Z-Files

Metaphors are everywhere.  As the author of The Immortal Game: A History of Chess states, “So much about the experience of living is intangible, we need choice comparisons and symbols…

Hi, This is a book I finished a couple of months ago that deals with the psychology of driving.   It’s a truly fascinating work that explains why we do the…

 Hello, Here is an article that deals with a powerful but sometimes overlooked emotion – disgust. The topic is how people’s threshold for disgust can influence their sense of right and wrong…

I recently finished a pithy little book called Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.    There are lots of little ZMET-related nuggets in here.  Among them: --How discounting the price…

  This Wall Street Journal article by renowned management guru Philip Kotler and two colleagues discusses the conflict that often exists in organizations between R&D and marketing. Among the authors' remedies is…

  A California company called Namelab (which creates names for products and companies) has an informative blog called LabNotes in which they discuss news associated with linguistics and branding. A…

I recently stumbled upon an article in one of those in-flight magazines about a company called College Hunks Hauling Junk which has become a highly successful and profitable business. The…

I am reading a book called “One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture.”  It’s a fascinating book for a lot of reasons but one is that the author…

When I first saw this Gatorade spot that is linked below I thought, “Man, that’s an excellent ad!  There’s a brand trying to reach out to people who are struggling…

This article comes from a recent New York Times Magazine.  It is a long article, but a good one.   The article is about ZipCar, the car-sharing service that is becoming increasingly…

    This from The Emotional Brain by Joseph LeDoux: Often we are asked whether ZMET work with so-called unemotional participants.  There is no such thing as a fully-functioning person…