The American South – and the nation more broadly – continues to wrestle with how to remember its most painful chapters. Tourism is one of the arenas where that struggle is most visible. This tension came into sharp relief in May 2025, when the largest antebellum mansion in the region – the 19th-century estate at...
In his powerful book “The Burnout Society,” South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that in modern society, individuals have an imperative to achieve. Han calls this an “achievement society” in which we must become “entrepreneurs” – branding and selling ourselves; there is no time off the clock. In such a society, even leisure risks becoming...
When business researchers analyze data, they often rely on assumptions to help make sense of what they find. But like anyone else, they can run into a whole lot of trouble if those assumptions turn out to be wrong – which may happen more often than they realize. That’s what we found in a recent...
Reflections on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on its 80th anniversary. Eighty years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were immediately killed, and tens of thousands more died in the months and years that followed. The bomb virtually wiped Hiroshima from existence. Paul Tibbets,...
A review of Emilie A. Caspar, “Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience” (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Why do individuals obey commands to inflict terrible pain or even kill other people, sometimes people they may know personally? Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram’s famous—and controversial—studies in the 1960s suggested the answer lay in “agentic...
President Donald Trump’s first term saw a record-high rate of turnover among his Cabinet members and chief advisers. Trump’s second term has, to date, seen far fewer Cabinet departures. But some political commentators have observed that the president this time around has primarily appointed loyal advisers who will not challenge him. As Thomas Friedman pointed...
The US Food and Drug Administration recently convened a panel of experts to examine a sensitive and increasingly urgent question: should antidepressants be prescribed to women suffering from depression during pregnancy? To the surprise of many in the American medical community, the panel included not only US-based experts but also three international voices known for...
What began as songs about heartbreak in the brothels and barrios of the Dominican Republic in the 1960s has become a worldwide sensation. Even the Bee Gees have gotten a bachata spin. Prince Royce’s bilingual take on the 1977 hit “How Deep Is Your Love” has topped the Latin music charts this summer and proves...
When women political candidates deviate from expectations or the views of their party, they are judged far more harshly than men by voters, a new study in Politics & Gender, published on behalf of the American Political Science Association by Cambridge University Press, reveals. The research also found that voters begin campaigns with greater uncertainty about women...
If you find yourself routinely throwing away groceries and leftovers the night before you check out of an Airbnb, you’re not alone: A new study values the food wasted by U.S. vacation renters at about $2 billion each year. Based on survey results, researchers estimated that groceries, takeout and restaurant leftovers averaging $12 in value...
