Medicine, culture, travel, food, healing, and human stories from the archive.
A CGM, Artificial Intelligence, and the Limits of Cultural Understanding For the past week, I have been wearing a continuous glucose monitor, a device largely designed and marketed for the…
Suriname is a small country on the northern coast of South America, bordered by Guyana to the west, French Guiana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its population…
Healing and curing are often used as if they were interchangeable, yet they arise from very different philosophical traditions. In Western biomedicine, curing usually means the elimination or control of…
Epigraph “I am nothing. I shall always be nothing. I cannot wish to be anything. Aside from that, I carry within me all the dreams of the world.” — Fernando…
The River Beneath the Numbers Psychosocial Stress, Inflammation, and the Anthropology of Disease Still Water / Hidden Flow The heart appears still—like water in the Everglades. But beneath, unseen currents…
Psychosocial Stress, Inflammation, and Atherosclerosis: An Anthropological Reflection That most feared of outcomes— the heart attack , or acute myocardial infarction (AMI)—rarely occurs out of the blue. From a biomedical…
There’s something quietly radical about stepping out of the noise. Not escaping it entirely—Miami does not permit such illusions—but placing a gentle distance between oneself and its glitter, its urgency,…
A French Lunch — A Nutrition Lesson for the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand For a complex mix of anthropological, historical, and geopolitical reasons, English-speaking countries and their…
A CGM, Artificial Intelligence, and the Limits of Cultural Understanding For the past week, I have been wearing a continuous glucose monitor, a device largely designed and marketed for the…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRMcimuuk0Q. In this talk, de Botton challenges the deeply ingrained romantic belief that successful relationships depend on finding the “right person.” Instead, he argues that this idea is a cultural…
Today, in the brief and indifferent cadence of BBC news, I read of the death of Raghu Rai . And yet, what stirred in me was not sorrow, but a…
I am writing this note, knowing fully well that Internet is down but it will be up, like the hopes and aspirations of the Iranian people. When i left Miami…
I was in Cochin, the bombings in the middle east had begun and every single flight going west out of Cochin was cancelled. I had a flight to Doha and…
What Did the Medicine Man Say? “Humility is not thinking less of oneself; it is thinking of oneself less.” — Ancient teaching often repeated among Indigenous elders It took me…
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment; Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.” — Rumi I have spent much of my professional life moving between worlds—London, Melbourne, Miami, and the…
GOODBYE, RICKY CAFÉ “I carry within me all the dreams of the world.” — Fernando Pessoa There are cafés that serve coffee, and there are cafés that quietly hold fragments…
“To travel is to feel.” — Fernando Pessoa I went to Pinecrest today, though it no longer exists. Not in the way that towns exist—with a centre, a rhythm, a…
Spiritual materialism is a concept introduced and most clearly articulated by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa , especially in his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism . At its core,…
Spiritual Materialism: Cross-Tradition Comparison Handout Core Question Across Traditions Is spirituality being used to dissolve the ego—or to sanctify it? 1. Tibetan Buddhism Key voice: Chögyam Trungpa Risk Turning meditation,…
LIFE IS FULL OF UNEXPECTED PLEASURES Today was one such .. not that i did any thing more special than my usual work with the Indigenous people .. but a…
Yesterday, in Antigua, Guatemala , I received a message that a surprise birthday party was being arranged for a Lebanese friend of ours who works for the UN in Jamaica.…
Empathy, Compassion, and Respect for the Other In the span of a single week, events have unfolded with such density that one has the uneasy feeling that the political architecture…
So much has changed in the span of days. Of all that unfolds around me, the one realm still within my command is my own mind—my response, my interior weather.…
Iran, Silence, and Waiting With the sudden and complete cessation of the internet, Iran has fallen into a silence heavier than distance itself. Overnight, I found myself cut off from…