Ideas
The Nocebo Effect: How We Worry Ourselves Sick
NewYorker.com • April 2013
Many of us hope to find Wi-Fi wherever we go, preferably for free. But some people devote their lives to avoiding Wi-Fi altogether. Sufferers of
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Autism Inc.
New York Times Magazine • November 2012
When Thorkil Sonne and his wife, Annette, learned that their 3-year-old son, Lars, had autism, they did what any parent who has faith in reason
Read more →Beehive management
Boston Globe • April 2012
FOR THOSE interested in doing a better job of managing people - supporting them, inspiring them to greatness - there is plenty of advice out
Read more →Why Do Nations Fail?
Boston Globe • March 2012
SEVERAL CENTURIES ago, there was a nation that rose to become a world power on the strength of its innovation and its dedication to capitalist
Read more →Did the Solutreans settle America first?
Boston Globe • March 2012
===== IMPORTANT NOTE. In the years since I first wrote this, the "Solutrean" hypothesis has been widely and convincingly rejected by archeologists. See here for
Read more →The Brain, Weaponized
Boston Globe • February 2012
ONE BY one, the disciplines of science have lost their innocence. For chemistry, the defining moment came during World War I, when the Germans unleashed
Read more →Neuroscience Challenges Ideas about Free Will
Mind Matters • November 2011
Do we have free will? It is an age-old question which has attracted the attention of philosophers, theologians, lawyers and political theorists. Now it is
Read more →Good Bugs in our Body
Boston Globe • November 2011
MOST OF US look at bacteria as the enemy. They are the invisible things that lay in wait all around us - clinging to food,
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How Crowdsourcing is Changing Science
Boston Globe • November 2011
At the end of the 19th century, a team of British archeologists happened upon what is now one of the world’s most treasured trash dumps. The
Read more →Modern psychology's God problem
Boston Globe • October 2011
THINK ABOUT something that is very important to you. Like the ability to walk, or your vision. Now carefully visualize an entire day without it.
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The Dark Side of Happiness
Boston Globe • October 2011
You can be happy starting today! Don't sit by any longer, while friends and co-workers enjoy the good life. Happiness is yours for the taking:
Read more →Why Japan Surrendered
Boston Globe • August 2011
What ended World War II? For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan's surrender. By the
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Untangling the Mystery of the Inca
Wired • January 2007
Incan civilization was a technological marvel. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1532, they found an empire that spanned nearly 3,000 miles, from present-day Ecuador
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