We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.

Since becoming a journalist, each time I engage with subjects I become more radicalized.

You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.