Dan Ariely on building an understanding of how humans behave from the ground up.
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Our Favorite Words Of 2016
From akasha to kompromat, a guide to the words we learned in 2016.
Falling in Love with Words: The Secret Life of a Lexicographer
Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper describes how she fell in love with words and offers a peek into the complex process of making dictionaries.
Why the World Is Betting on a Better Battery: A Reading List
Nick Leiber | Longreads | March 2015 The first battery, a pile of copper and zinc discs, was invented more than 200 years ago, ushering in the electric age. Subsequent versions led to portable electronics, mobile computing, and our current love affair with smartphones (1,000 of which are shipped every 22 seconds). Now batteries are […]
What Happens When We Run Out of Jobs?
After 300 years of breathtaking innovation, people aren’t massively unemployed or indentured by machines. But to suggest how this could change, some economists have pointed to the defunct career of the second-most-important species in U.S. economic history: the horse. For many centuries, people created technologies that made the horse more productive and more valuable—like plows […]
Home Is Where the Fraud Is
At the height of the housing crisis, one woman’s bureaucratic odyssey to discover who really owns her home leads her to startling revelations about the housing market.
Home Is Where the Fraud Is
At the height of the housing crisis, one woman’s bureaucratic odyssey to discover who really owns her home leads her to startling revelations about the housing market.
Why the World Is Betting on a Better Battery: A Reading List
Nick Leiber | Longreads | March 2015 The first battery, a pile of copper and zinc discs, was invented more than 200 years ago, ushering in the electric age. Subsequent versions led to portable electronics, mobile computing, and our current love affair with smartphones (1,000 of which are shipped every 22 seconds). Now batteries are […]
A Three-Part Series on the Plight of the Black Middle Class in America
In January The Washington Post published a powerful three-part series looking at the plight of the black middle class in America. The series focuses on Maryland’s Prince George’s County—the most affluent majority-black county in America, as well as one of the counties hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis. At the heart of the series is a singular, vexing question: “Why don’t […]
What It’s Like to Fly Into a Thunderstorm
The art and science of cloud seeding, from the pilots who fly directly into storms to help save farmers’ crops.
