Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# politics
# politics
Unless we tackle the cultural and mental health issues fueling populist train wrecks across the West, any political victory against them will only be temporary.
# politics
When populists, demagogues, and authoritarians insist on attacking experts for trying to fix the problems their dogmas created, the consequences can destroy entire nations.
# politics
It turns out that polls and predictions of who'll win, along with fake news appealing to our cognitive dissonances, are changing outcomes of elections before we even have them.
# politics
Widespread fraud and financial misdeeds have cost us trillions of dollars, but we're having trouble holding the perpetrators responsible. Is it because our minds can't process it?
# politics
While today's nationalists try to elevate borders to almost sacred status, the truth of the matter is that borders change frequently, and our definition of nations is still very fresh.
# politics
Skeptical groups were poised to bring science and critical thinking to the masses. They failed in their mission. But did they ever really have a chance to succeed?
# politics
When we want to see if economy is growing or to measure its relative size to others, we use the gross domestic product, or GDP. But what if this number is horribly misleading?
# politics
The good news is that foreign disinformation trolls aren't changing people's minds. The bad news is that, as it turns out, they don't have to…
# politics
It's bad enough when conspiracy theorists with an axe to grind decide who gets to run nations. It's far worse when those they elect are just as wild-eyed and paranoid.
# politics
In the last 25 years, there's been a steep decline in our average empathy. Why? We're stuck in a self-created loop of misery, woe, anger, and conspiracies. And we must break the wheel.