Future Business Leaders of America

 

A perk of being so physically close and relationally connected to Penn is staying in touch with campus trends, including the thought process of this generation of undergrads as they decide where to go to college, navigate making the most of their four years as a student, and then think about the start of their careers. Needless to say, when I was in their shoes was literally a generation ago, so while some things remain the same other things change dramatically. 

Maybe my high school friends and I were exceedingly nerdy, but what drove a lot of us was getting into the most prestigious and academically rigorous school possible, with no regard for how far away from home it was or what kind of community it sat in. I tell people that Penn could’ve been on Mars, if it had the number one undergraduate business program in the world I would’ve said yes. 

It did help that, as I was deciding where to go to college, Philly had a national reputation for being pretty cool – the early 90’s were the apex for entertainers like Fresh Prince and Boyz II Hood, and even the most grizzled Philly sports fans would admit that the Eagles, Phillies, and Sixers enjoyed some success during this era – but the only other impression I had of Philly and the Penn campus was that it was a big city at a time when that meant crime and blight and grittiness, a far cry from the relatively well-manicured suburban existence I hailed from. 

Today’s high-achieving students similarly have a lot of choices of where to go to school for four years. And those choices represent a wide range of community types: 

* Campuses are set apart amid a largely suburban form – Duke, Stanford

* Urban form at a small scale (i.e. college towns) – Cornell, Michigan

* Big city – Columbia, Hopkins 

The Stanford-Penn comparison is worth diving into a little, especially since I grew up less than a 30-minute drive from the Stanford campus and now live 5 blocks from Penn. Two amazing world-class institutions with sterling reputations in scholarship, science, and innovation. And yet consider how the differing forms in and around campus influence the undergraduate student experience: 

* At Stanford, it would take a significant amount of intentionality to interact with contemporary urban issues, observe municipal government in action, and participate in diverse social and cultural activities.

* Conversely, at Penn, it is almost impossible to not engage on such things since they are all around us, and it is quite easy to get involved in the inner workings of how things get done in the public or business or civic space. 

And, as noted above, to each his or her own. We will always sort in ways that are consistent with where we feel we will be happy and comfortable. Perhaps Penn students are more clued in to the fact that their collegiate experience will more easily involve engagement with an urban experience in the form of the city of Philadelphia, warts and all, while for Stanford students those opportunities are not as important and/or they prefer and are therefore intentionally choosing into a more suburban and set-apart environment. 

But, I do think that while some people will choose Stanford and other people will choose Penn until the end of time, there is something to be said about how it matters what tomorrow’s leaders and innovators are exposed to during their formative undergraduate years. Will they have anything to draw from when empathizing with our most vulnerable households or will such perspectives be only theoretical? Will they have access to a wide range of lived experiences, cultural backgrounds, and entrepreneurial ideas, or will their social circles be narrower? Will they even have any direct and tactile connection to the outside world while they learn, or will their learning experience feel distant from the outside world? 

There is no doubt that places like Stanford and Penn and Princeton and Notre Dame and UChic and WashU will produce a large proportion of tomorrow’s leaders in politics, business, and science/technology. I wonder if there will be material differences in how they view the world based on what community form they were exposed to when they were 18 to 22, and how easy it was for them to interact in meaningful ways with that surrounding community. I am obviously biased based on the life choices I made, to come to Penn and then to make roots in Philadelphia, but I do think that it behooves students to consider how where you learn needs to relate to what you are exposed to and can do real engagement with. The future of our country, our business competitiveness, our scientific innovation, and our cultural expression hinges on this.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 499

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Count of Monte Cristo," by Alexandre Dumas.

Danglars looked at the two men, one after the other, the one brutalized by liquor, the other overwhelmed with love. "I shall get nothing from these fools," he muttered; "and I am very much afraid of being here between a drunkard and a coward. Here's an envious fellow making himself boozy on wine when he ought to be nursing his wrath, and here is a fool who sees the woman he loves stolen from under his nose and takes on like a big baby. Yet this Catalan has eyes that glisten like those of the vengeful Spaniards, Sicilians, and Calabrians, and the other has fists big enough to crush an ox at one blow. Unquestionably, Edmond's star is in the ascendant, and he will marry the splendid girl—he will be captain, too, and laugh at us all, unless"—a sinister smile passed over Danglars' lips—"unless I take a hand in the affair," he added.

