The illustration above should give you some sense of how I spent my summer: Learning everything I possibly could about the current state of hibernation research, the unheralded key to getting our species to Mars and beyond. I did so in order to write this new Wired story, which came out on Thanksgiving morning. The […]
Tags:exhuastion·hibernation·Mars·mental health·philosophy·Wired·writing
A thought I’m frequently comforted by is the realization that most of my fellow humans understand the absurdity of life. It’s a truism that shines through in the jokes people create when there’s nothing outwardly funny about their circumstances. Take, for example, the humorous anecdotes that Soviet citizens crafted under Stalin, a topic explored in […]
One of the animating principles of Microkhan is the steadfast belief that the recent past was more chaotic—and thus immeasurably more interesting—than most of us realize. Take, for example, the prevalence of hogs on the streets of New York City in the mid-19th century, the subject of this paper by a pair of Spanish professors. […]
I recently went down the rabbit hole on the history of American bullfighters in Mexico, thanks in large part to this incredibly niche book. One of the characters who jumped out at me was New York native Diego O’Bolger (née James Bolger), who was affectionately profiled in Tucson Weekly some 19 years ago. The story […]
