The Renaissance drenched the roots of a dull Feudal Europe with magic and let it blossom into the most beautiful flower Earth had ever seen. It was man’s Yellowstone, a colossal cultural explosion that stormed the lands for thousands of miles. It catapulted art, science, literature, architecture, and philosophy far beyond their perceived boundaries. Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael—three dynamic polymaths whose aggregated effect on mankind boils every century—fought to be the most perfect genius ever. Machiavelli and Thomas More resurrected Greek Thinkers, using their ideas to critique present governments. Intellectuals gradually composed modern science. Accounting was invented, and knowledge-based economics flourished. Brunelleschi—another of the many polymaths—created his Duomo. Columbus sailed West. Education poured into the masses. The Gutenberg Press started mass communication, AKA what I do.The Renaissance has stirred the world in every second of the last 600 years—especially throughout 2016.

Pictured at Kauai’s northern tip, I have really soaked up…