Danglars alone was content and joyous -- he had got rid of an enemy and made his own situation on the Pharaon secure. Danglars was one of those men born with a pen behind the ear, and an inkstand in place of a heart. Everything with him was multiplication or subtraction. The life of a man was to him of far less value than a numeral, especially when, by taking it away, he could increase the sum total of his own desires. He went to bed at his usual hour, and slept in peace.

"It is sometimes essential to government to cause a man's disappearance without leaving any traces, so that no written forms or documents may defeat their wishes."

"Only seventeen months," replied Dantes. "Oh, you do not know what is seventeen months in prison! -- seventeen ages rather, especially to a man who, like me, had arrived at the summit of his ambition -- to a man, who, like me, was on the point of marrying a woman he adored, who saw an honorable career opened before him, and who loses all in an instant -- who sees his prospects destroyed, and is ignorant of the fate of his affianced wife, and whether his aged father be still living! Seventeen months captivity to a sailor accustomed to the boundless ocean, is a worse punishment than human crime ever merited. Have pity on me, then, and ask for me, not intelligence, but a trial; not pardon, but a verdict -- a trial, sir, I ask only for a trial; that, surely, cannot be denied to one who is accused!"

Dantes, whole attention was riveted on a man who could thus forget his own misfortunes while occupying himself with the destinies of others.

While affecting to be deeply engaged in examining the ladder, the mind of Dantès was, in fact, busily occupied by the idea that a person so intelligent, ingenious, and clear-sighted as the abbé might probably be able to solve the dark mystery of his own misfortunes, where he himself could see nothing.

"What are you thinking of?" asked the abbé smilingly, imputing the deep abstraction in which his visitor was plunged to the excess of his awe and wonder.

"I was reflecting, in the first place," replied Dantès, "upon the enormous degree of intelligence and ability you must have employed to reach the high perfection to which you have attained. What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?"

"Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced—from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination."

"This treasure belongs to you, my dear friend," replied Dantès, "and to you only. I have no right to it. I am no relation of yours."

"You are my son, Dantès," exclaimed the old man. "You are the child of my captivity. My profession condemns me to celibacy. God has sent you to me to console, at one and the same time, the man who could not be a father, and the prisoner who could not get free."

And Faria extended the arm of which alone the use remained to him to the young man, who threw himself upon his neck and wept.

Thus Dantes, who but three months before had no desire but liberty, had now not liberty enough and panted for wealth. The cause was not in Dantes but in Providence who, whilst limiting the power of man, has filled him with boundless desires.

"You know it is not my fault," said Morrel.

Maximilian smiled. "I know, father, you are the most honorable man I have ever known."

"Good, my son. And now there is no more to be said; go and rejoin your mother and sister."

"My father," said the young man, bending his knee, "bless me!" Morrel took the head of his son between his two hands, drew him forward, and kissing his forehead several times said:

"Oh, yes, yes, I bless you in my own name, and in the name of three generations of irreproachable men, who say through me, 'The edifice which misfortune has destroyed, Providence may build up again.' On seeing me die such a death, the most inexorable will have pity on you. To you, perhaps, they will accord the time they have refused to me. Then do your best to keep our name free from dishonor. Go to work, labor, young man, struggle ardently and courageously; live, yourself, your mother and sister, with the most rigid economy, so that from day to day the property of those whom I leave in your hands may augment and fructify. Reflect how glorious a day it will be, how grand, how solemn, that day of complete restoration, on which you will say in this very office, 'My father died because he could not do what I have this day done; but he died calmly and peaceably, because in dying he knew what I should do.'"

"My father, my father!" cried the young man, "why should you not live?"

"If I live, all would be changed; if I live, interest would be converted into doubt, pity into hostility; if I live I am only a man who has broken his word, failed in his engagements—in fact, only a bankrupt. If, on the contrary, I die, remember, Maximilian, my corpse is that of an honest but unfortunate man. Living, my best friends would avoid my house; dead, all Marseilles will follow me in tears to my last home. Living, you would feel shame at my name; dead, you may raise your head and say, 'I am the son of him you killed, because, for the first time, he has been compelled to break his word.'"

The young man uttered a groan, but appeared resigned.

