I spent the first act of my career in big New York ad agencies, and the second in venture-funded startups. The startups needed better tools to tell their stories, and I adapted those from the agencies to help.

The framework evolved, getting simpler as I learned what worked. I’ve since helped hundreds with this approach, and while not all succeeded, none failed for the reason so many startups do: an inability to communicate their customer value hypothesis in a way that attracts customers, talent, and capital. …

I enjoy a nice cocktail at the end of the day. Not a beer, though I love those sometimes, or a glass of wine, which for some reason gives me a headache. I like a cocktail.

A cocktail is the reward for bearing the enormous burden of being an adult.

It’s a tonic to calm the mind, and a totem to signal to the world that Daddy has downshifted into another plane of operation, a richer plane of being and not merely planning, thinking, doing, working, lifting, or otherwise operating anything more complicated than a shaker and a strainer. …

Nigella Lawson is sometimes called the “Goddess of Cooking” both because one of her dozen or so best-selling books was titled “How To Be A Domestic Goddess,” AND because she is plainly, and enduringly gorgeous. She’s also a brilliant writer, TV star, entrepreneur, and generally among the better regarded thinkers on all things food among people who know what they’re talking about.

In every single interview of Nigella — and I have seen plenty — she’s asked the same question: “So what are your guilty pleasures?” It’s a question that always struck me as wrong. …

“Cogito, ergo, sum.” I think, therefore I am.

Since Descartes first published his philosophical proof of human existence in 1637, science has often overlooked emotion as the real engine of human behavior. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding the important role of emotion in the way we make decisions. This began to change in academic circles in 1995 with the publication of Descartes’ Error, by famed Portugese Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.

Damasio challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotion and rationality, taking readers on a journey of scientific discovery…

I came across a piece in the current issue of The Atlantic I’ve been thinking about ever since. It’s an attempt to map the fault lines in American politics right now as the product of fractures in the society as a whole, and it begins with this profound insight:

Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness. There is never just one — they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are…

The NY Times published a piece recently by Adam Grant, the title of which was “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing”

Grant defines languishing as “a sense of stagnation and emptiness.…. The feeling as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.”

Psychology types think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being, a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is of course the valley of ill-being; feeling despondent, drained, worthless.

Languishing is, according to Grant, “the…

Lorne Michaels just completed the 46th season of Saturday Night Live, a show he created and executive produced for most of its existence. It began, of course, in 1976 with an incredibly talented group of future superstars, including Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and the source of my first tears over a celebrity death, John Belushi.

To have identified such a talented group of people once could have been dumb luck. But Michaels has renewed the cast dozens of times since then, finding and launching comedic giants year after year, decade after decade. As I get older, and struggle to keep…

Think back to high school, specifically to your high school classrooms. Odds are that on some wall in some class was some version of a poster called the Ascent of Man. Even if there wasn’t, I’m sure you’ve seen it… From left to right it depicts a hunched over chimpanzee, then some other kind of ape walking on two legs, then some kind of missing link walking erect, followed by beings that look more and more human, culminating in the image, at far right, of some walking White guy. It’s the story of human evolution, in pictures, and it’s one…