INSIGHTS

By all counts, 1896 was a significant year. Utah was admitted as the 45th U.S. state. The first X-ray photograph was taken. Puccini's La Bohème premiered in Turin while Oscar Wilde's Salomé premiered in Paris. Stanford and California played the first known women's college basketball game. Henry Ford finalized development of his first automobile – the Ford Quadricycle. And in May of that year, 12 stocks were chosen to form the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA).

The friendship between Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg seems unlikely. She’s the polished lifestyle expert who gives new meaning to the concept of domestic perfection, and he’s a pot-smoking rapper.  And yet, not only is their friendship very real, it led to two seasons of the Emmy-nominated show Martha and Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party. Who could have predicted the success of these unlikely besties hosting a weekly potluck? Not many because frankly, it doesn’t make sense. 

March Madness. It conjures up images of office pools, trash-talking and some of the best college basketball played all year. But 2020 saw a different kind of March Madness as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of people. As the number of cases began to rapidly grow, and the death toll mounted, social distancing and self quarantine guidelines were put in place in an attempt to flatten the curve and reduce the strain on our healthcare system. The result was a “self-induced” economic slow-down the likes of which we’ve never experienced as most non-essential businesses were asked to shut their doors.