"And now," said Morrel, "leave me alone, and endeavor to keep your mother and sister away."

"And now," said the unknown, "farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been heaven's substitute to recompense the good -- now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!" At these words he gave a signal, and, as if only awaiting this signal, the yacht instantly put out to sea.

"Well, sir," resumed Danglars, after a brief silence, "I will endeavor to make myself understood, by requesting you to inform me for what sum you propose to draw upon me?"

"Why, truly," replied Monte Cristo, determined not to lose an inch of the ground he had gained, "my reason for desiring an 'unlimited' credit was precisely because I did not know how much money I might need."

The banker thought the time had come for him to take the upper hand. So throwing himself back in his armchair, he said, with an arrogant and purse-proud air:

"Let me beg of you not to hesitate in naming your wishes; you will then be convinced that the resources of the house of Danglars, however limited, are still equal to meeting the largest demands; and were you even to require a million——"

"I beg your pardon," interposed Monte Cristo.

"I said a million," replied Danglars, with the confidence of ignorance.

"But could I do with a million?" retorted the count. "My dear sir, if a trifle like that could suffice me, I should never have given myself the trouble of opening an account. A million? Excuse my smiling when you speak of a sum I am in the habit of carrying in my pocket-book or dressing-case."

And with these words Monte Cristo took from his pocket a small case containing his visiting-cards, and drew forth two orders on the treasury for 500,000 francs each, payable at sight to the bearer. A man like Danglars was wholly inaccessible to any gentler method of correction. The effect of the present revelation was stunning; he trembled and was on the verge of apoplexy. The pupils of his eyes, as he gazed at Monte Cristo dilated horribly.

 "Maximilian," said the count, "the friends that we have lost do not repose in the bosom of the earth, but are buried deep in our hearts, and it has been thus ordained that we may always be accompanied by them. I have two friends, who in this way never depart from me; the one who gave me being, and the other who conferred knowledge and intelligence on me. Their spirits live in me. I consult them when doubtful, and if I ever do any good, it is due to their beneficent counsels."

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.”

What Athletes Do Well on the Golf Course

 

One of the joys of golf is that it is a wonderful platform for spending time with others. Everyone tends to be on their best behavior, you’re out in nature, and there’s great camaraderie in navigating a course and celebrating good shots and sloughing off bad ones. Whether making new friends or deepening ties with existing ones, it’s hard to beat a round of golf for quality time together. 

Along the way, I’ve had the pleasure of playing with people who have played competitive sports at the highest levels. What’s interesting to me is that, regardless of the sport, there are invariably common traits that transfer well to success in golf: 

1. Good hands. Every sport involves some level of hand-eye coordination, and while it’s helpful to be able to control your body to do a complex task, it seems like the hands are the differentiating skill for people who have excelled at some sport. Which means that athletes tend to be good on and around the green, because it is there that the delicate movements of our hands come in to play the most. 

2. Taking care of your body. Hydration, snacks, and stretching are not after-thoughts for athletes, even if they have become routinized. Golf may not be as physically demanding as the sports my colleagues have performed in, but it does require managing your body over the course of a long round. I’ve noticed good attention to detail on this front. 

3. The ability to stay in the present. Golf is such a mental game, and one area I struggle in is stewing on the previous shot or worrying about the next one. Professional athletics demands that people lock into the task at hand, and then success or failure move on to the next task to lock into. This is probably the area where the difference between their skill and mine is most pronounced. 

There’s a reason many parents get their kids into sports. So many life lessons, like teamwork and sportsmanship and working hard. The three characteristics above have clearly been mastered by my colleagues who have played at the highest levels of their respective sports, and it shows when I join them on the golf course.

 

 

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 498

 

Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store," by James McBride.

So a few years after medical school when friends approached him about attending a meeting of the Knights of Pottstown to spread good Christian values, he agreed. And when that Knights of Pottstown meeting actually turned out to be the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan instead, he saw no difference. The men were like him. They wanted to preserve America. This country was woods before the white man came. It needed to be rescued from those who wanted to pollute the pure white race with ignorance and dirt, fouling things up by mixing the pure WASP heritage with the Greeks, the Italians, the Jews who had murdered their precious Jesus Christ, and the niggers who dreamed of raping white women and whose lustful black women were a danger to every decent, God-fearing white man. 

