It starts with something much smaller

It didn’t work. That’s when the engineer in me got interested.

Do you remember New Coke? I saw this week that Brian Dyson, the former Coca-Cola executive who championed New Coke, passed away at 90. In 1985, Coca-Cola replaced its famous formula with a sweeter version...

How do you wear out something that’s still there? I can understand a bald tire or a hole in a sock. But the foam in my running shoes hasn’t gone anywhere. I watched the Apollo...

At the top of every Excel financial model I built was a cell I hoped never to see. ERROR. In my twenties, I worked at a private equity firm in New York City. The hours...

Rocky III, the Marine Corps Marathon, and committing to the fight.

I've been reading the Jack Aubrey novels, which means I've inadvertently learned a lot of 19th-century naval vocabulary. Some of it is completely foreign to me. Aubrey will order someone to haul in the mizzen...

I'm in my 40s, and yesterday was the first time I'd ever been called for jury duty. It was a serious criminal case in Superior Court. I ultimately wasn't selected, but I spent the entire...

Einstein called compound interest the most powerful force in the universe.Put a little money away and nothing changes. A year later, still nothing exciting. Five years later, it feels barely worth the effort. Then, somewhere...

The ancient Greeks told the story of Sisyphus, a man condemned by the gods to spend eternity pushing a massive boulder up a hill. Every time he neared the top, it slipped from his hands...

The innovation that ended America's 132-year winning streak wasn't a bigger sail—it was a revolutionary keel hidden beneath the water.

The flashlight you carry on early morning runs almost didn't exist. Or at least, not in the form we know today. An LED—short for light-emitting diode—is a tiny semiconductor that turns electricity directly into light....

  If you run before sunrise or after sunset, you've probably trusted an LED. It's in your headlamp. It's in your watch. It's in the taillight clipped to your running belt. You probably use LED technology several...

The best scientific ideas are simply the best explanations we have today.

Most runners have two New Years. January 1st and the Summer Solstice.