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A Billion Dollars
Uses the thought experiment of a billion dollars to examine what money actually buys in life.
Kevin KellyAug 2026
11 pieces that cleared seventy. Ordered by how far each sits from the centre of this catalogue.
Uses the thought experiment of a billion dollars to examine what money actually buys in life.
Explores how Arabic's four distinct words for sadness reveal finer emotional granularity than English.
Considers how writing for a reader who might leave at any moment differs from writing for a captive audience.
Uses a carpenter's method of correcting warped wood as an analogy for reshaping character through vice.
Explores how the brain processes grief, reconciling loss with an enduring sense of presence.
Presents Epictetus's teaching that peace comes from wanting events as they happen, not as we wish.
Argues Mother Teresa's virtue ethics overlooked 'structure-facing virtues' aimed at systems, not individuals.
Collects untranslatable words from other languages that name complex, hard-to-describe emotions.
Draws on Marcus Aurelius to explain how mismatched expectations fuel frustration, and how to temper it.
Argues that rigid categories of friendship and romance limit emotional life, and calls for finer distinctions.
Proposes a three-minute exercise of sitting still and content, as a small test of consciousness itself.