In what’s becoming an annual tradition here, below is my top ten books reading list for 2017. It will be updated over the course of the year to reflect the fiction and literature books I’ve read over the course of the year. As I read each book, I will list it below, in order of preference from most to least favorite, … Read More
The Most Important Person of Our Generation
This week is the 50th anniversary of Rolling Stone‘s first issue. And I’m excited to announce that I was selected to write the cover story. Most importantly, it’s about an individual who, I believe, is the single-most important person of our time. I’ve spent the last nine months in and out of his world, working on this profile of… Elon … Read More
Fear Illusions: How Your Brain Gets Hacked Every Day
I’ve spent the last three months researching fear and anxiety, and how they work on a psychological and neurobiological level, for a big Rolling Stone article. In this time of pre-election hysteria and fear-mongering in the U.S., and so many other places around the world, I thought I’d write an email sharing some of the findings here. The goal is … Read More
My Last Conversation With Prince, R.I.P.
I just heard moments ago the tragic news that Prince, one of the greatest recording and live artists of our time, passed away. Over the years of writing about music, I’ve interviewed him, seen him perform big and small shows, and even run afoul of him. The following obituary of sorts is from my last encounter with him, when the tables … Read More
Goodbye Merle Haggard: The Last Interview
Today, the world lost one of the greatest country musicians of all time. Merle Haggard, who died on the day he turned 79 today, is the American dream personified. Born to a hardscrabble family, he lost his father at age nine, was in juvenile detention homes by the time he was thirteen for shoplifting from a lingerie store, and was … Read More
The Year in Top Fiction Recommendations
On New Year’s Day, 2016, I looked at my bookshelf and thought it was time to read the stack of books that was piling up, most of them top fiction recommendations from others. It was time to re-enter the world that had inspired me to write in the first place: The intersection of imagination, craft, and storytelling. So I committed to emptying … Read More
Love In The Age of Hyperbole: Our Culture vs. Love
According to Billboard magazine, the greatest love song of all time is the Diana Ross and Lionel Richie duet “Endless Love,” in which she sings, “You’re every breath that I take/You’re every step that I make.” Spotify reports the most popular wedding song is John Legend’s “All of Me,” in which he proclaims, “Give your all to me/I’ll give my … Read More
The Quick-Start Guide to Healing Trauma and Psychological Wounds
A Framework For Transformation Over the course of writing The Truth, I came to develop a very specific take on healing trauma, specifically developmental trauma, as I slowly but surely reduced my own. As an overall framework for psychological healing, think of the childhood pain and shame we store—and the dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts created by them—as cancerous tumors attached to the heart … Read More
Why You Need a Ulysses Strategy
Too many people I’ve met this week are telling me something like this: Me: So what are your resolutions this year? Them: I’m not making any this year. Me: Why not? Them: Well, I would just make the same resolutions I made last year. And it’s depressing to know I didn’t do them. Others making resolutions confessed that deep down, they … Read More
How to Survive Family Holidays
During college, after returning from winter break, I griped to a friend: “It was great being home…for about two hours. But then my mom started pushing all my buttons and I was over it.” “Do you know why she pushes your buttons?” he asked. “I have no idea.” “Because she’s the one who put them there.” The holidays are here. … Read More