The End of Debate

The Press to Impress: A fictional short-short story

Questions I Still Have

Guilty: a short-short story

An Out-of-Step Professor: A short-short story

Scrooge on Dec. 26: A short-short story

The Newscast Reinvented

A parody of the challenges of having an office holiday party in today's ...

Is Ronald Reagan Overrated or Underrated?

My 11 Favorite Short-Short Stories from My New Book, Soloists

“You’re Weird:” When being peculiar is to be venerated.

We claim to celebrate diversity, but some people stop celebrating when a person’s behavior departs from the standard. That can be true even when that departure is benevolent.

My Psychology Today article today offers an example and then asks the reader questions to help ensure they're not being hypocritical.

Episode 27 of my How to Do Life podcast and YouTube: When You're Out of Step

 Here's episode 27 of my podcast and YouTube video, How to Do Life:: When You're Out of Step.

True Independence Day: Toward replacing lemming thinking with free thinking

Independence Day has a hidebound ring to it, evoking an event of 244 years ago. independence Day seems even less relevant in light of today’s growing suppression of independent thinking, yes regarding the deconstructionist triad of race, class, and gender, but far more broadly.

In an attempt to encourage more independent thinking on this Independence Day, my Psychology Today article today offers three other issues on which the marketplace of ideas is being truncated.

"I’m Not Brave Enough:" Leaving a lover, quitting a job, questioning conventional wisdom, seeing a doc

Have you ever felt that you should do something but can’t muster the courage? Perhaps my Psychology Today article today, which offers composite letters from the fearful and my responses, might be helpful.

Tough Problems: Being out of step: Indifferent to pop culture, a Republican in San Francisco

This is the latest in the Tough Problems series. In each installment, I present two composite questions that my clients face and my response to each.

Today's question is from a person who is indifferent to sports, pop culture, and what's hip. The second is from a Republican in San Francisco.

Out of Step: How much do you want to follow the crowd? A self-inventory.

Some people fit easily within societal norms, and life is easier for them. But what if you’re not much of a follow-the-crowd person?

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers three composite profiles, which present many ways a person might be out-of-step. Their purpose is to help you inventory the ways you are and aren’t normative and what, as we enter 2019, you might want to change...and not.

Watch What You Say: There are more minefields than ever.

When I was growing up, my parents said, “Never discuss religion or politics.”

Today, the tread-lightly topics have expanded. Some observers praise that as due sensitivity to race, class, and gender. Others lament that as undue sensitivity and censorship. Either way, the need for caution is real.

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers examples of statements that in earlier years would have been less dangerous.

Doubt: 19 Questions with answers less certain than many people believe.

Today, we seem ever more polarized. Of course, the U.S. presidential election brought this into full relief but apart from that.

Excessive zeal leads to excessive closed-mindedness, intolerance, and enmity.  
In a small (if lengthy) attempt to engender moderation, my PsychologyToday.com article today lists some of the day’s more contentious positions and reasons why moderate positions and certainly respect for differing opinions is justified.

Come See My One-Man Show, Odd Man Out

I'm doing my one-man-show, Odd Man Out this Saturday afternoon.

It's a bit of a misnomer to call it a one-man show because my wife  Barbara Nemko pops up periodically to annoy me. Plus, awesome singer Jeffrie Givens and I tell her amazing story in words and song. The word "amazing" is overused but not in Jeffrie's case.

The show has been reviewed twice, in the Berkeley Daily Planet and in the Napa Valley Register. 

The performance is this Saturday, May 13, at 1:00 PM at the Octopus Literary Salon: 2101 Webster St., Oakland, CA. $10. For more info and tix, click HERE.

A Bomb: A short-short story about suppressed anger.

I offer a short-short story on suppressed anger as my PsychologyToday.com contribution today