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In high school there was always an answer. It sat in the back of the textbook or in a folder on the teacher’s desk. Knowing it was there shaped how I thought. Every question had an answer. If two people disagreed, one of them just hadn’t found it yet. My… Read more: Sometimes There’s No Answer

I love weird words, especially the ones with strange histories. This one comes from Ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, the Roman writer who later died getting too close to Vesuvius, tells a story about Apelles, the most famous painter of his day, who liked to hide behind his paintings while… Read more: Ultracrepidarian: Let the Cobbler Not Judge Above the Sandal

In seventh or eighth grade there was a science teacher, who I’ll call Professor Plum. I never had a class with him, and I never spoke to him, but everyone knew him by his hair. He had maybe three strands left, combed over his head like a Quonset hut. We… Read more: Does He Know? In Defense of the Comb-Over

Updated August 2026 “Do you know about Neal.fun?” I asked. “Yeah,” says Ari, my ninth grader. “We used to play this in the library in middle school and told the teacher it was an educational game.” For those who haven’t fallen down the rabbit hole yet, Neal.fun is a website… Read more: Neal.fun: The Internet’s Creative Playground

I always thought of Bon Jovi as a hard rock band, filed in roughly the same part of my brain as Def Leppard. Long hair. Loud guitars. Songs about young men overcoming something together and winning. The key song was always “Livin’ on a Prayer.” It was an anthem of… Read more: Bon Jovi Isn’t Who I Thought He Was

It was 9:30 on a Friday morning when I got a text. The Knicks watch parties were going on sale at 10, one at Wollman Rink and one at Radio City Music Hall. The one inside the Garden had sold out a couple minutes after it went on sale. Game… Read more: Knicks in 5

About a month before my son graduated from preschool, I was walking through the park, thinking about the last walk that I would take. I wanted to really experience it, because it would be the last morning walk through the park. I wouldn’t have this opportunity to drop him off… Read more: How to Make the Most of Your Life

Walking around Yale’s Old Campus in the late 1990s, I got an idea stuck in my head that wouldn’t leave for decades. I’m exceptional. Everyone at Yale is exceptional. There’s a line they used to tell us in some form or another, “You can graduate from Yale and become a… Read more: Chasing Gemeinschaftsgefühl

I have always liked art that made me laugh. For years my favorite art joke was René Magritte’s pipe, the painting of a perfectly ordinary pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” written underneath. This is not a pipe. And of course it is not. It is a… Read more: Marcel Duchamp, the Funniest Man in the Museum

I played weekend soccer in elementary school. Though I was far from the best player on the team, I was the fastest kid on the field. That meant I’d sometimes end up on a breakaway, with the ball at my feet and no defenders ahead of me. When that happened,… Read more: The Dizziness of Freedom

On the value of trading things you can’t buy. I was flying out to California last week for the Collaborative Gain conference and ended up next to a guy who was actually reading. He wasn’t scrolling or multitasking. He was on a Kindle, deep in his book, and stayed that… Read more: The Navy SEAL in Seat 14B

David Allen wrote Getting Things Done in 2001 and became a kind of secular priest for ambitious, overwhelmed professionals. His central claim was almost absurdly simple. Get things out of your head and write them down. He wasn’t just pitching better organization. He was promising you’d feel calmer, think more… Read more: Mind Like Water

There’s this thing that happens on crowded sidewalks in New York. Two people are walking toward each other in a rush, both trying to navigate around the other. One steps left, the other steps left. One corrects right, the other corrects right. And suddenly you’re doing this little dance with… Read more: The Art of Getting Out of the Way

“What were you most excited about when you thought about coming to New York?” I asked. “The snow,” she said. “Growing up in Singapore, I’d always see movies of the snow, but I’d never seen it in person. Tbe snow is always this beautiful white blanket that comes out and… Read more: The Great Thaw

