What My PhenoAge Didn’t Tell Me About My Heart
A few days after my 61st birthday, I decided to give myself something more valuable than a present: information.
I signed up for a comprehensive health assessment measuring 81 biomarkers related to cardiovascular health,
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Meteorologists are currently staring at climate models with a sense of profound unease. Recent projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggest that Pacific sea surface temperatures are not just rising; they are threatening to move “off the charts”. Some models predict temperature increases exceeding 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above average by the fall of 2026—a level of warming that would signify one of the most powerful El Niño events in recorded history.
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“Watch out, you might get what you’re after.”
The line floats through Burning Down the House almost as a warning—half playful, half ominous. I’ve heard it countless times, usually sung along to without much thought. But lately, it’s been echoing differently.
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On Energy, Empire, and the Seductive Power of Coherent Stories
One of the most intoxicating human capacities is pattern recognition.
It is the engine of intelligence, the source of insight, and the reason we survive complexity at all. But it is also the birthplace of our most confident errors—especially when patterns begin to feel inevitable.
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I saw a lot of coverage last week about people taking their Social Security benefits as soon as they become eligible at age 62. This is a typical headline.
The thinking is that the much larger than expected number of people filing for their Social Security benefits at the earliest age is due to concerns that program benefits will be cut in the future as a result of DOGE and President Trump’s lack of regard for legacy institutions.
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I’m on a bit of a slippery slope here. I take pride in producing a weekly blog almost without fail for the past 12 years. There are times when I am scratching my head for ideas or not feeling super inspired to write.
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One of my favorite podcasts is Founders. The creator of the podcast has come up with a number of maxims from all of the books that he has read and summarized to draw inferences that apply across the lives of many Founders.
One of them is belief occurs before ability.
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I saw a clip of a recent interview with Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google and worth more than $100 billion. He was being interviewed in front of a live audience. The first question he was asked was how much time he was spending at Google.
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There are things you can replace
And others you cannot
The time has come to weigh those things
This space is gettin’ hot
You know this space is gettin’
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I remember reading the 20th-anniversary edition of Rolling Stone magazine in 1987. There were numerous interviews with some of the greats of rock and roll who had been performing for most, if not all, of those 20 years. The one common theme I picked up was that when they started playing music and getting paid for it,
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