My Writing

• I spoke with , writer of Bird History, about the origins of bird names, why birds offer such a rich lens on American history, and what our changing relationship with them can tell us about conservation and progress. You can watch, listen, or read the transcript. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts:

Robert: In the 1400s, the English had this endearing practice of giving birds people names. You had Tom tit, Jenny wren. There’s also a bird called a pie, and they called it Margaret pie, or Maggie pie, and that just became magpie. There are other birds that this happened to as well. There was a bird called a daw, and they named him Jack, so that became Jackdaw.

There’s a bird called a redbreast that they named Robin. Robin redbreast became so popular and attached that the original redbreast fell away. That name has spread all over the world too. American robins are named after English robins, which were just a nickname. It was like we had all these birds flying around and we’d call them Steve, and that just became the name that we call them. This is something that has a six hundred year history. It shows that people, the culture, and history have these long through lines for the birds we see around us all the time.

• My essay, Powering progress: The quest for energy abundance, came out several months ago as part of Big Think’s special issue The Engine of Progress. I’m relinking to it because a few weeks ago the featured it in their recap of the Climate and Energy tracks from Progress Conference 2025. I strongly recommend checking out the recap for great talks by , , and many others.

  From “Powering Progress”:

Progress runs on power. There is no progress without energy. Our ability to harness energy has enabled enormous strides in agriculture, industry, manufacturing, transportation, and medicine. The more energy available to a society, the wealthier it becomes.

• My series on The Odyssey is still going strong. Last month I wrote about Why Odysseus Turns Down Immortality. The next session is Thursday, April 9. We’re having a great time, join us!

  • You can watch sessions 1, 2, 3, and 4 on Interintellect’s Youtube channel

    Get tickets here!

• I created a new landing page on the website I’m calling Marginalia. It’s a place for me to post shorter pieces or blog style reflections, not full essays. I generally won’t send these out via email, but I’ll share them on notes and in these recaps.

  • Growing up and saying goodbye

I told him it was just me teasing, that I actually love watching him grow. He’s such a big boy now, and I love him. He smiled and went back to his cookie.

I put him to bed and knew, once again, I had just said goodbye forever to another version of my little boy.

(Mike Riggs gets it; so does “To have a child is to fall in love with a thousand beautiful strangers.”)

• Moments that come and go

I appreciate Impressionism much more since I had kids. I get what an artist like Monet was trying to do now. Trying to hold on and capture a moment before it disappears into another.

• One more note about parenting while we’re on the subject:

Ideas I enjoyed

• Motorcycles and Cows: My brother took a three week motorcycle trip across India. He wrote a great, and often quite funny, essay about the experience:

“Always eyes are forward in India, never left and right.” He continued on his diatribe, explaining how common it was for cows to wander into the street. With four or five examples, he sounded like nothing more than that Fred Armisen meme from Parks and Rec, where the answer to every infraction is “straight to jail.” Here, any possible circumstance ended with “cow.”

“You are driving on highway? Cow.

You are crossing street? Cow.

You see market, want to stop? Cow.”

I assured him I would keep both eyes forward, always on the lookout for cow.

• Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching: Multiple people sent me Listers after listening to my podcast with Robert, and it’s easily one of the best things I’ve ever watched on birding. Also a good example of why I do things like the podcast and these posts in the first place — as said “A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.”

• I know I’m late to the party, but I just discovered ’s blog, and I’m loving it. In The anti-Promethean backlash he makes a very important, but often overlooked distinction between environmentalism and the anti-progress crowd. They’re related, but “it’s critically important not to conflate the two.”

It was primarily through environmentalism that the anti-Promethean backlash manifested itself and exerted influence over events, yet there is no fundamental, necessary connection between concern for the health and beauty of the natural world and antipathy toward — in Francis Bacon’s formulation, the use of science and technology “for the relief of man’s estate.” Indeed, as is now becoming clear in the context of climate change, it is only through the continued development of our technological powers that we can hope to arrest and reverse the immense damage we have caused.

I content the misanthropic views often attributed to environmentalism are not representative of the movement writ large. Environmentalism can be positive-sum and as Lindsey says, “must be judged as a large and necessary step forward in human progress.”

• In a similar vein, wrote a great story for , Can Abundance Include Nature? Certainly! Plus, restoration will become even more of an imperative as land is decoupled from production. More from less means more marginal land taken out of production and the need for tools to restore it.

• Speaking of decoupling land from production, I’ve been pondering what will become of ranch and grazing lands if synthetic beef makes traditional ranching obsolete. In The AI Revolution No One’s Talking About: How Artificial Insemination reshaped the American beef supply by , she shows how artificial insemination is improving dairy economics and what that means for beef production. It’s a good example of how technology is revolutionizing food production in often surprising ways.

• On that note, years ago I worked on an investment to grow and export blueberries in Peru. does a nice job in Chasing Counter Seasonality explaining how and why it became such a booming sector. His article How packaged salads took over America is another great read on the technology in agriculture and food systems.

• Why Are American Passenger Trains Slow? by is an excellent economic and historical explanation of why we don’t have high speed passenger rail in the US. The answer is much more interesting than the US doesn’t know how to build.

• Are screens bad for children? An excellent interview of by . One takeaway from the conversation is how important discernment and judgment is for a parent. Simple rules like no screen time are easy to enforce (and easy for others to comprehend), but taking the time to be thoughtful and discerning, and teaching kids to do the same, opens up far more opportunities for growth.

