Nations, norms, and identities feel permanent from the inside. From a slight distance, most of them turn out to be recent inventions, useful fictions that took hold and started to feel like facts.
These essays pull on that thread: where our stories about who we are actually came from, and what changes when we see them as stories.
Homer's first works are The Iliad and The Odyssey — poems still shaping literature three thousand years later, with no trail of clumsy early drafts behind them. Every theory of mastery says that shouldn't be possible. So where did his bad work go?
On the morning of May 12, 1797, Ludovico Manin entered the Great Council chamber inside the Doge's Palace in Venice. Behind him hung Tintoretto's enormous Paradise. Outside, people crowded into St. Mark's Square. Across northern Italy, word had spread. Napoleon's armies were advancing toward the republic. Manin had spent the previous eight years as doge of Venice. He was about to become its last.
Every era has an operating system the people in it can't see. 1987 thought American suburbia was the center of the universe. What does 2025 think? Here's what I learned watching He-Man fight rubber monsters in a New Jersey high school parking lot.
Most famous Italians from history never tasted tomato sauce. That matters more than you think — especially if you've ever felt guilty for changing careers. In this week's newsletter, I unpack why so much of what feels permanent is actually just... inherited.
In today’s workplace, it’s not just whistleblowers who get punished. It's educators, engineers, analysts, creators — anyone bold enough to speak plainly about the world, their work, or themselves. We’re not just afraid to speak negatively about our employers. We’re afraid to speak at all. What is silence is costing us? Here's why reclaiming your voice might be the most important thing you do — for your career, your sanity, and society as a whole.
I thought buying a house was the final stamp of adulthood. In this letter, I share how losing out on a home forced me to rethink success, stability, and what freedom really looks like.
Look at a map of Europe from 500 years ago and much of the political world we take for granted disappears. Italy wasn’t yet a unified country. Germany was a patchwork of states inside the Holy Roman Empire. It makes you wonder: will my country still exist 500 years from now?
Do we actually want freedom from the system… or do we just want to win the game? And what does the fact that Michelangelo never ate tomato sauce have to do with it?