Ilana E. Strauss
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Photo Josse / Leemage / Getty The Ben & Jerry’s of Medieval Times
“Social responsibility” seems like a recent trend, but businesses have been practicing it for more than half a millennium.
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Wellcome Library The Original Sharing Economy
For most of human history, there was no such thing as private property.
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Leemage / Getty The Hot New Millennial Housing Trend Is a Repeat of the Middle Ages
Communal living is hardly a departure from tradition—it's a return to how humans have been making their homes for thousands of years.
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Wikimedia Would a Work-Free World Be So Bad?
Fears of civilization-wide idleness are based too much on the downsides of being unemployed in a society premised on the concept of employment.
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Kara Gordon / The Atlantic The Alarming Truth
Car alarms don't deter criminals, and they're a public nuisance. Why are they still so common?
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Wikicommons / Imbre / Shutterstock / Paul Spella ... The Myth of the Barter Economy
Adam Smith said that quid-pro-quo exchange systems preceded economies based on currency, but there’s no evidence that he was right.
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Maxim Shemetov / Reuters The Mothers Who Can't Escape the Trauma of Childbirth
For some women, the psychological toll of childbirth leads to a form of PTSD—distinct from postpartum depression—that follows them into new motherhood.
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kanchana tipmontian / Shutterstock Soul Searching Through the Myers-Briggs Test
The personality test isn't perfect, but it plays to people's desire to understand themselves and others.
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Robert Couse-Baker/Flickr/The Atlantic A New Diagnosis for Combat Nightmares
Soldiers returning home from duty often experience vivid dreams, night sweats, and other symptoms commonly classified as PTSD, but some argue that a newly named condition—trauma-associated sleep disorder—may be more accurate.
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Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters Not Everyone's Internal Clock Is Set for the 9-to-5
Sleep disorders put some workers out of sync with traditional schedules and are estimated to cost employers $2,000 per employee in lost productivity every year.
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Movie About You / Shutterstock The Weird Little Industry Behind a Mesmerizing Instrument
The manufacturers of the world's handpans don't want to turn to mass production. The result: Super-long waiting lists to get one of these rare steel orbs.
