On The Fly

In this episode, Finding Peace Beyond the Headlines. This afternoon, I sit by the open window as the house settles into a generous quiet. Beyond the screen, the backyard breathes. A gentle slope rises to a vine-draped fence, as if the earth has drawn a soft green curtain. A breeze stirs the wind chimes—no performance, just a few wandering notes—and birds move in quiet procession to and from the feeder, intent on their small, necessary lives. I haven’t stepped outside, and yet I’m there—folded into the rhythm of it all. Then, inevitably, my gaze shifts. Away from the trees. Toward the world. And the contrast lands. The headlines arrive like a tornado we didn’t ask for—except this weather has producers. Somewhere, I imagine, a meeting is underway: “Gentlemen, what do we have today?” “Well, sir, things are mostly stable.” “…That won’t work. Can anything be on fire?” And just like that, the day is rebranded. Chaos loops. Anger echoes. Division hums beneath everything. If a meteor doesn’t s...

In this episode - Ticklish Trivia . . . In the distant annals of history, around the 4th century BC, the illustrious Aristotle, in his contemplative wisdom, mulled over a quirk of nature: the peculiar vulnerability of human beings to tickling. His reasoning? Humans have finely-tuned skin and an exclusive laughter privilege over animals. Though Aristotle's ideas may have veered off-course like a compass in a magnetic storm, they set the stage for a procession of thinkers like Descartes, Spinoza, Galileo, and Darwin to wade into the ticklish terrain. Fast-forward through the ages, some 2,500 years of intellectual wrangling, we find ourselves still perched on the precipice of tickling enlightenment. A question persists: why, oh why, can't we tickle ourselves? It's a conundrum that's laughed in the face of time, and we're none the wiser. Theories as diverse as ticklish sensations emerge from this tapestry of tickling contemplation. One hypothesis paints tickling as a fa...