The Hollow Promise of Numbers It begins, as these things so often do now, with a podium and a graph. A minister in a navy suit announces...

The Human Hunch You know the feeling. Someone says all the right things, but something in you tugs: Do they actually care—or are they...

A woman I know—let's call her Sarah—works in child protection. Her job, she told me, is not really about following procedures, though...

It was one of those crisp winter afternoons in a suburban primary school, the kind where sunlight slants through the windows at just the...

Modern business too often operates under a colossal misconception: that the world is complicated but ultimately controllable, and that...

Part I: The Glittering Hall of Reason and Dreams On a brisk evening in December 2024, the Grand Hall in Stockholm glittered with ceremony...

British education is fast losing its soul, if it hasn't already lost it. There is no animating vision of what schooling is for, or what...

There’s a familiar refrain nowadays: “Follow the science!”  In a world awash with claims of “alternative facts,” conspiracy theories, and...

Look at today’s tech headlines, and you’ll see a recurring theme: Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Geoffrey Hinton all caution (or exult) that...

PART I: THE ILLUSION OF “INTELLIGENCE” IN THE AGE OF IQ TESTS In the early 20th century, French psychologist Alfred Binet devised a test...

In the mid-1960s, the hallways of MIT seemed to glow with promise. Artificial Intelligence, many believed, was just a few breakthroughs...

PART I: THE GREAT PROMISE—AND ITS SHADOW It was March 2016 in downtown Seoul when the world first heard the news: a computer program had...

The Hard Realities of Innovation Innovation is seductive. It promises growth, disruption, and an edge in a competitive market. Yet the...

Something in modern life feels profoundly off. Across the world, trust in institutions—governments, businesses, schools, and even...

Innovation promises breakthroughs, transformative ideas, and progress. Yet too often, our efforts to innovate fail—not because of a lack...

In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg made a promise. Facebook, he said, would open the world, connect people across boundaries, make us closer, more...

In the small hours of a hospital ward, John sat staring at the ceiling, his body hollowed out by a grief too vast to name. Two days...

Why did some of history’s greatest innovators—the visionaries who gave us cars, smartphones, and other groundbreaking technologies—seem...

The Magnetic Pull of Truth in the Age of Trump In a world saturated with misinformation, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories, it’s...

Chances are you’ve never heard of Frederick Winslow Taylor. He isn’t a household name, but his ideas have shaped how many of us...