Joel Stein
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Articles by Joel Stein
When the Person You Love Doesn’t Appreciate Everything You Do
You rearranged your schedule. You made the call. You picked it up. You stayed awake. You took care of the problem before they even knew there was a problem. You gave up something you wanted because you knew something else mattered more to them. And then came the moment when you expected them to notice. Maybe you didn’t expect a speech. Maybe you didn’t even expect a big thank-you. You just wanted them to understand. To look at you and somehow communicate: I see what you do for me. But they didn’t.
Zombie Politicians Are Headed Straight at Us
It’s already obvious that you are busier than me, because I am watching a campaign ad. I am whatever demographic has more downtime than, as of this month, math PhD students. My time is worth less than the $7 it would cost to go ad-free on Peacock. Still, you want me to know you are so busy you couldn’t stop moving to shoot this ad. The only way you could squeeze in 30 seconds to explain your position on insider politics is to multitask.
When the Clutter Is Driving You Crazy, Remember Who You Love
There is a box sitting in the corner. It has been there for years. Nobody has opened it. Nobody has needed anything inside it. You have asked about it before. “Can we please throw this out?” Your partner looks inside. “No.” “Why?” “I might need this.” “You haven’t needed it in eight years.” “That doesn’t mean I won’t need it.” You stare at the box. Then at your partner. And something happens inside you. It isn’t just a box anymore. It becomes evidence. Evidence that your partner is unreasonable.
I’ve never run a political campaign. But I have been in romantic relationships. And I know that you don’t open with the question “Did I do something wrong?” unless you are absolutely positive that you did something wrong and the other person knows you did something wrong. So when I got an email from the Trump campaign this afternoon that started with, “Friend, did I do something wrong?” I knew that things weren’t going well for the GOP in the midterms.
Maybe Procrastination Isn’t Your Problem
You have been putting it off for three weeks. You know it needs to be done. You have written it on your list. Moved it to tomorrow. Moved it to Monday. Promised yourself you would finally take care of it this morning. And now it is evening. Still not done. So you reach the conclusion millions of people reach: I have a procrastination problem. Maybe. But I want to suggest another possibility. Maybe procrastination isn’t your problem.
Napa Valley’s hangover
Joseph Phelps Vineyards looks just as nature intended, if nature hired 1,000 gardeners.
OCD Does Not Get to Decide What You Are Worth
There are three letters that can become far more powerful than they deserve to be. OCD. For some people, those letters describe a struggle. But somewhere along the way, they can become something much bigger. A judgment. Something is wrong with me. My mind isn’t normal. Other people don’t struggle like this. I’m mentally ill. I’m damaged. I’m less capable. I’m less worthy.
Why Some Criticism Destroys Us — and Other Criticism Barely Touches Us
One day, the boss becomes furious and lashes out at both of them. “You’re worthless to this business.” The first employee is devastated. He goes back to his desk, but he can barely concentrate. The words keep repeating in his mind. I’m worthless. He thinks about them on the way home. He thinks about them that evening. He wonders whether everyone at work secretly thinks the same thing. The second employee walks away, almost amused.
Why Some People With Almost Nothing Are Happy — and Some With Everything Are Miserable
It is one of the strangest contradictions of human life. There are people who seem to have almost nothing. They struggle financially. Their homes are modest. Their lives have disappointments, limitations, and problems most of us would desperately like to avoid. And yet they laugh. They enjoy dinner. They look forward to tomorrow. They somehow experience themselves as fortunate. Then there are people who seem to have everything. Money. Success. Family. Comfort. Respect.
Peter Max Did Kindergarten Art for Me
When I got hired at Time magazine, I was a little bummed. Sure, leaving my job at Time Out New York meant I’d no longer be paid in food, but now I’d have to make my writing boring. Once I got to Time, I found out that opportunities abounded. Not only would my slightly voicey writing seem wild in its pages, but Time also had magic I could exploit. Namely, that powerful people would take me seriously. It was my responsibility to see if they’d do stupid things.
AI's Greatest Use: Giving Advice to Friends
AI’s worst use: Creating an image for this column A friend asked for advice. He’d met a woman on a dating site who lived in another city. I thought this sounded like a waste of time. No, he said, she was great, and the city wasn’t that far away. Right now, though, she was in Nigeria, where she was born. She had gone back because her dad died. And he left her a lot of money. In the form of gold bars. Now she wanted advice on how to get those gold bars to America.
You May Not Need Fewer Negative Thoughts. You May Need Better Competition.
There is a strange thing we do when a painful thought refuses to leave us alone. We fight it. Stop thinking about it. Let it go. Move on. Think about something else. And then, five minutes later, there it is again. The argument. The embarrassment. The regret. The fear. The conversation we have already replayed twenty times. And eventually, the thought itself becomes only half the problem. The other half is our frustration with ourselves. Why can’t I stop thinking about this?
