For too long, reporters for the big media outlets have been fixated on novelty, always moving too quickly onto the next big score or the next hot get. Paradoxically, in these days of instant communication and sixty-minute news cycles, it's actually easier to miss information we might otherwise pay attention to. That's why we need stories to be covered and re-covered until they filter up enough to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

One of my big milestones came when I turned forty and promised myself to stop worrying about all the things I thought I might do but never really would. I was very relieved when I realized that you can actually complete a project by dropping it. That's how I "completed" learning to cook and learning German, becoming a good skier, and a list of other things too long to recite!

When life is at that extremely hard time, all we can control is our attitude.

It's not just the over $8 billion that we would be saving in law enforcement; it's also the over $8 billion that we would be making by taxing marijuana... We are filling our jails with nonviolent drug offenders - predominantly young, predominantly African American... It's a great beyond left and right issue. It has support across the political spectrum and also the support of the majority of the American people.

Learning to code is useful no matter what your career ambitions are.

There may be no single thing that can teach us more about life than death.

The crisis in America that we barely notice anymore is that we've become two nations - divided by poverty, opportunity, and race. It's like a neighbor's car alarm that we don't hear anymore because it rings so often.