A lot of money is pouring into the global diamond industry, but demand for diamonds has been less than lustrous of late. But, at the same time, money has been pouring into the industry. Why? We have on our hands – a four carat mystery. Full length podcast, here. Shorter, radio/All Things Considered version, here. #Consumers #Science #Tech #Marketing

The American journalist Sally Herships has long felt she carries within herself a sense of the trauma suffered by her grandmother a century ago, in Russia, and subsequently passed down through her own mother.How is it possible to explain a fear that isn't of any thing tangible or present, a fear that isn't our own, that isn't rooted in direct experience? Psychiatrists know that behaviour can condition how we feel with physically-measurable impact - for example, upon the PAG o

Humans have been eating meat since, well, before we were human. But there are so many of us now eating so much meat that raising all those animals is having a big impact on the global environment, including the climate. That has people around the world scrambling for meat substitutes, but something better than those dry and pasty veggie burgers. Patrick Brown, founder and CEO of Impossible Foods, thinks he's hit the jackpot. His company invented a veggie burger that claims to

Ted Berger is trying to build a microchip that can remember things for us. He teaches biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California,and his goal is to create a device that can take over for the hippocampus of the brain, translating thoughts into long-term memories. But that’s a complicated task. “If they’re not transformed the way the hippocampus transforms them,” Berger explains, “then you can’t store them. That’s what it boils down to." Berger would like t

In three-card monte, con artists use swift hand moves and constant patter to convince a sucker there's a way to win. A magician, a theater professor, and a real-life grifter each describe how the monte isn’t just a crime; it’s street theater designed to keep its losers entertained. Read the full story here. #Magic #Crime #Science

Immorality, criminality, that is the stuff of the outside world. Well, that's what some people thought, like the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, back in the 1820's. So they opened up the Eastern State Penitentiary, an experiment in correcting criminal behavior through solitary confinement. Advocates for the system believed that if left alone for long enough, away from the dirty outside world, a criminal's innate morality would prevail and,