For many years, I’ve been wrong about massages. My mistake was that I thought about them scientifically. If it’s worth doing, there should be measurable outcomes. Deep tissue work releases lactic acid. Pressure on trigger points reduces inflammation. That didn’t work for me. It just hurt, and then hurt a… Read more: The Massage Convert

Apologies for posting this on a nonstandard day, but I wanted to post this in time for January 27th, Holocaust Remembrance Day. I’ve been thinking about Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass. It’s a strangely beautiful name for such horror, and the word has actually fallen out of favor in Germany,… Read more: Profaning the Sacred

This really is unfair. I spent last year working on myself—figuring out how to relax, how to unhook from things that were bothering me. I read The Happiness Trap and Feeling Great, and I was well on my way to cleaning up the issues in my life. But now that things are cleaned… Read more: Life Is Unfair: A Guide to Existential Meaning

Hello loyal readers! I’m starting a new project on Substack called AI for Poets. You can subscribe here. This will be my main writing priority for the year, so I’ll be posting there weekly while this blog becomes more occasional. It’s similar to what I write here, but focused on… Read more: Subscribe to My New Project: AI for Poets

I’m writing this for one particular friend, but thought the rest of you might enjoy it. As an atheist, you probably think of religion like Richard Dawkins. He talks about religion this way. Imagine someone tells you there’s something incredibly important hidden in your backyard. You start digging. When you… Read more: An Open Letter to Atheists

As we come to the end of the year, I always think about one of the most amazing holiday gifts. It was on TV, yet it’s rarely discussed. It was given by Aaron Sorkin, during an episode of his show Sports Night. This was his first television show, before The… Read more: Aaron Sorkin’s Hidden Holiday Gift

We all know addiction is bad for us. But when we hear the word, we think of drugs, alcohol—maybe gambling if we’re feeling expansive. Few of us think about being addicted to food, or YouTube, or productivity itself. Those don’t sound dangerous—just human. But there’s a quieter kind of addiction… Read more: Getting Over Hidden Addictions

I used to think numbers in Judaism were kind of random. Noah was on the ark for 40 days and 40 nights. The Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years. I thought “There’s no way there were actuaries counting out 40 days.” But then it got worse. I learned… Read more: The Holiness of Numbers

You may have heard of the marshmallow test. Back in the late 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel sat preschoolers down with a marshmallow and made them an offer—eat it now, or wait fifteen minutes and get two. Then he left them alone and watched what happened. The kids who waited,… Read more: When Science Fails

Can something be too convenient? That’s a question I’ve been grappling with for years. You see, I’m a product manager. My entire job is built on making things more convenient for customers. In tech speak, we call it “removing friction.” That’s the Silicon Valley playbook: find pain, remove friction, scale… Read more: Can Something Be Too Convenient?

For most of my life, I carried around a fixed idea of who I was: Smart. Impulsive. A little weird. “This is just who I am,” I’d tell myself, as if it was literally set in my genes. But this year, after reading some great books on psychology and working… Read more: I’m Not Who I Thought I Was

Welcome to Buc-ee’s, the world’s most magical gas station—a place where travelers from every corner of this great country find comfort, refreshment, and a moment of cheer along their journey. Here, the spirit of the open road lives on—in the laughter of families, the sparkle of spotless tile, and the… Read more: Welcome to Buc-ee’s: The Disney World of Gas Stations

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Ari’s bar mitzvah. Words can’t really capture the feelings I have about it. Watching my son become an adult, surrounded by family and friends—there’s nothing like it. Yes, we had a fun party. But a bar mitzvah is more than that. It’s a spiritual… Read more: The Best Birthday Ever: Ari’s Bar Mitzvah

I have a secret: I’m not perfect. I’ve stopped trying to be. Why am I telling you this? Isn’t a blog post supposed to help you become a little more perfect? Not this one. This is about giving up the constant struggle for perfection, and in doing so, leading a… Read more: The Imperfectionist

To me, reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro always seemed like an intellectual bullying move. There are some of us that can’t get through a 1344-page book, no matter how hard we try. It’s just not going to happen. Even the audiobook clocks in at 66 hours long. On… Read more: Robert Caro’s The Power Broker (Abridged)

One of my wife’s favorite books from growing up was Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin. It stands proudly on our bookshelf like a little totem to childhood optimism—a promise that somewhere out there, happiness could be a permanent state if you just figured out how to arrange your… Read more: Happy All the Time?

