Why subscribe?

I’ve been to about two dozen countries. Walked through Roman ruins, the empty streets of Pompeii, and ancient cities in Croatia and Turkey. And somewhere along the way, I noticed something that nobody really talks about.

The people who lived 2,000 years ago weren’t that different from us.

They worried about money. They gossiped about celebrities. They built things to impress their neighbors, made bad decisions for obvious reasons, and followed leaders who probably shouldn’t have been leading. Voltaire said history never repeats itself — man always does. He wasn’t wrong.

Past Passport is where I write about how history changes, but man never does. For instance, I recently wrote about how our tendency to return a wallet full of $100 bills is predicted by past behavior. If we study history, we know what people are likely to do today.

Most of us sense that the past is connected to right now. Few of us know the specifics. That’s the gap I’m interested in.

I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve stood in a lot of places. And I keep finding the same thing: the further back you look, the more familiar it gets.

Subscribe if you've ever looked at the present and suspected the past already had the answer.