Curiosities

I’d contend that the demand for live-ness is also connected to the boom in sports viewership and theater attendance. There is a growing appreciation of those inimitable moments where ‘ you just had to be there ’ because that specific experience can never again be exactly replicated.

The second truth is that we are terrible at putting a finger on what it is that makes these people so captivating. Beyond surface-level observations — a nice smile, or the ability to tell a good story — few of us can quantify, in an instant, what makes charismatic people so magnetic.

Perhaps it’s evolutionary. As a species, innate instinctual... See more

An alternative school of Darwinism emerged in Russia emphasizing cooperation, not competition, as the driver of evolutionary change. In 1902 this approach found a voice in a popular book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution , by naturalist and revolutionary anarchist pamphleteer Peter Kropotkin. In an explicit riposte to social Darwinists, Kropotkin... See more

As the ability to hold a conversation or ‘work a room’ becomes less common, it also becomes more desirable. When nobody knows how to have fun at a party, being ‘the life of the party’ is an enviable characteristic. Our desperate desire for genuine human interaction is repositioning interpersonal skills, individuality, and generally ‘charisma,’ as a... See more