Alex Dobrenko

These glimpses — never overshares — into Klein’s home life have helped him become more than just another New York Times know-it-all. Recently, he joked that listeners were getting a taste of what pillow talk is like in his house when his wife, the economist and Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey, came on to sort out a question they’ve clearly been... See more

During an evening swim through big, slow swells, I floated on my back and peered across at San Francisco; the sun was sink­ing directly behind the city. All I could see was the water — dark, nearly black, the way it gets at that time of day — and the scal­loped top of the city’s sil­hou­ette, like a float­ing citadel. Atlantean, in that light.

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Allow me, then, to close with a simple exhortation: we need people in our lives, not the simulation of people.

In a series of experiments begun in the 1980s, Schultz and his colleagues showed that when monkeys first get something pleasant—in this case, fruit juice—their dopamine neurons fire most intensely when they drink the liquid. But once they learn that a cue like a light or a sound predicts the delivery of delicious stuff, the neurons fire when the... See more