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No More Hamburgers: The Strange Rise of Alpha-Gal Syndrome

For decades I sat behind a gastroenterologist’s desk listening to patients tell me they were “allergic to food.”

My usual response was measured, sympathetic, and, I thought, scientifically sound. True food allergy, I would explain, generally announces itself quickly: itching, hives, swelling, wheezing, or—at the terrifying end of the spectrum—anaphylaxis. There were certainly rare patients with genuine food allergy, but most of what I saw in a GI office was something else: lactose intolerance, where the problem is not allergy but failure to absorb lactose sugar; irritable bowel syndrome, where the gut behaves like a nervous committee; or food poisoning, where the culprit is less mysterious and more likely named “potato salad left out too long.”

Then, about ten years ago, I read about something that made me sit up a little straighter: alpha-gal syndrome.

Here was an allergy that did not behave like the others. It was an allergy to mammalian meat—beef, pork, lamb, venison—triggered not by the food itself but by a tick bite. The offending tick in the United States was usually the lone star tick, a small creature with the public-relations instincts of a medieval assassin. The reaction could include abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea, hives, and even anaphylaxis, but unlike classic food allergy, it often arrived two to six hours after eating. In other words, the patient could have steak for dinner, go to bed peacefully, and wake up in the middle of the night with what looked like food poisoning, gallbladder disease, panic, or divine punishment.

At the time, the literature described alpha-gal as rare, mostly confined to the Southeast—Texas, Arkansas, Virginia, the Carolinas—and certainly not something I expected to see in my Southern California patients. It was an oddity, the kind of diagnosis one filed away with “zebras,” “conference trivia,” and “things allergists worry about.”

Fast-forward to 2026, and alpha-gal has moved from medical curiosity to public-health warning flare. America can ignore a lot of obscure immunology—until a tick threatens McDonald’s hamburgers, backyard cheeseburgers, and a ribeye at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Then, suddenly, the nation takes notice.

The popular literature has caught up with the medical literature, most notably in a recent New Yorker article, “The Tick That Hunts Down Its Hosts—Including Us,” which portrays alpha-gal not as a regional eccentricity but as a spreading, disruptive, life-altering illness carried by an expanding tick population. The article’s most unsettling point is not simply that lone star ticks bite people. It is that they actively pursue hosts. This is not the passive tick of childhood memory, waiting politely on a blade of grass like a bad idea in slow motion. This one goes looking. (The New Yorker⁠)

The science behind alpha-gal is one of the stranger detective stories in modern allergy. Alpha-gal is shorthand for galactose-α-1,3-galactose, a sugar molecule found in most non-primate mammals. Cows have it. Pigs have it. Lambs have it. Deer have it. Humans, apes, and Old World monkeys do not. That biological absence matters because, under the wrong circumstances, the human immune system can decide that alpha-gal is foreign and dangerous.

The first clues came from two directions that eventually converged. In Australia, physician Sheryl van Nunen and colleagues had noticed a connection between tick bites and delayed reactions to mammalian meat. In the United States, Thomas Platts-Mills and his University of Virginia group were investigating severe allergic reactions to cetuximab, the monoclonal antibody used in colorectal and head-and-neck cancer. Cetuximab is also better known to the general public by its trade name, Erbitux—the ImClone drug at the center of the Martha Stewart insider-trading scandal, an odd footnote in which Wall Street, oncology, and tick immunology somehow all ended up at the same dinner table. (PMC⁠)

The UVA investigators found that some patients had pre-existing IgE antibodies that reacted to alpha-gal on cetuximab. Cetuximab is a chimeric mouse-human antibody, and the glycosylation pattern from its production helped expose the alpha-gal problem. The clinical mystery then widened: the same immune response that could cause anaphylaxis to cetuximab could also explain delayed reactions to red meat. Later work tied many of these patients to prior tick bites. The “red meat allergy” was not really a meat allergy in the traditional protein-allergy sense. It was an IgE-mediated allergy to a carbohydrate—an immunologic plot twist worthy of a mystery novel, except the butler was a tick. (PMC⁠)

The epidemiology has become increasingly hard to dismiss. CDC data identified more than 110,000 suspected U.S. cases between 2010 and 2022, but because alpha-gal syndrome is not nationally notifiable and is often missed, the CDC estimates that as many as 450,000 Americans may be affected. (CDC⁠) Many patients have positive blood tests but no clear symptoms; others have symptoms for years before anyone connects the dots. A delayed midnight reaction after a cheeseburger is easily blamed on the restaurant, the onions, the gallbladder, the marriage, or “something I ate.” Technically that last one is true, but not in the way anyone expects.

Why now? One major reason is the spread of the lone star tick. Historically associated with the southeastern and south-central United States, it has been moving northward and appearing in places where older physicians were not trained to expect it. CDC surveillance notes that the expansion of white-tailed deer populations since the 1940s has helped the lone star tick repopulate and expand through the eastern United States. (CDC⁠) Deer are not just innocent woodland scenery in this story. They are tick buses, tick cafeterias, and tick convention centers. Or, to put it in Palm Beach terms, the deer carry ticks home like the Four Seasons Hotel carries guests after a wedding weekend—well-fed, well-distributed, and somehow everywhere by morning.

The deer population explosion, suburban sprawl, fragmented forests, warmer seasons, and abundant edge habitat have created tick-friendly environments. We built lovely neighborhoods at the forest’s edge, planted ornamental shrubs, encouraged deer to browse our landscaping, and then acted surprised when the ticks RSVP’d. In New Jersey and other northeastern areas, lone star tick populations have increased in places where they are now established, often in habitats frequented by deer. (New England Journal of Medicine⁠)

For patients, the practical problem is that alpha-gal is not limited to a ribeye steak. It is a mammalian molecule hiding in the pantry, the medicine cabinet, and occasionally the hospital. The obvious triggers are beef, pork, lamb, venison, organ meats, and meat broths. But alpha-gal can also appear in gelatin, dairy products, lard, tallow, suet, some medications, capsules, vaccines, biologic agents, and medical products derived from mammalian sources. The CDC specifically warns that alpha-gal may be present in foods and products made from mammals, including some medications and medical products; many patients tolerate dairy, but some do not. (CDC⁠)

This is where the illness becomes more than “no more hamburgers.” It becomes label reading as a second career. Gelatin capsules? Maybe. Beef broth in a sauce? Maybe. Pork-derived heparin? Ask. Magnesium stearate, glycerin, gelatin, bovine extract, tallow-based products? Now the patient is doing detective work in aisle seven while everyone else is deciding between barbecue and sour cream potato chips. (MU Extension⁠)

Diagnosis remains imperfect but increasingly available. The key blood test is alpha-gal–specific IgE, interpreted in the clinical context. A positive test alone is not the same as symptomatic disease; exposure history and delayed symptoms matter. The classic pattern is delayed reaction after mammalian meat, often worse with fatty meats, alcohol, exercise, or larger exposures. From a gastroenterologist’s point of view, the most important lesson is that alpha-gal can present predominantly with GI symptoms—abdominal cramping, nausea, diarrhea—without dramatic hives. That means some patients may spend years labeled as IBS, food intolerance, or “sensitive stomach” when the real problem arrived on eight legs.

