Showing results by author "David Boles" in All Categories

The title comes from "The Atomic Man," the seventh story in the collection, where a teenager named Calvin Reece understands what he has become. He has become light: the loneliest thing in the universe, touching everything, holding nothing. But the phrase describes all twelve protagonists. Each one reaches the world in some remarkable way and finds that the reach itself prevents the grasp. They affect everything around them and possess nothing of what they most need: ordinary human closeness, the unremarkable warmth of being known without being studied, feared, worshipped, or fled from.

The Human Meme podcast examines what separates human consciousness from mere biological existence. Each episode investigates the inherited behaviors, cultural transmissions, and cognitive patterns that replicate across generations, shaping how we think, grieve, speak, and remember. David Boles, a New York City writer, publisher, and teacher, hosts these conversations as mindfulness with teeth: no production music, no easy comfort, only the direct inquiry into what makes us recognizably human. Since 2016, the podcast has asked why we weep emotional tears, how language emerged from gesture, and ...