One last thing

• Give your kid a pencil and pad of paper. You’ll be surprised what they come up with!

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I feel it most in Monet’s series of the same landscape in different light and seasons. The kids and I take the same walk many times a week, and like Monet painting the same scene, I watch it change each time and witness the moments come and go.

When we started on these walks the kids were in strollers. Before long they were tottering and babbling at the cows and horses. Now they speed ahead on their scooters. I try to hold the moments, to memorize them, but they evaporate so quickly.

I’ve started to see paintings on these walks. It’s never a perfect match, but a specific painting will come to mind. Sometimes it’s the mood, color, or perspective. I marvel that my here and now can be connected across time and space with an artist’s there and then. It makes the moment much more precious.

Last night Clark (3yo) said, “okay, daddy. I’ll stop for you. How do I stop growing?” His earnestness, the recognition that his growing up was breaking my heart, bowled me over.

I told him it was just me teasing, that I actually love watching him grow. He’s such a big boy now, and I love him. He smiled and went back to his cookie.

I put him to bed and knew, once again, I had just said goodbye forever to another version of my little boy.

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• I had a great conversation on the Hostcast with (summary on X). We talked about progress, abundance, and The Odyssey.

• Reflections on the Telemachy, Books 1-4 of The Odyssey. The second in a series (Part 1) related to my Interintellect salon series on The Odyssey.

  It got me thinking about how we treat the strangers who show up on our shores today. We educate and then force international students back home. We have random lotteries for H-1B visas instead of policies to keep high-skilled workers here permanently. Visa wait times and renewal processes are longer and more harrowing than some of Odysseus’s tribulations. If that’s how we play host to the most talented strangers, how likely is it we’re treating our more ragged guests well?

  The xenia described in The Odyssey is not a great guide to immigration policy. Xenia is about how individual guests, not a diaspora, are treated. It covers brief encounters, a guest passing through, not settlement. Yet I think xenia still has something to teach us. The formal protocols of xenia are oddly comforting. More than that, the rules of xenia are coherent. There is morality in clear rules of the road.

  A few seats are still available for the next session on February 12, and you’re warmly invited. We’re having a blast!

  Get tickets here!

Ideas I enjoyed

• Magical AI Crayons by Brendan Mulligan, on AI and creativity. I’m biased because he’s my brother, and I helped edit the piece, but (X) and (X) enjoyed it too!

“Leonardo da Vinci had to be a master chemist to break free from the limited pigments available from natural materials. Now, every child has access to over 100 colors in a box that costs their parents less than a sandwich. Professional artists may scoff at the lowly crayon, but is there a more common art tool in the American home? Every household with a child likely owns more pieces of colorful art than a workshop could produce throughout the entire Renaissance. Their beauty lies not merely in their variety but in their simplicity – hand a box to a toddler and without instruction they will put them to use immediately.”

• The Case for Conservation Abundance by . Many environmentalists see the necessity of an abundance agenda. We need to push back against the narrative that environmentalists are nothing but obstructionist.

“The question facing our country and the world more broadly is not whether a massive amount of energy infrastructure and housing will be built, but where, how and when. And those are questions that conservationists can and should help answer. If conservation values and research can be included in siting, designing, and building more of what people need, then both nature and people will win.”

• Economic development is key to addressing climate change by , , , and The conclusion seems self-evident, but common climate policy arguments suggests it isn’t. It’s a paradox because one of the arguments I’ve heard most from climate hawks is that we should do something to help the poor countries that can’t adapt as they’ll be disproportionately affected. That argument acknowledges wealth and economic development are beneficial for adaptation, yet policies are proposed to make people poorer. This paper helps illuminate the folly.

• How Will the Miracle Happen Today? by . I’ve said many times that it feels like the universe wants to help me, so I love Kevin Kelly’s use of the word “pronoia.” What a great explanation of the idea to go along with an important condition: one must be open to the gift.

• From :

Exciting new projects:

• and Charles C. Mann have a new podcast coming out. I can’t wait to listen!

• Silverlinings.bio from Raiany Romanni-Klein: A gorgeous, informative, and fascinating website for exploring longevity.

• will be writing about industrial policy in Alaska. He’s looking for contacts, reach out!

• Dream internship to work with .

• is writing a book “for serious thinkers working with complex ideas who want to speak well under pressure. The core problem isn’t talent or confidence. It’s the absence of a system for getting better.”

Book Notes

Odyssey by Stephen Fry:1

I listened to the audio version of Odyssey by Stephen Fry. Narrated by Fry himself, it’s an excellent companion text to Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. Fry’s Odyssey is the perfect complement because he doesn’t just retell the story of Odysseus, but he weaves in the related myths referenced but not fully explored in Homer’s epic. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Stephen Fry story; erudite, witty, and entertaining.

I imagined Fry poring over an ancient version of a vessel tracking tool as ships sailed away from Troy, telling each ship’s story in turn. I particularly enjoyed the chapter “The Cursed Children” about Orestes’ revenge for the death of his father, Agamemnon, and the conclusion of his cursed family’s tale. The story culminates with a trial in Athens that marks the beginning of civic justice and the end of the gods’ roles in the everyday affairs of men. It’s in these side quests, the stories adjacent to, but not directly told in The Odyssey, that Fry’s version shines.

Highly recommended for those interested in Greek mythology and going beyond Homer, but not quite ready to pick up Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides.

One last thing

Get your early literacy stage kid a label maker (X thread):

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