My wife can’t seem to walk for a half-hour around Ottawa, a city with nearly a million people, without running into at least three of her friends. Some people, like my wife, seem to have a zillion of them, while others appear to be content with just a handful. Having more friends seems like a […]

When scale confounds our perceptions, stories can clarify them.

MacArthur Fellow Danielle Bassett says learning works best when you don’t overthink it.

In 1972 the Club of Rome, an international think tank, commissioned four scientists to use computers to model the human future. The result was the infamous Limits to Growth that crashed into world culture like an asteroid from space. Collapse, calamity, and chaos were the media take-aways from the book, even though the authors tried hard to explain […]

As pills and gadgets proliferate, what matters is still social connection.

We predicted cell phones, but not women in the workplace.