Treatment, unfortunately, is mostly avoidance and preparedness. Patients avoid mammalian meat and individually determine, with an allergist, whether dairy, gelatin, medications, and other products are safe. Those at risk for severe reactions may need epinephrine. There is no definitive cure. Some patients improve over time, especially if they avoid further tick bites, but others remain sensitive. CDC materials and reviews emphasize that management is avoidance, symptom control, and prevention of additional tick exposure—not a magic desensitizing hamburger patch. (CDC⁠)

That has led to some unexpected workarounds. Emu and ostrich farms have found a niche because these birds can provide red-meat-like flavor and texture without being mammals. For the alpha-gal patient mourning a burger, ostrich may sound like culinary witness protection: legally not beef, emotionally beef-adjacent. (Jacksonville Journal-Courier⁠)

Even more futuristic are GalSafe pigs. In 2020, the FDA approved a genetically engineered line of domestic pigs in which the alpha-gal sugar is eliminated from the surface of the animal’s cells. The approval was for both food use and potential biomedical uses, including therapeutic products. These pigs had already attracted interest in transplantation because removing alpha-gal may reduce one major immune barrier between pigs and humans. Now, in a twist only modern biotechnology could provide, the same kind of animal engineered for xenotransplantation may also represent a possible pork source for people whose immune systems have been reprogrammed by ticks. (ISAAA⁠)

There is something both comic and sobering about all this. We spent much of medical history worrying about bacteria in meat, cholesterol in meat, nitrates in meat, and whether meat was grilled too long, too rare, too processed, or too expensive. Now we must add: “Did a tick alter your immune system so that bacon has become an allergen?”

For a retired gastroenterologist, alpha-gal is humbling. It reminds us that patients who say, “Doctor, food is making me sick,” may be wrong in the details but right in the essence. It reminds us that the immune system has a flair for drama and poor timing. And it reminds us that ecology is medicine. Deer populations, suburban landscaping, warming climates, tick behavior, monoclonal antibodies, cancer drugs, food labeling, and late-night diarrhea are not separate stories. They are one story.

I once told patients that true food allergy was usually immediate. That was still generally correct. But alpha-gal is the exception that should make every clinician pause. It is delayed, disguised, geographically expanding, and deeply disruptive. It turns the backyard into a risk zone, the medicine cabinet into a puzzle, and the hamburger into a memory.

So yes: no more hamburgers. At least for some.

And if you see a lone star tick, do not admire its confidence. It is not coming over to congratulate you on your landscaping. It is looking for dinner—and, with terrible irony, it may be trying to ruin yours.

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Pedaling Through Life

I can still picture it.

It was bright red, with white handlebars and fat black tires. My first tricycle. It probably didn’t cost much, but to a four-year-old growing up in Whitestone, Queens, it was freedom painted crimson.

Then came my first “real” bicycle—a Huffy.

It wasn’t a Schwinn.

Back then, Schwinn was the Cadillac of bicycles. Every kid wanted one. My family couldn’t afford it, and at the time I noticed. Looking back now, I realize something more important: my Huffy took me everywhere a Schwinn would have. Childhood doesn’t care what badge is on the frame.

Like every aspiring cyclist, I began with training wheels, rocking awkwardly from side to side, convinced I was riding while those little wheels quietly prevented disaster.

My father would jog beside me, one hand steadying the seat while I pedaled with all my might. One day the training wheels were gone, and so was his hand. I didn’t realize he had let go until I looked back and saw him smiling from halfway down the block.

I was riding.

“I’m a man,” I probably thought, despite being about seven years old.

The greatest expedition of my young life followed soon afterward.

I pedaled completely around our block in Whitestone by myself. By today’s standards it was only a few city streets. To me, it was Magellan circumnavigating the globe. The world had suddenly become larger—and somehow more reachable.

Soon my bicycle became transportation, independence, and social network all rolled into one.

My friends and I rode to the neighborhood candy store to see whether the newest Superman comic had arrived. We clipped baseball cards into our spokes to imitate motorcycle engines. Second string players became willing sacrifices.

But Mickey Mantle?

Never.

Even a kid knew there were some things too valuable to destroy.

As the years passed, bicycles became less about neighborhoods and more about horizons.

Friends talked me into riding the Tecate-to-Ensenada ride in Mexico. By the finish my quadriceps were staging a revolt, but the long descent toward the coast made every painful pedal stroke worthwhile. Recovery, naturally, occurred at Señor Frog’s with a well-earned cerveza that tasted suspiciously like modern sports medicine.

Years later I found myself riding along California’s Highway 1 through Del Mar and Santa Barbara. My cycling nutrition was elegantly simple: a granola bar, a Mountain Dew, and youthful confidence that somehow everything would work out.

Then came one of life’s greatest pleasures—watching my own sons discover the same freedom that a bicycle had given me decades earlier. My older son chose independence over convenience, pedaling uphill to high school each morning while the school bus rolled past. The climb built stronger legs, but I suspect it also built character. My younger son learned under somewhat more memorable circumstances. His classroom was a narrow paved trail through the Everglades, bordered on both sides by alligator-infested water. There was little room for wobbling, no luxury of wide-open grassy fields. He learned to ride straight as an arrow, with remarkable focus and determination. Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether the alligators were simply excellent cycling instructors. Fortunately, they never had to give a practical demonstration.

Forty years after those California rides, I found myself cycling again—this time with Backroads through Spain and Portugal.

The bicycle had evolved.

So had I.

Gone was the heavy steel frame, replaced by a featherweight titanium e-bike whose discreet battery quietly compensated for muscles that no longer recovered overnight.

Gone were the convenience-store snacks.

Now lunch featured local cheeses, smoked salmon, crusty bread dipped in peppery olive oil, remarkable wines, and leisurely conversations overlooking vineyards that had been producing grapes for centuries.

