Author in natural habitat. Perching atop sun heated rocks is commonly observed in late spring when the author incubates essays. This behavior is known as “working.”
When I asked a friend how he would describe Escaping Flatland, he said that I’m essentially a daddy blogger. Except I’m the kind of dad who knows how to find the eigenvectors of a matrix and spend my nights reading the correspondence of Renaissance philosophers. I have two daughters whom I homeschool with my wife, Johanna, on a small farm on a rocky, pine covered island in the Baltic Sea.
All the ambitious, well-researched pieces are co-written with Johanna (for examples, see: 1, 2). And the more personal and emotional tend to be written by me (3, 4).
Our writing has appear in WIRED, Asterisk and The Spectator. It has been on Marginal Revolution, the top of HackerNews front page, and Escaping was one of Substack’s featured publications in 2023 and 2025.
You’ll find essays about everything from the childhoods of exceptional people to how to find a good life partner, from an analysis of the notebooks of Ingmar Bergman to why the culture of schooling will limit the impact of AI tutors. Here is a summary of what I wrote in 2024.
My philosophy is that a blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting things to your inbox.
Thanks to the support and donations of subscribers, Johanna and I currently work full time on the blog.
Henrik
