The Maven Game

Last week, my son, Henry, said he liked my new essay, but that all the links I included made me look like an influencer trying to sell you something.

Yesterday, I had a really terrific conversation with a publisher/neighbor.

It was a fancy liberal arts college that introduced me to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: a urinal, signed “R.

I’m inclined to skip cardio.

My wife and I begin each morning with coffee and Connections, the New York Times word grouping game.

Will Wright designs video games.

Sort of a weird thing to feel compelled to ask, but would you buy a book by you on the subject of your book?

Unless you have aphantasia and can’t visualize images, you’re able to close your eyes and imagine a friend’s face.

The other day, I didn’t feel like writing something.

While writing is always useful for self-discovery, good writing should also involve discovery-discovery, i.e., finding something worthwhile to write about.

Earlier this week, I drove past a store labeled SMOKE AND CONVENIENCE.

Richard Feynman saw nothing fundamentally unusual about his work as a physicist: The average person is not so far away from a scientist.

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Recently, I saw and enjoyed What We Did Before Our Moth Days, the latest of many wonderful collaborations over the decades between director André Gregory and playwright Wallace Shawn.

People tell me they want to make an impact.

In the Times, NYU professor Clay Shirky, one of my favorite experts on the intersection of tech and humanity, weighs in on the effect of LLMs on university learning: We cannot simply redesign our assignments to prevent lazy A.I. use.

Are you old enough to remember blowing on your cartridges?

After being cast as a hapless cop in Superbad, Bill Hader decided his character should wear glasses.

I’m a process guy, but even process has its limits.

© 2025 Samantha Hahn Though I can’t source the anecdote, I remember it clearly: A music producer installed an antenna on the roof of his recording studio.

In a post about the "PhD metagame," Max Forbes, an AI researcher and indie developer who recently completed his PhD at the University of Washington, relates the experience of having an academic paper rejected, making some "mostly aesthetic revisions," and…

"All creativity is an act of play," screenwriter and author Noah Hawley tells The Believer.