The garden Alice longed for from Chapter One had bright flower beds and cool fountains. What she found when she finally walked through the door were roses being…
Blog
Marcus Aurelius wrote that life is opinion. Jimmy explores what that means through colorblindness, the sun problem, and Meditation IV.3 — the most radical idea in the Meditations.
Most readers think the Mad Tea Party is Carroll letting his imagination run loose. That’s the wrong conclusion. The chaos has a logic. The Hatter is right about…
Marcus Aurelius listed five ways the soul harms itself in Meditation II.16. Not what others do to you — what you do to yourself. Jimmy's analysis of the…
Alice was not looking for the pigeon’s eggs. Her intentions were entirely innocent. The pigeon didn’t care. What you do — and what you don’t do — is…
Epictetus wrote: when you kiss your child, remind yourself they are mortal. A BBC professor called it stupid. She missed the point. Jimmy’s analysis of the present moment,…
Alice has been in Wonderland for three chapters and still doesn’t know who she is. The caterpillar is about to make that problem impossible to ignore. This is…
In Meditation V.13, Marcus Aurelius wrote that matter cannot perish into non-existence. Einstein proved it eighteen centuries later. Jimmy's analysis of atoms, change, death, and the philosophy that…
The first sentence of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is 57 words long. Carroll never uses the word ‘bored.’ He shows it. That difference is one of the oldest…
A homeless man in San Francisco said one word: Amnesty. Marcus Aurelius wrote about it eighteen hundred years earlier. Jimmy's analysis of cooperation, kinship, and Meditation II.1.
Odin. Thor. Freyr. Freyja. Loki. A rich, complex mythology full of competing powers, supernatural drama, and very specific ideas about how a warrior should live and die —…
Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world — and every morning he wrote himself a warning. Jimmy's analysis of Meditation II.1: the busybody list, the…