Category: History

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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 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.

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The Lost Language of the Chart-Toppers: Why Bad Bunny Frustrates a Monolingual America

If you scroll through the comments of any major music publication today, you’ll find a recurring grievance: “Why is the biggest artist in the world singing in a language I don’t understand?” Bad Bunny’s refusal to “crossover” into English has become a cultural flashpoint. To some, it’s a triumphant display of Latino pride; to others, it’s a barrier to entry that feels alienating. But if we look back sixty or seventy years, the American listener was actually far more comfortable with a polyglot playlist than we are today.

What changed? It might be that we’ve lost the “shared trauma” that once forced us to look outward.

When the World Was on the Radio

In the 1950s and 60s, Americans didn’t just tolerate foreign-language hits; they celebrated them. Consider the landscape:

• Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” (1958): An Italian ballad that spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the first-ever Grammy for Record of the Year.

• Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki” (1963): A Japanese torch song that reached #1 despite the fact that most listeners had no idea it was actually a melancholy poem about walking to keep from crying.

• Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba”: A traditional Mexican huapango that became an indelible part of the early rock-and-roll DNA.

Even Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera,” while primarily English, leaned into its Spanish title as a universal mantra. Back then, the American ear was conditioned to find beauty in the melody, even when the vocabulary remained a mystery.

The Military Connection: A Global Perspective

There is a compelling argument that this mid-century musical tolerance was forged in the fires of World War II. After a global conflict that left 60 million dead, the world was irrevocably interconnected.

Millions of young American GIs were deployed to Europe and the Pacific. They weren’t just tourists; they were young people living in German villages, Italian cities, and Japanese occupied territories. They ate the food, heard the radio, and brought those sounds home in their kit bags.

This created a “globalized” generation. They had seen the wreckage of isolationism and, through sheer military exposure, developed a cultural elasticity. To a veteran who had spent two years in Naples, an Italian ballad on the radio didn’t feel like a “foreign intrusion”—it felt like a memory.

The Modern Divide: No Shared Experience

Contrast that with the environment that greets Bad Bunny today. Today’s United States lacks that unifying, outward-facing experience. We are more “connected” via the internet, but more “siloed” in our consumption.

• Algorithmic Bubbles: We only hear what we already like.

• The Lack of National Service: There is no longer a massive, cross-cultural “melting pot” experience like the draft to force diverse groups of Americans to live and work together.

• Language as Politics: In the current climate, Spanish isn’t just a language; it’s often treated as a political statement, making Bad Bunny’s success feel like a “takeover” to those who prefer an English-only status quo.

Final Thoughts

The criticism of Bad Bunny often stems from a feeling of being “left out.” But if the 1950s taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need to know the lyrics to feel the soul of a song.

Perhaps the reason we struggle with foreign-language hits today isn’t a lack of talent on the artist’s part, but a lack of curiosity on ours. We no longer have the grim necessity of global war to force us to see the world; now, we have to choose to look.

⭐ The True Foreign-Language #1 Hits in the U.S.

These were fully or predominantly non-English and went all the way:

  • Volare – Domenico Modugno (Italian) – 1958
  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto (Japanese) – 1963
  • Dominique – The Singing Nun (French) – 1963

That’s it — only three in the entire two decades reached #1 in their original languages.

📊 By Language

🇮🇹 Italian

  • Volare – Modugno
  • Al Di Là – Pericoli
  • O Dio Mio – Annette
  • Quando, Quando, Quando – Pat Boone

➡ Italian was the dominant foreign language on U.S. radio in the late ’50s/early ’60s (Sanremo effect + Italian-American audience).

🇪🇸 Spanish

  • La Bamba – Ritchie Valens
  • Guantanamera – The Sandpipers
  • El Watusi – Ray Barretto

➡ Spanish entered via rock & Latin dance crazes.

🇫🇷 French

  • Dominique – The Singing Nun
    ➡ The most unlikely #1 of the rock era.

