Every day, I jostle against other people in physical and non-physical space; viewing a website at the same time as other people, cramming myself into a three-seat bench on a peak-hour train, shouting 140-character opinions on topics important and mundane as others do the same. This issue‘s pieces are about the way people and things brush up against each other—strivers and their ambitions, fame-seeking pop stars and the tech world, avant-garde musicians and the artwork that inspires them, fathers and sons and their record collections.