First Person

Essays

Personal reckoning. Intellectual honesty. Writing that risks something — that reasons as well as feels, that complicates its own position.

Cover Essay  ·  Issue 01

I Am Not the Same Person I Was Ten Years Ago. Am I?

On the Ship of Theseus, the narrative self, and what neuroscience actually tells us about who we are across time — and why it may not be what matters.

Tomás Pereira  ·  24 min read
All essays Full archive
Essays

On Being Called a Foreigner in My Own Country

What happens to your sense of self when the place that made you refuses to claim you? A personal reckoning with belonging and the violence of belonging's absence.

11 min
Essays

Writing in a Second Language, Thinking in a Third

Every language I write in changes what I am able to say. On translation, self-betrayal, and the strange gift of not quite belonging to any tongue.

15 min
Field Notes

The Languages That Shape What We Can Feel

If you don't have a word for an emotion, can you still feel it? Dispatches from the borderlands of language, culture, and inner life.

10 min
Conversations

Free Will, Determinism, and the Feeling of Agency

A philosopher and a neuroscientist sit across from each other with the oldest question. Neither wins, and that turns out to be the point.

18 min