Musings

“I’ve always said I wanted to be a player that didn’t waste a moment, didn’t waste a day. I felt extremely blessed by the God given talent. At the same time I didn’t take it for granted at all. I think that’s a very powerful message to have…The story would be about transformation of a kid looking inwardly, to then growing up and understanding the importance, the power, and the significance of looking outwardly.”

Kobe Bryant

Articles that keep me inspired:

George the Poet's Undefinably Good Podcast

The medium of podcasting has become so essential that it feels like it's been around forever, while also being novel enough to surprise listeners with new forms and content, such as a deep dive into the cultural significance of Dolly Parton, or The Paris Review's peregrination through its own archive.

Opinion | The Legacy of Toni Morrison

There is a blossoming of black women writers who are following in her footsteps and making their own impact. By Ms. Gay is a contributing Opinion writer. Toni Morrison was unparalleled. She will always be so. A novelist, essayist, woman and sage, she was a genius of uncommon grace.

Burna Boy Is Trying to Wake Up Africa

We're backstage just moments before Burna Boy makes his Tonight Show debut, and Africa's biggest superstar is tucked away in his dressing room, surrounded by an entourage of more than a dozen people.

A Brave and Startling Truth

Maya Angelou’s Stunning Humanist Poem That Flew to Space, Inspired by Carl Sagan and Read by Astrophysicist Janna Levin. 'Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.'

The Terror Within and the Evil Without: James Baldwin on Our Capacity for Transformation as Individuals and Nations

"The self," the poet Robert Penn Warren observed in his immensely insightful meditation on the trouble with "finding yourself," "is a style of being, continually expanding in a vital process of definition, affirmation, revision, and growth, a process that is the image, we may say, of the life process of a healthy society itself."

'I know what lurks in the bushes. And that's how I write the stories'

Tony Eprile is in conversation with Jason Reynolds, the New York Times bestselling author whose titles include All American Boys, the Track series, Long Way Down, For Everyone, Miles Morales: Spiderman and, most re

Happiness Won’t Save You

Philip Brickman was an expert in the psychology of happiness, but he couldn’t make his own pain go away.

The Love of Truth and the Truth of Love: Bertrand Russell on the Two Pillars of Human Flourishing

Bertrand Russell, whom I continue to consider one of the most lucid and luminous minds our civilization has produced, and by far the philosopher whose ideas ideas at the rare and necessary nexus of science and humanitarianism I most admire in totality.

Dear Graduates, Never Wait Your Turn

Jemele Hill: The Kobe I knew became a champion for others Like many of you, I had never experienced-until now-any event that brought life to a complete standstill. We are walking around with heavy hearts and worn spirits. And more than ever, we seem obsessed with our failures and also frustrated by our perceived powerlessness.

Scientific Regress | William A. Wilson

The problem with ­science is that so much of it simply isn't. Last summer, the Open Science Collaboration announced that it had tried to replicate one hundred published psychology experiments sampled from three of the most prestigious journals in the field.