HeyJaredThe Art of Being Human
The Art of Being Human is a collaborative yearlong exploration of one of the oldest and most urgent questions: What makes us human?
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 27, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 6, 2026
Latest issues
Tell Me About Yourself (In Five Paragraphs) (opens the original)
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We spend many years in schools learning to identify the theme of someone else’s story. We learn to summarize an argument, cite the evidence, and organize our answers into five paragraphs.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="1092" src="https://substackcdn.
Are Humans Losing The Plot Of Our Own Story? (opens the original)
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Watch this short video -- just 100 seconds long -- and be prepared to describe what you see:You just watched a short film about bullying, didn’t you? The larger triangle was harassing the smaller triangle, until the two smaller shapes banded together and outwitted their aggressor. Perhaps you even saw a micro-reenactment of your own family dynamics.Except that’s not what really happened; all you saw were shapes and lines moving around on a piece of paper. Why
Stories of Serendipity (opens the original)
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“Words, words, words . . .”Sometimes, when a word doesn’t exist, you need to make it up.It happened in 1754, when a man named Horace Walpole, in a letter to his friend Horace Mann (so many Horaces!), recounted a popular fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, in which the heroes are, as Walpole put it, “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”<a class="image-link image2 is-viewa
Increasing the Surface Area for Serendipity (opens the original)
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Where are you increasing the surface area for serendipity in your life? And what has found you lately that you weren’t looking for? Photos, poems, art, writing…Join the Serendipity ChatI visit my local library, the Philadelphia City Institute, at least once a week. When my kids were younger, the librarians all knew their names. We live in Center City, Philadelphia, not a tiny town, so I ha
August 2026: Serendipity (opens the original)
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Serendipity is a favorite word of mine. I have always loved even the way it sounds, and its magical quality.It holds both mystery and agency, and that balance is compelling.We cannot schedule an unexpected encounter, or a surprising connection, but we can predict they will happen. Serendipity is the idea that arrives from somewhere we were not looking, like on a long walk through the streets of your old neighborhood, like I just took today here in Washington, DC<a class="image-link image2 is-vie
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