Giving up can be painful. That’s why we need to talk about it. Today: stories about glitchy apps, leaky paint cans, broken sculptures — and a quest for ...

In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales from the front line, the lab, and the I.T. ...

We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with ...

It used to be that making documentary films meant taking a vow of poverty (and obscurity). The streaming revolution changed that. Award-winning filmmaker R.J. ...

It’s been in development for five years and has at least a year to go. On the eve of its out-of-town debut, the actor playing Lincoln quit. And the producers ...

In an episode from 2012, we looked at what Sleep No More and the Stanford Prison Experiment can tell us about who we really are. SOURCES: Felix Barrett, ...

A hit like Hamilton can come from nowhere while a sure bet can lose $20 million in a flash. We speak with some of the biggest producers in the game — Sonia ...

It has become fiendishly expensive to produce, and has more competition than ever. And yet the believers still believe. Why? And does the world really want a ...

Why do so many promising solutions in education, medicine, and criminal justice fail to scale up into great policy? And can a new breed of “implementation ...

There is no sludgier place in America than Washington, D.C. But there are signs of a change. We’ll hear about this progress — and ask where Elon Musk and DOGE ...

Insurance forms that make no sense. Subscriptions that can’t be cancelled. A never-ending blizzard of automated notifications. Where does all this sludge come ...

The quirky little grocery chain with California roots and German ownership has a lot to teach all of us about choice architecture, efficiency, frugality, ...

Nearly everything that politicians say about taxes is at least half a lie. They are also dishonest when it comes to the national debt. Stephen Dubner finds one ...

Lina Khan, the youngest F.T.C. chair in history, reset U.S. antitrust policy by thwarting mega-mergers and other monopolistic behavior. This earned her enemies ...

It’s a powerful biological response that has preserved our species for millennia. But now it may be keeping us from pursuing strategies that would improve the ...

To most people, the rat is vile and villainous. But not to everyone! We hear from a scientist who befriended rats and another who worked with them in the lab — ...

Even with a new rat czar, an arsenal of poisons, and a fleet of new garbage trucks, it won’t be easy — because, at root, the enemy is us. (Part two of a ...

A brief meditation on loss, relativity, and the vagaries of show business. RESOURCES: Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, documentary (2021) ...

New York City’s mayor calls them “public enemy number one.” History books say they caused the Black Death — although recent scientific evidence disputes that ...

Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal ...