And what it means for Trump and Biden — Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, retired in 1961 — sort of. Following the Great Leap Forward, a disastrous economic plan that led to the death of over 30 million people, Mao was pushed back from the first rank of the party, while a group of leaders…

Why addressing climate change will only get harder — In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the UN’s scientific working group on global warming) wrote the following: We are certain of the following: there is a natural greenhouse effect which already keeps the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be; emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing…

AI and humans are both getting better at writing boring schlock — In May, movie and TV writers began the first labor action against artificial intelligence. In addition to their other concerns — dwindling royalties, opaque streaming metrics, etc. — writers are worried about what they see as an existential threat on the horizon. It’s not hard to imagine a world in…

Why does America have two-year-long presidential campaigns? — Four hundred and twenty-one days to go. I’m so tired of this election, and it hasn’t even really started yet. As I write this, we’re staring wearily at another year and two months before the 2024 presidential election. …

Four ways to get good people to run for office — Back in the 1930s, it wasn’t uncommon to enter somebody’s house and see a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt on the wall. This made sense at the time. He was a very popular politician, with approval ratings that sometimes topped 80%. But it was more than that — in addition to…

What headphones and smartphones have done to our auditory experience — For a while during the pandemic, I did my grocery shopping on Saturday nights to avoid the crowds. I found that Saturday-night shoppers, especially at the height of COVID, behaved differently from the people I was used to seeing at the store on pre-pandemic weekend mornings. The store had a…

What lessons do kids learn from the structure of school? — We tend to make the mistake of thinking that school is primarily for teaching kids information. Of course, we want students to learn the causes of the Civil War, how to solve quadratic equations, or how to conjugate French verbs. All of this stuff is important, and I believe in…

The long, strange history of “amateur” athletics — At some point a few years from now, the student-athletes on the Rutgers softball team may have to travel from New Jersey to Los Angeles to play a league game against UCLA. That’s a five-or-six-hour flight each way to play a two-hour game. These student-athletes will have traveled thousands of…

Why do we allow some of our most important industries to hide their prices? — Imagine you’re in the grocery store to pick up some eggs. When you get to the aisle, the eggs don’t have a conventional price tag. Instead, the sign under them says “price TBD.” …