But Dodo could not sleep. He lay in terror that Son of Man would return. He fought sleep. He was terrified he'd awaken to Son of Man returning to visit that extreme pain on him again. He did not know what to do. He could not help himself, and once again, guilt assailed him. I did wrong, he thought. I did wrong, wrong, wrong. I'll be here forever.

Sleep began to push at him again, and as it did, his terror grew. He began to wonder if he was sleeping or not, and since he could not tell, that increased his terror. He began to sob. He was doomed.

Building Community with Intentionality

 

 

I forget where I read that everyone should, at some point in their lives, try to accomplish something completely audacious with a small group of people. I agree with the sentiment. There’s nothing quite like the energy of having a challenging purpose to fulfill with a manageable number of team members. O the exhilaration of trying something really hard. And O the satisfaction of being intimately tied with others in the effort. 

I’ve been lucky to go deep during college with my fellow Christian fellowship leaders, doing our best to live right and influence others, and then in both my jobs where I had the honor of working with and learning from some amazing human beings as we did meaningful labor. Outside of the close relationships I’ve been lucky to forge with my nuclear family through marriage and parenthood, these are the greatest experiences in my life. 

As we age, community becomes so important yet isolation becomes so common. People move away and eventually die off, those that remain get busy or face limited mobility, and our once crowded social calendars give way to the numbing constancy of solitude. While it is good to learn how to enjoy  being by yourself, being alone for long stretches of time is not good, so it is worth considering what community looks like when it is hard to form, and how to overcome those growing barriers to build it with intentionality. 

Social media is, of course, a low-barrier form of human communication that has its limitations and dangers but also its upsides. But, while I ascribe great value to this platform in forming and strengthening connections, I want to emphasize how essential physical contact is, especially in places with limited natural interaction in the form of age-diverse neighborhoods or welcoming public spaces (e.g. senior centers, parks). 

I hope to have many years of easier communal experiences through work, civic activities, friends and extended family, and of course my wife and kids. But I’m already thinking ahead to a time where such touchpoints become less accessible for a variety of reasons, and feeling grateful that places like the Y and activities like golf represent opportunities to make new friends and cherish existing ones. Hopefully I’m lucky enough to enjoy it all for many decades to come, and hopefully we can all put in the work to make sure everyone has someone.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 497

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life," by Jonathan Alter.

Midway through my research, it struck me that Carter was the only American president who essentially lived in three centuries: His early life on the farm in the 1920s, without electricity or running water, might as well have been in the nineteenth. He was connected—before, during, and after his presidency—to many of the big events and transformative social movements of the twentieth. And the Carter Center, the nongovernmental organization he founded, is focused on conflict resolution, global health, and strengthening democracy—cutting-edge challenges of the twenty-first.

Carter never would have been appointed to the school board if, a mere three years after he came home, he had been considered unreliable on school desegregation. Throughout this period, he not only did nothing to carry out Brown, he actively catered to the demands of white parents, often as part of his single-minded commitment to fiscal prudence. His very first motion on the board in early 1956 was to use lower-than-expected black enrollment as an opportunity to shift resources from black schools to white ones. He introduced a resolution that called for “leaving off two classrooms from each of the county’s three negro elementary school buildings, and then reassigning those six rooms, or the equivalent in equipment, to another project, or building, for the purpose of answering the needs of the white high school pupils of Sumter County, since these rooms are not needed in the negro schools.” It may be that his visits to black schools, then just beginning, opened his eyes to the error of that motion. Or perhaps his colleagues found his efficiencies over the top. In any case, the minutes of the next month’s board of education meeting record without explanation that two other board members withdrew Carter’s resolution.

Throughout this period, President Kennedy remained the closest any politician ever came to being Carter’s role model: moderate, energetic, charismatic. On November 22, 1963, Carter was in the warehouse when he learned of Kennedy’s assassination. He knelt on the steps and prayed, then cried for the first time in the ten years since his father died. The following weekend, he recalled being sickened at a Georgia Tech football game when some fans booed during a moment of silence for the slain president. 

