The classic interview question that every applicant dreads: tell me about a time when you changed your mind. Most interviewees launch into some canned story about a sudden revelation—an aha moment of transformative insight—intended to demonstrate the candidate’s candor, open-mindedness and analytic skills. The interviewer nods along as they consider if the story is memorable […]
The first 2020 presidential debate did not go well for Donald Trump. Viewers were turned off by the president’s constant hectoring of Joe Biden. And many were alarmed when he not only declined to denounce white supremacists but went so far as to tell a far-right neofascist group to “stand by.” Polling by FiveThirtyEight revealed […]
A persistent falsehood has been circulating on social media: the number of COVID deaths is much lower than the official statistic of more than 218,000, and therefore the danger of the disease has been overblown. In August President Trump retweeted a post claiming that only 6 percent of these reported deaths were actually from COVID-19. […]
Buried in frozen soil across the Arctic, billions of tons of carbon lies trapped in the ground. Just a few degrees of warming could unleash it into the atmosphere. At least, that’s what the past would suggest. According to a new study, it’s happened before. The research, published Friday in the journal Science Advances, looks back 27,000 […]
When the Food and Drug Administration ran into White House resistance to its proposed vaccine safety standards in early October, the agency took a bold step: It published the guidance on its Web site. The public could now see what vaccine manufacturers and the FDA’s own independent advisory panel would require to ensure a longer, […]
People of all ages have moments when it feels like we’re on the edge of recalling something but can’t quite do it—where we parked our car or left our phone, for example, or what name goes with that familiar face. It’s extremely frustrating in the moment, but for most of us, we can usually remember […]
The 1930s and early 1940s were a good time to fish for sardines off California. Catches soared in a boom that was centered on Monterey Bay and supported the state’s flourishing economy. But the tides began to turn in 1946, and sardine catches eventually fell from an average of 234,000 tons to just 24,000 tons. […]
Not all planets orbit stars. Some are instead “free-floating” rogues adrift in interstellar space after being ejected from their home systems. For decades astronomers have sought to study such elusive outcasts, hoping to find patterns in their size and number that could reveal otherwise hidden details of how planetary systems emerge and evolve. Of the […]
People of all ages have moments when it feels like we’re on the edge of recalling something but can’t quite do it—where we parked our car or left our phone, for example, or what name goes with that familiar face. It’s extremely frustrating in the moment, but for most of us, we can usually remember […]
Ballgames are a big source of modern amusement, even amid the pandemic. But they’re nothing new. Consider for instance a 4,500-year-old linen ball found in a child’s tomb in Egypt. Or 3,600-year-old rubber balls, from Central America—where the contest called for players to slam the ball with their hips. Now, researchers have pinned a date […]