The scenery had changed from suburban Queens to medieval villages.

The engine had changed from youthful legs to lithium-ion batteries.

But the feeling was exactly the same.

Freedom.

There’s something poetic about the evolution of the bicycle itself.

From the towering, precarious Penny-farthing—with its enormous front wheel daring riders to pitch headfirst onto cobblestones—to today’s marvels of titanium and carbon fiber, hydraulic disc brakes, electronic shifting, and electric assist, every generation has made cycling lighter, safer, faster, and more accessible. The bicycle may be one of humanity’s most beautifully refined inventions—an elegant machine that has continuously improved without ever losing its essential simplicity.

It even helped launch another revolution.

Before they conquered the skies, Orville and Wilbur Wright owned and operated a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. Building and repairing bicycles taught them precision machining, balance, lightweight construction, and steering dynamics—the very skills that ultimately allowed them to solve the problem of human flight. It seems fitting that humanity learned to balance on two wheels before learning to soar on two wings.

As I look back, I realize bicycles have quietly marked every chapter of my life.

They taught me balance before I understood the word.

They gave me independence before I had a driver’s license.

They carried me toward friendships, adventures, and discoveries that still make me smile decades later.

They became a bridge between generations, carrying first a little boy around a block in Whitestone, then a young man across Mexico and California, then my own sons toward their independence, and finally an aging physician through the vineyards and ancient villages of Europe.

Today, with a little help from modern technology—and an electric motor wise enough to ignore my birth certificate—I continue to pedal.

Not as fast.

Not as far under my own power.

But perhaps with greater appreciation.

The bicycle has never really been about getting from one place to another.

It has always been about freedom, curiosity, and the quiet joy of discovering what lies around the next bend.

For nearly eight decades, it has carried me through life.

And I’m not finished riding yet.

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Lessons from Lisbon, Madrid and Madison Square Garden

What Makes a Civilization Great?

What the Knicks and the Iberian Peninsula Teach About Greatness

As I watched the New York Knicks march toward a championship, I found myself thinking less about basketball and more about history.
Championships are often explained through the mythology of the superstar. We celebrate the dominant scorer, the transcendent athlete, the singular genius who carries everyone else to glory.
Yet the Knicks offered a different lesson.
Jalen Brunson was unquestionably their leader, but this was not a one-man team. Their success depended on relationships forged years earlier at Villanova. These were players who trusted one another instinctively, who understood where teammates would be before they arrived, and who were willing to sacrifice statistics, shots, and even money for a larger goal.
Brunson famously left substantial money on the table to help the organization assemble a deeper roster. In a professional sports world often defined by maximizing individual gain, he chose collective success.
The result was not merely a winning team. It was a cooperative enterprise. And history suggests that great civilizations are built the exact same way.

The Chemistry of Convivencia

During our recent trip through Spain and Portugal, I was struck by how often the story of Iberian greatness was actually a story of collaboration among very different peoples.
Long before the Inquisition, the Iberian Peninsula became the world’s vibrant center of learning. This didn’t happen because one culture triumphed over another, but because multiple cultures interacted in a unique ecosystem of coexistence, or Convivencia.

  • Romans contributed law, infrastructure, and language.
  • Muslim scholars brought radical advances in mathematics, navigation, and agriculture while preserving Greek philosophy.
  • Christian kingdoms eventually provided the political framework that inherited this vast reservoir of knowledge.
    But it was the region’s Jewish scholars and statesmen who often served as the vital connective tissue—the ultimate “glue guys” of the Mediterranean world—functioning as the translators, diplomats, scientists, and financial administrators who made the system run.

Hasdai ibn Shaprut (c. 915–970): The Ultimate Catalyst In the Golden Age of Córdoba, Ibn Shaprut served as a physician, translator, and foreign minister to the Caliph. He utilized his multi-linguistic mastery to translate the famous medical texts of Dioscorides into Arabic, establishing Iberia as Europe’s medical capital. As a diplomat, he negotiated complex alliances between Muslim rulers and Christian monarchs, proving that intellectual and political synthesis was the true engine of Iberian prosperity.

The Knowledge Enablers

When we look closer at the Golden Age of Spain and Portugal, the intellectual peaks were achieved not through isolation, but through an intentional exchange of ideas.
Consider Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), born in Córdoba. While globally revered as a towering rabbi and philosopher, Maimonides was also a brilliant physician who wrote extensively on hygiene, pharmacology, and psychology. His philosophical masterpiece, The Guide for the Perplexed, sought to harmonize Aristotelian science with divine revelation. His works were eagerly read not just by Jews, but by Christian thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Muslim scholars alike, fueling the intellectual fire of the entire continent.
This collaboration yielded practical, world-changing technology. The famous translation schools of Toledo transformed Europe by turning ancient Greek and Arabic texts into Latin. Suddenly, Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy were available to a continent hungry for knowledge.
When it came to the Age of Exploration, Portugal’s maritime empire was literally guided by Jewish science:

[Jewish & Islamic Astronomical Data] 
               │
               ▼
   [The Perpetual Almanac] (Abraham Zacuto)
               │
               ▼
[Advanced Cartography & Astrolabes]
               │
               ▼
  [Global Maritime Exploration]

The legendary astronomer and mathematician Abraham Zacuto (1452–1515) revolutionized navigation. His life’s work, The Perpetual Almanac, alongside his improvements to the copper astrolabe, allowed sailors to determine their latitude at sea using the sun rather than the stars.
Without Zacuto’s calculations and personal consultations, there might have been no Vasco da Gama reaching India, no Pedro Álvares Cabral reaching Brazil, and no Portuguese trading empire stretching from Africa to Asia.
The remarkable achievements of Spain and Portugal were not products of isolation. They were products of connection.

The Cost of Exclusion

Yet history also reveals how fragile such success can be. Beginning in the late fifteenth century, Spain and Portugal gradually abandoned the very conditions that had fueled their rise.
The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 systematically removed the most educated, skilled, and commercially connected citizens from the peninsula. Abraham Zacuto himself was forced to flee to Lisbon, and later Tunis, taking his brilliant mind away from the Iberian sphere.
This purge of human capital soon stretched from the cities to the fields. In the 1520s, the Spanish Crown banned Islam entirely, forcing the remaining Moorish population to convert or flee. These Morisco communities comprised the foundational backbone of Spain’s agricultural sector. For generations, they had engineered and maintained highly sophisticated, intricate systems of irrigation, terracing, and water management that kept the arid landscapes of Valencia and Andalusia incredibly fertile.
When this specialized expertise was systematically uprooted and driven out, the consequences were immediate and devastating. The complex canal networks fell into disrepair, agricultural productivity plummeted, and once-abundant yields dropped dramatically. Spain quickly found that you cannot exile your primary food producers without paying a severe price; as the agricultural infrastructure collapsed, localized famines began to creep across the countryside.

