Life Lessons from Origami

Susan Orlean, a staff writer at The New Yorker, likes to joke that her beat at the magazine is “maniacs.” Ten years ago, she wrote about a former laser physicist who had given up a successful career to become an origami artist. In time, Robert Lang became one of the world’s top practitioners, and origami became a surprising area of scientific activity, with government grants encouraging research into how materials fold. Orlean caught up with Lang at the OrigamiUSA convention recently, where she tried her hand at Lang’s popular goldfish—which has a hinged jaw and fins—and talked with him about the life lessons of folding paper.