Is time an asset, or is it something else? A person is an expert on a topic because they have spent more time thinking about it than most people. Some experts have gone in very deep and narrow on a very specific topic, and they get paid a lot because few people have dedicated that … Read more

There’s a story going around about artificial intelligence and work. You’ve probably heard it; AI will hollow out the middle tier of knowledge jobs (squeezing analysts, paralegals, junior consultants) while leaving plumbers and CEOs more or less intact. The bottom does physical work that machines can’t replicate. The top makes judgment calls machines can’t match. … Read more

Social change doesn’t happen because people are persuaded to be better. It happens when groups realise they cannot achieve their goals without each other. Not “I should help you because it’s right” but “I literally cannot get what I want unless you also get what you want.” This interdependence – not empathy, not representation, not … Read more

There is a point beyond which the sermon ends and the invoice begins. Every lofty declaration contains its own reservation clause, the little asterisk that saves the speaker from their better self. We are forever telling one another what we believe, and then adding, sotto voce, the conditions under which belief is suspended. There is … Read more

7×7, Autumn, Twilight, Thursday. Other liminal things, not quite the end, but still enough time to run down. Something is unsettling about three-quarters. Not the fraction itself—that’s clean enough, a neat division that any schoolchild can visualise with a pie chart or a measuring cup. It’s the feeling of three-quarters that gets under your skin: … Read more

Explaining Things to People Who Don’t Want to Hear Them By the time they reach Year 11, most of my students have already made up their minds. About politics, about science, about what matters and what’s a waste of time. It’s not that they’ve deeply studied the issues. It’s that they’ve absorbed enough headlines, slogans, … Read more

Or: How to Get Married in 3 Hours and Feed 200 Strangers at Once Seoul is a city built on contradictions and careful choreography. It’s a place where forty-storey glass towers cast shadows on two-storey barbecue joints. Where tree-lined alleyways snake between apartment blocks like the city is still trying to remember its village roots. … Read more