Multimodal MRI-to-PET image translation recovers disease-specific hypometabolism in epilepsy and mild cognitive impairment
Abstract nd: Glucose-metabolism imaging with positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) helps localize the seizure focus in epilepsy and diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, but its radioactive tracer limits repeat scanning. Arterial spin labeling, a magnetic resonance (MR) method, measures blood flow without radiation but detects these changes less reliably. We aimed to generate metabolic-like images from magnetic resonance imaging to address these limitations.
The End of My Career
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Why the Happiest Moments Can Leave Us Strangely Sad
There is a sadness we almost never talk about. It doesn’t arrive after something terrible happens. It arrives after something wonderful happens. The vacation you counted down to for six months is over. The wedding that filled the calendar with excitement has come and gone. Your children and grandchildren leave after a beautiful weekend together. The house that was filled with conversation becomes quiet again. You return home. You unpack. You look at the photographs. And something feels wrong.
The Most Dangerous Thing Hopelessness Makes Us Believe
There is an enormous difference between pain and hopelessness. Pain says: “This is unbearable.” Hopelessness adds four words: “And it will never end.” Those four words can change everything. Human beings can endure extraordinary difficulty when they believe there is an end somewhere ahead. A terrible flight feels different when you know you will land in two hours. A brutal workweek feels different when Friday is coming.
The Invisible Wound of Divorce: When You Stop Trusting Yourself
People think divorce breaks your heart. Sometimes it breaks something even more devastating. Your trust in yourself. The deepest question many divorced people carry is not: “Will I ever find love again?” It is far quieter. Far more frightening. “If I was wrong about the biggest decision of my life… how can I ever trust myself again?” That question becomes an invisible prison. It follows you into every relationship. Every opportunity. Every important decision.
Columns I’m Not Allowed to Publish: Elijah Wood
I was buying a bunch of $1 oysters yesterday for a dinner party, because I am a man who greatly overestimates his ability to shuck oysters. A man sidled up to the register next to me at the small counter. He was very excited about the current state of stone fruit.
Don’t Just Remember Them. Continue Them.
There is a sentence we hear after almost every funeral. “Keep their memory alive.” It is beautiful advice. But I have come to believe it is incomplete. Because memory alone does not change the world. Character does. And perhaps the greatest mistake we make after losing someone we love is believing that remembering them is the highest form of love. It isn’t. The highest form of love is continuing them. Not their career. Not their possessions. Not even their dreams. Their goodness.
The Greatest Mistake Parents Make When Their Adult Child Loses Their Way
There are few pains in life more unbearable than watching your own child slowly disappear. They are still alive. You still know their phone number. You still remember the sound of their laughter. But the child you once knew feels farther away than ever. You watch them make one destructive decision after another. You plead. You explain. You argue. You warn. You pray. You replay every conversation in your mind, wondering what you could have said differently.
Is Your Praise as Enthusiastic as Your Criticism?
A child walks into the house carrying a report card. One grade is disappointing. The parent notices immediately. The conversation becomes serious. The parent’s voice grows animated. Questions are asked. Concerns are expressed. Strategies are discussed. The child leaves the conversation with absolutely no doubt that this mattered. A week later, the same child does something wonderful. Perhaps they showed kindness. Perhaps they worked hard. Perhaps they demonstrated honesty.
LeVar Burton, 69, on the Power of Storytelling
While LeVar Burton, 69, was working on his upcoming memoir, Take My Word for It (out in November 2026), the actor and beloved Reading Rainbow host discovered a greater arc to his life.
When You Put Yourself in Someone Else’s Shoes, Your Shoes Become More Comfortable
What if one of the greatest beneficiaries is you? Imagine sitting on a crowded bus after a long day. You are exhausted. You finally find a seat. You close your eyes for a moment and hope for a quiet ride home. Then chaos erupts. Several children are running through the aisle. They are loud. They are shouting. They are bumping into passengers. They are ignoring every unspoken rule of public transportation. At first, you try to be patient. Children are children. But the minutes pass. The noise continues.
Is It ADD or LED?
The teacher explains. The lesson continues. The other students take notes. But this child seems to be somewhere else entirely. His eyes wander. His attention drifts. His thoughts float far beyond the walls of the classroom. The teacher redirects him. A few minutes later it happens again. And again. And again. Eventually, a conclusion begins to form. The child has an attention problem. Parents become concerned. Teachers become frustrated. Evaluations are discussed. Labels begin to appear.
