The King of Human Error
On a pair of Israeli psychologists who between 1971 and 1984 “published a series of quirky papers exploring the ways human judgment may be distorted when we are making decisions in conditions of uncertainty.”
Showing 25 articles matching physics of music.
On a pair of Israeli psychologists who between 1971 and 1984 “published a series of quirky papers exploring the ways human judgment may be distorted when we are making decisions in conditions of uncertainty.”
Michael Lewis Vanity Fair Dec 2011 Permalink
How the contradiction-rich “country the size of Connecticut” that birthed Al-Jazeera has played an integral and surprising role in the revolutions of the Arab Spring.
Hugh Eakin New York Review of Books Oct 2011 20min Permalink
A profile of John Alan Schwartz, creator of one of the most notorious movies ever made.
Brian Hickey Deadspin Feb 2012 10min Permalink
Jung’s ‘Red Book’, a secret journal of dreams and drawings, has been in a Swiss vault for the better part of a century. The burden of its care has fallen on his descendants, who have reluctantly allowed it to be published.
Sara Corbett New York Times Sep 2009 Permalink
On the history of content moderation and what it means for the future of free speech.
Catherine Buni, Soraya Chemaly The Verge Apr 2016 40min Permalink
“Political argument has been having a terrible century. Instead of arguing, everyone from next-door neighbors to members of Congress has got used to doing the I.R.L. equivalent of posting to the comments section: serially fulminating.”
Jill Lepore New Yorker Sep 2016 20min Permalink
For decades, the artist’s Saturday Evening Post covers championed a retrograde view of America. This is the story of the politically turbulent 1960s, a singular painting, and Rockwell’s unlikely change of heart.
Tom Carson Vox Feb 2020 25min Permalink
The death of Elijah McClain prompted a flood of more than 8,500 letters from outside the state of Colorado—all begging Governor Jared Polis for justice. The author opens every one.
Robert Sanchez 5280 Sep 2021 20min Permalink
A writer considers America as he dies.
On waiting tables.
A personal history of “America’s most misunderstood religion.”
Walter Kirn The New Republic 25min
Guns, race, and childhood in Mississippi.
Kiese Laymon Cold Drank 20min
On the shifting nature of time.
An interview with Maurice Sendak.
Emma Brockes The Believer 20min
An interview with Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich.
Alex Pappademas Grantland 30min
An interview with a john.
Antonia Crane The Rumpus 20min
An interview with Kate Boo.
Emily Brennan Guernica 10min
An interview with Spike Lee.
Will Leitch New York 25min
On the film The Act of Killing, in which the actual perpetrators of a 1966-1966 Indonesian genocide recreate their own actions for the camera, and what it can tell us about our memories of the Vietnam War.
Errol Morris Slate Jul 2013 25min Permalink
Each soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan generated around 10 pounds of garbage per day. Most of that trash—along with used equipment and medical supplies and other wastes of war—was burned in open-air pits, emitting a toxic smoke that many soliders blame for their poor health today.
Katie Drummond The Verge Oct 2013 Permalink
In spite of the boiling-hot anticipation of its release, no one had much fun making this movie.
Vanessa Grigoriadis Vanity Fair Feb 2015 25min Permalink
A grandmother from Chicago, she’s one of those people who knows everybody. And those people who know everybody, the connectors, make the world work. A study of the power of (offline) social networking.
Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker Jan 1999 35min Permalink
Evidence of the failure to love is everywhere around us. To contemplate what it is to love today brings us up against reefs of darkness and walls of despair.
Barry Lopez Orion Aug 2020 15min Permalink
John McAfee created one of the first anti-virus programs. Then he traveled to Belize, where he lived with a harem of young women and a lot of guns. His neighbor was murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Stephen Rodrick Men's Journal Sep 2015 20min Permalink
Part one of a planned nine-part serialized biography of Harrison Gray Otis, the “inventor of modern Los Angeles.”
Future installments will include Otis’s interlude as “emperor of the Pribilofs,” his military atrocities in the Philippines, his bitter legal battles with the Theosophists, the Otis-Chandler empire in the Mexicali Valley, the Times bombing in 1910, the notorious discovery of fellatio in Long Beach, and Otis’s quixotic plan for world government.
“My mother kept scrapbooks of everything any of her children did all their lives, and among my scrapbooks are newspapers that I wrote on the typewriter at the age of six, The Hersey Family News, with ads offering my older brothers for various kinds of hard labor at very low wages.”
John Hersey, Jonathan Dee The Paris Review Jun 1986 50min Permalink
Shot and killed just shy of his 18th birthday, Deonte Hoard was one of 489 homicide victims in Chicago last year. How this happened—and how it keeps happening—is both one person’s story and the story of how a community has been forced to adjust to murder as an everyday fact of life.
Albert Samaha Buzzfeed May 2016 30min Permalink
Ricky Rodriguez was born in the role of the messiah. His father was David Berg, the leader of the polygamous/incestuous cult The Children of God, which published a book documenting his early life:
In 1982 a shop in Spain printed several thousand copies of a book that was then distributed to group members around the world. Bound in faux leather, illustrated with hundreds of photographs, the 762-page tome meticulously chronicled Ricky's young life and was intended as a child-rearing manual for families. Its title, The Story of Davidito, was stamped in gold. With its combination of earnest prose and unabashed child pornography, it is perhaps the most disturbing book ever published in the name of religion.
Eventually, he left the cult and found work as an electrician. But revenge called him back.
Peter Wilkinson Rolling Stone Jul 2005 Permalink
The decades-long saga of Michael Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife.
Pamela Colloff Texas Monthly 50min
As a 15-year runaway hitchhiker, the writer was nearly killed by a trucker. Twenty seven years later, she investigates whether her attacker was truck stop serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades, who often kept his victims chained in the back of his truck for weeks before killing and dumping them.
Vanessa Veselka GQ 30min
The murderous tale of Washington D.C. fabulist Albrecht Muth and his late wife Viola Drath.
Trevell Coleman wasn’t sure whether he’d killed a man. But after 17 years, he needed to find out.
Jennifer Gonnerman New York 20min
A medical device company experiments on humans.
Mina Kimes Fortune 30min
New medicines can cost hundreds of thousands of dolllars a year. Are they worth it? A look at how a pair of pharmaceutical compainies set their prices.
Barry Werth Technology Review Oct 2013 20min Permalink
How the United States came to spend more on defense than all the other nations of the world combined.
Jill Lepore New Yorker Jan 2013 20min
Last fall, a team of American Special Forces arrived in Nerkh, a district just west of Kabul. Six months later, amid allegations of torturing and murdering locals, the team was gone. Shortly after they left, the remains of 10 missing villagers were found outside their vacated base. An investigation into a possible war crime.
Matthieu Aikins Rolling Stone Nov 2013 25min
On decorated sniper Chris Kyle and the troubled young veteran who took his life.
Nicholas Schmidle New Yorker May 2013 50min
After two tours in Iraq, the writer returns to a volatile region of Afghanistan as an embedded journalist.
Matt Cook Texas Monthly Jul 2013 35min
As NATO leaves, the Afghan National Army grapples with a resilient Taliban.
Luke Mogelson New York Times Magazine Jan 2013 20min
Jan–Nov 2013 Permalink
Arts Crime History World Movies & TV
On Benjamin Murmelstein, the head of the council of elders at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Mark Lilla New York Review of Books Dec 2013 20min Permalink
A profile of the founding editor of Radar and current editor of The Fix, penned by a former employee.
Aaron Gell The New York Observer Jun 2011 20min Permalink