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Life

How to Remake Yourself When You Are Undone: Lincoln and the Gift of His Suicidal Depression

Life-affirming inspiration from a man who knew intimately “that intensity of thought, which will...

Vincent van Gogh on Fear, Taking Risks, and How Inspired Mistakes Propel Us Forward

“However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy,...

How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an...

Why Are We Not Better Than We Are

“…a stillness in which the germ of what is not yet palpable pauses and...

How to Doubt Your Way into a Truer Life

The most maddening thing about life is also the most beautiful: its indeterminacy. The course of our lives, the fate of our species, the...

How to Remake Yourself When You Are Undone: Lincoln and the Gift of His Suicidal Depression

Life-affirming inspiration from a man who knew intimately “that intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it...

Vincent van Gogh on Fear, Taking Risks, and How Inspired Mistakes Propel Us Forward

“However meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth… steps in and does something.” During our recent conversation...

How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent?” “In disputes upon moral or scientific points,” Arthur Martine counseled...

Why Are We Not Better Than We Are

“…a stillness in which the germ of what is not yet palpable pauses and gathers to begin one more time.” “A life of patient...

James Baldwin’s Advice on Writing

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all,...

David Bowie Answers the Famous Proust Questionnaire

“Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Living in fear.” In the 1880s, long before he claimed his status as...

Inner Space, Outer Space, and How to Be an Astronaut in the Cosmos of Connection: Eric Berne on the Key to True Intimacy

“A star is the glowing light inside the other person, distantly seen, brave soul’s tiny flame, too bright to approach without great courage and...

Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness

“Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as...

Emerson on How to Trust Yourself

“It is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps...

Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup

“I can’t consider you a friend when out of every contact there comes some intentionally wounding thing.” “A friend,” wrote the poet and philosopher John...

Are You Working: In Defense of the Invisible Labors of Creativitiy

Once, at the gym with a physicist friend, I was struck by how no one else in the room had any idea that while...

How to Promise and How to Keep Promises from Breaking

We are creatures fragmentary but indivisible, each of us a whole that is always simpler than its parts, but complicated by the struggle for...

The Peace of Wild Things: Wendell Berry’s Poetic Antidote to Despair, Animated

On where to seek refuge from the forethought of grief. UPDATE 2022: For more soulful animated poems, see my collaboration with On Being on an...

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