Page 57 of 506 · Back to latest writing
James R. Flynn, a political philosopher and intelligence researcher, documented the Flynn effect, the rise in global IQ scores. He argued that modern environments cultivate abstract cognitive habits, challenging innate explanations and exposing limits in standardized testing.
Django Davidson, a founding partner and portfolio manager at Hosking Partners, applies the capital cycle framework to global equities, studying how supply and corporate spending shape long-term returns while tracking physical capacity instead of chasing demand.
Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist and bioethicist who helped shape the Affordable Care Act, examines how American healthcare functions and fails, asking whether the cultural pursuit of longer life can diminish the quality of our final years.
John McWhorter, a Columbia University linguist, studies how languages form, change, and die, with particular attention to creoles and African American Vernacular English. His work frames language evolution as inevitable rather than evidence of cognitive decay.
Alex Ross, a New Yorker staff writer and its music critic from 1996 to 2026, connects classical music to popular culture, political history, listening, performance, and technology.
Ada Palmer, a historian of the Renaissance and Enlightenment and author of the Terra Ignota series, uses research on censorship, radical thought, and statecraft to examine institutional disruption, historical contingency, and the power dynamics that shape possible futures.
Michele Gelfand, a cultural psychologist, developed the framework of “tight” and “loose” cultures to explain how groups enforce norms. Her research reveals why societies vary in tolerating deviance and how unwritten expectations influence pandemic responses and corporate mergers.
Michael Kremer, an economist, shifted poverty research toward measuring what works. His field experiments, Advance Market Commitments, and O-Ring theory show how practical interventions can address health, agriculture, and institutional design while small errors bottleneck entire economies.