Writing about all of my bad customer service experiences would be a full-time job, so I let most of them roll by with a shrug or a sad shake of the head. Yet every now and then, someone sets the bar so low, it’s remarkable. Take, for example, my experience with American Airlines yesterday....

Decades ago I fell terribly and hopelessly in love with a young woman named Elaine. Any stranger on the street could see that we were doomed. I lived on the West Coast, she lived on the East Coast. She was smart and sophisticated and worldly. I, on the other hand, was a caricature of the...

The moment you think you’ve lost your wallet, you get that panicky feeling. All of your cash, your ID, and your credit cards are suddenly gone. Your range of options is dramatically limited. You might be stranded somewhere, unable to get home or into the club where your friends are. You...

At this time of year it’s easy to get caught up in the hubbub of friends and family, parties and presents, and forget the real reason for Christmas: we are primitive, superstitious Neanderthals. For millennia any tribe with enough brains to recognize patterns in the night sky has held a...

What is the world’s biggest secret? Perhaps you are thinking “the formula for Coca-Cola”, “who shot Kennedy”,” what happened to the Holy Grail”, or “the location of Atlantis”. All good guesses, but these are merely historical...