Essays exploring self-deception, awareness, decision-making, and the hidden patterns of human behavior.
Time Has Two Lives The photograph should not exist. Inaya knows this before any thought assembles itself into words. It slides out from behind a stack of bank statements, and there is her son, and he is seven. Their son is eleven. She turns it over. Nothing on the back. Her husband says the math…
Something is wrong with the world, and you cannot point to it. The coffee shop has exposed brick and Edison bulbs and a chalkboard menu written in a font designed to look handwritten. The playlist was chosen by an algorithm trained to sound like a person who loves vinyl. The barista’s tattoos are real. Everything…
The quiet narratives that keep us trapped, why we mistake familiarity for identity, and what it takes to rewrite the story without losing ourselves. My friend Dana has explained her career to me six times over the past decade. Not the same explanation … she refines it, trims it, discovers new supporting evidence. The first…
Why Smart People Rationalize Bad Decisions, Protect Their Blind Spots, and Mistake Explanation for Truth He had been explaining his job for three years. Not complaining about it — explaining it. There is a difference, and the difference matters. He would sit across from you at dinner and walk you through, with real precision, the…
The Hidden Psychology of Self-Deception, Delayed Decisions, and the Truths We Avoid The Conversation You Keep Not Having There is a particular kind of conversation that happens late at night, in the dark, when there is nothing left to distract you. It is not a conversation with another person. It is the one you have…