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EXTRA

Policymaking Is Not a Science — Yet (Update)

Why do so many promising solutions in education, medicine, and criminal justice fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation scientists” crack the code?

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Episode 86

Toothpaste

We reach for it twice a day — without thinking about the decades of research and engineering that went into that squeezable tube of minty goo. Zachary Crockett extracts the last bit.

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Episode 154

Can Robots Get a Grip?

Ken Goldberg is at the forefront of robotics — which means he tries to teach machines to do things humans find trivial.

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Episode 627

Sludge, Part 1: The World Is Drowning in It

Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. Where does all this sludge come from — and how much is it costing us? (Part one of a two-part series.)

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