Writing

What the Season Found | What a year of asking other people about uncertainty taught me about the difference between holding a room and being in one — and the porch conversation, twenty-four years ago, that gave the season finale its name.

It's Not the Prompt | What writing an essay about AI's perceptual limits with an AI revealed about those limits — and why the thing you're bumping against isn't a prompting problem.

Homegoing | What adding "Sunrise" to a campus crime blotter taught me about the difference between a curriculum and an education — and what it's like to be invited back to explain the degree you're still living.

What Curiosity Requires | What a theater-maker who spent thirty-five years building civic dialogue taught me about the difference between collapse and curiosity — and why only one of them requires a crisis.

The Checkpoint | What a poet-slash-AI-ambassador taught me about the cost of carrying multiple identities — and why the tax isn't the crossing, it's the preparation for it.

This Is Labor | What David Foster Wallace got right about attention, what professional training does to it, and why fixing that is harder than anyone tells you.

The Grammar of Collapse | What a barbecue in Buenos Aires, a Supreme Court ruling, and a bunch of therapists learning to meditate have in common.

On the Other Side of Boredom | What a photographer and a disco ball taught me about the kind of attention our culture is organized to prevent.

When Achievement Stops Working | On invisible frameworks, the permission no one else can grant, and what it takes to open your mouth.