Here’s a picture of the Acropolis, which I took on my trip to Greece in 2016. It was a bit of a vision quest for me, seeking to harmonize my head and my heart. What I found was a crossroads between East and West, bringing together a fortress and religious sanctuary, a key economic hub and a center for civic and cultural expression. I’ve pretty much spent my whole life trying to navigate such a crossroads in my inner world, building a bridge from science to philosophy, and fro

That's me as a circus ringmaster getting caught for committing murder! An old WaPo article from 30 years ago! My father founded a bank and my mother was an artist. I am their son. Today, I'm a business professor. But, I'm also a classically-trained musician and actor, who panicked and went into finance for 25 years. The picture above shows one of my weirder efforts to try to make all that make sense! I have been trying to make sense of my business and creative sides for a lo

Athena and Bob — Thanks ChatGPT! I've been trying to write a play about a guy named Bob going through a midlife crisis. He quits his job at a startup in Boston and goes on a vision quest, wandering toward New York City. As he does, he uses an AI Bot — AthenaLM — to explore the history of places along the way. At first, he’s humbled by all that Athena knows. But, he starts to realize it’s up to him to discover the meaning of his quest. Athena is great at finding facts; but he’

Sunnyside in Tarrytown NY. The home of one of our greatest storytellers - Washington Irving At the NYU Stern School of business our...

A picture I took from a sidewalk in Greenwich Village NYC Nietzsche's quote here may sound like hyperbole, but I’d argue he didn’t go far...

My crooked photograph of my mother's beautiful work! Before we can be fully effective in our lives, we need to be grounded and well. Unfortunately, our society is suffering from an epidemic of anxiety, which is pervasive in many worlds, including business. But, business culture may be less tolerant of the open management of this challenge than other realms, compounding the problem. Arts have been a universal communal expression for thousands of years and, I would argue, part

Sir Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, playing a Nazi torturer and his victim in The Marathon Man (1976) What a horrific image! And,...

An image from an Arts & Health @ NYU event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021 On one level, it's obvious why storytelling is...

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality" - Yoko Ono ++ For thousands of years, humans have created communities to survive and thrive. And that effort has evolved as we created language and agriculture, commerce and global trade, and the technologies that helped drive them in the past and will help change them in the future. It is a story of the changing ways that we connect and communicate - from tribes in the jungles of Africa to the A

That’s our dog Lexi and my partner Toni Taylor on the right ... and me! How do we tell our stories? During my careers, I've seen the...

This Japanese ideogram — Ima Kokoro — roughly translates as current heart/mind and captures the secret of successful connection, communication and collaboration with others. The upper character, Ima, is the roof-like peak, which signifies this present moment, the Now . Ironically, that’s the foundation of a trusting and effective relationship with others. There are many different practices that can help us become fully present, mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, just to name a few.

I traveled to Delphi in Greece in 2016. I first heard about it when I used the so-called Delphi Technique as a financial analyst thirty...

I learned to love music and philosophy, science and technology all at the very same time. A monolith appears pointing to the moons of Jupiter and the Sun, and what lays beyond. The opening chords of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra sound triumphantly. The orchestra swells and the timpani announce the beginning of a hero's journey. Our ego boundaries fall away and we become part of a cascade of light and sound toward a new life. And the underscoring for that journey w

Leonardo was not just studying the anatomy of his subjects in order to paint or draw them accurately, he wanted to know how they...

When I was a kid, you went to school to learn from the teacher and the books in the library. And although our world brings us a vast...