Links for the first batch of subscriber writing links here. Second batch here.
**
Brett Powers, On Fairness vs. Justice
A reflection on the difference between fairness and justice
**
Dani Beja, Thanks for the Ride
An abstract idea of how I want to measure my life
**
Dani Beja, El Fracc
What it was like to grow up in a 90s TV-style neighborhood
**
Bobby Hulme-Lippert, Did You Know You're in a Jazz Band?
When we're at an inflection point, life is less about playing the 'right' notes and discovering our own unique, jazzy riff on life
**
Alexander von Sternberg, Affirmative Action May Have Always Spelled Trouble
In this essay written for the American Dreaming Substack, I argue that the repeal of affirmative action was likely a good move because affirmative action was placing racial minorities--particularly black Americans--in the same kind of position into which European Jews were placed several hundred years ago
**
John K Veroneau, Good Fences Make Good Governments
Political discord today reflects exhaustion of the FDR paradigm and the nearing a shift
**
Brandon North, Grief Makes Ghosts: Hauntology and The Last of Us Part II
A long meditation on why the divisive narrative of the popular game The Last of Us Part 2 is best understood through the lens of hauntology, namely because the game hinges on characters experiencing grief and grief's often attendant trauma via ghost-like temporal dissonance
**
Jonatha Small, My Anxiety Used to Be Funny, Until It Wasn't
One writer's journey to conquer his lifelong battle with anxiety
**
John Brundage, Why You Should Give Money to Homeless People
The risk of accidentally helping someone buy beer pales in comparison to the risk that you fail to help someone in dehumanizing need
**
Brendan Bures, The artist as a business
As creative industries take a bigger piece of pie, artists like Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and Frank Ocean have fashioned themselves into one-person media empires to balance the scales
**
adcv, The resource curse is really a curse of government
Why do resource-rich countries grow slower than others and why is it the government's fault (again)?
**
David Pinsof, Opinions Are Bullshit
Opinions are bullshit
**
Jacob Schroeder, Are Kids Worth the Cost?
Kids are expensive, stressful, heartbreaking, unbearable and just overall pains in the ass, but as most parents know, you’ll get more in return than you could ever imagine
**
Elena, How Does Social Media Warp Our Reality?
I'm elaborating on how and why we live in a Cluster B society, how social media twists our reality through compromised/delusional content creators, why women are so delusional today and why children become mentally unstable, etc.
**
Adriana Forte, Menstrual Futurism
In this piece, I link modernity's disconnection from the cyclical nature of life to our collective blindness to the cyclical nature of the female body/mind.
**
Mary Jane Arneaud, Can Protests Illuminate Collectivism in Individualistic Societies?
A suggestion for social psychologists to examine the psychology of defiance as demonstrated by Gaza-war protesters in individualistic societies
**
Shane Simonsen (penname Haldane B Doyle), Our Vitreous Womb
A hard sci-fi novel set in a distant future civilization built on pure biological technology
**
Joe del Rosario, About Time
Why time travel would be the worst superpower
**
Dylan Levi Tucker, Onward to Bravery: My Quest to Conquer Anxiety
After never struggling with anxiety my entire life, all of a sudden I was suffering with bad anxiety and panic attacks; this piece tells the story of how I came out on the other side
**
Travis Harless, Swords to Plowshares
The transition from war fighting to normal society and how those skills can be converted and put to use for peace time living
**
Rebecca, Declutter your brain: get more done with less thinking
Put systems in place to unload your working memory and function more effectively, both at home and in life
**
Toni Hart, How I Survived My Right Wing Father
My doctor father was so violent my family was run out of town in a vigilante action
**
Meighan Finigan Mingrone, Why Books?
A reflection on the importance of books in a digital world
**
David Teachout, Psychotherapy Isn’t What You Think It Is
Psychotherapy is a relationship at the intersection of hope and projected authority, rather than a structured space for personal development
**
Caleb Ontiveros, Most People Are Other People
Why Shakespeare is great, Girard, and Julius Caesar
**
Heidy De La Cruz, Our Perspectives Is Our Reality
Everyone's reality is different because it's based on our perspective
**
Lee Pai, Because wine is, after all, my love language
A man who articulates his love for his girlfriend through his love of wine
**
Katie Burkhart, WTP
Asking, “What's the point?” to make the most of your time. Covering work, strategy, business, productivity, and culture in the value economy
**
Eneasz Brodski, A Reason Immigrants Excel
Immigrants have plausible deniability of regulation culture, which allows others to be lax with cultural taboos/regulations, and helps them establish a business without licensure that governments are reluctant to kill once it's providing value & taxes
**
Sami Sharaf, The worst thing on LinkedIn is AI-gendered content. But here’s how to fix it
AI-generated content is wrecking the creator economy and if you want to unhappen that, do these tiny adjustments to your AI-generated content
**
Scott Clarke, Schoolyard daze
When I was nine years old, "recess" was the sweetest two-syllable sound combination in the entire English language
**
Maggie McLauchlin, Parasocialism and Politics
A piece exploring the evolution on the public's relationship with politicians and the mutation of politicians into influencers
**
Henry D. Wolfe, Don't You Understand? When You Give Up Your Dream You Die
Philosophical look at life's mediocrity when dreams die
**
William Poulos, Can Christopher Hitchens Save The Left?
