Mar 7The Headline GameA friend of mine from Manhattan used to play this game called ‘Who Makes Money? Who Loses Money?” The way the game is played is with the front page of the New York Times. You go headline-to-headline and answer those two questions without reading the accompanying copy. With the front…3 min read
Feb 19, 2021The Lack of Problems is a ProblemOne of the formative experiences of my working life was Disney’s 1982 motion picture, Tron, the first motion picture in history to use CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) as a way to build a world. I was the unit publicist on the film, which meant I managed (with a lot of help…Tron4 min read
Jan 20, 2021A Story in 233 NicknamesRubber Lips asks Bulldog for the Straight Skinny on the Smoke from his Chopper. “Speedy in the Hills,”says the Fatman, “Observing highway Sifey rules. Get Sloppy. Hit a Greaser Slick. Lurch! Pogo a Dip. Kunk! Spank a Possum. Whooshty! Sled off the Lip. Go OB. Squeesh! Shreds a Tire. Flip…Storytelling3 min read
Jan 15, 2021Story SeductionI got a question today from a colleague about whether our story science accounts for the ‘seduction’ that’s inherent in stories. It does, in fact. We call it Magnetism. In 2018, Dr. Nazanin Tourani, who is on the faculty in the school of Business at Penn State, and I published…Storytelling4 min read
Nov 27, 2020Giving Thanks for SakagaweaI have quite a few friends who called out Thanksgiving yesterday as a day of mourning, which it understandably is for many Native Americans. White people bring smallpox and take our land? Hooray! Let’s eat! I can see what a wrong was done, too, where I grew up in Southern…Native American History4 min read
Nov 26, 2020Kaling Physics: The Quantum Comedy of The Mindy ProjectA few years ago, I was at a business dinner in Beverly Hills with half a dozen people. The dinner lasted long over drinks, with bonding and truthful talk about our work punctuated by big laughs. Near the end of the dinner, I noticed B.J. …Mindy Kaling5 min read
May 31, 2020Personal MagicWhen I am working at Disney Studios in the early 1980s, a friend of mine at Warner Bros. needles me by calling it, The Land that Time Forgot. …Storytelling7 min read
May 24, 2019Brian SpeaksI need to get this down while I’m still vibrating from the experience. What happened yesterday began a week ago, when a friend asked to look at my high school yearbook, which I’d recently learned I could access online via the website for the library in the town where I’d…Music10 min read
Feb 22, 2018Red and White — A Love StoryRed and White met in a Keith Haring painting in 1981 when Black introduced them. They realized they had the Swiss flag in common, and Red was like, call me, and White was like, I don’t call, I return. …Life4 min read
Aug 14, 2017A Side Is Not A DivideTo hear people tell it, there are two sides to issues, the most recent example being the tragic-any-way-you-slice-it Charlottesville situation. It goes like this: On one side there’s Yadda-yadda-yadda; on the other there’s Blah-blah-blah. This divide is drawn out most glaringly by pundits and politicians, who needs easy binaries for…Charlottesville2 min read