[Forced Conversion/Exile of Moorish Peasantry (1520s)]
                         │
                         ▼
      [Collapse of Sophisticated Irrigation Networks]
                         │
                         ▼
           [Severe Drop in Agricultural Yields]
                         │
                         ▼
             [Creeping Famine and Depopulation]

At the exact same time, enormous quantities of silver were flowing into Spain and Portugal from the Americas. Instead of stimulating innovation, this easy wealth reduced incentives to develop domestic industry or rebuild the shattered farming sector. The broad lesson remains: easy wealth can quickly become a substitute for creativity.
Meanwhile, nations such as the Netherlands and Great Britain adopted the exact playbook that had once made Iberia successful. They welcomed displaced Jewish merchants and skilled laborers, encouraged innovation, expanded scientific inquiry, and developed institutions that rewarded enterprise.
Leadership shifted. The world’s center of gravity moved northward.

The Contemporary Question

History does not repeat itself exactly, but it often rhymes.
Today, the United States remains the most innovative nation on earth. Our universities attract talented students from every continent. Our laboratories lead scientific discovery. Our entrepreneurs continue to create technologies that reshape the world.
But these strengths depend on openness.
Scientific progress thrives on collaboration. Medical breakthroughs emerge from international networks of researchers. Innovation accelerates when people with different experiences, perspectives, and skills work together toward common goals.
When nations become fearful of outsiders, suspicious of rigorous inquiry, or hostile to global intellectual exchange, they risk weakening the very forces that created their success.
The lesson of the Knicks is surprisingly similar to the lesson of pre-Inquisition Iberia. Greatness is rarely the product of a single star, or a single insular culture.
Whether in basketball, science, business, or civilization itself, success emerges from cooperation. The most successful teams are not always the ones with the highest raw talent; they are the ones that best combine talent, trust, shared purpose, and a willingness to sacrifice individual advantage for collective achievement.
Civilizations are no different.
The question facing every great nation is whether it will continue attracting talent, embracing knowledge, and building institutions that encourage cooperation—or whether it will retreat into exclusion and self-congratulation.
The Knicks answered that question on the basketball court. History answered it centuries ago.
The question now is whether we are paying attention.

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Miracles on 34th Street


New York City has endured its share of sporting futility, but basketball failure feels particularly unnatural.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

The game was invented by James Naismith only a few states away. From the late nineteenth century onward, New York blanketed its boroughs with playgrounds, blacktops, school gyms, and settlement houses where basketball became part of the city’s DNA. College basketball once revolved around New York. Madison Square Garden was its cathedral. In 1950, CCNY accomplished something that will never be repeated: winning both the NIT and NCAA championships in the same season.

Then something happened.

The point-shaving scandals of the early 1950s cast a long shadow over New York basketball. One of the CCNY players caught up in the scandal later became my neighbor in Queens. Growing up, I would occasionally see him and knew little of his history. Only years later did I understand that he had been part of a team that represented the pinnacle of New York basketball and the scandal that helped bring that era to an abrupt end. 

New York basketball has spent much of the ensuing seventy-five years trying to recapture what was lost. The city’s college dominance evaporated. The original Pennsylvania Station, perhaps the most magnificent railroad terminal America ever built, was demolished and Madison Square Garden rose over its ashes.

The Garden would become “The World’s Most Famous Arena,” but not because of basketball. A few stories below the court, travelers could catch a train out of town. The building hosted political conventions, rallies, concerts, and iconic boxing matches. For basketball, its enduring image remains Willis Reed limping from the tunnel before Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.

The Knicks’ history has largely been a study in longing.

They lost to the Rochester Royals before I was old enough to understand disappointment. They spent decades staring up at the Celtics. Patrick Ewing’s finger roll rolled off the rim. John Starks misfired fifteen times in a decisive Finals game. The years that followed brought a parade of bad decisions, overpaid rosters, lottery disappointments, and steadily rising ticket prices to watch increasingly mediocre basketball.

Yet basketball runs deep in native New Yorkers.

We played before school, during recess, after dinner, and until the streetlights came on. Every neighborhood had a court and every court had legends. I remember hearing about a kid in seventh grade who stood only five-foot-nine and could dunk a basketball. Endless debates followed: what would you rather accomplish, dunking a basketball or winning a Nobel Prize?

The answer was always dunking.

So when the Knicks fell behind by twenty-nine points in the second half yesterday, the familiar feeling returned. Futility was back in town.

I shut off the television in disgust and went to bed.

Around 11:40 p.m., I could hear noise drifting up Third Avenue from the direction of the Garden. I ignored it. A text arrived from an old colleague in California. I didn’t open it. I assumed it was another taunt.

The Knicks had broken my heart too many times to earn the benefit of the doubt.

The next morning I glanced at the score.

Knicks 107.

Spurs 106.

I looked again.

Surely I was reading the wrong game.

But there it was. A one-point victory. A comeback from twenty-nine down. One of the greatest playoff rallies in franchise history. Miracles, it turns out, still happen on 34th Street.

Walking through Manhattan later that morning, I noticed Knicks jerseys everywhere. Construction workers patching potholes on Lexington Avenue were talking basketball. Strangers exchanged thumbs-up. The city seemed lighter.

For one morning at least, New York wasn’t carrying fifty-three years of basketball disappointment.

Could this finally be the end of the wandering?

The rational side of me remains cautious. Knicks fans have learned caution the hard way. Decades of disappointment create a futility blockade in the mind that even the most spectacular victory struggles to penetrate.

But perhaps something is changing.

Perhaps this team is writing a different ending.

And if they are, I will be there in spirit with Clyde Frazier, Earl Monroe, Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, and Dave DeBusschere, standing at the gates of deliverance, waiting to see whether the long exile is finally coming to an end.

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From Stonehenge to Manhattanhenge: 5,000 Years of Looking West at Sunset

As I stood on a Midtown Manhattan street corner one evening, I noticed an unusual gathering. Hundreds of people had assembled, staring intently toward the horizon. They stood shoulder to shoulder, phones held high, faces illuminated by a golden glow. Some appeared reverent. Others seemed excited. A few looked as if they were witnessing a religious miracle.

