Also: how do you avoid screwing up your kids?
Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth…
Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth…
Stanford professor Carolyn Bertozzi’s imaginative ideas for treating disease have led to ten start-ups. She talks with Steve about the next generation of immune therapy she’s created, and why she…
To get a lot of followers on Twitter, do you need to follow a lot of other Tweeps? And if not, why not?
Palliative physician B.J. Miller asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?…
Also: why do people pace while talking on the phone?…
Khan Academy grew out of Sal Khan’s online math tutorials for his extended family. It’s now a platform used by more than 115 million people in 190 countries. So what…
If you think talent and hard work give top athletes all the leverage to succeed, think again. As employees in the Sports-Industrial Complex, they’ve got a tight earnings window, a…
Where’s the line between an addiction and a bad habit? Why do definitions of mental illnesses change over time? And what’s the most addictive thing in the world?…
Kate Douglass is a world-class swimmer and data scientist who’s used mathematical modeling to help make her stroke more efficient. She and Steve talk about why the Olympics were underwhelming,…
He has been a lawyer, an instructor at the F.B.I. Academy, the owner of a frozen-yogurt chain, and a winner of the TV show Survivor. Today, Kwon works at Google,…
What happens when an existentially depressed and recently widowed young physicist from Queens gets a fresh start in California? We follow Richard Feynman out west, to explore his long and…
Are Europeans more sophisticated than Americans? What’s wrong with preferring Taylor Swift to Puccini? And is Steve Levitt “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob”?
Whether you’re mapping the universe, hosting a late-night talk show, or running a meeting, there are a lot of ways to up your idea game. Plus: the truth about brainstorming….
Economists and politicians have turned him into a mascot for free-market ideology. Some on the left say the right has badly misread him. Prepare for a very Smithy tug of…
Ken Ono is a math prodigy whose skills have helped produce a Hollywood movie and made Olympic swimmers faster. The number theorist tells Steve why he sees mathematics as art…
Also: is it better to “go with the wind” or to “be the wind”?
Can a little dishonesty be a good thing? How many fibs does Angela tell every day? And why does Stephen have a forehead?…
Naturalist Sy Montgomery explains how she learned to be social from a pig, discovered octopuses have souls, and came to love a killer that will never love her back.
Also: do we overestimate or underestimate our significance in other people’s lives?…
Thick markets, thin markets, and the triumph of attributes over compatibility.
The more successful an artist is, the more likely their work will later be resold at auction for a huge markup — and they receive nothing. Should that change? Also:…
Daniel Kahneman left his mark on academia (and the real world) in countless ways. A group of his friends and colleagues recently gathered in Chicago to reflect on this legacy…
The gist: the argument for open borders is compelling — and deeply problematic.
The pandemic has hit America’s biggest city particularly hard. Amidst a deep fiscal hole, rising homicides, and a flight to the suburbs, some people think the city is heading back…
Humans have a built-in “negativity bias,” which means we give bad news much more power than good. Would the Covid-19 crisis be an opportune time to reverse this tendency?
In addition to publishing best-selling books about pregnancy and child-rearing, Emily Oster is a respected economist at Brown University. Over the course of the pandemic, she’s become the primary collector…
The N.B.A. superstar Chris Bosh was still competing at the highest level when a blood clot abruptly ended his career. In his new book, Letters to a Young Athlete, Bosh…
