The trolley problem has been a staple of undergraduate philosophy courses for over fifty years. In basic form, a running cart is headed for five people on rails. You can pull the lever to sidetrack him, and he’ll kill one…
Think about the most confident person you know. The one who walks into rooms without second-guessing himself, who expresses his opinions without hedging, who really doesn’t seem shaken by criticism. Now ask yourself: do you consider that person a narcissist?…
Two people are talking at a business event or orientation week or at a dinner party where they happen to be sitting next to each other. By most objective measures, it went well. Both were engaged, they found something to…
Think back to almost the last message you sent. That old friend you’ve been meaning to get in touch with for years. A colleague you are considering signing up for during a difficult time. It’s almost like your relative called…
When something goes seriously wrong, there’s usually one person you want to tell before anyone else. Not necessarily the most qualified person to help. Not the one with the most professional training or the most relevant experience. Someone whose voice…
There is a certain type of person if you know what to look for. Now they are often in their fifties or early sixties. They tend to be calm under pressure to the dismay of their younger counterparts. When something…
Boredom was something you had to solve yourself before anyone made a bait to solve boredom for you. You’ve opened a browser, typed something in the address bar, or gone to a place you already know or come across something…
What’s the right way to respond to a hand-touched portrait of a celebrity taken in all honesty? Or a piece of taxidermy assembled in a way that raises questions no one thought to make? Or any of the hundreds of…
Most of us have a vague intuition that something an older person writes might carry information about how their mind is going. The handwriting shakes, the letters slide, the pen rises too quickly. But intuition is not measurement, and what…
After about twenty of these conversations, I stopped being surprised by the anger. The outrage was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was what sat beneath it, something quieter, more insistent, and harder to name at first articulation. Most…