In a sense, they were.

The event was Manhattanhenge, the twice-yearly phenomenon when the setting sun aligns perfectly with Manhattan’s street grid. As the sun descended between the skyscrapers, the crowd collectively gasped, photographed, videotaped, and otherwise documented the event from every conceivable angle.

Watching them, I couldn’t help wondering: Have we really evolved all that much from our ancestors?

For thousands of years, human beings have worshipped the sun. Ancient Egyptians revered Ra, the sun god who sailed across the heavens each day. The Incas worshipped Inti and built elaborate ceremonies around the solar cycle. The Maya designed temples and pyramids that aligned with celestial events. Across Europe, Stonehenge was constructed with astonishing precision to mark the solstices.

The sun was not merely a source of light. It was life itself. It determined harvests, seasons, migrations, and survival. Entire civilizations oriented themselves around its movements.

Fast forward to twenty-first-century Manhattan.

The sun no longer determines whether our crops survive. Most New Yorkers couldn’t identify a wheat field if it appeared in Times Square. Yet twice each year, thousands leave their offices, interrupt phone calls, postpone dinner reservations, and gather in the middle of traffic to witness the setting sun.

The difference is that ancient priests carried staffs while modern pilgrims carry iPhones.

The Maya climbed temple stairs to observe the heavens. New Yorkers climb out of the subway at 42nd Street.

Stonehenge required decades of labor. Manhattanhenge required an 1811 city planning commission and a lot of real estate developers.

Ancient observers carefully recorded celestial events on stone tablets. Modern observers upload them to Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook before the sun has even disappeared below the horizon.

One suspects that if a Mayan astronomer suddenly appeared in Midtown during Manhattanhenge, he would immediately recognize what was happening. He might be confused by the yoga pants, food-delivery bicycles, and Starbucks cups, but he would understand the crowd.

“Ah,” he would say. “These people have gathered to honor the sun.”

“Not exactly,” we would reply. “We’re creating content.”

The more I thought about it, the more Manhattanhenge seemed less like an astronomical event and more like a reminder of something deeply human. We are drawn to moments that make us feel connected to something larger than ourselves. The sun setting between Manhattan’s towers transforms ordinary streets into cathedrals. Glass office buildings become modern standing stones. Traffic lanes become ceremonial pathways.

For a few brief minutes, nobody is looking at stock prices, political polls, text messages, or emails. Everyone is looking in the same direction.

That may be the most remarkable part.

In a city famous for individual ambition, millions of people pursuing millions of different goals suddenly stop and share a common experience. They are united by a celestial event that their ancestors would have instantly understood.

Of course, there are differences.

The ancient Maya occasionally practiced human sacrifice.

Modern Manhattanites merely sacrifice battery life.

The priests of Stonehenge probably didn’t spend fifteen minutes trying to find the perfect filter.

And while Incan worshippers undoubtedly hoped for a successful harvest, today’s participants mostly hope their photographs will get more likes than their friends’ photographs.

Yet beneath the humor lies a serious truth.

Human beings have always sought meaning in the sky. We have always paused when nature offers us a moment of beauty. We have always gathered together to witness extraordinary alignments between heaven and earth.

The temples have changed.

The rituals have changed.

The technology has certainly changed.

But the impulse remains remarkably familiar.

Five thousand years after our ancestors stood before stone circles, pyramids, and sun temples, we still gather at sunset.

Only now we do it in Midtown Manhattan, wearing sneakers, holding smartphones, and hoping for good Wi-Fi.

Perhaps that is what Manhattanhenge really teaches us: beneath all our technology, sophistication, and urban complexity, there is still a small part of every human being that wants to stop, look toward the horizon, and worship the sun.

Or at least get a really good picture of it.

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Why I Would Make an Excellent Coxswain

An open application to Georgetown Rowing, submitted from a highly qualified bench near the Potomac

There comes a time in every retired physician’s life when he must ask himself the big questions:

Have I contributed enough to society?
Have I learned enough about the human condition?
Can I still yell at young people in a constructive manner while sitting down?

That last question, I believe, points me toward my next great calling: coxswain.

For the uninitiated, the coxswain is the small but mighty field general of a rowing shell. While the rowers provide muscle, sweat, blisters, and the faint aroma of wet Lycra, the coxswain provides direction, rhythm, motivation, steering, and what my family would describe as “a socially sanctioned opportunity to be bossy.”

In other words: I was born for this.

I am retired, which means I possess the most important qualification of all: availability. I am also increasingly immobile, which in ordinary life might be considered a limitation. But in rowing, the coxswain is not expected to row. He sits. He observes. He commands. At last, a sport has emerged that rewards my current athletic profile.

I spend time down by the Potomac, watching Georgetown students glide across the water with youth, discipline, and suspiciously healthy knees. I admire them. They are bright, strong, and purposeful. I would like to help. More specifically, I would like to sit in the stern of their boat with a bullhorn and improve morale through a combination of nautical insight, grandfatherly encouragement, and mild cardiology-level urgency.

My recent piano studies would also make me invaluable. Rowing, like music, depends on tempo. Too fast and the boat becomes chaos. Too slow and everyone looks like they are commuting to Rosslyn. I am learning rhythm, timing, and the spiritual power of repetition. I can already envision myself chanting:

“Row, row, row… gently? No. Firmly. Together. On my count. Again. No, not like that.”

The classic song Row, Row, Row Your Boat has been criminally underused as a training tool. With enough metronomic precision, I could transform it from nursery rhyme to aquatic battle hymn. Imagine eight Georgetown athletes, blades flashing, shell surging forward, while I maintain perfect tempo like Leonard Bernstein in a life vest.

I also like bullhorns. This is not incidental. Some men collect watches. Some collect golf clubs. I appreciate amplification. A bullhorn gives the retired man what Medicare does not: projection. I could deliver crisp, actionable commands across the Potomac with the confidence of a man who has spent decades telling patients to avoid seeds, nuts, alcohol, red meat, stress, and Google.

My medical background would be a bonus. Should a rower complain of abdominal pain, I could immediately distinguish between appendicitis, gas, overtraining, and “you’re 19, keep rowing.” If someone develops blisters, I can offer empathy. If someone becomes short of breath, I can say, “Excellent, that means you are exercising.”

I would also bring maturity. Many coxswains motivate with youthful intensity. I would bring something different: historical perspective. During a race, while other boats shout “Power ten!” I might call:

“Remember the Peloponnesian War!”
“Think of Washington crossing the Delaware!”
“Imagine your tuition bill chasing you!”

