Brian Wiesner

However, amid the AM -ification of cities and culture, there is light in the darkness. We are beginning to understand what we lose when we reject the night. Policies to keep cities open round-the-clock have been picking up steam since Amsterdam began issuing 24-hour operating licenses in 2013. The idea of cultivating night time economies has since... See more

It made me start to wonder just how much I’d been affected by the bubble of prosaic routine in the US, feeling the only path to success was rigidly linear. This was a gentle reminder that there were no straight lines on the path to success. Success became a universe of possibilities. Their energy imbued my world with new, limitless horizons.

Life... See more

The idea of research as leisure activity has stayed with me because it seems to describe a kind of intellectual inquiry that comes from idiosyncratic passion and interest. It’s not about the formal credentials. It’s fundamentally about play . It seems to describe a life where it’s just fun to be reading, learning, writing, and collaborating on... See more

Doing work in a coffee shop, drinking coffee on a terrace and walking around—often to many of the tourist sites or local hot spots—for an extended period isn’t living in a place. It’s a working vacation, often part of a series of working vacations, typically for the relatively privileged among us.

An aggregator like Facebook or Airbnb brings all the relevant goods, services, or information that a consumer might seek into one place, and it gathers all the consumers there, too. Netflix is a one-stop shop for film and television. YouTube is a one-stop shop for user-generated video. Uber is a one-stop shop for car rides. These aggregators amass... See more

When I arrived at the first of the many neighbourhoods that I would call “my barrio,” I was able to leverage proximity to quickly integrate into the local community with a level of Spanish that was enough to be able to make an effort. I took advantage of the low social barriers to entry. With a wealth of meeting places on my doorstep, I was able to... See more

Takeaways from Jerry Seinfeld on Tim Ferriss:

• To survive in comedy you have to be a writer

• “As any writer can tell you it’s 95% re-write”

• “I think I could solve just about anyone’s life, I don’t care what you do, with weight training and transcendental meditation” Jerry Seinfeld

• “If you could take your experiences and ask to trade them in, the last

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Murthy offers a strategy to address loneliness that begins with building up the infrastructure that enables social connection. That includes physical infrastructure, such as parks and libraries, and also social infrastructure to weave together volunteers or enthusiasts with similar interests. Once again, Britain provides a model.

The English town of... See more

Again, the hopes of our travels seem somewhat distinct from hopes of everyday life, mainly because we believe that by going elsewhere we can obtain something that we can’t obtain where we presently stand.