While researching the #MeToo phenomenon, I discovered Kasia Urbaniak, a former Dominatrix. She was once paid $64,000 for a 10-minute session, a handsome fee that went toward her college tuition. Today, she teaches women-empowerment classes in New York. Her classes sell out. Soon she’ll be taking her training online including...
Author Archives: Patricia Martin
Home Front: To My Thoreau Delight
Sometime in 2017, my husband and I decided to look for a home in the woods. After months of fruitless searching, we nearly gave up. Shortly after we agreed to end the struggle, our realtor shot us a must-see listing. Yes! We made it ours. It’s a mid-century modern gem...
News: Trend Report will be a Video Series!
After 9 years, I’m excited to announce that beginning in January, the new format for our popular Trend Report will be a video series. Change is good. After all, does anyone really need a giant sheaf of written findings to add to their monstrous stack of things to read? We...
Trend Watch: The hidden story behind the wild popularity of the Handmaid’s Tale
Month after month, Amazon rated Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale in its top 10 most-purchased novels during 2017. Hulu’s gripping adaptation was a runaway hit generating countless blog posts. What does it mean? The tsunami of social media surrounding the women of Gilead, the dark dystopian society where the Handmaid’s Tale...
Getting in Touch with Your Future Self
Our future self has desires, ambitions, and big plans for us. Now it also has an app. Have you ever looked back and wished you could tell your 16-year old self some sage piece of advice? I have. But what about your future self? I just love the new app...
New Research: How Robust Cultures Get That Way
These days, teams work in far-flung places and communicate electronically more than in person. What is the glue that holds teams together? For years, it seemed as though business leaders would strive to build great work cultures, but still fall short. At a corporate strategy session I recently facilitated, the...
How to Make a Better Future for Yourself
On a sultry afternoon in August, I scooped up an armful of daily newspapers and trudged up to my writing studio to make sense of things: Neo-Nazis brandishing Tiki torches, the circus that is the White House and bitter partisan finger pointing. I must tell you, I see a pattern...
Summer Reading: iGen, Smartphones, Digital Culture and the Disrupted Self
As many of you know, my current obsession is researching how digital culture is changing humans most deeply—especially from within. Our sense of identity is not only a compass that motivates us, it also a cultural touchstone. It won’t surprise you. My findings are disturbing. [tweetshareinline tweet=”Big picture: the rise...
What Digital is Doing to Our Drive
Back in 2012, I started looking into what digital culture is doing to our sense of identity. I was especially curious about how the Internet is affecting the interplay between identity and ambition–our drive to become someone, to make something of our selves. Because if you think about it, our...