Rohit Bhargava's Blog

The Curious Modern Popularity of Pumpkin Spice

It’s September and pumpkin spice everything is there. Coffee, candles, cereals, Oreos, dog treats, gum, ​hummus​ and even ​butt wipes​ (entertainingly rebranded as “Dumpkin Spice”). The inescapability of this random ingredient may leave you wondering why exactly it’s so popular … especially since it doesn’t actually include any pumpkin (the term “pumpkin spice” is used to describe an aromatic blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger).

The credit for its modern appeal ​often goes to Starb...

The Death of Articulate Criticism

No one cares what you hate on social media. Or at least they shouldn’t. But as the anonymity of the Internet offers up permission to people to be the worst versions of themselves, the exact opposite may be happening to professional critics of music, film and culture. In other words, they are getting nicer. In the New Yorker, this shift of ​how music critics “lost their edge“​ is explored in an article this week:

“The idea that people’s tastes have a right not to be criticized is, of course, q...

The Human Insight Behind a Restaurant That Promises Not to Make Any Money

A new restaurant in Manhattan called the ​Community Kitchen​ is doing a pilot test through November of a business model where people choose to pay what they can for a fine dining experience. The restaurant promises to use sustainable locally farmed ingredients, offer their workers a high wage and predictable hours, and a dining experience that rivals that of other establishments which might charge $100 a plate for a meal.

The dinner pricing is based on a fixed-menu meal on a sliding scale: $1...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

If you thought, like I did, that many of the negative impacts that Facebook has had on our culture from failing to curb the spread of misinformation to offering evil people a platform was all about the money … this book will offer you a sobering reality check. Written by someone who was instrumental in that “growth at any cost” ethos that always defined Facebook, this is the ultimate highly readable tell-all memoir. From stories of crashing parties with Zuck to revealing stories of invitations f...

How “Dumbification” May Be the Next Hot Technology Trend

What happens when all the good TVs that you can buy in the market are automatically programed as “smart” TVs, ready to connect to the Internet to stream shows from all platforms? For some people, it’s leading them to figure out how to turn that smart TV into a dumb one by removing all connectivity. This desire to go more basic when it comes to the technology we use isn’t new and it’s on the rise.

For anyone who has driven a rental car with overactive steering correction or endured constant un...

Of Course, the Cracker Barrel Logo “Backlash” Was Planned … And It Worked Perfectly

Cracker Barrel announced they were ditching their old logo for a forgettable generic new one. The news got people to pay attention. Lots of them condemned the switch. Then predictably a few weeks later, they backtracked and brought back the old logo. I suspect that was always the plan. Here’s the one headline that should tell you everything you need to know about the ideal outcome of this strategy.

The Washington Post ran an article with this headline: “Cracker Barrel is trying to modernize. ...

The “Anna Karenina Principle” That Explains How Optimists Differ from Pessimists

The first line of Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel Anna Karenina offers this observation:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Based on a recent research study, there may be some science that actually proves his point. Neuroscientists studying key brain patterns among people who imagined positive events with a feeling of optimism versus those who did so with pessimism found that the optimists brain patterns were largely similar. For pessimists, those sam...

The Rise and Fall of Drive-In Theaters

The year 1933 brought the world’s first drive-in theater. Since that moment, it’s become one of those iconic American-style exports of entertainment. Today it’s a nostalgic experience, still done at several hundred spots around the country and perhaps others around the world but much less than at its peak. The story of the rise and fall of the drive-in theater is a fascinating one.

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The fall, in particular, is blamed on the rising price of oil and a lack of green space due to rapidly deve...

The Book on How NOT To Use AI Is Being Written Right Now

European payment network Klarna was one of the first fintech companies to go all in on AI. They were even featured as a case study by OpenAI. Then after a flood of customer complaints, they tried to quietly backtrack and hire back many human assistants. Recently an author was called out after readers discovered that the text of AI prompts was published in her final book.

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A lawyer was caught using fake citations hallucinated by AI and failed to notice them. A tech company’s AI coding tool...

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Defy by Dr. Sunita Sah

I ask for my coffee extra hot. Sometimes, I do that, and it comes cold anyway. There would be times when that happened and I would drink it anyway. Most people don’t like to cause a scene and sometimes that means we don’t speak up. It’s a small moment, but also a symbol of larger opportunities for defiance in our lives that we often let pass by.

According to Dr. Sunita Sah, the ability to embrace your defiant side is critical in learning to speak up for yourself. When I spoke to her for this ...