Over the past year, I’ve been practicing mindfulness. I’d meditate for fifteen minutes a day, sitting quietly, watching my thoughts drift by. I was also working on my psychological flexibility, separating my thoughts from my emotions. At first, it felt like exercise for the brain: uncomfortable, sometimes boring, but strangely… Read more: A Mindful Yom Kippur

Why does my son watch these horrible Instagram influencers who spew misogyny, racism, and hate? There’s Andrew Tate, arrested on human trafficking charges. And Dan Bilzerian, who literally threw a porn star off a roof. I want to yell that my generation was different, that we were better, that we… Read more: Revisiting Truly Tasteless Jokes

I think I’m the most special person on earth—part of the most special species on Earth. Not because of my job or my talents or anything I’ve accomplished, but because I’m human. And if you’re reading this, you probably think you’re the most special person on earth too—for the exact… Read more: From Sapiens to Silicon: The Evolution of Storytelling Species

I learned something fascinating this week that completely changed how I think about drugs. Remember in health class when we learned that alcohol goes out of your system at about 1 drink per hour? I used to think all drugs worked that way. I used to believe that if I… Read more: Your 3 p.m. Coffee Is Still Awake at Midnight

Every September 11th, the memories return: the falling towers, the smoke, the senseless loss. This year, I discovered it just a block from my apartment, in the pages of David Halberstam’s Firehouse—written by a neighbor I’d never met. Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, lived nearby and was searching for meaning… Read more: A September 11th Memorial: Firehouse

Isn’t it great to have a three-day weekend? We have a little extra time to breathe, sleep in, maybe go somewhere. We should have more of them. But there’s nothing we can do about that… right? Well—maybe. Unless we were more like China. In China, they noticed the same problem:… Read more: Let’s Have More 3 Day Weekends!

Colleges teach you how to think. What they should teach is how to live a life that matters. On the train up to Yale for an event, I told my friend Cherie, “Whenever I go back, I get this feeling of anxiety. It’s not about other people judging me—it’s about… Read more: What I Wish I Learned in College

For most of history, people worked so they could have leisure. We’ve somehow flipped it: now we have leisure so we can work better. Somewhere along the way, we decided that being busy was the same thing as being valuable. If your calendar is full, you must be important. If… Read more: In Praise of Idleness

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein We’ve all heard that quote. At meetings. In self-help books. On motivational posters in office break rooms. It exemplifies Einstein’s legendary cut-to-the-chase brilliance. The only problem is, Einstein didn’t say… Read more: Who Really Said That?

I love notebooks. I love the ritual of pulling out my Leuchtturm Bullet Journal and pretending—for a few minutes each day—that I’m a nineteenth-century poet in a French cage, writing up my deep and progound thoughts. Most of the time, it’s my work list and reminders for my kids’ homework.… Read more: A Short History of Thinking on Paper

The strangest thing happens to me when I visit the cafeteria at work. People will come in from out of town and we’ll go to lunch with about 10 people. But there’s nowhere that we can find for 10 people to sit together. There will be a number of seats… Read more: The Cafeteria Conspiricy

This is a story about an experiment in giving. I’m used to walking down the street and seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk with a sign: “Homeless. Please Help.” And I feel it—that tension. That deep, emotional tug to help. But then the mental calculus starts. There are so many… Read more: What $1 Can Buy

When I wrote the blog post last year, Yale Needs Women, I found myself cringing at how President Kingman Brewster handled coeducation. He didn’t so much throw open the gates as grudgingly unhook the latch—mostly because Princeton had just started to admit women, and Yale’s admit rates were taking a… Read more: Ivy League Trading Cards: The Heroes of Early Women’s Education

I just finished Original Sin, the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that traces how President Biden’s decision to run for a second term—despite mounting evidence to the contrary—slowly unraveled into a crisis. It’s not a thriller, exactly. More of a slow-motion reckoning.