When news of JFK’s assassination was announced in Chip’s classroom at Plains High School, the teacher said, “Good!” and students applauded. Chip picked up a chair and flung it in the teacher’s direction. In the principal’s office, Mr. Sheffield expressed his sympathies over the president’s death and sent Chip home, where Jimmy and Rosalynn declined to punish him.

Wallace’s own 1970 gubernatorial campaign next door was a rancid racial throwback. It included a print ad with the line “Wake up, Alabama! Blacks Vow to Take Over Alabama” over pictures of seven menacing black boys surrounding a white girl. Much later, long after leaving the presidency, Carter called it “one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern history.” But that year, he even stole one of Wallace’s slogans: “Our kind of man. Our kind of governor.” You didn’t have to be a linguistics professor to understand the meaning of “our kind.”

So did evangelicals—a newly organized force in politics that had no problem castigating one of their own. They denounced Carter’s refusal to restore the tax-exempt status of fundamentalist Bob Jones University (because it discriminated against blacks); his opposition to constitutional amendments that banned abortion and enshrined school prayer; his backing of the ERA; and his hosting of the June 1980 White House Conference on Families, which evangelicals opposed because it counted single mothers as families and allowed discussion of contraception and divorce. (The fact that Reagan was divorced and didn’t go to church often was apparently a nonissue for them.)

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 496

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Democracy in America," by Alexis de Tocqueville.

The picture of American society is, if I may put it this way, overlaid with a democratic patina beneath which we see from time to time the former colors of the aristocracy showing through.

One day, in Philadelphia, someone was telling me that almost all the crimes in America were caused by the abuse of strong drink which the lowest classes could consume when they liked because they were sold it cheaply. "How is it," I asked, "that you do not place a duty on brandy?" "Our legislators," he replied, "have often considered it but it is a difficult undertaking. There is fear of revolt and besides, the members who voted for such a law would be certain to lose their seats. "So, therefore," I continued, "in your country drunkards ar ein the majority and temperance is unpopular."

The Negro has lost even the ownership of his own body and cannot have any control over his own existence without committing a kind of theft.

In that part of the Union where Negroes are no longer slaves, have they drawn nearer to the whites? Any inhabitant of the United States will have noticed just the opposite.

Racial prejudice seems to be stronger in those states which have abolished slavery than in those where slavery still exists and nowhere is it as intolerant as in those states where slavery has never been known.

When men who dwell in a democratic society are enlightened, they have no difficulty in realizing that nothing restricts or pins them down, nothing forces them to limit themselves to their present state of wealth.

Then it is that they all have the idea of increasing it, and, if they are free, they all try to do so but do not succeed in the same manner. The legislature grants no privileges, it is true, but nature does. Natural inequality being very great, fortunes become unequal from the moment each man uses all his talents to get rich.

The law of descent still stands in the way of wealthy families but does not prevent the existence of wealthy individuals. It constantly levels men to a common point, from which they constantly escape. Their inequality in possessions increases as their knowledge and liberty expand.

As the principle of the division of labor is applied more completely, the worker becomes weaker, more limited and more dependent. The craft makes progress, the craftsman slips backwards. On the other hand, as it becomes clearer that industrial products are all the better and cheaper as production lines are more extensie and capital is greater, very wealthy and enlightened men appear on the scene to exploit industries which, up to that point, had been left in the hands of ignorant or restless craftsmen. They are attracted by the scale of the efforts required and the huge results to be obtained. 

Thus at the very moment that industrial science constantly lowers the standing of workers, it raises that of the bosses.

While the worker, more and more, restricts his intelligence to the study of one single detail, the boss daily surveys an increasing field of operation and his mind expands as the former's narrows. Soon the one will need only physical strength without intelligence; the other needs knowledge and almost genius for success. The one increasingly looks like the administrator of a vast empire, the other, a brute.

So, the employer and the worker share nothing in common on this earth and their differences grow daily. They exist as two links at each end of a long chain. Each holds a place made for him from which he does not move. The one is dependent upon the other.

The dependency the one has upon the other is never-ending, narrow, and unavoidable; the one is born to obey as the other is to give orders.

What is this, if not aristocracy?

