Summer festivals are a huge part of the American music scene -- and of the music marketplace. Why do millions of people risk sunburn and dehydration when they could hear the same music better with earbuds? Music critic Maura Johnston unpacks the economics and the atavistic lure of the summer music festival.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Sherman Alexie wrote a novel in response to 9/11. He thinks the fanaticism of flying planes into buildings is the end game of tribalism and he wanted to teach his sons something else.
One of the most interesting stories of 2015 was the idea that is a formula for love—or, more specifically, a series of questions that might fascilitate falling in love. We spoke the author of this study, Arthur Aron, as well as Mandy Len Catron, a woman who used the questions on her partner.
Tom Lessl conducted a study of the Darwin fish emblem some people slap on their cars. He says that it seems to have little to do with evolution but represents a rejection of fundamentalist Christianity.
Stephen Bloom tells Jim Fleming about a group of Orthodox Jews who moved from Brooklyn to Postville to run a kosher slaughterhouse.
According to one estimate, the average young person spends about 8 hours a week playing video games. While many parents are worried about all that screen time, there's an emerging body of research that suggests some social and psychological benefits to gaming. And now there's a new generation of educators who want to bring video games into the classroom, not only to make it more fun, but also more effective. Journalist Greg Toppo writes about their efforts in "The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter."
Memory is a hot topic in neuroscience, and it turns out the context of our memories is as important as the event itself. Dartmouth neuroscientist Jeremy Manning has found that people can intentionally forget past experiences by changing how they think about the context of their memories.
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