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Mar 2023
55m 26s

Why Are American Teens So Unhappy? How D...

The Ringer
About this episode
This is our second installment of happiness week on the Plain English podcast. On Tuesday, I spoke with the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development about what makes a good life, based on their 80-year longitudinal study. Today’s episode is about the phenomenon of rising teenage unhappiness. What's actually happening? Why is it happening? What the ... Show More
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Yesterday
A Grand Unified Theory of Cultural Stagnation
One of my favorite theories about the modern world is the idea that culture is "stuck." Whether the decline of ornamentation in modern architecture, or the fact that every corporate logo looks the same now, or the fact that Gen Z's favorite television was all made in the 1990s an ... Show More
58m 51s
Nov 21
The American Math Crisis
The University of California San Diego is one of the best public colleges in America. So it was fairly shocking when the school released a report on the steep decline in academic preparedness of its freshman. The number of incoming students in need of remedial math has surged in ... Show More
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Nov 18
How Superintelligent AI Could Upend Work and Politics
Many AI experts believe that some time in the next few years, we will build something close to artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that can do nearly all valuable cognitive work as well as or better than humans. What happens to jobs, wages, prices, and politics in tha ... Show More
58m 43s
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