Decisions at the Fulcrum

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I explore the neon logic of today's supermarket aisle, where food has become a continuous commentary on societal unease.

Nestlé's Vital Pursuit, aimed at those who use GLP-1 drugs, seems to be another neat health launch: fewer portions, extra this, more of that buzzword, and happy-sounding reassurance on the container. This episode investigates how a food corporation tries to make up a n...

In this interview episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, Dr. William Hoffman speaks with founder and CEO of Mightylicious Carolyn Haeler about the decisions that emerge when necessity, taste, and enjoying food are immediate and abrupt. What began with a celiac diagnosis became Mightylicious, a quest to make the best gluten-free cookie consumers ever tasted. 

Carolyn Haeler reflects on her path from finance to food, a peculiar challen...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we trace Slice from its 1984 debut inside Pepsi’s lemon-lime strategy to its slow disappearance from the American soda aisle. We begin in the fluorescent chill of the cola wars, where Pepsi decides that Teem no longer has enough force in the market and launches Slice with a sharper promise. It would have fruit and offer a contemporary vocab for soda.

From there, we follow the brand throu...

What makes a smooth, thoughtful, and worthwhile experience? In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I speak with Vance Morris, who has expertise in customer experience consulting, Disney tourist attractions, and entrepreneurship. Together, we examine the choices that determine what visitors truly recall: the greeting, the wait, the script, the recuperation, and the sense of being respected. We examine how experience is develop...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I zoom into Zoom and go from the train station platform to the teleconferencing platform that became ubiquitous during the early 2020s. This episode opens in Logan, UT, at Utah State University, and I cover early interest and delivery of distance education by train.

From there, I cover Zoom during the COVID-19 crisis, a series of fulcrum points in which a handful of interface decisions t...

There was a time when a protein powder didn't pretend to be a personality type, thanks to history doing its irritating job. Inside a compostable wrapping, it offered no intensity, calmness, or equitable harmony. It was only a coarse, chalk-like implement for those who viewed eating as an administrative task.

So how did we get from a few bars in the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s to today's chaotic, unending protein aisle?

There are state flags everywhere, but they are seldom investigated. In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I focus on Maryland's state flag, a quartered design that seems to be contrasting a lot with itself. The tension was a decision though about a state sense of place and identity.

Let's be clear: The Civil War was not a conflict of equal moral standing, and acknowledging division or later reconciliation amongst divided par...

Part II of the DuPont episodes begins after the armistice following World War I. The episode begins in November 1918, when the explosions cease, contracts disappear, and a munitions-based firm determines what to become afterwards.

This episode follows DuPont's postwar shift from an explosives firm to a materials empire, beginning with nylon. Nylon was that material in American department shops. We start there, but the episode concl...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, we look at BrightSide Produce, a produce distributor that works in impoverished parts of San Diego County, and discover that food availability isn't only a matter of supply, demand, or good intentions.

It's a complex situation with coordination, not optimization.

Let's follow BrightSide Produce through forecasting discussions, uncertain delivery trajectories, and the hushed aftermath of ...

In this episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum, I map out one of the more complex disputes in international resource policy: the seabed mining near Nauru. We'll look at the issue by going from the depth seabed floor to the brightly-lit world of international governance. I employ Paul Wehr's conflict mapping approach to comprehend how conflict arises when parties have disparate "maps" of the same terrain that have different interpretat...

This episode of Decisions at the Fulcrum starts with the Brandywine River, instead of inventiveness, innovation, or even chemical synthesis. This is an account of how a few generations of refugees taught in  European scientific disciplines morphed into an institution much bigger than a company. Instead, this institution gradually became a kind of infrastructure the United States grew to rely on, from the War of 1812 through the Fir...

Part II shifts focus from federal legislation to the marketplace, revealing the painful truth that, after years of expansion, the CBD business in 2025 remains fundamentally unstable, poorly regulated, and dominated by bulk isolates and white-label manufacture. Laboratory tests, including JAMA's 2020 review, continue to demonstrate considerable mislabeling, with products having considerably less or significantly more CBD than promis...