Make America Great for Young People Again

 

Much has been made of the rapid political ascent of Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City. In my social and social media circles, there is elation from some and dread from others that a self-described “socialist” has ascended to one of the highest and most influential roles in the country. To the extent that this divide falls along age, class, and ideological lines, I am more in the latter camp than the former. That makes me considerably far less enthusiastic than his supporters. But I am far less pessimistic than his detractors. At any rate, just like another polarizing New York City figure who engenders both passionate support and utter contempt, the way American democracy works is if you get more votes you get the office. And so, just as Donald Trump now inhabits the White House because he got more electoral votes than Kamala Harris, the preparation begins for a Mamdani administration in the Big Apple. 

While Mamdani’s electoral success can be chalked up to many things – he is likeable and charismatic, represents a youth movement that has particularly appealed to younger folks, and has signaled an inclusiveness that appeals to voters turned off by President Trump’s rhetoric – I would argue the biggest takeaway from his win is that even for a complex office as mayor of the largest city in the US, he staked his campaign on a singular focus on affordability and never relented from talking about the pain of the problem and the promise of solution. So, before we get to deciding whether his solutions will work, let’s give him his flowers for tapping into the majority sentiment in New York City and having the discipline to stick with the message throughout his campaign. 

Now, many of my friends and colleagues disagree vehemently with what Mamdani is proposing for New York City, and that should he be successful in implementing his solutions it will portend the end of New York City as we know it, transforming a great world city into a shell of its former self, riddled with crime and emptied of people and resources. In fact, some are predicting he won’t be successful in getting anything done and are hoping that is the case, so opposed are they of his methods and so afraid of their potential consequences. 

As important as Zohran Mamdani is, as significant as the mayoralty of New York City is, this is a discussion that taps into a much broader topic today, that of faith in capitalism versus opposition to capitalism. Particularly along age lines, you have one group that is fed up with capitalism and its consequences, open to and excited about socialistic approaches to resource allocation and social equity and pocketbook concerns, and another group that finds this philosophy naïve and dangerous and predictably ruinous.

You know where I land on this debate. But pause for a minute to understand why young people are disillusioned with and antagonistic towards capitalism, and why Mamdani is proving to be so popular to this growing voting bloc. As a father of two young adults, it’s easy for me to observe, vicariously through my daughter and son, what it feels like to try to start a life, a career, and a family, and feel like what used to be common aspirations are impossibly inaccessible. College feels prohibitively expensive to afford. Buying a home is out of reach, and the rent is too damn high so good luck saving up until a future date when it is in reach. And the number of entry level white collar jobs with benefits available to this generation is shrinking by the minute, as employers hold off staffing up due to economic uncertainty or increased use of artificial intelligence.

 Again, I don’t agree with most of what Mayor-elect Mamdani has proposed to help his fellow New Yorkers. But I do agree that he’s identified the right problem, and that’s half the battle. Let’s see whether he’s able to follow through on his solutions, and where those solutions are able to make a difference.

The World Needs More Warriors

 

 

 

Thirty-four pitches. Across 10 batters. That's what 2025 World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto survived to close out Game 7 and secure the championship for his Los Angeles Dodgers against their worthy opponent the Toronto Blue Jays. Having started and pitched six strong innings just the day before. Rightly his performance has reached "instant legend" status, given the high quality on the highest stage. Rightly is he seen as a warrior of warriors, with his "losing is not an option" quote sure to grace locker room walls and yearbook photos for many years to come.

The thing I want to highlight, and the reason why I used the word "survived" in the previous paragraph, is that, while Yamamoto ended up being the hero of perhaps the greatest game in baseball history, there were many opportunities that he could've been the goat. Thirty-four, to be exact. In baseball, the home team is up last, and in a tie game in the ninth inning and beyond, that means that if the home team scores the game is over. It's called a "walk-off," and the home fans in Toronto were waiting desperately to cheer for one.

Which means that, 34 times, Yamamoto made a pitch that could've ended the game and the series. (Actually, not all 34: in the bottom of the 11th, he was protecting a one-run lead, so had the first batter homered it would've tied the game rather than won it.) Talk about nerve-wracking! The last series of the year. The last game of the series. The last inning of the game, and then another one and then another one (he entered in the 9th and finished the 11th). With every pitch, the possibility of giving away the game and entering into baseball history as the loser, his sad walking off the mound to join his teammates in the dugout immortalized in highlights to be played until the end of time. 

