change be permanent? What are the implications for products and retailers? Note: this piece takes its title from Barry Schwartz’s famous and terrific book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. In 1985, Wendy’s ran a memorable, minute-long spot,…

  • The Distraction Button

    What Sydney Sweeney and Jeffrey Epstein have in common, plus why it’s time to revive the word “Ridiculous.” For the Dispatch readers who aren’t compulsive media watchers, a summary: a scandal of the week involves the actress Sydney Sweeney in a new ad campaign for American Eagle jeans. The campaign’s tag line is “Sydney Sweeney has great…

  • What Folks Are Missing About “South Park”

    The first episode of season 27 of the iconic animated series lit up media last week, but in the tumult over profane political satire pundits only got part of the picture. “Take heed, sirrah—the whip.”  —Lear to his Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear   It was a terrific water cooler week for people who follow the…

  • AI Double Agents

    With all the talk about Agentic AI, there’s an important question that people aren’t asking: who are these agents working for? In last week’s main piece, I explored how Agentic AI will be bad for brands because, in a world where digital servants take over trivial everyday decisions, we human deciders will be less vulnerable to…

  • Mission Implausible

    Tom Cruise’s new movie has amazing stunts, a ludicrous plot, and doesn’t understand Artificial Intelligence. Here’s my snarky review.  “Thank you for saving my marriage.” That’s what I said to my friend Jeff when we exited the IMAX theater at 10:30pm on Wednesday, having taken in the 7:00pm Mission Impossible: the Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise’s eighth…

  • Agentic AI Will Change Everything

    How realistic is the idea that AI-powered agents will change the way we work, play, and live? The answer: it’s already happening. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called Piercing the AI Wall about an executive who had surrounded himself with a barrier of Agentic AIs that prevented…

  • Gen AI and the Future of Entertainment

    Will algorithms take over Hollywood and make personalized video the dominant way people entertain themselves? Like me, my friend Shelly Palmer is in the futurist business—peering into trends, technologies, and tea leaves to make sense of what’s coming. Last week, Shelly published, “Hollywood’s AI Blind Spot: The Fatal Mistake That Will Kill the Industry,” which…

  • 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?…

  • 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…