There is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share. It is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group’s beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dares to ask questions, is deemed “unsafe.”
Read More2024 was full of ups and downs, but still read 120 books. Check out all the stats from reading this year and see the best books I read in 2024.
Read MoreThe biggest hits—be they Coca-Cola or Doritos or Kraft’s Velveeta Cheesy Skillets dinner kits—owe their success to formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct overriding single flavor that says to the brain: Enough already!
Read MoreParentified children are often referred to as “old souls” —wise and calm beyond their years. But they can pay for their precocity by harboring a squishy center of insecurity and loneliness, a wound formed in their earliest unsupported years.
Read MoreWhen we read, we take in whole eyefuls of words. We gulp them like water.
Read MoreFantasy is a safe space; it is not necessarily what we wish was real. Crucially, in a fantasy we don’t need anyone’s permission other than our own: a fantasy is a deliberate, and usually entirely private, act of both memory and imagination.
Read MoreYou go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered.
Read MoreOur brain’s performance is being gravely manipulated, resulting in behaviors that leave us more lonely, anxious, depressed, distrustful, illness-prone, and overweight than ever before. At the same time, we feel disconnected from ourselves, from others, and from the world at large.
Read MoreA helpful introduction to making magic easy and repeatable in your everyday life.
Read MoreThese past forty years have witnessed the twin epidemics of the negative extremes of both of these emotions: addiction (from too much pleasure) and depression (from not enough happiness).
Read MoreDiscipline is like knowing the rules of a game; once you understand them, you can play freely and even win.
Read MoreMathematics is not just a sequence of computations to be carried out by rote until your patience or stamina runs out—although it might seem that way from what you’ve been taught in courses called mathematics.
Read MoreWhat is worry, at its core, but the activity of a mind attempting to picture every single bridge that might possibly have to be crossed in future, then trying to figure out how to cross it?
Read MoreNo single human can work to save the orcas and protect the Amazon and organize anti-fracking protests and write poetry that inspires others to act and pray in a hermit’s dwelling for transformation and get dinner on the table. How easy is it to feel paralyzed by obligations.
Read MoreThe Coast Salish people think trees have personhood too. They teach that the forest is made of many nations living side by side in peace, each contributing to this earth.
Read MoreWe are ecosystems, composed of—and decomposed by—an ecology of microbes, the significance of which is only now coming to light.
Read MoreWhen fear stops us from asking questions, it stops us from solving treatable problems.
Read MoreDiagnosis is a gatekeeping process, and it slams its heavy bars in the face of anyone who is too poor, too busy, too Black, too feminine, too queer, and too gender nonconforming, among others.
Read MoreI'm a huge believer that, as long as you’re still alive and your heart beats in your chest, you can change, you can improve, you can influence, you can motivate, you can build, and you can do better.
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