In life, few of us will experience this sort of pressure cooker, where the fate of an entire sports league and two cities' fan bases hangs on a single pitch, let alone 34 over 3 nerve-wracking innings. It is easy to forget that the pitchers and batters in the World Series are human beings, and young ones at that; I'm not that old and I'm twice as old as Yamamoto is. At the highest levels of sports performance, it takes both endless practice to sear in the muscle memory required to perform on command with the world watching you, and severely strong mental capabilities to block out everything around you and execute.

There are obviously many more spectators than players in the game of baseball. On the field were 9 fielders and about 50 players total between the two teams, whereas the stands held 50,000 viewers with another 25 million watching on TV. So odds are you're a spectator and not a player, when it comes to baseball.

But in the game of life, we have many more opportunities to be on the field rather than in the stands. And the world needs people to be on the field. But too often we prefer to be in the stands. We are happy to cheer the players on or boo them mercilessly; we just don't want to be the players themselves, not really given how hard it is to perform at that level and how stressful it is to do so in front of millions with so much at stake.

Being on the field requires a lot of work, a lot of risk-taking, and a lot of catching flak. For most of us, in most aspects of life, we're not interested. Easier to kibbitz from the comfort of our seats or homes, second-guessing and criticizing and lampooning endlessly with no regard for what it's like to actually have all eyes on us. Which is a shame, because, considering how amazing Game 7 was, being on the field means being responsible for bringing a lot of people a lot of joy (except for Blue Jays fans, I guess, but even they would, after they lick their wounds, agree it was an amazing experience to behold).

Some of us will aspire to be great athletes, the kinds that millions will watch. Some of us will put in the work to be elected officials or small business owners or civic leaders, for the positive good we can do in the world to influence communities and societies. But it feels like not enough of us are willing to put in the time, bear the stress, and expose ourselves to the heckling. And we're worse off for it.

Much has been made of Elon Musk's desire to take steps towards sending people to Mars and eventually having permanent habitation there. It seems incredibly impossible and perhaps wasteful and foolish. And maybe it is. But I'm reading a book about the earliest humans, and how they somehow made their way from Africa to the Middle East to the rest of Asia, and then, improbably, to the continent of Australia. Which, at the time, must have felt just as unreachable as Mars is to our modern minds. 

I'm not sure every crazy venture is worth pursuing. There is nothing wrong with seeing the punishing lifestyle required of elite athletes and powerful politicians and startup unicorns and deciding that for our self-care we will decline such a path for ourselves. But if too few of us decide we don't want to be the warriors on the field, humanity is less well off for it. And it leaves me wondering what it'll take to get more people to have the heart to do it. Even if, like Yamamoto ran the risk of, every pitch brings with it the possibility that you'll be the goat forever.

A Moderate Perspective on Cities

 

 

I am a lover of cities. I am also politically moderate. Putting the two together, it occurs to me that what I hope for cities (including my own) is a combination of left-leaning and right-leaning preferences. 

From the left, I believe there is a good reason for and high return from greater public investment in public goods like transit and public space, as well as top-down methods for bringing these goods into being. Cities require the former to scale up to the density that makes the magic happen (whether the magic is innovation, business, or social). And they need the latter for the density to lead to the magic (i.e. facilitating the kinds of diverse interactions that make cities productive and enriching). Hence, I’m for large public sector outlays and heavy public sector involvement in these cases. 

From the right, I believe that in order for people to feel welcome, safe, and happy in cities, laws must be enforced consistently, including punishment and separation of those who break the law (albeit with careful attention to implicit bias that affect our ability to be consistent, and to an overall objective of rehabilitation and reinvestment for those who become justice-involved). I also believe that housing affordability is critical to the accessibility and productivity of cities, and that affordability is best achieved by making it easier for the private market to add new supply (not that public sector involvement in housing policy isn’t warranted, just that it should be a lighter touch). 

I suspect that there are many among my friends and peers who disagree with me from both sides of the ideological spectrum. Perhaps there are some who are with me in the middle, or perhaps more accurately who lean left with me in some ways but also lean right with me in other ways. What do you think?

The Trump Ballroom is a Politically Shrewd Move…But Will It Cause Us to Lose Our Soul as a Nation

 

The circles I run in are overwhelmingly Democrat, left-leaning, and anti-Trump. Even so, I have found myself surprised by the intensity of pushback friends of mine have expressed about the President’s plans to build a new ballroom for the White House. 

