Get Smarter Everyday
Let’s talk about one of the most radioactive questions in American history—not because it’s conspiratorial nonsense, but because it flirts with something true, something gray, something uncomfortable:
Did Roosevelt deliberately bait Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor?
The betrayal of Anne Frank, her family, and the others hiding in the secret annex is one of the enduring mysteries of the Holocaust. Despite decades of investigation, no definitive answer has ever been found. But the question continues to fascinate and trouble historians: Who told the Nazis where to find the people in hiding at 263 Prinsengracht?
Imagine sitting in that Amsterdam courtroom in 1947. The war is over, the Nazis have been driven out, but the scars are everywhere. You’ve lost neighbors, friends, maybe entire branches of your family tree. And now you’re watching a woman — a Jew — stand trial not as a victim, but as a collaborator.
There’s this moment I keep coming back to. I’m on a crowded city bus, wedged into one of those pairs of molded plastic seats next to a girl reading a paperback. Our thighs touch—not in a flirtatious way, just that accidental, human kind of contact that happens in cities. And I don’t say a word. I barely breathe. I’m too busy memorizing the way her breath fogs the window, pretending we’re something we’re not. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing. But it’s also the most intimate physical experience I’ve had in years.
Rabies is, without exaggeration, one of the deadliest diseases known to humankind. It’s not because it kills millions every year (thankfully, modern medicine and vaccination have kept numbers relatively low). It’s terrifying because once symptoms begin, survival is nearly impossible. Fewer than 20 people in recorded medical history have ever survived symptomatic rabies—and even those survivors required extreme, experimental treatment, often with permanent neurological damage. For all practical purposes, rabies is fatal once it declares itself.
You’ve seen the ad. Some guy running down a city street, his blazer flapping behind him like a cape, leaping over puddles, throwing a football in a conference room, inexplicably kickboxing in an elevator. And the caption is always the same: “Hi Quality. Athletic Fit. Wrinkle-Free. Machine Washable. Professional.”
You don’t walk into a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder knowing that’s what it is. You just think they feel more. You think they’re intense, emotional, alive in ways you aren’t. You mistake it for depth. You mistake it for honesty. But it’s not honesty. It’s panic disguised as love.