Showing results by narrator "Mark Schectman"

How does the architecture of our brain and neurons allow each of us to make individual behavioral choices? Scientists have long used the metaphor of government to explain how they think nervous systems are organized for decision-making. Are we at root a democracy, like the UK citizenry voting for Brexit? A dictatorship, like the North Korean leader ordering a missile launch? A set of factions competing for control, like those within the Turkish military? Or something else?

During the early 19th century, the Supreme Court’s term was so short that the justices would leave their families behind when they came to Washington. Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall arranged for the Supremes to live together, in hopes that shacking up in boarding houses or inns would instill a sense of fraternity among them. It did.

In 1946, George Orwell traveled to the house of an acquaintance in Scotland to write his final book. He had been suffering from tuberculosis for a long time, although it’s hard to know how long exactly.

In his 1907 autobiography, cowboy Nat Love recounts stories from his life on the frontier so cliché, they read like scenes from a John Wayne film.

Are you frustrated or disenchanted by the results of your Agile approach? Does Agile sound like a good idea, but you're not sure how to explain it beyond roles, practices, and meetings? Is your team going through the motions, but it's still business as usual? The missing piece is the Agile mindset - the thinking that makes Agile processes work.

Who polices America's prosecutors? And when they set their sights on an innocent CEO, can he survive a five-year, $25 million legal labyrinth to save the company he built, and himself from prison?

It’s a sizzling July day at Kure Beach. Kids in bathing suits walk barefoot along Fort Fisher Boulevard; moms and dads lug lawn chairs to the sand. Motels with names like “The Hang Ten Grill” and “The Salty Hammock” bespeak a chilled-out lifestyle in this summer community, located 15 miles south of Wilmington, North Carolina.

By the mid-1800s, tuberculosis had reached epidemic levels in Europe and the United States. The disease, now known to be highly infectious, attacks the lungs and damages other organs. Before the advent of antibiotics, its victims slowly wasted away, becoming pale and thin before finally dying of what was then known as consumption. The Victorians romanticized the disease and the effects it caused in the gradual build to death.

Noted Psychologist Revealed as Author of Best-Selling ‘Wonder Woman,’” read the astonishing headline. In the summer of 1942, a press release from the New York offices of All-American Comics turned up at newspapers, magazines and radio stations all over the United States.

The Mariana Trench is one of the most enigmatic spots in the ocean. This crescent-shaped scar in the Earth’s crust forms where the Pacific plate collides and sinks below the Philippine plate. It runs for 1,500 miles and contains the deepest spot known in the ocean: the Challenger Deep, which hides 6.83 miles below the surface.

In May of 1980, the World Health Assembly declared the world free from smallpox. The disease that had killed millions of people every century for much of recorded history was gone (at least, outside of laboratories)—a triumph that began with English doctor Edward Jenner, who discovered in 1796 that a little bit of a similar virus from cows could protect humans.

Lightweight and incredibly strong, proponents have touted carbon nanotubes as the ultimate building material. These tiny cylinders of interlinked carbon molecules have been popping up everywhere, from racing bikes to biomedical devices. And many scientists have suggested using this material to take the long-held dream of a space elevator from fiction to reality.

Drawing your own unlock pattern on a touchscreen is faster and easier to remember than a password, and much harder to crack.

It’s the ultimate spring-cleaning find: the great, great, great, great grandson of William H. Crawford, the US Ambassador to France between 1813 and 1815 and later US Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury was digging through a box of family heirlooms when he happened upon a trove of letters and documents received by his ancestor.

The Cyber Risk Handbook is the practitioner's guide to implementing, measuring, and improving the counter-cyber capabilities of the modern enterprise. The first resource of its kind, this book provides authoritative guidance for real-world situations, and cross-functional solutions for enterprise-wide improvement.

We live in a golden age of wine, thanks in part to thirsty millennials and Americans seemingly intent on out-drinking the French. 

Volcanologists have a flair for understatement. Here is the term for the roiling, spattering 2,000-degree Fahrenheit liquid rock visible in the caldera of Kilauea volcano this afternoon: lava lake.

Earworms wriggle their way into your brain, lingering there for hours, impossible to excise.

Jack Barsky was standing on a New York subway platform in 1988 when someone whispered in his ear: “You must come home or else you are dead.” No one had to tell him who’d sent the message. For ten years, Barsky had been a Soviet spy in the United States. Now, the KGB was calling him back. But Barsky wanted to stay.

The president promised peace with Indians - and covertly hatched the plot that provoked one of the bloodiest conflicts on the plains.