What The Dog Saw - Part One

 

Amazon - What the Dog Saw

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I love all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books that I have read.  I previously blogged about his book The Tipping Point.  Anyways, What The Dog Saw is a collection of 19 stories that he published while working at The New Yorker.  The book is divided into three parts and I will do my write-up over three days.  One for each part.

Part One - Is titled Obsessives, Pioneers and Other Varieties of Minor Geniuses

The first chapter is about Ron Popeil of Ronco.  If you an old fart like me you remember his commercials for the Electric Food Dehydrator, the Showtime Rotisserie, Veg-O-Matic and the Pocket Fisherman to name a few.  He just talks about Ron’s ability to pitch an item.  

The second chapter was about Ketchup.  Why is it only really Heinz?  At one time mustard was only French and it was strictly yellow until Grey Poupon came along.  In spaghetti sauce it was only really Ragu  until Cambells   came up with Prego extra chunky and a variety of others.  Not in ketchup though.  

The third chapter is about a fund manager from Empirical Capital, Nassim Taleb who has a different way of looking at options trading.  He has a few “quants” working for him.  They are like financial mathematicians.  His algorithm basically favours a large probability of losing a small amount of money everyday against a small probability of making a boat load of money when things like 9/11 happen or COVID hits. 

The fourth chapter is about hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America.  Shirley Polykoff, a part Ukrainian of Jewish faith was a copywriter who came up with “Does she or doesn’t she” for Clairol.  In the 70s Ilon Specht as copywriter came up with “Because I’m worth it” for L’Oreal.  There was much interesting talk about product psychology.  

The fifth chapter dealt with the development of the birth control pill.  There was discussion of how women at the beginning of the 19th century rarely menstruated because of  having children so early versus now and how this has effected the rate of ovarian and breast cancer.

The sixth chapter gave the book its title.  Cesar Millan owns the Dog Psychology Center in South-Central LA.  He is from Tijuana.   He has the ability to understand and help with dogs that have violence issues.  They even had a show on tv called The Dog Whisper about him.  

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