Essays
Essays, interviews and articles I keep coming back to.
Games and the Art of Agency
A move towards reconceptualising direct instruction in sport coaching pedagogy
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
After Work, We'll Have Each Other
Against Rotten Tomatoes
Approaching Absolute Zero
Capital in the 22nd Century
Cinema Lessons from a Trash-Movie Auteur
Curtis Yarvin's Plot Against America
Demanding Pleasures
Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles
On Seatbelts and Sunsets
Heidegger's Concept of Care
How (and Why) Athletes Go Broke
Why Is Everyone in Silicon Valley Talking Like That?
Joan Didion's Thanksgiving: Dinner for 75, Reams of Notes
Joy
Letters to a Young Poet: Letter Seven
Letters to Véra
Francis and the Lights, Pop Star Interrupted
Frank Ocean
How SoundCloud Rap Took Over Everything
Never mind the lit-bros: Infinite Jest is a true classic at 30
On Style
On the Spline: A Brief History of the Computational Curve
The Great Ozempic Experiment
This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too.
Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69
Pet Milk
The Poetry Challenge Day 3: How do you write about love?
Prague: A Disappearing Poem
Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance
Summary Report of Independent Investigators Concerning the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard
Somewhere Behind
The artist grows old
The Atlantic Writers Project
The Ethical Assassin: One Man's Quest for the Perfect Way to Kill a Fish
The Insidious Charms of the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic
The Knicks' victory points to the value of scarcity
The Ghosts of Altadena
The Pain of Caring for a Parent Who Abused You
The soul of the great Milanese apartment
The Truth Physics Can No Longer Ignore
The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein's Death
An Angel Passed Above Us
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
There's No Place Like Group Chats
Return to Tipasa
Toni Morrison Was a Master of the Unthinkable
What Is a Game?
The no-human future
What's Missing from Cookbook Reviews
Where Billionaires Summer, a Gardener Died in the Snow
Why dads are learning to braid hair in the pub
Why I Sought Out a Taliban Commander I Had Fought
Reason is more than a tool
Why rivers, not lakes or seas, make the best companions
What Steven Spielberg Taught Me About Fear, Catharsis, and Being Human
You Might Be a Late Bloomer
Young Hunger
She Popularized Economics. Then She Was Erased From History. Why?
Steve Jobs at the 1983 International Design Conference
Balls, boats and billionaires: Como 1907's lifestyle brand aspirations
Beveridge Report
Child's Play
How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
How to Do Great Work
Lovely Day for the Black Stuff
Michelin restaurants and fabulous wines: Inside the secret team dinners that have built the Spurs' dynasty
Netflix Culture Memo
Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
The Long Tail Theory, Debunked: We Stick With What We Know
The New World: Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital, and the American dream
The price of Palantir's politics
Words Of Advice From The Founder Of Sony "Akio Morita"
The Democratic Financialisaton of the Music Industries: On JKBX and the Assetization of Music Rights
Thoughts on Music
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Deceit, determination and Murdoch's millions: how Premier League was born
Does Silicon Valley dream of Philip K Dick?
Don't Sell Out, Sell Bonds: The Pullman Group's Securitization of the Music Industry
Forget the World Cup. Culture is becoming more fragmented
The Prospects of Recording
How I Became the Honest Broker
How Netflix Reinvented HR
How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity
Is Old Music Killing New Music?
The age of authentic perfection
The Billion-Dollar Underdog: A24 and the Business of Cultural Capital
The Dehumanization of Art: Jose Ortega y Gasset and Ad Reinhardt
The Ghosts in the Machine
The Mastermind Behind Coachella
The Society of the Spectacle
How America Lost Dinner
© 2026 Nathan Mai
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