Dez Reads. We Found Out How to Make Mark Emerson Mad.

Dez’s Mark Emerson, my co-producer of Dez Reads, is not known for his temper. The guy is just a peach…unless his flight is delayed. The vicarious fury that oozes from Mark’s write-up of a United Airlines pilot diverting a flight abroad because the pilot forgot his own passport made me laugh through the entire edit. It leads this week’s edition.

Beyond that, we are all over the place. Anne Marie documents an internal accounting of employee verbal mistakes at Ford Motor Company (and is hopefully not planning to implement this at Dez), Maggie Johnston explores the tension between human struggle and human achievement through the eyes of the cheating losers at Yankee Stadium, Bova explains why Apple is happy to lose a billion dollars a year on streaming, and I dust off my sixth grade science textbook to learn more about the promise of mitochondria in improving human lives.

It’s Opening Day in Detroit; Go Tigers. Here’s to your ball club sweeping the season series with the Yankees, your verbal gaffes going unnoticed, season 3 of Severance improving, your metabolic health lengthening and improving your life, and all of us avoiding a delayed Mark Emerson on our weekend travels.

Thanks, as always, for reading along with us.

Here we go.

Travel.

NBC News. United Airlines flight to China diverted to San Francisco after pilot forgets passport

As all of my colleagues have heard me complain (loudly) on more than one occasion, there’s nothing that unsettles me more than airline incompetence. The endless spin, the constant delays, the hours of being smashed into a narrow seat on the tarmac waiting to take off – it’s enough to test the patience of a saint.

When I saw this story, I truly felt for these passengers. A United flight from LAX to Shanghai had to turn around midair because the pilot forgot his passport. Let me repeat that. The pilot. The person flying the plane forgot his passport.

The flight was rerouted to San Francisco, where a new crew had to be brought in. The delay lasted six hours. Passengers were handed meal vouchers (totally worth…) and some compensation. Personally, I’d need a lot more than a sandwich to justify a six-hour detour caused by this kind of mistake.

Look, I get that things happen to all of us. But there’s something deeply unsettling about the person responsible for flying you across the globe, realizing after takeoff that they don’t have the one document they need to land the plane. No checklist? And no gate agent noticed the international pilot didn’t have the one thing he absolutely needed?

Yikes.

– Mark Emerson

Clowning.

WSJ. The Ford Executive Who Kept Scores of Colleagues’ Verbal Flubs.

In 2014, Mike O’Brien, a sales exec at Ford, scribbled on his office whiteboard a coworker’s botched expression that caught his ear in a meeting. Ten years later, O’Brien amassed a collection of 2,229 of his colleagues’ linguistic gaffes.

These verbal mishaps became known as “the Board Words,” and spread throughout the company, eventually filling six whiteboards of verbal mishaps. Ford teammates loved seeing the latest addition when they popped into O’Brien’s office. “We weren’t being mean, it was just funny,” he said.

During lockdown, Board Words lived in O’Brien’s garage, until eventually going digital (great use of spreadsheets). With analog tracking in the rearview, flubs were categorized by sports/exercise, body parts, food-related, and animals, and included exact quote, context, name of the guilty party and O’Brien’s color commentary. Some of the GOATs:

• “We need to keep running in our swim lanes.”

• “Too many cooks in the soup.”

• “We need to make sure dealers have some skin in the teeth.”

• “I’m not trying to beat a dead horse to death.”

There’s a quote from Boondock Saints that I’ve always loved:

Doc says, “You know what they say: People in glass houses sink ships.” Rocco responds, “I gotta buy you a proverb book or something. This mix and match sh!t’s gotta go.”

Dezenhall President and editor of Dez Reads, Josh Culling, loves a good whiteboard. Prior to reading this piece, I could take or leave them. Now I think I need one. O’Brien’s since retired, someone needs to carry on this impressive, hilarious and oh, so petty work. Cheers to you Mike O’Brien – no notes, 10 out of 10.

– Anne Marie Malecha

Sports.

WSJ. The MIT Scientist Behind the ‘Torpedo Bats’ That Are Blowing Up Baseball

Baseball’s newest innovation, the torpedo bat, is radically changing the sport. Designed by an MIT physicist, the bat shifts its weight closer to the handle, aligning with a hitter’s natural sweet spot. The result is a tool that could turn weak hits into home runs, offering a fascinating blend of science and sport.

This kind of innovation isn’t unique to baseball. Tennis has been impacted by advancements in racket technology that allow players to hit faster serves and generate more spin. Golf has seen clubs and balls engineered to maximize power and precision. The problem is that these advancements often push sports to their limits. Tennis risks becoming dominated by aces rather than long rallies. Golf courses feel too short for modern drives. Baseball fields may soon seem inadequate if every hitter can send balls flying over the fence.

It gets at an interesting tension in sports and human nature. We love seeing records fall and imagining what’s possible when innovation meets ability. But we also want athletes to struggle against their environments. We want tennis matches with long rallies, golf courses that demand creativity, and baseball games where home runs aren’t automatic.

This dynamic reflects how society views technology itself. We’re fascinated by progress but terrified about how it might change the things we love.

– Maggie Johnston

Science.

Economist. Mitochondria transplants could cure diseases and lengthen lives

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.” – Mr. Weigman, sixth grade science, Gateway Middle School (paraphrased).

This is the one fact I remember from junior high science class, and it’s finally relevant. Moving past organ transplants to organelle transplants, cutting edge scientists are honing in on the mitochondria, a critical cell component that releases energy and drives metabolism. The potential human health and longevity implications are vast – from improving metabolic processes in preborn babies to repairing and enhancing aging cells in the elderly to improving mental health in people of all ages, healthy mitochondria may become a critical component of longer, more livable lives.

If Mr. Weigman would have forecasted the fact that mitochondrial transplants from young mice to old mice may reduce the latter’s biological age, I probably would have paid closer attention in class.

– Josh Culling

Business.

Morning Brew. Apple TV+ is losing $1b/year…likely as planned

Fighting the streaming wars is expensive. A business unit losing over $1 billion a year would normally sound like a corporate nightmare – unless you’re Apple. For the $3.4 trillion giant, $1 billion loss on Apple TV+ every year is just the cover charge for staying culturally relevant.

Apple is one of the few players who can afford to treat streaming as a high-stakes marketing campaign. And that’s exactly what this is. Apple isn’t just trying to beat out streaming competitors like Netflix, Disney+ and Max, they’re focused on positioning Apple as cooler, more relevant, and more essential. Shows like Severance and Ted Lasso are more than just content – they’re shiny billboards screaming “Apple = Quality.”

Similar to Amazon’s content development strategy, Apple has made the business calculation that while they are interested in having people watch their content and subscribe to their services, this investment is more about brand building at scale. The good thing for these two is that their other businesses are so wildly successful that they can have these calculated losses.

– Mike Bova

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