Brad Barrish

My name is Brad Barrish. I grew up in Overland Park, Kansas and have lived in Los Angeles, California longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. I live with my wife Laura Hess, our daughter, Cassidy and son, Ozzie.

I’m currently Chief Technology Officer for Frank & Eileen. I was previously the COO and co-founder of Clarity, a neurotech company working to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. I remain an advisor for Clarity. Prior to Clarity, I was Vice President of Customer Experience at Oura and Director of Customer Experience at Sonos. You can see the rest of my career history on LinkedIn.

I love working with founders and founding teams, which I did for several years as an All-Star Mentor for Techstars and as a Fellow with Conduit Venture Labs. My mentorship primarily focuses on early-stage startups developing consumer-oriented products and services. I also enjoy collaborating with leaders throughout their careers to foster leadership styles rich in emotional intelligence to help build company cultures that grow and retain exceptional people.

I have limited time, but if you are interested in working together, reach out! I’m brad at this domain. I don’t feel particularly connected to any social networks the way I once felt about Twitter (RIP) and while I have accounts on many, I’m not really active on any social networks. I feel strongly that everyone should have their own domain and should publish stuff on the open web. Despite what many institutions, companies and cynical people would have you believe, there’s still a lot of wonderful, real people creating and publishing online. I’m not only here for it, I’m contributing to it.

My Setup

I use an iPhone 16 Pro as my trusty pocket computer. I have a few machines for personal use. I primarily use a MacBook Air M4. I also have a Mac mini M4, which gets used for AI hacking and an older Intel Mac mini running Linux that I use as a server. My work machine is a MacBook Pro M4 Max. I gave up my iPad and have no desire to replace it at the moment. I shoot photos with a Fujifilm X-T5, which I’m slowly learning how to shoot with.

If I’m leaving the connected devices behind, I’m writing primarily in Midori MD Notebook Journals, size A5 with dot grid using Zebra Sarasa Clip Pen 0.4 mm (black, of course). I always have my Kindle Paperwhite loaded with books, but also occasionally carry a physical book as well.

This site is hosted on Micro.blog. I mostly use Gmail and iCloud+ with custom domains. I use Apple Calendar for appointments. I mainly use Dia to browse the web, but Safari is nice too. I like Orion on iOS. I use Unread with Feedbin for RSS, which is my predominant interface with the web. I save web things to Sublime and Raindrop. I use Reader to read, highlight and annotate articles, papers, posts, newsletters and any other text on the web. Obsidian is, more or less, my second brain. I use it for journaling, note-taking and research. I also have a vault that is primarily used with AI. I use Apple Notes when I need to share notes.

I’m constantly trying out all kind of AI tools and use various models, but probably use Claude the most of any of them. And I mostly use Claude Code as my interface. Since I’m introducing a lot of people to Claude at work, I also use Claude Cowork a fair amount for work stuff. I use Perplexity Pro for questions I would normally ask a traditional web search engine, but still pay for and use Kagi.

Last updated: 2026-04-04

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I’ve been creating and sharing playlists in various forms for decades, but unless we’re IRL friends or URL friends or you subscribe to my longstanding music email list, you wouldn’t know about them. As I write this, at the end of 2025, the web and the Internet as a whole, is going through a massive transition. I’ve felt especially compelled to consolidate things on my own domain. I’ve largely stopped contributing to social networks like I used to and almost everything I publish online, I post on my own domain and blog. I’m working on gathering as many of my playlists as I can find, even if they are only in list form.

Yearly Playlists

2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025

Misc Playlists

My 45th Birthday

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No surprise to those who knew her, the following obituary was written largely by my mom in advance of her death. She also chose the photo.

Dr. Harriet H. Barrish, also known to many as Momma B, of Overland Park, KS, passed away peacefully surrounded by her children on April 23, 2025. Services will be held on April 27 at 1:00pm at Mt. Moriah, Newcomer & Freeman Funeral Home located at 10507 Holmes Road, Kansas City, MO 64131. Burial will be at Mount Moriah Cemetery South.

Dr. Barrish was preceded in death by her husband of thirty-nine years, Dr. I. Jay Barrish, by her mother and father, Ruth and Leo Shultz of Overland Park, KS and her brother Myron B. Shultz of California. Dr. Barrish is survived by her son Brad Barrish his wife, Laura Hess and their two children Cassidy and Ozzie of Los Angeles, CA; by her son Jonas Barrish, his wife, Meghann and their two children, Dov and Leora of Overland Park, KS; by her daughter, Brandy Barrish, her husband Matt Solomon and their three sons Julian Jay Magness, Jonah Solomon and Eli Solomon of Overland Park, KS. She also leaves behind a wonderful extended family of cousins, special friends and longtime office manager and close friend of over thirty-eight years, Jeanne Harmon.

Dr. Barrish was born on March 17, 1945, on her mother’s birthday in Kansas City, MO. She attended Paseo High School, Shawnee Mission East High School, and graduated in the first graduating class at Shawnee Mission West. She received her BA, MA, and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Kansas. She was an undergraduate member of Psi Chi National Honor Society in Psychology. She was a Public Health Service Fellow during graduate school. She was a well-known and respected psychologist in private practice and taught over the years at several area universities, colleges, and hospitals. She also authored numerous professional articles, consulted, presented papers, and co-authored two books with her husband. She was an Associate Fellow of the Albert Ellis Institute in New York. She served on the Board and was a past President and Fellow of the Kansas Psychological Association.

She was a pioneer in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral psychology and was one of the area’s early therapists who introduced behavioral and cognitive-behavioral psychology to the clinical setting. Her master’s thesis became a Citation Classic and was later developed into a marketed game for use in the classroom setting. She belonged to numerous professional organizations but devoted her private time to her family. Her passions included dedication to her profession of helping people, her family, pets, and artistic activities.

The family would like to thank the many friends and extended family members who were a constant blessing to her and us, especially over the last few years. She was loved and cared for by so many. In the final days of her life, she was surrounded by family and loved ones. They are especially grateful for the compassionate nurses and staff of Monarch Hospice & Palliative Care.

In lieu of flowers, donations would be appreciated to Operation Wild Life, the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City - Gabriel’s Fund, Harvesters, Children’s Mercy, Defenders of Wildlife or an organization or charity of your choice.

Few do the kind of deep investigative reporting that Ronan Farrow is known to do. His latest piece on Sam Altman in The New Yorker is something.

Friday night is movie night in our house and we’ve gotten to the point where coming up with a movie is especially tough. Last Friday we chose Uncle Buck, but we ended up stopping it. The 13yo (daughter) was creeped out by it and the 11yo (son) didn’t think it was all that great, despite Kevin McCallister starring in it.

When you save the book for after the movie, it’s like getting an extended director’s cut that includes so much more material, and lets you dive into that world even deeper with characters and details that weren’t captured on screen.

From Don’t read the book before the movie

As is the case for many macOS users, I have an overcrowded menubar, especially since my MacBook Air and MacBook Pro have the notch. I’ve been a long-time user of a little macOS menubar utility called Ice, which hasn’t received updates for a while. It seems to still work pretty well, but I have been low-key looking around for something to replace it. To my surprise, I ran across a fork of Ice called Thaw, which is under active development and adds some welcome features.