History professor Mark LeVine examines the complex relationships between immigration, globalization, and natural resource extraction. He sees a system that stratifies wealth.

"We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to," says Paul Graham. The essayist writes that technological development creates addictive products from drugs to the Internet.

"An anthropologist argues that polygamy is harmful as Canada considers whether having multiple wives is a constitutional right." Our neighbors to the North take a surprising turn.

A private university in England has changed their curriculum to offer a two-year degree and its students highly approve. A two-year degree may make more economic sense in our times.

"Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis." Scientific American reports on the effects of our spreading social isolation.

Job retraining seems like an ideal solution for the unemployed, but problems persist. Are Americans being trained for the right jobs, and what if nobody is hiring in the first place?

"According to a controversial new theory, our emotions have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with us." The New Scientist says emotions are the currency of relationships.

Illustrator Jess Bachman diagrams Glenn Beck's shady links to Goldline in an accessible infographic. To summarize: Goldine is a sponsor of Beck's TV and radio shows. Beck tells his audience […]

David Keith, director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the University of Calgary, says geoengineering should be "a central part of how we think about managing climate risk over the next 100 years."

The big cognitive and emotional news in the Mind Matters household is that it is expecting the arrival in a few weeks of a demanding, very long-staying guest, whose personality […]

When creating a new business, take your big idea and chop it in half. And then chop it in half again. Rather than loading your product up with lots of […]

The newspapers of yore had two dependable revenue streams: subscribers and advertisers. Today’s broadsheets draw money from the same sources, but funding problems at even the most mainstream papers are […]

Trypanophobia – the extreme, irrational fear of needles – is said to affect 10% of American adults. And then there are the merely squeamish ones, for whom getting a shot […]

At some point, however, the country will have to let the yuan appreciate and allow cash flows in and out of the country.

Cutting down on over-the-counter derivatives trading among banks will reduce the likelihood that if one bank goes under so will the rest.

Buoyed by past deregulation successes, Congress didn’t want Wall Street regulators to interfere before the crash.

Why some of the notorious financial instruments that helped bring down the financial system in 2008 really aren't so bad.

Investment banks encourage faulty risk management because the risks are "not internalized by the people that are taking them."

A conversation with the Nobel Prize-winning economist.