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My journey as a writer begins with magic. I was taught how to write by a witch. That is not exaggeration, hyperbole, or a whimsical metaphor.

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian household, and one of our neighbors was a practicing Wiccan. We weren’t allowed to shovel snow on her driveway after storms or mow her lawn for extra cash. The entire time we lived in that neighborhood, we avoided The Witch’s House on the corner.

Eleven years later…

My Grandpa once told me “Aaron, only date for looks until you’re at least 25.”

He’s hilarious, but is not, by most definitions, a wise man. While my siblings and I were growing up, he tried to pass on what he’d learned about the world by showing us old movies. He’d escaped into movies In his own troubled childhood in 1940s Chicago, to get away from his broken home and cruel mother.

By the time I came along, he’d learn to relate to the world through the silver-screen lens of Hollywood. He loved westerns, and from watching them on his…

Since I’ve started writing on Medium, a few people have reached out to ask me to explain my ideas in greater depth on podcasts/youtube channels. I’ve had a tremendously fun time doing each one, and they’re starting to pile up, so I thought I’d organize them into one place!

These are wildly different, often hilarious romps through the world of ideas. I promise that they’re worth your time, especially the first two on this list.

Zulie Rane and I talk about how to succeed as a Medium beginner

This was great fun. It’s not just earnings and writing tips that we cover! We also chat about life lessons, ideas, and what’s next…

As great as the Stoics were, I lose patience with modern philosophers pretty quickly. This sense of irritation started for me in college when I first encountered the “logical fallacies.”

For anyone unfamiliar, these are several-thousand-year-old frameworks cooked up by very dead Greeks to ensure that the people around you live in fear of your razor-sharp wit. They include terms like “ad hominem” and “red herring” which are shouted by debate bros at the top of their lungs whenever you stray from the path of perfect western logic.

In that philosophy 101 class, I realized that logical fallacies aren’t for…

Last month, I saw an article called something like “Jeff Bezos’s Morning Routine May Surprise You.”

I’ll go to go out on a limb and say that’s true. I’m sure that once I learned about the bed-helicopter that carries him from his sleeping mansion to his eating yacht, the personal chefs that make omelets with eggs that have been floated in zero gravity for at least 24 hours, and the robot that feeds and massages him, I would be very surprised!

I’m only going to say this once, so lean in and pay attention:

F*ck Jeff Bezos’s morning routine. Jeff…

**WARNING: This story contains a description of suicide that may be triggering for some readers. Just know that it is, in the end, a piece about hope.**

When I was nineteen, a young man I’d known for 2 weeks called me at 2:37 in the afternoon, asked me to say goodbye to his family for him, and stepped in front of a semi on the interstate. …

I grew up on classic adventure stories. Marco Polo, Lewis and Clark, and Sir Edmund Hillary were my favorites. I loved hearing about people who pushed into the unknown, not knowing what was possible, or even if they would survive, just knowing that the world needed to be explored and that they were bloody well going to do it.

Now, in the age of satellite imagery, radar, and GPS, the parts of the world accessible by land have been explored, mapped, flown over, and named. There are no longer vast territories of unexplored land. …

For those of you who have never experienced the genius of Dylan Moran, what have you been doing with your life? He’s the greatest comedian I’ve ever found. I always start people off with his rant about potential, to see if they like Dylan’s comedy. It’s a good test to see if they’re the kind of people I plan on speaking to ever again.

I’m picky when it comes to comedy. That’s not to say that I have some great insider knowledge or a superior understanding. I just love the medium, and when someone comes along who can make me…