Well-Informed & Open-Minded

The word “genius” carries a seductive power—but it may explain far less than we think. Drawing on Helen Lewis’s critique, this episode unpicks the idea of genius not as an innate quality, but as a status granted by society, shaped by fashion, power, and storytelling. In this episode, we explore how the myth evolved from Romantic suffering to pseudo-scientific rankings that once underpinned eugenic...

When 18-year-old Dommaraju Gukesh returned to Chennai as the youngest world chess champion in history, the celebration felt like more than a sporting triumph. His victory over China’s Ding Liren—the first all-Asian world championship final—marked a generational shift in a game long dominated by Europe and Russia. In this episode, we explore how Gukesh’s rapid rise, powered by relentless training a...

Never before have two leading presidential candidates been so old—and so closely scrutinized for it. With Joe Biden and Donald Trump both well beyond the age of past presidents and most global leaders, concerns about health, stamina, and mental sharpness have moved from the margins to the center of political debate. In this episode, we explore what biology and social science actually say about agi...

More than a century ago, Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago offered a bold idea: that cities should be planned not just block by block, but as regions, weaving beauty, infrastructure, and growth into a single vision. That ambition spread quickly, as planners grappled with sprawl, coined new ways to measure metropolitan scale, and experimented with governance models that could coordinate transport, h...

Rising from the desert with mathematical precision, the Great Pyramid of Giza remains one of humanity’s most astonishing feats of organization and belief. Built for Pharaoh Khufu under the direction of his architect Hemiunu, the monument demanded twenty years of relentless coordination—quarrying stone, hauling blocks across the Nile, and placing one massive block every few minutes. In this episode...

For more than a century, big cities have been celebrated as engines of growth, magnets for talent, and crucibles of innovation. Economists have long argued that crowding people together boosts productivity through “agglomeration,” making everything from public services to new ideas more efficient. In this episode, we explore a provocative challenge to that logic, examining research that suggests A...

When the pandemic shut the world down, it also stripped away the illusions of celebrity. As millions struggled with illness, isolation, and lost income, famous figures posting from vast homes and urging solidarity exposed the widening gap between wealth and reality—and sparked a furious backlash. In this episode, we explore how COVID-19 accelerated the unraveling of celebrity culture, from tone-de...

Not long ago, New York Harbor was treated as an open sewer, written off as biologically dead—but today, whales surface beneath the skyline. After decades of environmental regulation and conservation, sharks, dolphins, and even humpback and fin whales have returned, alongside the slow revival of oyster reefs that once defined the city’s waters. In this episode, we explore how laws like the Clean Wa...

China’s consumer slowdown is not unfolding the way many expected. While wealthier urbanites tighten their belts, spending is rising among lower-income households and residents of smaller cities, reshaping where—and how—money is being spent. Budget destinations like Dali are booming, even as visitors spend less per trip, reflecting what economists call “consumer downgrading.” In this episode, we ex...

In South Korea, a quiet countercurrent is pulling young people away from the city and back to the land. Known as kwichon , the movement reflects post-pandemic disillusionment with precarious urban work and the grind of corporate life, especially within the country’s powerful chaebol . In this episode, we explore why the government is encouraging this return to rural life, how new farmers are being...

A rare coyote attack on a child in Chicago briefly pulled an overlooked urban resident into the spotlight. Though such incidents are uncommon, coyotes have quietly colonized cities across America, adapting with remarkable success to parks, railways, and suburban edges. In this episode, we explore why thousands now live in Chicago alone, how the loss of wolves and changes in human land use pushed t...

At the highest levels of leadership, success often depends on a resource that is rarely discussed and easily depleted: personal energy. When football manager Jürgen Klopp stunned fans by stepping down from Liverpool, citing exhaustion, he voiced a truth few elite figures admit—that stamina, not just talent or strategy, can set the limits of achievement. In this episode, we explore why roles like C...

In China’s bookstores, self-help manuals tower over fiction and history, reflecting a society under intense pressure to adapt, compete, and succeed. Translations of American guides on management and personal growth sell briskly, even as the Communist Party urges readers toward homegrown models of “positive energy,” including the writings of Xi Jinping himself. In this episode, we explore why advic...

