Interesting Government Nudge
Do you think this will work to get people to stop texting and driving?

Do you think this will work to get people to stop texting and driving?

Put our brains into the modern food environment, and you have a recipe for disaster. Our brains are hardwired to crave calorie-dense foods, this craving no doubt arising from our evolutionary time spent on the Tundra where calories were often scarce. But our modern food environment surrounds us with calorie-dense foods, forcing us to deplete…
My friend and colleague Brian Wansink, from Cornell University, worked with some colleagues to design a preliminary restaurant menu, that maximizes the odds the people will order healthy foods. Trick number one: don’t call them “healthy” foods. Here is an image of that menu, reproduced in the Atlantic. This is a great example of how…
Shutterstock If you experience a heart attack, you are probably going to need to take pills to prevent another such attack. People who take beta blockers, aspirin, or cholesterol pills after heart attacks are less likely to experience a second such attack. (Note: Don’t take any of these pills until you have spoken to your…
I have absolutely no confidence that this approach will work, but I don’t even care because it is so hilarious. Thanks to Pelle Hansen (@Peguha) for tweeting this image.
Imagine you are 17 years old again and applying to college. You have your heart set on Stanford, but know it’s a long shot. Your well-meaning aunt, aware of your interest in that fine Palo Alto institution, buys you a Stanford sweatshirt. Would you wear it before you found out whether you had been accepted? ……
In a recent post, I give you a flavor for Rich Cohen’s wonderful book The Fish That Ate the Whale. One of the things that struck me in reading his book was the psychology of entrepreneurial success. It is often difficult to be a superstar entrepreneur if you are realistic. Often the biggest successes in…