Corporate America Has a Caste Problem
Silicon Valley’s diversity problems are not hidden, with white males occupying prominent positions. However, there is a hidden aspect of diversity that corporate America is beginning to feel: caste. On June 30, 2020, for the...
Now Is the Time to Prepare for the Economic Shocks of Battling Climate Change
The costs keep piling up: California’s 2018 fire season caused close to $150 billion in damages, and this year’s record-setting wildfires could prove just as dear. Rebuilding after Germany’s summer floods will probably cost more than 6...
A More Prosocial World in Theory and Practice
Listen to “#30 – A More Prosocial World in Theory and Practice” on Spreaker. In this episode of the Breaking the Fever podcast, we speak with David Sloan Wilson about cooperation—how it evolved in social...
How Networks of Complicity Can Enable Crimes to Go on for Decades
The R&B singer R. Kelly was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking charges on Sept 27, 2021, having been exposed as the ringleader of a decades-long scheme to recruit girls, boys and women to have...
The Double-Edged Nature of Cooperation
The pandemic has been a stark reminder of just how much we rely on one another. Like plagues of the past, the novel coronavirus has exploited our social nature. But our sociality is also our Get...
How to Address the Legal Status of Afghan Refugees
In the last two weeks of August, the U.S. government coordinated an unprecedented and massive evacuation from Afghanistan of more than 124,000 people, mostly Afghan refugees. This daunting logistical feat relied on the tireless efforts...
Elizabeth Holmes Is a Scapegoat—Even If She’s Guilty
Reprinted with permission from Luke Burgis’ Substack, Anti-Mimetic. The criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos, began last week. As the trial drew near, I had a foreboding feeling that...
The Two Sides of Envy at Work
Back when she was in college, Alaina G. Levine used to envy fellow students who seemed to have their entire lives mapped out. A physics and astronomy student at the University of Arizona, her own...
Can Geopolitical Decision-Making Benefit from a Little Bias?
A well-established finding from modern psychology is that mentally healthy people are generally overconfident (with men being particularly cocky). What this body of research suggests is that we individually tend to overestimate our abilities, as...
How Political Polarization Affects Our Personal and Professional Lives
Listen to “#29 – How Political Polarization Affects Our Personal and Professional Lives” on Spreaker. In this episode of the Breaking the Fever podcast, we speak with Alison Goldsworthy, Laura Osborne, and Alexandra Chesterfield—the authors...