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2mins
Safran Foer likens the experience of watching films of his novels to hearing his own voice on an answering machine—except far stranger.
3mins
Comedy may be difficult to pull off, but comedians can at least gauge their success by the audience’s laughter. For writers, there is no similar criterion by which to judge […]
3mins
Though some claim factory farming is necessary to feed the Third World, it requires seven calories of input to generate one calorie of food.
2mins
Safran Foer says Pollan is the most important and sensible food writer in American history, but he disagrees with Pollan over the idea of “table fellowship.” “We’re past the point […]
4mins
A recent study calculated the environmental costs of a 50-cent fast food hamburger to be 400 times its price at the register.
3mins
Eating meat is a part of our cultural and personal identity—think Christmas hams or Thanksgiving turkeys—but the factory farming system is not sustainable.
3mins
The neurotransmitter dopamine is crucial for learning adaptive behaviors, but addictive drugs exploit this normal mechanism by flooding the brain with dopamine.
2mins
“Your legs couldn’t tell you Newton’s laws, but they still obey them, and of course your brain might not be able to explain the laws of statistics, but it still […]
7mins
Kepecs uses rats to study the neurology of decision-making because their brains are evolutionarily similar to ours but much simpler. Likewise, if you wanted to learn how cars worked, you […]
4mins
Being able to retain some sense of control during his kidnapping—albeit small—helped Alpert overcome the trauma of the experience.
5mins
Humanizing yourself and creating a bond with your captor enhances your chances of survival, but sometimes you will also need to be deceptive.
7mins
The NYPD and FBI both agree that Alpert should not have survived his kidnapping; Alpert shares with us the strategies he used to stay alive.
7mins
Former federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped at gunpoint on his 38th birthday, kept his wits during the harrowing 25-hour ordeal, convinced his captors to release him, and then helped […]
24mins
A conversation with the writer and kidnapping survivor.
2mins
Every choice we make involves calculating the risk versus the reward, but if we mistake luck for skill, as was the case on Wall Street, these calculations become meaningless.
3mins
Survival expert Laurence Gonzales explains how to increase your chances of surviving some of the most common deadly scenarios.
2mins
The characteristics that increase your chance of survival in extraordinary situations can also help you manage the daily trials of life.
2mins
The rule of thumb is that humans can survive three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food, but there are always extraordinary cases—some have gone […]