The famed statistician Nate Silver has his work cut out for him. 2020 has been a year of great upheaval and unrest, with uncertainty in the economy, in public health, and in the upcoming US presidential election. In The Signal and the Noise, Silver’s classic book about predictions, he offers an interesting piece of advice: don’t […]
End on a Good Note
We’ve all been there. A lackluster Zoom meeting. A presentation that falls flat. A vacation that doesn’t go as planned. If you ever find yourself flopping, here’s a quick tip to salvage the situation: make sure to end on a positive note. The way in which an experience concludes helps to crystallize a good—or bad—memory. Often enough, […]
Know When the Price Is Right
After a drastic drop in March and April, consumer confidence has been shaky around the globe—slightly up in the US, and down in China. Amidst so much upheaval, it’s reassuring to know that some things haven’t changed, including the principles that govern consumers’ choices. In Dollars and Sense, behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores how consumers calculate the value […]
Love Takes Practice
Falling in love is easy. But loving someone for a lifetime—well, that’s an art. In the 1950s, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm shook up the fields of psychology and philosophy with the simple (but revolutionary) idea that loving is a skill, not a state of mind. Before Fromm, people had always thought of love as a phenomenon […]
The Roots of Unrest
Over the last few weeks, concern regarding inequities in the US criminal justice system have come to a head in protests against police brutality across the country. While civil unrest has spread rapidly, the underlying issues represent a chronic problem of which many people were blissfully unaware: Racism is a longstanding problem in the US […]
Vulnerability Is Not A Weakness
Brené Brown describes vulnerability as a measure of strength, not weakness. Expressing feelings of self-doubt and uncertainty, discussing uncertain situations, and sharing encounters with failure and hardship are all ways that we can practice vulnerability. Many Westerners have been raised to think of vulnerability as a weakness or a flaw. In fact, vulnerability is a tool […]
The World is…Flat?
It’s rare to see a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer argue that the world is flat. But that’s exactly what Thomas L. Friedman has done, observing the “flatness” of a global market that lets developing countries complete and collaborate with developed nations. Tracing the phenomenon of globalization all the way back to Christopher Columbus, our Instaread on […]
Food for Thought: The Mindless Mishap that Unraveled Brian Wansink’s Bestseller
Is there any story more delicious than a proud man’s fall from grace? Discredited food psychologist Brian Wansink, a Cornell professor and formerly the head of the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and promotion, built his career by fanning the flames of public interest in his gimmicky food lab projects. As a frequent fixture in […]
A Tour of Silicon Valley
For some, Silicon Valley is a place to live and work. For others, the Valley seems so alien that it might as well be another planet. This rift has perhaps never been so clear as it is in a trio of pieces in the New York Times that ran this week about how parents in […]
Walter Isaacson’s Renaissance Men
Walter Isaacson was once labeled a “protean biographer” by the New York Times. The phrase was a clever reference to the way his writing style shifts to accommodate the demands of a given subject. As a professor of history, a journalist, a network news leader, and the head of a respected think tank, Isaacson is […]
