Pete Michaud

Tailgating

On Thursday morning I started driving from Florida to Austin, Texas. My Cadillac was as full as it could be while still being able to make a 1,000 mile journey. I was a little stressed because the lady whose house I had arranged to rent had backed out of the arrangement. I was headed to Texas with nowhere to...

How to Break Your Limits

Gema is 23 years old and might be gay. She’s not sure. (Not news.) The problem about being maybe-gay is that Gema lives with her hyper-conservative parents, and has no legal rights as an unmarried Muslim woman in Indonesia. She was in a bind. Her parents expect her to find a nice boy (of their...

TV Creates Cowards

This is the first episode of a British show called How TV Ruined Your Life. I’m sharing it because it drives home the point that the influences we subject ourselves to deeply influence our perception of the world. TV is the pet example here, but remember that it’s one of many....

When To Lie To Get Ahead

Summary Honesty is more difficult than you think, and the naive approach to honesty will sink your business. Lie to get ahead. It was painless and it only took 15 minutes. The only disturbing part was watching the smoke rise from my testicles while an early-20s blonde trainee watched everything. Dr. Stein...

How to Get Your Wallet Back

This is a story of empathy brought you by StoryCorps, a radio show that shares stories from ordinary people. Julio Diaz, the storyteller, gives us a shining case in point about choosing love over fear, just like in “No Such Thing as Monsters”. The acceptable response was anger and violence, but...

No Such Thing as Monsters

I had a powerful moment of transformation as a child that I’m going to share with you because it’s an important lesson about psychological scripts, empathy, and the essential humanity of all people. In fifth grade, my scars were still horror movie material. My skull was indented, my eye socket...

Transcend Your Tribe

Humans are tribal animals. We trust and mimic members of our group, while we distrust and malign outsiders. That worked 200,000 years ago, but it’s a bad strategy now, and one 1950s experiment is a fantastic case in point. In the Robber’s Cave Experiment, researchers pitted two groups of...

Is Your Face Real?

“Is your patch real?” My eye patch is a conversation piece. Many people ask about it, a lot assume it’s either fake or temporary (it’s neither). “Do I need it?” some ask. Some people reflexively yell “Yarrr!!” at the sight of me, like their ancestors evolved...

Hack the World: A Conspiracy of None

Introduction What I’m about to tell you is part of the painful slashing and burning you need to undertake in order to live an authentic life. It’s maybe the most important essay I’ve ever written. It’s longer than usual (around 2600 words), but if this idea is new to you, it might change your...