Good Names, Good People
A running, dated feed of short, positive profiles of real people — historic and present-day — who share popular names. New posts appear here on a regular schedule; every name's own detail page always shows the full set of profiles researched for it.
-
September 22, 2026
Joseph Pulitzer — Joseph
Joseph Pulitzer understood something I spent 38 years trying to teach eight-year-olds: that telling the truth clearly, and doing it well, deserves real recognition. His name is on the Pulitzer Prizes now, which most…
-
September 21, 2026
Thomas Keller — Thomas
Thomas Keller trained generations of cooks and became one of the most respected voices for craftsmanship and sustainability in the culinary world, and even though my own cooking skills stop somewhere around a decent…
-
September 20, 2026
Thomas Paine — Thomas
Thomas Paine wrote 'Common Sense' in language plain enough that regular working people, not just the educated elite, could read it and understand exactly why independence mattered, and I respect that more than almost…
-
September 19, 2026
Thomas Edison — Thomas
Everybody knows Thomas Edison for the light bulb, but here's the stat that matters to me as a coach: hundreds of patents, which means hundreds of ideas that didn't just show up fully formed, they came out of an insane…
-
September 18, 2026
Charles Schulz — Charles
Charles Schulz drew 'Peanuts' — Charlie Brown, Snoopy, the whole gang — nearly every single day for almost 50 years, which when you actually sit with that number is an enormous amount of quiet, consistent labor…
-
September 17, 2026
Charles Dickens — Charles
Charles Dickens grew up with his own family in financial trouble, working as a child in a shoe-polish factory before he ever became one of the greatest novelists in the English language, and I think that's exactly why…
-
September 16, 2026
Charles Darwin — Charles
Charles Darwin spent decades gathering evidence before he published 'On the Origin of Species,' and that patience is the part of his story I most want people to understand — the theory of evolution by natural…
-
September 15, 2026
Robert Ballard — Robert
Robert Ballard is best known for locating the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, which is the kind of discovery that captures public imagination instantly, but the more significant part of his career, in my view, is what…
-
September 14, 2026
Robert Downey Jr. — Robert
Robert Downey Jr. is famous now for playing Iron Man, but the part of his story that actually means something to me is the comeback — recovering from addiction after years of very public struggle, and rebuilding an…
-
September 13, 2026
Robert Frost — Robert
Robert Frost wrote about rural New England in a way that reminds me of a hundred small towns I've rolled through on long hauls — quiet places most people just pass on their way somewhere bigger, that turn out to have…
-
September 12, 2026
Grace Bumbry — Grace
Grace Bumbry broke a real barrier in 1961, becoming the first Black singer to perform at Germany's Bayreuth Festival, in an art form and an institution that hadn't exactly been rolling out the welcome mat before her. I…
-
September 11, 2026
William Osler — William
William Osler basically redesigned what medical education looked like — he's often called the 'Father of Modern Medicine' for insisting that students learn directly at patients' bedsides instead of only from textbooks…