That sort of thing stays with a crew.

And yes, I am still looking to earn a university letter. Some men letter in football. Some in baseball. I am proposing a new category: Distinguished Late-Life Coxswain Emeritus. I would accept a sweater, a blazer patch, or frankly even a laminated certificate. I am not proud. I am, however, very available for ceremonies.

The photograph of the rowers says it all. There they are, powerful and synchronized, cutting across the Potomac with purpose. And there I am, not pictured, standing nearby thinking: “Those boys need rhythm, wisdom, and possibly a retired gastroenterologist with a megaphone.”

So, Georgetown, consider this my formal application.

I can sit.
I can shout.
I can count to eight.
I am learning piano.
I like your students.
I own comfortable shoes.
And I promise never to confuse port and starboard more than twice per outing.

Put me in the boat.

Or at least give me a bullhorn and a letter sweater.

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What Hawkeye Taught Me About Hantavirus

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In the first two years of medical school at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, Monday nights had a ritual quality.

A group of us would gather in the medical school library to watch M*A*S*H. We laughed at Hawkeye, rolled our eyes at Frank Burns, admired Colonel Potter, and quoted Radar. But somewhere between the wisecracks and the operating room scenes, many of us were quietly learning medicine.

And not bad medicine, either.

One episode stayed with me for decades.

It involved Korean Hemorrhagic Fever — what we now recognize as a hantavirus-related illness. The episode, “Mr. and Mrs. Who?”, aired in the 1970’s. While the comic storyline involved Charles Winchester accidentally acquiring a wife during a drunken Tokyo weekend, the real medical drama centered around soldiers developing a mysterious hemorrhagic fever with renal failure.  

The physicians at the 4077th struggled with fluid management, shock, electrolyte abnormalities, and kidney failure. The disease had phases. Patients deteriorated suddenly. There was debate over hypertonic saline and rigid military directives. Nobody fully understood the illness.

That uncertainty was historically accurate.

During the Korean War, thousands of United Nations soldiers developed what was then called Korean Hemorrhagic Fever. The actual causative virus — Hantaan virus — was not identified until 1978, years after the war itself.  

And there I was, a medical student in Los Angeles, absorbing it through television.

What made M*A*S*H different from most medical dramas was its obsession with getting the medicine right. The show’s legendary medical consultant, Dr. Walter Dishell, insisted on realism in the scripts and operating room details. The medicine mattered. The diseases mattered. The patients mattered.

Even the setting mattered to us at USC.

Our lecture hall carried the name of Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood studio mogul. There was always an odd but unmistakable connection between medicine and storytelling at USC. Hollywood was only a few miles away, and somehow that intersection produced a generation of physicians who learned not just from textbooks and rounds, but from carefully crafted television.

Years later, the lesson resurfaced.

In 1993 came the Sin Nombre hantavirus outbreak in the American Southwest — the “Four Corners” outbreak. Young healthy people suddenly developed pulmonary failure after exposure to aerosolized rodent droppings. Physicians scrambled to identify a mysterious pathogen. The disease entered the public consciousness almost overnight.

And somewhere in the back of my mind was Hawkeye Pierce talking about hemorrhagic fever.

Then recently came the widely publicized death of the wife of Gene Hackman, reportedly linked to hantavirus exposure, followed by news reports involving suspected hantavirus illness on a cruise ship. Suddenly the terminology sounded familiar again — not because I had recently reviewed infectious disease journals, but because of a television episode I watched over fifty years ago in medical school.

That is the extraordinary thing about narrative medicine and visual memory.

I may not remember every Krebs cycle intermediate from 1975, but I vividly remember Hawkeye and B.J. debating fluid management for hemorrhagic fever patients.

Television, at its best, creates durable memory pathways. It attaches medical facts to emotion, humor, fear, and character. We remember stories better than lists.

Medical education now talks endlessly about “multimedia learning.” We had it already. It simply starred Alan Alda.

And perhaps that is why Alan Alda deserves a little credit from an entire generation of physicians.

He made medicine human.

He made curiosity admirable.

And without realizing it, he may have helped many of us remember a rare infectious disease long enough to recognize it decades later when it re-entered the news cycle.

Not bad for a Monday night in the library.

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The Cookie I Chased for 70 Years: Found Me On My Birthday

This post is rewritten to reflect recent developments:

Some people chase fame, fortune, or the fountain of youth. Me? I chase black-and-white cookies. Not just a black-and-white cookie—I’m talking about the black-and-white cookie. This is less a hobby and more a lifelong pursuit—part nostalgia, part stubbornness, and part refusal to accept mediocrity in baked goods.

My journey has taken me from childhood bakeries that no longer exist…to modern-day pilgrimages that occasionally end in heartbreak. (More on that Florida debacle later.) But every once in a while, just when the trail seems cold, something unexpected happens.

Like this year—on my 73rd birthday—when the cookie found me.

A Love Letter to the Black-and-White Cookie

Let’s get one thing straight: the black-and-white cookie is not a cookie. It’s a cake wearing a cookie costume.

Soft. Slightly domed. Tender but not flimsy. And topped with that signature half-and-half glaze—vanilla on one side, chocolate on the other—like a dessert that couldn’t decide and wisely chose both.

The icing is where greatness lives or dies. It should be thin, almost fondant-like—not a slab of sugary drywall. The vanilla side should be clean and bright. The chocolate side should taste like cocoa, not compromise.

No sprinkles. No fillings. No nonsense.

This is not dessert innovation. This is dessert perfection.

For me, it’s more than food. It’s memory. It’s New York. It’s childhood. It’s a time when bakeries smelled like sugar and promise, and one cookie could make your entire day.

A Bite of History

The black-and-white cookie has been around for over a century, which already gives it more staying power than most things on the internet.

Often associated with New York, its origins are debated. Some credit Bavarian immigrants. Others point to Glaser’s Bake Shop, which opened in 1902 and helped define the form before closing in 2018—an event that should have warranted citywide mourning.

Screenshot

Jewish bakeries and delis carried the torch, turning the black-and-white into an icon. Even Seinfeld weighed in, famously declaring it a symbol of harmony.

I’ll leave the philosophy to Jerry. I’m here for the icing.

The One That Got Away: Adventurers Inn

Every obsession has its origin story. Mine involves a now-defunct amusement park in Queens: Adventurers Inn.

They didn’t just serve black-and-whites. They served a double-decker version.