The Terror of Having No Distraction
Most people think they know what is bothering them. They are often wrong. Ask someone why they feel stressed, and they’ll usually have an answer. Work. Money. Responsibilities. The economy. Politics. The news. The endless demands of modern life. And sometimes they’re right. But sometimes something stranger is happening. Sometimes, the thing a person believes is causing their stress is not the thing occupying the deepest parts of their mind. The real concern is somewhere else. A relationship. A decision. A fear.
Photos: Sun Valley Players’ Private Thoughts Behind Those Ray-Bans
Stein previously wrote “A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Netflix–Warner Bros. Deal” — when that was still a thing. Each July, 86-year-old investment banker Herb Allen’s four-day Sun Valley, Idaho conference aims to solve world problems, such as business moguls never having met certain other business moguls. The most dizzying part of arriving at the Sun Valley Lodge is quickly adjusting your status.
The End of My Career
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Why Even the Right Life Can Make You Grieve
It appears in people who are happily married. People who love their children. People who find meaning in their work. People who, if given the chance to go back in time and choose again, would make the same major decisions all over again. And yet, from time to time, they find themselves thinking about the lives they never lived. The career they never pursued. The city they never moved to. The version of themselves they never became. Most people immediately misinterpret this feeling.
Saying Nice Things About America on Its Birthday
This book I wrote is having a nicer July 4th than I am Let’s say you had to write something nice about America. Partly because somewhere deep down you believe it, but mostly because your friend of 35 years was the editorial director of Assouline, and the writer he hired for a coffee table book called “America: The Imagination of a Nation” disappeared, and he was sending the book to the printer in three days, and he offered you a bunch of money.
Air Jordans, Barbie & the Big Mac: 10 great American products that changed the world
A big swirling bucket of the latest rumors, celebrity news and Hollywood gossip. The premier celebrity gossip app. The only apps that gives you a comprehensive real time celeb news stream. Gossip Bucket aggregates and streams the latest gossip news and headlines from the top sources in one place.
Air Jordans, Barbie & the Big Mac: 10 great American products that changed the world Original
Some of America’s greatest products have solved problems — and others have changed culture. As Joel Stein, author of “America: The Imagination of a Nation,” tells it, these are their stories. 11 Joel Stein’s “America: The Imagination of a Nation” is available soon from Assouline. 11 Michael Jordan jogs up court wearing his original Nike sneakers in a game against the New York Knicks in 1998. It would be his final game at Madison Square Garden. Humans have always turned craft into art.
The Grief of Becoming Someone Else
People think growth should feel exciting. You work on yourself. You heal. You become healthier. Stronger. More confident. More capable. And then life improves. That is how the story is supposed to go. But something strange often happens along the way. A sadness appears. Not overwhelming. Not dramatic. Just enough to be noticed. And because nobody talks about it, people often assume something must be wrong. If becoming healthier feels sad, maybe I’m not really healing.
I've Done Duolingo for 2,269 Days Straight
I have a streak of 2,269 days on Duolingo. That means I’ve spent at least five minutes learning Spanish each day for more than six years. The only other things I’ve done consistently for that long are eat, sleep, and complain about Donald Trump. My Spanish studies have had about the same effect as that last activity. The End of My Career is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Wenn Bruce Springsteen Geschichte wird
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Wenn Bruce Springsteen Geschichte wird
Ein Museum über die Menschen, die man in der Schule vergöttert hat – das sollte eigentlich nicht erlaubt sein. Wird es jetzt ein David-Letterman-Museum geben? Ein Reggie-Jackson-Museum? Ein Forschungszentrum für das 1982er-„Penthouse“-Playmate Corrine Alphen?
When Bruce Springsteen Becomes History Original
They’re not supposed to make a museum about the people you idolized in high school. Is there going to be a David Letterman Museum? A Reggie Jackson Museum? A Center for the Studies of 1982 Penthouse Pet Corrine Alphen? When I played Born to Run on the record player in my basement in Edison, New Jersey, and when I chanted lyrics in unison with 22,000 fans at Madison Square Garden as Bruce Springsteen preached hope for three-and-a-half hours, I was not appreciating art.
When Bruce Springsteen Becomes History
Monmouth County 1 hour ago Suspect Charged In 6/22 Shooting At Asbury Circle tapinto.net - TAPinto Neptune/Neptune City Staff • 1h NEPTUNE TOWNSHIP– A Bayshore man has been charged in connection with a shooting incident in Neptune Township, Monmouth County Prosecutor Raymond S. … Calgary Flames 2 hours ago Calgary Flames Acquire Simon Nemec yardbarker.com - Brennan McClain • 2h The first domino of the Sunny Mehta regime with the New Jersey Devils has fallen.
