How to Make Your Own Luck (Update)Before she decided to become a poker pro, Maria Konnikova didn’t know how many cards are in a deck. But she did have a Ph.D. in p […]

639. “This Country Kicks My Ass All the Time”Cory Booker on the politics of fear, the politics of hope, and how to split the difference.   SOURCES: Cory Booker, […]

638. Are You Ready for the Elder Swell?In the U.S., there will soon be more people over 65 than there are under 18 — and it’s not just lifespan that’s impro […]

What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common? (Update)In this episode from 2013, we look at whether spite pays — and if it even e […]

637. What It’s Like to Be Middle-Aged (in the Middle Ages)The simplicity of life back then is appealing today, as long as you don’t mind Church hegemony, the o […]

636. Why Aren’t We Having More Babies?For decades, the great fear was overpopulation. Now it’s the opposite. How did this happen — and what’s being done about it? ( […]

An Economics Lesson from a Talking Pencil (Update)A famous essay argues that “not a single person on the face of this earth” knows how to make a pencil. How tru […]

635. Can a Museum Be the Conscience of a Nation?Nicholas Cullinan, the new director of the British Museum, seems to think so. “I’m not afraid of the past,” he says […]

634. “Fault-Finder Is a Minimum-Wage Job”Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is less reserved than the average banker. He explains why […]

633. The Most Powerful People You’ve Never Heard OfJust beneath the surface of the global economy, there is a hidden layer of dealmakers for whom war, chaos, and […]

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 4: Extreme Resiliency (Update)Everyone makes mistakes. How do we learn from them? Lessons from the classroom, the Air Force, and the […]

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)Giving up can be painful. That’s why we need to talk about it. Today: stories about glitchy apps, leaky p […]

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 2: Life and Death (Update)In medicine, failure can be catastrophic. It can also produce discoveries that save millions of lives. Tales […]

How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events (Update)We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad […]

632. When Did We All Start Watching Documentaries?It used to be that making documentary films meant taking a vow of poverty (and obscurity). The streaming […]

631. Will “3 Summers of Lincoln” Make It to Broadway?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 a […]

Is It a Theater Piece or a Psychological Experiment? (Update)In an episode from 2012, we looked at what Sleep No More and the Stanford Prison Experiment can tell us […]

630. On Broadway, Nobody Knows NothingA 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 […]

629. How Is Live Theater Still Alive?It has become fiendishly expensive to produce, and has more competition than ever. And yet the believers still believe. Why? […]

Policymaking Is Not a Science — Yet (Update)Why do so many promising solutions in education, medicine, and criminal justice fail to scale up into great policy? And […]