Two layers. Twice the cake. Twice the icing. A structural achievement that should have required an engineering permit.

As a kid, I stared at it like it was edible mythology. And then—like all great childhood institutions—Adventurers Inn disappeared, taking my beloved double-decker with it.

I’ve been chasing that ghost ever since.

The Delray Beach Debacle

Fast forward to recent times. I hear whispers of greatness at Boy’s Farmers Market. Naturally, I go.

The bakery counter was five people deep. Not a line—a contact sport.

Elbows were deployed. Orders barked. Boxes clutched like lottery winnings.

I hovered. I strategized. I briefly considered a pick-and-roll maneuver.

But in the end? I walked away. No cookie. Just dignity… and a growing suspicion that the best black-and-white in Florida was five feet away and completely inaccessible without shoulder pads.

Still, if it’s that crowded, they’re doing something right.

The Birthday Surprise (When the Cookie Found Me)

And then—just when I least expected it—came my 73rd birthday.

No bakery pilgrimage. No crowded counters. No tactical maneuvering required.

Instead, my son’s mother-in-law—clearly a woman of exceptional judgment—had scoured the internet, found a recipe, and showed up with a batch of homemade black-and-white cookies.

What I walked into was less a kitchen and more a cookie workshop in full swing.

Rows of freshly baked cookies. Bowls of icing. Spatulas in motion. It had the feel of a family-run bakery—only warmer, livelier, and a lot more fun.

And then came the grandkids.

My granddaughter and grandson stepped right into the process with complete enthusiasm. They helped spread icing, sampled along the way, and brought a level of joy and energy that no professional bakery could ever replicate.

The cookies took on a little personality—some with a bit more chocolate, some with a bit more vanilla—but each one felt like it had a story behind it.

It was exactly how baking should be.

The cookies themselves? Genuinely excellent. Soft, balanced, with icing that captured the spirit of a true black-and-white.

But more importantly, they had something no bakery can reliably produce:

They had occasion.

The Search Continues

So here I am. Still chasing the perfect black-and-white cookie.

Maybe it’s in a hidden bakery.
Maybe it’s in a deli that hasn’t changed since 1975.
Maybe somewhere, somehow, a double-decker is waiting for its comeback tour.

But now I know something I didn’t before.

Sometimes the best version isn’t the one you chase.

Sometimes it’s the one that shows up—on your 73rd birthday—made in a busy kitchen, shared with family, and brought to life by a couple of enthusiastic young assistants who understand, instinctively, that dessert is supposed to be fun.

And frankly, they’re absolutely right.

The quest continues.

But for one day at least?

I caught it.

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The Mascot Hunger Games: Why Every City Needs Its Own “Running Presidents”

Let’s be honest: baseball is a game of statistics, tradition, and three-hour-long stretches where absolutely nothing happens except a grown man adjusting his gloves. That’s why we have mascots. Specifically, the Washington Nationals hit gold with the Racing Presidents. Seeing a giant-headed Abraham Lincoln accidentally clothesline George Washington is the peak of American athleticism.
But why should D.C. have all the fun? It’s time we localized the chaos. If we’re going to have 10-foot-tall foam caricatures sprinting for our entertainment, they should at least reflect the specific neuroses and local flavor of their home cities.
Here is my proposal for the “Mascot Races of the Future.”

New York City (Mets/Yankees): The Great Slice Scurry

Forget the subway race; let’s talk about what actually fuels the city.

  • The Competitors: Classic Pepperoni, Fancy Margherita, The Dollar Slice, and The Pineapple (The Villain).
  • The Twist: To win, they have to navigate a series of obstacles including a slow-walking tourist and a puddle of “mysterious liquid.” If the Pineapple slice wins, the stadium is legally required to boo for ten minutes.

Baltimore (Orioles): The Battle of the Bards

Baltimore is a city of history and very specific bragging rights.

  • The Competitors: Francis Scott Key vs. The Guy Who Wrote “America the Beautiful” (Katharine Lee Bates).
  • The Twist: Since Key wrote the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Baltimore Harbor, he gets a home-field advantage—but Bates gets to throw “Purple Mountain Majesties” (purple dodgeballs) at him from the infield.

Milwaukee (Brewers): The Hangover Heat

We know they have the Sausages, but let’s get corporate.

  • The Competitors: Giant foam cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life, and Schlitz.
  • The Twist: Halfway through the race, they have to stop and eat a bratwurst. The first one to finish without their foam lid popping off wins a “Best Utility Player” award and a nap.

San Francisco (Giants): The Tech Disruptors

The race starts at the center-field wall and ends at the Silicon Valley bank account.

  • The Competitors: The AI Startup Guy, The E-Scooter, and A Rent-Controlled Studio Apartment.
  • The Twist: The Apartment doesn’t actually move, yet somehow its value increases by 15% every inning. The AI Startup Guy claims he’s winning, but he’s actually just hallucinating the finish line.

Philadelphia (Phillies): The “Everything is a Projectile” Derby

Let’s be real, Philly fans don’t want a race; they want a spectacle.

  • The Competitors: A Giant Cheesesteak (Whiz Wit), A Parking Cone, and Ben Franklin.
  • The Twist: There is no finish line. The mascots just run until the fans start throwing batteries. Ben Franklin wins by default because he’s the only one wearing a kite for protection.

Pro Tip: If you ever find yourself at a game where a giant condiment is winning a race, bet on the Mustard. Ketchup always gets complacent in the final stretch.

Which city do you think would have the most chaotic race—and more importantly, what local food item would you put in a footrace against a historical figure?

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Organized Minds, Glorious Nerds

My grandson is at it again. He’s ticking off African nations — all 54 of them — with the focused serenity of a monk counting prayer beads.

Yesterday it was the counties of Texas. Before that, American presidents in reverse chronological order, which he performed at dinner with the calm confidence of a kid who has seen things. He lives in Washington, D.C., which I suspect is less a geographic choice than a spiritual one: he wants to be near the material.

I recognize him completely. I am him, sixty years earlier, haunting the mailbox in October waiting for the Information Please Almanac to arrive. When it did, I did not read it so much as inhale it — population densities, Olympic records, the gross national products of countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a globe.

Meanwhile, the World Book Encyclopedia sat on the shelf like a cathedral, and I was its most devoted worshipper. Volume P alone — Population, Planets, Presidents, Portugal — could sustain me through a dull February weekend.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who make lists… and those who pretend they don’t.

