The Variance

Why we accept gifts we'd never buy ourselves — and what adaptive-product brands and care-givers can learn from it. When Margaret's daughter set the wrapped box on the kitchen table last spring, Margaret assumed it was another candle. She was seventy-eight, her birthdays had become predictable, and macular degeneration had quietly rearranged what she could still enjoy about them. She hadn't finished a novel in almost a year. She had stopped mentioning it. Inside the box was a

On the Ability Curve, Why "Disabled" Isn't a Community, and How Aging Into Disability Is the Conversation Nobody Wants to Have I sat down with Tracy V Allen on Impactors Out Loud for a conversation that ran just under an hour and dug into corners I don't always get to explore — the sub-communities inside "disability," why marketing to disabled people is like marketing to Asia, the family office as the ideal impact investor, aging into disability, and why a friend's line about

On the Agency of Others, Why the Idea Is Only 15%, and How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy I sat down with the Move Swiftly Podcast — a show about innovative teamwork — for a conversation that ran about 50 minutes and went places I didn't expect. We talked about my failed side businesses, why Gen X is the "Pottery Barn generation," why the U.S. patent system is quietly broken, why your success comes down to the agency of others, and why I now believe the idea itself is 15%

On the Ability Curve, Why "Adaptive" Costs Too Much, and How Kids in the Kitchen Might Be the Ones Who Finally Change the Culture I sat down with Aaron DeVries on The Inclusive Dad Podcast for a conversation that started with the question I most like being asked — what is your definition of inclusion? — and ended somewhere I didn't expect: talking about the psychology of walkers, the "gray tsunami," why 3D printers matter, and whether I'd ever eaten Spam. It ran about 42 minu

Part 1 of a 2-part series on adaptive cutting solutions for arthritis and reduced grip strength If you have arthritis and you've started dreading meal prep, you're not imagining things — and you're not alone. For the roughly 54 million American adults living with arthritis — including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriatic arthritis — the humble kitchen knife has become one of the most surprisingly hostile tools in the home. Not because your hands are failing you

I sat down for a conversation recently on the Entrepreneurs Enigma Podcast with Seth Goldstein about NULU, about the artillery officer's approach to problem-solving, about why adaptive design is just smart design, and about the actuarial tables that shape how I think about time now. There's a lot in there — some of it about the product, some of it about how a counterfire officer ends up inventing a kitchen knife thirty years later, some of it about why the venture capital wor