I’m born and raised L.A. and have been driving since I was 14. And yes, illegally, but growing up in the 70s, if you wanted to go anywhere in the Los Angeles area, you had to drive there. There was no Metro Rail back then, and the buses weren’t safe for young girls, or anyone … Continue reading Most Everything I Know About People I Learned from Driving
Do you believe in God and Jesus? Why? Likely because your mother taught you to — marketing to you throughout your formative years the benefits of belief: Community Solace Salvation Your beliefs were marketed to you through holiday celebrations, and maybe Sunday school and prayer. Even if mom, and/or your dad, didn’t directly push their … Continue reading Marketing to Believers
250 yrs later, we’re back to Civil War… My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. I once saw him put his fist through the maple cabinet an inch from my mom’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected … Continue reading Today’s Great Divide
The MILGRAM EXPERIMENT revealed some profound truths about all of us... Shortly after WW2, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor did what has come to be known as an ‘obedience’ experiment. (Trailer of docudrama:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngGqBOLWaI According to Milgram, while self-interest is part of our nature, most of us are fundamentally FOLLOWERS. His famous study revealed it … Continue reading What Makes a Leader?
Do you FEEL before you THINK?Or do your THOUGHTS generate your FEELINGS? Psychology is split on this. Old world believed it was THOUGHT first, i.e. behavioral/cognitive therapy. New world has finally come around to what seems to me so blatantly obvious: The Human Psyche:FEELINGS lead to THOUGHTS, and THOUGHTS lead to ACTIONS. Human beings are FEELING creatures FIRST … Continue reading Emotional Intelligence
Why are some jokes universally funny to large swaths of people? For my husband’s birthday, I took him and our two adult kids to a comedy show last weekend. There were around 30 people in the club that easily held 100 or more. The headliner was a Black guy, and I’m identifying his race with … Continue reading The Tragedy in Comedy
“I saw someone die today, Mom,” my daughter told me on the phone, her voice four octaves higher than normal, like she’d been sucking on helium. “Where are you?” I heard street noise in the background. “I’m on the 101. I’m driving home from the hospital.” Again, her voice was...off—too high, too cheery. “I saw … Continue reading On Raising a Doctor
Talked to an old friend yesterday. We hadn’t spoken for almost a decade. No particular reason. Life took over and we lost touch. The last time we spoke, 10 yrs back, he told me his wife had quit her job as a restaurant manager and was very happy to be home, fixing up their house, … Continue reading On Being Human
Why Tech WON'T Fix Your Business A while back, a friend asked me what I thought about him taking a job offer at MIX. “They’re the reboot of StumbledUpon,” he’d told me. “They want me to improve their recommendation engine, to keep the users they have with better recs, and to get new users by … Continue reading What Happened at MIX
For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a mom. I was absolutely convinced I could parent better than my mother. My father was the breadwinner — king of our small kingdom — and more into himself than raising the two kids he produced and the one he adopted. I became a … Continue reading Letting Go of Adult Kids