On July 4th, we usually remember the events of 1776, when America cast off the yoke of British rule. But something else happened on that date—exactly 200 years later. On July 4th, 1976, Israel carried out one of the most daring military operations in its history.

If you’re a subscriber, you might notice something new today. I’ve been writing this blog for a few years now. It started as an experiment—a place to think out loud, share what I’m learning, and occasionally rant into the void. Over time, it’s become something I’m proud of: a testing… Read more: My Blog is Growing Up

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot changeThe courage to change the things I can And the wisdom to know the difference. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer I first heard these words in my twenties and thought they were the pinnacle of self-help wisdom. It’s known as… Read more: Grant Me the Wisdom to Do More Than Cope

My son Ari is playing on his middle school’s E-Sports Team. Each week, he and his classmates log on to play Super Smash Brothers against kids from other schools. Their uniforms are school-branded hoodies with their names printed on the back. At first, it felt weird. A school E-Sports team?… Read more: Why E-Sports Are Sports—And Why it Matters

I’ve been noticing a pattern: no matter how much I do, it never feels like enough. This make sense at work. The more I accomplish, the more money I can make, the faster I might get promoted, and the sooner I can wrap things up and spend time with my… Read more: I Never Listen to Music at 2X Speed. Why Try to Live Life That Way?

We live in an age of constant urgency. Every scroll brings a new crisis, a new villain, a new call to action. And if you’re not keeping up, you start to feel like you’re part of the problem. You should be outraged. You should be doing more. You should care… Read more: What If Trying to Save the World Is Making It Worse?

When I tell people I’m re-reading Walden, they usually look at me a little funny. There’s a certain kind of surprise that comes with it—Wait, that book? The one everyone had to read in high school? The one where the guy builds a cabin and creates war stories about ants?… Read more: Finding Walden: How a 19th-Century Hipster Taught Me to Pay Attention

Early on, the Internet felt like it was going to be a force for good. It was supposed to connect people across the world, break down barriers, bring everyone a little closer together. That’s not exactly how it turned out. Spend a few minutes scrolling through Reddit and you’ll find… Read more: They Called Her the “The Ugliest Woman in the World.” Here’s Who She Really Is.

When I first picked up Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to get out of it. Lamott writes about fiction and memoir, about the kind of writing that draws on personal memory, deep emotional truths, and a close relationship with storytelling. I don’t… Read more: What I Learned About Writing from Ann Lamott’s Bird by Bird

Here are two quotes from commencement speeches: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” — Steve Jobs Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement, 2005Full Video “You’re not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking… Read more: Stay Human, Stay Foolish

We were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, getting ready for a tour. Tours start in the Vélez Blanco Patio, a light-filled marble courtyard just past the library. The kind of space that makes you pause—not just because it’s beautiful, but because it feels transported from somewhere else. Which, it… Read more: Hallucinations: It’s Not Just for ChatBots

When I was a kid, every sitcom seemed to have a time capsule episode. The kids would gather at school, bury a box filled with artifacts—a mixtape, a letter to the future—planning to dig it up years later. I realized that I could do the same for 2020, but as… Read more: Digging Up My Pandemic Time Capsule

Rules for good passwords seem less like security measures and more like a practical joke. Your password must have at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character. It must not contain dictionary words, but it must also be memorable. It must be changed every… Read more: Neal.fun and Password Games

There’s something about folk stories behind names that makes the world feel richer. Names, after all, aren’t just labels—they’re little windows into the past, into the way people once understood the world. And when the official explanation is dry, people fill in the gaps with something better.

