It’s hard to believe that summer is already here. Where I live, outside of Philadelphia, the nights in May have been pretty cold, so I’m still trying to get used to the idea that the time for backyard barbecues and hanging out by the pool has already arrived. Still, summer…

There are a number of stories about what led Hans Lipperhey to submit a patent for the telescope in 1608. Some say that he saw two children playing with lenses in his shop who discovered that when they put one lens in front of each other they could see a…

I still remember the excitement I felt seeing Kyiv, Ukraine for the first time in 2002. I had been living in Eastern Europe for five years by that time and had the privilege of witnessing first-hand how formerly communist countries moved boldly into a new future of peace and prosperity…

Anybody who has ever been married or had kids knows how difficult it can be to convince even a single person. To persuade dozens or hundreds — much less thousands or millions — to change their mind about something important seems like a pipe dream. Yet that doesn’t stop people…

Roger McNamee is one of the smartest investors in tech, seemingly always ahead of the curve. A long-time sounding board to Bill Gates he was an early investor in companies like Palm, Electronic Arts, and Facebook. He has also not hesitated to be fiercely critical, writing an unsparing book about…

I have a friend who was once ambushed on a TV show panel. Being confronted with a clearly offensive remark, she was caught off-guard, said something that was probably unwise (but not untrue or unkind), and found herself at the center of a media-driven scandal. …

In 1954 the economist Paul Samuelson received a postcard from his friend, the statistician Jimmie Savage asking, “ever hear of this guy?” The ”guy” in question was Louis Bachelier, an obscure mathematician who wrote a dissertation in 1900 that anticipated Einstein’s famous paper on Brownian motion published five years later. …

For decades, economists have been obsessed with the idea of “enlightened self-interest,” building elaborate models based on the assumption that people make rational choices. Business and political leaders have used these models to shape competitive strategies, compensation, tax policies and social services among other things. It’s clear that the real…

Not long ago I was participating in a discussion on the social audio app, Clubhouse, and I said something a lady didn’t like that triggered her emotions. “Obviously, you need to be educated,” she said before subjecting me to a prolonged harangue riddled with inaccuracies, logical gaps and non-sequiturs. Yet…