The New Generation Of Self-Created Utopias
The United States has been a laboratory for experiments in alternative living since its founding. As so-called intentional communities proliferate across the country, a subset of Americans is discovering the value of opting out of contemporary society.
Can Computers Ever Replace The Classroom?
Derek Haoyang Li is the founder of Squirrel AI, an education company that offers tutoring delivered in part by humans, but mostly by smart machines, which he says will transform education as we know it. Other entrepreneurs are making similarly extravagant claims about the power of online learning.
Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus
In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing you to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too.
How Psychology Is Just Catching Up With The Effects Of Online Hate
Lindsay Ellis is a video essayist. She makes videos commenting on films, TV shows, and other media. More than 860,000 people subscribe to her YouTube channel. But there is also this difficult aspect to what Ellis does: online hate.
The Convert: Life With A Jihadist
Tania Joya had been married to a jihadist from Texas for ten years, but she was tired of living like a nomad and unnerved by his increasingly extreme ideology. When he dragged their family to war-torn Syria, she knew it was time to get out.
Can Kyoto’s Buddhist Cuisine Teach Us All To Eat Better?
From the Buddhist perspective, cooking is a form of spiritual practice that produces nourishment to prepare the body for hard work and meditation. Its goals are nothing less than permanent enlightenment, nirvana, the fundamental transformation of the human mind and society.
Why Can’t The World’s Greatest Minds Solve The Mystery Of Consciousness?
Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots. Why aren’t we just brilliant robots, capable of retaining information, of responding to noises and smells and hot saucepans, but dark inside, lacking an inner life?
The Rise And Fall Of Marty Tirrell
From central Iowa radio pioneer to alleged scam artist. Money didn’t always belong to Tirrell, according to numerous court judgments against him. He defrauded eight people out of $1.5 million.
The World’s Oldest Winery in Armenia
The Areni-1 complex, uncovered in 2007, contains a 6,100-year-old winery replete with fermenting vats, a grape press, and subterranean clay storage vessels. Altogether, it’s the best-preserved archeological site in the ongoing search for winemaking’s birthplace.
Can Ageing Be Delayed, Stopped Or Even Reversed?
This is the pursuit of a much longer, healthier life span using science and genetics to achieve it. Who hasn’t dreamed of staying young but how far will you be prepared to go to achieve that dream? BBC’s Gabriela Torres meets the self-experimenters and scientists who are trying to dramatically extend our lives.
The Art World’s Mini-Madoff And Me
Inigo Philbrick made his money betting big on a rise in price for a few artists, notably Stingel, who is known for his seemingly endless series of indistinguishable paintings of wallpaper, and Wool, whose most famous text painting fittingly spells out the word FOOL.
Retiring Retirement
We’re going to see something we’ve never seen before—people in their 60s, 70s and 80s functioning at an exceptionally high level who want to continue working and remain connected. The question is whether society will adapt to make the most of this new labor pool.
Fake It Till You Make It: Meet The Wolves Of Instagram
To thousands of young millennials from humble backgrounds, Jordan Belfort’s Wolf of Wall Street story became a blueprint for how to escape an unremarkable life on low pay. Their social media feeds display super-rich lifestyles, but what are these self-styled traders really selling?
Life Under The Algorithm
Increase your output, get paid more. Wages go up with productivity. Until, it turns out, they don’t anymore. The unwinding of this agreement in recent decades, such that workers must continue to produce more without expecting it to show up in their pay stubs, has now been the subject of a good deal of discussion and debate.
The Link Between Self Compassion And Peak Performance
Research shows that individuals who react to failure with self-compassion get back on the bandwagon much more swiftly than those who judge themselves. That’s because if you judge yourself for messing up, you’re liable to feel guilt or shame, and it is often this very guilt or shame that drives more of the undesired behavior.
How A New Technology Is Changing The Lives Of People Who Cannot Speak
Millions are robbed of the power of speech by illness, injury or lifelong conditions. Can the creation of bespoke digital voices transform their ability to communicate? The digital voice is not a remnant of who they were, but a promise of who they will be.
Raising The Minimum Wage By $1 May Prevent Thousands Of Suicides, Study Shows
Between 1990 and 2015, raising the minimum wage by $1 in each state might have saved more than 27,000 lives, according to a report published this week in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. An increase of $2 in each state’s minimum wage could have prevented more than 57,000 suicides.
The Danger Of Befriending Celebrities
Meryl Streep doesn’t call me every week to go bowling. In fact, she doesn’t call me at all. And that’s a good thing. I honestly can’t recommend becoming friends with celebrities, especially if you’re a long-running journalist like I am. It simply will not lead to a Hollywood ending.
Is Aging A Disease?
Over the years, the movement to classify aging as a disease has gained momentum not only from longevity enthusiasts but also from scientists. Whether aging can be cured or not, there are arguments for thinking about it like a disease. But there are major pitfalls, too.
There Is No Reason to Cross the U.S. by Train. But I Did It Anyway.
Tell your fellow Americans that you plan to cross the United States by train, and their reactions will range from amusement at your spellbinding eccentricity to naked horror that they, through some fatal social miscalculation, have become acquainted with a person who would plan to cross the United States by train.
Inside The All-Star Café Baseball Card Heist
A Coen Brothers-esque tale about knuckleheaded kitchen staffers at the All-Star Café, a Hollywood A-lister, the Mona Lisa of baseball cards and a plan that went horribly wrong.