Putting Yourself in the Other Person’s Shoes Makes Your Own Shoes More Comfortable
One of the hardest truths about being hurt by someone is this: what they did to you does not only affect your life. It affects the story you begin telling yourself about yourself. A cold comment from someone you love becomes, “Maybe I’m not valued.” Being ignored becomes, “Maybe I don’t matter.” Cruelty becomes, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me.” That is why emotional pain lingers so deeply. Not only because of what happened, but because of the meaning we attach to it.
The Human Default We Rarely Admit
There is something deeply uncomfortable about human nature that most people never notice in themselves: we do not naturally begin at neutral. We begin at guilt. Not just in courtrooms. In ordinary life. A spouse forgets to call back, and almost immediately the mind moves toward, “They don’t care.” A friend becomes distant, and instead of wondering whether they are overwhelmed or struggling, we quietly begin building a case.
This is how Dana White became Trump’s favourite bro
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Voices: Dana White tried to strangle me – now he’s Trump’s favourite CEO
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Interview with a Genius: Vijay Gupta
In an effort to become an intolerable old person, I’ve written a handful of articlesaboutclassical music. I’ve inveigled my way into becoming friends with a few musicians in the L.A. Philharmonic, which is how I met Vijay Gupta. I had heard that the L.A. Phil had hired a 19-year-old violinist, possibly the youngest person to ever get a job at a major orchestra.
A multimodal epilepsy dataset of paired 3-Tesla and 7-Tesla MRI and intracranial EEG
Abstract There is an increasing need to integrate multimodal datasets in epilepsy research, particularly to correlate electrophysiology with imaging in patients with refractory epilepsy. We present a multimodal paired 3T and 7T MRI dataset acquired from 30 drug-resistant focal epilepsy patients (18 females, 38.8 ± 11.7 years) who underwent T1-weighted (T1w), T2-weighted (T2w), Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR), and resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI).
When Someone You Love Is Suffering, Joy Can Start Feeling Like Betrayal
One of the cruelest emotional traps human beings fall into is this: the moment someone we love begins suffering, part of us starts feeling guilty for still being able to enjoy life. We laugh and immediately feel wrong for laughing. We relax and suddenly feel disloyal. We experience a moment of pleasure, peace, excitement, or happiness — and part of the mind quietly whispers: “How can you feel good when they are suffering?” Most people never say this out loud. But countless people live inside it.
A Completely AI-Written Commencement Speech
Just do what this dude says to do Please, hold your boos. I have watched the viral videos of graduation speakers getting aggressively heckled the microsecond they mention “generative AI,” and frankly, I don’t blame you. If someone stood up here in a silk robe and told me a soulless data aggregator was my new workplace best friend, I’d throw my flat hat at them too. You have every right to be furious.
Why You Pull Back the Moment Something Starts to Matter
There’s a moment most people don’t notice. It doesn’t happen when things go wrong. It happens when things start to feel real. You’re in a conversation, and at first it’s light. Then it shifts. You actually care what the other person thinks. You feel something real behind what you’re about to say—and right there, you change your sentence. You soften it. You make it sound lighter than it really is. Or you write a message that says exactly how you feel, and then you delete part of it before sending.
America Is Throwing a 250th Party for Itself
Because No One Else Will This is the first thing in my mailbox to make me laugh out loud. And I was rejected by Georgetown. I received a FedEx from JPMorganChase, which made me nervous. Was a studio revoking a contract for a script I co-wrote? Was it a mortgage-related thing? Did I break some rule by opening too many credit cards for bonus points? It got more confusing when I opened it. This was everything inside the box: Did they send this to the wrong Joel?
The Fear Inside the Moment
Everyone knows FOMO—the fear of missing out. The fear that something better is happening somewhere else. But that’s not the fear shaping most of our lives anymore. The deeper fear shows up inside the moment. Not when something is wrong. When something is right. You’re with people you care about. You’re laughing. There’s nothing pulling you away. For a second, everything is just… happening. And then— a thought.
AI Wrote This Crappy Column
The Bar for Quality is Now So Low That You're Reading It This is the kid AI created for no reason. The other kids look so little like themselves that I probably didn’t need to blur them. As a man who has spent twenty-five years convincing editors that my unique blend of deep personal insecurity and profound laziness constitutes a “literary voice,” I am deeply offended by how cheap it has become to replace me. The End of My Career is a reader-supported publication.
The Disappearance of Anticipation
There was a time when happiness didn’t begin when something happened. It began before. A trip didn’t start at the airport. It started weeks earlier—in conversations, in imagination, in quiet moments where your mind wandered ahead of your life. A letter didn’t arrive instantly. It lived inside you before it ever reached your hands. Even small things—plans, events, a simple night out—carried a kind of emotional gravity that built over time. You didn’t just experience them. You felt them coming.
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