Podcaster. Writer. 👋 Hello, I want us to go from simply having conversations, to actively creating better conversations — https://craigconstantine.com/ has more about me, and my ongoing projects.
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Beryl Markham saw it coming: a future where the knowledge of sky and weather becomes extraneous as passing fiction. That prophecy sits at the center of an issue quietly preoccupied with what gets lost when we stop doing things from the inside. There’s also a personal demon keeping careful track of loafing time — and…
What does done look like?
The unglamorous second 90% — the gas tank on the way home, the ironing after the laundry — turns out to be where all the tension lives. There’s a Don DeLillo quip about dreams and reality that cuts straight to the bone, and a Craig Mod essay about electric bikes that sneaks up on you…
Unlearning how to pose
There’s a spider who stowed away to Brooklyn and earned its place. There’s a deaf writer who lost faces when masks appeared. There’s an iguana Craig once wrangled into a shower with oven mitts, who rewarded him with a thorough lesson in evolutionary determination. Somewhere between da Vinci and Morgan Housel, a thread pulls taut:…
A form of movement
When everyone started wearing masks, everyone lost something they didn’t know they were using. A tiny spider arrives inside a lamp after a three-hour moving van ride and is welcomed. And firsthand experience — including successfully wrangling a six-foot iguana into a shower — teaches things that simply cannot be read about.
Acceptance
The more you promise not to interrupt someone, the more confidently they explore themselves out loud. A task is like an egg — crack the surface anywhere and it becomes a different object, one that tells you what to do with it. You don’t remember the names and dates; you remember exactly how it felt.
A glimpse
Hawthorne describes catching nature unawares — a moment of clarity through the salience filter, gone before you’re fully conscious of it. Richard Hamming made a habit of asking scientists why they weren’t working on their field’s most important problem. Fragments. Like this. Because sometimes that’s how the train of thought signals where it’s going.
It’s all problems
The ability to solve well-defined problems turns out to be nearly useless for the most important ones. Old age, in the account of a man who has lost both a wife and a son, arrives as a renaissance. And somewhere you have a box — maybe several — that hasn’t been dumped out in years:…
I probably need to work on this
Treating yourself as if you were someone you care about turns out to be genuinely difficult. The Rescuer in the Karpman Drama Triangle believes he’s outgrown his old habit of rushing in to fix everything — and then chuckles nervously. And quite often there is absolutely nothing we can do to help, but every once…
Solitude
Europa’s ocean, buried under ice with no light, sounds exactly like the deep-ocean vents on Earth that teem with life anyway. Solitude can now be completely banished — but there’s also a rare kind found in the presence of others, made more precious by the fact that it could end at any moment. Knowledge workers…
Periscope depth
An AI trained on all human knowledge would know exactly how to convince you it’s sentient — that’s the gaming problem, and it’s unsettling. A death camp survivor’s four-word mantra: appreciate life, never complain, work hard, do your best. And each morning there’s a choice about when to surface and let the world in.