🇯🇵 Japanese

  • Sukiyaki – Kyu Sakamoto
    ➡ Still the only Japanese-language U.S. Hot 100 #1 in history.
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I Went Back to my Kindergarten Class of 1958– Here is What I Told Them

Show and Tell, 67 Years Later

I arrive in Whitestone, Queens, in the soft, milk-glass light of 1958. The air smells faintly of chalk and floor wax. The sidewalks are narrower, the cars longer, the future quieter. I push open the classroom door and there you all are—knees scabbed, collars starched, haircuts obedient to gravity and mothers. Mrs. LaPenna stands watch, ruler nearby, smile doing most of the work.

You look up at me as if I’m a substitute teacher who took a wrong turn off the Whitestone Expressway. I tell you I’m one of you—just borrowed from a later inning of the same game. I’m here on a time pass from 2025, and I don’t have long.

I start with the easy truths.

“First,” I say, “you’re growing up in a good moment. The Dodgers have left Brooklyn, which hurts, but the Yankees are still a juggernaut. Elvis is on the radio. Ike is in the White House. Polio is on the ropes. Milk comes in bottles and your parents still believe tomorrow will be better because it usually is.”

A few of you grin. One kid in the front row adjusts his bow tie like it’s armor.

“Second,” I say, “hold onto this room. You won’t know it now, but classrooms like this—blackboard dust, wooden desks, a teacher who knows your full name—are where the country learns how to argue without fighting. You’ll need that skill.”

I tell you what’s coming, gently.

“There will be a man on television named Kennedy who makes politics look young. There will be marches where people insist—out loud—that America live up to its own handwriting. There will be a war you’ll see every night at dinner. Some of you will go. Some of you will protest. Most of you will just try to make sense of it all.”

You fidget. Big words for small shoes.

“So here’s the advice,” I say, and I lean in because advice should never be shouted.

“Be curious longer than is comfortable. Read beyond the assignment. Learn how things work—your body, a carburetor, a balance sheet, a sentence. When the world tells you to pick a side fast, slow down. Speed makes noise; understanding makes progress.”

I point to the windows. “Neighborhoods change. Whitestone will still be here, but it will look different. That’s not a loss—it’s a relay. You’ll carry what matters and pass it on.”

I pause, then add the part I didn’t know in kindergarten.

“You will fail at things you’re good at and succeed at things you never planned. That’s not hypocrisy—it’s growth. Be kind to yourself when the map gets smudged.”

Someone asks about the future—always the future.

I smile. “In 2025, you’ll carry a small rectangle in your pocket that knows almost everything. It will be miraculous and distracting. Use it to learn, not to disappear. And when it tells you the world is on fire, remember this room. Remember how a group of five-year-olds once sat still long enough to listen.”

Mrs. LaPenna clears her throat—the bell is coming.

“One more thing,” I say. “Call your parents more than you think you should. Thank teachers while you can. Save a photograph like this and look at it when you’re unsure who you are. You’re in here. So is everyone you’ll ever be.”

The bell rings. Chairs scrape. Time tightens.

As I step back into 2025, the chalk dust follows me for a second, then settles. I carry it with me—the proof that before the headlines and the hindsight, before the decades did what decades do, there was a room in Whitestone where the future sat cross-legged and waited its turn to speak.

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Liberty, Land Deals, and the Lost Colony of Vandalia:

How Real Estate Speculation Helped Spark the American Revolution

Everyone learns the American Revolution was about liberty, rights, Enlightenment ideals, and maybe some cranky guys in Boston who took their tea way too seriously.

But there’s another story (highlighted in Ken Burns documentary on the Revolutionary War) — the property story — where the Revolution looks less like a philosophical uprising and more like a group of wealthy Virginians who believed deeply in freedom, self-determination, and their God-given right to buy land west of the Appalachians and flip it for profit.

This is that story.

The story of land, liberty… and one spectacularly failed frontier real-estate venture called Vandalia.

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1. Before They Were Founders, They Were the Original Real Estate Syndicate

The Virginia gentry of the 1760s weren’t just planting tobacco and writing political pamphlets.

They were busy accumulating land like it was a colonial version of Monopoly.

The roster of early-American real estate titans included:

George Washington

If Washington were alive today, he’d be on HGTV explaining riverfront parcels and ROI on Kanawha Valley acreage. The man owned tens of thousands of acres in the Ohio River Valley, much of it technically illegal under British law — a detail he resolved by ignoring British law.

Thomas Jefferson

Dreamed of a nation of yeoman farmers cultivating the American West… on lands Jefferson already had his eye on.

