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Anybody Can Pull the Cord
At the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, any line worker — six weeks on the job, no stripes on his sleeve — can grab a yellow cord and stop the…
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The Song Belongs to Whoever Signs Last
Here is a piece of stoic math nobody tells you when you’re young and good at something: talent is not an asset. It’s a faucet. Somebody else owns the plumbing,…
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Lose Small, Win Stupid
A merchant gets locked outside a city’s gates after dark. No inn, no light, just the long wait until morning. An old man leading a flock of sheep wanders up…
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Stop Selling Hours
The Convict Who Redesigned Invention In 1950, a young Soviet patent examiner named Genrich Altshuller made the mistake of telling the truth to the wrong people. He’d spent years reviewing…
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The Voice Nobody Taught You to Use
In the summer of 1964, a self-conscious teenage John Fogerty landed a two-week bar gig in Portland, Oregon, and decided, out of nowhere, that he was going to start singing…
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Nobody Wants Scott
In October of 1911, two men raced for the same frozen finish line, for reasons that had nothing to do with women and everything to do with what women, a…
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Ambition Doesn’t Ask Permission
In 1909, a football club made up almost entirely of coal miners from County Durham sold off personal belongings and passed a collection plate around their own impoverished village so…
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Good Banter is Expensive
In 2017, a team of researchers in New Zealand discovered that kea parrots have a specific call reserved entirely for play. Not for food. Not for danger. Not for mating.…
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Never Grab, Never Stare
A master falconer will tell you the whole trade lives in two rules: never grab, never stare. You stand in the field with your arm loose and your face turned…
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The Confidence Con
In 2016, the psychologist who helped launch one of the most-watched TED Talks in history stood up and quietly demolished her own life’s work. Dana Carney had co-authored the original…