In the 1950s, scholars worried that, thanks to technological innovations, Americans wouldn’t know what to do with all of their leisure time. Yet today, as sociologist Juliet Schor notes, Americans are overworked, putting in more hours than at any...

In 1905, the 26-year-old Albert Einstein proposed something quite outrageous: that light could be both wave or particle. This idea is just as weird as it sounds. How could something be two things that are so different? A particle is...

Brian was just a kid when he first saw the movie Good Will Hunting and wasn’t thinking about therapy or his mental health. The 29-year-old engineer was mostly just fascinated by stories about repressed geniuses and Matt Damon’s background story...

What happens when you close down a city street to cars? More people do non-driving things, like walking, biking, strolling, skating and frolicking in the space normally reserved for motor vehicles. Car-free advocates would say that as greenhouse gas emissions...

The data are stark: the typical American diet is shortening the lives of many Americans. Diet-related deaths outrank deaths from smoking, and about half of U.S. deaths from heart disease – nearly 900 deaths a day – are linked to...

We think we want to be happy. Yet many of us are actually working toward some other end, according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Kahneman contends that happiness and satisfaction are distinct. Happiness...

            Artist Statement: Roland Nissan   I’m an urban sketcher and painter working primarily around London and the Southeast of England. I concentrate on buildings and street scenes. Since I use my sketchbooks as a...

A few months ago, I was introduced over email to a consultant, who I’ll call Brad. The person who made the introduction thought Brad would make a good contributor to Harvard Business Review, where I work as an editor. I receive...

In Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan, Francesca Gino, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, explores a range of fascinating subjects, including how emotions influence decisions and the often-thorny matter of understanding the perspectives...

    For years, Alan, a designer in Vermont, had a persistent, hacking cough that kept him up at night, and every winter, a near-constant series of sore throats and colds. He visited his doctor’s office, got diagnosed with reflux...

Amid the human crush of Old Delhi, on the edge of a medieval bazaar, a red structure with cages on its roof rises three stories above the labyrinth of neon-lit stalls and narrow alleyways, its top floor emblazoned with two...

At a conference in 2012, Luc van Loon was presenting some exciting data from a newly published study. After a heroic research effort that took 2.5 years and 500,000 euros, he and his colleagues had managed to shepherd a large...

      Artist Statement: I’m a self-taught artist from Finland, working in many different traditional mediums and digital art. I especially like to create digital art that feels as if it’s made in a traditional medium. It feels that...

  I believe that the new reality is here now … that it’s liveable in wonderful ways, all while the old reality is seemingly crumbling around us. Here are some tips for brilliant living in the new …. Seek breathtaking...

Spiritual teacher Don Miguel Ruiz brought The Four Agreements into Western awareness. A new thought author versed in ancestral knowledge, Ruiz says the agreements come from Toltec wisdom. The Toltecs were a pre-Hispanic culture living in central Mexico, talented artists...

  Most American yards don’t reflect their ecological condition. The plants need to be treated with fertilizer because the soil’s not right. They want water the weather doesn’t provide. Wildlife disappears because they no longer have food to eat. All...

  A thousand seemingly insignificant things change as an organism ages. Beyond the obvious signs like graying hair and memory problems are myriad shifts both subtler and more consequential: Metabolic processes run less smoothly; neurons respond less swiftly; the replication of...

Recovering from a happy childhood can take a long time. It’s not often that I’m suspected of having had one. I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, a daughter of immigrants. When I showed up at college and caught sight of...