Alcohol vs Drugs: Which Is More Dangerous?
The social drug of choice in Western culture is alcohol. Yet drinking is estimated to kill 100,000 a year in the UK alone. Should we wean ourselves off alcohol or even ban it, and instead promote other less harmful but currently illegal alternatives?
Extreme Athleticism Is The New Midlife Crisis
Increasingly, people are responding to the anxieties of middle age not by clinging to the last vestiges of expiring youth but to taking on challenges that seem to belong to the young alone: by pushing the limits of what they’re physically capable of through endurance athletics and extreme fitness.
The Diabetes Patients Who Hacked A Pancreas
While diabetics anxiously awaited the release of commercial systems, tech-savvy diabetics and their loved ones worked on do-it-yourself systems. How could a bunch of hackers, working in their free time, create something medical manufacturing companies had yet to put on the market?
Don’t Let Your Obsession With Productivity Kill Your Creativity
Our current work world is obsessed with productivity. We read about other leaders’ productivity hacks, trying to model how to get into hustle mode. But our relentless quest to be productive is undermining one of the most important abilities in today’s workplace: creativity.
Why Apple’s ‘Trash Can’ Was A Colossal Failure
Apple’s 2013 Mac Pro was a classic case of form over function. Pro users were unable to upgrade the “trash can” or customize it to their liking. There were also thermal limitations that Apple didn’t think about with this design. And 6 years after the revolutionary “trash can” design, Apple goes back to the cheese grater design.
Life And Struggle After YouTube Fame
Dax Flame was only 15 when he became YouTube royalty – his channel was among the top 20 most subscribed in the early years of the site. But 13 years later, his fortunes have changed – he’s working as a waiter and trying to scrape together money just to get by.
Charity: How Effective Is Giving?
Philanthropists are putting record sums into tackling the world’s most pressing problems. And unlike the mega-donors of the past today’s philanthropists want to see the results in their lifetimes. But how altruistic is this new golden age of giving? Have these mega-donors become too powerful?
“Happiness”, An Animated Mirror Into Our Culture
“Happiness”, by Steve Cutts, is a brilliant jab at our Trumpian universe, where people have been brainwashed into believing that the newest device, car, hot partner, or pill will fulfill our inner yearning for peace.
“Quadrangle”, Award-Winning Doc About Marriage And Divorce
A documentary about two ‘conventional’ couples that swapped partners and lived in a group marriage in the early 70s, hoping to pioneer an alternative to divorce and pave the way for how people would live in the future.
Is Sunscreen The New Margarine?
A rogue band of researchers argues that what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above.
The Remote ‘Democratic’ Oasis Of Soviet Russia
The academic town of Akademgorodok in Siberia was created by Russian mathematician Mikhaïl Alekseïevitch Lavrentiev, who wanted to install a safe haven for scientists in the middle of Siberia. Such isolation from Moscow created a fertile scientific and cultural nest away from the influence of the State and its politics.
The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone
Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.
The Healing Power of Gardens
Oliver Sacks on the Psychological and Physiological Consolations of Nature: “In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.”
The Great Vape Debate: Are E-cigarettes Saving Smokers Or Creating New Addicts?
Behind the outright ban on sales of e-cigarettes in San Francisco is a panic about teenagers vaping. More than one in four American teens have tried vaping. In the UK, meanwhile, the medical establishment is endorsing vaping as an aid to giving up smoking. Where does the truth lie?
When The iPhone Nearly Killed A Nation
Nokia dominated the first decade of the cellphone boom, becoming a beloved brand around the world and pumping billions of dollars into the Finnish economy. Then, along came Steve Jobs and his iPhone in 2007 and ruined everything. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost. Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft. And Finns took a serious hit to their country pride.
Need A Happiness Boost? Spend Your Money To Buy Time, Not More Stuff
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that when people spend money on time-saving services such as a house cleaner, lawn care or grocery delivery, it can make them feel a little happier. By comparison, money spent on material purchases — aka things — does not boost positive emotions the way we might expect.
Rural America Is In The Midst Of A Mental Health Crisis. Tech Could Help.
Too many Americans don’t have access to sufficient mental health support. A large reason for this disparity is that physicians aren’t moving to rural areas, but innovative partnerships are helping bridge the gap for some patients.
The Diabolical Genius Of The Baby Advice Industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. While there might indeed be one right way to do things, you will never get to find out what it is.
“No Other Way To Say It”, A Comedy About Advertising
Director Tim Mason pulls the curtain back on the glamorous world of advertising in this short comedy about a voiceover actor trying to nail the right tone for a pair of indecisive ad creatives selling a fictitious children’s ice cream brand.
The 30 Year-Old Airline That’s Never Flown
Back in 1989, a guy by the name of Igor Dmitrovsky filed the paperwork to incorporate a small little business in the state of New York. This company would enter the metal cylinder organism transport business under the name Baltia Airlines. The airline was to fly from New York, US to St Petersburg, USSR.
How Africa Can Get Rich
Africa is changing so fast, it is becoming hard to ignore. In the short term, the continent faces many problems, but in the long term, it could rival China’s economic might. By the end of this century, Africa is set to play a much bigger role in world affairs. The Asian growth miracle is likely to slow Africa’s rapid rise could be next.