Profile 9 min read

Lessons from John McWhorter

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.
Profile 9 min read

Lessons from Alex Ross

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.
Profile 6 min read

Lessons from Ada Palmer

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.
Profile 8 min read

Lessons from Michele Gelfand

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.
Profile 9 min read

Lessons from Michael Kremer

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.
Profile 7 min read

Lessons from Melissa Dell

Melissa Dell, a Harvard economics professor, studies how historical institutions continue to shape modern economies. Her work on forced labor in Peru and military strategy in Vietnam shows how to isolate cause and effect across centuries and use deep learning to digitize historical archives.
Profile 8 min read

Lessons from Matt Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias, a journalist and author, focuses on economic policy, housing, and political strategy. He argues that expanding housing, energy, and infrastructure can drive growth, connecting abundance to demographics, popularist messaging, and the mechanics of building a more abundant society.
Profile 8 min read

Lessons from Mark Carney

Mark Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and England, coined the “Tragedy of the Horizon” to explain why markets struggle with climate change’s systemic financial risks. His work probes the gap between market prices and human values.

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