From Absent in the Spring to Things Fall Apart — and everything in between. — In many ways, 2021 was an extraordinary year. I spent a good chunk of it hunkered down in a tiny studio apartment in Manchester, probably the rainiest city in the world. I had no human contact, no winter jacket, and no job. If it wasn’t for books, I would have…

In 2021, I donated €4,000. — This year, I gave away 10% of my net income. Every year, I donate to three cause areas: 60% to saving lives and improving health outcomes of the world’s poorest. 20% to finding long-term solutions to global poverty and inequality. 20% to spreading happiness. In a year that felt, in…

Can development economics move beyond its obsession with income to become truly human-centered? — Development, at its heart, is an endeavour to better the lives of humans. The pursuit of a good life has fascinated thinkers for millennia, and yet what a good life looks like is as heatedly debated today as it was in the time of Aristotle. Most philosophers would agree on…

My steps are measured. Casual, determined, as if I belonged here. My bag with a screaming-orange priority luggage tag betrays me. I ignore it. Head raised high, confidently, but not defiantly. I’m staring ahead, like a horse. What you can’t see won’t scare you. No, not that. I’m staring ahead…

30 years ago, my Dad taught me what freedom meant. — I remember little of that Sunday. But I can imagine it to the minute detail — the story, repeated by Mum every year, gradually changing like a Lithuanian fairy tale, is my favourite. Dad left, probably on one of those buses that transported thousands of people from every corner of…

From Beloved to A Theory of Justice — and everything in between. — This year sucked. So I read — to forget the mess we are in, the mess we made while trying to get out, and the mess that is surely yet to come. Some of the 58 books I read in 2020 also sucked. Candide by Voltaire was ridiculous, and not…

In 2020, I donated €12,725. — Just like last year, in 2020 I gave away around 10% of my net income. My strategy is to distribute this amount across three cause areas: 60% to saving lives and improving health outcomes of the world’s poorest. 20% to finding long-term solutions to global poverty and inequality. 20% to…

The world is wonderful. The world is terrible. Let’s choose again. — The world is richer, healthier, and more educated than it has ever been. In the last 150 years, we broke out of the Malthusian trap; eradicated smallpox; invented sliced bread, the automobile, the Internet, and the smartphone; and put a man on the Moon. And yet the awe-inspiring scientific, technological…

The covert battle between the ethical and the conventional. — I’ve been thinking about fish lately. I am not a fan of fish as food. I love cheap kaiten sushi and my Mum’s pike and carrots in foil. But that’s it, all other fish is yuck. My Dad’s not a fan of fish as food either. But he loves fishing…