Sport is obsessed with streaks—with dynasties that seem unstoppable and teams so cursed they appear incapable of winning. From the record-breaking dominance of the 1971–72 Los Angeles Lakers to the years-long misery of the Cleveland Browns or the American Samoa football team, winning and losing runs are woven into how fans explain success and failure. In this episode, we explore what really lies b...

Chinese cuisine is often reduced in the West to takeaway staples, but a new book invites readers to taste something far deeper. Fuchsia Dunlop’s Invitation to a Banquet uses thirty carefully chosen dishes—not recipes, but stories—to reveal how food expresses Chinese history, philosophy, and everyday life, from the quiet elegance of a final cup of broth to the prized textures of slippery, crunchy k...

For more than a century, tennis has ruled the world of racket sports, crowned by global stars, billion-dollar tournaments, and a reputation for athletic and cultural prestige. Yet on courts from Miami to Madrid, quieter challengers are gaining ground. In this episode, we explore how padel and pickleball—easier to learn, more social, and especially appealing to older players—have surged in populari...

Urban planning is often presented as a technical exercise, but at its core it is a political act—one that decides who benefits from city life and who bears its costs. From exclusionary zoning and racially restrictive covenants to modern debates over gentrification, planning has long reflected the interests and power of those able to shape it. In this episode, we explore how planning evolved from i...

Ever since the Concorde’s final landing in 2003, commercial air travel has been getting slower, not faster—despite decades of technological progress. The reason lies less in engineering limits than in economics and physics: supersonic flight creates disruptive sonic booms, guzzles fuel, and forces airlines onto narrow, unprofitable routes. In this episode, we explore why modern jets cruise below 9...

In one of the world’s most tightly managed cities, an unlikely form of freedom splashes into view. Along Beijing’s rivers and canals, residents—once mostly retirees, now joined by younger swimmers—slip past fences and warning signs to plunge into forbidden waters, building informal swimming holes complete with chairs and makeshift diving boards. In this episode, we explore how “wild swimming” has...

Born from the shockwaves of the atomic age, Godzilla first stomped onto Japanese screens as a creature of terror and trauma—a living metaphor for nuclear destruction in a country still reeling from war. Inspired by the 1954 exposure of a Japanese fishing boat to an American hydrogen-bomb test, producer Tanaka Tomoyuki imagined the monster as nature’s revenge, awakened by human hubris. In this epis...

Once a quiet inhabitant of Mexico’s ancient canals, the axolotl has become one of the internet’s most recognizable creatures—smiling, pink, and endlessly reproduced in games, memes, and toys. Revered by the Aztecs and later rediscovered by scientists for its uncanny ability to regenerate limbs and remain forever youthful, the salamander’s leap to global fame came through Japanese kawaii culture an...

Each spring in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, rattlesnake roundups draw crowds eager to watch hunters flush snakes from their dens, parade them through town, and turn them into spectacle, food, and local income. What began as a practical response to fear and ranching life has evolved into a ritual that now sits uneasily with modern ideas about conservation and animal welfare. In this episode, we exp...

Half a century on, Jaws is still hailed as the first great summer blockbuster, remembered for its thrills, its iconic score, and the stoic heroism of Police Chief Brody. But a closer look reveals a stranger, darker film beneath the legend. Plagued by technical failures and nearly undone by the decision to shoot at sea, Steven Spielberg was forced to hide the shark—turning absence into suspense and...

From bustling marketplaces to gleaming waterfronts, the modern city center is the product of repeated reinvention. Once forged by the convergence of railways, ports, and commerce in the late nineteenth century, downtowns later became targets of mid-twentieth-century urban renewal schemes that sought to erase “blight” through large-scale redevelopment—often at the cost of local communities. In this...

Often reviled as symbols of death, vultures are in fact among nature’s most effective public-health workers. Armed with stomach acid strong enough to neutralize pathogens like rabies, cholera, and tuberculosis, they strip carcasses clean before decay can poison water and soil, quietly stopping outbreaks before they begin. In this episode, we explore how these “plague-busting heroes” evolved to tur...