Patrick Henry

Before “Liberty or Death,” he might as well have said, “Kentucky land grants or a very stern letter.”

George Mason

Wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and bought frontier acreage in roughly the same breath.

Richard Henry Lee

The man who proposed independence also proposed a number of highly optimistic western land investments.

This group was less “Founding Fathers” and more “Colonial Berkshire Hathaway.”

Their philosophy was simple:

Buy cheap, survey often, hope the Crown doesn’t notice.

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2. Enter Britain, Stage Left, With a Giant ‘No Trespassing’ Sign

After the French & Indian War, Britain was:

• Broke

• Tired

• Allergic to further Native wars

• Deeply suspicious of ambitious Virginians with surveying equipment

So in 1763, the Crown issued the Proclamation Line, banning settlement west of the Appalachians.

This did not sit well with men who had already purchased, surveyed, subdivided, or preemptively named half of West Virginia.

Then came the Quebec Act of 1774, which effectively reassigned part of the Ohio region to Canada.

To Virginians, this was like finding out your beachfront condo had been rezoned as “Greater Toronto.”

If Parliament wanted to anger Americans, they were doing a stellar job.

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3. The Shawnee Perspective:

“Stop Surveying Things That Belong to Us.”

Here’s the part land speculators usually glossed over:

People already lived there.

The Shawnee, along with the Mingo, Delaware, and other Ohio Valley nations, did not want Virginians marching in with compasses, boundary chains, and vague promises of “fair compensation.”

Their viewpoint was clear:

“This is our home.

You are not invited.

Please go back to Virginia.

They had just fought the French, fought the British, and now watched survey parties tromp across their hunting grounds like they were measuring for a golf course.

When Virginians pushed deeper, the Shawnee pushed back — diplomatically at first, then militarily.

Conflicts like Dunmore’s War (1774) were basically the Shawnee saying:

“I’m serious. Stop drawing lines on my land.”

Britain, trying to avoid more frontier wars, sided with the Shawnee.

This was completely reasonable…

and completely infuriating to land-hungry Virginians.

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4. And Then There’s Vandalia:

Franklin’s Frontier Colony That Never Was

Benjamin Franklin, never one to miss a business opportunity, helped conceive Vandalia, a shiny new British colony carved out of what is now:

• West Virginia

• Kentucky

• Western Pennsylvania

Part real estate venture, part political project, part ambitious retirement plan, Vandalia would’ve had:

• Pittsburgh as the capital

• Tens of thousands of acres available for settlement

• Investors counting their profits before a single settler arrived

The plan actually received preliminary approval in London.

Then three things happened:

1. The British treasury panicked

2. The Shawnee objected (see above)

3. Virginia and Pennsylvania both screamed, “That’s our land!”

Finally the British said:

“Never mind. No Vandalia.”

Franklin’s investments evaporated, along with his patience for British land policy.

When a man loses a fortune, he reflects deeply on liberty.

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5. The Ingredients for Revolution (Real Estate Edition)

By the 1770s, a combustible mixture had formed:

• Wealthy Virginians with land they couldn’t use

• Franklin with a failed colony he couldn’t build

• Veterans promised land grants they couldn’t claim

• A British government blocking westward expansion

• Shawnee nations refusing displacement

• A colonial belief that “freedom” meant expanding westward without London’s permission

Add taxes, stir gently, and light with a spark from Lexington and Concord.

Voila.

Revolution.

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6. So Did America Fight for Liberty or Land?

Yes.

Both.

The founders passionately believed in:

• Natural rights

• Representative government

• Self-determination

• And turning a tidy profit on riverside acreage in the Ohio Valley

We aren’t cheapening the Revolution by saying this.

We’re telling the truth in full.

America was absolutely founded on high ideals —

and also on an epic real estate dispute.

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7. The Bottom Line

The Revolution wasn’t just about Parliament and taxes.

It was about a tug-of-war between:

• British officials trying to avoid frontier wars

• Shawnee communities fighting for their homeland

• Virginia gentlemen defending their right to buy land they didn’t live on

Freedom and property were so intertwined that by 1776, the Founding Fathers could barely tell them apart.

So yes — America was born out of liberty, Enlightenment ideals…

and a very early form of frontier real-estate frustration.