Recently, I read “Abundance,” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, in which they express that, as liberals, they desire that government get stuff done for the people, and lament that the Democratic party has become the party of process even when that process gets in the way of progress. High-speed rail in California is cited as an example, where political complications and environmental review have yielded multiple budget over-runs with nary an inch of track being built. Meanwhile China laps the field in building out the infrastructure that moves people from city to city at practically light speed. 

The contrast is a telling one, which they admit. California is where well-meaning progressive policies are birthed and often transmitted to the rest of the country. The state leads on matters of racial equity and ecological sustainability and worker rights. China, in contrast, is notoriously undemocratic and no respecter of human rights. Yet one place’s government has accomplished much in the way of transit infrastructure, while another’s languishes in environmental reviews, legal challenges, and committee meetings. 

It reminds me Robert Moses, famously profiled in Robert Caro’s epic book, “The Power Broker.” It’s a biography of Moses but also an account of how power is gained and wielded, and in Moses’ case this meant extraordinary measures to carve the roads that make up modern-day New York City. To some, he is a hero for making the impossible possible. Others hold their nose and try not to think too much of the unseemly “means” as they acknowledge that the “ends” have been net positive. Still others loathe everything about the process and the result. 

Which brings us back to the Trump Ballroom. I suspect that, once it is built, and for many generations to come, the typical American will either be glad for its existence or take it for granted. Very few will fume about processes being trampled on or the symbolism of a president branded as a tyrant acting tyrannical about the most famous piece of public property in the country. Had a Democratic president been behind this, or perhaps any other human being besides Donald J. Trump, it likely would have been celebrated as visionary and long overdue. 

But is this where we are? Seduced by a fancy ballroom to compromise our most cherished democratic principles? Anesthetized by “bread and circuses” while our grand experiment slowly burns to the ground? Depending on where you are on the political spectrum and how you feel about the current occupant of the White House, you will have differing feelings of contentedness or alarm.

What Our Politicians and Media Owe Us in a Functioning Democracy

 

In exactly a year, Californians will vote for their next governor. Here is the full interview set from CBS that includes a disastrous performance by candidate (and former Congresswoman) Katie Porter. You may have seen her portion but please do nerd out on how the others fielded the same questions. 

But all the attention about this footage has been given to Congresswoman Porter’s meltdown. I won’t add to the pile-on by criticizing her specific answers, attitude, and body language. I do think the clips speak to a broader concern I have about modern politics, two related ones really, which is one that politicians have to deliver and not just perform, and two that the media plays an important accountability role to draw out, challenge, and clarify politicians’ positions. 

To start, I acknowledge that politics is in fact performative. Sure, elected officials do important things like pass laws and set policy and allocate resources. But they do so from a place of optics and messaging and human connection, all of which requires performing in a way that gets people to trust you, like you, agree with you. 

However, this fact can be taken to an extreme. One can’t simply say they’re a leader and do their best to act like a leader on camera. One must also be a leader, including when the bright lights are on and including behind the scenes and everything in between. “Integrity” gets thrown around so much that who knows what we’re talking about when we use the term. To me it’s that your words and actions are internally consistent to each other, and that they are consistent with a standard of excellence and morality that all of us can be comfortable with and proud of. And most Americans understand the difference between performing to that standard and just plain performing. One is leading, and the other is play-acting. 

For all the tsk-tsking about the confrontational tone politicians and the media have fostered, that’s not far from the tone it should be in a functioning democracy. Media don’t exist to fawn over or cover for politicians, so when they do shame on both the media and the politicians. And when media members come with the hard questions, how politicians respond is an accurate litmus test of their readiness to lead in the crucible of modern politics. Are they confrontational back, deflecting reasonable interrogation with personal attacks and back talk? Are they incredulous that someone would dare ask for clarification or offer an opposing perspective? Or are they civil, respectful, yet firm about their positions? Seems like a good way to find out who we should vote for, which means it is imperative that media play this role and not fall short. 

Honestly, Congresswoman Porter’s clip was really painful to watch. I sure hope more politicians can step up and handle the heat, and I absolutely beg of the media to keep throwing the heat. Our democratic experiment hinges on this very thing.