Author: Yuval Noah Harari | Source: Big Think (August 11, 2025) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Information, Intelligence | Knowledge, IT | Technology, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
A simple 2×2 matrix can explain why the House of Representatives has found it harder and harder to get anything done.
Authors: Carolyn Silverman, Ronald Brownstein | Source: Bloomberg (December 17, 2025) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
One of the great mysteries about the rise of populism, in both the United States and Europe, is why it has benefited the political right so much more than the left. For years, American progressives have been trying to get people worked up over rising rates of economic inequality, with the expectation that this anger could fuel greater support for the Democratic Party. Yet the … [ Read more ]
Author: Joseph Heath | Source: The Atlantic (December 15, 2025) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
How a chance encounter on a plane sparked a quest to uncover life’s meaning. Arthur C. Brooks shares research-grounded tips to help your happiness levels soar.
Authors: Arthur C. Brooks, Suzanne Hogseth | Source: IESE Insight (May2025) | Subjects: Career, Happiness, Personal Improvement
For decades, American politics have relied on the same logic that polygraph machines do: that liars will feel some level of shame when they tell their lies, and that the shame will manifest—the quickened heartbeat, the pang of guilt—in the body. But the body politic is cheating the test with alarming ease. Some Americans believe the lies. Others refuse to. Some Americans recognize the lies’ … [ Read more ]
Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy
Philosophically speaking, the right has long been defined by its emphasis on the value of stability — as odd as it may seem in the era of Trump’s radically destabilizing administration.
Conservative theorists, most notably Edmund Burke, have long maintained that political flourishing depends on the existence of stable social rules developed gradually and from the bottom up over the course of generations. Those who seek … [ Read more ]
Author: Zack Beauchamp | Source: Vox (June 11, 2025) | Subjects: America, Articles & Links, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy
The Republican Party stands for lower taxes, especially on the rich; lower spending on programs for the poor; and big spending on defense. That’s what Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and other figures who defined the party have all stood for, for nearly half a century now… The essential Republican message may become blurred around the edges, the way that George W. Bush messed … [ Read more ]
Author: Dylan Matthews | Source: Vox (May 22, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy
And that’s okay.
Author: Julie Beck | Source: The Atlantic (June 2, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Fact-checking was a theme of Donald Trump’s first presidency. Journalists kept count of those first-term fictions—30,573 in all, per one count—guided by the optimism that checking the president’s words might also serve as a check on his power. In late 2020, when Trump claimed victory in the presidential election he had lost, scholars saw in his declaration the kind of propaganda … [ Read more ]
Author: Megan Garber | Source: The Atlantic (April 29, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Concepts, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Politics & Public Policy, Truth | Right | Wrong
A self-schema is the information and beliefs you hold about yourself. This cognitive framework influences how you feel, how you react, your actual behavior, and your perception of your place in the world.
How your self-schema influences your actions can be nuanced: For example, you may have internalized that you’re not athletic during childhood — and then, later in life, limit yourself when you want to … [ Read more ]
Author: Sarah Sloat | Source: Inverse (April 22, 2025) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Max Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms…
The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” … [ Read more ]
Author: Jonathan Rauch | Source: The Atlantic (February 24, 2025) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, International, Politics & Public Policy, Trump
Populism is never separate from this “voice of passion.” That is its defining characteristic. It begins in deep grievance. Some of those grievances can be quite real and consequential — such as when modern populist anger is rooted in fury over the Great Recession, long wars in the Middle East or shuttered factories in the Midwest.
Some of the problems, however, that motivate populists aren’t problems … [ Read more ]
Author: David French | Source: The New York Times (February 9, 2025) | Subjects: Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Trump