Essays

Formula 1, travel, economics, culture, and life

The writing here is the other side of the ledger: the things I think about when I am not thinking about data products. Formula 1 strategy, what trading taught me, why retail refused to die, getting sober, leaving the country late. Most of it carries a quiet product lens, because that is how I see things, but none of it is homework.

Why Artificial Intelligence Threatens Movies But Not Music

Theaters release about 150 wide films a year. Spotify gets tens of thousands of new songs a day. The supply structure of each industry decides which one artificial intelligence can actually disrupt and which one it can't.

Technology

We Thought Retail Was Dead

In the late 1990s, everyone agreed the internet would kill physical retail. Twenty-five years later, brick and mortar still owns 84% of sales. The story of what actually happened is the most useful lens we have for thinking about artificial intelligence right now.

Technology

I Didn't Leave the Country Until I Was Twenty-Six

The first time I crossed an ocean I was twenty-six. The lessons came in two layers. People are mostly the same. And the United States is its own continent, with the kind of internal variety most travelers cross borders to find.

Travel

Trading Isn't About Math

Everyone thinks trading is math. From 2013 to 2016 I worked in high frequency trading and futures coverage. The edge wasn't math. It was world news, poker, and psychology. And the fact that bonds still trade through chat windows tells you why.

Markets

Read Your Own Pre-Read

Letting artificial intelligence summarize the meeting, write the prep, and take the notes feels like a shortcut. The research says it's quietly making us worse at the part of the job that actually matters.

Work

AA Is Great. It's Also Not the Only Way.

I've been sober for almost a year. AA works for a lot of people, and the data is on its side. It's also not the only way, and most of what makes it work has nothing to do with the steps.

Health

The Tax Complexity Lobby

Americans spend 1.7 billion hours and $31 billion a year doing taxes. That's not an accident. Here are practical ways individuals can route around the lobby that wants to keep it that way.

Policy

The Best of East and West

Western medicine writes off acupuncture, tai chi, and turmeric as junk science. The peer-reviewed evidence says otherwise. The smart move is to take the best of both traditions, not pick a side.

Health

Covid Rewrote the Dating Rules

The pandemic forced people to invert the typical dating script. Define the relationship first, meet later. The data says it actually worked better.

Culture

The Problem with the Word Smart

When we say someone is smart, we usually mean they remember things and answer questions quickly. That's one kind of intelligence. The research says there are at least seven more, and most of them matter more.

Education

Seven Things Every Religion Figured Out

Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks independently converged on the same breathing rate. That's not theology. That's data. My book is about what it means and what you can do with it.

Faith

Is College Worth It?

Tuition has risen 13x since 1980. The average borrower takes 20 years to pay off their loans. But the earnings premium is real. The honest answer depends entirely on what and where you study.

Education

The Long Road to Representative Leadership

Fortune 500 CEOs are 89% male and overwhelmingly white. At the current rate, demographic parity is decades away. Some of the headlines celebrating progress are actually part of the problem.

Leadership

The Best Way to Write a Date (And Why Almost Nobody Does It)

There are three ways to write a date. Most of the world picked one, the US picked another, and the objectively correct answer is the one almost nobody uses in conversation.

Standards

The Junior Role Is Disappearing. What Happens in 25 Years?

Entry-level jobs are vanishing faster than anyone expected. If artificial intelligence replaces the first rung of the career ladder, where will tomorrow's leaders come from?

Future of Work

The Tipping Problem Nobody Wants to Solve

Restaurants have tried eliminating tips. Servers hated it. But the alternative is a system where 20% of Americans still tip for terrible service. Something has to give.

Culture

Nuclear Energy Has a Marketing Problem, Not a Safety Problem

Nuclear power causes 99.9% fewer deaths than coal per unit of energy. The Chernobyl death toll was a fraction of what most people believe. So why are we still afraid?

Energy