The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

hope is the correct response to the strange, often terrifying miracle of consciousness.

Kurt Vonnegut, wrote that one of the flaws in the human character “is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

it may seem odd that the world’s most popular football song comes from musical theater. But football is theater, and fans make it musical theater.

For professional athletes, the yips are a threat not just to their livelihood but also to their identity.

Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires.

We probably didn’t know what we were doing thousands of years ago as we hunted some large mammals to extinction. But we know what we’re doing now. We know how to tread more lightly upon the earth. We could choose to use less energy, eat less meat, clear fewer forests. And we choose not to. As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocal

Smell’s radical specificity is part of what connects it so particularly to memory; it’s also part of why imitation is so difficult, even when it comes to artificial odors.

these songs are made great by the communities singing them. They are assertions of unity in sorrow and unity in triumph: Whether the bubble is flying or bursting, we sing together.

What’s absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.