Josh

A handful of workmen stoke a smoky fire of damp straw and rags, and a giant heap of painted cloth fattens into a balloon roughly seven stories tall. It’s the fall of 1783, and the yard behind a Paris wallpaper factory smells like someone is barbecuing a haystack. A young man steps onto a narrow … Read more

A nurse is halfway through changing an IV bag when a monitor starts beeping down the hall. She hustles over, silences it, and finds a sleeping kid whose oxygen level dipped for a few seconds and then corrected itself. Before she makes it back, another one is going off two doors down. A single patient … Read more

Trader Joe’s brings out the worst in my self-discipline. I show up with a carefully planned list and a goal of being in and out in ten minutes, but I abandon both halfway down the first aisle for frozen soup dumplings and a cheese I’ve never heard of. By the time I reach produce, my … Read more

A craftsman pulls a clump of curly horsetail hair from a pile, teases it apart with his fingers like a pastry chef pulling cotton candy, and spreads it by hand over a layer of cotton and wool. At the next bench, a coworker drives an oversized needle through a side seam and pulls it tight … Read more

Like many of us, when I read last week’s credible reports that AI could eradicate all human life within the next 10 years, I spit out my morning coffee as if I were in a 1990s sitcom. That’s a topic for AI experts to wax poetic and I’m not smart enough to know how things … Read more

I’ve long believed there should be a mandatory class for all middle schoolers called Making Mistakes. When we were in school, most of us received the opposite education. We’ve been taught to avoid mistakes at all costs, so we tiptoe through our careers like the floor is covered in Legos. In reality, mistakes are often … Read more

Inside a smoky control room a few hundred feet from the Berlin Wall, a group of musicians sit slumped on chairs, couches, and amplifiers. One has his head in his hands. Another picks at a guitar without really playing it. It’s 1977, and they’ve spent the whole afternoon on a track that refuses to come … Read more