The Inner Monologue

Ask someone to name a famous person from the year 1200, and they’ll likely pause. A few might recall Genghis Khan, though he was already aging by then. Others might guess Leonardo da Vinci, who wouldn’t be born for another two centuries. But if you ask what was happening around that time, most can give…

When I was a kid, I used to watch old men sit on porches and complain about how everything was going to hell. Music was noise, kids were disrespectful, politicians were crooks, and the world wasn’t what it used to be. And I’d think, God, I hope I never turn into that guy. And yet…

Ask anyone to list what they care about.Most will start earnestly: family, friends, health, happiness.Then, when pressed—what else?—there’s a pause. They might mumble music, movies, travel, or my dog. And that’s it. For all the hours spent scrolling, streaming, and speaking of “passion,” the actual list of things that command sustained attention is remarkably short.…

We moderns live under a comforting delusion — that we are the culmination of a grand story called progress. We look back on the people of 1,000 or 10,000 years ago as primitive: simple-minded, superstitious, and emotionally undeveloped. We talk about “ancient man” as though he were another species, fumbling toward the light of civilization…

In 2014, I made a bold forecast: Now, in 2025, let’s examine how close we are to this futuristic vision—and whether quantum mechanics will truly revolutionize global communication. The Prediction: Instant Communication via Quantum Entanglement Quantum entanglement—a phenomenon Einstein famously called “spooky action at a distance”—allows two particles to remain intrinsically linked, no matter how…

There’s a popular conspiracy theory circulating online — that venture capitalists are buying up all the houses just to “flip” them for astronomical profits, locking ordinary people out of homeownership. It’s the kind of theory that fits perfectly into our collective anxiety about inequality: the rich snapping up what little is left of the American…

Every few years, a government cuts a program, a company shutters a lab, or a university quietly ends a line of research. The announcement always sounds like a funeral: “A sad day for science.” “A step backward for innovation.” “We’ve lost our edge.” But that narrative assumes civilization operates as one unified project. It doesn’t.…

There is a small, almost laughably trivial irony flickering in bedrooms and hallways across the modern world. The humble LED nightlight—our technological evolution of the soft-glow plug-ins of childhood—often uses more electricity when the light is off than when it’s on. It’s true. When the light detects dawn or ambient illumination, it dutifully extinguishes its…

There is a cynical comfort in dismissing failed ideas. “Another waste of time,” we say, as we scroll past a new gadget that flopped, a social movement that fizzled, or a startup that burned through its funding. We treat these failures as clutter — the debris field of human overconfidence. But the truth is far…