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The identities we weave—and what aging may ask us to loosen Penelope at the loom Saturday morning, I ran into a wise friend at the pâtisserie who shared a quote from a book he was reading. In The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric, John Scheid and Jesper Svenbro describe the individual as one “who is born a thread and dies a fabric.” We are born a thread. Then life begins weaving. We are given a name and placed within a family. Before we understand who we are, others

Cultivating Curiosity in the Age of AI The future will not belong to the child who can memorize the most. AI has already won that contest. Machines can summarize, calculate, organize, compare, draft, and explain. They are becoming very good at the tasks schools have traditionally rewarded. So the more urgent question is this: What remains human? Aravind Srinivas, CEO and co-founder of Perplexity, has argued that success in the AI age will depend not only on technical skill bu

What The Odyssey Taught Me About Aging, Identity, and the Journey Back to Ourselves I first encountered The Odyssey as a teenager. What held me then were the fabulous adventures: strange islands, angry gods, temptresses, impossible creatures, violent seas, and a hero who survived whatever the world placed before him. It was the kind of story a young mind could enter completely. Odysseus sailed beyond the edge of the known world. Each new shore promised another danger, another

Fifty years later, the country and I are still becoming. In 1976, America turned 200 years old. I turned 18. That has always felt like more than a coincidence. It was the year I graduated from high school. The year the country was wrapped in Bicentennial colors. Flags were everywhere. Fireworks felt larger than usual. History was suddenly not something trapped in textbooks. It was in the streets, on television, in parades, in speeches, in storefront windows, in the air. Ameri

My Problem with the Transcendental Meditation Pitch I went to the TM information session open-minded. I believe in meditation. I believe in silence. I believe the mind can settle, the nervous system can soften, and a person can become more available to the deeper currents of life. But what I heard did not feel like wisdom. It felt like a sales pitch wrapped in incense. What shocked me was not that they believed in meditation. I believe in meditation. What shocked me was the s

What Joshua Tree Reveals About Survival, Wonder, and the Soul There are places that impress you. And then there are places that enter you. Places that rearrange something quiet and hidden inside the body. Joshua Tree National Park is one of those places. You arrive thinking you are going to see a desert. A park. Some famous trees. Some unusual rocks. You arrive with the innocent arrogance of someone who still believes the world can be sorted into simple names. Desert. Boulder

On the Knicks, the Canyon of Heroes, and the rare grace of being happy together. Last week, I wrote about the Knicks winning the championship before I knew they had actually won. I admit, it was a strange thing to do. But I post every Sunday morning at 4:44, and I wanted to be ready. Just in case. Just in case the impossible happened. Just in case fifty-three years of waiting finally ended. Just in case the boy I had been in 1973 was allowed, for one more moment, to come runn

On boyhood, basketball, grief, and the spiritual weight of a championship. I have yet to write about sports. Not because sports haven’t mattered to me. Quite the opposite. Professional sports in New York have been woven through my life in ways I probably understand more now than I did when I was younger. The teams, the voices on the radio, the heartbreak, the rituals, the arguments, the hope that returns every season, even after it has been humiliated the season before — all

The Lemurians: A New Testament for the Soul Laurence O’Bryan: Neil, I finished The Lemurians last night, and I’ll be honest—I closed the book and thought, I’m not sure if I just read a novel, a spiritual warning, or the beginning of a new religion. Neil Perry Gordon: That’s probably the most dangerous compliment you could give me. Laurence: Dangerous how? Neil: Because I don’t want the book to feel like a religion. That’s actually one of the tensions inside the story. Nathan