I managed to break my ankle in the most absurd way possible. Technically, I was on my way to go skiing—but saying I was skiing would be a stretch. It’s complicated… I’ll just let some familiar characters explain it.

He was just an ordinary product manager, struggling with messy data and failed queries. Day after day, he was constantly thwarted by the complexities of SQL. Queries were unsolvable puzzles—joins, aggregations, and null values tripping him up at every turn. Then, one fateful afternoon, everything changed. He discovered a secret weapon… Read more: Are You Struggling with SQL? AI Can Give You Analytics Superpowers

When we were in London, we went to the fanciest teahouse in the world and were given a pastry fork—a delicate little thing, part fork, part knife, designed for the precise task of slicing through scones and dainty pastries. Sitting there in such an elegant setting, it struck me how… Read more: Words, Words, Words: The Hidden Bias in Language

A startup friend of mine started chatting with me about his “new” idea. “I know there are many bad ideas in cypto, but I’ve been thinking,” he said, lowering his voice like he was about to reveal a state secret. “What if every email required you to buy a little… Read more: The Curious Case of Spam, Crypto, and Reinventing the Wheel

“This is how you hug,” my mother-in-law said to my teenage son. She wrapped her arms around him firmly, holding him tight and lingering just long enough to make her point. My son froze, his shoulders stiff and uncertain, his face fixed in an awkward smile. Gradually, his expression softened… Read more: Continuous Partial Hugging: A Metaphor for Modern Life

Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning is one of the most unique self-help books ever written. It’s not your typical “Ten Steps to Success” guide, and it’s not filled with quick fixes or easy answers. Instead, it’s a guide to living a meaningful life, born out of Frankl’s harrowing… Read more: Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor Frankl and Bullet Journaling

Sometimes, an idea is so good that everyone around can’t help but pitch in. Take the story of stone soup, a folktale about a traveler who convinces an entire village to create a feast out of nothing but a stone and a pot of water. It begins with skepticism, but… Read more: Luna Luna: When the Art World Ran Away with the Circus

October 7th, 2023, was a day of tragedy, horror, and unfathomable loss. Everyone has their own way of carrying the weight of that day. Many people turn to memorials like the Nova Exhibition, which has been traveling from city to city, offering a raw, unflinching portrayal of the attack on… Read more: Choosing Love Over Fear: Matisyahu vs. The Nova Exhibit

“You’re not wrong, but you’re not 100% right either.” – Wise words from my boss Joshua Feldman Imagine this scenario: A facilitator walks into an office to mediate a conflict between a boss and her employees. She begins optimistically: “This is a safe space. Share how you feel. There are… Read more: Being Right Is Overrated. Trust Me, I’m Right About This

For many nerds like me, The Big Bang Theory felt like more than just a TV show — it felt like validation. Unlike countless other sitcoms where nerdy characters were relegated to sidekicks or punchlines, this series placed them firmly at the center. It celebrated the quirks and passions that… Read more: On The Big Bang Theory, The Nerds Aren’t Who You Think They Are

If a nerd is someone whose every word and deed are predicated on the belief that appearing smart is more important than getting laid, then They Might Be Giants are, in fact, nerds: their music doesn’t sell sex; it sells smart-kid whimsy. Arty, melodic, and well wrought in a formal… Read more: When I Grow Up, I Want to Be Two Guys Named John

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t look around once in a while, you could miss it.—Ferris Bueller There’s so much going on. My kids are growing up so fast, and I’m desperately trying to keep up with the whirlwind of changes in the world, especially with AI. Like many… Read more: A Year of Living Mindfully

I’m pissed. Bestselling nonfiction books have been lying to me. I know I shouldn’t care so much about this, but these books hold an odd level of cachet in our world. Books like those by Steven Levitt (Freakonomics) or Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers) have ideas that I used to take seriously.… Read more: The Power of the Written Word