I come from a proud lineage of list-makers. Not casual, jot-it-on-a-napkin types—but the kind who would alphabetize their anxieties if given a quiet afternoon and a sharpened pencil.

My grandson, at the ripe old age of four, has already joined the guild. He ticks off countries in Africa like a seasoned diplomat, names U.S. states with the confidence of a campaign manager, and is working his way through presidents as if he has a clearance badge to the White House.

The List Gene

I blame genetics. Or perhaps nostalgia.

In my day—back when hair was longer and attention spans were shorter—we didn’t have YouTube serenading us with “Top 50 Rivers of Europe” set to a catchy beat.

We had the annual unveiling of the Information Please Almanac, which arrived with all the fanfare of a new iPhone launch, minus the line outside. And then there was the majestic World Book Encyclopedia—a 26-volume monument to curiosity and back strain.

You didn’t “Google” things. You hunted them. You earned them. You cross-referenced Mongolia like it owed you money—and if you wanted an update, you waited a year and hoped Mongolia hadn’t moved.

Surgical Precision, Trivial Pursuits

There is nothing quite like standing in an operating room, where a vascular surgeon is calmly repairing an aortic aneurysm while casually listing the ten tallest buildings in the world. (“Burj Khalifa, Shanghai Tower… suction please…”)

Meanwhile, a family practice colleague—clearly underutilized—recites the La Marseillaise backwards. Not clinically useful, but impressive enough to make you question your own hobbies.

We were supposed to be saving lives. Instead, we were mentally indexing them.

The Ken Jennings Ideal

And then there is the patron saint of us all: Ken Jennings. Seventy-four consecutive Jeopardy! victories. A human being who appeared to have simply agreed to remember everything, on the off chance someone would someday ask. When Ken Jennings walked onto that stage, he wasn’t showing off. He was reporting for duty.

Every one of us who ever memorized the order of the planets, the presidents, the periodic table, or the airports of Europe by IATA code contains a small Ken Jennings. A tiny, extremely well-organized Ken, sitting in the library of our hippocampus, cross-referencing, updating, waiting for his moment. We are all, in our hearts, training for Jeopardy!.

I suspect this is, at its core, a love of order in a disordered world. The universe tends toward entropy; the list-maker pushes back. You cannot control geopolitics, but you can, by God, know all the landlocked countries of Africa in alphabetical order.

You cannot cure mortality, but you can tell me the ten longest rivers on every continent, and for a moment — just a moment — the world is knowable, mappable, tamed.

The Sports Lists (Where It Gets Serious)

This is where list-making graduates from hobby to religion.

The Mickey Mantle File

Every self-respecting sports fan of a certain vintage has this memorized:

  • 536 home runs
  • 3 MVP awards
  • Triple Crown (1956)
  • Switch-hitter with tape-measure power from both sides
  • Knees held together by willpower and clubhouse tape

We didn’t just admire Mantle—we archived him.

The Los Angeles Lakers Pantheon

You can start an argument at any dinner table with this one:

  • Magic Johnson – ran Showtime like a jazz conductor who never missed a beat
  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – the skyhook: medicine’s answer to the unstoppable procedure
  • Kobe Bryant – relentless, surgical, occasionally terrifying
  • Shaquille O’Neal – less a player, more a controlled demolition
  • Jerry West – the logo, before branding departments existed

Ranking them is like choosing your favorite child—except everyone is louder about it.

The Tiger Woods Ledger

This one borders on scripture:

  • 15 major championships
  • The “Tiger Slam” (holding all four majors at once, 2000–2001)
  • Masters wins: 1997, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2019
  • U.S. Opens: 2000, 2002, 2008
  • The Open Championship: 2000, 2005, 2006
  • PGA Championships: 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007

If you play golf, you don’t just watch Tiger—you audit him.

The Modern Evolution: Musical Lists

Today’s children have upgraded tools.

My grandson doesn’t flip through encyclopedias—he watches YouTube videos where animated characters sing the capitals of Europe in a rhythm that gets stuck in your head for three days. I now know more about Slovenia than I ever intended, entirely due to a chorus line of cartoon goats.

It’s hard to compete with that. My generation had mnemonics. His has choreography—and better production values.

Why Lists Matter (or at Least Why We Think They Do)

There’s something deeply satisfying about a list:

  • It imposes order on chaos
  • It gives the illusion of mastery
  • It turns the infinite into something you can check off before dinner

Lists are how we convince ourselves we understand the world. If we can name all 50 states, surely we’ve conquered geography. If we know the presidents in order, history must be under control.

The Family Tradition Continues

And so I watch the next generation.

My grandson, sitting on the floor, confidently announcing: “I know all the countries in Africa.”

I don’t correct him—not because I’m generous, but because he’s usually right. Sudan and South Sudan? That update didn’t make it into my edition of the encyclopedia.

It’s a humbling experience to be outmatched in geopolitical awareness by someone who still needs help tying his shoes.

Final Entry

Somewhere along the way, I traded my encyclopedias for Google and my almanacs for apps. But the instinct remains.

To categorize. To rank. To recall.

And occasionally, to wonder—usually late at night—whether I could still name the ten tallest buildings in the world if someone handed me a scalpel.

Probably not.

But give me a list… and I’ll give it a shot.

A PARTIAL TAXONOMY OF LIST ENTHUSIASTS
1. The Completionist — Cannot rest until every African country, every Texas county, every U.S. president is accounted for. Sleep is optional. Gaps are not.
2. The Performance Lister — Deploys their lists at precisely the right moment. Dinner parties. Operating rooms. Elevators.
3. The Almanac Archaeologist — Keeps a 1965 World Almanac specifically because the 1965 data is still technically accurate for historical purposes.
4. The Trivia Athlete — Trains daily. Has a vision board. Watches Jeopardy! in the way most people watch playoff games.
5. The Backwards Reciter — A rare and specialized subspecies. Requires no further explanation.
6. The YouTube Mnemonist — Has learned 195 countries through earworm. Is unstoppable at parties.

WHAT WE KNOW FOR CERTAIN
1. Lists are not a quirk. They are a calling.
2. The almanac was the internet before the internet, and it had better binding.
3. YouTube trivia songs are a legitimate branch of classical education.
4. Any surgeon who can name the world’s tallest skyscrapers while operating has simply found an efficient use of bandwidth.
5. The Marseillaise backwards is probably not useful. It is nonetheless impressive.
6. A grandson who ticks off countries is not wasting time. He is building a mind.
7. Ken Jennings is proof that there is a God, and that God rewards those who pay attention.