Streets vs. Roads: An Ode to Dutch Urban Design
Leave the microstates and Malta aside and the Netherlands is the most densely populated country in Europe, at roughly 520 people per square kilometer. And yet when you’re in a Dutch city, it doesn’t feel that way. The biggest reason is…
Urban Atheists: The Most Religious People You Know
Urban atheists are a unique breed. They hold strongly felt opinions about how the natural world works, and equally strong opinions about traditional religion, which they regard as a quaint thing their grandparents needed and they have moved past.…
Voice vs. Exit: Stay and Fight, or Leave and Build?
You are unhappy with something you belong to. A company, a church, a party, a platform, a country. You have exactly two instruments. You can complain and try to change it from inside. Or you can leave. Albert Hirschman named them in 1970, in…
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way
Not long ago I got to see a childhood friend for the first time in a year or two. There had been a lot of buildup to it. He was traveling with his family, and between the schedules and the crowd, we didn’t get the time together I had hoped for, and…
Intimacy at a Distance
My parents live on the other side of the Atlantic from their grandkids. When they tell people that, the reaction is always the same: how sad that you never get to see them. It is about the furthest thing from the truth. Last year my mom was in town,…
American Supplicants: What to Expect from the State Department as a U.S. Expat
The U.S. has enough money to bomb faraway places in sneak attacks - Iran being the most recent example - and yet doesn’t seem to have the money to fund, or at least administer, what it calls American Citizen Services i.e. ACS. ACS is part of the…
Crossing Into Belarus, Europe’s Last Dictatorship
It wasn’t until we crossed into Belarus that anyone in the car spoke. It could have been 1986, not 2026, in terms of how Soviet it all felt. Here’s the scene: Four strangers in a Volvo SUV, who had been in the car together for the better part of…
Dark Clouds Over the Rainbow Nation: South Africa Today
After spending upwards of a year on the ground here in South Africa and having read quite a bit of the history on the place (it’s a never-ending wormhole, let me tell you) I’ve come to believe that the following quote from Rian Malan, the Afrikaner…
The Most Important Hire for a New Dad
Quality, reliable child care is the great unlock. Want to go to the gym? Go for a run? Go out with friends in the evening? Show up on time for a call and be prepared for it? Do deep work that's uninterrupted? You need an extra set of reliable,…
Debate vs. Denounce: How Cancel Culture Replaced Civil Disagreement
It’s October 2020, and I’m at the Mises Institute Supporters’ Summit at Jekyll Island, Georgia – the site where the Federal Reserve was founded in 1910. Timing-wise, this was deep COVID. The lockdowns were in full swing. Sweden was running its…