This year, Yale honored Constance L. Royster ’72, the second Black woman to receive the Yale Medal (as far as I can tell), the university’s highest alumni honor. Ms. Royster was celebrated for her extraordinary contributions to Yale—her dedication, her advocacy, and her unwavering commitment to building a stronger, more… Read more: Yale Needs Women

I recently watched the movie Venom and couldn’t help but notice the fascinating psychological dynamic at play—Venom embodies Eddie’s selfish inner self—in Freud’s words, his id. On the surface, it’s a story about a guy being consumed by an alien symbiote. But beneath the humor and the high-octane action lies… Read more: Befriending My Inner Venom

As much as we’d like to believe we’re guided by pure logic, the truth is far messier: we’re not rational beings; we’re rationalizing beings. Our decisions aren’t always born of reason but are often retroactively dressed up in it. We make choices based on feelings, impulses, or half-formed desires, and… Read more: Why ChatGPT Didn’t Brush Its Teeth

If there’s one thing I learned in high school, it’s that math was created by white men. Or at least, that’s how it seemed at the time. Names like Pythagoras, Pascal, and Fibonacci loomed large in my textbooks as if they had singlehandedly invented the building blocks of mathematics. No… Read more: The Fibonacci Sequence, Brought to You by Fibonacci (and Absolutely No One Else)

On November 14, 2024, The Onion announced a move that felt straight out of its own pages: it acquired Infowars, during a bankruptcy auction. This surprising twist came after Infowars’ downfall following defamation lawsuits won by families of the Sandy Hook victims. The Onion plans to relaunch Infowars in January… Read more: How Elon Musk Paid Off My Friend’s Mortgage

Today we went to see & Juliet. I didn’t know much about it beforehand, only that it was supposed to be good for familes, so it seemed like a good choice for an outing with the kids. A couple of days ago, though, I found out it was a jukebox… Read more: How to Appreciate a Jukebox Musical: A Review of & Juliet

Last week, New York City’s Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) took place—a single exam with the power to determine entry into the city’s most prestigious high schools. For years, this test has sparked fierce debate: is it an equalizer, giving all students a shot at academic excellence, or a… Read more: The SHSAT Debate: Excellence vs. Equity

Making good decisions isn’t easy, especially when it’s hard to know what information to trust. In an ideal world, we could trust the information we hear from friends and from the news. But the media likes to cover the rare and shocking, not the common and routine. A plane crash… Read more: Skin in the Game

Paul Bloom’s book, Against Empathy, challenged a core belief of mine: that empathy is inherently good. He writes about how empathy, which feels so natural and kind, sometimes sends us down the wrong path. Recently, meditation has brought me closer to the world around me. In moments of stillness, I… Read more: The Case Against Empathy

In the past, the Turing Test was used as a measure of artificial intelligence. This was a test of whether a computer could fake being human. We don’t do this anymore. Here’s the reason why.

You Just Gotta Believe That’s the line that’s burned into every Mets fan’s heart. Being a Mets fan means living with disappointment, yet we keep coming back, asking for more. But sometimes, things break our way, making the victory that much sweeter. Friday night we went to Game 5 of… Read more: Mets Game 5: You Just Gotta Believe

Summary: Today was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. The holiday focuses on acknowledging sins over the past year and seeking forgiveness. Initially, I felt guilt for my mistakes, but I realized that guilt is heavily shaped by Western Christian culture, where mistakes often carry a sense of finality… Read more: Yom Kippur Meditation: The Beauty of Forgiveness

“Never express yourself more clearly than you can think.” — Niels Bohr I’ve been reading Ben Orlin’s new book, Math for English Majors. Ben always has a brilliantly philosophical way of looking at numbers and math, and it got me thinking about how we often misunderstand precision. I’ve always been… Read more: What is “Normal” Body Temperature?