A critical appraisal of the legacy and influence of Christopher Hitchens
**
Joanna George, Energy, Power and Political Language
Energy is everything, so why aren’t people in politics taking notice?
**
Centered, Translating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Translating poetry is difficult, but translations can be beautiful
**
Travis Monteleone, The Most Important Graph in the World
People universally think that others are much less happy than they really are, and this phenomenon helps explain why we're so polarized and generally pessimistic
**
Claudia Befu, Human Island
While making a documentary about a sacrificial ritual, a grieving mother comes to terms with the untimely loss of her daughter
**
Hermann J. Diehl, Who was Ancel Keyes
Ancel Keyes had a huge impact on how Americans eat to this day
**
Travis Grgurevic, To Be Loved - Unconditionally
A preface to an unfinished book about my turbulent upbringing
**
Mary Ann Rollano, There’s Something in The Air
Can negative ions from sea spray boost your mood?
**
Martin Brodsky, Being Weird Is Normal (Normal People Are Weird)
A story about fitting in
**
Anu Atluru, Pursuits That Can't Scale
I have a theory that chasing things that scale makes you need therapy, and the therapy is pursuing things that can’t scale
**
Lee Martin, Remember, it's a journey not a destination
Reflective thoughts on life as a Foster Carer
**
Chris Yabsley, Is Therapy A Force For Good
A reflective essay on Jordan Peterson’s conversation with Matt Walsh
**
Max Klinger, How academia launders activism
An analysis of the way in which 'progressive' academics are laundering deeply ideological, unfalsifiable and at times clearly misleading claims through the university system and by extension shifting socio-political discourse more broadly
**
Alexander Ipfelkofer, The Water Was Cold
A man takes a stroll along the beach where he sees two lovers play in the water and are pulled under by the tide
**
Charu Uppal, Pinked By Technology
Once a technology is introduced it alters the way our brains are wired around certain tasks, altering the course of how a society works, but by being mindful we can be more discerning consumers of technology rather than complain about something we cannot avoid
**
Ragged Clown, What are philosophers for?
Philosophy is cool and fun. But philosophers? What are they for?
**
Robert Jacoby, Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir
In this memoir-in-conversation, two men talk about life, love, and loss during the year after the death of one's wife
**
Robert Jacoby, Dusk and Ember: A Novel
Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana
**
Robert Jacoby, At Bethany on the Jordan
A Christian Arabic monk was praying for me beside the Jordan River near where John baptized Jesus while my Muslim friend was translating
**
Charu Uppal, Karva Chauth: A Celebration of Family and Community
Male-female relationship is sanctified through marriage, but comes to its complete fruition when it is seen as a link to a greater social fabric, where joys and sorrows are borne together forging supportive structures for the future generations
**
KMO, Last Train to Mordor
Serialized prelude to the novel Fear and Loathing in the Kuiper Belt
**
Mindy Schaper, Somebody's Child
Poem about homelessness- thanks for doing this! Very kind of you
**
Charu Uppal, Om Ganesha Namah
Hinduism a very misunderstood religion, should be practiced before being analyzed, and practicing Hinduism requires loving life in all its complexity, absurdly and loveliness
**
A. N. Owen, Quest for Justice
Not a single essay but a Dickensian style serialized story exploring the meaning of justice in the final days of antebellum America
**
A. N. Owen, Summoning to a Quest
The opening chapter to a Dickensian style serialized historical fiction exploring the meaning of justice against the backdrop of the final days of antebellum America
**
Charu Uppal, Beyond the 'Post' Condition in India: Hailing a New Rashtra
Book Review: Paranjape asks both Indian and Non Indian Scholars to question the universality of modernism and post-modernism
A reminder that you can now order your copy of Troubled (now a National Bestseller!):
Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
Thanks for the reader links. It’s great that your newsletter has served as a common touchstone for incredible talent to meet and share. I’ve subscribed to several of the writers you’ve featured and enjoyed their content.