Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 31

The Importance of Local News

This month was a big one for political news, obviously … but as we come closer to the U.S. election, one of the elements that will probably never get as much attention as it deserves is the importance of local news and the role that it plays in helping people understand who is running for all the local elections that will be contested this year too. The critical role local news can and must play is a topic Pew Research explores in a multi-part series that just released its continuation this week...

Is Katy Perry Holding Empowered Women Back, Or Are We Missing the Joke?

There is a moment in Katy Perry’s new video for “Woman’s World” where she sticks a gas pump into her backside and turns the clock backward to a 2010s era pop video that had Rolling Stone magazine offering some heavy criticism: “rarely has someone so misread the room.” For her part, Perry defended her video suggesting that it was supposed to be satire and “a bit sarcastic,” which had others wondering whether the video and ensuing controversy was just another example of how our culture seems unabl...

This Journalist Tried to Make a New Friend in 30 Days and It Went … Badly

What if you set out to make a new friend and gave yourself 30 days to make it happen? That’s the intriguing challenge that forms the backdrop for an article from this month’s issue of Esquire magazine where journalist Kelly Stout tries everything from taking a mommy and me swimming class to signing onto the “Bumble for Friends” app in an effort to find an “entirely new person entering my life and becoming a friend.”

Publicly declaring this goal to family and current friends is an impressi...

Welcome to a Future Where Food Is Made from Thin Air

Last year when Henry and I were writing The Future Normal, we wrote about a trend we named Unnaturally Better and profiled Solar Foods, a company that had created a protein called Solein synthesized from carbon dioxide. Literally food from air. This week, I came across another story of a similar company called Savor that can create fats from air and is starting specifically with a butter product that looks and tastes like “real” butter produced from dairy sources. Some reports share that the rea...

The Art of Gathering – How We Meet and Why It Matters

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Several years ago, I read this wonderful book by Priya Parker and it really stayed with me so I thought I’d resurface it this week as you may be in the midst of some summer gatherings yourself. While the book may seem to focus more on events, it’s equally valuable as a primer on how to become a better and more social host and attendee in any situation. Parties, meetings, and casual encounters alike—if you approach them with more intention, you can create memor...

Custom Fragrances Recreate What a Book Character Smells Like (and more)

Red wine spilled in a Birkin bag, smeared lipstick on suede, Maraschino cherry juice and stale cigarette ash. These are just a few ingredients in a new fragrance called Die Hot With A Vengeance, which also happens to be the name of a new book of essays by Sable Yong, a former beauty editor at Allure magazine. To accompany the book, she commissioned a scent from boutique parfumier Hoax Parfum, starting with the creative brief that she wanted the perfume to “smell like a rich, evil woman’s Birkin ...

New Options May Bring a Small Business Advertising Revolution

Over the past several weeks, travel and media brands with access to plentiful user data are finally following the path of social media platforms to create new ways to monetize it. United Airlines announced “the airline industry’s first media network” and just this week the Paramount Plus streaming network opened up their self-service Ads Manager to allow businesses of any size to advertise against programming on the platform.

Obviously, the creative challenge of how to make a good 15 ...

The Assassination Attempt and Why the “Obvious” Conclusions Are Usually Wrong

The biggest news story of the past week was certainly the assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life and almost immediately in the aftermath of the shooting there were plenty of theories about what had happened and who was behind it. The media dutifully reported on all of it, from conspiracy theories to early guesses about motives and intentions. The best thing I read this week, though, was an article from writer Dan Gardner retelling the story about the assassination of Senator Huey...

Are Colleges and Universities Failing Liberal-Leaning Students by Not Challenging Their Perspectives?

In a forthcoming book by Princeton Political Science Professor Lauren A. Wright, the author writes about her research process that involved interviews with self-described liberal and conservative students about the variety of topics and perspectives they are learning. She found a disproportionate number of conservative-leaning students are exposed to new perspectives or ideas that they don’t necessarily agree with. They are frequently forced to question their beliefs and understand both sides of...

After 40 Glorious Years of Simplicity Notepad Gets “Improved” By Adding Autocorrect and Spellcheck

I admit I’m a Notepad junkie. I use it nearly every day to capture ideas for stories, writing to use elsewhere and just general notetaking. It’s probably one of my favorite programs on my computer. It’s also dead simple. Or it was, until the latest update announced this week which notes the app is “finally” getting autocorrect and spellcheck. I’m not sure how other Notepaders feel about this, but I definitely wasn’t waiting or hoping for it. Perhaps I spent way too many years working at a PR fir...