I just went to the first Mets game in their playoff series against the Phillies. The game was in Philly, but I stayed local and joined thousands of fans at the Citi Field watch party. Even though we were just watching a broadcast on the Jumbotron, the energy was unreal.… Read more: Watching a Baseball Game on TV with 10,002 Friends

In economics we learn that as prices rise, demand falls. This happens because we assume that rational customers are looking to buy things that provide the most value for the least expense. But there’s a class of goods that don’t behave this way: Velben goods. Veblen goods defy classical economics.… Read more: Why We Buy Overpriced Things and “Like” Things We Don’t Really Like

Yesterday was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. In many ways, Rosh Hashanah is like the day after the secular New Year—when we think about the previous year and make resolutions for how to be better. Making resolutions can feel overwhelming. It’s exhausting to examine an entire year and think… Read more: Being a Better Person is Easier Than You Think

Walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we pass the Temple of Dendur, rescued by Jackie Kennedy before Lake Nasser was flooded after the Aswan Dam was built. Then it’s off to European art to see Picassos and Renoirs. Then we go downstairs to the Design Collection to see… my… Read more: Is Great Design Hiding in Your Living Room?

Animals can fake their evolutionary fitness in a number of ways. Humans do it too. While this may seem like we’re corrupting our gene pool it might not be so bad.

It’s also a good time to point out something we emphasize in each of our books: Nothing you will read in this book was invented by us. Marty Cagan. Transformed. Silicon Valley Product Group. I enjoy Marty Cagan’s books on Product Management. The ideas are simple and straigtfoward. As he… Read more: 10 Commandments of Product Management

The nickname “Strawberry” for OpenAI’s new model is an inside joke, but no one told ChatGPT. Here’s the punchline: “Finally, ChatGPT knows how many R’s are in the word Strawberry.”

I used to think that conversations were about what two people say to each other. Recently I’ve come to think of them as an improv game where each person adds something unique to the mix. One person might introduce a surprising idea, while another runs with it in an unexpected… Read more: How a Conversation is Like a Rainbow

I’ve become spoiled. I love being able to look at the art and have somebody explain to me what’s going on. This started in college when I went to a Picasso exhibit with my grandfather. Picasso is quite difficult to understand without the background. I just saw a lot of… Read more: ChatGPT as a Museum Tour Guide

How does a leader create things? I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that a leader can have an idea and then get a group of people together and create something new. Something didn’t exist, and then magically it does. In 2006 there wasn’t an iPhone and then, magically, in… Read more: The Art of Asking: Collaborative Creation

This has been an extremely hard year for us Jews. On October 7th over 1,200 were killed and over 200 were taken hostage in the most brutal attack on our people since the Holocaust. Jews were attacked in their homes and at a peace-loving music festival. Survivors were dragged from… Read more: Even in the Darkest Times, Don’t Dispair. Embrace the Broken World

I never thought of Warner Bros as a Jewish studio, but then I learned the brothers’ names—Harry (Hirsz), Albert (Aaron), Sam (Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak). These four Jewish brothers, who immigrated from Poland in the late 1880s, were a case study of Jewish success early in the movie business.

I used to wonder if my local paper, the New York Times, was biased. This would happen when the paper was to far right, or left, of where I thought it should be. I felt that the paper was twisting the facts to get its viewpoint across. I thought, “Why… Read more: Why My Newspaper Will Never Tell Me the Truth

As I was sitting on the Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas, one of the world’s most luxurious cruise ships, I found myself immersed in the stillness of the morning. I like to meditate in the morning and wait for the world to wake up. The peacefulness of that time… Read more: How I Learned to Appreciate the Sunrise

My grandfather Barney Liebman owned a drug store in Brooklyn. He went to pharmacy school and opened his own shop. He was always at the store, to make sure that everything was going well and also to make sure that all of the customers had a great experience when they… Read more: The Slow Death of the National Drugstore Chain

I used to love Honest Tea. It made me feel so good. The company was the brainchild of Barry Nalebuff and Seth Goldman. It was based on an idea that we could have healthy, great-tasting, and ethically sourced tea. They even wrote up the history of their company, Mission in a… Read more: The Rebirth of Honest Tea as Just Ice Tea