Celebrities are increasingly fronting aid campaigns. But what role do they play in the development process? Is it right they gain direct access to the political bargaining table?
What are the implications of the U.S. Federal Court finding this week that Congress cannot force people to engage in a commercial activity, in this case buying an insurance policy?
Most people want to have children. Societies that don’t accommodate this aspiration run the risk of losing faith in their own future and compromising their economic development.
“Politics is like term papers,” says U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. “You usually get serious right before the term paper is due. That’s the downside of democracy: without friction, there is […]
Many countries felt shocked and cheated when FIFA chose Qatar to host the 2022 football World Cup. But it could usher in a new era for the sport and the region.
The coalition has been unable to communicate to the electorate that the individual student debt they are saddling young graduates with is fairly abstract.
Selling your organs is illegal in every country except Iran. But the WHO says the black market is massive. Can economists make the system more humane and efficient?
Glamour magazine dubbed her “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo” in naming Somali Muslim Dr. Hawa Abdi “woman of the year.” She epitomizes courage and compassion.
Even if science is able to teleport humans across large distances, would the teleported human really be the same person or just an exact replica? What would happen to the soul?
Why are effective obesity drugs so hard to develop? The brain circuits responsible for appetite overlap with those that control other important functions, raising the risk of side effects.
Defenders of copyright law often talk about how copyright is a ‘right’ for artists but ignore that at the same time it often takes away the rights of users.
Securing our borders is not enough: the Senator favors comprehensive immigration reform, including a temporary workers program, better employer verification, and a path to citizenship.
Everyone yawns, but no one knows why. We start when we are in the womb, and we do it through old age, but the purpose and survival value of yawning remain a mystery.
The three most important questions for a nationwide broadband network are: What should the speed be? What will it cost? And how will we pay for it? Craig Settles gives some answers.
Investors’ giddiness over the tech upstarts—and the dozens of other Chinese companies that have gone public in the U.S.—has some wondering whether this boom is really a bubble.
Our cosmos was “bruised” in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background.
The amiable idea that language shapes thought has become disconnected, in our popular culture, from any consideration of mere fact, says Mark Liberman of the U of Pennsylvania.
Can modern science help us to create heroes? That’s the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Stanford psychologist Phil Zimbardo.